"Four of them took after me, and I had to think quick. I couldn't
skip exactly, for I had to give the observation bus a chance to get
a start. I maneuvered into a pretty good position, under the
circumstances, and was going to fire a round into them and then dive
for home and mother, when the bullets began to sing about me from a
fifth plane. I couldn't see it, so I flip-flopped chop-chop. As I
turned I saw Immelmann's plane swoop past. I turned over just in
the nick of time and he missed me, though his nasty gun-fire pretty
well chewed up my bottom plane.

"I did a hurried dead-leaf act, and I guess the Germans thought I was
done for and dropping, for they lit out without bothering any more
about me. I got home without any further incident, and found the
observation fellow had got back without a scratch, and had managed to
just finish his job before we were attacked, which was lucky."

Jimmy had taken in every syllable of Parker's story. He had tried
to picture himself in the same bad fix, and had caught the idea of
Parker's lightning action. "This fellow must be as quick as a cat,"
he thought. "I wonder if I would have had sense enough to grasp the
situation in the way he did? Well, if I get in a similar fix I will
have some idea of what to do, thanks to him."

Weeks afterward Jimmy heard that story of Parker's fight with five
Boche planes from another source. He then learned that Parker had
omitted an interesting feature of the tale. Before Immelmann swooped
on him, Parker had smashed up and sent to ground two of the four
Boche machines which had originally attacked him.

The Brighton boys soon learned that the most outstanding characteristic
of veteran fliers was modesty. A new chivalry had sprung up with the
development of the air service. Every successful flier had to be a
thorough sportsman to win through, and never did the boys meet a real
veteran at the, game who would tell of his own successes.

The general view of the flying men at the front was that the man who
did the prosaic work of daily reconnaissance and got back safe and
sound, without frequent spectacular combats and hair-breadth escapes
that made good telling, was just as much of a hero and took his life
in his hands just as surely, as did the man who went out to individual
duel with an adversary, and accomplished some stunt that had a spice
of novelty in it.

The second in command at the airdrome gave Parker and Jimmy their
fin