For the rest of the day General von Wittelsbach remained shut up in the Government House, waiting and waiting, hoping against hope that the threatened exposure of his duplicity might yet pass away.
Throughout the short summer's night Hamerton clung to his frail support. He gloried in his position. Nothing seemed to trouble him. Here he was floating in hundreds of feet in the air, and being rapidly borne westward by the partially crippled Zeppelin.
The aircraft, being entirely out of control, was nothing more than a non-dirigible balloon. For the most part she drifted broadside on to the wind, occasionally describing a pendulum-like motion in a horizontal plane. Otherwise she was fairly steady, with hardly any tendency to dip her bow or stern. The air was warm, the threatened rain had not fallen, the airship seemed far above the surface of the sea, and showed no inclination of descending. By occasional bearings from certain well-known stars, the Sub derived the consolation that the westward drift was still maintained.
Day began to break: a grey light in the north-east betokened the approaching dawn and the coming of fine weather. This latter circumstance was not pleasing to the self-constituted crew of the airship. He realized that with the falling of the wind the progress of the Zeppelin would naturally be retarded. His wish was to place as many miles betwixt himself and his prison isle as he could in the shortest possible time. He had counted upon that; but if hung up in the middle of the North Sea the airship stood a chance of recapture by German torpedo craft, or destruction by the guns of the Teutonic seaplanes, which he fully expected would be sent for that purpose.
The exhilaration of the pure air raised his already buoyant spirits. He felt as if he could dance a hornpipe even on the narrow girder on which he sat. Instead, he began to whistle, till the effort reminded him very forcibly of the pangs of hunger.
It was now light enough to see about him. He found himself just in front of the ruins of the after nacelle, that looked almost exactly like a railway carriage with the floor knocked out. Abaft were the remains of two of the propellers, with only one blade left intact. The alley way communicating with the midship and foremost cars was originally outside the outer aluminium envelope. This had been torn away for a length of nearly a hundred feet, only the longitudinal girders and a few vertical rods remaining.