Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/299

1918] I looked around and noticed that Lt. Galvayne was in a stooping position, with head and one arm on his seat, the other arm hanging down as if reaching for something. I had seen him in this position earlier in the day so thought nothing of it. All this I had seen in the fraction of a second, for I had to continue firing. A few minutes later I turned around again and found with a shock that Lt. Galvayne was in the same position. It was then that the first inkling of the truth dawned upon me. By bending lower I discovered that his head was lying in a pool of blood.

From this time on I have no clear idea of just what our manoeuvring was, but evidently we put up a running fight steering east, then circled until suddenly I found our machine had been cut off from the formation and we were surrounded by seven enemy seaplanes.

This time we were steering west or more to the south- west. We carried on a running fight for ten miles or so until we drove the seven planes off. During the last few minutes of the fight our engine had been popping altogether too frequently and soon the engineer came forward to tell us that the port engine petrol pipe had broken.

By this time I had laid out Lt. Galvayne in the wireless cockpit, cleaned up the second pilot's seat, and taken it myself.

The engagement had lasted about half an hour, and the closest range was one hundred yards while the average range was two hundred. The boat with Ensign Eaton in it landed between the Islands of Texel and Vlieland, while the other boat, which had not taken any part in the fight, was last seen two miles off Vlieland and still taxiing in toward the beach.

We descended to the water at five forty-five, ten miles north-west of Vlieland. During the ten minutes we were on the water I loosened Lt. Galvayne's clothing, made his position somewhat easier, and felt for his heart which at that time I was quite sure was beating feebly.

When we rose from the water and ascended to fifteen hundred feet, we sighted two planes which later proved to be the two Yarmouth boats. We picked them up, swung into formation, and laid our course for Yarmouth.

At ten minutes to seven we sighted land and twenty minutes after we were resting on the water in front of Yarmouth slipway.