earth and trust
themselves to all the winds of heaven in a frail box of cloth-covered
sticks.

The last clear space grew smaller and smaller. I searched for an
outlet, but the clouds closed in and in a moment I was hopelessly lost
in a blanket of cold drenching mist.

I could hardly see the outlines of my machine and had no idea of my
position with reference to the earth. In the excitement of this new
adventure I forgot the speed-dial, and it was not until I heard the
air screaming through the wires that I remembered it. The indicator
had leaped up fifty kilometres an hour above safety speed, and I
realized that I must be traveling earthward at a terrific pace. The
manner of the descent became clear at the same moment. As I rolled out
of the cloud-bank, I saw the earth jauntily tilted up on one rim,
looking like a gigantic enlargement of a page out of Peter Newell's
"Slant Book." I expected to see dogs and dishpans, baby carriages and
ash-barrels roll out of every house in France, and go clattering off
into space.

IV

AT G. D. E.

Somewhere to the north of Paris, in the _zone des armees_, there is a
village, known to all aviators in the French service as G. D. E. It is
the village through which pilots who have completed their training at
the aviation schools pass on their way to the front; and it is here
that I again take up this journal of aerial adventure.

We are in lodgings, Drew and I, at the Hotel de la Bonne Rencontre,
which belies its name in the most villainous fashion. An inn at
Rochester in the days of Henry the Fourth must have been a fair match
for it, and yet there is something to commend it other than its
convenience to the flying field. Since the early days of the
Escadrille Lafayette, many Americans have lodged here while awaiting
their orders for active service. As I write, J. B. is asleep in a bed
which has done service for a long line of them. It is for this reason
that he chose it, in preference to one in a much better state of
repair which he might have had. And he has made plans for its purchase
after the war. Madame Rodel is to keep careful record of all its
American occupants, just as she has done in the past. She is pledged
not to repair it beyond the bare necessity which its uses as a bed may
require, an injunction which it was hardly necessary to lay upon her,
judging by the other furniture in our apartment. Drew is not
s