CHAPTER III--THE MISSING MAN The smoking ruins of the schoolhouse and its outbuildings were now visible. The five boys came to the edge of the crater which marked the effect of the explosion of the bomb from the Zeppelin. From somewhere appeared an old man in a smock, and his hard, weather-beaten face writhed with an emotion unspeakable. His outstretched shaking hand pointed to the spot where the schoolhouse had stood. “I saw her face at the pane but the moment before. She waved her hand to me,” he said. His awestricken tone made the American lads tremble. A younger man with his face bloody from a wound above the temple appeared beside the boys with the same startling suddenness. “’Twas his gran’darter. She teached here,” whispered the wounded man. He laid hold upon the old man. “Come away, Daddie,” he said. “Come away wi’ me now.” A woman screamed up the road just as Phil Morgan spied a motor ambulance with a huge red cross on it, mounting from the port. Rescue parties were afoot already. There really was nothing the American lads could do at the wrecked schoolhouse. The shrill cry of the woman above them caused all five to turn to look. “’Tis down! ’Tis down!” The Americans were just in season to see the Zeppelin crumble like a huge concertina and dive toward the earth. Fire broke out amidships. The landing of the Hun airship took place far up on the open hill, in a pasture above the road. The boys could see the gigantic British seaman toiling toward the Zeppelin. He was the nearest person to the burning airship as it came down, although there were other men running over the downs toward the spot. “Cracky!” exclaimed Al Torrance to Belding, “your big chum is going to fight them single handed!” “Come on, fellows!” Whistler cried, starting away. “We can do no good here. But those Germans must not escape!” “No chance!” exclaimed Ikey. “They won’t even try. If the English hung every member of the Zep crews they caught the Kaiser would soon have hard work finding men to man the bomb-droppers.” “Right you are,” Frenchy agreed. “The baby-killers!” He was still sobbing. Right then and there the Navy Boys would have been glad to take vengeance on the crew of the Zeppelin. The first man was descending out of the burning machine. The Americans saw the huge British sailor spring upon him. “There was no _kamerad_ stuff,” Torry observed. The two locked and went to the ground, disappearing in a wallow. At this sight the boys uttered a cheer and leaped the hedge beside the road. They tore up the hill as fast as they could run. A shot sounded, and the spurt of flame and smoke marked the appearance of a farmer with a shotgun. He, however, was firing at the balloon of the Zeppelin, not at her crew. From the machine a second figure dropped to the ground, and just as the farmer fired his second barrel. This second member of the crew darted away from the burning wreck and disappeared into the furze that covered the summit of the hill.