which will make 30.

Thirty victories, twenty or twenty-one of which occurred on the Somme:
such is the schedule of these extraordinary flights. The last one
surpassed all the rest. He fought unarmed, with nothing but his machine,
like a knight who, with sword broken, manages his horse and brings his
adversary to bay. What a scene it was when the German pilot and
passenger, prisoners, became aware that Guynemer's machine-gun had been
out of action! Once more he had imposed his will upon others, and his
power of domination had fascinated his enemies.

In the beginning of February, 1917, the Storks Escadrille left the Somme
after six months' fighting, and flew into Lorraine.

CANTO III

AT THE ZENITH

I. ON THE 25TH OF MAY, 1917

The destiny of a Guynemer is to surpass himself. Part of his power,
however, must lie in the perfection of his weapons. Why could he not
forge them himself? In him, the mechanician and the gunsmith were
impatient to serve the pilot and the fighter. Nothing in the science of
aviation was unknown to him, and Guynemer in the factory was always the
same Guynemer. He worked with the same nervous tension when he
overhauled his machine-guns to avoid the too frequent and too
troublesome jamming, or when he improved the arrangement of the
instruments and tools in his airplane in accordance with his superior
practical experience, as when he chased an enemy. He wanted to compel
the obedience of matter, as he compelled the enemy to surrender.

In the Somme campaign he had forced down two airplanes in a single day,
and then four in two days. In Lorraine he was to do even better. At that
time, the beginning of 1917, the German aerial forces were very active
in Lorraine, but the city of Nancy paid no attention to them. In 1914
Nancy had seen the invading army broken against the mountain of Saint
Genevieve and the Grand Couronne; she had withstood a bombardment by
gigantic shells and visits from air squadrons, and all without losing
her good humor and her animation. She was one of those cities on the
front who are accustomed to danger, and who find in it an inspiration
for courage, for commerce, and even for pleasure which does not belong
to cities behind the lines. Sometimes people who were dining on the
Place Stanislas left their tables to watch some fine battle in the air,
after which they resumed their seats and their appetites, merely
replacing Rhenish by Moselle wines. Nevertheless, the fre