A biting wind having sprung up I, for a full half-hour, lost my bearing altogether. Roseye, practised airwoman that she was, had quickly discerned my perplexity and danger. Yet she showed no fear—trusting in me implicitly.
There seemed to be a quantity of rising ground about me, therefore I decided to ascend farther, first to avoid the oncoming clouds that were drifting low, precursory of rain or snow, and secondly, from a higher altitude to be able to pick up hoping, Theed’s flares guiding us home.
I rose to five thousand eight hundred feet when, on my left, I saw in the far distance a red stream of light from the furnace of a locomotive, but on what line of rail it was I could not decide. Lost I was in that unbounded space of darkness—lost until I saw half a dozen scattered street lamps darkened on top and shedding slight patches of light upon the pavement, when I suddenly realised that below me lay a small town. I recognised station lights! I had seen those once before that evening. It was Uckfield!
While lost I had flown in a complete circle quite unconsciously, as every airman flies. But now, steering again by compass, it was not long before I at last saw those four tiny points of white light below—the acetylene lamps over which old Theed was keeping guard.
At such a height were we that the flashes looked mere specks.
Roseye nudged me, and pointed down at them, while I nodded a response.
Just at that moment we saw, a tiny pin-point of light flashing near the lamps, and knew it to be old Theed signalling to us, fearing lest at that height we might miss our landmark and go forward.
He could not see us, but of course he must have been hearing our powerful engine for some time.
In response, I gave one short flash with the searchlight, and then commenced to plane rapidly down, circling above the field marked for our landing.
A belt of firs stood on the west side I knew, and these I was compelled to avoid. My additional difficulty was one that always confronts a pilot when landing at night, namely, an ignorance of the direction of the wind. By day the pilot can tell this from the way in which smoke blows, the currents of air waving across growing crops, and by other signs which in the darkness are not available. A good landing should be against the wind, so as to break the impact of coming to earth. Yet by night, if there be no mark in the aerodrome telling the pilot the direction of the wind, he has to take chances and risk it.