Zeppelin's doctor into the main street of the place, and they
broke into a drug shop and obtained various things of which they stood
in need. As they returned they found an officer and two men making a
rough inventory of the available material in the various stores. Except
for them the wide, main street of the town was quite deserted, the
people had been given three hours to clear out, and everybody,
it seemed, had done so. At one corner a dead man lay against the
wall--shot. Two or three dogs were visible up the empty vista, but
towards its river end the passage of a string of mono-rail cars broke
the stillness and the silence. They were loaded with hose, and were
passing to the trainful of workers who were converting Prospect Park
into an airship dock.

Bert pushed a case of medicine balanced on a bicycle taken from an
adjacent shop, to the hotel, and then he was sent to load bombs into the
Zeppelin magazine, a duty that called for elaborate care. From this job
he was presently called off by the captain of the Zeppelin, who sent
him with a note to the officer in charge of the Anglo-American Power
Company, for the field telephone had still to be adjusted. Bert received
his instructions in German, whose meaning he guessed, and saluted and
took the note, not caring to betray his ignorance of the language. He
started off with a bright air of knowing his way and turned a corner or
so, and was only beginning to suspect that he did not know where he was
going when his attention was recalled to the sky by the report of a gun
from the Hohenzollern and celestial cheering.

He looked up and found the view obstructed by the houses on either side
of the street. He hesitated, and then curiosity took him back towards
the bank of the river. Here his view was inconvenienced by trees, and
it was with a start that he discovered the Zeppelin, which he knew had
still a quarter of her magazines to fill, was rising over Goat Island.
She had not waited for her complement of ammunition. It occurred to him
that he was left behind. He ducked back among the trees and bushes until
he felt secure from any after-thought on the part of the Zeppelin's
captain. Then his curiosity to see what the German air-fleet faced
overcame him, and drew him at last halfway across the bridge to Goat
Island.

From that point he had nearly a hemisphere of sky and got his first
glimpse of the Asiatic airships low in the sky above the glittering
tumults of the Upper