us is getting big
and bold," he said; "Fritz has a new machine and he is making the most
of it. There they come, the beauties!"

He slipped his field-glasses from the case at his belt and focused them
upon the sky. The enemy came, a graceful V-shaped flight of monstrous
geese, throbbing and humming, and the wandering patrols above changed
direction and flew to meet them.

As at a signal the V parted at the fork, each angle divided and
subdivided into two, so that where one broad arrow-head had been, were
four diamonds. The anti-aircraft guns were staining the evening skies
brown and white till the attacking squadrons came gliding like tiny
flies into the disturbed area, when the gun-fire ceased.

And now friend and enemy were so mixed that it needed an expert eye to
distinguish them. They circled, climbed, dived, looped over and about
one another, and it seemed as if the tendency of the oncoming wave was
to retire.

"They're going. They've had enough," said the general.

Two machines were wobbling to earth, one in a blaze, whilst a third
planed down toward the enemy's lines. The fighters were going farther
and farther away, all except three machines that seemed engaged in
weaving an invisible thread one about the other.

Under and over, round, up, down, and all the time the ceaseless chatter
of machine-guns.

Then one side-slipped, recovered and dropped on his tail to earth. The
fight was now between two machines, the maneuvers were repeated, the
same knitting of some queer design until--

"Got him!" yelled the general.

The German plane fell in that slow spiral which told its own tale to the
expert watchers. Then suddenly his nose went down and he crashed.

"Who's the man? Tam, for a ducat!"

Blackie nodded.

Tam's machine was planing down to earth.

"He'll miss the aerodrome," said the general.

"That's not Tam's way of returning at all," said Blackie with knitted
brows.

The machine dropped in the very field where the "Sausage-Killer" had
been brought down a week before. It did not skim down but landed
awkwardly, swaying from side to side until it came to a stand-still.

Blackie was racing across the field. He reached the machine and took one
glance at the pilot. Then he turned to the mechanic who followed at his
heels.

"'Phone an ambulance," he said; "they've got Tam at last."

For Tam sat limply in his seat, his chin on his breast, his hand still
clasped about the bloody grip of his machine