As I am turning the little milled adjusting wheels, the machine on our right moves off with a sudden roar of power. I hurry back and sit beside the pilot.
"Are you all right now, Paul?" he asks. "We are next off."
A wave of noise sweeps over to us from the middle of the aerodrome as the next ahead, gathering speed, rushes across the aerodrome. We both watch it with slowly turning heads.
Gradually the machine rises, and with a change of note roars up into the sky above the farm buildings to the left.
A series of flashes from a signalling-lamp on the control platform. It is the _next-machine-away_ signal. The pilot at once opens up the engines. We move slowly across the gra.s.s, b.u.mping and swaying as we pa.s.s over the uneven ground. When we come to the end of the landing T, the starboard engine is put on, and we swing round to the left till the line of electric lights stretches ahead of us. The noise of the engine dies away. The pilot takes his goggles out of a wooden box, which he hands to me, and snaps them over his eyes. He straps himself in his seat with a safety-belt, and pulls on a pair of fur-covered gloves.
"You quite ready, old man?" he asks.
"Yes!"
"We"ll start off now! I think it will be all right; don"t you?"
"Yes!"
Soon we are off the ground. Below the wings streak the little lights of the cross-bar of the landing T. I can see the illuminated blades of gra.s.s round the bulbs. We climb up and up, and clear with ease the roofs of the farm buildings. Over the tall trees lining each side of a wide ca.n.a.l we pa.s.s, and beneath us lie the coruscating scarlet and white lights of a railway junction. I can see the fiery red smoke of a locomotive moving down one line of tracks.
"What a target!" says the pilot. "Have a look at the engines!"
I switch on my torch and shine it on to the two engines, to see whether the sinister white scarves of steam and water are sweeping back from the top of the radiators. Fortunately, to-night the engines are working splendidly. If either engine were to be boiling, after one or two efforts to prevent it, the pilot would land the machine at once. If not, disaster would probably follow, as it did during my last terrible raid.
For a while, as ever, I am a little nervous of looking below. I prefer to hunch myself inside the big collar of my overall suit, and to make continual adjustments of the petrol pressure, which is recorded on two little dials whose pointers move slowly forwards or backwards in accordance with my opening of the release or the pressure tap.
A thin pencil of light flashes upwards from the coast-line east of Dunkerque. Four times it flashes--long, long, short, long. It goes out, and one is conscious of the town wrinkling its forehead, listening intently, uneasy, wondering. Again the searchlight stabs the sky four times and goes out.
"Challenging some one at Dunkerque!" I remark to the pilot.
"Expect it is a Hun. We had better keep well clear of it!"
A third time the searchlight throws upwards its anxious inquiry, and this time, still receiving no answer, it is not extinguished but moves across the sky hesitatingly, nervously.
Flashes leap up from the ground at several places round the town. In a few seconds the red sharp spurts of the bursting sh.e.l.ls appear suddenly in half a dozen places across the sky.
"Barrage!" mutters the pilot. "We"d better get clear away or we"ll get bothered. Here we are! They"re sh.e.l.ling us! Fire! _Fire!_ We"re only two thousand up!"
I hurriedly push a green cartridge into the Very"s light pistol and pull the trigger. The explosion barks out, and a green globe of light drifts below us. The sh.e.l.ls, which had been bursting unpleasantly near us, now, to our great relief, cease.
"Surely they can see our navigation lights! It"s no good! We will have to get height somewhere else!" grumbles the pilot, turning the machine away.
We fly over to a "blind spot," and, climbing in great circles, see our height indicator record in turn, three, four, and then five thousand feet.
"Let"s push off now!" says the pilot. "We"re high enough!"
"Make it five thousand five hundred, old man! The wind is with us the whole way! We want to be at six before we cross the lines if we are to get up to nine by Bruges."
The patient pilot makes one more wide turn and then faces east, and flies ahead on a direct course.
On the left the line of the sand-dunes edges the misty sweep of the sea.
In the north a strange sign is in the skies. Great streaks of white vapour, resembling moonlit clouds, stream from the horizon towards the zenith, spreading like the ribs of a fan. This beautiful vision of vast scarves of light, motionless and majestic, hangs over the sea with a splendid n.o.bility, and, as we discover later, it is the sublime Aurora Borealis.
Following up the stretch of sand-dunes I see near the lines the twinkling lights in the hutments near c.o.xyde, and at the Nieuport piers the occasional flash of a gun and the red burst of a sh.e.l.l. Here and there along the floods rise and fall the tremulous star-sh.e.l.ls. To the right Ypres flickers and flashes, stabbing the horizon with incessant daggers of flame.
When we are about seven miles from the trenches I crawl into the back and press hard forward the fusing lever, which draws the safety-pins from the bombs hanging in rows behind us. I tie up the lever with string to make sure that it will not slip, and resume my seat beside the pilot.
We approach Furnes, and, as we expect, we see a pale white beam of light leaping upwards in front of us, and vanish, and leap up again and again--as it flashes the challenging letter of the night.
"All right! I"ll give them a green!" I say to the pilot as I load the Very"s light pistol and fire it over the side. A green light drops, and dies. Again the thin beam of light flashes its anxious challenge towards us.
"Curse! I"m not going to fire another! Surely they can see us!" I say irritably, having been rather worried by these searchlights before.
"Go on, Bewsh! You"d better fire another--they"ll start sh.e.l.ling us!"
comments the pilot.
Meanwhile the searchlight, having received no satisfactory answer to its inquiry, apparently, remains in the sky, where it is joined by its two watery brothers who move querulously to and fro within half a mile of us.
"Go on! Fire a light!" says the pilot.
"Oh, I"m fed up with these fools! It will only give warning to the Germans. They won"t find us! It"s a waste of lights!"
"Fire a light--and don"t talk!" orders the pilot.
I do so with an ill grace, muttering under my breath.
The searchlights do not go out, and, a.s.sisted by our green light, sweep on to the machine.
The pilot begins to get really angry.
"h.e.l.l to them! What is the matter? Look at them--right on the machine.
Fire a green, and keep on firing them! They are giving away our course and position. I"ll get some devil shot for this when I land ... give them another ... that"s right! What is the matter with them?"
So he storms on, ablaze with a natural anger. The searchlights lose us.
We are now about three miles from the lines, so the pilot presses a switch on the dashboard, which extinguishes the wing and tail navigation lamps.
Below us the reflection of a drooping star-sh.e.l.l on the waters of the floods rises towards its falling counterpart, and as they meet I can almost imagine that I hear the hiss of the burning globe of light.
Another star-sh.e.l.l rises below us throwing a brilliant radiance over a circle of flood and water-filled sh.e.l.l-holes and a twisted line of trench. In turn it sinks quivering to death. Two sharp red flashes leap up in the dim country beyond the German lines, and in a few seconds I see, on the ground beneath, the swift flash of the bursting sh.e.l.l, and another near beside it. In one place is a faint red glow where perhaps some wretched soldier tries to keep warm by a fire in some inconceivable shelter in the mud. Glad am I to be an airman, well-clad, well-fed, and warm in my sheltered aeroplane, with the thought of the welcoming fire and white sheets and hot-water bottle which will greet me when I return, to buoy me onwards through the momentary discomforts of a few hours in the air! As I see the water-filled sh.e.l.l-holes shining in the moonlight like strings of pearls, and picture the cold and the mud and the desolation, I realise that it is the infantryman, the man on the ground, who suffers most and has the worst time. I snuggle up in my warm furs at the very thought of the misery which is not mine.
We hang right above the lines now. Over the wings I see the faint quivering glare of light, cast upwards by some star-sh.e.l.l far below over the lonely floods. In front of us two sharp flashes again appear on the German side of the lines, to be later answered by the flame of two bursting sh.e.l.ls on the ground behind us.
We turn to the right, and for a little while fly along over the lines looking for a landmark to help us onwards. Though we know the way well enough, and could travel to Bruges by instinct, we know by experience that it is best to travel along some fairly well-defined route in order to keep a close check on our position in case at any time we get lost, or fall into any trouble.
Soon we see the circular ma.s.s of poor Dixmude--sh.e.l.l-shattered and mutilated--lying at the landward end of the black waters. Stretching eastwards from it, into the heart of the German territory, is the thin line of a railway. We sweep to the left and fly eastwards again, leaving the lines steadily behind us.
A few minutes pa.s.s, and then we see to our left the two mighty beams of the Ghistelles lights stab upwards into the night, and move slowly and with an uncanny deliberation across the sky. There is something strangely alive about these searchlights. They appear to have a volition of their own. They seem to be seeking the hidden terror of the gloom with their own intellect. Look at them! They lean over towards one corner of the sky--keen swords of blue white steel, piercing upwards fifteen thousand feet of darkness. They have heard something: they are suspicious. In that one corner they move, sweeping, sweeping, through a small area. They wait motionless, then again they hear the faint hum of the hidden traveller; again they stalk wearily with tense eager arms, strained with the expectation of touching the evil presence for which so anxiously they grope. Suddenly one swings over a vast segment of the sky with a hurried gesture. Does some new menace approach--or is it deceived? It sweeps uncertainly for a few moments, and then darts back to join its companion who has not been faithless to his steady conviction. Look at them, slowly rising more and more upright as the unseen machine draws more and more above their heads! You can imagine them following the object of their hate, growing ever angrier as they fail to discover it. Then--look! look! half-way up the beam there is a spot of light! They have found the elusive night-bird! The other beam leaps over to it with a vicious grip and holds it too. See the two beams crossed like a gigantic pair of scissors, and in the hinge a white speck whose quickening movement is followed, followed, followed by the inexorable tentacles.
Flash, flash ... flash. Sh.e.l.l upon sh.e.l.l bursts, sullen and angry, above, below, on either side of the blinded bird, lit up so clearly and helplessly. Spurt, spurt, spurt of flame on the ground! A few seconds pa.s.s like the ticking of a clock--flash, flash, flash--the answering sh.e.l.ls burst into brilliance near the crossing of the two beams.