She pulled off a loose buff glove and stretched a large white hand for the paper-pad. The message ran:
"6 a.m. Now leaving Compiegne for Calais. Seasheere in five hours, barring accident. All my love to you. Alan."
And the Lieutenant had thought her pale.... She kissed the paper and smiled at him bewilderingly. "Lucky beggar, Sherbrand," thought the Lieutenant. "What a glorious woman!" He extorted from Patrine, who would not be twenty until next August, the penalty for being built on a grander scale than other daughters of Eve. But she was asking:
"Whom have I to thank for bringing Mr. Sherbrand's message?"
"Flight Sub-Lieutenant Dareless—and the thanks are quite on my side." He phrased the trite civility punctiliously, while the bold brown eyes beamed and twinkled: "For you're IT," they said; "just—clippingly—IT!"
"How did you know me?" began Patrine.
"Picked you up through the binnics from the bridge, ten minutes ago." The slim brown hand flourished, indicating a T-square-shaped space of well-watered turf marked off in whitewash lines upon the green aërodrome below. "We call things by their proper names so as not to lose touch, you understand? The short stretch is the Bridge, and the long strip aft at right angles—that's the Quarter-deck. The big hut No. 1 is our Wardroom—the Wing-Commander's cabin is divided off from it. The officers' cabins are in the small hut, No. 2, and the Warrant Officers and men divide No. 3. Of course we keep watches and post sentries—just as if we were at sea. That Territorial on guard near is relieving a man of ours, do you see?" He jerked his chin towards the moving brown figure. "What have we to guard? Oh, well, the hangars, and our Wireless"—another jerk indicating the latticed steel mast surmounting a telegraph hut wedded to a vibrating dynamo-shed. "We get reports from our patrols—most of 'em are fitted with radio-apparatus—and we receive and transmit messages. Long distance? Well, rather! We're frightfully swanky about our Wireless plant. It's Number One, H.P. Not big, but jolly powerful. A——"
Six clear, silvery double-notes had sounded from a brass bell, hung beneath a little white-painted penthouse sitting on the blue strip of shadow on the westward side of the Wardroom hut. The Petty Officer who had rung the bell exchanged a brief word with the Territorial, and went back to the hangars from whence he had emerged. Patrine, with her heart in her mouth, asked the Sub-Lieutenant:
"Was that a signal?"
"Only ship-time," said the brown-eyed one. "Six bells. Eleven A.M. And our man ought to be looming up in sight. He might hit Seasheere now at any minute. In fact, he's nearly an hour late."