I felt a tremendous pity for my old friend hobbling about a German prison-yard, when he had once flown a hawk.

I reflected that I had wasted my life hitherto.

And then I remembered that all this glory had only one use in war and that was to help the muddy British infantryman to down his Hun opponent.

He was the fellow, after all, that decided battles, and the thought comforted me.
A great exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and mine was to have a sudden downfall.

It was getting on for noon and we were well into England--I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were somewhere in the north of Yorkshire--when the machine began to make odd sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air.