The narrow white footpath had suddenly led nowhere. Patrine had found herself standing at the edge of a four-foot bluff, looking down upon a grassy plateau that gently sloped to the brink of the cliffs. A wire fence enclosed an aggregation of stone-grey wooden buildings dominated by a flagstaff and the latticed steel tower of a Wireless installation. The White Ensign flapped lazily from the halyards of the flagstaff, there were three hangars at a little distance away. A row of seaplanes sat on the grass before them, and some figures of men in overalls or the familiar Naval uniform moved in and out and about the machines busily as ants. Where the grassland stopped at the cliff-edge the roofs of other hangars showed, that were built upon the shingle. A little way out beyond the line of foam where the long green lips of the sea mumbled at the wet pebbles, another row of seaplanes lashed to buoys, rocked like gulls drowsing after a gorge of fish. And far out to sea, where the heavy trails of smoke bannering from the funnels of rushing grey hulls betokened the War activities of the Fleet in the Channel, and the conning-towers of big submarines sometimes pretended to be little stocky steamers sitting on the swell, two strange bat-like things rose and circled and swooped, and were hidden in grey-blue mists to rise again, and swoop and circle.... And a little dinghy with two blue figures in it was pulling out from the beach in the direction of the anchored planes.
"Beg pardon! But—aren't you Miss Saxham?"
She craned her long neck, looking for the speaker, and found him in a youthful Flight Sub-Lieutenant, who, standing below the grassy bluff, was looking up with very brown eyes at the tall figure in the narrow skirt of tan, white and rose-pink chequers, the low-cut blouse of guipure lace, and the knitted silk coat of rose-pink. Buckled pumps adorned the well-arched feet, clad with navy blue silk stockings of liberal open-work. She sported a buff sunshade lined with rose, and a hat of rough tan straw, trimmed with quills of navy blue and rose-pink, sat coquettishly on the beech-leaf hair. She gave the boy one of her wide smiles, evading the "Yes" by nodding, and with a cat-like leap and scramble, he was up the grassy bluff and standing before her, blushing and saluting and holding out a scribbled paper-pad.
"For me?"
"For you—if you're Miss Saxham. It's a Wireless came this morning—from your—from a great friend of yours. Somewhere in France."
"Oh—thank you!"
She pulled off a loose buff glove and stretched a large white hand for the paper-pad. The message ran:
"6 a.m. Now leaving Compiegne for Calais. Seasheere in five hours, barring accident. All my love to you. Alan."
And the Lieutenant had thought her pale.... She kissed the paper and smiled at him bewilderingly. "Lucky beggar, Sherbrand," thought the Lieutenant. "What a glorious woman!" He extorted from Patrine, who would not be twenty until next August, the penalty for being built on a grander scale than other daughters of Eve. But she was asking:
"Whom have I to thank for bringing Mr. Sherbrand's message?"
"Flight Sub-Lieutenant Dareless—and the thanks are quite on my side." He phrased the trite civility punctiliously, while the bold brown eyes beamed and twinkled: "For you're IT," they said; "just—clippingly—IT!"
"How did you know me?" began Patrine.
"Picked you up through the binnics from the bridge, ten minutes ago." The slim brown hand flourished, indicating a T-square-shaped space of well-watered turf marked off in whitewash lines upon the green aërodrome below. "We call things by their proper names so as not to lose touch, you understand? The short stretch is the Bridge, and the long strip aft at right angles—that's the Quarter-deck. The big hut No. 1 is our Wardroom—the Wing-Commander's cabin is divided off from it. The officers' cabins are in the small hut, No. 2, and the Warrant Officers and men divide No. 3. Of course we keep watches and post sentries—just as if we were at sea. That Territorial on guard near is relieving a man of ours, do you see?" He jerked his chin towards the moving brown figure. "What have we to guard? Oh, well, the hangars, and our Wireless"—another jerk indicating the latticed steel mast surmounting a telegraph hut wedded to a vibrating dynamo-shed. "We get reports from our patrols—most of 'em are fitted with radio-apparatus—and we receive and transmit messages. Long distance? Well, rather! We're frightfully swanky about our Wireless plant. It's Number One, H.P. Not big, but jolly powerful. A——"
Six clear, silvery double-notes had sounded from a brass bell, hung beneath a little white-painted penthouse sitting on the blue strip of shadow on the westward side of the Wardroom hut. The Petty Officer who had rung the bell exchanged a brief word with the Territorial, and went back to the hangars from whence he had emerged. Patrine, with her heart in her mouth, asked the Sub-Lieutenant:
"Was that a signal?"
"Only ship-time," said the brown-eyed one. "Six bells. Eleven A.M. And our man ought to be looming up in sight. He might hit Seasheere now at any minute. In fact, he's nearly an hour late."
"You don't—you don't suppose——?"
Fear had pinched and drawn and bleached her so that she looked forty behind her white veil with blue chenille dragonflies. Her pale mouth twitched and her black brows knotted over the haunted eyes that strained out to sea. The paper-pad, crunched to a mere wad, dropped from the hand that unconsciously released it. The boy picked it up, thrilled by this peep behind the scenes of another's romance.
"No, no! There's no fear of an accident, Miss Saxham. Perhaps a bit o' engine-trouble—you've got to travel slowish if she vibes too much. Or he might have spotted an Aviatik and delayed to have a biff at him—on the principle that ten Hun-birds make an evener bag than nine. We know what a terror he's getting to be with the Maxim. But what puts the fear of God into the flighty Taube quicker than anything is our R.N.A.S. Vickers' gun."
Ah, did he know how horribly he tortured her! But a grey speck showed upon the delicately-misty distance eastwards, growing bigger, coming nearer, putting miles of green white, heaving water under its throbbing engine with effortless speed. Her glance leaped to Dareless, studying the oncomer between narrowed lids, and the hope that had kindled in her died out as he shook his head.
"One of ours, on the Home-flight from Belgium, Miss Saxham. Your man will pick up much higher, and to the south-east."
And presently the latest type of Fleet hydroplane, a two-seater Batboat carrying two bareheaded young gentlemen, moaned into view, chasing its own wave-skipping, flying shadow at full stretch for the shore, came down in a long mallard-like glide, skidding over the water as the wild-duck does, and in a ruffle of glittering spray, continued the home-journey in the character of a motor-boat.
Then there was a sharp squib-like crack, and from one of the anchored hydroplanes, a rocket went up and burst in a smoke-puff that hung in a little cloud of violet-grey upon the sunny air, and from the hangars on the shingle under the bluff streamed figures in blue overalls or grimy shirt-sleeves, and cheered and waved, standing ankle-deep in refluent water, topped with creamy sheets of foam. As the Batboat with her joyous navigators rushed spluttering to the shallow anchorage and tied up beside the Station planes, megaphones bellowed, motor-horns tooted, somebody banged on the ship's bell, a cornet struck up "Rule Britannia!" very much out of tune....
"Well done, you two beggars! Oh! well done!" trumpeted Dareless, through his hollowed hands, and turned a beaming face on Patrine to explain that the hatless navigators of the Batboat were Lieutenants of a Flight stationed at Antwerp, and had shared in the Air Raid on the Zeppelin-sheds at Düsseldorf—early on the previous day.
And then a droning song had come drifting down out of the sky to the south-eastward with a buzzing undernote in it that Patrine remembered well. Dareless had lifted his head for a rapid upward reconnaissance, and said with a flash of white teeth in his brown face:
"Thumbs up, Miss Saxham!—this is your particular bird!"
And Patrine had seen, small and high, and shining palely golden in the sunlight, the shape of the biplane that carried her lover, and her heart knocked twice in her bosom, heavily, as they knock behind the curtain before they ring up at the Comedie Française. A Clery's signalling-pistol had cracked and been answered from the Air-Station. Mechanics in overalls had appeared upon the green. Then the buzzing had stopped, and the second Bird of War, rising higher to escape the backwash of light airs from the cliffs, had launched into a splendid sweeping spiral, ending in a long glide, and alighted on the well-rolled Station aërodrome—and Sherbrand had come home.
Surely never until the thought of Flight,—formed in the brain-cells of Man and fertilised by the lust of Adventure,—hatched out in the Bird that bears the Knight of To-day upon the air-path, did lover return to his lady after a fashion so wonderful as this.
The Flying Men have always been coming. In the Book of Books you will read of them. Ecclesiasticus, the Preacher, foretold of the day when a Bird of the Air should carry the Voice, and That Which Hath Wings should tell the matter; and how these Winged ones rush and roar through the prophetic pages of Ezekiel and Daniel, you have but to open them to learn. Their shapes like locusts, their armoured bodies with great-eyed headpieces "like those of horses prepared unto battle," the noise made by their wings in flight "like the noise of chariots and horses running to battle," the wheels beneath their wings, the human faces appertaining to them, the inward fire that issues from them in scorching vapours,—are described with fiery eloquence in the Apocalypse of the Apostle of St. John, when the Fifth Angel sounds the Trumpet, and the King whose name is Exterminans, the Destroyer, reaches the culminating point of his terrific reign upon earth.
Flight makes the world no more joyful, being mainly used for purposes of destruction, but nothing can rob the Flying Man of his shining gloriole of Romance. The boy who was building toy aëroplanes of card and elastic a few years back has rediscovered the Flying Dragon of the Cretaceous period, broken and tamed the winged monster into a War steed, and thundered down the forgotten roads of the Pterodactyl and the Rukh, to reap shining honours upon the battlefields of the mutable Air. And if the girl who chaffed the boy of old worships him to-day as St. George, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and Le Bon Sieur de Bayard rolled into one, who shall blame her? Not I, for one!
In the instant of reunion, when the tall brown figure came swinging to meet her, and the strong hard hands gripped her own, Patrine loved him more than ever. Sherbrand's was not a romantic greeting, but it thrilled her nevertheless.
"They've asked us to lunch here, but it's ready at the Cottage. Shall we accept? It's for you to decide."
His tone had indicated his keen desire for the tête-à-tête in preference. Disappointment had shadowed his clear eyes when Patrine had voted for luncheon at the Air Station, inwardly longing to be alone with him—to be alone.
And yet, despite the longing, the haunting sense of a sword of Fate hanging over her, Patrine found the Wardroom lunch a jolly banquet. They were so young, those sunburnt faces, laughing about the plainly-furnished board. The Wing-Commander in charge of the Station proved to be something under thirty. To Patrine, occupying the place of honour on his right hand, he did the honours like a veteran. One of the navigators of the Batboat sat upon her other side, and Sherbrand was her vis-à-vis.
Sherbrand was altered. She knew him older, harder, sterner.... Thinner to the verge of haggardness, with a deep vertical furrow graved between the thick eyebrows that made a bar of blonde fairness against the red of his deeply-burned skin. He had gone away a splendid youth. Now he returned with two silvery-yellow stars on the cuffs and shoulder-straps of his khaki tunic, a man seasoned and tempered as a bar of steel in the furnace-blast of War.
The pleasant meal ended, and the jolly party broke up. Their hosts accompanied them to the gate of the Station enclosure, and the warmth and heartiness of Naval tradition had been in the farewells that had sped the departing guests upon their way:
"Au revoir! All happiness!"
"So-long! We'll look after the 'plane all right!"
"Adios! Buenas noches!"
"Sayonara!"
"Siéda!"
"Good-bye and good luck! Now all together.... Hip—hip—" and a rousing British cheer.