Pilot and Observer were both long-trained and skilled night-fliers. They crossed the line at the selected point and at a good height, looking down on the quivering patchwork ribbon of light and shadow that showed the No Man's Land and the tossing flare lights from the trenches, the spurting flashes of shell-bursts, the jumping pin-prick lights from the rifles. The engine roar drowned all sound, until suddenly a yowl and a rending ar-r-r-gh close astern told them that Archie was after them. Faintly they heard too the quick wisp-wisp of passing machine-gun or rifle bullets, the sharp crack of one or two close ones, and then silence again except for the steady roar of the engine and the wind by their ears.
Ahead of them a beam of light stabbed up into the sky, swept slowly in widening circles, jerked back across and across. The big machine barely swung a point off her course, held steadily to a line that must take her almost over the spot from which the groping finger of light waved. A spit of flame licked upward, followed quickly by another and another, and next instant three quick glares leaped and vanished in the darkness ahead. A second search-light flamed up, and then a third, and all three began swinging their beams up and down to cover the path the bomber must cross. The bomber held straight on, but a quarter of a mile from the waving lights the roar of her engine ceased and she began to glide gently towards them. The lights kept their steady to-and-fro swinging for a moment; the Night-Flier swam smoothly towards them, swung sharply as one beam swept across just clear of her nose, dodged behind it, and on past the moving line of light. One moment Pilot and Observer were holding their breath and staring into a vivid white radiance; the next the radiance was gone and they were straining their eyes into a darkness that by contrast was black as pitch. The engine spluttered, boomed, and roared out again; the lights astern flicked round and began groping wildly after them, and spurt after spurt of fire from the ground, glare after glare in the darkness round and before them, told that Archie was hard at it again. The Observer leaned over to the Pilot's ear and shouted "Dodged 'em nicely."
"Jacky's turn next," answered the Pilot, and began glancing back over his shoulder. "There he comes," he shouted, and looking back both could see a furious sputter of shell-bursts in the sky, the quick searching sweeps of the lights where the second Night-Flier was running the gauntlet. The leader went on climbing steadily in a long slant, and at the next barrier of lights and guns held straight on and over without paying heed to the rush and whistle of shells, the glare and bump of their bursts.
Mile after mile of shadowy landscape unrolled and reeled off below them.
The Observer was leaning forward looking straight down over the nose of the machine, unerringly picking up landmark after mark, signalling the course to the Pilot behind him. At last he stood erect and waved his arms to the Pilot, and instantly the roar of the engine sank and died. "Steady as you go," shouted the Observer, "nearly there. I can see the Diamond Wood."
"Carry on," the Pilot shouted back, and set himself to nursing his machine down without the engine on as gentle a glide as would keep her on her course and lose as little height as possible. The Observer, peering down at the marks below, gave the course with a series of arm signals, but presently he whipped round with a yell of joyful excitement. "Gottem! We fairly gottem this trip. Look—dead ahead." The Pilot swung the machine's nose a shade to the left and leaning out to the right looked forward and down. "The 'drome?" he shouted. "'Drome," yelled the Observer, scrambled back to get his head close to the Pilot's and whooped again. "'Drome—and the whole bunch of 'em lined up ready to take off. See their lights? Wow! This isn't pie, what!" He was moving hastily to get to his place by his gun again when the Pilot reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and shouted, "Don't go'n spoil a good thing. We don't want to hog everything. Let's wait and get the crowd in on it."
"Right," returned the Observer. "Keep the glide as long as you can."
They slid noiselessly in to the enemy 'drome, circled over it, losing height steadily, looking down gloatingly on the twinkling row of lights below them, and peering out in a fever of impatience for sign of the next machine of the flight. But in their anxiety to have a full hand to play against the enemy below they nearly overplayed. A search-light beam suddenly shot up from the ground near the 'drome. Another leaped from a point beyond it. "They're on to us," yelled the Observer. "Open her up and barge down on 'em quick."
But the Pilot held his engine still. "It's some of the others they're on," he shouted back, as light after light rose, and, after a moment's groping, slanted down towards the west where a sparkle of shell-bursts showed. "Now for it. Look out."
The line of lights which marked the machines below had winked out at the first burst of the Archies, but the Night-Flier had marked the spot, her engine roared out, and she went swooping down the last thousand feet straight at her mark. At first sound of her engine half a dozen lights swung hunting for them, spitting streams of fire began to sparkle from the defences' machine-guns. The Night-Flier paid no heed to any of them, dropped to a bare three hundred feet, flattened, and went roaring straight along the line of machines standing on the 'drome below. Crash-crash-crash! her bombs went dropping along the line as fast as hand could pull the lever. Right down the line from one end to the other she went, the bombs crash-crashing and the Observer's gun pouring a stream of fire into the machine below; a quick hard left-hand turn, and she was round and sailing down the line again, letting go the last of her bombs, and with the Observer feverishly pelting bullets down along it. Clear of the long line, the Pilot was on the point of swinging again when a huge black shape roared past them, the wing-tips clearing theirs by no more than bare feet. Pilot and Observer craned out and looked down and back, and next moment they saw the glare and flash, heard the thump-thump of bombs bursting on the ground. The Observer was stamping his feet and waving his arms and the Pilot yelling a wild "Good shot!" to every burst, when a rush and a crash and the blinding flame of a shell-burst close under their bows recalled them to business. The air by now was alive with tracer bullets, thin streaking lines of flame that hissed up round and past them. The Pilot opened his engine full out and set himself to climb his best. The tracers followed them industriously, and the Archie shells continued to whoop and howl and bump round them as they climbed. The Pilot, craning out and looking over, was aware suddenly of the Observer at his ear again. "I gotta heap of rounds left," he was bawling. "Let's go down and give 'em another dose."