"I believe it's those confounded destroyers!" I said. "They must be British too, off here. Can't they see our marks, blame fools?" Two or three more shells appeared between us and our two companions, who were now going round and round in circles evidently very mystified. It looked so amusing that we could not help laughing, now that the fire was not meant for us. Then the shells came over to us again. It was a curious sight. You would look out into the blue sky and the mist-bound coast, and suddenly, in absolute silence (for the roar of our engines deafened us), would appear, out of nothing, a perfectly hard outline, looking as solid as a piece of coal or a crumpled top-hat. There it would appear in a second of time and would hang in they sky--an apparent mockery of gravity. Its outline would flux and change, it would writhe and roll round into an ever larger expanse of vapour, its edge would grow soft and more ragged, and in a few minutes it would be a little cloud of haze and nothing more. Suddenly the pilot exclaimed, "It _is_ them, the swine, I saw them fire!" and impetuously threw round the wheel and pushed forward the rudder. The machine swung round at a tremendous pace, and a most curious incident occurred. Ahead of us were the two machines, some way below us, with their noses pointing downwards. Now to our amazement we saw them mount up, up, up, into the sky, with their tails down as though they were climbing furiously, and then the coast shot round and rose up into the sky as well. In the midst of this mad inversion of the universe the pilot turned to me and calmly said-- "What the blazes has happened, Paul--it looks all wrong? What shall I do?" "Shove her nose down, old man!" I said. "It looks mighty rum to me--but we'll get out somehow!" The universe swept round us again, the coast fell down, the Handley-Pages dropped below us with their noses towards the sea. The pilot looked at me, I looked at him. "What on earth was that?" he said. "Must have been jolly nearly upside down!" I suggested, feeling a bit dazed. The memory of that brief and mystified conversation, as we sat side by side in a machine which had assumed some incomprehensible position, has remained in my memory as one of the strangest moments I have known. The shells still burst near us and the pilot got annoyed. "Let's drop our stuff on them! Get in the back! They can't be British. They must be able to see our marks. We're only seven thousand." "Well! What about the leader? We daren't do it unless he does--we'll get in a thundering row. Anyway they are just off our coast!" The leading machines still flew round undecidedly. The destroyers below still fired their occasional shells. One burst rather near us. "I'll bomb them and chance it--the swine!" said the pilot, "You get in the back!"