Read "Envoy Extraordinary" by E. Phillips Oppenheim online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Once more the lights were flaming from behind every window of the Great House. Everyone crowded on to the terrace or on to the balcony above. Out of the clouds had come the roar of the engine of a slowly descending plane. They could see its lights now, burning fiercely, they could watch the slackening of the speed as it stood for a time out over the sea and slowly circled inland. In the centre of the park every man upon the place was engaged in building up with dry timber the bonfire which had already been started. Matresser, apparently the least concerned of anyone, was standing in the gunroom doorway, with Humphreys by his side.
"It be a mighty big plane, your lordship," the latter observed. "I were just settling down to home and I heard the engines when she must have been t'other side of Fakenham. Put me in mind, it did, of that afternoon in August when we first seen one of them great Zepp'lins."