When finally the awakening came she thought at first it was a Sunday morning at home, it was so quiet. The sun was coming up, round and rosy.
The appreciation of this last fact aroused her thoroughly. She knew she must be late. She sprang to the window to see the fields covered with low-rolling mist. Nothing was to be seen in the direction of the battlefield, and only a single broken-down ambulance was in sight on the road.
She scamped her toilet on this morning to rush down for a drink of coffee before hastening to the hospital. It was cold, for a biting air came out of the low-hung fog, and she drew her cape close around her throat as she walked hurriedly along the road.
She wondered how the battle had ended—or if it had ended. The hospital had been overcrowded when she left the evening before. Were they still bringing in those ruins of men that the guns had made?
As she walked on she became aware of a whirring and buzzing apparently directly in her rear. She turned out to make way for the automobile, the engine of which she thought she heard.
But nothing came out of the mist in the roadway. Yet the whirring and clattering increased. Then, suddenly, she knew that the sounds were in the air.
On one side of the road was a plowed field. Belinda realized that some pilot was seeking to make his landing in this open space; and landing in a fog is one of the most uncertain things that confront the pilot.
In the first place the altimetre which is supposed to register the aeroplane's height is never delicate enough for that purpose when the machine is descending for a landing. It is always fifteen or twenty yards behind the rapidly dropping aeroplane. Then, the pilot's eyesight is of little use in a fog.
It must be by exercise of almost a sixth sense that the aviator judges the position of the ground when coming down on such a day as this. Belinda knew this. She almost screamed a useless warning as she heard the clashing wings drawing nearer so swiftly.
Through the rolling mist a great shape—like nothing so much as a huge and horrid insect—came plunging down. Belinda did scream as the end of one wing brushed the top rail of the fence between field and road.