Under a leaden-coloured sky the travel-stained amphibian fought its way through a thirty-mile-an-hour headwind across the Channel towards the English coast. From time to time, low, driving clouds blotted out the horizon and embraced the aeroplane in a clammy mist that formed in little globules on the wings, only to be swept away instantly by the swirling slipstream of the propeller.
Biggles, at the control-column, snatched a fleeting glance at Algy, who sat beside him, and forced a grin. “Welcome home!” he yelled above the roar of the engines, and then turned his attention again to the task of keeping the “Vandal” on its course. A grey moving speck in the mist a short distance ahead caught his eye and held it; he recognised it at once as one of the London-to-Paris machines, obviously boun
