Dastral's professional curiosity also urged him to do this. The huge machine was of a new type, for in all his experience he had seen nothing like it, and he was eager to examine it. Keeping his eye, therefore, on the descending German, who was trying with the utmost care to navigate the aerial monster to the ground, Dastral banked, then spiralled, and after one or two rapid nose-dives, planed swiftly down to within a few score of yards of the place where the monster must ultimately descend; and three minutes later, having landed, he waited calmly on the ground for mein herr to complete his landing. Down, down she came, lobbing first one way and then another, finishing up with a bump which completed the wreckage of one of her huge outstretched planes, and hurling the lifeless form of an observer-gunner to the earth. "My word, what a size she is!" cried some one from the group of officers and men standing by. She was a mass of wreckage, and how the wounded pilot had managed to bring her down so calmly was a miracle. "Where are you hurt, Captain?" asked Dastral, helping the wounded man from the wrecked car. "Here and here, Flight-Commander!" replied the German in good English, leaning heavily on the pilot, who a few minutes before had been his deadly enemy. "Fetch Captain Young, the M.O., at once!" ordered Dastral, and immediately one of the air-mechanics ran off to find Number Nine. "You were a marvel to bring her down without a crash!" said Dastral. "I'm sure I could never have done it." The German smiled. He was a fair-haired Prussian, not at all of the Hun type, and there was moisture in his blue eyes as he replied, "I thank you for the compliment, Flight-Commander. You also are _some_ pilot, as you English say." "And she is _some_ machine, too!" urged Dastral, trying to keep up the man's spirit until the medical officer arrived. "Ah, my poor machine, and my poor gunners! They were brave fellows and they died for the Fatherland. And the machine?--yes, she was a beauty, and it was her first trip. Now she is a ruin, and I must surrender her to you, but you will never be able to use her. See!" Dastral turned round to look, and noticed that the German warplane was in flames, for the pilot, mortally wounded as he was, knew his duty, which was, if he could not bring his machine back, to destroy it. And his last act, which had been unnoticed, ere he left the machine, was to set her quietly on fire, only waiting to make sure that the second gunner was really dead. "Ah! My poor machine, but you English--will--never--use--her!" As he uttered these words slowly, gasping and clutching at his heart, the German turned ghastly pale, and, staggering, fell into the arms of Dastral just as the medical officer came running up. For a moment Dastral held him, but the blood began to gush from his mouth and nostrils, and then his head fell back, for he was dead.