"I hope it isn't Dastral who has crashed, Cowdie," said Brat.
"I hope not," replied Cowdie, feeling at the time somehow that it could be no one else.
"'B' Flight ought to have returned some time ago now. I'm very much afraid they've met their match this time. We could afford to lose half a dozen men rather than the Commander of 'B' Flight."
"Perhaps he's met Himmelman," urged the man on the carrier, steadying himself for the next heavy jolt, for the last one had nearly thrown him off, and the bad places were becoming more and more plentiful as they neared the lines.
"He will meet him some day, and there'll be a deuce of a fight. Just mark my words. There isn't room for two lords of the air, not in these parts, and one of them will go under."
"Well, I hope it will be the Boche."
"So it will be if they meet on equal terms, but the German air-fiend is a wily brute."
"Whiz-z-z! Bang-g-g!" came a shell at that moment, striking the ground not thirty yards away from them, and sending both men and motor-cycle spinning into the ditch by the very concussion.
"Not hurt, are you, Cowdie?" asked Brat, as he scrambled out of the ditch first, and ran to help his friend.
"No, but it was a very near thing that. Another few inches and that would have been the end of the regimental 'spare part.' Look here!" and Cowdie showed a rent in his tunic where a piece of shrapnel had torn away six inches of it behind the left shoulder.