by Anthology
"Look, mine friendt, look down dere, and tell me vhat you tink of dat for a nice trick to blay on dose unsuspecting sailors and soldiers vat are vaiting to plow each oder to pieces mit all de resources of Christianity and civilisation. By tam! I believe dose tings belong to de Russians, and if dey do, dere will be de teufel's own delight down dere before de sun rises."
Max looked down, and to his amazement saw three great elongated, cigar-shaped bodies drifting rapidly through the air to northward over the waters of the Sound.
"Aerostats, by all that's wonderful!" he ejaculated. "And pretty lively ones, too, at that. Those fellows aren't moving much less than fifty miles an hour, and what wind there is is against them. Yes, I remember now, Lea told me only the other day that she had heard rumours that the Tsar's engineers had succeeded in building some of those things in some out-of-the-way place, and hoped to be able to use them in the war. Well, if they do belong to the Tsar, and he has a good few of them about, I hardly think there'll be much need for our assistance for some time yet. They'll smash one another up pretty completely without us."
"And den," chuckled Hartog, rubbing his hands in anticipation of a perfect carnival of bloodshed,- "den, wen dey are all smashed, ve can sail in and go for de remains, and den tackle de war-balloons and bust dem up as vell. Mein Gott, dat will be glorious fun!"
"I don't see why we should smash up the war-balloons, at any rate just yet," said Max quietly. "Just think of the damage they are able to do to those who are our enemies just as well as theirs. Of course I don't suppose they'd be any match for us, for we could fly two or three feet to their one, but for land and sea warfare they'll be better than anything the British or Germans have got. I think we'd better see what damage they can do before we interfere with them. It all helps on the good work of anarchy, you know. The more horrible war becomes, the sooner the peoples of the earth will get disgusted with the rulers and politicians who are always dragging them into it. Let them do what destruction they can manage, and then we'll go in and finish."
"Max," said Hartog, in a tone of sententious mock reproof, "I am afraidt you haf very bloodtirsty tastes. I tink it would be a fery great slaughter dat would satisfy you."
"Yes," said Max, with a savage laugh, "a very big one; but look, there goes the main fleet! The first three we saw were only scouts, I suppose. I don't think it will be long now before the fun begins."
The rift in the clouds had widened now, and through it they saw a long line of the strange-looking shapes, curved in the form of a crescent, drift swiftly to the north, where the unsuspecting fleets and fortresses were waiting for a very different and far less formidable enemy.
"I hope our fellows won't take it into their heads to fire at those aerostats," continued Max. "That would spoil all the fun. I wish those clouds were a bit thicker, and I'd take the risk of signalling them."
"Yy not hoist a vite flag instead of de red one," suggested Hartog, "and den fly along past dem? Dey will understand dat after your oder instructions."
"Yes, that's not a bad idea," said Max. "We'll try that."
Ten minutes later the Revanche bad ascended a few hundred feet and passed along the long line of air-ships which extended north and south. At the southern end, towards Fehmern Island, at the entrance to Kiel Bay, one of the ships stationed there ran alongside her. When they were within hail, a slide was drawn back in her conning-tower, and her captain called to Max and asked him if he had seen the aerostats. Then, on learning that he had, he told him that another squadron had passed under him into the bay, apparently heading for Kiel.
"All right," replied Max. "I suppose you understand what the white flag means?"
"Oh yes; you don't want us to do anything until they have got to work," was the reply. "I suppose you'll give the signal when you want us to start?"
"Yes, I'll fire the first gun. If you have nothing better to do, you may as well run along and speak the other ships, and tell there not to fire until I do, and to be careful of the ammunition, and to see that every shot does its work. I'm going to look for the Russian fleet now."
Max nodded to the captain of the Ravachol,- for all the vessels of the anarchist fleet, saving the Revanche and the captured Vengeur, had been named after the so-called heroes and martyrs of anarchy,- and then the flag-ship, once more flying the red flag, flew it a rapid pace toward the eastward. After half an hour's flight, during which they gradually descended to fifteen hundred feet, Max pointed ahead and said to Hartog-
"There they are, and a rare old crowd of them too! Why; there must be over a hundred of them altogether."
"Ja, dat is so; and vat for a smoke and sparks dey are making. Dey will be going full speed now mit der forced draughts. Dey vill vait for deir aerostats to make tings all clear anyhow in de Sound, and den make a rush to get trough. I tink ve had better go back, or ve shall miss some of de fun."
"Yes," said Max, swinging the Revanche's head round, "I suppose we had. The bombs will be beginning to fly by this time. I am rather curious to see how those things do their work."
In an hour the Revanche was over the scene of action, and a strange and terrible scene it was. The aerostats had dropped to a height of a thousand feet above the fortifications of Elsinore and the Danish ships guarding the Sound, and were raining melinite and dynamite bombs on them with fearful effect. Searchlights were flashing up from the land and water in all directions, seeking the terrible foe, until the whole air was ablaze with them, and those in the forts and on board the ships saw, to their horror, not only the aerostats, but, above them, the more distinct shapes of the anarchist air-ships.
Thousands of projectiles from machine guns were being hurled in showers into the air, but none seemed to strike the rapidly moving aerostats, which were able to dart hither and thither in the almost windless atmosphere at a speed of over fifty miles an hour, so that they swept through the beams of the searchlights and into the darkness again with such bewildering rapidity that it was little better than a waste of ammunition to fire at them.
From their great size, it was evident they could carry enough ammunition to keep the bombardment up for hours, possibly till daylight, and during all that time the British and Danish fleets and fortresses would be battered into ruins under the falling storm of explosives, and then the untouched Russian fleet would come and make short work of what was left of them.
As for the other fleet, one or two vessels of which were every now and then made visible by some chance ray of the searchlights shooting up through a rift in the clouds, the bewildered defenders of the Sound could make nothing of it, beyond the fact that it evidently was not friendly, or it would have engaged the aerostats before they had had time to begin their deadly work.
When the anarchists, from their unassailable vantage-point, had watched the bombardment for about three hours, they could see that Copenhagen was in flames and Elsinore in ruins; while, from the constant explosions that took place on the water, blazing up like volcanoes for a moment through the darkness, and then dying down into the night again, and from the constantly diminishing number of searchlights that were thrown up against the clouds, it was manifest that terrible execution had been done.
But the merciless destruction was not by any means confined to Danish territory and the Sound, for the air-ships brought up reports from the south to the effect that Kiel had been vigorously bombarded all the time, and was now little better than an area of blazing ruins; while another squadron of aerostats had attacked the German fleet, and not only prevented it getting out of the bay, but had greatly damaged and completely demoralised it into the bargain.
"I told you there would be no need for us to interfere for the present," said Max, who had received the news when the Revanche was floating over the Gut of Elsinore. "The organised anarchy that these good people call war is, after all, nearly as effective as anything we can do. They seem to be in hopeless confusion down there, and yet their heavy guns haven't fired a single shot yet. Verily, the days of sea fighting are
about over. Ah, I thought so! There are the Frenchmen closing in from the north, and here come the Russians at last full steam up from the south. I don't think there'll be much of the British fleet left by sunrise."
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE VICTORS VANQUISHED.
THE showers of sparks and plumes of flame now plainly visible north and south clearly proved that Max was right when he said that the French and Russian fleets were closing upon their more than half-disabled enemies. Under the highest speed that their forced draught would give them, the two great squadrons, loaded with potential death and destruction, rapidly converged upon the narrow waters in which the remains of the British and Danish fleets were now imprisoned.
"Ah, ja, now de big guns are beginning to speak!" cried Hartog, as the deep, dull booming of the battle-ship's artillery rose like distant thunder from the water.
Pale flashes of yellow-white flame streamed through the darkness to north and south of the Gut, to be answered by other flashes from the centre; and these, again, were supplemented by brilliant spheres of light which blazed out for a moment and then vanished, as the bombs from the aerostats fell on the decks of cruisers and battle-ships, and exploded, spreading death and ruin over them.
Outnumbered as they were on the water, and attacked from an unassailable position in the air, the sorely-pressed British and Danish battle-ships were maintaining a heroic if hopeless, fight, not for any possible advantage, for there was none to be gained; but simply with the object of doing as much damage as possible to their enemies before the inevitable came. Every gun that remained effective was served and fired with such rapidity and precision that the fighting force of the fleets seemed doubled, and cruiser after cruiser and battle-ship after battle-ship, when her guns were no longer serviceable, made a dash with the ram upon the nearest enemy, charging into her through a storm of shot and shell, and either sinking beside her or with her rather than haul down her flag in surrender.
Indeed, so obstinately heroic was the resistance, or rather the dying struggle, of the allied fleets, that not until morning dawned, and the unequal fight had been prolonged for five hours, did the French and Russian fleets find the way of the Sound open, and steamed together southward past the silenced fortifications on land and the crippled and sinking wrecks of the blockading squadrons on sea.
To the south, from the direction of the Great Belt and the Bay of Kiel, the sounds of conflict were still rolling up like peals of distant thunder. A portion of the Russian fleet had been detached, as soon as the defeat of the British and Danish force was assured, to co-operate with the second squadron of aerostats against the German fleet and the fortifications of Kiel. To the north the victory was complete, and so the united fleets, greatly diminished in numbers by the fierce struggle that their triumph had cost, but still in overwhelming strength, steamed south to complete the destruction that the aerostats had begun.
As the light increased, a splendid, but what would have been to any other eyes a terrible, spectacle was unfolded before the gaze of the anarchists, floating high above the smoke and din of the combat. To the south-west the smoke and flames of the burning town and docks and arsenal of Keil were plainly visible over the low-lying land of Probstei. In the Fehmern Belt and Fehmern Sound one German fleet was making ready to attack the French and Russian squadrons, while to the eastward a second German fleet was coming up under full steam from Stralsund, apparently in the hope of catching the enemy between two fires.
As soon as the reinforcement was sighted, the French fleet parted from the Russian and made its way east to intercept it. Meanwhile the aerostats had sunk down alongside a flotilla of transports which had been kept in the wake of the Russian fleet, and were taking in fresh supplies of ammunition. By the time the four fleets were fairly engaged again, they mounted slowly into the air, divided into two equal squadrons of twenty-five each, and stationed themselves over the two divisions of the German force.
It was now quite light enough for Max and Hartog to see that the gas-holders of the aerostats, instead of being made of silk or balloon cloth, were really huge cylinders of a white metal, probably very thin sheet aluminium, which glistened with a silvery lustre in the beams of the rising sun, and that their cars, instead of being suspended by ropes, were simply lower compartments of one and the same structure. They also differed in another respect from all previous types of aerostats.
Two propellers projected from the stern of the car, and a third and very much larger one revolved on a shaft projecting from the after part of the gas-holder itself. This was obviously an immense improvement on all previous forms, not only as regards speed, but also in stiffness and facility of management. From the jets of white vapour which constantly escaped from the stern of the cars, it was plain that their motive power was derived from steam engines, and as a matter of fact their engines had been designed and built from the published descriptions of those which had been used to propel the Maxim aeroplanes.
As soon as the sun got fairly above the horizon, the clouds began to melt away rapidly, and before long the anarchist fleet was plainly visible to the eyes of the astonished combatants, flying round and round in wide curves at just sufficient speed to keep the vessels supported on the air-planes with the smallest possible expenditure of motive power. They maintained themselves at an almost uniform speed of between forty and fifty miles an hour, and a height that varied from two to three thousand feet, as they alternately sank and soared in their swift and graceful evolutions.
That they had an interest in the combat was manifest from the fact that they remained on the scene of action, but they took no part whatever in the struggle, until a signal from the Russian flagship sent three aerostats into the upper regions of the air to investigate.
"Those fellows had better mind their own business," said Max, who still remained with Hartog on the conning-tower of the Revanche. "If they come too close, they'll be getting hurt. We'll let them rise a bit further, just to satisfy their curiosity, and then if they don't go down again, we'll send them down. I wonder how they manage to rise without throwing out any ballast."
"Oh, I tink I can tell you how dat is done," said Hartog, "Dey haf a collapsible air-chamber inside de gas-holder. Ven dey vant to go down, dey pump air into it, vich is fourteen times heavier dan deir hydrogen, so down they go; and ven dey vant to rise, dey draw de air out, and den de hydrogen expands and takes its place, getting lighter de more it spreads, and so dey go up. It is very simple ven you know how. But look, von of dose fellows is coming at us as dough he fought he can do us some damage. Maybe he tinks he can fly as fast as ve can. Vill you not show him vat a foolish mistake dat is?"
Instead of replying, Max uttered a short, scornful laugh, sent a signal to the engine-room, and then gave some rapid orders down the tubes communicating with the gun-room. The Revanche immediately quickened up a little. Max gave the wheel a turn, and brought her stern on to the aerostat, which was now almost on a level with her, and about five hundred yards away. Then he took up one of the speaking-tubes and said into it-
"After guns- fire when you're ready," and then he looked back to watch the effect of his order. A minute later the two shells struck the forward part of the car, close under the gas-holder of the aerostat, almost simultaneously, and burst.
The aerostat exploded like a huge bubble in the midst of a momentary mist of flame. Her car, with its cargo and machinery, plunged downwards into the water from a height of nearly two thousand feet, just missing one of the Russian battle-ships, and that was the end of her. The other two needed no second hint not to continue the investigation. They sank rapidly on a slanting course towards where the French and German fleets were now hotly engaged, leaving the anarchists in undisputed possession of the upper regions of the air.
"Dot vill be a nice little surprise for dem," chuckled Hartog, as he watched the fearful effects of the two shells. "I suppose dey fought ve came here just to see de fun as ve might haf come to a circus, and so dey came to say goot morning to us
. Perhaps dey vill attend more strictly to pusiness now."
"Yes," said Max, with something like a snarl, as though the fate of the aerostat had whetted his appetite for destruction. "We'll give them business when they've crippled each other a bit more. Those poor beggars of Germans are making a precious poor show against their new enemies of the air. Your fellows don't fight as well as the British did, Franz."
"No, dey don't," snapped Hartog savagely. "Mein Gott, I am ashamed of dem! Dey seems to tink dey are at a review. If I vas only down dere in mine old Destroyer, I vould show dem vat proper fighting is."
"Until you got a shell on top of you from one of those aerostats," laughed Max," and then you'd wish you were up here again, I think."
"Ach Himmel, ja! I forgot dat. No; sea fighting is no good mit air-ships. It is not a fair game, unless you happen to be in de air-ship. But don't you tink it's about time for us to join in de fun, friendt Max? Look, dey haf half crippled each oder already."
This was true, for ever since daybreak the fighting had been fast and furious between the fleets, and the aerostats had been discharging their fresh cargoes of bombs upon the German vessels with fearful effect. Their fire was visibly slackening, and each of their squadrons had lost at least a dozen battle-ships and cruisers, which had either been blown up by the bombs from the air or been sunk by torpedoes.