fighting machine.

"_Ticka--ticka--ticka--ticka--tick!_" said Tam's machine-gun.

Tam's staring blue eyes were on the sights--he could not miss. The pilot
went limp in his seat, the observer took his hand from his gun to grip
the controls. Too late; the wide-winged fighter skidded like a motorbus
on a greasy road and fell into the clouds sideways.

But now the enemy was coming at him from all points of the compass.

"Dinna let oor pairtin' grieve ye!" sang Tam and dropped straight
through the clouds into the rain and a dim view of a bedraggled earth.

"There's Burley," said Blackie, clad in a long oilskin and a sou'wester
as he checked off the home-coming adventurers. "Do you ever notice how
his machine always looks lop-sided? There's Galbraith and Mosen--who's
that fellow on the Morane? Oh, yes, that's Parker-Smith. H'm!"

"What's wrong?"

"Where's Tam--I hope those beggars didn't catch him--There he is, the
devil!"

Tam was doing stunts. He was side-slipping, nose-diving and looping--he
was, in fine, setting up all those stresses which a machine under
extraordinary circumstances might have to endure.

"He always does that with a new machine, sir," said Captain Blackie's
companion. "I've never understood why, because if he found a weak place,
he'd be too dead for the information to be of any service to him."

* * * * *

Later, when Tam condescended to bring himself to earth, Blackie asked
him.

"Why do you do fool stunts, Tam? The place to test the machine is on the
ground?"

"Ye're wrong, sir-r," said Tam quietly; "the groond's a fine place to
test a wee perambulator or a motor-car or a pair of buits--but it's no'
the place to test an aeroplane. The aeroplane an' the submarine maun be
tried oot in their native eelements."

"But suppose you _did_ succeed in breaking something--and you went to
glory?"

"Aye," said Tam quietly, "an' suppose A'm goin' oop wi' matchless
coorage to save ma frien's frae the ravishin' Hoon an' ma machine plays
hookey? Would it no' be worse for a' concairned, than if A' smash oop by
mesel'?"

"Did you see Mueller?"

"In the clouds. A' left him hauldin' a committee-meetin', Captain
MacMuller in the cheer.

"'Resolvit,' says the cheerman, 'that this meetin', duly an' truly
assembled, passes a hairty vote o' thanks to Tam o' the Scoots, the
Mageecian o' the Air-r, for the grand fight he made against a superior
enemy--Carried.

"'Resolvit,'