In a short time, approaching each other at around eighty miles an hour, the other ship was close to us. It was not an Army ship, for it was painted a bright yellow, and it flashed golden in the sun. It was coming toward us at an angle. That was natural. A Martin Bomber is quite a sight in the air, trundling along like an aerial lumber wagon. It’s so heavy that it’s fairly stable, and after one gets off the ground the wheel handles so easily a baby could work it, so I watched the other ship and flew my huge craft automatically. The ship was possibly a hundred and fifty yards from us, coming at a slight angle, as I’ve said. It was perhaps fifty feet above us. Suddenly it banked a bit, and its new course brought it on a line parallel to ours, but it was pointed, of course, in the opposite direction. In a flash I caught sight of a double Lewis machine-gun, swung on a scarf-mount in the back cockpit. As it sprayed its hail of lead I had nosed my big, loggy Martin over as far as it would go. At the same second Marston, I realized, had stiffened, spun half around, recovered, and was at his guns. They had got him-- I saw the blood soaking one arm of his flying suit. I threw my ship around as the equally slow, but much smaller, Jenny banked and flew back at right angles to us for another shot, from above and behind. I spun the wheel desperately, to get the Bomber’s nose pointed toward the other ship. Subconsciously I realized that all my suspicions of Marston had been wrong. There was some gang trying to crab getting the Martins to Langham. I was straightened around for them as the Jenny crossed above us, those wicked guns being sighted by the gunner in the rear. We were looking right up into their muzzles, a hundred feet away. Marston was on his knees, sighting too. If we were to get them, I _must_ hold the ship in position for a moment more. It was shot for shot. It was. I saw Marston’s hand, a mass of blood, pull the trigger of his Lewis as a terrific impact made me cry out and seemed to pin me to the seat. Something crashed through my chest, and I felt as if I had been torn apart. As if in a dream I saw the Jenny spinning downward. Then, through blurred eyes that could not transfer to my brain what they saw, I saw a huge bulk looming above me. It looked as big as all the world. I knew the Martin was diving like mad for the ground, but my nerveless, groping fingers could not find the wheel. And I didn’t care. In short, I went out like a light, my last remembrance being a torrent of blood flowing down over my body. V I came partly to, not entirely, in what looked like a hospital, and for two weeks I was so weak I couldn’t even talk. In another week I was out of danger, and by the end of a month I knew I was in a Cleveland hospital. Then Les Fernald and Jim Tolley--Jim had taken my place as a ferry pilot--were allowed to see me. “So you’re going to get well! My, my!” grinned Fernald. “Can’t the Air Service ever get rid of you?”