For four days this sort of thing continued. In that time the mechanics averaged twenty and a half hours' driving hard work a day, the shop electrics were never out, the lorry-shop lathe, with relays running it never ceased to turn; the men ate their food at the benches as they worked, threw themselves down in corners of the hangars and under the benches, and snatched odd hours of sleep between a Flight going out and another coming in. By the mercy, dud weather came on the fifth day, driving rain and blanketting mist, and the mechanics--no, not rested, but spurted again and cleared up the débris of past days, repaired, refitted, and re-rigged their machines in readiness for the next call, whenever it might come. At the finish, about midnight of the fourth day, some of them had to be roused from sleeping as they stood or sat at their work; one man fell asleep as he stood working the forge bellows and tumbled backwards into a tub of icy water. Then they reeled and stumbled to their beds, and again by the grace--since once asleep it is doubtful if mortal man could have wakened them--the sixth day was also dud, and the mechanics slept their fill, which on the average was somewhere about the round of the clock. By then the fury of the battle assault had died down, the Squadron's duties were eased, and the mechanics dropped to a normal battle routine of fourteen or fifteen hours a day. The Air Activity speeded up again after a few days of this, and from then on for another fortnight the men in the air were putting in two and three patrols a day and with some of the Artillery Observing machines in the air for four and four and a half hours at a time, while the men on the ground in the Squadrons were kept at full stretch and driving hard night and day to maintain their machines' efficiency. No. 00's mechanics did an average of nineteen to twenty hours work a day for fifteen days, and it is probable that if the full fact were known so, or nearly so, did the mechanics of most of the other Squadrons on that front. For, as it always does in prolonged fine weather and continued air work, the "air supremacy" became much more than a matter of the superiority of the fighters or fliers, dropped down to a race between the German mechanics and our own, their ability to stand the pace, to work the longest hours, to put in the best and the most work in the least time, to keep the most machines fit to take the air.