A quarter of an hour later Billy Barcroft felt like dancing a hornpipe on the quarter-deck. He had been given a task after his own heart—to bomb the German hangars at Lierre, a town about six or seven miles south-east of the fortress of Antwerp and a distance of eighty miles, as the crow flies, from the position taken up by the seaplane carriers. To Fuller was deputed the business of wrecking the important railway station of Aerschot, while the other pilots were likewise given definite instructions to drop their cargoes of explosives on specified places of military importance. The airmen were enjoined to avoid as far as possible encounters with hostile machines on the outward journey, the importance of reaching their respective objectives being paramount to the excitement of aerial duels with Hun flying men.
"We'll be within sight of one another most of the time, Barcroft, old man," said Fuller, as he signed to his observer to take his place in the machine. "Now, Gregory, all ready?"
Fuller's companion, a sparely-built sub-lieutenant, whose long, hooked nose and obliquely placed eyes gave him the appearance of a bird, nodded assent.
"Well, good luck!" shouted Barcroft.
The words were drowned by the roar of the engine, but the lieutenant instinctively realised their meaning. With a cheery wave of his gauntletted hand he started on his long flight.
Thirty-seconds later Barcroft got away, with Kirkwood as his observer. There had been a slight rivalry between Billy and Fuller as to who should take the A.P., for the lieutenant had regarded the latter as his own right-hand man since the night of the encounter with the Zeppelins, while Barcroft claimed priority. The matter had been decided by the spin of a coin, with the result that the A.P. was now on his way to Lierre with Barcroft.
High above the bombarding monitors flew the powerfully engined seaplane, now nearly half a mile in the wake of Fuller's "bus." At regular intervals astern came the rest of the aerial raiders, all rocking slightly in the disturbed air caused by the concussion of the heavy guns.
Ten minutes were sufficient to bring Barcroft's machine over the Belgian coast. Acting upon previous instructions he maintained an altitude of eleven thousand feet, at which height it was practically invisible from the shore, across which clouds of smoke and dust were slowly drifting as the British shells burst with devastating effect upon the Huns' positions.
No Archibalds greeted the raiders; neither Fokkers nor Aviatiks appeared to bar their way. For the present the flight was nothing more than an exhilarating joy-ride.
Once Kirkwood turned his head to watch the following seaplanes. Only one was in sight. The rest had already turned off for their respective objectives, and even that one was beginning to plane down towards a broad canal on which were dozens of loaded barges, their cargoes consisting of heavy gun ammunition destined for the batteries of Zeebrugge and Ostend.