s for his victim among eight
other machines, and had pulverized it at a distance of a few yards.

This victory was his forty-ninth. He secured his fiftieth the very next
day, bringing down a D.F.W. in flames over Westrobeke, the enemy showing
fight, for Guynemer's magic airplane was hit in the tail, in one of the
longitudinal spars, the exhaust pipe, and the hood, and had to be
repaired. This day of glory was also one of mourning for the Storks.
Captain Auger who, trusting his star after seven triumphs, had gone
scouting alone, was shot in the head, and, after mustering energy enough
to bring his machine back to the landing-ground, died almost
immediately.

Fifty machines destroyed! This had been Guynemer's dream. The apparently
inaccessible figure had gradually seemed a possibility. Finally it had
become a fact. Fifty machines down, without taking into account those
which fell too far from the official observers, or those which had been
only disabled, or those which had brought home sometimes a pilot,
sometimes a passenger, dead in their seats. What would Guynemer do now?
Was he not tired of hunting, killing, or destroying in the high regions
of the atmosphere? Did he not feel the exhaustion consequent on the
nervous strain of unlimited effort? Could he be entirely deaf to voices
which advised him to rest, now that he was a captain, an officer in the
Legion of Honor, and, at barely twenty-two, could hardly hope for more
distinction? On the other hand, he had shown in his unceasing effort
towards an absolutely perfect machine a genius for mechanics which might
profitably be given play elsewhere. The occasion was not far to seek,
for he had to take his damaged airplane back to the works; and what
with this interruption and the precarious state of his health--for he
had left the hospital too soon--he might reasonably have applied for
leave. Nor was this all. The adoption of the new tactics of fighting in
numbers might change the nature of his action: he might become the
commanding officer of a unit, run less risk, indulge his temerity only
once in a while, and yet make himself useful by infusing his own spirit
into aspiring pilots.

Slowly all these ideas occurred, if not to him, at all events to his
friends. Guynemer has slain his fifty--they must have thought--Guynemer
can now rest. What would it matter if some envious people should make
remarks? "It is a pleasure worthy of a king," Alexander once said after
Antisthe