"Save my pal! Save my pal!" I cry.
Down the wing slides the other man, and suddenly I see it is not the pilot at all, but the back gunlayer.
"Where's Roy? Where's Roy?" I shout in a sudden dread.
"He never came up!" is the terrible answer.
"Oh! Save my pilot! Save my pilot!" I call out, bursting into sobs, partly with hysteria at the ending of the strain, partly with utter grief. "He was a wonderful chap ... one of the best ... one of the best. Save him! Oh! Do save him! He can't be dead! Roy! Roy! He was the best chap there—ever—was."
It is too late. We are lucky to be picked up at all, for it is against regulations. The row-boat goes back to the little grey motor-launch which is protecting the monitor with a smoke-screen, and must go on at once. We are pulled on board. An anxious-eyed and evidently very busy naval officer comes to me.
"Are you wounded or anything?" he asks. "No? Good! I am so sorry we cannot wait to look for the other man. Go down to our cabin and get into blankets. I will send some whisky down! That noise? No! It's not the monitor. It is fifteen-inch shrapnel shell being fired at us from Ostend!"
"Where are you going—anywhere near Dunkerque?" I ask.
"Yes! Going back now with the monitor! The stunt's washed out—bad weather!"
"Washed out! All wasted, all wasted. Oh! Roy! Roy!"