William Le Queux - The Zeppelin Destroyer - Being Some Chapters of Secret History

It was that incident which first set me thinking of how to combat hostile aircraft. At once I thought of aeroplane versus aeroplane, but when three weeks later, two Zeppelins came over to the east coast to reconnoitre, and dropped nine bombs, blowing to pieces two old people, then my attention was turned towards the Zeppelin, and in Teddy Ashton I found a ready and enthusiastic assistant.

This raid, and those which followed on points on the north-east coast, small as their immediate results were, yet demonstrated one thing. The German Press proclaimed that German genius had at last ended the legend that England was invulnerable owing to her insularity. An English writer had pointed out that it was certainly proved that the seas no longer protected England from attack. She was no longer an island. Should she hope to keep her shores inviolate, and to allow her people to live in the safety that they had enjoyed for so many centuries, she must be prepared to meet invaders from the sky, as well as on the water. Both Teddy and myself saw that the coming of the German airship was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of this country.

The real German defence was summed up in a semi-official message published, which read: “The German nation has been forced by England to fight for her existence, and cannot be forced to forego legitimate self-defence, and will not do so, relying upon her good right.”

Her good right! Had Germany a right to drop bombs blindly on open villages, and kill our women and babes at night?

That had fired us both, and the result had been that long shed, and the great mass of electrical apparatus it contained.

Sometimes, when I begged more money from my father for the purposes of those experiments, he had grumbled, yet always when I pointed out what Teddy and I were actually doing, he was ready again to sign a further cheque.

Teddy was, of course, richer than myself. His father had been a cotton-weaver who had lived in Burnley, and had died leaving his whole fortune to his only son. Therefore my friend was possessed of considerable means, and had it not been so, I fear that we should never have been able to establish such an extensive plant, or go to the big expenses which we had so often to incur.

The secrets of that shed of ours had to be well guarded. Our night-watchman was a retired police-sergeant, John the father of my faithful mechanic, Harry Theed, and in him we reposed the utmost confidence.

“If anyone ever wants to get into this ’ere place, sir,” old Theed often said to me, “then they’ll have to put my lights out first – I can assure you.”

“Well,” Teddy exclaimed presently, as he slowly lit a fresh cigarette. “Let’s adjust things a bit better, and we’ll then try how she goes – away out on the pole. It’s getting quite dark enough to see – especially with your glasses.”

“Right you are,” I said, and then, after another ten minutes of manipulation with the wires, during which I “cut out” the aerial and several big glass-and-tin-foil condensers, all was ready for the experiment.

Teddy had drawn a heavy wooden bench in front of the door, and upon it I placed the big box of brown-stained deal which contained our mysterious apparatus from which we both expected such great things. Indeed, that curious machine, had just escaped bringing upon us instant death.

Yet that mishap to which we had been accidentally so near had revealed several things to me, causing me to reflect upon certain crucial and technical points which, hitherto, I had not considered.

In that square, heavy box, connected up by its high-tension wires to three of the big induction coils upon the table was, we believed, stored a power by which the Zeppelins could be successfully destroyed and brought to earth.

It was nearly dark when I opened the door of the shed situated opposite to where I had placed the box, and looked out to ascertain if anyone was about, as we wished for no prying eyes to witness our experiment.

I walked out, and around the building, but nobody was near. Then, when I returned to the door, I stood for a moment gazing away across the wide area of market-gardens to where, perhaps half a mile distant, stood a high flag-pole which had been erected for me a couple of years before, and which had, before the war, borne my wireless aerial.

The little white hut near by I had built, and until the outbreak of war, when Post Office engineers had come and seized my private station, I had spent many hours there each evening reading and transmitting messages.

The pole, in three sections, which in the falling darkness could only just be discerned, was about eighty feet in height and stayed by eight steel guys, each of which was in three sections connected together by green-glazed porcelain insulators, so that any leakage of electrical current could not go to earth. Affixed to the pole and protruding some two feet above it was a copper lightning-conductor with four points, an accessory which I had had put up recently for experimental purposes.

“Nobody’s about,” I said to Teddy when I returned. “Will you run the dynamo, if all is in order?”

Then, after a final examination of the various electrical connexions, he started the engine and the dynamo began to hum again.

I drew over a switch at the side of the box, when a loud crackling was heard within – a quenched-spark of enormous power. Afterwards, I quickly seized my binoculars and going out through the open door, taking great care not to pass before the lens, – where in the place of glass was a disc of steel – something like that of a big camera, forming the end of the box, I focussed my glasses eagerly upon the flagstaff.

“Hurrah! Teddy!” I cried in glee. “It works – Gad! come and look! At last! We have it at last !”

Next moment, my friend was eagerly at my side, while at the same instant we heard a light footstep and Roseye, in her big motor-coat, stood unexpectedly before us.

“It works! Roseye! It works, darling! Mind! Don’t pass in front of the box. Do be careful!” I cried in warning, while at the same time Teddy Ashton, with the binoculars at his eyes, gasped:

“By Jove, Claude! It’s wonderful. Yes! You’re right! We have success at last !”

In our eagerness, Roseye and I set out to walk towards the pole, leaving Teddy in charge of the apparatus.

To approach the spot, we had to leave the market-garden and take a road lined by meagre cottages, then at last, skirting two orchards and yet another market-garden, we came out upon a second road, which we crossed, and at last found ourselves at the disused wireless-hut.

There a strange spectacle greeted our eyes for, the darkness having by that time become complete, we saw, around the lightning-conductor on the pole and over the steel stays, blue electric sparks scintillating.

“Look, darling!” I cried. “See what we have at last produced by the unseen directive current!”

“Yes,” replied my well-beloved. “Look at the sparks! How pretty they are! Why – they seem to be jumping across the insulators from one stretch of wire-rope to the other!”

“That effect is exactly what Teddy and I have for so long laboured to produce,” was my answer, as I stood there fascinated by the sparks and the slight crackling which reached our ears where we stood.

The fact was that though our apparatus was half a mile away, yet upon those steel strands, as well as upon the copper lightning-conductor, the electric waves which we were discharging – a new development of the discovery of Heinrich Hertz – was such as to spark over all the intervening gaps, even though the space where the insulators were inserted was quite three inches.