The roof-tops of the city are covered with great rolling clouds of thick black smoke. It is now almost impossible to distinguish any landmark on the ground below. Two of our machines have already gone crashing down. The sight of them falling is the greatest shock to the nerves imaginable; it is the true test of bravery, for one always feels tempted to give up and follow them, but only for the passing second. The lust of battle grows strong again; more bombs and yet more are dropped onto the stricken city. The flying of the machines is marvelous to behold. Another of our craft is hit, making number three; she, too, disappears into the mist beneath. Our bombs are now all exhausted and we turn thankfully homewards. Another machine drops out, to land safely on the foreshore, and, as we afterwards learn, the pilot is made a prisoner. Then we reach our own lines once more and are safe. CHAPTER XVIII A DAY-DREAM _Somewhere in the North of France, Saturday._ The other day I had a dream; at six o’clock in the morning, at 10,000 feet up in the air, with the biting cold wind whistling by my ears. On all sides stretched the air, a boundless infinity; beneath, a moving panorama of wood, river, and hill, of men, guns and battle-field. Far in the distance, the waters of the North Sea glinted blue in the early morning sun; when suddenly the air became filled with a strange purring sound, and from all sides came flying hundreds of aircraft of varying shapes and sizes. Among them I noticed one, a leviathan. A long cigar-shaped, silver-tinted, super-airship; beneath and swinging easily in the breeze, the hull was in the shape of the old-fashioned sea-going steamer. For’ard was a wide expanse of promenade deck, where could plainly be distinguished the passengers walking to and fro. In the center, on a raised dais, a band, resplendent in blue and gold, were strumming some popular air. Amidships a great bridge, where the officer of the watch and the quartermaster were directing her course. Astern was another wide expanse of deck, but this apparently was reserved for the crew. Now a large group of men were busily engaged round a small, bullet-shaped aeroplane. With a whirr, she started off across the wide deck, and a second later was gracefully clearing the great ship’s side, and missing a green and white balloon buoy literally by inches, sank rapidly in a southerly direction; and then our wireless telephone rang. It was the big ship speaking us, “Had we seen anything of the home-bound mail?” “No, we had not.” “Could we say what the Siberian weather conditions had been the day previous?” “Well, nothing extraordinary, slight haze over North China.” “Strange, the Menelaus left Canton yesterday, should have reported Bombay this morning, Moscow reports her two hours overdue.” “No, we have seen nothing of the missing liner;” and, leaving the great pleasure ship miles in the rear, we skim across the Carpathians, speaking two Serbian cruisers on patrol