“Just a moment,” I interrupted, anticipating the end of the tale at the end of Horne’s next breath. “You’re dumping over your story just the way a Zeppelin under fire dumps over its bombs. Now please back up and tell it properly. The night is young, the raiders are now headed out to sea, and the lady and I are here to follow you to the end.” III Horne laughed uneasily, fumbled through his pockets in a vain search for matches, filched a box from the tilted tray of our nodding companion,--leaving a sixpence in its place,--lit his pipe, puffed pensively for a minute or two; and even after all that preparation made his beginning apologetic. “I don’t know that I’ve ever told the yarn from the beginning,” he said, “and I’m dead sure I’ve never said much about the end. If I chatter a bit to-night, you’ll please check it up against the good news I had a while ago--and the air. A man could pretty nearly walk on the air as it has been to-day, and a machine would slide through it like tearing silk. Funny thing, but it was in the dawn following almost just such a night as this that I went off on the flight I have spoken of. “There are three main factors in flying,”--Horne spoke more freely again as he digressed upon generalities,--“the man, the machine, and the atmosphere. Theoretically, man and machine are supposed to be sent out in perfect order, ready to take the air as they find it. There _are_ days, of course, when you are ‘off’, your machine ‘cranky,’ and the air all ‘heights’ and ‘hollows,’ and at such times there is pretty sure to be a ‘stormy passage,’ if nothing worse. Usually, however, it’s a fairly fit man and machine against indifferent air. But once or twice a year there comes a period, like the last eighteen hours, when the air is almost absolutely ‘homogeneous,’ and then, with his engine running ‘sweet,’ the man has spells of fancying himself an ‘air god’ in fact as well as in name, and acts accordingly,--invariably either to his own or his enemy’s sorrow. “It was like that on the morning I am telling you about--man, machine, and air all in harmony--yes, and with the usual result. I would have remembered this flight for several reasons, even if the Zepp hadn’t come along; for one, because of our ride down the wake of a ‘42’ shell; for another, on account of the terrific shelling they gave, or tried to give us, as we passed over the German lines.