e
area.

The cars fled onward, skidding at every turn of the road, and the bombs
followed or preceded them, or else flung up the earth to left or right.

"That's the tenth and the last, thank God!" said the sweating
aide-de-camp. "Heaven and thunder! what an almost catastrophe!"

In the amazing spaces of the air, a lean face, pinched and blue with the
cold, peered over the fuselage and watched the antlike procession of
pin-point dots moving slowly along the snowy road.

"That's ma last!" he said, and picking up an aerial torpedo from between
his feet, he dropped it over the side.

It struck the last car, which dissolved noisily into dust and splinters,
while the force of the explosion overturned the car ahead.

"A bonnie shot," said Tam o' the Scoots complacently, and banked over as
he turned for home. He shot a glance at the climbing circus and judged
that there was no permanent advantage to be secured from an engagement.
Nevertheless he loosed a drum of ammunition at the highest machine and
grinned when he saw two rips appear in the wing of his machine.

By the time he passed over the German line all the Archies in the world
were blazing at him, but Tam was at an almost record height--the height
where men go dizzy and sick and suffer from internal bleeding. Over the
German front-line trenches he dipped steeply down, but such had been his
altitude that he was still ten thousand feet high when he leveled out
above his aerodrome.

He descended in wide circles, his machine canted all the time at an
angle of forty-five degrees and lighted gently on the even surface of
the field a quarter of an hour after he had crossed the line.

He descended to the ground stiff and numb, and Bertram walked across
from his own machine to make inquiries.

"Parky, Tam?"

"It's no' so parky, Mr. Bertram, sir-r," replied Tam cautiously.

"Rot, Tam!" said that youthful officer. "Why, your nose is blue!"

"Aweel," admitted Tam. "But that's no' cold, that's--will ye look at ma
altitude record?"

The young man climbed into the fuselage, looked and gasped.

"Dear lad!" he said, "have you been to heaven?"

"Verra near, sir-r," said Tam gravely; "another ten gallons o' essence
an' A'd 'a' made it. A've been that high that A' could see the sun
risin' to-morrow!"

He started to walk off to his quarters but stopped and turned back.
"Don't go near MacBissing's caircus," he warned; "he's feelin' sore."

Tam made a verbal report to Bl