The German took no notice of this. The past three years had made her an
adept in taking no notice.

"And now," she added. "After all these weary months of hoping, and
long-distance broomstick practice, and of parachute practice, and of
conflict with narrow officialdom, I have come--and this is the result. I
am separated from my broomstick, which has all the germ-bombs hanging
from its collar--the germs are those of dissension and riot--I am
marooned upon an English cloud, with no enemy at my mercy but a paltry
and treacherous non-combatant----"

"At your mercy," breathed our witch, remembering. She looked up. The
broomsticks were closer now, and through the breathless air, amidst the
dream-like firing of the guns below, she could hear the difficult
gasping of the hard-pressed Harold, still fighting bravely but with
hardly a twig on his head.

The tide of space was coming in. The edge of the cloud was barely six
inches from her hand. Our witch's mind overflowed with the thought of
invasions and the coming in of tides. It seemed that all her life she
had been living on a narrowing shore. She remembered all her dawns as
precarious footholds of peace on a threatened rock, and all her evenings
as golden sands sloping down into encroaching sleep. She realised
Everything as a little hopeless garrison against the army of Nothing.

She clutched a pinch of cloud nervously, and it broke off in her hand.
She recalled her senses with a devastating effort.

"Do you mean to say," she said, after a moment, "that poor dear Germany
really believes that she is right and we are wrong? I suppose, when you