Both broomsticks were by now so uproariously excited that neither witch
was able to aim her magic missiles very carefully, and indeed it was not
long before Harold passed entirely beyond control. After bucking
violently once or twice, he gave a wild high cry that was like the wind
howling through the fierce forest past of his race, and fell upon the
other broomstick, fixing his bristles into its throat. The shock of the
collision was too much for both witches. Our witch--if I may call her
so--was shot over Harold's head, and landed on the ample breast of her
adversary, who, in consequence, lost her balance. They fell together
into space.

"Oh, lost, lost, ..." cried our witch, and thoughts rushed through her
mind of green safe places, and old safe years, and the little hut in a
pale bluebell wood, where she was born. She had time to remember the
blue ground, dimpled and starred with sunlight, and the way the bees
pulled over the bluebells and swung on them to the tune of cuckoos in a
May mist; she had time to think of the green globe ghosts of the
bluebells that haunted the wood after the spring was dead. Bluebells and
being young were in all her thoughts, and it was some time before she
noticed how slowly she and her enemy were falling.

For they were locked together. And the enemy witch's cloak, an orthodox
witch cloak except for its colour, which was German field-grey instead
of red, was spread out like a parachute, and was supporting them upon
their peaceful and almost affectionate descent.

For all I know they might have alighted gently in the Strand, and the
authorities might by now be regretting the capture of a most
embarrassing and unaccountable prisoner. But something intervened. The
cloud, like a sheep suffering from the lack of other sheep to follow,