The observer clambered, and the pilot was lifted down from the cockpits and taken to a dug-out where a First Aid Post had been established. The Post and the trenches round it were crowded with wounded men. The pilot was attended to--he was already far spent with two bad body wounds--and the observer while he had his hand dressed asked for news of the attack. "Don't know much," said the doctor, "except that my own battalion had a bad doing. Left half got over with little loss but the right half had to go through a barrage and was just about wiped out. These"--with a jerk of his head to the casualties--"are some of 'em. But most are out there--killed." "I saw the barrage as we came back," said the observer bitterly. "Across the Elbow Trench? Yes, and about the only bit of the whole line they managed to barrage properly. And they could only do that because we couldn't out the guns that laid it down. Couldn't do our job properly and counter-battery them because we were up on a crock of a 'bus that the Huns could fly rings round, and that let us down into rifle range and got him"--nodding his head at the recumbent pilot--"his dose. All just for want of a good machine under us." "Chuck it, old man," said the pilot faintly. "The old 'Gamecock' did her best ... and stood to it pretty well considering." "Mighty well," said the observer hastily, suddenly aware that he had spoken louder than he meant. "I'm not grousing. It's a sheer matter of luck after all. How d'you feel now? Any easier?" But he was wrong. It was not luck. It was the Sequel. The doubtfully efficient machine sent on dangerous work, the unsilenced batteries and high-explosive barrage, the hundreds of dead men lying out in the open, the "Gamecock's" pilot dying slowly there in the trampled mud of the dug-out under the flickering candles' light were all part of the Sequel--a sequel, of which the aircraft strikers had never thought, to a strike of which the dead and dying men had never even heard. "We were battered all round the ring at first, We were hammered to hell and back, But we stood to old Frightful Fritz's worst And we came for another whack. Now the fight's swung round; now we're winning fast, And we'll make it a knock-out too, If Home doesn't let us down at the last, If our backers will see it through." XVIII THE RAID-KILLERS