Tam who was
doing stunts over our new gun?"

Blackie nodded.

"I thought it was. They have been cursing him all the evening--I mean,
of course, the technical people," he added hastily, as though to
emphasize the fact that the Imperial Air Service was above resentment.
"Naturally they swore you had some kind of armor on your machine, and
though we told them it was most unlikely, they insisted--you know what
obstinate people these manufacturers are; in fact, they say that they
saw it glitter," he laughed softly. "You see," he went on, "they don't
understand this game. They can not understand why their wonderful"--he
corrected himself swiftly--"why their gun did not get you. It would have
been a terrible disappointment if they had brought you down and
discovered that you were not sheeted in some new patent shell-proof
steel."

"Oh, aye," said Tam, and he smiled, which was an unusual thing for Tam
to do, and then he laughed, a deep, bubbling chuckle of laughter, which
was even more unusual. "Oh, aye," he said again and was still laughing
when he went out of the little anteroom.

He did not go back to his bunk, but made his way to the workshop, and
when he went up the next morning he carried with him, carefully strapped
to the fuselage, a sheet of tin which he had industriously cut and
punched full of rivet-holes in the course of the night.

"And what are you going to do with that, Tam?" asked Blackie.

"That is ma new armor," said Tam solemnly. "'Tis a grand invention I
made out of my own head."

"But what is the idea?" asked Blackie.

"Captain Blackie, sir-r," said Tam, "I have a theery, and if you have no
objection I'd like to try it oot."

"Go ahead," said Blackie with a perplexed frown.

At half-past eleven, Tam, having roved along the German front-line
trenches and having amused himself by chasing a German spotter to earth,
made what appeared to be a leisurely way back to that point of the Lille
road where he had met with his adventures of the previous day. He was
hoping to find the battery which he had worried at that time, and he was
not disappointed. In the same area where he had met the guns before,
they opened upon him. He circled round and located six pieces. Which of
these was "Annie"?

One he could silence at terrible risk to himself, but no more. To drop
down, on the off-chance of finding his quarry, was taking a gambler's
chance, and Tam prided himself that he was no gambler. That the gun was
t