Nine miles east of the Sixteenth Pursuit Squadron’s fog-shrouded field, ten thousand feet above the front lines, two ships zoomed and dove, twisted and spun in the sky. The two ships had been engaged in combat for more than three minutes, and the battle was a tough one. One plane was a baby Albatross, very well camouflaged. The other was a fifteen-meter Nieuport, not so well camouflaged. In the narrow cockpit of the Nieuport was Lieutenant Tex Langdon. His blue eyes were rimmed with red, his lips were pressed tightly together as he handled the American ship, trying to get in position for a machine-gun burst at the enemy plane. The German pilot was a fine flyer. Twice he had almost sent streams of tracer-marked lead into the fuselage of the American ship. The left wing surfaces showed the bullet holes of his last hit--and it was much too close for comfort. But Tex Langdon was fighting on and fighting desperately. Two things worried him. He was running low in gas--and the damaged wing surfaces might be badly weakened. The Boche pilot had come down out of the clouds, almost taking him by surprise, as he was winging back toward the Sixteenth. Tex had kicked the Nieuport into a tail-spin, and on coming out of it the German lead had punctured his wing fabric. Since then the fight had been sharp. The air was bad; the earth below was obscured by drifting fog. The patrol had not been a particularly successful one and now the attack of the German pilot threatened to make it disastrous. Tex had the feeling that he was too green for the enemy pilot. The Nieuport came up in a zoom; for a flashing second he had the Albatross in the ringsight of the Browning. He squeezed the stick-trigger of the propellor-synchronized weapon, then released pressure after a short burst. He saw that his stream was behind the slanting enemy ship, then he lost the plane in a blind spot of his own ship. He nosed downward and caught the flash of a shape coming up at the Nieuport then went over in a vertical bank. Green-yellow tracer-bullet fire streaked through the sky close to the plane. Once again the German pilot had come very close to scoring a hit! Tex Langdon’s lean face twisted. The patrol had been a long one, a difficult one. He was new to such flying. The German pilot was more experienced. The Nieu-port’s gun was getting low. There was the fog hanging close to the earth; it might mean that he would have to search for the Squadron field. The Albatross was a quarter mile away, between the Nieuport and the Allied rear lines, and banking. Her pilot banked, came out of it, zoomed for altitude. Tex Langdon wiped his goggle-glass clear of a splatter of oil, nosed down to gain speed, and banked his own ship. He could not afford to let the other pilot get altitude. His lips moved as he squinted blue eyes on the enemy ship. “Get sense--show tail and fly out of it! If I don’t--he’ll get me!”