nd he proceeded to practise 'stunts'--the loop,
the spinning nose-dive, and others I didn't know the names of. It was
glorious fun, and he handled his machine as a good rider coaxes a
nervous horse over a stiff hurdle. He had that extra something in his
blood that makes the great pilot.

Presently the chessboard of green and brown had changed to a deep
purple with faint silvery lines like veins in a rock. We were crossing
the Border hills, the place where I had legged it for weary days when I
was mixed up in the Black Stone business. What a marvellous element was
this air, which took one far above the fatigues of humanity! Archie had
done well to change. Peter had been the wise man. I felt a tremendous
pity for my old friend hobbling about a German prison-yard, when he had
once flown a hawk. I reflected that I had wasted my life hitherto. And
then I remembered that all this glory had only one use in war and that
was to help the muddy British infantryman to down his Hun opponent. He
was the fellow, after all, that decided battles, and the thought
comforted me.

A great exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and mine was
to have a sudden downfall. It was getting on for noon and we were well
into England--I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were
somewhere in the north of Yorkshire--when the machine began to make odd
sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air. We dived and
then climbed, but the confounded thing kept sputtering. Archie passed
back a slip of paper on which he had scribbled: 'Engine conked. Must
land at Micklegill. Very sorry.' So we dropped to a lower elevation
where we could see clearly the houses and roads and the long swelling
ridges of a moorland country. I could never have found my way about,
but Archie's practised eye knew every landmark. We were trundling along
very slowly now, and even I was soon able to pick up the hangars of a
big aerodrome.

We made Micklegill, but only by the skin of our teeth. We were so low
that the smoky chimneys of the city of Bradfield seven miles to the
east were half hidden by a ridge of down. Archie achieved a clever
descent in the lee of a belt of firs, and got out full of imprecations
against the Gladas engine. 'I'll go up to the camp and report,' he
said, 'and send mechanics down to tinker this darned gramophone. You'd
better go for a walk, sir. I don't want to answer questions about you
till we're ready to start. I reckon it'll be a