This victory was his forty-ninth.  He secured his fiftieth the very next day, bringing down a D.F.W. in flames over Westrobeke, the enemy showing fight, for Guynemer’s magic airplane was hit in the tail, in one of the longitudinal spars, the exhaust pipe, and the hood, and had to be repaired.  This day of glory was also one of mourning for the Storks.  Captain Auger who, trusting his star after seven triumphs, had gone scouting alone, was shot in the head, and, after mustering energy enough to bring his machine back to the landing-ground, died almost immediately.

Fifty machines destroyed!  This had been Guynemer’s dream.  The apparently inaccessible figure had gradually seemed a possibility.  Finally it had become a fact.  Fifty machines down, without taking into account those which fell too far from the official observers, or those which had been only disabled, or those which had brought home sometimes a pilot, sometimes a passenger, dead in their seats.  What would Guynemer do now?  Was he not tired of hunting, killing, or destroying in the high regions of the atmosphere?  Did he not feel the exhaustion consequent on the nervous strain of unlimited effort?  Could he be entirely deaf to voices which advised him to rest, now that he was a captain, an officer in the Legion of Honor, and, at barely twenty-two, could hardly hope for more distinction?  On the other hand, he had shown in his unceasing effort towards an absolutely perfect machine a genius for mechanics which might profitably be given play elsewhere.  The occasion was not far to seek, for he had to take his damaged airplane back to the works; and what with this interruption and the precarious state of his health—­for he had left the hospital too soon—­he might reasonably have applied for leave.  Nor was this all.  The adoption of the new tactics of fighting in numbers might change the nature of his action:  he might become the commanding officer of a unit, run less risk, indulge his temerity only once in a while, and yet make himself useful by infusing his own spirit into aspiring pilots.

Slowly all these ideas occurred, if not to him, at all events to his friends.  Guynemer has slain his fifty—­they must have thought—­Guynemer can now rest.  What would it matter if some envious people should make remarks?  “It is a pleasure worthy of a king,” Alexander once said after Antisthenes, “to hear evil spoken of one while one is doing good.”  But Guynemer never knew this royal enjoyment; he never even suspected that well-wishers were plotting for his safety.  He took his machine to the works, supervised the repairs with his customary attention, and by August 15 he was back again at his sport in Flanders.

* * * * *