light to call us
aloft for our daily reconnaissance when Nap let his tongue loose.

"Five years ago, when the Wright Brothers first flew, Europe went dotty
and began to offer big prizes for stunts in the air. Wright took his old
'bus across the pond and won everything. Next year our Glen Curtis went
over and brought back all the scalps. Then America got tired. We live in
a hurry there. We're the spoilt kids of the earth, always wanting a new
toy. When we tired of straight flying, we went in for circus stunts;
such as spiral turning, volplaning, upside-down flying and looping the
loop. We interested the crowd for a while, as there was a chance of some
of us smashing up. But when flying got safe and sane and the aeroplane
almost foolproof, the public got cold feet, and the only men flying when
I left, were young McCormick, the Harvester chap of Chicago,
occasionally hiking across Lake Michigan in his 'amphoplane,' and
Beechy, dodging death in 'aeroplane versus automobile' races.

"Curtis has a factory that had been shooing the bailiff till Wanamaker
came along and financed that Atlantic aeroplane that was too heavy to
carry its weight; and Lieutenant Porte, who was to take it across, was
in a fix till this war came along and called him over. Orville Wright is
trying to make a do of his factory. It is significant that Captain
Mitchell, of the U.S. Signal Corps, the other day asked the U.S.
Government 'to help those fellows out or they'll have to quit the
business.' So you see Jefson, that's why I get the huff when I see the
same sort of thing over here, especially in times like these 'that try
men's souls.'"

Then the dawn light streaked the eastern sky rim. We pulled the plane
from under the tree screen. The propeller hummed, dragged us across a
dozen yards and up into the cold air of the early New Year morn.

[Illustration: "When flying got safe and sane."--Chapter IV.]

CHAPTER V.

The Tired Feeling.

Our quarters were outside Epernay, about fifteen miles south of Rheims,
with the Marne between us and the enemy.

To the north the horizon was fringed with the ridge-backed plateau cut
by the Aisne. The enemy had been holding that fringe since October,
having pushed back our almost daily attempts to get on to it. We got a
particularly bad smack early in 1915, after crossing at Soissons.

To the north east was the ridge covered by the Argonne Forest; a sealed
area to the man in the air.

We had been her