Probably the Second—tchah!—the First Class of the Iron Cross—with military promotion, and a handsome sum in hard cash. Laudatory articles in the State-inspired Press organs and Service Gazettes presently. Meanwhile, was it fitting that the future of von Herrnung should lie, not upon the knees of the gods, but on the lap of a little, seasick English boy? True, the brown satchel was firmly strapped to the boy, now lying in an attitude of complete exhaustion, with one arm thrown over the gunwale, and his small round head feebly nodding to and fro. The child knew nothing of the Imperial dispatches. And yet—one would have been wiser to keep the bag about one, in spite of the danger of fouling the controls. It will be gathered that a chilly premonition of imminent disaster crawled in the veins of the Kaiser’s messenger. Hunger and fatigue were spurring von Herrnung to imaginativeness unworthy of a Superman. Now he knew his frail winged craft beset by cunning, treacherous enemies; the invisible air that cradled and supported her, only waiting to destroy. Other elemental forces, Gale, Lightning, Hail, Waterspout—in collusion to bring about her swift and speedy ruin. The Sea, no less than these, was an implacable adversary, reaching up innumerable greedy hands to drag her down and drown. The hawk-hoverer would have been a help at this juncture if one had had some previous experience in the use of it. As things were, it was wiser to leave the Englishman’s invention alone. A labouring beat admonished the man’s quick ear of impending engine-trouble. Ah, if the motor, that was the living heart in the aëroplane, should break down at this juncture, or the human intelligence perched behind the roaring tractor falter, the game was up. Kaput for von Herrnung, he very well knew. As though the very fear had brought on the catastrophe, the revolutions dropped. Below 1000, said the indicator’s trembling finger, and there was a miss. The bang!—bang! of a back-fire followed. If one had believed in God, now, this would have been the time to pray to Him. But now the aviator’s keen eye, peering downwards through Sherbrand’s binoculars, picked up something that had emerged with a sudden yeasty swirl among the white-crested waves. No handsomer nor bigger than an under-sized steam-trawler, the casual observer might as such have accepted her. But a moment more, and fore and aft of the stocky little pseudo-steamer, stretched the long snaky, whitey-brown hull of a submarine. U-18, on observation-service off Spurn Head, or a Britisher? An Evans signalling-pistol, loaded, and with a supply of spare rockets, was fixed in a cleat beside the instrument-board, within reach of the pilot’s hand. The altimeter, illuminated by the electric bulb, gave an altitude of six hundred, as von Herrnung snatched the pistol, and fired, aiming towards the sky.