to his morning ration. That consumed, he went out on the little
gallery; but he could see nothing but eddying clouds driving headlong
by, and the dim outlines of the nearer airships. Only at rare intervals
could he get a glimpse of grey sea through the pouring cloud-drift.

Later in the morning the Vaterland changed altitude, and soared up
suddenly in a high, clear sky, going, Kurt said, to a height of nearly
thirteen thousand feet.

Bert was in his cabin, and chanced to see the dew vanish from the window
and caught the gleam of sunlight outside. He looked out, and saw once
more that sunlit cloud floor he had seen first from the balloon, and the
ships of the German air-fleet rising one by one from the white, as fish
might rise and become visible from deep water. He stared for a moment
and then ran out to the little gallery to see this wonder better. Below
was cloudland and storm, a great drift of tumbled weather going hard
away to the north-east, and the air about him was clear and cold
and serene save for the faintest chill breeze and a rare, drifting
snow-flake. Throb, throb, throb, throb, went the engines in the
stillness. That huge herd of airships rising one after another had
an effect of strange, portentous monsters breaking into an altogether
unfamiliar world.

Either there was no news of the naval battle that morning, or the Prince
kept to himself whatever came until past midday. Then the bulletins came
with a rush, bulletins that made the lieutenant wild with excitement.

"Barbarossa disabled and sinking," he cried. "Gott im Himmel! Der alte
Barbarossa! Aber welch ein braver krieger!"

He walked about the swinging cabin, and for a time he was wholly German.

Then he became English again. "Think of it, Smallways! The old ship we
kept so clean and tidy! All smashed about, and the iron flying about
in fragments, and the chaps one knew--Gott!--flying about too! Scalding
water squirting, fire, and the smash, smash of the guns! They smash
when you're near! Like everything bursting to pieces! Wool won't stop
it--nothing! And me up here--so near and so far! Der alte Barbarossa!"

"Any other ships?" asked Smallways, presently.

"Gott! Yes! We've lost the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run
down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting
in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's
afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a
battle!--never