Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/331

 blood. Faster, faster, was the song her pulses sung. She was a part of the Yellow Dove now, and it was a part of herself. Its wings were her wings and its instinct was in her own fingertips.

Night fell slowly, a luminous night full of stars. She seemed to be hanging among them—to be one of them—watching the earth pass under her. Two of them gleamed like St. Elmo’s lights at the tips of the planes. The sky was clear and bright, of a deep bluish purple, like the skies she remembered high up on the plains of the great West in her own country. The air was bitter cold upon her face and she blessed Cyril’s foresight for the helmet, gloves and old leather jacket that he had put on her in the hangar. In front of her Cyril leaned slightly to one side and his right hand touched a button, throwing an electric light in a hood in front of the wheel upon the face of the compass and barograph. She glanced at them quickly—four thousand feet—the direction north-northwest. She longed to speak to him and shouted his name. But in the roar of the engines she could not hear her own voice.

He still sat up, the fingers of his right hand moving from time to time as he gave her the direction. She thanked God for that—he was alive—he would live until they reached Ypres. He must live. He must. She set her teeth upon the words and willed it, praying at last aloud with lips that screamed yet made no sound.

Below her moved the lights of a city. She did not know what it was. Cologne, perhaps. She had passed it yesterday morning in the train with John Rizzio. Yesterday! It seemed a year ago. Cologne—then Dusseldorf. The river was not difficult to follow. She