their steps.
The big show they had so long waited for was here with an ear-splitting,
nerve-racking tempest of thundering guns. The Big Parade!

2

At any other time the air forces would have stayed safely at home, not
daring to take wing on such a day when the ceiling was scarcely higher
than a man's head. But now they must go out, at any cost, blindly flying
and vainly seeking some view of the advancing troops. But they went out
singly, for to attempt formation flight on such a morning would be to
court disaster and death.

McGee and Larkin were the first of the squadron to take off for the
front, the interval between their time of departure being sufficient to
avoid any meeting as they climbed.

The fog bank was much thicker than McGee had anticipated. At a hundred
feet he could not see a thing above, below, or on either side. He headed
his new ship, a swift Spad, in the direction of Vauquois Hill, intending
to cross the line there and hoping that the crest of the hill might loom
up out of the fog.

Vain hope. It was impossible to see a thing. Any minute he might go
plowing into some hillside or foul his landing gear in the tops of
trees. It was eerie business, this flying by instinct and facing the
dreaded possibility of coming a cropper.

Several times he cut his motor, and at such times could hear the din of
battle below--and it was not any too _far_ below, either.

Added to the fear of crashing was the thought that any second he might
cross the path of a high angle shell which had been directed at some
enemy strong point. It was not a pleasant thought, but he could not
shake it off. Certainly the air was full of them, and if he was to get
any information as to the progress of the battle he must keep low and
accept all hazards. Then too, there was the chance that he might meet up
with some other plane drilling through the fog.

"Well," he thought aloud, "I'm a poor prune if I lose my nerve now. I
expressed my opinion of Siddons--and gee! how he'd like to be facing no
more than this."

It was a depressing, angering thought. Five days, von Herzmann had said.
Then Siddons would face a firing squad. In the meantime, there was no
human agency, on the Allied side of the line, that could stop the
inexorable march of time and the certain death which this man must meet.

It was this latter fact, the feeling of helpless impotency, that fired
McGee's brain with reckless daring and sent him boring through the f