In the meantime Anderson, Magor's engineer, stripped off his leather flying-coat and climbed out on the wing to the damaged engine. He was passing through the air at sixty knots. It whipped his clothing against his arms and legs, making them difficult to move; it tried to wrench his tools and materials from his hands, and would have blown him overboard had he relaxed his vigilance. For one hour, an hour completely filled with sixty long minutes, he fought with the air and completed the repair.
Magor, when he could start up his second engine, was two hundred miles from Felixstowe, and had completed his reconnaissance, so he turned the formation for home, crossed the North Sea, and landed in the harbour at half-past twelve o'clock.
Nineteen days later the second lighter trip was sent into the Bight.
Tiny Galpin and Rhys Davis were leading, Webster and Tees were in the second boat, and Barker and Galvayne were in the third. The latter pilot was killed later when the pilots of four boats attacked fifteen Huns off Terschelling, and put them to flight.
Tiny led his flight into the Bight, and also encountered two enemy seaplanes. But these pilots were not having any. They dropped their bombs and made off inland at high speed.
He met a flotilla of mine-sweepers who fired shells at him. So he and the other two pilots swooped down and swept the decks with machine-gun fire. When the mine-sweeper first opened fire the wireless operator seized his Aldis lamp and began signalling furiously to one of the ships. Tiny, reaching out, pulled him away from the side and demanded an explanation. The operator wrote on his pad—
"Sir, he was making e's to me."
He had not realised they were enemy craft, and thought that the quick flash of the gun was the light of a signal-lamp with which somebody was making a series of e's to him, the calling-up signal.