"So," said the Professor, "but shooting from an aeroplane depends not so much upon the gunner as upon the steersman. Their planes wabble, the metal frame work is too stiff, it doesn't yield to the air pressure." Along such lines the conversation continued for an hour or so. Neither the men nor Madame Oshima seemed the least bit excited over the prospects; but Ethel, striving to keep up external appearances, was inwardly torn with warring emotions. Making an excuse of wishing to look for something among her luggage, the girl finally escaped and walked quickly toward the other plane. But instead of stopping, she passed by and continued down between the rows of cotton, avoiding as much as possible the lights that dotted the field about her. "Oh, God!" she repeated under her breath; "Oh, God! I can't go! I won't go!" For some time she walked on briskly trying to calm her feverish mind and reason out a sane course of procedure. She was passing thus where the lights of two planes glowed fifty meters at either side, when she stumbled heavily over some dark object between the cotton rows. She turned to see what it was; and, bending forward, discerned in the starlight the body of a man. She started to run; then, fearing pursuit the more, checked her speed. As she did so some one grasped her arm and a heavy hand was clapped over her mouth. "Keep quiet," commanded her captor hoarsely. In another instant he had bent her back over his knee and thrown her--or rather dropped her for she did not resist--upon the soft earth beneath. "If you make a sound, I'll have to shoot," he said, resting a heavy knee upon her chest and clasping her slender wrist in a vise-like grip of a single hand. The girl breathed heavily. The man reached toward his hip pocket and drawing forth a bright metallic object held it close to her face. Her breath stopped short. Then a flood of light struck her full in the eyes, as her captor pressed the button on his flash lamp. "God! a woman!" the man gasped. The exclamation and voice were clearly not Japanese. Ethel felt the grip loosen from her wrists and the weight shift from her chest. "You're no Japanese!" he said under his breath, at the same time letting the glowing flash lamp fall from his hand. Presently Ethel raised her head and reached for the lamp where it lay wasting its rays against the black soil. She now turned the glow on the other and saw kneeling beside her a young man in American clothes. He was hatless and coatless and his soft gray shirt was torn and mud bespattered. A massive head of uncombed hair crowned a handsome forehead, but the face beneath was marred by a stubby growth of beard. "Who are you?" whispered Ethel finding her voice. "Put out the light," he commanded, reaching forward to take it from her. "Who are you?" he asked reversing the query as they were again in darkness. "I'm a girl," said Ethel. The man laughed softly. "I'm not," he said.