ut warm, and the room in which they sat was quite cool; but the
memory of that scene, four miles up, brought the moisture to Will's
brow, after months had passed since the occurrence.

Two young officers in the mess had been interested listeners. One
of them, a slight youth named Mason, who hailed from the Pacific
Coast, now joined in the conversation.

"There has been an instance of an observer taking control of a plane
and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said
Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was
stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the
back. It did not kill him instantly, but he was not long in
succumbing to his wound. He had just energy enough left, after he
realized that he was very badly hurt, to tell his observer that he
was going off. Before he actually relinquished control of the machine,
the observer, who was a daring chap, climbed right out of his
seat, pulled himself along the fuselage, and half-sitting, half-lying,
managed to stick there, within reach of the control levers and the
engine cut-off.

"He was an old-time flyer himself, and understood aeroplane construction
pretty well, and he made a very decent landing not very far from our
front lines. Fortunately he was on the right side of them, though
from what he told us afterward that was more luck than judgment. He
thought he was much further back than he was.

"He had become very tired, owing to his strained position on the body
of the plane, and was afraid he would fall off. So he came down.
He had a bad shock when he found that his pilot was stone dead,
and had been for some time. He must have died when the observer
took over the control of the plane, but the observer, oddly enough,
never thought of him as dead, and quite expected to be able to bring
him around if he once got him safely landed."

"Well, that was enough to give anyone a shock," said Will. "But he
would have had a worse shock if he had come down on the Boche's
side. More than one chap has done that just through not knowing
exactly where he was. I can't imagine anything more tough than
to get yourself down when something has gone utterly wrong, thanking
your lucky stars that you are down with a whole skin, and then discover
you are booked for a Hun prison, after all. I could tell you a
thriller along that line, but it'll keep. You've had enough now to
make you believe that the Air Service