Part 9

I stand up and look down at the dim pattern of the docks. This is the most exciting moment of the raid. I know the fourteen bombs are going down--the Germans do not know it, and I know they do not know it. For the moment the men in the air are triumphant. There we move in silence and unseen above the very heart of the enemy's stronghold. The fourteen bombs are whirling at a terrifying speed towards the docks, and the valuable material which they contain. No one below expects the sudden disaster which inexorably draws nearer and nearer. What use are the waiting watchmen a thousand strong? What use are your plans, O ye cunning enemy,--what use your well-oiled guns, the clear-polished lenses of your great searchlights--the long belts loaded with your green-tipped pom-pom shells? We have come, we have struck home! Down, down below with intent eyes I gaze, waiting to see the bursting of the missiles. Hours seem to pass. I wonder if the bombs have failed to explode; I wonder if they have dropped. In a fever of expectancy I peer to the gloomy bottom of the great pool of night. Then a great flash leaps out of the earth and slowly fades, leaving by the dim strip of water a pale moonlight cloud of smoke. Another and yet another leap up in the basin itself. Then another and yet two more burst on ahead in a line. "Ah! good! good!" I mutter to myself. Seven bombs clearly I see explode, and then I can scarce see the ground at all, for with the bursting of these first bombs the whole fourteen searchlights are flung into the sky like a handful of white ribbons of light, and begin at once to move to and fro in a slow determined motion. Above us, below us, to right of us and to left of us, behind us and in front of us, move these brilliant bands of up-pouring light. So bright are they that some, though they are seventy or eighty feet away, throw a white radiance over the machine. The dim country is slashed and cut across by these almost dazzling beams which wheel and hesitate and cross each other in gigantic patterns. Against the stars over our heads move their long pale arms, which slowly fade as height destroys the power of their thrust.

A few seconds after the appearance of this company of searchlights there rise from three or four points in the neighbourhood of the docks long chains of vivid green balls, which cast an unearthly gleam upon the water of the basins, and light up with their fantastic glow a circle of vaguely-seen country. Right in front of us they pass, passing upwards in an orderly hurry and giving a greenish tinge to my hands, the pilot's face, and to the planes on either side. They bend over slowly in the upper sky, and one by one fade away to red sparks dropping swiftly. Through the thin trails of vertical smoke left by their passage we pass, and I am reminded of the magic beanstalk of the fairy tale, rising up into unimagined heights and joining the world of reality to a world of dreams.

Then breaks into action the third weapon of this opposition--of this turbulent maelstrom to which I gave birth when I pressed over the wooden lever in the cockpit. Four little red flashes break the darkness below, and then two more a mile away, then four others to the west, and yet four more ... as anti-aircraft battery after anti-aircraft battery comes into action against the machine. Four or five seconds pass, then, a few hundred feet away, appears a swiftly-vanishing flame. Another appears to the left, and dotted at random here and there they leap out and vanish in quick succession, shell-burst after shell-burst. Round puffs of white moonlit smoke whirl by us as we go gliding onwards in silence, and untouched, through this turmoil of flame and radiance.

On all sides move the long blue-white swords of dazzling light--thirty feet wide they lie right before us, barring our way. To our right and our left they follow us, trying, trying to touch us. Behind our tail they dog us relentlessly, yet seemingly in vain. Below they lie across the vast depths of the sky, blinding our eyes and hiding the country from our sight. Above they move, pale beams, across the ten thousand watching stars. Here and there among their white anger move the jealous ropes of glowing jade, which pass upwards in swaying curves and mingle their green brilliancy with the searchlights' glare, which is clearly reflected on our great wings. Shell after shell, red, vicious, and sharp, bursts and bursts above us and around us--protesting with its storm of temper at the vain groping of the searchlight--the useless beauty of the green balls. Lastly, the swift-moving streaks of the fiery tracer bullets from the machine-guns cut across the sky in a dozen directions.

Wherever we may look we see this boiling volcano of shell and bullet, searchlight and green ball. White, green, and red play the colours over our hands and faces. The chorus of the bursting explosive clamours around us, and above its sound we hear the splendid noise of the fourteen bombs, the sound of whose detonation has at length risen to us from the earth far below. When we hear that welcome sound we realise that our duty has been done, and we have driven the blow home. We are exhilarated by the thought, exhilarated by this ferment of opposition. Its very power only seems to show us that the enemy must value what he is defending so fiercely. I almost want to sing with delirious joy. What matter the blazing rays of light--what matter the crashing shells and the chains of emerald balls? We are inviolable, and we will continue our enchanted immunity from danger.

Then I become suddenly conscious of a glare upon the machine. I look down to the left, and at once I see a great dazzling eye of light, so brilliant and strong that it shimmers and wheels and boils as I gaze into it. We have been caught by a searchlight, and held. In a swift moment I see the long arms in the sky about us move with a common impulse towards the machine, until wherever I look I see eyes, eyes, eyes in a vast circle around us.

"Oh, Jimmy! They've got us! _They've got us!_" I cry out. "Shove on the engines, and push her down to ninety! Keep straight on--quick! _quick!_ Push her down to ninety!"

No need is there now to be silent. We are by chance discovered, and are in the pitiless grip of fourteen powerful arms of radiance. Wherever I look there is light, light. I cannot see the ground below; I cannot see the stars above. We swim in a sea of brilliance. I am as blinded as when at times I have met upon a dark country road at night some car with huge head-lights, whose white glare has dazzled me and pinned me to the side of the road in fear. Each of these searchlights upturned against me now are many times more brilliant than the acetylene lamps of a car, and there are fourteen of them.

I am tense and quick-breathed. I feel stripped, naked, and ashamed. I am most tremendously conscious of my visibility to those below, and know that one and all they hate me. I put my hand across my eyes. I crouch lower inside the machine. _Crash, crash ... crash!_ Ah! Now the shells, no longer scattered in an idle barrage, begin to explode near the machine, which, like a white bird, at the apex of a gigantic pyramid of light, so slowly crawls through the sky.

"Jimmy! They're shelling us! Shove the nose down--shove the nose down! Make it a hundred!"

Red flash the shells through the white haze of light in which we move. Green pour the bubbles of light in upward progress by the machine. Over the wings and over my pilot's grim-fixed face play the three colours, scarlet, emerald, and brightest white, in an unending, ever-changing ripple of colour. Now sounds the staccato and unexpectedly loud thunder of the machine-gun behind us as the gunlayer begins to direct downwards to one of the searchlights a stream of fiery tracer bullets. What use are they, I wonder? If one searchlight is destroyed there are yet thirteen to hold us in their grasp.

My heart is jumping wildly inside me. I make my hands adjust the brass taps at my side so that the fingers of the white-faced dials keep to the needful figure, but I know any second there may be a rending crash, and we may spin swiftly down and down.... Still we are held. Still the dazzle of light lies round us--still the blue-white eyes of fire stare at us with their hypnotising whirl and boil of brilliancy which makes them look so huge although so distant. Still the whole machine is clear-cut to the smallest wire in their all-exposing luminance.

I grip the pilot's arm in my fear and shout to him--

"Oh, Jimmy! Keep her going! Keep her going! Make it a hundred! We'll soon be free!"

"But we're only four thousand! We can't go any lower!" he answers.

"Push on! Speed is what matters! Keep her to a hundred, and we'll get through if we can!"

Now do I feel my mascots in my pockets and think for a swift sad moment of those I love best. Will it never end, I wonder? For hours the shells seem to have flashed and crashed round us. For hours the searchlights seem to have revealed us white in the black night. Then I become somehow conscious that the light on the machine is a little less. Looking behind me I see one or two beams moving erratically across the sky. They are _beams_, and not eyes! At last, then, we are getting beyond the range of the defences! One by one the searchlights slide away from the machine and swing up and down, pale shafts now, above or to the side of it. The shell-fire dies away. A string of green balls pours upwards half a mile away to our left. Two searchlights alone hold us, then they lose us, and to our almost indescribable relief we are moving in the darkness, whose friendliness never before have I so loved, whose protection never before have I so vividly realised.

My forehead is wet with perspiration. My hands shake, my knees feel weak. The ending of the strain has left me feeble, and the reaction for a time is almost painful. The physical feeling of sinking inside me remains for a little while, but soon I begin to feel normal.

"Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! Aren't you glad that is all over? It put the wind up me! I don't think we got hit, though. Look at Bruges--she is mad!"

Over the weary city still glide and hover the thin beams of light, vainly regretting their lost prey. A few useless shells leap into red brilliance here and there among the stars, while the last lovely chain of green balls rises upward through the night. To the dim north, by the docks, glows the dull glare of a fire, where some bomb has gone home.

To the west we fly onwards in the moonshine over the pale pattern of the fields. Far ahead glimmer the white flames of the star-shells in the mist along the floods.

The sense of duty well done, of dangers faced and conquered, gives an exhilaration which has made the whole night of terror worth the while. The moments of dread through which we have lived have been so vivid, so intense, that they have left us cool-headed and tranquil, and now we know that we are on the way home, and that we go to rest and forgetfulness.

Minutes pass, and below us gleams the fading loveliness of a star-shell. To the left flickers Ypres. On the right at Nieuport one shell bursts out along the coast, beyond which lies the vast expanse of the quiet sea.

Minutes pass, and below us shines the little T of lights at Coudekerque. Down drifts our light--up drifts the welcome answer. Softly we sink towards the world, which slowly, slowly grows real from out a map.... Gladly I drop through the little door when we have at last drawn up beside the mighty hangars. Gladly I stretch my cramped legs and walk for a while unfamiliarly upon the grass. Gladly at last I switch off the light in my bedroom, and curl up in the sheets with my feet upon the hot-water bottle. On the ceiling gleams the fire-light. Voices sound more rarely in the cabins. Suddenly I remember something, and call out--

"Who was it getting hell over Ghistelles?"

"Bob!" comes an answer from some near-by cabin.

"I say, Bob! Did you have a bad time?"

"Twenty-five holes in the machine! Jack shoved the bombs right across the aerodrome, though--he's not a bad observer!"

"Shut up, Bob!"

"Good-night, Jack! Good-night, Bob! Good-night, Bill! Good-night, Shoey!"

"Good-night, Paul!"

"Good-night, Jimmy--it wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No! Good-night, Paul!"

Soon I drift to sleep and the well-loved world of dreams.

VII.

DAWN TO DAWN.

"When in the East the evening stars burn clear, We know our time of toil is drawing near; For as the evening deepens in the West, It brings an ending to our day-long rest.

One after one we slip into the gloom, And through the dusk like great cockchafers boom; High in the stars you hear our mournful cry, As we sail onward through the sapphire sky."

--_The Night Bombers._

I suddenly wake, and sit up in bed with strained ears. I have a dim recollection of a noise. Then I hear three or four dull explosions like distant gunfire, and out wails the piteous appeal of "Mournful Mary" at the Dunkerque docks.

_Zoop-zoop_ ... bo-o-o-o-m!

The last is a tremendous explosion.

I wonder what is happening.

"Did you hear that? Any one awake?" I call out softly.

"That you, Paul--what can it be?" answers a voice in the darkness from some near-by cabin.

"I'll go and see."

I step out of bed and walk to the door at the end of the hut. In bare feet and thin pyjamas I look straight out to the east, but faintly lighter than the dark skies above in which the stars still shine undimmed. The night is very cold and silent. On the left of Dunkerque a few pale searchlights move slowly across the sky. I see a few flashes and then hear the sharp reports of the guns. It must be an air-raid.

I hurry into bed again and call out: "Can't see much! must be a raid!" and then begin to drop off to sleep, when again I hear the wail of the hooter, followed by the dull reverberating crash.

Sleep comes with difficulty. Again and again I become conscious of tumult in the real world beyond my dreams. Again and again I hear the distant thunders. When I next wake it is getting light, so I walk to the door of the hut. Outside I now can see the flat countryside, desolate in the greyness of early morning. To the left are the towers and chimneys of Dunkerque, and on the little road running past the aerodrome are a few rough carts, piled high with bundles and shawled women, leaving the town.

_Zoop-zoop_ wails the syren. Out leaps the sudden roar of an explosion, and suddenly I see towering high above the roofs a tall column of dust and smoke, from which little black fragments are dropping back in a shower.

"Bob! Bob!" I call out.

A sleepy "Hullo!" answers me behind my back.

"They're shelling Dunkerque! It must be a fifteen-inch gun!"

The pitiful column of refugees, of women taking their children and a few precious bundles of clothes, or articles of furniture, away to some place of safety, rapidly increases.

As far as you can see the road is dotted with the little groups. Some of the poor people are riding; some follow a cart; some push perambulators.

Again the syren wails; again the tall plume of black smoke shoots up near the town; again the shower of wreckage drops from it.

Sleep is impossible. I get up and dress, and go to the mess for breakfast. We now know that the shells are bursting every seven minutes, and when six minutes have passed we talk less, and listen, and wait. There is the sudden crash, and through the window can be seen the earth shooting up in a field a little to our side of the town. The next shell is only a few fields away. I hurriedly finish the meal, and walk out of the mess to go to a hangar at the other end of the aerodrome, whose erection I am supervising.

I have just left the camp behind me, and am beginning to walk across the great field, when, in the very middle of it, some two hundred and fifty feet away, appears a solid black fountain of smoke and earth, quite seventy feet high. I stand transfixed with amazement and excitement as the roar of sound sweeps by me, and a few seconds later I hear the remote boom of the gun, twenty-eight miles away, near Ostend. The earth drops down again, the smoke clears, and I run panting across the ground to the low heap of earth which I can see in the distance, above the grass.

When I get there I find there is a huge crater some thirty-five feet across and twelve or fifteen feet deep. At the edge are two pilots, who shout breathlessly--

"We've got the base-plug! Look here! Don't touch it--it is almost red hot!"

There in the yellow loam lies the drum of clean white steel marked with the symbols M 38 and a crown. I touch it with a wettened finger and hear a quick hiss. The metal is unbearably hot still, and it is small wonder when it is realised that it has travelled twenty-eight miles, and risen and dropped thirty-three thousand feet in a little over a minute. Though it is only the base-plug, it is some twelve inches across, and later, when cold, requires removal in a wheelbarrow into which two men can scarcely lift it.

Meanwhile I search eagerly for fragments. I find half-hidden a twisted piece of metal, and am just about to lift it when the syren in the docks gives warning of the approach of the next shell. Taking advice from the axiom that a shell never falls twice in the same place, we slide down into the crater and wait, a little nervously. We hear the dull boom of the explosion, and scrambling to the top, see to the south of the hangars a cloud of smoke rapidly disappearing. The wind is evidently causing the shells to deviate, as they are falling farther and farther away from the town. The German spotting machines have been driven away by the British scouts, and so the gunlayers at Leugenboom (descriptive name!) are trusting to luck, as their early shells were so successful. One of the first, indeed, struck the Casino at Malo clean in the middle, and cut a slice out of it as with a knife. Only the previous night a divisional headquarters staff had moved into it, and thought it a rare billet after weary days behind the lines in the French sectors further south. Dawn brought to many of them a swift and unexpected death.

Carrying my hot lump of steel in my handkerchief I hurry over to the skeleton of the semi-erected hangar. The men, only naturally, seem little inclined to work. For five minutes they stand to their duty, and then, as the hooter blows, I give the order to take cover, and they go down the sides of the canal until the crash of the explosion shows that the menace has passed.

The French have very quickly organised the hooter system. Some one says that a look-out at the lines, on seeing the flash of the gun, presses a button which rings a bell in Dunkerque. The signal is sent on to the man in the light-ship at the docks, and he pulls the string of his syren. The complete operation only takes some ten or twelve seconds, and as the shell is travelling for well over a minute it gave ample warning. As a matter of fact, such a system, if it does exist, is not necessary, as the shells are falling at an exact interval of just over seven minutes.

The order is now given by the C.O. for work to be abandoned, and for the men to take cover. With one of the pilots I make a tour of the neighbourhood, examining the shell-holes in the surrounding fields. The columns of earth and smoke shoot up at regular intervals some half a mile away, and we do not trouble much about them.

I return to the aerodrome and, meeting another friend, walk back across the field. A whistle is blown.

"That's old Charlie!" he says. "He's sitting in the canal with a stop-watch and a whistle. The C.O. put him on to it. Let's sit down till it has gone off!"

I suggest going on, as we are just as safe anywhere. He sits down on the edge of a small patch of growing corn; I sit beside him. Suddenly, while we are arguing whether we should go on or not, I seem to see something through the back of my head. I look quickly round, and there, towering some eighty or ninety feet high, only a few yards from us, is a tall fountain of black earth and uprising smoke, like the great genie which whirled upwards from the bottle in the fairy story.

"A shell--lie down!" I yell, and throw myself face forwards on the ground with my hands over the back of my head. In the moments of waiting before anything happens, I realise that I cannot be killed by the actual explosion of this shell although it is so near, as I have lived to see it, and then ... thump, thump, on my arms, my back, and my legs the pieces of earth begin to beat. They are heavy and, since they are dropping from some fifty feet or more, are very painful. The dust and stones rain down all over me and all round. I can hear the returning earth thundering on the ground. Faster and faster come the blows upon me; it is very much like being caned, and I know that at any moment a heavy piece of metal may drop and crush my skull. I cannot get up and run; I am in some way hypnotised. Beside me I am conscious of my friend cowering close against the ground as well. For seeming hours the hail of missiles continues, and I receive some very severe blows. At last it ceases. We scramble to our feet and begin to run away through the smoke, and then the eternal instinct grips us. We turn, and run back to get souvenirs from the crater. The size of it staggers us. It is almost big enough to put a motor omnibus in ... and the place where we were sitting is only a few feet away from the edge of the hole.

"By Jove, Milly! We are lucky! It's a good thing it's a fifteen-inch shell. If it had been a small bomb the splinters would have killed us!"

We slither and slide to the bottom of the pit and gather fragments of steel. The shell seems a very personal one to my mind, as it has fallen within five feet of me when it was fired twenty-eight miles away. As I turn over a piece of hot metal with my foot it is difficult to believe that that piece of metal ten minutes ago was near Ostend, and now it is here at Dunkerque. I seem to see the portly German sergeant-major in his grey-green uniform pressing the lever on the great gun to cause the mighty explosion which hurled that shell, which is as tall as me and weighed a ton, nearly thirty miles. Even now the coatless gunners sweat at the loading of the next shell into the grooved and shining breech.

We have decided that the canal bank is safer, and we hurry in that direction. It is lined with mechanics and officers, sitting low down near the edge of the water. My pilot greets me with mingled reproof and joy. He had seen me stagger out of the smoke of the shell rubbing the more bruised portions of my body, and thinking I was wounded he had sent off for the ambulance.

It is rather amusing in the canal. At the end of five minutes some of us become restive, and climb up to the top and walk about. "Charlie," dapper as usual, with his monocle screwed in his eye, sits looking at his watch.

"Six minutes!" He says, "Now then, some of you blighters, do you want to get killed?" He lifts the whistle and blows. Leisurely, but not too slowly, we walk down the side of the bank and make ourselves comfortable. We look at our watches. Six minutes and a half have passed since the last explosion. Now comes the uneasy time. We know the gigantic shell will explode somewhere near us in thirty seconds. There will be no warning whistle or sound of any kind. We will simply have to wait. Such precautions and nervousness in regard to shell-fire on active service may sound strange, but it must be remembered that we are twenty-two miles behind the lines, and so have been far, far beyond the range of shell-fire. We have had no previous experience, and there are no dug-outs of any real use for our protection.