Buck's hurried thoughts were suddenly checked by a sharp, stinging sensation that began at his side, then seemed to fill him completely. At the same time he realized that his hands no longer hold the steering wheel. He strove to seize it again, but his muscles did not obey. A stupor was on him. The sunlight faded, gave way to a bewildering maze of twinkling stars. His last conscious sensation was that his machine was crashing downward. Then came a long mental blank. Meantime Blaine was having his own troubles. The rest of the air fighting had gone eastward, while he was contending with the increased crippling of his planes. Overhead he saw only the now clearing sky. Ahead of him, beyond a rippling stream, lay certain trenches held, he felt sure, by his own side. But could be reach them? Far behind the noise of battle rumbled. Where was Buck? Somehow he had lost sight of his comrade within the last few minutes. "Buck is a good, bang-up fellow. We ought to go back together." But his power was waning. Try as he might, the plane was sagging groundward. Only Blaine's skillful efforts kept it from dropping with a crash which he knew would probably be the end of him -- Lafe Blaine. What was that just below him which some scraggy shell-torn timber had kept him from seeing before? "Looks like a piece of a house," he muttered. Stoutly he tried to make the small open space around this half ruined hovel. Almost he made, it. But just beyond a crumbling stone wall, that once must have been the enclosure of a tidy yard, the tail of his machine dipped all at once. It struck the wall, causing the heavier bow, weighted with the propellers, the petrol tank and the machinery, to crash downward with force. The recoil sent Blaine, now at the last physical gasp, plunging forward over the almost perpendicular machine. He struck the earth heavily, and lay there almost insensible, while the vanquished plane fell sideways, striking wall and ground, then, with a last respiration not unlike that of its master, it lay still, a wreck for the time being. From out the house two skirted figures ran, figures in nurse's attire, with the omnipresent red cross blazoned conspicuously on their white-capped headgear. "Oh, Andra, Andra!" cried the first to the one following. The last cast a swift glance back inside the cabin. Then she, too, hurried to the prostrate form lying beside the wrecked machine. CHAPTER X A QUICK CONVALESCENCE Two days later. The scene had changed. The Allied front, leaving the rippling stream some two miles or more in the rear, was now showing a convex bend towards the foe instead of a concave hollow, as was the case before the :fighting.