"This was my first time in a Handley-Page, and I knew nothing of pressures or temperatures. How long I flew I don't know; what direction I should have flown I did not know at that time. Occasionally I glanced at the compass and as well as I can remember the needle pointed west generally, but I gave it no thought. Finally I pulled back the throttle and began to glide. I leaned over the next seat and pulled two levers. Remember that at this time I had never heard of shutters for the radiators. Down I came into heavier and heavier atmosphere. I was calm and happy. I never even gave the ground a thought, never even glanced at it. I remember taking from a rack on my left a stubby revolver with a huge bore, pointing it over the side and pulling the trigger, and I watched a green light go slowly down and searchlights that were blinking up at me went out. A few seconds later a knob on the dashboard seemed to rivet my attention; it was a small knob exactly like an electric-light switch. I began to play with this. To do this I had to lean forward and stretch out my left arm; this action brought my face around to the right, and as I played with the knob I saw a light blinking on my right wing tip. I remember laughing at this. "The plane took a sudden dip and I sat up. Just off to my right and very little below me were lights on the ground in the shape of a 'T,' and other lights were flashing at me. I turned toward the 'T' and stuck down the nose of the machine; I pulled the throttle farther back, and just as I seemed to be running into dense blackness I leaned forward and pressed a button; a brilliant light sprang up under the machine; there was the ground not two feet away, apparently. I yanked back the wheel and a moment later there was a great bump, another and another, and we came to rest on our own aerodrome. "The doctor told me that he had never seen such a collapse. I had been unconscious for hours after being lifted from the machine together with my dead pal. I was awarded this decoration, gentlemen, for bringing that machine home safely. Since that time I have been awarded these other decorations for feats you have all heard of. But I want to tell you," and "Mystery Dick" stood up with flushed face and blazing eyes, "that I have never flown an aeroplane in France. Jack, my old pal, dare-devil Jack, whose head was blown off beside me during my first trip across the lines, flies my machine. Jack, dear old Jack, has won these medals I wear." And Dick, no longer "Mystery Dick," left the mess. I say no longer "Mystery Dick" because from that day on there was nothing mysterious about Dick to the "Bedouins."