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Two practice buses had been allotted to us, and on them the pilots were set to perform landings, split-"air" turns, and stunts likely to be useful in a scrap. For the rest, we sorted ourselves out, which pilot was to fly with which observer, and improved the machines' accessories.

On the 11th January, 1600, de Weert made sail for Penguin Islands, and next day came to anchor under the smaller of these islands, where he immediately landed with thirty-eight men in tolerable health, leaving the pilots and other seamen on board. Leaving three men to keep the boat, the rest fell to killing birds, of which there were a prodigious quantity in the island.

For some strange reason, my own hurt at the loss was toned down by a mental farewell to each of the fallen, in words borrowed from the song sung by an old-time maker of ballads when youth left him: "Adieu, la très gente compagne." The crowded months of the umptieth squadron from June to November were worth while for the pilots who survived.

Then, as aviation developed, pilots came together at these grounds, and sheds were built to house their craft. And after this, quickly as a rule, an organisation was built up. Beginning from rough shelters, erected hastily on the brink of a stretch of open land, there grew row upon row of neatly-built sheds, with workshops near them in which aircraft could be constructed or repaired.

The fleet in the mean time had suffered perils and hardships which can never be told. Many of the transports were still missing. Many were at anchor outside the inlet, waiting for pilots to bring them in. Some had been lost. The "City of New York," a large steam propeller, freighted with stores and munitions of war, had struck on the bar, and foundered in the breakers.

Certain portions of old Weymouth are very picturesque, with steep streets and comfortable old bow-windowed lodging-houses patronized almost exclusively by the better class of seafarer; merchant captains, pilots and the like. A few of the lanes at the upper end of the harbour may be termed "slums" by the more fastidious, but it is only to their outward appearance that the word is applicable.

Among Hawke's memoranda occur the words, "Not to undertake anything without good pilots."

They accomplished their object without opposition; but, after having first run aground in the troublesome, and to their pilots unknown, waters of the Lesser Syrtis, whence they with difficulty got clear again, the fleet encountered a storm between Sicily and Italy, which cost more than 150 ships.

What with the pilots already breveted, and the eleves, or pupils in the training-schools, there were quite enough of our compatriots to man the dozen airplanes in one escadrille. Every day somebody "had it absolutely straight" that we were to become a unit at the front, and every other day the report turned out to be untrue. But at last, in the month of February, our dream came true.

Crippled, maltreated, and diminished in number, as were his ships; he would have still faced, the enemy, but the winds and currents were fast driving him on, a lee-shore, and the pilots, one and all, assured him that it would be inevitable destruction to remain. After a slight and very ineffectual attempt to rescue Don Diego de Pimentel in the St.