“That is odd,” he mused.  “New activity there this morning.  Maybe the Boches have planned an ammunition dump at that point.  That is one for the bombers.”

Thus time passed.  Archie was busy dodging his dangerous namesakes, while Carleton focused his entire attention on gathering material for his report.

Carleton did not watch the movements below, however, with more care than Archie watched the sky on all sides for signs of enemy air-craft.  The American machine had been so long inside the enemy lines that a German fighting plane might be expected at any moment.  At last a Boche plane did make its appearance, a mere brown speck, at first, far ahead.  Archie’s signal to Carleton that trouble was ahead was conveyed by giving the machine a slight rock as he started to climb.  Not much time was allowed for maneuvering.  Carleton lost no time in placing a disk on his Lewis gun, and as the German approached, both observers opened up with a salvo.  It was all over in a second.  Firing point blank, in that fraction of time spent in passing, both had missed.

The excitement of that brief encounter, a mere matter of seconds as the two swift planes swept out of each other’s range, was hardly past when the rattle of a machine-gun nearby and the zipp! zipp! as the bullets tore their way through the canvas, told of another Boche machine at hand.  Neither Archie nor Carleton could see it.  Carleton unbuckled the strap that held him in his seat, rose, and looked over the top plane.

There, just above and well out of range, was an enemy fighting plane.  The machine had apparently dropped from the clouds above, and with great good fortune gained an ideal position.  Before Archie could swing his “bus” around so that Carleton could get his Lewis gun to work on the Boche another salvo came from the enemy machine-gun.

That belt of cartridges found its mark.  Both Carleton and Archie were hit, the former badly.  The young officer dropped back into his seat.  Archie saw that the lad had sufficient presence of mind to hastily buckle his belt round his waist again, then, his right shoulder numb, he dived steeply, bringing his plane up and straightening it out after a sheer drop of a thousand feet.

The German machine tail-dropped alter the American one, but by a stroke of good luck the enemy pilot seemed to have some difficulty in righting.  When Archie headed for home the Boche flier was far below.

Carleton had become unconscious.  Archie’s head began to swim.  His right arm became stiff, and the blood from a wound in the shoulder trickled down his sleeve.  He dared not try to stop the bleeding, and decided to trust to luck and make for home as fast as he could.  Periodically he became dizzy and faint, and once, when he thought he was going to lose consciousness, he was roused by an anti-aircraft shell that burst but a few feet from one of his wing tips.  He managed to dodge about and tried a half circle to get out of range of the guns below.