So we were almost home now--home!--the thought made you grimace--miles away! And in a moment now we must drop, begin that bolt down through that zone, through which the shells of our own batteries were flying. And I heard that most disconcerting of all sounds that you hear in the air, the shutting off of the motor--an instant, and as we slid forward, I felt for the brass handles to brace myself, and no longer sped round by the motor's power, the propeller blades became as the strings of a monstrous harp through which the rushing wind wailed a weird song; and we bolted down.... If a shell passed I did not hear it. Gaining in violence, the wind shrieked through the slowly spinning blades, shrieked as though the very air had gone mad; and just when you had begun to doubt that it was beyond human skill to bring an aeroplane to earth through the night like this, you felt a sudden forward horizontal glide, and the next moment the rubber tired wheels were bouncing over the hardened field, and the shadowy forms of soldiers seemed to spring out of the earth, laying hold of the wings as though to make it captive, and the concentric lights were gleaming just in front; and a voice you knew to be Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann's was calling, with a trace of relief, you thought: "Well, how was it?" Laboriously climbing down from the fuselage, I looked for the aviator, Hals. "He ran off to telephone," a soldier said. "The French battery," I said aloud. As we motored back to Lille, I heard a German howitzer open fire. V BEHIND THE BATTLELINE The service was as good as you get at the Waldorf. Moving with deft skill round the long table, as if their training in the array had consisted of passing platters of food, the soldiers in field gray silently importuned you to have at least another helping of cheese. In a detached way I was gazing at the big canvas hanging on the brocaded wall, the lower part of the picture half hidden by the smart jackets and shaven heads of the Prussian officers, sitting opposite; then I saw a soldier opening one of the stained glass windows, and muttering along the wet wind, I heard the muffled grumbling of the guns. "An excellent canvas, is it not?" the staff officer at my right was saying, a slender man with one of those young mustaches; he wore a monocle, and the Iron Cross. "The Marquis, you know, has one of the best collections in France. He has several Rubens, I believe, but I have never seen them," he added hastily. "The gallery is on the second floor, and the Marchioness has a perfect terror of our going in there--we barbarians," he laughed.