midnight
Yes la -- la ! We Flemings know what cold is more than what it is to be too -- too warm . Don ' you bodder , sar ! '' And so the many more or less friendly , even solicitous conversations went on until the midnight hour had fled . By then the groups of friends and visitors had melted back to the rear into the misty regions where lay the small French village that had sheltered them together with the aerodrome itself . It might have been one o'clock or later when a bugle sounded . Up and down the long , long line aviators were scrambling into their machines while the sputter and throb of many engines punctured the night air .