“He was a marked man. The Germans knew him to be our best, perhaps the best aviator in all the Allied armies, and they needed him. They tried every sort of hellish torture on him, things one mustn’t think about, to get him to take up one of their photographers over the French trenches, knowing he could do certain notorious tricks which would prove him our man and so render the taking of the necessary pictures comparatively safe. He stuck it out, growing weaker and weaker, until the order came that he was to take up their man in his own machine (they’d used their diabolical skill to reconstruct it), or— Perhaps if it had been an order to shoot him then and there, his courage would have held out; but the other— He was broken, weakened, driven; he gave in. “They’d taken photographs for miles along the French and British fronts when Esmè noticed the strap which held the camera man was loosened. The man was busy adjusting the films for a new set. Esmè pulled, the strap gave way; he lurched the machine suddenly, and turned it over,—his famous somersault trick,—and then, without looking back or down, made for our camp. “Sometimes one forgets to guard one’s expression. I suppose mine showed the horror I couldn’t help feeling. He put his hand out to touch me, but I jumped up and moved away. ‘Marston,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter? Aren’t you glad? There wasn’t any other way but to give in to them. _You_ don’t know what it’s like to feel yourself dying by inches, a little piece more every day, all the time knowing you can’t die _enough_, and then the chance to be free once more, in the air, clean; you only fifty miles away, and one man between us—one man. What was his life among so many? It’s war, Marston; war.’ “I failed him then. I didn’t stop to think of his overwrought condition, mentally and physically. He simply wasn’t responsible. I had a quick vision of the way the other men would take it, of how I’d try and try to explain Esmè’s action because it was Esmè’s, and all the time I’d know the explanations weren’t any good. We have a code all our own; no rules, no mention ever made of its interpretation—just an aviator’s honor. “Now, looking back, I can’t think why Esmè’s dropping the man out seemed so hideous. It did, though, and I failed him. He wanted to hear me say the words of welcome he’d counted on, and I just stood and looked at him. He was making queer, whimpering little noises, with his mouth wobbling all over his face, and I watched him. He was suffering, and I looked on. “After a while the whimperings turned into words, and the words started with giggles. ‘A-aren’t you g-glad, Marston? A-aren’t you g-glad? A-aren’t you?’