She put the thought from her. It was impossible. She had prayed. Not that.... He had only fainted from pain, from sickness. Not dead—she would not—could not believe it. She longed to reach forward—to let him feel her hand upon his neck—that he might know her pity and her pain. It almost seemed better that death should come to them both now than that he should die and not know the comforting touch of her hand. She leaned forward and one hand left the wheel, but she lost her touch of the air and the planes tipped drunkenly, threatening the destruction she courted.
The madness passed—and with its passing came a calm, ice-cold. She was no longer a sentient being. She was merely an instinct with wings, flying as the eagle flies straight for its goal. She kept her glance on the compass and followed the river. North-northwest. The silver thread had become a ribbon now, reflecting the starlight. She passed over other towns. She could see their lights, but her gaze was fixed most often on the distant horizon, where after a while she would find the sea.
A yellowish light, painting the under side of the plane above her head, bewildered her. She could not understand. It was like a reflection of a candle inside a tent. Low as it was, it blinded her eyes, accustomed to the soft light of the stars. There was a crash nearby, in the very air beside her it seemed, a blinding flash of light, and the Yellow Dove toppled sideways. Instinctively she caught it, turning as she went and rose higher—higher—as a bird flies at the sound of a shot below. She knew now what it meant—a searchlight! They were firing at her with the high-angle guns. She had come fast, but the wire from Windenberg had been faster. She put the light behind her and long arms of light still groped for her, but she rose still higher, five—six thousand feet her barograph told her. Below, to her right, a small thing, shaped like a dragon-fly, was spitting fire—to her left another, but she sank lower in her seat laughing at them. Something of Cyril’s joyous bravado possessed her. She defied them, rising far above them—higher—seven thousand feet—eight, until she could see them no more.
North-northwest! She found her course again and flew on into the night. She had lost the river, but that did not matter now. She knew that after a time—an hour or more—she must come to the sea. And when all signs of danger were gone she went down again where she could more plainly see the earth. The moon had come up and bathed the scene below with its soft light, and far ahead of her she saw irregular streaks of pale gray against long lines of purplish black. The sea? She had lost all idea of time and distance. How far the sea was from Windenberg she did not know, and if she had known it, the passage of time was a blank to her—a continuous roar, the music of the spheres which took no thought of time or space. The flight had lasted but a minute—and an eternity.
To her left the gray streaks were nearer—west by north her compass said, and she steered for them. Soon she made out distinctly contours of large masses of gray against the black—water and land. The air was milder and she sniffed the salt. She went down to three thousand feet to get her bearings, ever watchful for the dragon-flies and ready to soar again at the first flash of a searchlight. She had already learned to avoid the planes where the lights were grouped—the colonies of glow-worms that here meant danger.
Had she crossed the Belgian line? She had been to Antwerp, to Brussels, and tried to remember what they had looked like on the map. There was water near Antwerp—she remembered that, inland bodies of water which led to the sea. Now she could see beyond the bodies of inland water to a wide expanse of gray beyond the dark—uninterrupted gray—the ocean! She bore to her left until her course was due west. A searchlight flashed upon her for a second and was gone. By the way the contours were changing she knew that her speed was terrific. And slowly but more and more certainly as she neared the sea, a problem presented itself—her goal! Where was it, and how to find it in the dark? Cyril had said that they must land back of Ypres. But where was Ypres? Beyond Ostend and inland—thirty—forty miles. She knew that much from the war maps that she had pored over with her father. But how to find it?
She was over the sea now. The Yellow Dove felt a new breeze and the wheel tugged under her hand, but the machine lifted at the touch and wheeled like a gull to speed down the coast. Ostend! The Kursaal! If she could get a sight of it! It was dangerous, but she must go lower—three—two hundred feet from the sea, where she might make out familiar profiles against the sky.
The waves rose to meet her, reflecting the starlight, and just below her to the left the surf rolled in lines of white upon the beach. Dunes, dunes interminably, with here and there a collection of huts. A dark shape moved in the water ahead of her, another—— Warships? Destroyers. She wheeled out to sea and flew above them, but before they had time even to get their searchlights ranged upon her, the danger was past. She would win now. The Yellow Dove was invincible.
A dark irregular mass ahead of her rose above the monotony of dunes, buildings, and a bulk she seemed to recognize—a round dome iridescent like a soap bubble in the moonlight. The Kursaal! Ostend! She was nearing her destination—the end of the German lines. Friends were near—Belgians, French, and English. Twenty—thirty miles beyond Ostend and then inland somewhere back of Ypres she would find the English. The English lines were thirty or forty miles long, she remembered. It should not be difficult to find them. She must be sure to go far enough—but not too far—not to where the French army joined the British forces. Cyril’s papers must go to the English, to General French himself. He had said so.
She had no way of judging distance except by the passage of the minutes. At the speed she was flying she must turn inland in fifteen minutes. She had no watch and she tried counting the seconds. She had counted sixty—four times—when a battery hidden among the dunes along the shore opened fire on her. She was half a mile from shore, flying low, but the flash of light startled her and the shell burst beyond. She rose quickly, moving further out to sea, frightened, but still self-possessed. It would not do to fail now with the goal in sight.