telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabin--that is to say,
under the chin of the fish.

These monsters were capable of ninety miles an hour in a calm, so
that they could face and make headway against nearly everything
except the fiercest tornado. They varied in length from eight
hundred to two thousand feet, and they had a carrying power of
from seventy to two hundred tons. How many Germany possessed
history does not record, but Bert counted nearly eighty great
bulks receding in perspective during his brief inspection. Such
were the instruments on which she chiefly relied to sustain her
in her repudiation of the Monroe Doctrine and her bold bid for a
share in the empire of the New World. But not altogether did she
rely on these; she had also a one-man bomb-throwing
Drachenflieger of unknown value among the resources.

But the Drachenflieger were away in the second great aeronautic
park east of Hamburg, and Bert Smallways saw nothing of them in
the bird's-eye view he took of the Franconian establishment
before they shot him down very neatly. The bullet tore past him
and made a sort of pop as it pierced his balloon--a pop that was
followed by a rustling sigh and a steady downward movement. And
when in the confusion of the moment he dropped a bag of ballast,
the Germans, very politely but firmly overcame his scruples by
shooting his balloon again twice.



CHAPTER IV
THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET