It was during one of the raids that Alec witnessed a daring stunt on the part of a young R.A.F. pilot. All that morning the Huns had been loading mines on board three new mine-laying submarines, the work being performed under a camouflaged canvas screen. Either a Belgian had managed to send the information over to the British Admiralty, or else aerial observers had noticed a difference in their photographic views of the harbour during the last few days. In any case, the solitary airman knew of the operations in progress. In the grey dawn the British machine swooped down from a bank of clouds. With his engine cut out, he dived steeply. Too late the German anti-aircraft guns opened their hymn of hate. At two hundred and fifty feet the pilot released his cargo of bombs. A miss was almost an impossibility. With an appalling, deafening roar, the three U-boats disappeared, together with nearly two hundred Germans engaged in loading their dangerous cargoes. For a radius of a hundred yards the havoc was terrific. Far beyond that area the damage wrought was severe. With the roar of the explosion still dinning in his ears, Alec saw the gallant airman disappear in a cloud of smoke mingled with far-flung debris. Hurled like a dried leaf in an autumnal gale the British biplane was seen to be turning over and over, in spite of the engines running all out, and the efforts of the pilot to keep his 'bus under control. Momentarily, through rents in the blast-torn cloud, Seton watched the man whose work had been accomplished, and whose efforts were now directed to save himself--if he could. "He's done himself in this time," exclaimed Alec. The biplane was falling jerkily and giddily. She had got into a spinning nose-dive. Her tail-piece had been hit by a fragment of metal, and wisps of dark-brown canvas were streaming in the wind. Although falling with great velocity, the biplane appeared to be dropping slowly. It seemed as if the pilot was bound to crash upon some houses, a short distance from the lock-gates of the Bruges Canal. To make matters worse, her petrol-tank caught fire, her downward course being marked by a trail of bright yellow fumes. Then, falling headlong behind a tall building, the sea-plane was lost to sight. "Hard luck!" murmured Seton sympathetically. "The fellow took no chances of missing; but, by Jove, it was certain death!" Accustomed though he was to see men slain in the heat of battle, the catastrophe to the daring airman had a depressing effect upon the Sub. He rejoiced in the knowledge that the pilot's effort had not been in vain. He felt proud of the man who had given his life for his country; but, at the same time, the spectacle was a gruesome one.