He
could see him dimly by the window, which he had unscrewed and opened,
peering down. That cold, clear, attenuated light which is not so much
light as a going of darkness, which casts inky shadows and so often
heralds the dawn in the high air, was on his face.

"What's the row?" said Bert.

"Shut up!" said the lieutenant. "Can't you hear?"

Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one, two, a
pause, then three in quick succession.

"Gaw!" said Bert--"guns!" and was instantly at the lieutenant's side.
The airship was still very high and the sea below was masked by a thin
veil of clouds. The wind had fallen, and Bert, following Kurt's pointing
finger, saw dimly through the colourless veil first a red glow, then
a quick red flash, and then at a little distance from it another. They
were, it seemed for a while, silent flashes, and seconds after, when
one had ceased to expect them, came the belated thuds--thud, thud. Kurt
spoke in German, very quickly.

A bugle call rang through the airship.

Kurt sprang to his feet, saying something in an excited tone, still
using German, and went to the door.

"I say! What's up?" cried Bert. "What's that?"

The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the doorway, dark against the
light passage. "You stay where you are, Smallways. You keep there and do
nothing. We're going into action," he explained, and vanished.

Bert's heart began to beat rapidly. He felt himself poised over the
fighting vessels far below. In a moment, were they to drop like a hawk
striking a bird? "Gaw!" he whispered at last, in awestricken tones.

Thud!... thud! He discovered far away a second ruddy flare flashing guns
back at the first. He perceived some difference on the Vaterland for
which he could not account, and then he realised that the engines
had slowed to an almost inaudible beat. He stuck his head out of the
window--it was a tight fit--and saw in the bleak air the other airships
slowed down to a scarcely perceptible motion.

A second bugle sounded, was taken up faintly from ship to ship. Out went
the lights; the fleet became dim, dark bulks against an intense blue sky
that still retained an occasional star. For a long time they hung, for
an interminable time it seemed to him, and then began the sound of air
being pumped into the balloonette, and slowly, slowly the Vaterland sank
down towards the clouds.

He craned his neck, but he could not see if the rest of the fleet was
follow