Free The Bomber Balloon by Terry Deary Page B

it could be a signal to other spies,’ Constable Smith explained. ‘You can’t speak in a foreign language on the phone. You must never show a light in the street at night, and you have to keep quiet in the street. There are no churchbells after sunset, and it is against the law to whistle in the street.’
    â€˜Or make a dog bark after dark?’
    â€˜Exactly.’ The constable nodded. He spoke softly. ‘There could be twenty Germans up there in a Zeppelin, just listening and waiting. Remember that next time you make a silly noise.’

    Millie trembled. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but she was afraid of a bomb landing on her head. She whispered, ‘Are they there now?’
    â€˜No, but they are not far away. See the searchlights? They are moving towards us… and listen!’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Aeroplanes. I can hear aeroplanes.’
    Millie strained her ears and heard the faint buzz like distant bees on a summer meadow.
    â€˜They’ve sent up aeroplanes to shoot it down. Mark my words, there’s a Zeppelin coming this way.’

Chapter 3
Balloon and beer
    Captain Alois Bocker’s face was frozen. Frozen with the icy winds at four thousand metres above London, and frozen with fear. He stood in the cabin of Zeppelin L33. His crew of eighteen men were staring at him.
    At last Sail-maker Ernst Kaiser spoke. ‘What shall we do, sir?’
    â€˜Do?’ Captain Bocker said, swallowing hard.
    â€˜The canvas has torn. The gas is escaping,’ Kaiser said.
    â€˜Mend it.’
    The sail-maker shook his head. ‘A piece of shell ripped through it. It is far too big a hole to repair while we are flying, in the dark. We can only do it when we get home.’
    â€˜So get us home,’ the Captain barked at Steersman Siegfried Korber.
    He nodded. ‘We head east, then over the English Channel.’

    â€˜We are losing height,’ Signalman Gustav Kunischt reminded the captain.
    Alois Bocker’s brain began to work again. ‘Throw everything over the side that we don’t need – landing ropes, food tins… erm…’
    â€˜Bombs?’ Sail-maker Kaiser asked.
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜Should we throw Signalman Kunischt over the side?’ Steersman Korber asked. Kunischt was round as a barrel, but not quite as heavy as a house.
    â€˜Yes, good idea,’ Captain Bocker said without thinking. The crew laughed. Captain Bocker managed a thin smile as if he shared the joke. Kunischt didn’t think it was funny.
    The men were as scared as their captain was. Scared of the word no one spoke. The word
feuer
. Fire. If a spark from the enginesmet the leaking gas, the balloon would catch fire and they would fall, burning, onto England.
    But the shell had not set the balloon alight yet. They had a chance.
    The men hurried to throw as much as they could over the side. Their bombs flashed briefly when they struck the distant ground.

    Their hearts rose as the balloon rose. ‘We’re going to make it.’ Steersman Korber smiled, and wiped an oily hand over the sweat on his bald head.
    Then he heard the rattle of a machine gun. He turned to peer through the windows of the cabin and saw the glint of bullets streaming over his head.
    â€˜Captain, we are under attack from English planes!’

    â€˜I can see that, you fool.’
    â€˜Your orders, captain?’
    â€˜Dive, dive, dive! In the dark he’ll never find us again.’
    â€˜But if we lose height we’ll never get home,’ Signalman Kunischt argued.
    â€˜I know that,
Dummkopf
. Climb, climb, climb!’ the captain shouted.
    Engineer Joseph Wegener called back, ‘That last attack lost us more gas. We’ll never climb.’
    â€˜So dive, dive, dive!’
    The German airmen crashed into one another as they ran back and forth to obey the changing orders.
    â€˜We’ll never get home. We’ll drown in the sea,’ Signalman