Then suddenly, like a mirage, he saw the half-moon of a harbour and black ships at anchorage. He drew rapidly near. A violent puff of smoke rose from the funnels of the largest ship. She had seen him, or she had been warned, and was endeavouring to escape. He recognized her with a cry of delight. She was the Sultan Omar.
Hidden forts on the green hills about the harbour burst into life. Smoke, flame, and the dull thud of cannon rose to him, for he was flying lower and lower. A shrapnel shell flashed just in front of him and showered steel splinters against his windshield. He screamed with laughter. It seemed to him ridiculously funny that they should think they could kill him or escape him.
He volplaned; from seven thousand feet he sank to one thousand, then to eight hundred—to seven hundred—to six hundred—to five hundred. A curving white wake showed him that his victim was in motion. He was almost over her. Rifles cracked as the crew endeavoured to reach him with their bullets. He did not hear them. His right arm swung deliberately back to the bomb-thrower. He was near. He was over. He jerked madly, and the pent volcano fell straight on the warship.
The air rocked and heaved. His ’plane almost turned a somersault, and he fought to restore its balance in an atmosphere reeling like a typhoon. Solid waves of air beat and buffeted him. He jerked the levers and fought furiously. Then, like a bronco, the machine found her feet, prancing and shuddering in the choppy air, and up he climbed. A glance over his shoulder was enough, even if the boiling air had not told him of his success. The blue sea was black with wreckage; men like insects floated in the water, but the Sultan Omar had disappeared.
The air still cracked and roared as the Turks shelled him. The whole land seemed to wake, and the setting sun shone through a curtain of dirty smoke. A Turkish aeroplane slid up in long spirals behind him to cut off his retreat; petrol dripped slowly from a leak in his reservoir caused by shrapnel or a rifle bullet. It was the price of his success; a glance told him that he could not stop the leak. He had often thought of that moment. Should he go back and risk capture by the Turks? No; he would fly straight out into the Black Sea and die alone in its waters. He would fly out into the sea where his ancestors had sailed centuries before the Moslems had taken Constantinople; the sea of the Golden Fleece, of Medea, of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, of the long campaigns against the Persians. He would die there.
The sun set swiftly. In the twilight his mind seemed to slip its leash and play high jinks with him. His palms grew into the handles of the controls and became part of the mechanism; his fingers lengthened into levers, his legs into rods upholding the aeroplane, and he flew, screaming, laughing, and cursing, until night fell like a plummet from the dusky sky.
Suddenly his machine struck the level surface of the sea and buckled forward. Douka awoke, as if from sleep, tore the harness from his aching head, and slumped forward against the straps, waiting for the end. The wreckage of his machine still floated on the long, slow waves, and rocked easily to and fro, but one of the pontoons was crushed and another was leaking.
He felt no wind against his face, and the sea was calm. “Lucky,” he thought listlessly, knowing that at a touch of wind or wave the ’plane would go under. It might float for hours, or only for minutes; he did not care. Death was certain.