Realizing the necessity for quick action, Davis sharply slipped the plane into the wind, and amid a deafening applause of exploding shells, we plunged to momentary safety behind the curtain of the low, dark clouds with which the sky was filled. We were in the cloud, perhaps, for five minutes and the wind was with us. I knew we were covering a great deal of territory and in the wrong direction. So, when we emerged I quite well knew we were completely off our course. I asked Davis if he knew his location. He answered frankly that he did not—that it was away off his map. I was in the same predicament exactly as to the location, it being off my map as well, but fortunately I recognized the bomb-shattered town nearby as Dun-sur-Meuse, as I had many times studied it as a very prominent bombing objective. “Head due south along the river,” I cried through the communicating tube, “We’ve got to hit the lines sometime.” Dun-sur-Meuse had been bombed very heavily in the drive and I am sure the remaining inhabitants thought we too had that intention, for in heading south they certainly let us know we were not welcome. This time it was not only artillery, but machine guns in such a hail of fire that we would have been brought down with little effort had we attempted to fly a straight course. We didn’t attempt it. We answered by sharp zig-zags, and it was the master job of my life to keep up with the snaps, jerks, slips and dives of Davis’, in dodging the archies; and to still keep our direction in mind. We attempted this for fully ten minutes, but we were making no appreciable headway. The firing was too heavy—we must get higher as we could not expect to live at nine hundred feet at a very long period. We had been lucky to survive this long. Davis headed due south by his compass which was east by mine. It looked all wrong to me. “Is your compass pointing south?” I asked feverishly, for it was a question of life and death. “Yes, due south,” he replied. I knew one of the two was considerably off, but it might be mine as well as his, so I decided to try his. A constant mist of rifle fire and archies followed us in our ascent into the clouds, which fortunately was not long—thanks to the climbing power of the Salmson airplane. We were in and above the clouds for fully twenty-five minutes, and believe me, those twenty-five minutes were prayers that Davis’s compass was unerring. Finally, considering the wind velocity, our probable distance from the lines, and the speed of the motor, I was convinced that if the compass were true we should be well over the French lines, so, hoping to encourage Davis, I called, “Well, Davis, if that old pointer of yours is right we are in La Belle France again. Let’s go down and see.”