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FLYING MEN

credit, and whose combined ages total up to sixty or thereabouts. We will call them X., Y. and Z. Now X. is an American, Y. is an Englishman, whose peach-like countenance yet bears the newly healed scar of a bullet wound, and Z. is an Afrikander. Here begins the story:

Upon a certain day of wind, rain and cloud, news came that the Boches were massing behind their lines for an attack, whereupon X., Y. and Z. were ordered to go up and verify this. Gaily enough they started despite unfavourable weather conditions. The clouds were low, very low, but they must fly lower, so, at an altitude varying from fifteen hundred to a bare thousand feet, they crossed the German lines, Y. and Z. flying wing and wing behind X.'s tail. All at once "Archie" spoke, a whole battery of anti-aircraft guns filled the air with smoke and whistling bullets — away went X.'s propeller and his machine was hurled upside down; immediately Y. and Z. rose. By marvellous pilotage X. managed to right his crippled machine and

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