been reconnoitering the German
lines in one of their own make of machines," said Lieutenant Mackinson,
as the Taube came within a hundred yards of the ground and righted
herself for a landing.

There was a general rush toward it as it hit the ground. Of its own
momentum it rolled to within a two minutes' run of where the lieutenant
and the others had been standing. In another instant it was entirely
surrounded by a crowd of curious American soldiers.

But if they were surprised at seeing seated therein two men in the
uniforms of the United States army, their feelings hardly compared with
those of Lieutenant Mackinson, Joe, Slim and Frank Hoskins, as they
recognized, stepping out of the Taube, Jerry and the observation officer
with whom he had occupied the stationary balloon practically all of that
day.

"Who are you?" "What happened?" "Where have you been?" and a score of
similar questions were fired at them by the other soldiers as Jerry
shook hands with his friends, and the officer smilingly made away to
file his report.

"Well, to put it briefly," Jerry said, in answer to the general demands
for information, "we were anchored off there most of the day in an
observation balloon. Late in the afternoon a shell cut our cable, and
almost before we knew it we had been carried behind the German lines.

"The fight was still commanding the attention of almost everyone, and
after descending a little by permitting some of the gas to escape, we
jumped over the side of the basket and came down on our parachutes. I
landed in a deserted barnyard, and the officer hit the earth only a
short distance away.

"While we were hiding there, debating just what we should do, along
comes a Taube, and its pilot decides to make a landing almost at that
same place. Well, the officer being a pretty good pilot, we decided to
have that machine. We got it, and I guess that pilot's head aches yet
where I plumped him with the butt of my gun when he wasn't expecting
anything of the kind.

"But some other German aviators saw the affair, apparently recognized
our uniforms, and hardly gave us time to make a decent start.

"Say," Jerry concluded, "they certainly did pebble us with machine-gun
bullets! I saw two bounce off the propeller, and one broke a wire on the
left wing, making us flap around rather uncertainly for a few minutes.
It was a great race, though, and we considered our greatest danger lay
in landing on this side. We knew it would