d helpless
others, too.

"There they go! They've had enough!" shouted Ned, and as he spoke it
was seen that the Hun machines, which had been circling about, as
though looking for more targets on the ground below, had turned and
were speeding toward their own lines, pursued by the American and
other machines, eager to visit on them just vengeance.

And then the hospital patients, some of them wounded airmen
themselves, watched the battle of the clouds, out of danger now that
the Huns were in retreat.

The machines were so high that little could be seen, but some one had
a pair of glasses and reported that one of the German craft was
disabled and was coming down out of control.

This information afterward proved to be correct. Then during the
battle which followed another German machine was set on fire; so that
a total of three were destroyed, and another of the six engaged in the
raid sent back damaged, and one of its occupants killed.

Nor did the Allied planes come off scatheless. One was shot down and
both occupants killed, while another man was wounded. But the hospital
had not been bombed, which was the great thing.

"Do you wonder that I'm aching to get back into the fight against such
beasts?" asked Jerry, when the patients had once more been carried
back to the wards, and Jerry and his chums had resumed their
conversation in a quiet place outside.

"Don't blame you a bit," assented Ned. "But we were talking about
Noddy Nixon."

"Yes," resumed the tall lad. "I was saying he asked a mighty queer
question of the surgeon and I have my own opinion----"

At that moment a smiling Red Cross nurse appeared and said:

"There's a visitor asking to see you, Mr. Hopkins."

"A visitor for me!" exclaimed Jerry.

"Yes, do you wish to see any one?"

"Man or young lady?" asked Ned, with a mischievous smile at his chum.

"Oh, a dear, little, bald-headed man, who peers at you in such a funny
way through his big glasses and----"

"Show him in!" cried Ned, Bob and Jerry in one voice.

CHAPTER XXII

AN UNEXPECTED CAPTURE

The smiling Red Cross nurse had no need to mention the name of the
visitor. The boys knew him for Professor Snodgrass after that
description, which could fit no one else. And the little scientist it
proved to be a moment later.

"Ah, here you are, boys!" he murmured, as though he had just parted
from them half an hour before, and under ordinary circumstances,
instead of the great war