"Oh, Jimmy! Keep her going! Keep her going! Make it a hundred! We'll
soon be free!"
"But we're only four thousand! We can't go any lower!" he answers.
"Push on! Speed is what matters! Keep her to a hundred, and we'll get
through if we can!"
Now do I feel my mascots in my pockets and think for a swift sad moment
of those I love best. Will it never end, I wonder? For hours the shells
seem to have flashed and crashed round us. For hours the searchlights
seem to have revealed us white in the black night. Then I become somehow
conscious that the light on the machine is a little less. Looking behind
me I see one or two beams moving erratically across the sky. They are
_beams_, and not eyes! At last, then, we are getting beyond the range of
the defences! One by one the searchlights slide away from the machine
and swing up and down, pale shafts now, above or to the side of it. The
shell-fire dies away. A string of green balls pours upwards half a mile
away to our left. Two searchlights alone hold us, then they lose us, and
to our almost indescribable relief we are moving in the darkness, whose
friendliness never before have I so loved, whose protection never before
have I so vividly realised.
My forehead is wet with perspiration. My hands shake, my knees feel
weak. The ending of the strain has left me feeble, and the reaction for
a time is almost painful. The physical feeling of sinking inside me
remains for a little while, but soon I begin to feel normal.
"Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! Aren't you glad that is all over? It put the wind up
me! I don't think we got hit, though. Look at Bruges--she is mad!"
Over the weary city still glide and hover the thin beams of light,
vainly regretting their lost prey. A few useless shells leap into red
brilliance here and there among the stars, while the last lovely chain
of green balls rises upward through the night. To the dim north, by the
docks, glows the dull glare of a fire, where some bomb has gone home.
To the west we fly onwards in the moonshine over the pale pattern of the
fields. Far ahead glimmer the white flames of the star-shells in the
mist along the floods.
The sense of duty well done, of dangers faced and conquered, gives an
exhilaration which has made the whole night of terror worth the while.
The moments of dread through which we have lived have been so vivid, so
intense, that they have left us cool-headed and tranquil, and now we
know that we are on the way home, and that we go to rest and
forgetfulness.
Minutes pass, and below us gleams the fading loveliness of a star-shell.
To the left flickers Ypres. On the right at Nieuport one shell bursts
out along the coast, beyond which lies the vast expanse of the quiet
sea.
Minutes pass, and below us shines the little T of lights at Coudekerque.
Down drifts our light--up drifts the welcome answer. Softly we sink
towards the world, which slowly, slowly grows real from out a map....
Gladly I drop through the little door when we have at last drawn up
beside the mighty hangars. Gladly I stretch my cramped legs and walk for
a while unfamiliarly upon the grass. Gladly at last I switch off the
light in my bedroom, and curl up in the sheets with my feet upon the
hot-water bottle. On the ceiling gleams the fire-light. Voices sound
more rarely in the cabins. Suddenly I remember something, and call out--
"Who was it getting hell over Ghistelles?"
"Bob!" comes an answer from some near-by cabin.
"I say, Bob! Did you have a bad time?"
"Twenty-five holes in the machine! Jack shoved the bombs right across
the aerodrome, though--he's not a bad observer!"
"Shut up, Bob!"
"Good-night, Jack! Good-night, Bob! Good-night, Bill! Good-night,
Shoey!"
"Good-night, Paul!"
"Good-night, Jimmy--it wasn't so bad, was it?"
"No! Good-night, Paul!"
Soon I drift to sleep and the well-loved world of dreams.