The Dirigibles of Death Read Online Free

maniacal was his fury, so terrible his rage, so demoniacal his strength, that the constables had been forced to shoot him in self defense. Even as it was, three of the men had been seriously wounded, and not one had escaped without lacerations from the fiendish thing's nails and teeth.
    As I was thereafter most busily engaged in superintending the examination of the airship's mechanism at Aldershot, I had no first-hand information of the series of events that occurred during the next few days. But the news that came to me through the press and the Air Ministry was most astounding and disconcerting. On the morning following the discovery of the mysterious ship at Ripley, two more, precisely like the first, were found. One near Hayward's Heath in Sussex, the other at Sutton Valance in Kent. In both cases the gondolas were found open, in both cases the interiors presented the same conditions as had the first, and in both cases horrible crimes and most revolting murders occurred in the vicinity of the spots where the ships landed. Moreover, as in the first case, the murders were committed by loathsome, ferocious maniacs, apparently negroes or mulattoes who, it was deduced, had arrived in the mysterious aircraft.
    By this time the entire country had become thoroughly aroused. The police had been armed in all rural districts, all citizens who went about the country were in constant fear and trembling of an attack, and everyone who could secure firearms went prepared to shoot down the terrible fiendish beings on sight. Fortunately those who had—supposedly—arrived in the ship that landed at Hayward's Heath, were destroyed before they had committed many atrocities. Two of them attempted to hold up a Brighton motor-coach and were run down and crushed beneath the vehicle's wheels, the driver of the coach having exhibited great presence of mind by swerving directly towards the creatures who, apparently, had no fear of the ponderous vehicle. Two more were gored and killed by a savage bull as they crossed a pasture, and the remaining two (I say remaining two as only six were seen and no others appeared after the six had been killed) were destroyed by farmers who, armed with guns, were patrolling the lanes in the vicinity. Those that had landed at Sutton Valance, on the other hand, were still at large, and almost hourly stories of new atrocities committed by them were reported by the newspapers.
    By the morning of the third day, more than a dozen of the strange aircraft had dropped upon English soil, and each had vomited its crew of maniacal negro murderers. Some had landed on the Norfolk coast, some in the Midland, others in the western counties, and one had dropped to earth within a few miles of Windsor. From everywhere came terrifying reports of murder and mutilations by the horde of revolting, terrible beings who had arrived in these silent, mystifying dirigibles. England was being cursed with them, the country was in a reign of terror, and although police, citizens and soldiers hunted them down like wild beasts and accounted for dozens of them, still many were roaming the country, attacking everyone they met, killing and mutilating and—so Doctor Grayson and other eminent medical men gravely feared—were spreading the loathsome diseases with which they were afflicted.
    In the meantime we had dissected the complicated machinery of the first arrived airship, and although no one—not even Sir Bertram Fielding, the greatest living authority on radio-controlled vessels—could make head or tail of the apparatus, all—including Sir Bertram —agreed that it was not actuated by radio as we knew it, but was operated and controlled by some unknown form of vibratory wave akin to the electro-magnetic waves but quite distinct. With so many of the vessels available, we could afford to tear them to bits, and we went at it with a will, for, as far as we could see, our only hope of preventing the things from landing, or of destroying them, was