It was only too true. The engines had been set going, for the Zeppelin commander had tried to make his escape, just as he was discovered, but it was too late. He had never suspected that Himmelman's terrible opponent was overhead, having climbed up twelve thousand feet while he had been hiding in the cloud. "Ach! Gott in Himmel! Wir sind verloren! Donner and Blitz!" Never will Dastral forget the sight which he beheld that night, close at hand, for the Huns now realised that all was lost, and that a terrible and speedy vengeance awaited them all from which there was no escape. As the huge envelope kindled into fierce leaping flames, two hundred feet high, the pilot could plainly see the panic-stricken crew of the doomed airship, wringing their hands in terror and fright, as they dashed madly along the narrow footways that led from one gondola to another, trying to escape, till the last second, from the fierce flames that spurted out above and below, and licked up and consumed everything with their intense heat. It was truly a terrible sight, and the burning mass lit up the countryside far below as well as the great metropolis away to the south. Never since the day when every hill-top in England was aflame with the fires that announced the coming of the Spanish Armada, in the days of the great sea-dogs, had such a beacon been lighted in this land of ours. Down, down fell the flaming mass, lower and lower, while the daring pilot, bewildered at what he had done, followed her, circling round and round, till, when some eight thousand feet from the ground, one of her four hundred-weight bombs, with which her crew had hoped to wipe out some peaceful village, exploded with the intense heat. "Boom-m-m! Crash!" came the terrible sound, and the flaming mass, shivered into a thousand fragments by the explosion, fell down to the peaceful earth below with the charred and mutilated bodies of its crew of baby-killers. A few minutes later Dastral, guided by a score of still flaming fragments about the adjacent fields, landed safely on the level stretch of grass from which he had ascended to fight the midnight raider. Next morning the daring pilot was decorated by His Majesty King George, and ten days later, having bade farewell to his friend, Tim Burkitt, he was back with his Squadron in France, and leading "B" Flight over the German lines once again. CHAPTER VII COWDIE, THE "SPARE PART" "REVEILLE! Show a leg there!" shouted Corporal Yap, one morning, as he went round the tents and hangars about the aerodrome near Contalmaison. The sleepy air-mechanics of the Royal Flying Corps in the field opened their eyes and yawned, showing no immediate disposition to rise, for the fatigue of the previous day's work had scarcely passed away. "Did you hear me, Cowdie, you, 'spare part.' Get up there smartly. I shan't call you again. If you're not on parade in fifteen minutes you'll be for the high jump."