owy figures came running toward me. Forgetting, in the joy of so
fortunate a landing, my anxiety of a moment before, I shouted out,
"Bonsoir, messieurs!" Then I heard some one say, "Ich glaube--" losing
the rest of it in the sound of tramping feet and an undercurrent of
low, guttural murmurs. In a moment my Spad was surrounded by a
widening circle of round hats, German infantrymen's hats.

Here was the ignoble end to my career as an airman. I was a prisoner,
a prisoner because of my own folly, because I had dallied along like a
silly girl, to "look at the pretty clouds." I saw in front of me a
long captivity embittered by this thought. Not only this: my Spad was
intact. The German authorities would examine it, use it. Some German
pilot might fly with it over the lines, attack other French machines
with my gun, my ammunition!

Not if I could help it! They stood there, those soldiers, gaping,
muttering among themselves, waiting, I thought, for an officer to tell
them what to do. I took off my leather gloves, then my silk ones under
them, and these I washed about in the oil under my feet. Then, as
quietly as possible, I reached for my box of matches.

"Qu'est-ce-que vous faites la? Allez! Vite!"

A tramping of feet again, and a sea of round hats bobbing up and down
and vanishing in the gloom. Then I heard a cheery "Ca va, monsieur?
Pas de mal?" By way of answer I lighted a match and held it out, torch
fashion. The light glistened on a round, red face and a long French
bayonet. Finally I said, "Vous etes Francais, monsieur?" in a weak,
watery voice.

"Mais oui, mon vieux! Mais oui!" this rather testily. He didn't
understand at first that I thought myself in Germany. "Do I look like
a Boche?"

Then I explained, and I have never heard a Frenchman laugh more
heartily. Then he explained and I laughed, not so heartily, a great
deal more foolishly.

I may not give my location precisely. But I shall be disclosing no
military secrets in saying that I am not in Germany. I am not even in
the French war-zone. I am closer to Paris than I am to the enemy
first-line trenches. In a little while the sergeant with the round red
face and the long French bayonet, whose guest I am for the night, will
join me here. If he were an American, to the manner born and bred, and
if he knew the cartoons of that man Briggs, he might greet me in this
fashion:--

"When you have been on patrol a long way behind the enemy lines,
shooting up towns