I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful—a faery’s child,Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.… JOHN KEATS, 1818 Marshall travelled back to Hartley in the train next day by way of London and Oxford. He travelled with his crew in a third-class compartment; the fact that they might not travel in first-class comfort with him added its quota to his black mood. They were all short of sleep. They had, in fact, spent the night battling with trouble ever since they had put down at Whitsand. They had dropped out of the fuselage hatch down on to the ground in the black darkness, landing one by one into a bed of stinging-nettles; getting to their feet most of them had fallen again over the telephone lines that lay draped over R for Robert, and the remains of the little short telegraph-pole that they had felled. Stumbling back to the runway to find somebody to fetch an ambulance for Leech, they had come upon the sergeant pilot of the Lancaster, now stopped upon the ring runway a short way behind them.
