end there glowed for an instant a yellow furnace of
fire. Then a flame shot up, followed by clouds of black smoke. Like a
stone, the basket crashed down, passing the two white, drifting specks
on the way, and leaving behind it a long streak of black.

Rolling from side to side like a drunken man, the aeroplane was coming
towards its next quarry. Lewis guns, machine-guns, Archies were now
all firing full blast, but the pilot continued on his course. Tracer
bullets shot up like lines of light, but so far he had come through
untouched. From the balloons the observers dived out until at one
moment there were ten in the air. And each balloon in turn followed
its owners, a flaming, smoking remnant . . .

Then came the end--as suddenly as it had begun. A tracer bullet seemed
to pass right through the aeroplane. Like a tiny ball of fire the
bullet struck it, and then went out. The plane swerved violently,
righted and swerved again. Then it spun down, rocking from side to
side, while a burst of white flame roared all round it. And, falling a
little faster than the plane, two black spots, which did not steady
after a hundred feet. They crashed fifty yards from the tin hut, and
almost before they reached the ground the officers were on the spot. A
little distance away the aeroplane was blazing, and they could feel the
heat as they bent over the pilot and his observer. They were both
dead, and the pilot was unrecognisable; a bullet had entered the base
of his skull from behind. But the observer was not much damaged
outwardly. He lay--arms outstretched--looking up at the sky, on the
ground that the farmer had just ploughed. He seemed to smile cynically
at the hoarse cheering now spreading from field to field, from camp to
camp. Perhaps even then he had realised the futility of it all . . .

For a few seconds Derek Vane looked at him gravely, while close by two
excited men from different units argued raucously as to which battalion
had brought the aeroplane down.

"I tell yer I saw the ruddy bullet hit the perisher right in the
middle," cried one claimant. "It were old Ginger's gun, I tell yer.
E's a fair corker is Ginger with a Lewis."

The smile spread till it was almost a grin on the dead man's face.
Muscular contraction, of course, but. . . . With a sudden movement
Vane stooped down and covered the face.

"Sergeant-Major." He turned to the N.C.O. beside him. "Armed guard
round the plane at once till t