k when I realised with a
start that we were nearly due south of, and a long way from, a
regularly-flashing lighthouse, standing out before the glow of some
great town, and then that the thing that had awakened me was the
cessation of our engine, and that we were driving back to the west.

Then, indeed, for a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I crawled
forward to the cords of the release valves, made my uncle crawl forward
too, and let out the gas until we were falling down through the air like
a clumsy glider towards the vague greyness that was land.

Something must have intervened here that I have forgotten.

I saw the lights of Bordeaux when it was quite dark, a nebulous haze
against black; of that I am reasonably sure. But certainly our fall
took place in the cold, uncertain light of early dawn. I am, at least,
equally sure of that. And Mimizan, near where we dropped, is fifty miles
from Bordeaux, whose harbour lights I must have seen.

I remember coming down at last with a curious indifference, and actually
rousing myself to steer. But the actual coming to earth was exciting
enough. I remember our prolonged dragging landfall, and the difficulty
I had to get clear, and how a gust of wind caught Lord Roberts B as my
uncle stumbled away from the ropes and litter, and dropped me heavily,
and threw me on to my knees. Then came the realisation that the monster
was almost consciously disentangling itself for escape, and then the
light leap of its rebound. The rope slipped out of reach of my hand.
I remember running knee-deep in a salt pool in hopeless pursuit of the
airship.

As it dragged and rose seaward, and how only after it had escaped my
uttermost effort to recapture it, did I realise that this was quite the
best thing that could have happened. It drove swiftly over the sandy
dunes, lifting and falling, and was hidden by a clump of windbitten
trees. Then it reappeared much further off, and still receding. It
soared for a time, and sank slowly, and after that I saw it no more. I
suppose it fell into the sea and got wetted with salt water and heavy,
and so became deflated and sank.

It was never found, and there was never a report of anyone seeing it
after it escaped from me.

VI

But if I find it hard to tell the story of our long flight through the
air overseas, at least that dawn in France stands cold and clear and
full. I see again almost as if I saw once more with my bodily eyes
the ridges of sand ris