“For your dear sake I go, and for the sake of my King and country!” I whispered. “Good-bye, my darling. Keep a stout heart until you hear of me again!”
“But—oh!—oh!—I fear, Claude!” she cried anxiously, clinging to me.
“No, my darling. We must, to-day, all make sacrifices. There must be no fear. I shall be back with you to-morrow.”
And then again I kissed her and disengaged those loving, clinging arms about me.
Five minutes later Teddy and I were away in the air.
The night was dull and overcast with a promise of clearing—yet bitterly cold.
Of course with our big engine roaring we could hear nothing of the enemy’s approach, but I deemed it wise to rise high and, at the same time, to follow the railway line from Colchester towards London, because that, no doubt, was the route which the airships would follow.
The alarm had been given, trains being darkened and brought to a standstill, station and signal-lights extinguished and towns blotted out, I quickly lost sight of the railway track and could only go very slowly to save petrol in case of a chase, and guide myself by my compass.
From a town somewhere on the coast I could see the long scintillating beams of a searchlight striking across the dark night sky, first directed in one quarter and then in another. I think it must have been the searchlight on the coast at T—.
I saw Teddy was busy adjusting the Lewis machine-gun at his side as we climbed rapidly in the pitch darkness. The engine raced and hummed and the wind shrieked weirdly around us.