“I didn’t have a chance for another good look at the Zepp; I only know that it descended rapidly, although apparently not entirely out of control. My machine, badly shot up as it was, still seemed to have a good deal of ‘kick’ left, though the reek of petrol in the air wasn’t an encouraging indication that its ‘vitality’ would continue. The impetus of my descent quickly carried me out of range of that spiteful but isolated little battery of ‘Archies’—luckily, too, in just the direction I wanted to go.
“Just before I flew over the Zepp—it was while the machine-gun bullets were still pattering, I have since recalled—K—— ’phoned me the compass bearing of the nearest point of the Dutch boundary, and said something about it being our only chance if things went wrong. (That they had already ‘gone wrong’ with him he gave no hint.) Strangely, the figures had stuck in my head, and it was in that direction I sheered as soon as the machine was on an even keel again. It was not far, thank heaven, and, partly planing, partly under the power of that brave little half-fed engine, I somehow managed to keep up long enough to clear the top wire of the boundary fence and pile up in a heap in the hospitable silt of good old Holland.”
A dozen questions tumbled after each other off the tip of my eager tongue, and the old “match dame,” who had snored peacefully all through Horne’s even narration, stirred and muttered petulantly at the unwonted disturbance. But Horne, rising and working his stiff joints, essayed to answer all in a single breath.
“I don’t know how much harm was done to the Zepp, or whether it was I or the Hun’s own ‘Archies’ that did it. K—— died in a Dutch hospital, without regaining full consciousness, two days later. (It was a bullet from one of the Zepp’s machine-guns that did for him.) I can’t tell you how I managed to get out of Holland; and”—as a low whistle sounded from Charing Cross and a hooded eye peeped cautiously out of the black shed—“the trains are running again; so we may take it that the little visitor we were watching is now out over the North Sea and on its way home to bed. I think it’s high time that we followed its good example on the latter score. Good-night and sweet dreams, mother.” And he took my arm and began piloting me back to the Strand to waylay a taxi.
Horne has been back at work for a month now, and, so far as I have heard, with no recurrence of ill luck. Last week I met another friend from Argentina—a doctor, returned to “do his bit” with the Red Cross. “Horne has made a brilliant success of his flying,” he said; “did he tell you anything of his exploits?”
“Only a little about a brush with a Zeppelin,” I replied, “and scant details of that.”
“That’s all he has ever told any one. Yet the Dutch patrol swear that he came down in Holland with the tail of his half-dead observation officer’s coat in his teeth (only thing that kept the chap from falling out); and there is also every reason to believe that it was his bombs that brought that Zepp down, and badly knocked up, too. Either one of them would bring him anything from the Military Cross to the V.C. if he would tell even the plain, unvarnished tale of it. But the quixotic idiot made his report so confoundedly non-committal that there was simply nothing for his commander to go by. Was hardly enough to merit mention in dispatches the way it stood, much less to award a decoration on. Queer thing, but they say they’ve had the same sort of trouble with a number of the flying chaps. Seems to be a sort of cult with them. Can’t say it’s a wholly bad one, either.”