You bank and turn sideways, so as to let your observer get in some shooting while you examine your gun. From the position of the check-lever you realise that there has been a misfire. Quickly but calmly--feverish haste might make a temporary stoppage chronic--you lean over and remedy the fault. Again you press the trigger, and never was sound more welcome than the _ta-ta-ta-ta-ta_ which shows you are ready for all comers. Once more you turn to meet the attacking Germans. As you do so your observer points to a black-crossed bird which is gliding down after he has crippled it. But three more are closing round you. Something sings loudly a yard away. You turn your head and see that a landing wire has been shot through; and you thank the gods that it was not a flying wire. The flight-commander and another companion have just arrived to help you. They dash at a Boche, and evidently some of their shots reach him, for he also separates himself and glides down. The two other Huns, finding themselves outnumbered, retire. All this while the two rear machines have been having a bad time. They were surrounded by five enemies at the very beginning of the fight. One of the Boches has since disappeared, but the other four are very much there. You sweep round and go to the rescue, accompanied by the flight-commander and the remaining British machine. Just as you arrive old X's bus drops forward and down, spinning as it goes. It falls slowly at first, but seems to gather momentum; the spin becomes wilder and wilder, the drop faster and faster. "Poor old X," you think, "how damnable to lose him. Now the poor beggar won't get the leave he has been talking about for the last two months." Then your thoughts turn to Y, the observer in the lost machine. You know his fiancée, you remember he owes you 30 francs from last night's game of bridge. You burn to avenge poor X and Y, but all the Huns have dived and are now too low for pursuit. You recover your place in the formation and the fight ends as suddenly as it began. One German machine has been destroyed and two driven down, but--"one of ours has failed to return." When you return and land, you are not so contented as usual to be back. There will be two vacant places at dinner, and there is a nasty job to be done. You will have to write rather a painful letter to Y's fiancée. Madam, you are now at liberty to give up the temporary role of a bold, bad pilot and become once more your charming self. FRANCE, _November_, 1916 VII. BACK IN BLIGHTY. ... You last heard of my continued existence, I believe, from a field post-card with but one of the printed lines uncrossed: "I have been admitted to hospital." When this was sent I had no more expectation of a return to Blighty than has a rich Bishop of not entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Nevertheless, here we are again, after a three days' tour along the Red Cross lines of communication.