Is the sport of war dead?  Not for Archibald!  Here you see your target —­which is so rare these days when British infantrymen have stormed and taken trenches without ever seeing a German—­and the target is a bird, a man-bird.  Puffs of smoke with bursting hearts of death are clustered around the Taube.  One follows another in quick succession, for more than one Archibald is firing, before your entranced eye.

You are staring like the crowd of a county fair at a parachute act.  For the next puff may get him.  Who knows this better than the aviator?  He is, likely, an old hand at the game; or, if he is not, he has all the experience of other veterans to go by.  His ruse is the same as that of the escaped prisoner who runs from the fire of a guard in a zigzag course, and more than that.  If a puff comes near on the right, he turns to the left; if one comes near on the left, he turns to the right; if one comes under, he rises; over, he dips.  This means that the next shell fired at the same point will be wide of the target.

Looking through the sight, it seems easy to hit a plane.  But here is the difficulty.  It takes two seconds, say, for the shell to travel to the range of the plane.  The gunner must wait for its burst before he can spot his shot.  Ninety miles an hour is a mile and a half a minute.  Divide that by thirty and you have about a hundred yards which the plane has travelled from the time the shell left the gun-muzzle till it burst.  It becomes a matter of discounting the aviator’s speed and guessing from experience which way he will turn next.

That ought to have got him—­the burst was right under.  No!  He rises.  Surely that one got him!  The puff is right in front, partly hiding the Taube from view.  You see the plane tremble as if struck by a violent gust of wind.  Close!  Within thirty or forty yards, the telescope says.  But at that range the naked eye is easily deceived about distance.  Probably some of the bullets have cut his plane.

But you must hit the man or the machine in a vital spot in order to bring down your bird.  The explosions must be very close to count.  It is amazing how much shell-fire an aeroplane can stand.  Aviators are accustomed to the whizz of shell-fragments and bullets, and to have their planes punctured and ripped.  Though their engines are put out of commission, and frequently though the man be wounded, they are able to volplane back to the cover of their own lines.

To make a proper story we ought to have brought down this particular bird.  But it had the luck, which most planes, British or German have, to escape antiaircraft gun-fire.  It had begun edging away after the first shot and soon was out of range.  Archibald had served the purpose of his existence.  He had sent the prying aerial eye home.

A fight between planes in the air very rarely happens, except in the imagination.  Planes do not go up to fight other planes, but for observation.  Their business is to see and learn and bring home their news.