ort perceived to be the cabin door in a
half-inverted condition. The whole cabin had in fact turned on its side.

"What the deuce do you mean by it, Smallways?" said Kurt, "jumping out
of that locker when I was certain you had gone overboard with the rest
of them? Where have you been?"

"What's up?" asked Bert.

"This end of the airship is up. Most other things are down."

"Was there a battle?"

"There was."

"Who won?"

"I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We left before the finish. We got
disabled and unmanageable, and our colleagues--consorts I mean--were
too busy most of them to trouble about us, and the wind blew us--Heaven
knows where the wind IS blowing us. It blew us right out of action at
the rate of eighty miles an hour or so. Gott! what a wind that was! What
a fight! And here we are!"

"Where?"

"In the air, Smallways--in the air! When we get down on the earth again
we shan't know what to do with our legs."

"But what's below us?"

"Canada, to the best of my knowledge--and a jolly bleak, empty,
inhospitable country it looks."

"But why ain't we right ways up?"

Kurt made no answer for a space.

"Last I remember was seeing a sort of flying-machine in a lightning
flash," said Bert. "Gaw! that was 'orrible. Guns going off! Things
explodin'! Clouds and 'ail. Pitching and tossing. I got so scared and
desperate--and sick. You don't know how the fight came off?"

"Not a bit of it. I was up with my squad in those divers' dresses,
inside the gas-chambers, with sheets of silk for caulking. We couldn't
see a thing outside except the lightning flashes. I never saw one
of those American aeroplanes. Just saw the shots flicker through the
chambers and sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a bit--not much,
you know. We were too wet, so the fires spluttered out before we banged.
And then one of their infernal things dropped out of the air on us and
rammed. Didn't you feel it?"

"I felt everything," said Bert. "I didn't notice any particular smash--"

"They must have been pretty desperate if they meant it. They slashed
down on us like a knife; simply ripped the after gas-chambers like
gutting herrings, crumpled up the engines and screw. Most of the engines
dropped off as they fell off us--or we'd have grounded--but the rest is
sort of dangling. We just turned up our nose to the heavens and stayed
there. Eleven men rolled off us from various points, and poor old
Winterfeld fell through the door of