Bruges lies below, scarce a mile and a half away. I dare not risk detection a second longer. Slowly, deliberately, I place both hands on my head and turn round, and in the moonlight I see the pilot's gloved hand go forward to the aluminium throttle which he slowly pulls right back. The noise of the engines dies swiftly, completely. The nose drops as we begin our long silent downward glide. No longer does the roar of the engines beat upon my ears, but I can hear that most wonderful of all sounds to a night-bomber--the whistle of the wind through the wires and on the planes, which tells me that we are no longer heard by those below. I begin to peer downwards, checking my aim. The direction bar swings slowly off the docks to the right. I throw out my left arm, still gazing downwards. The movement of the bar stops, and gradually it moves to the left across the rectangles of the harbours. It swings past them as the pilot turns the machine. I now throw out my right hand, and in response the machine swings back. Flinging my arm upright before the moving bar has become central I stop in time the too rapid turn of the machine, and slowly, slowly we move straight forwards over the dark and unlit basins where shines not one little hostile light or flicker. I hurriedly gaze through the luminous range bars, fixed at right angles to the direction bar. The time has not yet come. Holding my hand upwards, I keep the machine dead ahead in a straight line. I am becoming more and more excited. The strain has become intense. I have forgotten everything--forgotten that I am two miles in the air, forgotten that my bare hands are freezing, forgotten that I am in a hostile place. My whole being is concentrated on keeping that little bar of metal laid across the two black patches below. I am not conscious of being above human beings--it is not a real countryside which lies beneath. It is an unlit map made up of lines and curves and patterns and round spots. I am entirely impersonal: I have become a surveyor at his instrument waving his hand to make corrections.