Now I suddenly see sitting astride the top of the plane, some nine or ten feet above me, a muffled figure. I think at once that my pilot is saved and begin to shout out-- "Hello! Roy! I can't hang on! Oh! I can't hang on! What shall I do? Is any one coming? Is there any chance?... I'm drowning, I'm drowning!" "Hang on if you can!" comes the encouraging answer. "There is a boat coming!" My strength, however, has almost gone, and it is an effort even to hold up my head above the water. Now does reason whisper to me to leave go. You have got to die one day, it says, and if you sink down now and drown you will suffer scarcely at all. Since you have suffered such agony already, why not drift away easily to dim sleep and the awakening dreams of the new life. Leave go, it whispers, leave go. Tempted, I listen to the voice, and agree with it. Shall I leave go, I ask myself; and then instinct, the never absent impulse of life, cries out, "_No! Hang on!_" and I hang on with renewed strength inspired by the dread of approaching death. "Hang on, hang on! The boat is coming up!" shouts the man above me. "Oh! what are they doing? I can't hang on any longer!" "They're lowering a boat--hang on--they'll be here soon!" encourages the watcher on the wing. Changing hands I turn round quickly, and vaguely see in the darkness a motor-launch or some such boat, twenty feet or so away. "Hurry, hurry, _hurry_!" I yell, dreading that my strength may give out in these last moments of waiting. It seems utterly wonderful that I may be saved. I realise how fortunate it is that the machine is floating. If it were to sink but a foot or two, and the little hole through which my hand is thrust were to go under the water with it, then I should not be able to hold myself up, and would soon die. Still sounds the roar of near-by explosions: still shines the smooth cruel sea around me: still float the quivering flares above; then I hear the glorious sound of a voice crying-- "Where are you? Give us a hail so that we can find you!" "Here--_here_! Hanging on the wing! Do come quickly--_do_ come--I can't hang on any longer." I hear the splash of oars, and then two strong arms slip under my armpits, and I am dragged up to the edge of the boat. I am utterly weak and can use no muscle at all, so for a moment or two they struggle with me, and then I fall over the side on to the floor, where I lie, a sodden, streaming, half-dead thing. "Save my pal! Save my pal!" I cry. Down the wing slides the other man, and suddenly I see it is not the pilot at all, but the back gunlayer. "Where's Roy? _Where's Roy?_" I shout in a sudden dread. "He never came up!" is the terrible answer. "Oh! Save my pilot! Save my pilot!" I call out, bursting into sobs, partly with hysteria at the ending of the strain, partly with utter grief. "He was a wonderful chap ... one of the best ... one of the best. Save him! Oh! Do save him! He can't be dead! _Roy!_ Roy! He was the best chap there--ever--was."