It was less than fifty yards from the two chums' hut to the mouth of the dug-out, but during their deliberate and leisurely progress across the open ground Daventry and Kaye had an opportunity to observe some of the results of the raider's work.
A quarter of a mile away a fire was blazing fiercely. In that direction lay the hospital. Nearer, but in the opposite direction, was another but smaller blaze. A babel of excited voices could be heard between the crashes of the anti-air-craft guns and the explosion of the bombs.
"Chinks' quarters," remarked Kaye laconically.
"Yes; it's the Chinese compound," agreed Derek. "Pity the Boche didn't make a mistake and drop an egg into the barbed-wire enclosures to the right. There are about four hundred Prussians there, men of the lowest type of Hun I've ever met. Hallo! what's Fritz doing?"
Both officers stopped and gazed aloft. The German biplane was diving rapidly right into the eye of the searchlight. It was a deliberate move. The Hun was descending under perfect control, with his engine running all out, straight for the searchlight projector.
"Look alive, old man!" exclaimed Derek, gripping his chum by the arm and forcing him into the dug-out.
The two were only just in time, for as they descended the steps they could hear the rattle of a machine-gun and the splaying of hundreds of bullets upon the concrete.
Five minutes later the raid was over. The daring Hun had got away apparently untouched. Not only had he bombed the hospital, the Chinese compound, and part of the aerodrome, but by flying down the path of the searchlight and making good use of his machine-gun he had "wiped out" the entire crew of the searchlight itself.
While deprecating the wanton attack upon a Red Cross building in no mild terms, the R.A.F. men were not slow to praise the nerve and daring of the Boche, who, braving the Archibalds, had descended to within fifty feet of the ground in order to use his machine-gun with the deadliest results.
"Have a gasper?" asked Kaye, tendering a battered cigarette-case in which every dent had a story attached to it. "There's nothing like a cigarette when you've been turned out."