five hundred
feet. I pressed the bulb again twice over. Eagle began to steer the
monoplane in immense circles. I felt I could almost see our
corkscrew-track in the air, like twisted threads of gold on blue. The
hangars in the fields of Hendon were toy sheds on a green-painted tray.
Even the aerodrome was no more than a big rat trap. London spread itself
out beneath us, a vast dark patch, like a fallen cloud. A shaft of
sunlight set a golden dome on fire. It must have been St. Paul's. For
the third time I gave the signal to mount. For the third time Eagle
obeyed. I wondered if he liked me a little for sharing the confidence he
had in his machine.

A few white clouds floated lazily beneath us, like snowy birds of an
intolerable brightness and titanic size. Then they joined together in a
glittering flock, and lost the semblance of birds. The mass became a
sparkling silver sea, with here and there a dark gulf in it like a
whirlpool. The air grew biting cold. I felt it press on me through the
fur-lined coat Di had lent, like blocks of solid ice. But the strange
sensation only exhilarated me the more. "I'm not a coward, I'm not a
coward. I'm brave!" The words sang themselves in my head to the
accompanying roar of the motor.

It was a glorious, dependable roar, but suddenly, in the midst of a
spiral movement, I noticed a change in the sound. A gurgle--a choking
stammer. A spray of petrol dashed across my goggles.

"Now--what?" The question asked itself in my soul. But there was no fear
with it, only an awed realization that this might be the end of things,
as I had known them, in a very little world low down and far away. "What
does it matter?" the answer came. But Eagle had turned round in his
seat, and was handing me a spanner. Now he was motioning to me. If he
spoke, I couldn't hear a word. Yet I understood from the gestures of one
mittened hand what he hoped I might be able to do. Somehow, even then,
the driving force of thought in my brain was to please him, to show him
that he hadn't relied on me in vain, rather than to save us both from
threatening danger, though danger I saw there must be. I was determined
that the corporal should not fail the captain.

The thing I had to do, as I seized the situation, was to turn the
spanner on a loosened nut in the petrol pipe, to which Eagle pointed.
Reaching up with my right hand, I steadied myself with the left, and
touched something hot, horribly hot. There was an involuntar