Dennis reverted to his old tactics when he found that they had escaped, and turning to the right again, with an anxious eye on the compass, saw no more of the enemy for nearly a quarter of an hour, until, emerging into a burst of bright sunshine and looking down, he found himself immediately over a fierce engagement on the eastern crest of the Vosges mountains. Shells were bursting below them, and though he did not know it, they were passing above the Col de la Schlucht, from which the French guns were bombarding Munster. He could see the enormous puffs of smoke--white, black, and some of them tinged with yellow--but what was of greater moment to them both was the presence of the enemy machines a few miles to the southward. They, too, were just leaving the cloud-bank, which ended there, misled by the idea that their prey would make a bee-line for safety; but they saw the Aviatik at the same moment that Dennis saw them, and circled round to cut him off from home. Dennis realised that he was now above French soil. His engines were working magnificently, and dropping to an altitude of two thousand metres, which gave him a clear view of towns and buildings, he consulted his chart, identified Nancy far away on his right front, and trusted all to Providence. He had judged wisely, as it proved, and knew that he was out-distancing the enemy aircraft tearing in hot pursuit--all but one persistent Fokker that evidently meant business. He even found time to glance backward at his companion, who, with the folds of the French flag wrapped round his shattered shoulder to dull the force of the keen air, sat huddled up in his cockpit, apparently insensible. Once a shell came up from the ground, and burst between pursuer and pursued, and a gleam of fierce hope shot through the lad's heart as he saw the French "75" making good practice against the vicious little gadfly. Higher and higher mounted the Fokker to get out of range, and still Dennis kept on, remembering his appointment with the French Generalissimo, and glancing alternately from the chart to the little clock beside the aneroid barometer, whose registration was useless at that height. "Twenty-five minutes! Great Scott! can I do it?" he muttered, clutching the control wheel with his frozen fingers. * * * * * "Well, messieurs, it is a pity, and I am afraid something must have happened to that young officer," said General Joffre, consulting his watch for the last time. "I must find another messenger to carry my reply to the Commander-in-Chief of our Allies." And then he stopped as a murmured exclamation broke from the group of officers, and everyone looked up to the grey sky across which some rainclouds were drifting. "It is an aerial combat, mon General," said one of them. "_Ma foi!_ I should not care to travel at that speed, let alone fight with nothing under one's feet!"