A Taube, one of the smaller, lighter, and more easily handled aeroplanes, and used in great numbers by the Germans, shot into the air at great speed from behind the Boche entrenchments. In its upward course its path was a dizzy spiral, and, if one on the ground might judge, its pilot seemed to be seeking a particular air channel. At least that was the way it looked. Then, from almost the same point from which it had come into view, half a dozen other planes rose into the air, following in the path of the first, and also flying at top speed. Up to then there was nothing so very strange about the whole procedure. It simply indicated that those manning the American and French anti-aircraft guns, and the aviators of those two armies, should get ready to repel an enemy air raid. But the queer thing occurred when every one of the pursuing planes opened up their machine-guns almost simultaneously upon the first. And even this might have been considered a well-designed hoax, were it not for the unmistakable evidence that the first aeroplane, the Taube, had been hit. Still going at maximum speed, and now on a straight line toward the American side, without seeking a further height, the Taube several times wavered, and, a moment later, almost turned over. But the pilot righted her, and even as the pursuers began gaining, and still kept up an incessant fire, he pointed her nose downward toward the American lines. Four American planes sailed off and upward to meet the oncoming German air armada. But from the ground it could be seen that the man in the observer's place in the Taube was making desperate signals. The American planes maneuvered in such a way as to encircle the Taube, and yet at close enough range to examine her without particular menace to themselves. There were several seconds of criss-crossing and rising and descending, and then as a unit the American planes left the Taube and started after the German craft, which had hesitated, as though uncertain what further course to follow. Several volleys of shots were exchanged, and the other German planes turned back toward their own lines. The Taube continued on its wavering, crippled, downward course toward the allied lines. "Looks as though a couple of our men had been reconnoitering the German lines in one of their own make of machines," said Lieutenant Mackinson, as the Taube came within a hundred yards of the ground and righted herself for a landing. There was a general rush toward it as it hit the ground. Of its own momentum it rolled to within a two minutes' run of where the lieutenant and the others had been standing. In another instant it was entirely surrounded by a crowd of curious American soldiers.