He leads the column rapidly, now closed up into a compact group like a flock of sheep, towards the road from Harbonnières, which is lined with trees that will conceal us from the aeroplane. Two other bombs burst behind us one after another. “That makes four. He can’t have many left. He didn’t bring a truck!” Some hundred yards away near a pond cows graze absolutely indifferent to the battle in the air. The “75” again begins to fire. Its bursts of shrapnel come close to the aeroplane but do not hit it. Another bomb. I stop. It looks as though it were going to fall in front of us. I’m not going to put my head under the knife. So I start to draw my horse back under the trees. There it is. It has fallen in the fields again. But its explosion throws up dismal fragments, large and bloody ones. It fell squarely on the herd of cows and annihilated it. “The bungler! He’s wasting the milk,” comes in the accent of the faubourgs nearly under my horse’s feet. Hard by, in the hole of the “320,” Lace’s half-section has placed its battery. I had approached it without seeing it as I drew back under the threat of the bomb. “Say, how long are you going to let him do that?” I ask. “Let him do it!... You don’t mean that, Margis. He won’t blow on his sauerkraut this evening.” “Wait and see what sort of a menu we’re going to serve that ace.” It was Grizard, an actor in the suburban theaters, speaking. He looks like the best natured and quietest of men, but he is a pitiless pointer who never lets his prey escape. “Let me play a little, Margis. See how pretty he is, how fine, and how well he flies. It is too bad, a pretty little canary like that.” “Ah! Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Two turns, and at three we will commence. You’ll see what you will see.” “On with the music.” And the music begins the dance. First, come slow shots, rhythmic and irregular tac-tacs, spaced like the prelude to a slow waltz. Grizard is searching for the tune; then, gradually, he accelerates the time, and the tac-tac becomes faster. Now he has the aeroplane in his field of fire ... the bullets dance around him in a ring of fire, without a break ... the dance of death! And the circle grows narrower and narrower, infernal, pitiless. Everyone looks; there is nothing to see up there; bullets are elusive and invisible, but we make out the drama. From his rapid evolutions, his sharp darts back and forth, his irregular and hurried spirals, we understand that the aviator has already been reached but is trying to baffle the fire which pursues him. The tac-tac continues. It is incessant, implacable, ferocious. The silence of death hovers over men and things. All Nature seems to await the issue of the combat which is no longer doubtful.