He flew on west, hardly for the moment daring to believe he had escaped, opening the throttle and starting to lift from his dangerous proximity to the ground mechanically, and with his mind hardly yet working properly. If he had not caught the Hun with that last handful of shots before his second gun jammed.... And then, almost before he had collected his wits enough to realise properly how close his escape had been, that same horrible clatter of machine-gun fire from the air above and behind him broke out, the same hiss and snap of bullets came streaming about him. For a moment he had a wild idea that his Hun had not actually crashed, but a glance round showed that it was no longer the brilliant red machine, but another, and again a fighting scout. Exactly the old performance started all over again, but this time without even that slender chance he had used so well before of catching his enemy with the fire of his top gun. Again he went through the twisting and dodging and turning to avoid his relentless enemy and the fire that crackled about him. Again he dived into fields, skimmed the ground, hurdled over low bushes and hedges, used every flying trick and artifice he knew, but had never before dared try at less than thousands of feet height, to shake off his pursuer; and again as he flew he wriggled and worked at the jammed gun in front of him. For breathless minutes he worked, casting quick glances from the ground rushing under him to the gun mechanism, jockeying his machine with steady pressures or sharp kicks on the rudder-bar and one hand on the joy-stick, while the other fumbled and worked at the gun, and the bullets sang and cracked about him. By all the laws of chance, by all the rules of hazard, he should have been killed, shot down or driven down into a crash, a dozen times over in those few minutes; just as by all the limits of possibility he could never hope to clear a jammed gun while doing fancy flying at such a height. But against all chance and hazard and possibility--as pilots do oftener than most people outside themselves know--he flew on untouched, and ... cleared his jamb. By now he was worked up to such a pitch of fear, frenzy, desperation, anger--it may have been any of them, it may have been something of all--that he took no further thought of manœuvring or tactics, whirled blindly and drove straight at his enemy, firing as he went, feeling a savage joy in the jar and bang of his spurting gun. To avoid that desperate rush and the streaming bullets, the Hun swerved wide and swooped out in a banking turn, a turn so hurriedly and blindly taken that, before he could properly see, he found himself whirling into the edge of a forest the chase had unwittingly skirted. Ailie saw him distinctly try to wrench round to clear the trees--but he was too near; to hoick up and over them--but he was too low. He crashed sideways on a tree-trunk, down headlong into the ground.