“Did you hear anything suspicious?” she asked, as he placed the bag containing the wireless in the observer’s seat.
“Yes,” he replied. “It was just as we have guessed—enemy messages on a short wave-length. Not very plain, to be sure, but they are being transmitted, without a doubt. I heard you perfectly,” he added. “But we haven’t much time to waste if we are to keep the appointment.”
“The ’bus is going beautifully,” Beryl said. “I should have had quite a pleasant trip if it were not for the ‘Archie-fire.’”
“They may believe that the enemy send aeroplanes over to us at night painted to resemble ours. That is the reason you got peppered, no doubt,” he said. “We must give that station a wide berth in future.”
Climbing into the pilot’s seat he examined the map set beneath the small electric bulb, and afterwards slipped on his airman’s coat and cap, and buckled the strap round his waist. Then, after she had swung over the propeller, he helped his well-beloved into the observer’s seat into which she strapped herself.
With a quick bumpy run they sped over the pasture, and then, on the lower ground, they rose with a roar of the engine, turned and, passing over the high road, circled over the opposite hill. Higher and higher Ronnie went up into the starless darkness, making great circles in order to get up five thousand feet.
As the speed increased in the darkness the machine, thrusting its nose still upwards and lying over resolutely in its long spiral climb, throbbed onward until, at a thousand feet, there came to both a delicious sense of relief as they moved along on an even keel.
For over an hour they flew until they were high above the long, steep High Street of Guildford, where only a few twinkling lights could be seen below, owing to the excellent precautions of its Chief Constable. At that altitude, from the number of lights, an enemy airman would never have suspected it to be a town at all.
It was not long, however—even while they were circling above the town and Ronnie was taking his bearings—before two intense beams from searchlights shot out and almost blinded the aviators. For fully two minutes the lights followed them. Then the watchers below, having satisfied themselves that it was a friendly ’plane, shut off again, and all was darkness.
They had flown perhaps nine miles from Guildford when, of a sudden, almost directly below them, there sprang up four points of red light—lit simultaneously by an electrical wire—which showed them their landing-place.