“From the disposition of those lights it seems that we are near our objective,” he remarked. “I hope you are not nervous, darling?”
“Why should I be with you, Ronnie?” she asked, placing her gloved hand tenderly upon his shoulder.
“Well, because we’re now entering the danger-zone,” he replied, “and I think I ought not to conceal it from you. Would you like to turn back?”
“Turn back!” echoed the brave girl. “Never! Where you dare go, I will go too. Don’t think I’m in the least nervous. If anything happens, it will happen equally to both of us.”
“Well spoken, my darling,” he said, his hand touching her cheek in the darkness. “Then we will go forward.”
After that there was a long silence, until below they saw a cluster of faint lights, with one light flashing at regular intervals.
“Look!” he said. “That is Zeebrugge. Beyond—that fainter light over there—is Ostend.”
He consulted a roughly drawn map which he now produced, and which bore certain cryptic marks in red and blue; he directed Beryl’s attention to a speck of light to the north, saying: “That surely is Heyst!”
Then he pointed “The Hornet’s” nose upwards, and rose until they were enveloped in a cloud of fog in order to evade the inquisitiveness of any searchlights, afterwards flying in a circle directly over the port of Zeebrugge, which both knew to contain strong defences and long-range anti-aircraft guns.
For a full quarter of an hour they hovered over the town, their presence entirely unsuspected on account of the roaring exhaust being silenced. Then, carefully, he once more descended to mark out his objective—the new German submarine base. Between two spots seen far below he was undecided. There were many faint lights burning in the town, but one, he decided, was in the centre of the submarine base.