We therefore kept the remainder of our gun magazines intact, as also a brace of heavy service revolvers, 455 calibre, fully loaded.
We were not to know what might crop up at any moment. A Taube might find us and swoop down for bombing practice, or to make an easy prey. We could not in any event be taken prisoners by hostile aircraft, as there would be no space for us in a machine already full.
At any moment, too, a U-boat might pop up and either make a target of us for their quick-firer or take us in tow for the Belgian coast, which was uncomfortably near at hand.
However, come what might, we were in a mood to fight to a finish.
Unfortunately, my wireless transmitter was worked from the engine direct, otherwise I might have rigged up an extempore aerial from the spare reel carried, and sent a "S.O.S." from accumulators.
It is doubtful if such a scheme would have proved effective, but it would have been worth trying. But in the circumstances I was helpless.
The heat was now simply awful, the sea dead calm. We had taken off our leather coats long since, and now rigged them up across the fuselage overhead, for shelter from the sun's rays.
Presently it became so hot and stuffy on the seats that both the pilot and myself took our boots and trousers off, climbed down on the floats, and stretched ourselves along them in the comparative shelter of the wings and fuselage body.
The stern part of the floats was, of course, submerged, so we lay with our lower limbs under water, and felt cooler. This we did for about three hours, each of which seemed an age.