He had already won that coveted decoration, the D.S.O., as we have previously seen, and now the King was about to confer upon him the Military Cross, for a daring bombing raid which he had organised and carried out over the enemy's lines, when as Commander of "B" Flight he had led his men beyond the Somme, and blocked the enemy's communications, bombed the Havrincourt-Bapaume Railway, and destroyed the bridge and viaduct at Velu, hurling one long troop train to destruction, and preventing the Germans reinforcing their front line trenches near Ginchy and Morval. Now, after his latest deed, the King had sent for him to congratulate him in person for his skill and daring. On the morrow he was to be received in audience at Buckingham Palace. If he had consulted his own wishes he would much have preferred to remain with his comrades on the Somme, but a royal wish is an order, and, after all, perhaps the ten days' leave which had been granted to him would enable him to run north to visit his mother and friends in the little village in Yorkshire, and to gaze once again upon those blue, heather-tipped and bracing moorlands where he had spent his boyhood. "Good-bye, Dastral. Don't stay too long in Old Blighty!" again shouted his friends, as the vessel sheered off and gained headway, and he had shouted back in reply: "Cheer-o, boys! I shall soon be back again," waving his hand towards his comrades, as he bent over the rail. As soon as they left the shelter of the breakwater a destroyer, waiting outside, sent up a couple of flags to her masthead. "Send up the answering pennant, bosun!" cried the skipper of the mail-boat, when he saw the destroyer's signal, and immediately after he rang down to the engine room staff: "Full steam ahead!" for the warship was there to act as escort, as there were very valuable mails aboard, and only two nights ago, the enemy's destroyers, breaking out of their base at Zeebrugge, had crept through the gap in the British mine-beds in the dark, and had sent two patrols and an empty transport to the bottom. So, while the mail packet went full speed ahead, at twenty-four knots, the destroyer, with her superior speed, waltzed round her, like a dancing marionette, leaving a trail of white foam in her wake. This she continued to do all the way across the Channel, for it was known that several enemy submarines were lurking about the neighbourhood, watching through their periscopes for just such a target as the mail boat with her valuable cargo offered. Very soon, however, the white cliffs of Dover appeared in sight, and when they entered the new naval harbour, the destroyer sheered off and went back to her station. Dastral, having been recognised on the boat, had received several invitations to dine in London that evening, but all these he had courteously refused, although one of them had come from a Cabinet minister and his wife who were travelling on the same boat.