He afterwards learnt that an incendiary bomb, aimed at the naval signal station, had fallen in a timber yard and set the stacks of wood in flames.
Vera counted ten explosions in all. Then the bomb-dropping ceased.
"They haven’t stopped long," she sighed in relief. "I do hope nobody has been hurt. What are you looking at? Can you see the airship?"
"Yes. It’s like a big sausage high up in the air, just over St. Nicholas’ Church. Have a look!"
"I see it! I see it!" she cried. "And, oh, Mark, it’s chasing a motor-car!"
Mark peered out into the darkness and saw the brilliantly-lighted lamp of a motor flashing along the Buremouth road. The beam of the light was shed upward. The car was travelling at a tremendous pace.
"Chasing it?" said Mark. "I don’t think it’s a chase. That car is acting as a pilot—showing the airship which way to go, and where to drop its bombs! I shouldn’t wonder in the least if the man driving it were Heinrich Hilliger!"
As the motor-car, with its flaring headlight, went out of sight beyond the projection of the window from which they had watched it, Mark and Vera Redisham ran farther up the staircase and along the passage to Rodney’s room, on the north side of the house.
Mark crossed to the large door-window and flung it open. It led out to a roofed balcony overlooking the garden. Rodney had used this balcony as a study, from which he could watch the ships, pretending that it was an admiral’s gallery at the stern of a line-of-battle ship. On summer nights he had had a hammock slung across from side to side and had slept in the open air.
Mark caught at the balcony rail now, and bent forward, looking up into the night sky, searching for the Zeppelin by the purring of its machinery.
"There it is! There it is!" he cried. And taking hold of Vera’s arm he drew her to him and pointed.
Even though it was very high, the airship looked large. It was not travelling quickly; it seemed for a time to be hovering like a hawk. Against the blue darkness of the sky the two cars could be distinguished beneath the cigar-shaped structure. The rattling noise of the engines and the hum of the propellers could be clearly heard.
"It’s queer to think that there are Germans in it," said Vera, "and that they’re there with the intention of killing people! I suppose they’re going to Buremouth now, after dropping their horrid fire-bombs on Haddisport."