revealed itself.

A silvery streak lay beneath them; it was the River Ancre. Now a broad white patch of roadway came into view. It was the main road from Albert to Bapaume. As they came out of a bank of rolling mist and fog, a few red roofs and a church tower next came into view, standing just where four roads met.

"Contalmaison?" queried Dastral, and Jock, after a brief reference to his waterproof map, called back:

"Yes, and Bazentin on the left."

They were now almost over the trenches, and far beneath they could discern hundreds of tiny points of fires.

"What are they?" asked the pilot again, and the observer who had been scanning those red sparks for a couple of minutes replied,

"Fires in the British trenches. Men cooking their morning rations. Can't you smell the bacon?"

Dastral laughed and sniffed the keen morning air, as though in reality he could make out the fragrant aroma of the morning dish, about which those cold, wet, and shivering heroes of the trenches were standing, ankle-deep in mud and clay.

"The poor devils!" added the pilot, altering his controls slightly, and wheeling round to the south to pick up the enemy's lines more clearly at a point where they made a sharp curve.

They could now clearly see both the British and the German trenches. Three long, scarred and ragged lines of brown earth showed clearly where the enemy's front-line, reserve and support trenches stood. Long, twisting lines of similar demarcation showed where the communication trenches ran.

Now they were over No Man's land, sailing along serenely, and the artillery down below had already opened the morning concert on both fronts, when--

"Biff, puff----!" came a time-fuse shrapnel and burst scarcely a hundred feet in front of the machine. Then another and another as the "Archies" below spotted the hornet, and tried to give her a packet.

Suddenly they were in a cloud of yellow smoke and half-poisonous fumes, which made them gasp and sputter. Then, owing to the bursting of the shells and the heavy concussions they found themselves in a succession of air-pockets.

"Look out, Jock!" cried Dastral, as the machine rocked and swayed, banking over once or twice as though she had been hit.

For several minutes they ran the gauntlet of this heavy fire from the German A.A. guns, but the terrific speed at which they were travelling--now nearly one hundred and twenty miles per hour--soon carried them beyond the range of the enemy's guns.