Holiday-makers at a certain British coast town were treated to the spectacle of an alarm.
They gathered on the sands and on the front and watched a dozen English machines trekking upward in wide circles until they also were hovering specks in the sky. They saw them wheel suddenly and pass out to sea and then those who possessed strong glasses noted a new speck coming from the east and presently thirteen machines were mixed up and confused, like the spots that come before the eyes of some one afflicted with a liver.
From this pickle of dots one slowly descended and the trained observers standing at a point of vantage whooped for joy, for that which seemed a slow descent was, in reality, moving twice as fast as the swiftest express train and, moreover, they knew by certain signs that it was falling in flames.
A gray destroyer, its three stacks belching black smoke, cut through the sea and circled about the débris of the burning machine. A little boat danced through the waves and a young man was hauled from the wreckage uttering strange and bitter words of hate.
They took him down to the ward-room of the destroyer and propped him in the commander's armchair. A businesslike doctor dabbed two ugly cuts in his head with iodine and deftly encircled his brow with a bandage. A navigating lieutenant passed him a whisky-and-soda.
"If you speak English, my gentle lad," said the commander, "honor us with your rank, title, and official number."
"Von Mahl," snapped the young man, "Royal Prussian Lieutenant of the Guard."
"You take our breath away," said the commander. "Will you explain why you were flying a British machine carrying the Allied marks?"
"I shall explain nothing," boomed the youth.
He was not pleasant to look upon, for his head was closely shaven and his forehead receded. Not to be outdone in modesty, his chin was also of a retiring character.