ght of three or four thousand feet an occasional dash of
rain whipped your face, and again the soft mist of a cloud.

It was real English weather, overcast; and England plotted under your
eye, a vast garden with its hedges, fields and quiet villages, had never
been so fully realized in its rich greens. We overtook trains going in
our direction and passed trains going in the opposite direction under
their trailing spouts of steam. Only an occasional encampment of tents
suggested that the land was at war. The soft light melted the different
tones of the landscape together in a dreamy whole and always the
impression was of a land loved for its hedges, its pastures and its
island seclusion, loved as a garden. In order to hold it secure this
plane was flying and the great army in France was fighting.

After forty minutes of the exhilaration of flight which never grows
stale, the pilot thumped one of the wings which gave out the sound of a
drumhead to attract my attention and indicated an immense white arrow on
a pasture pointing toward the bank of mist that hid the channel. This
was the guide-post of the aerial ferry. He wheeled around it in order to
give me a better view, which was his only departure from routine before,
on the line of the arrow's pointing, he took his course, leaving the
railroad behind, while ahead the green carpet seemed to end in a
vaporish horizon.

Usually as they rose for the channel crossing pilots ascended to a
height of ten thousand feet, in order that they should have range in
case of engine trouble for a long glide which might permit them to reach
shore, or, if they must alight in the sea, to descend close to a vessel.
In both England and France along the established aerial pathway are
certain way stations fit to give rubber tires a soft welcome, with
gasoline in store if a fresh supply is required. It was the pride of my
pilot, who had formerly been in the navy and had come from South Africa
to "do his bit," that in twenty crossings he had never had to make a
stop. To-day the clouds kept us down to an altitude of only four
thousand feet.

Hills and valleys do not exist, all landscape being flat to the
aviator's eye, as we know; but against reason some mental kink made me
feel that this optical law should not apply to the chalk cliffs when we
came to the coast, where only the green sward which crowns them was
visible and beyond this a line of gray, the beach, which had an edge of
white lace