“Here comes Guynemer!”

“Then the Boche is done for.”

Guynemer, in fact, was coming down upon his prey like lightning, and the instant he was behind and slightly beneath him, he fired.  Only one shot from the machine-gun was heard, but the enemy airplane was already spinning down, its engine going full speed, and was dashed into the earth at Courlandon near Fismes.  The pilot had been shot through the head.

In the afternoon the very prudent Guynemer started for the third time, and towards seven o’clock, above the Guignicourt market gardens (that is to say, in the enemy lines), he brought down another machine in flames.

“Very prudent” is the last epithet one could have expected to see in connection with the name of Guynemer.  For he rarely came home without bullet-holes in his wings or even in his clothes.  The Boche, being the Boche, had shown his usual respect for truth and generosity towards an adversary.

Guynemer, when returning to camp after a victory, generally announced his success by making his engine work to some tune.  This time the cadence was the tune of the Lampions.  All the neighboring airplane sheds understood, also the cantonments, parks, depots, dugouts, field hospitals and railway stations; in a word, all the communities scattered behind the lines of an army.  This time the motor was singing so insistently that everybody, with faces upturned, concluded that their Guynemer had been “getting them.”

In fact, the news was already spreading like wildfire, as news has the mysterious capacity for doing.  No, it was not simply one airplane he had set ablaze; it was two, one above Corbeny, the other above Juvincourt.  And people had hardly realized the wonderful fact before the third machine was seen falling in flames near Fismes.  It was seen by hundreds of men who thought it was about to fall upon them, and ran for shelter.  Meanwhile, Guynemer’s engine was singing.

And for the fourth time it was heard again at twilight.  Could it be possible?  Had Guynemer really succeeded four times?  Four machines brought down in one day by one pilot was what no infantryman, gunner, pioneer, territorial, Anamite or Senegalese had ever seen.  And from the stations, field hospitals, dugouts, depots, parks and cantonments, while the setting sun lingered in the sky on this May evening, whoever handled a shovel, a pickaxe or a rifle, whoever laid down rails, unloaded trucks, piled up cases, or broke stones on the road, whoever dressed wounds, gave medicine or carried dead men, whoever worked, rested, ate or drank—­whoever was alive, in a word—­stepped out, ran, jostled along, arrived at the camp, got helterskelter over the fences, broke into the sheds, searched the airplanes, and called to the mechanicians in their wild desire to see Guynemer.  There they were, a whole town of them, knocking at every door and peeping into every tent.

Somebody said:  “Guynemer is asleep.”