The shrill cry of anger that came from the open mouth of the white face was lost to him in the necessity of switching on the engine. He nodded pleasantly to the white face and, in the darkness of his own shadowy visage, there was the glimmer of a laugh. Then he applied himself to other business, for the tide would turn in an hour, and then the wind might blow hellishly from the nor’-west. Flying lower, he knew his course the true one, for the white headlight and green starboard-lights of a big steamer pricked twinkling holes in the thick grey dusk to northward on his port beam. He told himself she was one of the Elbe Company’s big bluff-bowed liners making from Newcastle for Hamburg Docks. The stern-lights of a sister-ship hailing from Grimsby, by her steerings, were also discernible in the mirk ahead, while the lights from her tiers of cabins made her look like a black water-beetle with golden legs, hurriedly scuttling over the sea. Following the course of the Hamburg-bound liners, even if one failed to make connection with one’s accredited pilot, it would not be long before one picked up Borkum Riff Lightship and in due course, spiring silver grey against the pink-and-golden sunrise—the twin towers of Nordeich Wireless—marking the journey’s end. *CHAPTER XXXIV* *THE BROWN SATCHEL* The journey’s end. A gust, tearing the mist that veiled the livid waters, showed the shadowy shapes of a procession of battleships, steaming southwards in single line. You see the German assailed by the wind, now hard on the aëroplane’s port beam, craning over, counting the speedlights passing diagonally underneath. Eight steel Leviathans, stabbing bright points of electric light through fog and funnel-smoke, with an effect of diamonds seen against a background of dull grey plush. Eight rushing, neutral-tinted shapes—conveying a formidable impression of grim power, and force, and ruthlessness. A Squadron of Battle Cruisers of the British Home Fleet, new from the brine of Lerwick Waters, or the fierce green surges of Scapa Flow. Bound for Harwich Roads or Sheerness, or the Solent, to figure in the huge pageant of steel and steam, electricity, and man-power that would be called the King’s Review.