Suddenly we saw
him climb out of his seat on to the tail of the plane. My observer
had a good target, but his gun was silent. Perhaps that Boche
observer had an idea of climbing into the seat vacated so curiously
by the pilot, dropping, dropping, dropping, down that trackless
four mile path we had come up. If he had such a plan it failed
almost before he started to put it into execution.
"He had no more than climbed out on the tail proper than he lost
his hold and plunged headlong after his comrade. He went down pawing
and clutching into the void below like a lost soul, in horrible
contrast to the rigid figure of the pilot. Then the aviatik turned
its nose down with a jerk and fell after its human freight, all the
long twenty thousand feet to the earth below.
"We did not say a word to each other till we landed. It gave me a
nasty shock. I had seen enemy planes go down with enemy fliers in
them, but that rigid figure got me. The struggling chap I forgot
long before I did the other.
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