his engine." Sure
enough, out from a low-lying cloud-bank he came, wheeling in short
spirals, plunging earthward.

Down sank the aeroplane, the roaring engine fell silent, roared
again, and she sped towards us, her wheels within a foot or so of
earth. Finally they touched, the engine stopped and the witch-lamb
pulled up within a few feet of us. Hereupon the Major waved a
gauntleted hand to us.

"Must stop to lunch," he cried, "I've ordered soup, you know."

But this being impossible, we perforce said good-by to these
warm-hearted, simple-souled fighting men, a truly regrettable
farewell so far as I was concerned. They escorted us to the car, and
there parted from us with many frank expressions of regard and stood
side by side to watch us out of sight.

"Yesterday there was much aerial activity on our front.

"Depots were successfully bombed and five enemy machines were forced
to descend, three of them in flames. Four of ours did not return."

I shall never read these oft recurring lines in the communiques
without thinking of those three youthful figures, so full of life and
the joy of life, who watched us depart that dull and cloudy morning.

Here is just one other story dealing with three seasoned
air-fighters, veterans of many deadly combats high above the clouds,
each of whom has more than one victory to his credit, and whose
combined ages total up to sixty or thereabouts. We will call them X.,
Y. and Z. Now X. is an American, Y. is an Englishman, whose
peach-like countenance yet bears the newly healed scar of a bullet
wound, and Z. is an Afrikander. Here begins the story:

Upon a certain day of wind, rain and cloud, news came that the Boches
were massing behind their lines for an attack, whereupon X., Y. and
Z. were ordered to go up and verify this. Gaily enough they started
despite unfavourable weather conditions. The clouds were low, very
low, but they must fly lower, so, at an altitude varying from fifteen
hundred to a bare thousand feet, they crossed the German lines, Y.
and Z. flying wing and wing behind X.'s tail. All at once "Archie"
spoke, a whole battery of anti-aircraft guns filled the air with
smoke and whistling bullets--away went X.'s propeller and his machine
was hurled upside down; immediately Y. and Z. rose. By marvellous
pilotage X. managed to right his crippled machine and began, of
course, to fall; promptly Y. and Z. descended. It is, I believe, an
unwritten law in the Air Service never