Five minutes later the newcomers descended by rapid spirals, and, alighting on the aerodrome, taxied safely almost up to the very entrance of the sheds, and the pilots and observers alighted to report what they had discovered. They had been away two hours, had traversed fifty miles beyond the enemy's lines, and had picked up several night signals by a prearranged code, using the Morse flash and the Klaxon Horn. This information, which was of the utmost importance, had been collected from some of our most daring intelligence officers, who controlled a network of British spies behind the German lines. "Well done, Graham!" exclaimed the Major commanding the Squadron, as he grasped the Flight-Commander's hand on alighting. "Did you pick up anything?" "Yes, sir." "Then slip off your helmet and heavy coat, and make your report at once, and--hullo, there, Johnson!" "Sir," replied the sergeant in charge of the officers' mess, springing smartly to the salute. "Have breakfast ready in ten minutes in the private mess. Lay covers for all the pilots." "Yes, sir," replied Johnson, saluting once more, and clicking his heels at the "about-turn" he disappeared to introduce a little thunder amongst the early morning "fatigues" in the cook-house. A powerful and crafty foe, whose emissaries have never been surpassed in the espionage in the world, prevents me from giving the details of the reports brought home that morning by Graham and his pilots. Let it suffice, however, to say that amongst other information collected beyond the enemy's front, by a wonderful intelligence system of our own, it had been discovered in that dark hour before the dawn, by the Morse flash and the Klaxon Horn, that three German troop trains were to leave Liege that morning at eight o'clock, and, travelling via Mauberge and Cambrai, were to reinforce the hardly pressed German troops facing the British soldiers on the Somme. There was a jovial breakfast party that morning in the officers' mess of the --th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, for in this wonderful Corps, which, in the short space of two years, has done the seemingly impossible, and taken the high jump from an insignificant detachment, and become the most brilliant service under the British flag, there is an _esprit de jeu_ as well as an _esprit de corps_ unsurpassed even by that of the Navy, with its centuries of tradition behind it. "How shall I know a British 'plane, if I meet it suddenly in mid-air?" asked a German pilot once of his Flight-Commander. "You'll know it because it will attack you!" was the reply. And never yet has a British pilot, with a single round of ammunition left in his drum, turned tail upon the enemy, even though when outnumbered three to one. For such a pilot, there would be no room in the Royal Flying Corps.