On they stumbled, over the broken ground, through pools of water, and soon they reached the tangled wire. Exhausted they were ready to sink with fatigue, yet they held out. But their hands were bleeding and torn by the wire, and their clothing was in shreds. Suddenly they heard the sound of voices behind them. Low voices called to each other, and the tramp of feet was also heard. "They are advancing. Quick! quick!" shouted Cowdie. Then, knowing that the British trenches could not be more than thirty yards in front of him, he called out: "Stand-to! The Huns are attacking!" The next instant a blaze of fire lit up the fog, as a dozen Very lights were fired up from the British trenches. The two figures of the men carrying the unconscious pilot and observer were clearly outlined. The sergeant of the Wiltshires shouted to his men: "Don't fire! They are the R.F.C. men bringing in their officers." The firing, however, came from a different direction, for the Germans, baulked of their prey, and seeing who had given them away, opened fire, and Cowdie stumbled into the British first-line trench into the arms of the sergeant of the Wiltshires, carrying his burden to the last. He was dead, shot through the heart. He had made the supreme sacrifice to save the man he loved. With a wild cheer the British received the welcome order to charge, and the last thing that Brat remembered was that cheer, as the men swept by him, and he also sank down with his load. Next day they buried Cowdie, "the regimental spare part." Gently they laid him to rest in a little graveyard by a shattered church, behind the British lines. And over his grave the bugles of the Wiltshires sounded the solemn notes of the "Last Post." And his comrades in Number 7 tent fired three volleys over the hero's grave, just as in the olden days, two thousand years ago, AEneas and his comrades, when they buried the hero Misenus, called his name thrice into the shades. And Bratby, he recovered from his wounds, and, to-day, upon his breast he wears the ribbons of the Military Medal. Dastral and Jock also recovered from their wounds, for their work was not yet done, and six weeks later were back from sick leave, preparing once more to strafe the Huns. CHAPTER VIII THE RAID ON KRUPPS IT was a dark night, some two or three hours before dawn, when Air-Mechanic Pearson, one of the outer sentries at the aerodrome near Contalmaison, thought he heard the whirr of propellers somewhere in the dark skies above. For a few seconds he peered up into the gloomy heavens, trying to locate the sound, for he was very much puzzled, and could not account for the sound on such a night. "They can't be aeroplanes returning from over the lines," he told himself, "or we should have had notice to light the flares. It will be a sheer impossibility to land without a crash on a dark night like this."