They looked like a bed of white water lilies and he like a black dragonfly skimming among the lilies.
It was a pretty sight and as thrilling a one as I have ever seen.
I cannot analyze my emotions as I viewed the spectacle, let alone try to set them down on paper.

Alongside of this, big-game hunting was a commonplace thing, for this was big-game hunting of a magnificent kind, new to the world--revolving cannon, with a range of from seven to eight thousand feet, trying to bring down a human being out of the very clouds.
He ran for his life.

Once I thought they had him.

A shell burst seemingly quite close to him, and his machine dipped far to one side and dropped through space at that angle for some hundreds of feet apparently.
A yell of exultation rose from the watching Germans, who knew that an explosion close to an aeroplane is often sufficient, through the force of air concussion alone, to crumple the flimsy wings and bring it down, even though none of the flying shrapnel from the bursting bomb actually touch the operator or the machine.
However, they whooped their joy too soon.

The flyer righted, rose, darted confusingly to the right, then to the left, and then bored straight into a woolly white cloudrack and was gone.