did something this time all right, Buddie," Tom remarked to
Dick Martin.

"Did I--did I do that?" he asked, as though he had been walking in his
sleep, and was just now awake.

"Well, you and the old bus together," said Tom. "And we got off lucky at
that. Didn't I tell you to keep high, if you were going to fly over one
of the towns?"

"Yes, you did, but I forgot. Anyhow I'd have cleared the place if the
controls hadn't gone back on us."

"I suppose so, but that excuse won't go with the C.O. It's a bad
smash."

By this time quite a crowd had gathered, and Tom was trying to pacify
the excitable greenhouse owner by promising full reparation in the shape
of money damages.

How to get the machine down off the roof, where it rested in a mass of
broken glass and frames, was a problem. Tom tried to organize a wrecking
party, but the French populace which gathered, much as it admired the
Americans, was afraid of being cut with the broken glass, or else they
imagined that the machine might suddenly soar aloft, taking some of them
with it.

In the end Tom had to leave the plane where it was and hire a motor to
take him and Martin back to the aerodrome. They were only slightly cut
by flying glass, nothing to speak of considering the danger in which
they had been.

The result of the disobedience of orders was that the army officials
had rather a large bill for damages to settle with the French greenhouse
proprietor, and Tom and Dick Martin were deprived of their leave
privileges for a week for disobeying the order to keep at a certain
height in flying over a town or city.

Had they done that, when the controls jammed, they would have been able
to glide down into a vacant field, it was demonstrated. The machine was
badly damaged, though it was not beyond repair.

"And that's the last time I'm ever going to be soft with a Hun, you can
make up your mind to that," declared Tom to Jack. "If I'd sat on him
hard when I saw he was getting too low over the village, it wouldn't
have happened. But I didn't want him to think I knew it all, and I
thought I'd take a chance and let him pull his own chestnuts out of the
fire. But never again!"

"'Tisn't safe," agreed Jack. He was rapidly improving, so much so that
he was able to fly the next week, and he and Tom went up together, and
did some valuable scouting work for the American army.

At times they found opportunity to take short trips to Paris, where they
saw Nellie and Be