“You’ll let me go with you, won’t you?” she begged, as she poured him his second cup of tea with dainty hand.
“You were up last night, and you’ve been for a long joy-ride to-day. I think it would really be too great a strain, Beryl, for you to go out to-night,” he protested.
“No, it won’t. Do let me go, dear!” she urged.
“Very well,” he replied, always unable to refuse her, as she knew full well. “In that case we’ll fly over to Harbury now, and put the ’bus away till to-night. I’ve sent Collins out there in readiness.”
Then, half-an-hour later, “The Hornet,” with Ronnie at the joy-stick and Beryl in the observer’s seat, rose again from the grass and, after a couple of turns around the pylons, ascended rapidly, heading north-east.
As it did so, the dark-eyed mechanic in the brown overalls stood watching it grow smaller until it passed out of sight.
For some minutes he remained silent and pensive, his heavy brows knit as he watched. Then, suddenly turning upon his heel, he muttered to himself and walked to one of the flying schools where he, Henry Knowles, was employed as a mechanic on the ’buses flown by the men training as air-pilots for the Front.
In a little over half-an-hour the big biplane with its loud hum travelled nearly forty miles from Hendon, until at last Ronnie, descending in search of his landmark, discovered a small river winding through the panorama of patchwork fields, small dark patches of woods, and little clusters of houses which, in the sundown, denoted villages and hamlets. This stream he followed until Beryl suddenly touched his arm—speech being impossible amid the roar of the engine—and pointed below to where, a little to the left, there showed the thin, grey spire of an ivy-clad village church and a circular object close by—the village gasometer.
The gasometer was their landmark.
Ronnie nodded, and then he quickly banked and came down upon a low hill of pastures and woods about five miles east of the church spire.