Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/329

 behind them. His face was white but his eye flashed triumph. His lips moved, but she heard nothing. Safe? They must be. The Yellow Dove, mounting easily, had cleared the trees at the border of the farm and before the eyes of the girl stretched only undulating surfaces of gray and green.

In front of her Cyril lay back in his seat. His hands clutched the sides of the cockpit. O God! She had not been sure before what his sudden lassitude had meant. He had been hit! John Rizzio! He turned around and smiled at her and one hand, stretched before him, pointed up and to the right. Her throat closed and her heart seemed to stop its beating and the Dove for a moment swung and tossed like a drunken thing, but with an effort she inclined her wheel and met it. Cyril again raised his fingers and pointed upwards. Higher! She tipped the wheel further toward her. His gesture was like an appeal to Heaven—a symbol of his faith in her and in the God of both. She set her lips and obeyed. Broken and helpless—perhaps dying, he was putting his faith in her. She must not fail him now.

She kept her gaze before her over Cyril’s head, trying to gain strength for what she had to do, thinking that she was in England—at Ashwater Park—and that the wheel she held was that of her own little Nieuport. There seemed to be little difference between them, except that the Yellow Dove was easier to manage. It responded to the slightest touch, and had a magnificent steadiness that reassured Doris as to her ability to do the thing that was required of her.

The mountains had fallen below them and the horizon had widened until it blurred into the haze of the distance. She looked down on what seemed to her a