Shut off the motor!" cried Tom, but his words could not
be heard, so he punched Martin in the back, and when that frightened lad
looked around his teacher made him understand by signs, what was wanted.

With the motor off there was a chance to speak, and Torn cried:

"Head her up! Try to make her rise and we may clear. I can't do a thing
with the levers back here!"

Martin tried, but his efforts had little effect. For one instant the
machine rose as though to clear the fragile glass. Then it dived down
again, straight for the greenhouse roof.

"Guess it's all up with this machine!" thought Tom quickly. He was not
afraid of being killed. The distance to fall was not enough for that,
and though he and his fellow aviator might be cut by broken glass, still
the body of the aeroplane would protect them pretty well from even
this contingency. But there was sure to be considerable damage to the
property of a French civilian, and the machine, which was one of the
best, was pretty certain to be badly broken.

And then there came a terrific crash. The aeroplane settled down by the
stern, and rose by the bow, so to speak. Then the process was reversed,
and Tom felt himself being catapulted out of his seat. Only his safety
strap held him in place. The same thing happened to Dick Martin.

Then there was an ominous calm, and the aeroplane slowly settled down
to an even keel, held up on the glass-stripped frames of the greenhouse,
one of the very few in that vicinity, which was considerably in the rear
of the battle line.

Slowly Tom unbuckled his safety strap and climbed out, making his way to
the ground by means of stepping on an elevated bed of flowers inside the
now almost roofless house.

Martin followed him, and as they stood looking at the wreckage they had
made, or, rather, that had been made through no direct fault of their
own, the proprietor of the place came out, wearing a long dirt-smudged
apron.

He raised his hands in horror at the sight that met his gaze, and then
broke into such a torrent of French that Tom, with all the experience he
had had of excitable Frenchmen, was unable to comprehend half of it.

The gist was, however, to the effect that a most monstrous and
unlooked-for calamity had befallen, and the inhabitants of all the
earth, outside of Germany and her allies, were called on to witness
that never hid there been such a smash of good glass. In which Torn was
rather inclined to agree.

"Well, you