Now I press a brass key inside the machine which operates our big headlight. R-O-C-K-E-T-S, I flash piteously; and again, _Rockets_. Another Very's light I fire, and then click and clatter the key, "_Please fire rockets_"; and again, "_Rockets--we are lost!_" "What shall we do?" asks the pilot in a hopeless voice. "Shall we land on the beach? I am getting fed up!" "Just a second--I'll ask Wade." I climb into the back and flash my torch through the bomb-racks. I see the face of the gunlayer in the ray of light. Pushing my head and shoulders into the maze of framework, I shout out at the top of my voice. The gunlayer shakes his head. I go forward and ask the pilot to throttle down a little. The noise of the engine dies away. I hurry back and shout out again. "Can you make out where we are, Wade? I'm quite lost. Have we got to Dunkerque?" "Don't know, sir. I don't think so! I can't make out at all!" I climb back into my seat, and say-- "Put the engines on again! It's no good. He doesn't know either! I don't know _what_ to do!" The key taps once more the vain appeal. Again and again I fire a white light. The floor round my feet is strewn with the empty cartridge cases of brown cardboard. I feel depressed and tired and irritable. What a silly end to a raid, it seems, to lose yourself right over your own aerodrome! It is undignified. I am ashamed to have had to ask the gunlayer where we are. I feel a pretty poor observer. Then I see in the mist a little ahead of me a white light rise up and die away. "Look, Jimmy! A white light! Good! They've seen us at last!" But the pilot is not so trustful, and says-- "You're quite sure it isn't the _lines_?" "Oh no! I'm sure! Throttle down a bit and glide that way!" As we draw nearer I suddenly see the two piers of Dunkerque and the docks materialise in the mist, and on the other side the dull glow of landing flares from an aerodrome. "No! It's _not_ Ostend! It's all right, old man! There's St Pol! I'll fire another white!" I fire for the last time, and scarcely has my ball of light died out before the answering signal soars up from the ground. The engines are throttled, and we drift downwards on our whistling planes over the long basins of the Dunkerque docks. When we are about a hundred feet off the ground I press a small brass stud in front of me. A white glare of light bursts out under our right wing tip and throws a quivering radiance on the dyke round the aerodrome, on the hangars, and on the landing field itself, at the end of which are two or three red lights. We sweep gently on the surface of the ground, and before we have stopped rolling forwards, a little figure runs towards us flashing a light, and we hear its voice call-- "Turn to the left soon. The ground is full of bomb-holes ... where those red lights are!" Guided by the figure on the ground we "taxi" up to the hangars and stop our engines. In a second I am on the ground.