“While exposing six plates” (says the official report of this youthful Recording Angel) “observed five H.A.’s cruising.” (“H.A.” stands for Hostile Aeroplane.) “Not having seen escort since turning inland, pilot prepared to return. Enemy separated, one taking up position above tail and one ahead. The other three glided towards us on port side” (observe the Navy speaking), “firing as they came. “The two diving machines fired over one hundred rounds, hitting pilot in shoulder.” As a matter of sober fact, the bullet entered his shoulder from above and behind, breaking his left collar bone, and emerged just above his heart, tearing a jagged rent down his breast. Both his feet, furthermore, pierced by bullets, but the observer was not concerned with petty detail. “Observer held fire until H.A. diving on tail was within five yards.” Here it might be mentioned that the machines were hurtling through space at a speed in the region of one hundred miles an hour. The pilot of the “H.A.,” having swooped to within speaking distance, pushed up his goggles and laughed triumphantly as he took his sight for the shot that was to end the fight. But the observer had his own idea of how the fight should end. “Then shot one tray into pilot’s face,” he says, with curt relish, and watched him stall, sideslip, and go spinning earthward in a trail of smoke. He turned his attention to his own pilot. The British machine was barely under control, but as the observer rose in his seat to investigate, the foremost gun fired, and the aggressor ahead went out of control and dived nose-first in helpless spirals. Suspecting that his mate was badly wounded in spite of this achievement, the observer swung one leg over the side of the fuselage and climbed on to the wing--figure for a minute the air pressure on his body during this gymnastic feat--until he was beside the pilot. Faint and drenched with blood, the latter had nevertheless got his machine back into complete control. “Get back, you ass,” he said, through white lips, in response to inquiries as to how he felt. The ass got back the way he came, and looked round for the remainder of the “H.A.’s.” These, however, appeared to have lost stomach for further fighting, and fled. The riddled machine returned home at one hundred knots, while the observer, having nothing better to do, continued to take photographs. “The pilot, though wounded, made a perfect landing.” Thus the report concludes. The Navy-that-Flies had been in France some time before the Army heard very much about its doings. This was not so much the fault of the Army as the outcome of the taciturn silence in which the Navy-that-Flies set to work. It had been bidden to observe the traditions of the silent Navy, and it observed them, forbearing even to publish the number of Boche machines it accounted for day by day.