Just then a loud roar came from one of the forts, the powerful Spitz Horn Battery. The Germans, despairing at the loss of the pride of their aerial fleet, and fearful lest she should be borne by the gale to the shores of the hated England, had decided upon the expedient of riddling her with heavy shells. In the hope that their vaunted hole-closing fabric would in this instance prove unequal to the conditions laid upon it, the gunners used the secondary armament of twenty-six-centimetres weapons.
With an unearthly shriek the first projectile, weighing nearly three hundred pounds, passed harmlessly above the envelope of the errant Zeppelin, bursting with a lurid red flash at a distance of five hundred yards behind her. Two more shells followed, almost simultaneously. These fell far beneath the rapidly-moving target. Although the aim in a vertical plane was good, the artillery-men were hopelessly at a loss as regards elevation. The Zeppelin, now only faintly visible in the rays of the distant searchlights, was out of range and well on her way across the stormy North Sea.
IT would ill describe the state of mind of the deputy commandant of the fortress of Heligoland to say that he was thunderstruck at the latest disaster that had overtaken one of the German air fleet. It was he who had given the order for the gunners to bring down the derelict. Their failure to do so only increased his consternation. He was almost in a state of stupefaction. At one moment he raved at the indiscretion of the commander of the Zeppelin in attempting to come to earth in a gale of wind; at another he sat with his hands clasped tightly across his eyes, as if trying to shut out the inglorious sight of the hitherto peerless airship drifting helplessly at the mercy of the elements.
Then came the disconcerting news that one of the spies had escaped. The ruins of his cell had been hastily examined without any trace being found of his body, and it was owing solely to the statement of one of the men, who said he believed he saw the Englishman clinging to the wreckage, that the authorities came to the hasty, but none the less accurate, decision that such indeed was the case. This stirred the second commandant to action. He ordered the whole of the second flotilla of torpedo-boat destroyers to proceed at once to sea, in the hope that they might overhaul the errant Zeppelin should the gale moderate.