looking at a pair of feet that were dangling across the
downturned open doorway. Kurt appeared and squatted across the hinge. In
some mysterious way he had shaved his face and smoothed down his light
golden hair. He looked extraordinarily cherubic. "Der Prinz," he said.

A second pair of boots followed, making wide and magnificent gestures in
their attempts to feel the door frame. Kurt guided them to a foothold,
and the Prince, shaved and brushed and beeswaxed and clean and big and
terrible, slid down into position astride of the door. All the men and
Bert also stood up and saluted.

The Prince surveyed them with the gesture of a man who site a steed. The
head of the Kapitan appeared beside him.

Then Bert had a terrible moment. The blue blaze of the Prince's eye
fell upon him, the great finger pointed, a question was asked. Kurt
intervened with explanations.

"So," said the Prince, and Bert was disposed of.

Then the Prince addressed the men in short, heroic sentences, steadying
himself on the hinge with one hand and waving the other in a fine
variety of gesture. What he said Bert could not tell, but he perceived
that their demeanor changed, their backs stiffened. They began to
punctuate the Prince's discourse with cries of approval. At the end
their leader burst into song and all the men with him. "Ein feste Burg
ist unser Gott," they chanted in deep, strong tones, with an immense
moral uplifting. It was glaringly inappropriate in a damaged,
half-overturned, and sinking airship, which had been disabled and blown
out of action after inflicting the cruellest bombardment in the world's
history; but it was immensely stirring nevertheless. Bert was deeply
moved. He could not sing any of the words of Luther's great hymn, but
he opened his mouth and emitted loud, deep, and partially harmonious
notes....

Far below, this deep chanting struck on the ears of a little camp of
Christianised half-breeds who were lumbering. They were breakfasting,
but they rushed out cheerfully, quite prepared for the Second Advent.
They stared at the shattered and twisted Vaterland driving before the
gale, amazed beyond words. In so many respects it was like their idea
of the Second Advent, and then again in so many respects it wasn't. They
stared at its passage, awe-stricken and perplexed beyond their power of
words. The hymn ceased. Then after a long interval a voice came out of
heaven. "Vat id diss blace here galled itself; vat?"

They