im; as Pegoud told
us the other day: 'The Zeppelins! Ah, they are slow as geese, but our
aeroplanes, they are swift as swallows.'

"The trouble is there's not enough opportunity here to do things. This
daily 'good-morning fly' and cleaning engines the rest of the day is
getting on my nerves, we've been marking time here for months. I want
something to happen along 'right soon.'"

And something did happen along next morning.

CHAPTER VI.

Civilised Warfare.

Nap was in a bad humor.

The breeze from the north-east had kept us up for three days. It came to
us over fields of long-unburied dead. It explained our morbid craving
for tobacco--and Nap, during the night, had lost a cherished half-cigar!

We felt the cold that morning, as we wheeled the 'plane into the open
space. The engine was also out of sorts, coughing like an asthmatic
victim.

The first sun ray shot into the sky and called us aloft. So with engine
spluttering the 'plane climbed over the Marne-Vesle Ridge and above the
cloud of smoke that hid Rheims 5000 feet below us.

Looking far to the north-west, a great fog cloud lay over the wet
country of the Yser. About twenty-five miles off, near Laon, we spotted
one of the enemy's observation balloons being inflated.

"Shall we drop a 'cough-drop'?" Nap shouted to me through the speaking
tube.

"No chance," I shouted back, "there's something coming at us."

A swift Taube was racing up to challenge. It was rising to get the
"drop" on us. We carried an aerial gun, but hesitated to fire, as we
wanted all our speed to get above our rival. Our engine lost its bad
temper for a change. Round and round we began to circle like game cocks
spoiling for a fight; rising, forgetting, in the excitement, the cold of
the upper air--higher and higher, till Nap shouted, "We'll get her
beneath us in the next round and then for a 'cough-drop' or the gun."

But the Taube had seen our advantage. It banked up on a sharp turn,
dropped like a stone fully a thousand feet, making a magnificent
volplane, and scurried away like a frightened vulture, dropping and
dropping in a series of gigantic swoops.

"We won't chase," said Nap, "she wants to bring us into range of their
'air-squirts,' and 'Archibalds' are not pleasant on an empty stomach."

[Illustration: "ONE OF THE ENEMY'S 'AIR-SQUIRTS.'"

A German Aerial Gun.]

We turned home and then the engine sulked again. I could see Nap was in
trouble. It was was just as