s
were ripping through the lifting planes of the Aviatik.

"Mon General!" he cried suddenly, "for the love of heaven order our
battery not to fire! Look! The observer in that machine is waving a
French flag. He has dropped it now, and he slues his gun into
position--but with one arm only! He is wounded!"

"Do you know what you are talking about, young man?" said the
Generalissimo sternly.

"Forgive me, mon General!" faltered Martique. "It was a little secret.
Oh, look! The Fokker has got the top place, and is about to ram poor
Laval and his English companion!"

Everyone held his breath, for indeed it was as Martique had cried. The
Aviatik was volplaning down in a wide spiral now, and above it the
relentless pursuer poised like a hawk. He was judging the circumference
of those spiral curves, and even the Generalissimo himself tightened his
lips under the huge white moustache.

Over the side of the fuselage there was no mistaking the glorious red,
white and blue that fluttered wildly in the descent, and then the
Aviatik's swivel-gun spoke three times. A German always speaks French
badly, but that German gun rang out with a true accent that time, and
the Fokker gave a strange quiver, burst into a sheet of flame, and
dropped like a stone to death and destruction six thousand feet below!

The engines of the Aviatik ceased; the _nacelle_, pointing earthwards,
curved suddenly up again, and floating for some distance like a tired
bird, the machine dropped out of sight on the other side of the tall
poplars.

There was an instant stampede to the spot, the Generalissimo himself
following, unable to curb his curiosity; but as he reached the bank at
the edge of the cornfield a running figure in leather jacket and flying
helmet checked his pace and, throwing up his goggles, saluted smartly.

"Mon General, I hope you will accept my apology," said Dennis Dashwood.
"I am five minutes behind my time, but I am here, and I have a good deal
to tell you!"

CHAPTER XIV

The Sing-Song in the Dug-out

Three surgeons, hastily summoned to the spot, knelt with their
instruments beside Claude Laval, not twenty yards from the bodies of the
two German airmen whom he had brought down the afternoon before, and in
the circle that surrounded them stood the Generalissimo, holding the old
French colour which would never ornament the walls of that distant
hunting-lodge again.

"He will recover," said one of the doctors, getting up fr