Every day I took my machine up higher and higher until I had gradually increased my altitude to two thousand feet. Here, one day, I had a narrow escape. I had received orders to make a flight during a snow-storm. I rose to the prescribed height and then prepared to make my descent. A whirling squall caught me in the act of making a spiral. I felt the tail of my machine go down and the nose point up. I had a classical "perte de vitesse." I looked out and saw that I was less than eight hundred feet above the ground, and approaching it at an alarming rate of speed. I had already shut off the motor for the spiral, and turning it on, I knew, would not help me in the least. Suddenly I remembered the pilot who fainted. I let go of everything, and with a sickening feeling I looked down at the up-rushing ground. At that instant I felt the machine give a lurch and right itself. I grabbed the controls, turned on the motor and resumed my line of flight only two hundred feet in the air. All this happened in a few seconds, but my helplessness seemed to have lasted for hours. I had had a very close call—not as close as the man who fainted, but sufficiently so for me. [Illustration: "I had received orders to make a flight during a snow-storm." The author, together with his first mechanic, at the "mitrailleuse." The second mechanic is standing on the wing.] Since that day I have seen several other pilots experience a loss of speed under similar circumstances. Thanks to the thorough instruction which we had received previous to our being allowed to fly alone, their lives, as well as my own, were saved. Later we learned how the very dangers which we had experienced as new aviators often become the safety of expert pilots. *PASSING THE FINAL TESTS* My équipe was now making flights at three thousand feet and was remaining up for an hour at a time. We had all flown alone for thirty hours and were ready for our "épreuves." The weather was cloudy, however, and as our first examination was to be a height test, we had to wait until it cleared. It would have been extremely difficult—in fact, almost impossible—for us to go up under existing conditions. The first two tests which we were required to pass involved ascensions of six thousand feet; then an hour at ten thousand. If we passed these satisfactorily we would next be required to take a triangular voyage of one hundred and fifty miles, making a landing at each corner of the triangle. Lastly, there was the ordeal of going up to an altitude of one thousand five hundred feet, where the motor had to be cut off and the descent made by spirals to a previously determined spot.