Page 45 - A Hero of Liége

was flying towards the north-east. Bringing the monoplane round, he set his
course for the south-west, hoping to pick up in half an hour or so the lights

of Aix-la-Chapelle. He failed to locate the railway line from Cologne to
Aix, and the few scattered points of light in the black expanse below gave

him no landmarks.

After a while it occurred to him to switch on the electric light that

illuminated the dial of a small clock. It was a quarter to eleven. He must
have been flying for nearly half an hour, but neither to right or left nor

straight ahead was there any sign of the expected lights of Aix. The country
over which he was passing seemed to be hilly; it was possible that the lights
of the city were hidden by the shoulder of a hill.

Presently his companion shouted that he heard the sound of big guns away

to the left. Kenneth listened, but could hear nothing through the droning
whirr of the propeller.

Every now and then he glanced at the clock, the only indication of the
distance he had covered. When midnight was past, he felt sure that unless

he had completely miscalculated his direction he must by this time have
crossed the German frontier. He was thinking of landing and trying to
discover where he was, when he caught sight in the starlight of a broad

river flowing immediately beneath him from south-west to north-east. This,
he had no doubt, was the Meuse, but he knew nothing of the course of the

river, and could not determine whether he was in Belgium or Holland. At
any rate he was out of Germany.

Dropping a few hundred feet, and seeing below him a broad expanse of
fields, apparently flat, he thought it safe to risk a descent. No lights were

visible. A rapid swoop brought the machine into a meadow of long grass
ripe for hay, and he came lightly to the ground.

"I make you my compliments," said his companion, as they climbed out of
their seats. "It is my first aerial voyage, and I am pretty sure that no one has

ever tempted the empyrean under such exciting circumstances. But why did
you come down? I hoped we should find ourselves at Ostend."