Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/335

 and just below her to the left the surf rolled in lines of white upon the beach. Dunes, dunes interminably, with here and there a collection of huts. A dark shape moved in the water ahead of her, another Warships? Destroyers. She wheeled out to sea and flew above them, but before they had time even to get their searchlights ranged upon her, the danger was past. She would win now. The Yellow Dove was invincible.

A dark irregular mass ahead of her rose above the monotony of dunes, buildings, and a bulk she seemed to recognize—a round dome iridescent like a soap bubble in the moonlight. The Kursaal! Ostend! She was nearing her destination—the end of the German lines. Friends were near—Belgians, French, and English. Twenty—thirty miles beyond Ostend and then inland somewhere back of Ypres she would find the English. The English lines were thirty or forty miles long, she remembered. It should not be difficult to find them. She must be sure to go far enough—but not too far—not to where the French army joined the British forces. Cyril’s papers must go to the English, to General French himself. He had said so.

She had no way of judging distance except by the passage of the minutes. At the speed she was flying she must turn inland in fifteen minutes. She had no watch and she tried counting the seconds. She had counted sixty—four times—when a battery hidden among the dunes along the shore opened fire on her. She was half a mile from shore, flying low, but the flash of light startled her and the shell burst beyond. She rose quickly, moving further out to sea, frightened, but still self-possessed. It would not do to fail now with the goal in sight.

The compass gave her course southwest by west.