Down below the ground was hidden under a drifting haze of smoke and dust, and the "Gamecock" circled slowly while pilot and observer searched for their objectives. They found the other spots on which they had directed the guns--spots which now were marked by whirling, eddying clouds through which the bursting high-explosive still flamed red at quick intervals. From there at last they found the next target, and the observer hastily signalled back to his battery to fire. The engine was giving trouble again, missing every now and then, running slowly and laboriously, while the pilot fiddled and fretted about throttle and spark and petrol feed and tried to coax her into better running. The observer failed to catch the puffing smoke of the battery's first shot and signalled the code to fire again. Before the next shot came, a stutter of machine-gun fire broke out overhead, and pilot and observer glanced quickly up at the clouds that drifted over and hid the fighters. The machine-gun fire rose and fell in gusts, and then out of the cloud 1,000 feet up a machine whirled and spun down past them, recovered an instant and shot eastward in a steep gliding plunge, fell away suddenly, and crashed amongst the trenches. Immediately after her there fell out of the sky a cluster of machines, wheeling and circling and diving at each other like a swarm of fighting jackdaws. The "Gamecock" suddenly found herself involved in a scrimmaging mix-up without her crew knowing who or what was in it. A pair of wings, with thick black crosses painted on them, whizzed across the "Gamecock's" bows, and the pilot promptly ripped off a quick burst of fire at her as she passed. "Never mind them," shouted the observer, "get on with the shoot," and leaned out from his cockpit to watch for the fall of the next shell. The "Gamecock" resumed her steady circling, while the fight raged round and over her and drifted in wheeling rushes clear of her and away quarter, half a mile to the south.