Obediently mounting guard, Jimmy stood at alert while the aviator busied himself with his machine. For twenty minutes he remained thus, his ears cocked for the slightest hostile sound, his eyes keeping a bright lookout. "It is well!" the aviator at length exclaimed, raising up from the engine. "The damage to the plane has been, after all, small. We shall regain our lines easily, provided we can escape enemy planes on our way. We cannot fight as we have no Gaston. The enemy guns we may escape by flying high. Come; into the seat, my boy. We must lose no time. Do not fail to strap yourself in." Motioning him into the observer's seat, Voissard turned sorrowfully to the crumpled form of the bomber. It had slid well down into the seat Gaston had been occupying when killed. Strapping the body securely, so that it could not tumble out, the aviator sighed: "_Mon pauvre ami_," he mourned. "It is the best I can do for you until we have reached our station." Very grimly he strode to the propeller. Starting the engine he leaped into the pilot's seat. The engine responding with a deafening roar, the plane began to roll over the soft ground. His revolver in readiness, Jimmy kept his eyes trained earthward as they left the meadow and took to the air. Again they passed over the orchard and were on the point of spiraling upward when a shout issued from Jimmy's lips that Voissard heard even above the noise of the engine. Simultaneous with it a revolver spoke. Instantly Cousin Emile looked down and understood. Shutting off the motor, he volplaned and made skilful landing on an open space between the barn and the orchard. Before the plane touched earth, the revolver had spoken again. "Oh, the brutes! The dirty, yellow brutes! Thank God, I've done for two of 'em!" Another shot accompanied Jimmy's hoarse exclamation, shouted in a perfect frenzy of loathing. Out there in the stillness of the morning, Jimmy had come upon the thing which will forever brand the Germans as fiends incarnate. Half a dozen Boches were about to crucify an American soldier. Looking down, his eyes had come to rest on the barn. Grouped about the closed door were half a dozen German soldiers. He caught a glimpse of a hatless, olive-drab figure, spread-eagled against the door. He saw the gleam of bayonets--then he shouted and in the same instant fired his revolver. Intent on their fiendish work, the crucifiers had paid no attention to the purr of the aeroplane's engine. They were not looking for an enemy plane so far behind their own lines. At Jimmy's first shot a Boche threw up his arms and dropped. Instantly the other five whirled and left their victim, whose outspread arms were bound to two staples hastily driven into the door. Then another Hun clutched his breast and pitched forward. A third fell, shot through the head.