If there was any pouncing of this character to be done, Larkin and I had decided that we would take a shot at the trick ourselves, but first, of course, with the consideration of escaping detection altogether if we could, for our most important task was to send back the knowledge of the location of the big, murderous battery. The upward tendency of sound is almost as powerful as telegraphy. You can actually hear the chirping of birds at an altitude of more than 1,000 feet. But when your own motor and propeller are humming and throbbing into your ears, it is hard, if not impossible, to hear the other fellow’s. Evidently the enemy’s observation balloons had spotted us for all our efforts at hiding behind the clouds at the dizzy altitude of 20,000 feet and had given the alarm. Suddenly a Fokker came cutting through the mist not more than fifty yards away from us. I looked to see others come soaring at us and was convinced there were probably machines below ready to trap us should we seek flight by descent as it would be likely for us to do from such a great altitude. But at any rate only our single enemy was in sight. There wasn’t an instant wasted by either of us in maneuvering. We had come to such close quarters there wasn’t much chance. There was only one flyer in the Fokker and he let go at us with his machine guns the second he saw us. But in spite of his promptness, I appeared to have beat him to the fire. Or perhaps, it was at the very same time we got at it. How on earth such a storm of spitting bullets were sent at me without my being hit, is still a matter of wonderment to me. His bullets did tear through one of our wings and it was turned and crippled slightly, but not enough to bring us down. Larkin maneuvered swiftly above the Fokker and I knew what for. It was a chance for me to use my bombs. I let four go at the German in as many seconds. They did the work. We saw the Boche’s Fokker stagger, could make out the smashing of its engine in a sheet of a flame, saw the complete blowing away of one of the enemy’s wings and if the pilot himself was not blown to pieces then and there he must surely have been killed a few minutes later for the Fokker went plunging to earth like a dead thing and later when we came out of the clouds ourselves to take observations for the location of the battery, we saw the wreck of the aëroplane near an enemy trench. It was reduced to a mere heap.