"I believe it's those confounded destroyers!" I said. "They must be
British too, off here. Can't they see our marks, blame fools?"
Two or three more shells appeared between us and our two companions,
who were now going round and round in circles evidently very
mystified. It looked so amusing that we could not help laughing, now
that the fire was not meant for us. Then the shells came over to us
again. It was a curious sight. You would look out into the blue sky and
the mist-bound coast, and suddenly, in absolute silence (for the roar of
our engines deafened us), would appear, out of nothing, a perfectly hard
outline, looking as solid as a piece of coal or a crumpled top-hat.
There it would appear in a second of time and would hang in they sky--an
apparent mockery of gravity. Its outline would flux and change, it would
writhe and roll round into an ever larger expanse of vapour, its edge
would grow soft and more ragged, and in a few minutes it would be a
little cloud of haze and nothing more.
Suddenly the pilot exclaimed, "It _is_ them, the swine, I saw them
fire!" and impetuously threw round the wheel and pushed forward the
rudder. The machine swung round at a tremendous pace, and a most curious
incident occurred. Ahead of us were the two machines, some way below us,
with their noses pointing downwards. Now to our amazement we saw them
mount up, up, up, into the sky, with their tails down as though they
were climbing furiously, and then the coast shot round and rose up into
the sky as well.
In the midst of this mad inversion of the universe the pilot turned to
me and calmly said--
"What the blazes has happened, Paul--it looks all wrong? What shall I
do?"
"Shove her nose down, old man!" I said. "It looks mighty rum to me--but
we'll get out somehow!"
The universe swept round us again, the coast fell down, the
Handley-Pages dropped below us with their noses towards the sea. The
pilot looked at me, I looked at him.
"What on earth was that?" he said.
"Must have been jolly nearly upside down!" I suggested, feeling a bit
dazed.
The memory of that brief and mystified conversation, as we sat side by
side in a machine which had assumed some incomprehensible position, has
remained in my memory as one of the strangest moments I have known.
The shells still burst near us and the pilot got annoyed.
"Let's drop our stuff on them! Get in the back! They can't be British.
They must be able to see our marks. We're only seven thousand."
"Well! What about the leader? We daren't do it unless he does--we'll get
in a thundering row. Anyway they are just off our coast!"
The leading machines still flew round undecidedly. The destroyers below
still fired their occasional shells. One burst rather near us.
"I'll bomb them and chance it--the swine!" said the pilot, "You get in
the back!"
"All right, you take the responsibility!" I said, and climbed into the
back of the machine and lay on the floor under his seat. I pulled open
the sliding-door and a burst of wind came blowing up on my face. Below
me lay a little square of sea, on which I could see no destroyer, but I
could tell by the way it was racing under us that we were doing a steep
turn.
Still the two little black shapes of the destroyers did not come into
the frame of the picture. I put my head out below the machine and looked
for them. I could not see them. If I had I was determined to drop my
bombs on them whatever they were.