The Zeppelin Destroyer/Chapter III
CHAPTER III
THE BROWN DEAL BOX
Six days had gone by.
The weather having continued bright and fine, with a high and steady barometer, all of us at Hendon, quirks and pilots alike, had been up on many occasions.
In secret, I had placed upon my machine—a Breguet monoplane with a 200 horse-power Salmson—another new invention which, with Teddy's aid, I had devised, and was testing. We were keeping the affair a profound secret. Nobody knew of the contrivance evolved out of my knowledge of wireless, save we two, Roseye and my mechanic Harry Theed.
Carefully concealed from the eye it was carried in a large locked box, while, as further precaution, after testing it each time, I put it on my car and took it away to my chambers with me, for we were not at all anxious for any of the mixed crowd at the aerodrome to pry into what we were doing, or to ascertain the true direction of our constant experiments.
One afternoon down at Gunnersbury Teddy, in mechanic's brown overalls, was busily engaged repairing a portion of the apparatus which I had broken that morning owing to an unfortunately bad landing.
To the uninitiated the long shed with its two lathes, its tangle of electric wires across the floor, the great induction coils—some of them capable of giving a fourteen-inch spark—the small dynamo with its petrol engine, and other electrical appliances, would no doubt have been puzzling.
Upon the benches stood some strange-looking wireless condensers, radiometers, detectors and other objects which we had constructed. Also dressed in overalls, as was my chum and fellow-experimenter, I was engaged in assisting him to adjust a small vacuum tube within that heavy, mysterious-looking wooden box which I daily carried aloft with me in the fuselage of my aeroplane.
We smoked 'gaspers' and chatted merrily, as we worked on, until at last we had completed the job.
'Now let's put a test on it again—eh, Claude?' my friend suggested.
'Right ho!' I acquiesced.
It was already dusk, for the repair had taken us nearly four hours, and during the past half-hour we had worked beneath the electric light.
The shed was on one side of the large market-garden, at a considerable distance from any house. Indeed, as one stood at the door there spread northward several flat market-gardens and orchards, almost as far as the eye could reach.
Presently, when we had adjusted the many heavily-insulated wires, I started the dynamo, and on turning on the current a bright blue blinding flash shot, with a sharp fierce crackling, across the place.
"Gad! that's bad!' gasped Teddy, pale in alarm. 'Something's wrong!'
'Yes, and confoundedly dangerous to ourselves and to the petrol—eh?' I cried, shutting off the dynamo instantly.
'Phew! It was a real narrow shave!' remarked Teddy. 'One of the narrowest we've ever had!'
'Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something,' I said. 'We've made an accidental discovery—that spark shows that we can increase our power a thousandfold, when we like.'
'It has, no doubt, given the wireless operators at the Admiralty, at Marconi House, and elsewhere a very nasty jar,' laughed Teddy. 'They'll wonder what's up, won't they?'
'Well, we can't help their troubles.' I laughed.
'I expect we've jammed them badly,' Teddy said. Look the aerial is connected up!'
'By Jove! so it is?" I said.
I saw what I had not noticed before, that the network of phosphor-bronze aerial wires strung beneath the roof of the shed had remained connected up with the coils from an experiment we had conducted on the previous afternoon.
'I'll pump Treeton about it to-morrow. He'll be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House,' I said. 'They'll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!'
'No doubt. But we may thank our stars that we're safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We'll have to exercise far more caution in the future,' declared Teddy.
Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.
Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.
Our searchlights and aerial guns had been proved of little use. London, the greatest capital of the civilized history, the hub of the whole world, seemed to lie at the mercy of the bespectacled night-pirate who came and went as he pleased.
As is usual, the public were 'saying things'—but were not acting. Both Teddy and I had foreseen this long ago, for both of us had realized to the full the deadly nature of the Zeppelin menace. It was all very well for a Cabinet Minister to assure us on March 17, 1915, that 'Any hostile aircraft, airships, or aeroplanes which reached our coast during the coming year would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.'
Events had shown that the British authorities at that time did not allow sufficiently for the great height at which Zeppelins could travel, or for the fact that, while the airship could operate successfully at night-time, darkness was the least suitable time for aeroplanes in the stage of development which they had reached, on account of the difficulties of starting and of landing in the dark, as well as of seeing or hearing the airship from a machine flying aloft.
The German Government and the German people had thrown their fullest energies into the development of aircraft for war. Unfortunately we had not, and it is not too much to say that, during the first few months of the war, the responsible authorities in this country did not take the aerial menace seriously.
We, as practical airmen, had taken it up seriously—very seriously, and, as result, had devoted all our time and all our limited private means—for my governor was not too generous in the matter of an allowance—towards combating the rapidly increasing peril of air attack.
The first German attempt had been on Christmas Day in the previous year. As I happened to witness it, it had fired me with determination.
Shall I ever forget the excitement of that day. I had gone down the Thames to spend Christmas with my old friend, Jack Watson, of the Naval Flying Corps, when, under cover of a light fog, a German airman suddenly appeared.
We first saw him over the Estuary, slightly to, the south of us, flying at a height that we estimated at about 9,000 feet. There was great excitement. Anti-aircraft guns at once opened on him, but they failed to hit him. Lost to our view in a mist, he was not seen again until well up the river, and from the reports afterwards published it seems that fire was once more opened on him from our guns. Rising higher to escape our shells, he made a complete half-circle. By now, several British aeroplanes were in pursuit, and the German, seeing that it was hopeless to attempt to go farther, turned back. Thousands of people had a good view of this—the first real air-battle on the British coast. Shells were bursting in the air apparently all round the German. Time after time it seemed that he had been hit, yet time after time he escaped. Men could not fail to admire the skill with which he handled his machine. At one point a sudden dip of the aeroplane seemed to show that a shot had got home. Still, however, according to what I heard afterwards, he kept on, circling, dodging, twisting, climbing and diving with almost incredible swiftness to escape his pursuers. He made straight for the sea—and escaped. Weeks afterwards a rumour was received that some fishermen had found a body away out in the sea which was believed to be that of the German airman, but no satisfactory confirmation was ever published.
It was that incident which first set me thinking of how to combat hostile aircraft. At once I thought of aeroplane versus aeroplane, but when three weeks later, two Zeppelins came over to the east coast to reconnoitre, and dropped nine bombs, blowing to pieces two old people, then my attention was turned towards the Zeppelin, and in Teddy Ashton I found a ready and enthusiastic assistant.
This raid, and those which followed on points on the north-east coast, small as their immediate results were, yet demonstrated one thing. The German Press proclaimed that German genius had at last ended the legend that England was invulnerable owing to her insularity. An English writer had pointed out that it was certainly proved that the seas no longer protected England from attack. She was no longer an island. Should she hope to keep her shores inviolate, and to allow her people to live in the safety that they had enjoyed for so many centuries, she must be prepared to meet invaders from the sky, as well as on the water. Both Teddy and myself saw that the coming of the German airship was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of this country.
The real German defence was summed up in a semi-official message published, which read: 'The German nation has been forced by England to fight for her existence, and cannot be forced to forego legitimate self-defence, and will not do so, relying upon her good right.'
Her good right! Had Germany a right to drop bombs blindly on open villages, and kill our women and babes at night?
That had fired us both, and the result had been that long shed, and the great mass of electrical apparatus it contained.
Sometimes, when I begged more money from my father for the purposes of those experiments, he had grumbled, yet always when I pointed out what Teddy and I were actually doing, he was ready again to sign a further cheque.
Teddy was, of course, richer than myself. His father had been a cotton-weaver who had lived in Burnley, and had died leaving his whole fortune to his only son. Therefore my friend was possessed of considerable means, and had it not been so, I fear that we should never have been able to establish such an extensive plant, or go to the big expenses which we had so often to incur.
The secrets of that shed of ours had to be well guarded. Our night-watchman was a retired police-sergeant, John the father of my faithful mechanic, Harry Theed, and in him we reposed the utmost confidence.
'If anyone ever wants to get into this 'ere place, sir,' old Theed often said to me, 'then they'll have to put my lights out first—I can assure you.'
'Well,' Teddy exclaimed presently, as he slowly lit a fresh cigarette. 'Let's adjust things a bit better, and we'll then try how she goes—away out on the pole. It's getting quite dark enough to see—especially with your glasses.'
'Right you are,' I said, and then, after another ten minutes of manipulation with the wires, during which I 'cut out' the aerial and several big glass-and-tin-foil condensers, all was ready for the experiment.
Teddy had drawn a heavy wooden bench in front of the door, and upon it I placed the big box of brown-stained deal which contained our mysterious apparatus from which we both expected such great things. Indeed, that curious machine, had just escaped bringing upon us instant death.
Yet that mishap to which we had been accidentally so near had revealed several things to me, causing me to reflect upon certain crucial and technical points which, hitherto, I had not considered.
In that square, heavy box, connected up by its high-tension wires to three of the big induction coils upon the table was, we believed, stored a power by which the Zeppelins could be successfully destroyed and brought to earth.
It was nearly dark when I opened the door of the shed situated opposite to where I had placed the box, and looked out to ascertain if anyone was about, as we wished for no prying eyes to witness our experiment.
I walked out, and around the building, but nobody was near. Then, when I returned to the door, I stood for a moment gazing away across the wide area of market-gardens to where, perhaps half a mile distant, stood a high flag-pole which had been erected for me a couple of years before, and which had, before the war, borne my wireless aerial.
The little white hut near by I had built, and until the outbreak of war, when Post Office engineers had come and seized my private station, I had spent many hours there each evening reading and transmitting messages.
The pole, in three sections, which in the falling darkness could only just be discerned, was about eighty feet in height and stayed by eight steel guys, each of which was in three sections connected together by green-glazed porcelain insulators, so that any leakage of electrical current could not go to earth. Affixed to the pole and protruding some two feet above it was a copper lightning-conductor with four points, an accessory which I had had put up recently for experimental purposes.
'Nobody's about,' I said to Teddy when I returned. 'Will you run the dynamo, if all is in order?'
Then, after a final examination of the various electrical connexions, he started the engine and the dynamo began to hum again.
I drew over a switch at the side of the box, when a loud crackling was heard within—a quenched-spark of enormous power. Afterwards, I quickly seized my binoculars and going out through the open door, taking great care not to pass before the lens,—where in the place of glass was a disc of steel—something like that of a big camera, forming the end of the box, I focussed my glasses eagerly upon the flagstaff.
'Hurrah! Teddy!' I cried in glee. 'It works—Gad! come and look! At last! We have it at last!'
Next moment, my friend was eagerly at my side, while at the same instant we heard a light footstep and Roseye, in her big motor-coat, stood unexpectedly before us.
'It works! Roseye! It works, darling! Mind! Don't pass in front of the box. Do be careful!' I cried in warning, while at the same time Teddy Ashton, with the binoculars at his eyes, gasped:
'By Jove, Claude! It's wonderful. Yes! You're right! We have success at last!'