"The old sportsman!" Meriwell said to himself, and his throat choked with pride; "the great old sportsman!"
He remembered how, on the first raid of the leprous-white Zeppelins from over the channel, the first house to be struck was the house of the old commander, a square, uncompromising, soldier-like house on Notting Hill, where his wife—the gray-haired, motherly lady with the dignified eyes—dwelt, and his widow daughter, mourning her husband dead somewhere in France. His soldier son, of the Sherwood Foresters, home on leave, was sleeping at the time. There were heard the high whir of propellers and the desultory crashing of anti-aircraft guns. Then, accurate as a thunderbolt, the great pear-shaped bomb had dropped, with the crash of lightning striking a tree. A colleague of the Royal Artillery, a blunt old fighter, with a cropped gray moustache, had told him about it, tactfully, laconically, with a fighter's sympathy. He told him how the gray-haired lady had died—very dignified, as she had been in life; very peaceful, as befitted an upright gentlewoman, her calm features mercifully unmarked. He stumbled as he spoke of the young captain, for a soldier should die on the battlefield, with guns roaring and his men about him, instead of being potted like a rat in a corn-stack. When he came to the daughter his face diffused to purple and his gray eyes flashed.
"Curse them!" he swore viciously, "curse them night, noon, and morning! living and dead! the rotten gallows-birds!"
"That's all right, Carter," the aviator had said. "Thank you for telling me." And he had walked off, fumbling pitifully at his sword-belt. What black hairs he had left had turned white since then, and his gray eyes were more sunken, but his beard jutted savagely since, and his voice snapped commands to his airmen with a ring like that of steel.
"I wish we were over that railway station," said Meriwell to himself, grimly. He squinted across at the switches of the bomb-cages and at the silent machine guns in their oilskin swathings. "He's going to get some good work in to-night, if I can help."
The officer at the compass straightened suddenly. He punched at the indicator buttons in a quick burst of energy.
"Up planes," he shouted. "Nine degrees down."
"Nine down!" the steersman repeated. He heaved on his switch with a long, graceful pull. The notches clicked successively like a clock in winding. The car tilted forward gradually. Meriwell grasped at a support to keep himself from sliding. Wind flew against them in a strong upward sweep. The steersman braced to his wheel like a wrestler. The propellers purred less loudly. Meriwell had the sensation of being gently pulled downward. He looked over the side of the car fearfully. A few desultory lights showed dimly, like the lamps of a train in the distance. An engineer officer dropped into the car from the passage, electric torch in one hand and oil-can in the other. He reeked pungently of gasolene.
"Time you were going down," he remarked peevishly to the navigating lieutenant in strong Scots. "Do you want all my engines to freeze?"
"It'll be hot enough pretty soon," the navigator jeered at him.