At two o'clock in the afternoon the battleplane started on her cross-Channel flight. She rose awkwardly, side-slipping and missing fire badly, thanks to Blake's elaborate deception, and heading in a nor'-westerly direction was soon lost to sight.
Still climbing Blake kept her on a course diametrically opposite to her next landing-place until the battleplane attained the dizzy height of sixteen thousand feet. At that altitude, favoured by a slight haze, she was totally invisible from the ground. Then swinging round she retraced her course, flying at a rate of one hundred and eighty miles an hour towards the French coast.
Forty minutes later the battleplane planed down. As she swooped down out of a bank of clouds the lads could see what appeared to be a comparatively narrow stretch of silvery plain that expanded almost indefinitely in either direction north-east and sou'-west. It was the English Channel in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover. Ahead were the chalky masses of Cape Grisnez, the frowning promontory "flattened" out of all recognition by reason of the immense altitude of the observers.
"Do you remember the first time we crossed Channel?" asked Dick of his chum. "Sixteen solid hours of physical discomfort between Southampton and Havre. We were jolly bad."
"A submarine alarm would not have spurred us to energy," agreed Athol. "Four hundred and fifty men who had been singing 'Rule Britannia' at the top of their voices were lying on their backs, and bewailing the fact that the lady with the trident didn't rule the waves straighter. And now we are crossing the ditch in absolute comfort."
"Put on your flying helmets, lads, and lower the wind-screens," ordered Blake. "Nothing like getting used to Service conditions. Be careful as you lower away."
The warning was most necessary, for when the struts supporting the wind-screens were removed, it took practically all the strength at the lads' command to resist the fearful pressure of the wind upon the transparent panes.
Speaking, save by means of the voice-tubes, was now an impossibility. The furious air-currents, whirling past the airmen's heads, sounded like the continual roar of a mountainous sea breaking upon a rock-bound shore. The keenness of the wind cut the lads' faces; its violence almost took their breath away. For the first time they fully realised the sensation of speed through space.
Suddenly Blake, leaning outwards, pointed at something almost immediately beneath the fuselage. Following the direction of his outstretched hand, the lads could see a small glistening speck seemingly but a few feet above the sea. It was a monoplane.
Bringing their glasses to bear upon the machine the lads could distinguish it clearly. It was a British aircraft also making for the French coast, although owing to the relative difference of speed it looked as if it were flying stern foremost in the opposite direction. It was staggering in the teeth of a strong north-easterly gale, the effect of which was hardly noticeable in the upper air. The use of the binoculars also revealed for the first time that there was quite a mountainous sea running, while a patch of swirling foam betokened the presence of the dreaded Goodwin Sands.