you have
begun diving you're all right. The pilot just ahead turns tail up
like a trout dropping back to water, and swoops down in irregular
curves and circles. You follow at an angle so steep your feet
seem to be holding you back in your seat. Now the black Maltese
crosses on the German's wings stand out clearly. You think of him
as some sort of a big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of
his machine-gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up
with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit
the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his
mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the German's tail.

The rattle of the gun that is aimed at you leaves you
undisturbed. Only when the bullets pierce the wings a few feet
off do you become uncomfortable. You see the gunner crouched
down behind his weapon, but you aim at where the pilot ought to
be--there are two men aboard the German craft--and press on the
release hard. Your mitrailleuse hammers out a stream of bullets
as you pass over and dive, nose down, to get out of range. Then,
hopefully, you redress and look back at the foe. He ought to be
dropping earthward at several miles a minute. As a matter of
fact, however, he is sailing serenely on. They have an annoying
habit of doing that, these Boches.

Zeppelins as well as the stationary kite balloons and the swiftly
flying airplanes often tempted the fighting aviators to attack. One
of the most successful of the British champions of the air, though
his own life was ended in the second year of the war, was
sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford, of the British Flying Corps. In
his brief period of service Warneford won more laurels than any of
the British aviators of the time. He was absolutely fearless, with a
marvelous control of the fast Vickers scout which he employed, and
fertile in every resource of the chase and of the flight. In an
interview widely printed at the time, Lieutenant Warneford thus told
the story of his casual meeting of a German Zeppelin high in air
between Ghent and Brussels and his prompt and systematic destruction
of the great balloon. The story as told in his own language reads
like the recountal of an everyday event. That to meet an enemy more
than a mile above the earth and demolish him was anything
extraordinary does not seem to have occurred to the aviator