mass of steaming embers. The cowboy was
still snuggled up against the bitt, which he used to rest his right
elbow on in the occasional shots he was lobbing over at the now
distantly circling enemy. When I learned later what a crack shot the
chap really was, I cannot say that I blamed the Hun for his discretion.

"What tempted him to make that fatal final swoop we never knew. It may
have been sheer bravado, or he may have been trying to frighten off the
fire-fighters again. Anyhow, back he came, allowing plenty of leeway to
miss my smoke screen, and only high enough to clear the masts by forty
or fifty feet.

"The cowboy saw him coming, and I can picture him yet as he lay there
waiting, with his cheek against the stock of that old Winchester, and
following the nearing 'plane through its sights. With the rare good
sense of your real hunter, he didn't run any risk of frightening off his
quarry with any premature shots. He just laid doggo, and held his fire.

"If the Hun had been content to sit tight and keep his head out of
sight, the chances are nothing would have happened to him; but the
temptation to have a closer look at his handiwork and to jeer at his
'beaten enemy' was too much for him. Banking as sharply as his big
'plane would stand, he leaned out head and shoulders above the wrecked
poop, gave a jaunty wave of the hand, and opened his mouth to shout what
was probably some sort of Hunnish pleasantry.

"The crack of the old Winchester reached my ears above the roar of the
seaplane's engine, and the next thing I was clearly conscious of was the
machine's swerving--sidewise and downward--and plunging straight into
the trailing column of black smoke. The tip of its left wing fouled the
main truck, but it still kept enough balance and headway to carry past
and clear of the ship.

"It then slammed down into the water two or three hundred feet off our
starboard bow, and it only took a point or two of alteration to bring it
under our forefoot.

"The old ship struck the mark so fair that she cut the wreckage into two
parts, and I saw fragments of wings and fuselage boiling up on both
sides of our wake astern. I gave the order in hot blood, but I would do
the same thing again if I had a week to think it over in, just as I
would go out of my way to kill a poisonous snake.

"Of course we never knew definitely who was responsible for polishing
off the Hun. For a while I thought it probable that the cowboy had only
wou