So it was the news of the battle came filtering through to them
all that morning. The Americans had lost a second ship, name
unknown; the Hermann had been damaged in covering the
Barbarossa.... Kurt fretted like an imprisoned animal about the
airship, now going up to the forward gallery under the eagle, now
down into the swinging gallery, now poring over his maps. He
infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy of this battle
that was going on just over the curve of the earth. But when
Bert went down to the gallery the world was empty and still, a
clear inky-blue sky above and a rippled veil of still, thin
sunlit cirrus below, through which one saw a racing drift of
rain-cloud, and never a glimpse of sea. Throb, throb, throb,
throb, went the engines, and the long, undulating wedge of
airships hurried after the flagship like a flight of swans after
their leader. Save for the quiver of the engines it was as
noiseless as a dream. And down there, somewhere in the wind and
rain, guns roared, shells crashed home, and, after the old manner
of warfare, men toiled and died.

4

As the afternoon wore on the lower weather abated, and the sea
became intermittently visible again. The air-fleet dropped
slowly to the middle air, and towards sunset they had a glimpse
of the disabled Barbarossa far away to the east. Smallways heard
men hurrying along the passage, and was drawn out to the gallery,
where he found nearly a dozen officers collected and scrutinising
the helpless ruins of the battleship through field-glasses. Two
other vessels stood by her, one an exhausted petrol tank, very