"We're up seven thousand feet," the navigating lieutenant grinned. "How do you like it?"
"Don't like it at all," Meriwell answered. His teeth were chattering.
"You'll like it less in a minute. I'm going up to ten."
The din of fighting below had vanished into a faint murmur and the flashing guns and flaming artillery had become small, flickering lights, like fireflies on an August night. Occasionally a cloud flicked past below them and shut off even the pinpoints of light. Here and there a group of stars showed, coldly lustrous, while southward toward Reims one fell sheer, like a bomb.
"I'd rather be shot than as cold as this," Meriwell grumbled. Beneath his leather suit and woolen mask his skin had become rough as sandpaper.
He looked about the car. The navigator stamped his feet and swung his arms with the cold. The steersman crouched low behind the wheel. Four of the crew huddled in blankets against the walls of the basket. Only the commander stood imperturbable and grim, looking into the night. The shaded electric bulbs threw a sickly yellow light over the mechanism of the dirigible; over the black signal-board, on which green, red, and white circles and triangles showed, messages to and from the engineers fore and aft; over the row of switches, like those in a railroad tower, that opened the cages beneath the cars to release the pear-shaped bombs; over the navigator's map and compass. They outlined dimly the machine gun that peered over each side swathed in their oilskin coverings. They drew strange, green glints from barometer and spirit-level, and made silver sparkles on the frost crystals that were forming, parallelogram on parallelogram and triangle on triangle, among the twisted riggings of the car.
"What time is it?" Meriwell asked.
"It's ten-thirty," the navigator jerked. "We'll make Mainz by two and be back about dawn."
The cold became more dry and piercing. It seemed to ooze in at the pores and mingle with the blood and compose itself into a mixture that chilled flesh and bone. Meriwell felt his limbs going numb. The countryside beneath was becoming darker. There were no longer great chandeliers of light to show towns and small clusters that were villages. To the left a faint geometrical array of arc lamps rose dimly. The navigator crossed to the side of the car and looked at it for a moment. He shook his head grimly. Meriwell knew it was Brussels. A cloud enveloped them and dashed them with particles of dew that were like a shower of frost. Through the thick spray the figures of the steersman and commander loomed up gigantically, like visitors from another world showing vaguely through a misty dawn.
There was something eerie, Meriwell thought, in the immobility of the commander. He should have shown more eagerness, more of a sense of satisfied ambition. For years the old engineer officer had lived in the hope of seeing England recapture her lead in the aviation of the world. He had worked night and day in his laboratory, testing gases, testing metals, working out models for a battleship of the air that would thrust aside the Zeppelin and the Schutte-Laenze as the steamer put aside the barkentine. And now to-night he was commanding his dream for the first time in action. He was to raid the great railway network of Mainz, over which German corps were entraining night and day for the last supreme effort to gain the coast towns. In two hours he would be tearing the mighty terminal to shreds of twisted rails and charred wood, and distorted lumps of iron that had once been panting locomotives. Meriwell was proud to be with him, and the commander should be proudest of all. The gunner remembered how the old man had pleaded for the detail. The chief of staff had argued he was too old; he was too valuable. The chief had had in mind a thing Meriwell had forgotten and which suddenly came back to him with stunning force. But the old aviator had won.