rowing of cocks....

The sky above the indistinct horizons of this cloud sea was at first
starry and then paler with a light that crept from north to east as the
dawn came on. The Milky Way was invisible in the blue, and the lesser
stars vanished. The face of the adventurer at the steering-wheel, darkly
visible ever and again by the oval greenish glow of the compass face,
had something of that firm beauty which all concentrated purpose gives,
and something of the happiness of an idiot child that has at last got
hold of the matches. His companion, a less imaginative type, sat with
his legs spread wide over the long, coffin-shaped box which contained
in its compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs that would
continue to explode indefinitely and which no one so far had ever seen
in action. Hitherto Carolinum, their essential substance, had been
tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities within steel chambers
embedded in lead. Beyond the thought of great destruction slumbering
in the black spheres between his legs, and a keen resolve to follow out
very exactly the instructions that had been given him, the man's mind
was a blank. His aquiline profile against the starlight expressed
nothing but a profound gloom.

The sky below grew clearer as the Central European capital was
approached.

So far they had been singularly lucky and had been challenged by no
aeroplanes at all. The frontier scouts they must have passed in the
night; probably these were mostly under the clouds; the world was wide
and they had had luck in not coming close to any soaring sentinel. Their
machine was painted a pale gray, that lay almost invisibly over the
cloud levels below. But now the east was flushing with the near ascent
of the sun, Berlin was but a score of miles ahead, and the luck of the
Frenchmen held. By imperceptible degrees the clouds below dissolved....

Away to the north-eastward, in a cloudless pool of gathering light and
with all its nocturnal illuminations still blazing, was Berlin. The left
finger of the steersman verified roads and open spaces below upon the
mica-covered square of map that was fastened by his wheel. There in a
series of lake-like expansions was the Havel away to the right; over by
those forests must be Spandau; there the river split about the Potsdam
island; and right ahead was Charlottenburg cleft by a great thoroughfare
that fell like an indicating beam of light straight to the imperial
headquarter