"Didn’t know we had so many friends," remarked Fosterdyke. "Sportsmanlike of those Americans and Japs, too, when they have representatives in the show."
The "Golden Hind" was now approaching the regular mail line, where routes to and from the Cape and round the Horn unite in the neighbourhood of Las Palmas.
"We’ll signal the first vessel we sight," decided Sir Reginald, "and get her to relieve us of our cargo of Fritzes. The sooner the better, because several of the ballonets are showing distinct symptoms of porosity."
Five minutes later the airship had slowed down and had swung round on a course parallel to a homeward-bound Dutchman.
The skipper of the latter, when appealed to by megaphone, stoutly refused to receive the seventeen Germans. He gave no reason why he should not do so, and without waiting for further parley rang for full speed ahead.
A little later a French auxiliary barque was sighted, bound south.
Fosterdyke made no attempt to intercept her.
"There are limits," he observed. "Dumping those Huns on board an outward-bound Frenchman is one of them. Now for the next vessel. Three for luck."
The third was a British tramp, bound from Montevideo for Naples. Her "Old Man," although ignorant that a Round-the-World aerial race was in progress or even in contemplation, readily agreed to help the "Golden Hind" on her way.
"I’ll find use for ’em," he added with infinite relish. "They’ll work their passage, never you fear. Three times I’ve been torpedoed without warning, and on two occasions Fritz popped up to jeer at us struggling in waterlogged boats."
While conversation was in progress between Fosterdyke and the master of the S.S. _Diaphanous_, a wire hawser had been lowered from the bows of the airship and made fast to the tramp’s after-winch. Since she was steaming dead in the eye of the wind there was no necessity for her to alter helm. The "Golden Hind," pitching slightly, was towed astern of and thirty feet above the tramp. As the airship’s course was almost identical with that of the tramp Fosterdyke conscientiously kept the propellers revolving, since, even in the present circumstances, he did not wish to give his rivals a chance of raising a protest on the score that the flight of the British airship had been mechanically aided.