Then I see in the mist a little ahead of me a white light rise up and die away.
"Look, Jimmy! A white light! Good! They've seen us at last!"
But the pilot is not so trustful, and says—
"You're quite sure it isn't the lines?"
"Oh no! I'm sure! Throttle down a bit and glide that way!"
As we draw nearer I suddenly see the two piers of Dunkerque and the docks materialise in the mist, and on the other side the dull glow of landing flares from an aerodrome.
"No! It's not Ostend! It's all right, old man! There's St Pol! I'll fire another white!"
I fire for the last time, and scarcely has my ball of light died out before the answering signal soars up from the ground.
The engines are throttled, and we drift downwards on our whistling planes over the long basins of the Dunkerque docks. When we are about a hundred feet off the ground I press a small brass stud in front of me. A white glare of light bursts out under our right wing tip and throws a quivering radiance on the dyke round the aerodrome, on the hangars, and on the landing field itself, at the end of which are two or three red lights. We sweep gently on the surface of the ground, and before we have stopped rolling forwards, a little figure runs towards us flashing a light, and we hear its voice call—
"Turn to the left soon. The ground is full of bomb-holes ... where those red lights are!"