“England is the World Enemy,” said the German, evidently pleased to meet someone to whom this information was fresh.  “Throughout the ages she has been the Robber State, crushing the weaker nations, adding to her own wealth by treachery, and now forcing this war of aggression upon her peace-loving neighbours.”

Our witch laughed.  She was forgetting her danger.  “This is really rather funny,” she said.  “Do you know what’s happened?  You’ve been reading the Daily Mail and misunderstanding it.  The whole of that quotation applied to Germany, not England.  It’s Germany that’s being naughty.  You made a mistake, but never mind, I won’t repeat it.”

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 come to think of it, a man-eating tiger feels the same way.  It fights with a high heart, and a hot reproach, just as we do——­”

“We are Crusaders,” said the German.  “Crusaders at War with Evil.”

“Why, how funny—­so are we,” said our witch.  “But then how very peculiar that two Crusaders should apparently be fighting each other.  Where then is the Evil?  In No Man’s Land?”

“We are fighting,” recited the German glibly, “because England is the World Enemy.  Throughout the ages she has been the Rob——­”

There was a violent explosion quite close to them, and the cloud reeled and shook.  About a foot of the German end of it broke off and was dissolved.