On this a council was held, and it was decided to steer due N.W. We ran before a strong southerly wind that until now had been on our port beam. We did about sixty knots, and by fifty hoped to have reached Russian territory. But to be quite sure we kept on until midnight, when we descended to what we considered was 5000 feet. Suddenly a cry from the pilot brought every one to his feet. There, not a 1000 feet below us—a mere 300 yards—were the white-crested, creeping waves towards which we were rushing.... "Hold on." Boom! Swish! Our second barrel of gas was exploded and we rushed up and up. But once there the "Homeward Bound" began to sink again.
"Pedal, pedal, or we are lost," shouted Tipton. And they did pedal. But we still sank slowly....
"Lighten ship," he roared, as the repair party tackled a huge rent in the side of the bag. Things were slung overboard wholesale and the dinghy cut adrift. The ship then steadied and gently rose, but not before a large volume of the Mastik was hurled overboard by Blind Hookey.
"My poems, my precious poems," shouted Mr. Belton, as he leaped to save them. He slipped, beat the air, and had not Mr. Smoke seized him by the coat tails and twirled himself around a stanchion he had followed Mastik into the abyss of mist and cold grey sea. The gas generator was set going and we gradually rose to 10,000 feet once more.
"Gentlemen," said our commander coolly, "we have been under way twenty-four hours, and I beg to report we are lost at sea."
Lost, lost, lost, the words echoed. A ringing cheer was our only answer.
(12) FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW
Spring has come. The tree I told you of is thick with leaves. And so when as now the evening wind blows, a changed music falls on my ear. Instead of the soft swish of branches is the lisp of the young leaves, stirring in delight as they listen to the story about the winter dreams of the old tree. Birds are back once more, Old Jim Crow, the jackdaws that awoke me early last summer, and a little fellow like a wagtail who in his own fashion is accompanying the lyrics of a thrush in the mosque garden close by. One and all they have the look of adventurers thick upon them. "Happy to meet, Sorry to part, Happy to meet again," is the leit-motif of their song. Perhaps like birds we shall ourselves soon return to English woods.
A great window is this of mine with its view from the garden across the town to the distant hills. Now, to appreciate a view fully, it is imperative that you shall have spent just previously some considerable time in trenches and dug-outs and gun-pits. No, it is not a view either, but rather a stage. In the background is the drop-scene of mountainous hills, dotted with villages and scored with paths and gullies. It is a scene shadowed with forests and sprayed by the advancing sunlight, or sometimes by this light misty rain. Other drop-scenes are the mists that advance or retreat with the rain, and sometimes a thunder blanket shuts off the stage just outside the town. For the curtain there is the mantle of night—when there is no moon.