“I’ll remember that.”
Karen said, “Take the stick for a while. See if you can fly straight and level. All right, you have control.”
He grasped the control stick in his right hand.
She said, “You’re supposed to say, ‘I have control.’ That’s so that the pilot and copilot never get into a situation where each thinks the other is flying the aircraft.”
“I have control,” he said, but he did not feel it. The Hornet Moth had a life of its own, turning and dipping with air turbulence, and he found himself using all his powers of concentration to keep the wings level and the nose in the same position.
Karen said, “Do you find that you’re constantly pulling back on the stick?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because we’ve used some fuel and changed the aircraft’s center of gravity. Do you see that lever by the top forward corner of your door?”
He glanced up briefly. “Yes.”
“That’s the elevator trim lever. I set it all the way forward for takeoff, when the tank was full and the tail was heavy. Now the aircraft needs to be retrimmed.”
“How do we do that?”
“Simple. Ease your grip on the stick. You feel it wanting to go forward of its own accord?”
“Yes.”
“Move the trim lever back. You’ll find less need for constant back pressure on the stick.”
She was right.
“Adjust the trim lever until you no longer need to pull on the stick.”
Harald drew the lever back gradually. Before he knew it, the control column was pressing back on his hand. “Too much,” he said. He pushed the trim lever forward a fraction. “That’s about right.”
“You can also trim the rudder, by moving the knob in that toothed rack at the bottom of the instrument panel. When the aircraft is correctly trimmed, it should fly straight and level with no pressure on the controls.”
Harald took his hand off the column experimentally. The Hornet Moth continued to fly level.
He returned his hand to the stick.
The cloud below them was not continuous, and at intervals they were able to see through gaps to the moonlit earth below. Soon they left Zealand behind and flew over the sea. Karen said, “Check the altimeter.”
He found it difficult to look down at the instrument panel, feeling instinctively that he needed to concentrate on flying the aircraft. When he tore his gaze away from the exterior, he saw that they had reached seven thousand feet. “How did that happen?” he said.
“You’re holding the nose too high. It’s natural. Unconsciously, you’re afraid of hitting the ground, so you keep trying to climb. Dip the nose.”
He pushed the stick forward. As the nose came down, he saw another aircraft. It had large crosses on its wings. Harald felt sick with fear.
Karen saw it at the same time. “Hell,” she said. “The Luftwaffe.” She sounded as scared as Harald felt.
“I see it,” Harald said. It was to their left and down, a quarter of a mile or so away, and climbing toward them.
She took the stick and put the nose sharply down. “I have control.”
“You have control.”
The Hornet Moth went into a dive.
Harald recognized the other aircraft as a Messerschmitt Bf110, a twin-engined night fighter with a distinctive double-finned tailplane and long, greenhouse-like cockpit canopy. He remembered Arne talking about the Bf110’s armament with a mixture of fear and envy: it had cannons and machine guns in the nose, and Harald could see the rear machine guns poking up from the back end of the canopy. This was the aircraft used to shoot down Allied bombers after the radio station on Sande had detected them.
The Hornet Moth was completely defenseless.
Harald said, “What are we going to do?”
“Try to get back into that cloud layer before he gets within range. Damn, I shouldn’t have let you climb so high.”
The Hornet Moth was diving steeply. Harald glanced at the airspeed indicator and saw that they had reached one hundred and thirty knots. It felt like the downhill stretch of a roller-coaster. He realized he was grasping the edge of his seat. “Is this safe?” he said.
“Safer than being shot.”
The other aircraft came rapidly closer. It was much faster than the Moth. There was a flash and a rattle of gunfire. Harald had been expecting the Messerschmitt to fire on them, but he could not restrain a yell of shock and fear.
Karen turned right, trying to spoil the gunner’s aim. The Messerschmitt flashed past below. The gunfire stopped, and the Hornet Moth’s engine droned on. They had not been hit.
Harald recalled Arne saying that it was quite difficult for a fast aircraft to shoot at a slow one. Perhaps that had saved them.
As they turned, he looked out of the window and saw the fighter receding into the distance. “I think he’s out of range,” he said.
“Not for long,” Karen replied.
Sure enough, the Messerschmitt was turning. The seconds dragged by as the Hornet Moth dived toward the protection of the cloud and the fast-moving fighter swept through a wide turn. Harald saw that their airspeed had reached one hundred and sixty. The cloud was tantalizingly close-but not close enough.
He saw the flashes and heard the bangs as the fighter opened up. This time the aircraft were closer and the fighter had a better angle of attack. To his horror he saw a jagged rip appear in the fabric of the lower left wing. Karen shoved the stick over and the Hornet Moth banked.
Then, suddenly, they were plunged into cloud.
The gunfire stopped.
“Thank God,” Harald said. Although it was cold, he was sweating.
Karen pulled back on the stick and brought them out of the dive. Harald shone the flashlight on the altimeter and watched the needle slow its counterclockwise movement and steady at just above five thousand feet. The airspeed returned gradually to the normal cruising speed of eighty knots.
She banked the aircraft again, changing direction, so that the fighter would not be able to overtake them simply by following their previous course.
“Bring the revs down to about sixteen hundred,” she said. “We’ll get just below this cloud.”
“Why not stay in it?”
“It’s difficult to fly in cloud for long. You get disoriented. You don’t know up from down. The instruments tell you what’s happening but you don’t believe them. It’s how a lot of crashes happen.”
Harald found the lever in the dark and drew it back.
“Was it just luck that the fighter turned up?” Karen said. “Maybe they can see us with their radio beams.”
Harald frowned, thinking. He was glad to have a puzzle to take his mind off the danger they were in. “I doubt it,” he said. “Metal interferes with radio waves, but I don’t think wood or linen does. A big aluminum bomber would reflect the beams back to their aerials, but only our engine would do that, and it’s probably too small to show up on their detectors.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “If not, we’re dead.”
They came out below the cloud. Harald increased the revs to nineteen hundred, and Karen pulled the stick back.
“Keep looking around,” Karen said. “If we see him again, we have to go up fast.”
Harald did as she said, but there was not much to see. A mile ahead, the moon was shining through a gap in the clouds, and Harald could make out the irregular geometry of fields and woodland. They must be over the large central island of Fyn, he thought. Nearer, a bright light moved perceptibly across the dark landscape, and he guessed it was a railway train or a police car.
Karen banked right. “Look up to your left,” she said. Harald could see nothing. She banked the other way, and
