Curt but precise orders rang out from the navigation-room. The slight hiss of the brodium being released from the metal cylinders was barely audible above the sighing of the wind in the pine-tops until the gauges registering the "lift" of the airship indicated thirty-eight tons.
Armed with a megaphone, Fosterdyke leant out of the window of the navigation-room.
"All ready? ... Let go!"
Simultaneously the twenty men holding the airship released their hold. That was where training and discipline told, for terrible to contemplate would have been the fate of an unwary "ground-man" had he retained his grip on the rope. But without an accident to mar the momentous event, the "Golden Hind" shot almost vertically into the air, attaining in a very short space of time an altitude of six thousand f
