CHAPTER IV
STRAFING THE BABY-KILLERS
DASTRAL and Jock received a hearty welcome home that morning. Although it was scarcely yet six o'clock, their day's work was finished, and a good day's work it had been. Dastral's laconic report was handed to the Squadron-Commander. Then, as soon as his slight flesh wounds had been dressed by the genial "Number Nine," as Captain Young, the medical officer for the squadron, was called, they went in to early morning breakfast at the mess.
"So you've had a scrap with Himmelman, have you, Lieutenant?" asked Number Nine at the breakfast table.
"Just a slight skirmish," replied Dastral.
"You're lucky to get away from him!"
"You think so?" queried the young pilot, pouring out another cup of coffee, and pressing Jock, whose wound was giving him a good deal of pain, to another slice of hot buttered toast.
"I do, decidedly. He's so deucedly clever that he's uncanny. We haven't found the man who can match him yet on our side. But one of these days we shall do it."
Dastral did not reply for some time. His mind was full of the details of the recent encounter he had had with the unbeaten champion. He wondered what Himmelman thought of his own tactics which had made the air-fiend sheer off at the last moment. And he also determined that should the opportunity ever come to fight with him on equal terms he would not refuse the challenge. If it were possible the western front should be rid of this champion, and the supremacy of the air wrested from the Germans.