tell him a thing like that he'll just say something funny, and you're no better off." When they were in the skip Peters grumbled all the way down. "Anythin' wrong with you?" he asked at length. "No. What should there be?" said Isaac. "Ah, you're right," said Peters. "When I was a bachelor I'd no trouble either, except when I backed a wrong un. You're no horse-racer, though, are you?" "No," said Isaac; "but there's other wrong uns besides horses." "Eh! how's that?" Peters wished to know. Explanation was not vouchsafed him. The skip grounded and Isaac stepped out. His immediate thought was of the Cornishman and his desire to get at him. But the opportunity was withheld. Things were slack in the mine, and it didn't surprise Isaac to hear from Davis, a truck-boy, that Mitchell wasn't coming that day. Saint Monday made strong appeal to men of the Cornishman's stamp. One thing gratified Isaac. No one seemed to know about last night; otherwise it would have been flung in his face forthwith. The little, dark world of Perks's Hole would have had much to say about it, and Isaac could imagine its laughter and subsequent prophecies about a fight with Cornishman Mitchell. He shouldered his pick and strode away down the right gallery. Perks's was not an up-to-date mine, with cuttings roomy enough for a dogcart, and electric lights in all its arteries. old style of work went on by Davylamps. The His colleague was a deaf man named Bates, and he was glad of that also. They exchanged few words, which left more play for his thoughts. It was pick, pick, until the afternoon, with that music and the rumbling of the trolleys as accompaniment to his thoughts. After his dinner he strolled shaftwards as far as the shed where tools and other articles were stored. No one was in it, and Isaac wanted nothing out of it. But he swung his lamp about the little place, and discovered that a certain chest in the corner was not locked, as it should have been. The devil was on him in a moment, and he was soon out again with a dynamite cartridge and a detonator in his trousers-pocket. Give him his opening with things like these and the Cornishman should soon have no leg to stand upon. With a night of fettling in prospect, he was free for the rest of the day. He might have gone home again until the evening, but he chose to stay where he was. Peters volunteered to tell his mother about the night-duty and bring him his supper. Peters went up, still grumbling, and Isaac sulked in his corner with deaf Bates. The gloom suited his thoughts and the tragic trifles in his pocket. These last, moreover, made him careful of his movements. The day dragged on until it was time for Bates to go. "Got summat on your mind, haven't you, mate?" Bates asked on the point of departure. "Not me!" shouted Isaac. "I'm all right." And you're "Well, good-night, then. the quietest chap out of a cemetery, all right or all wrong. Sittin' moodyin' like a hen on her eggs, too!" Bates went off chuckling, and Isaac continued to sit. Soon the sounds of the mine gave place to its silences. By twos and threes the others all left it. The ponies in their stables, and only these, broke the deathly stillness with their intermittent shufflings. Isaac bestirred himself. The loneliness got on his nerves-that and his thoughts. Peters was a long while in returning. Memories of Lizzie, terribly fond memories, came upon him, and he tramped up and down trying to strangle them. That tired him, and presently he entered the shed and was asleep in a minute or two. He didn't hear the skip bring him his companion for the night. He heard nothing, indeed, until a hand touched his shoulder, and he opened his eyes upon the Cornishman. Mitchell's white teeth were the first details of him that his eyes rested on. He had splendid teeth, which showed well in a smile. "Had enough now?" asked the Cornishman good-humoredly as Isaac sprang up. "I wouldn't wake you before. Never saw a chap look so done in his sleep. It's shaping for one." Isaac stammered and stared. words "What brings you"- came from him thickly. The "Peter's wife's sick," exclaimed the Cornishman. "We arranged it with Griffin. A bit of a joke, I call ityou and me down here alone like this. I reckoned you'd start; but see here, Jesson, don't you go getting off your tracks. I bear you no malice for yesterday. I'd have done it myself in your place. Let's get this night through, and we'll start better. Wet our whistles together up above, andWhat do you say?" "I say I'll be struck dead first!" Isaac hissed. The Cornishman shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Think it's so bad as that, do you?" he said lightly. "Well, then, you shall. It'll square us a bit for what you done to my nose. Like to kill me, wouldn't you? Don't be a fool, Jesson. I'm going into No. 3. There's some faulty propping there I'm told. Go on dreaming. I'll say nothing. And your supper's on the table." Taking his lamp again, the Cornish man whistled himself off. His whistling grew fainter and fainter, and then all was silent as before. Many minutes passed, and still Isaac didn't touch his supper. He stared at the familiar knotting of the white cloth. There was a slip of paper tucked into the knot, and though he guessed it was a line from his mother he didn't stir for it. If His fingers felt the explosives in his pocket. These and his immense hatred of the Cornishman absorbed him. he could catch Mitchell sleeping as Mitchell had caught him, he might easily blow him to atoms. As for the collateral risks, what cared he? At length he got up and slipped into the corridor. He trembled from head to foot under the strain of his passions -staggered, indeed, as if he were really drunk this time. And then, all at once, something happened. There was a thud, followed by a shout from the Cornishman, and a dribble of lesser noises. The whole mine seemed to vibrate. "Jesson! Jesson! Come quick!" This cry shattered the recurring silences, and, darting for his lamp, Isaac ran for the No. 3 gallery on the left. All was black here, but the Cornishman continued to call. Forgetting everything except that a mate was in peril, Isaac shouted forward to him, "Coming! Coming!" He found Mitchell more than halfburied. The roof above that faulty prop had collapsed, and by wonderful luck the Cornishman had fallen head outwards. The weight on his loins and legs was crushing, but he tried to laugh as he grabbled with his hands and said that he was a deader. he couldn't have stirred. The Cornishman did all the talking, and that but feebly. Now and then he groaned. "I'm going, lad!" he whispered towards the end of Isaac's exertions; and then indeed Isaac had something to say. "You're coming out-that's what you're doing!" he cried. A little later he got the Cornishman Chambers's Journal. under the arms and slowly dragged him free. "There you are!" he gasped as he dropped by the side of his enemy. "Didn't I say so?" The Cornishman, however, was now quite silent. There was life in him, but it was at a low ebb; and all efforts to bring his senses back were useless. C. Edwardes. (To be concluded.) THE TACTICS OF THE AIR. The first stage in the use of dirigible air craft in war has been reached. A dirigible has been used to carry out a reconnaissance in actual fighting; its crew has reconnoitred the enemy's position, made sketch plans, taken photographs, and dropped bombs, and two facts have become abundantly plain. One is, that we are at the beginning, and that there is evidently no limit which we can foresee at present to the use of air craft in war; the other is, that the possession of an effective air fleet is an imperative necessity, not of to-morrow, but of to-day. If, to-day, war were declared between two Powers, the Power possessing the most efficient air fleet, caeteris paribus, would win. This, if any military expert ever doubted it, has been made a clear certainty by the work of the Italian dirigible P1 in a reconnaissance of the Turkish position near Bengazi, described by the special correspondent of the Turin Stampa. The Stampa's account appears in the Times, and may be briefly summarized. The P1 left its hanger at six in the morning, carrying on board the Commandate Peuco, the pilots, Captain Saymandi and Lieutenant Benigai, and a supply of bombs. It rose over the sea to a height of 1,000 metres, turned eastward over the oasis of Koefia, and satisfied itself that at the moment the oasis contained none of the enemy. LIVING AGE. VOL. LVI. 2948 Next it turned south towards Sidi Mufta, near which, at the foot of the Djebel and on the plain, lay the Turkish lines. As soon as the P1 came near the camp the Turks opened rifle fire; this proved futile, and the P1 dropped a bomb among the tents which took instant effect. The Turks ceased their rifle fire and brought their artillery into action. They had previously planted their guns on the slopes of sandhills, burying the tail of the carriage so as to take the recoil without overturning the gun. They sent their shells up almost vertically, but their fire was wild and harmless, and the dirigible, dropping bombs, proceeded on its course; it completed an exact reconnaissance of the enemy's camp, estimated the numbers of Turks and Arabs, took photographs of the position, and in two hours returned unharmed to the Italian lines, with the whole plan of the Turkish position at the disposal of the Italian general. The dirigible, in short, that morning obtained for nothing information for which a general a few years ago would have sacrificed troops as a plain duty. She was unopposed; she was in the position of a warship able to outrange the ships engaging her; she could hit without being hit and see without being pursued. It must have been an exhilarating two hours for her Italian crew; for the Turks it is difficult to imagine a on a a more hopeless and helpless experience. But what would happen in another war in a war in which both sides possessed an air fleet? The first obvious point is that it would be impossible for a dirigible to reconnoitre an enemy's position as the P1 reconnoitred the Turkish position with nothing more to fear than a stray rifle bullet through her envelope, and with very long odds against even that. The ascent of a dirigible on one side would be enby dirigible or countered number of aeroplanes ascending the other. Here, of course, we come at once to the question whether for war purposes the future is with the dirigible balloon or the heavierthan-air machine. The probabilities, no doubt, are that in the future it may be possible to build aeroplanes capable of carrying a crew of twenty-five or thirty, and that large aeroplanes of this kind would be easier to control than dirigibles with their huge envelope offering so vast a surface to a rough wind. But we are dealing for the moment with the war conditions, not of to-morrow, but of to-day, and to-day, if the weather made it possible, dirigibles would be used for reconnaissance because of their capacity for carrying Ana crew in addition to the pilot. other advantage, too, which the dirigible possesses over the aeroplane is that it can ascend vertically, whereas the aeroplane must leave the ground at an angle and necessarily must take some time in circling up to any considerable height. We may imagine, then, two armies lying opposite each other, as, for example, the Russian and Japanese armies lay before the battle of Liaoyang. It would be the object of the attacking general to discover the strength and the disposition of the enemy, so that he might know where to drive in his wedge or throw the full weight of his numbers. He decides, then, to send up his dirigible be She fore dawn, so that with the earliest aeroplanes would hum like wasps seeking where to sting. Each would try to get higher than the other, as hawks try to tower above their quarry; each would try to get the weather-gauge of the other, as ships tried in the days of sails. Each would try to reach the brain of the other, and at the touch of the bullet engines and planes would reel down out of the fight-the first tidings perhaps which would come to the armies waiting below to tell them how the battle was going 6,000 feet in the air above them. Or you may guess that the commander of the dirigible, directing the fight round him, would see perhaps that his accompanying squadron outnumbered his attackers, and that it would be worth his while to lose plane for plane; he might, a new Nelson in the Empyrean, show some air-signal to order his squadron to engage the enemy more closely, and that might end in aeroplanes going down locked in couples, with the survivors free to push home their victory. All the while, six, seven, perhaps ten thousand feet below, the opposing armies on the hills would have perforce to wait, "hushed in grim repose," for the result of the battle they could not see. To imagine such a fight, it may be objected, presupposes too much. Does it presuppose that the airmen on each side in a battle of the future will be gifted with superhuman courage, impossible skill, nerves which as a fact men do not possess? That was said once about the officers and men who manned torpedo craft and submarines. And it is probably no more true of air The Spectator. craft than it has been proved to be true of the most dangerous form of duty undertaken at sea. There will be men found to take any risks and all risks. We may remember, to begin with, that though it is doubtless the fact that the ordinary average man cannot contemplate ascents in an aeroplane to a height of six or seven thousand feet as anything but a nightmare, the skilled airman has no such feelings of horror and fear. To him height is not horrible; all he asks for is a sound machine. As the sailor in Shakespeare says, "Give me sea-room and I care not," so he asks only for air-room, and the further he is from the earth the safer he feels. And, possessed of sound machines and with a duty to do, we may take it for granted that the officers who take up their aeroplanes, or the pilots and crews who go up in dirigibles, will do their duty. It will be a duty which will carry honor with it, perhaps, with a certainty and to a degree that has not as yet been attainable by any branch of an army's fighting forces. But the duty will be there to be done; and with the drone of airships and aeroplanes already humming over African battlefields, over French and German flying-grounds, over England from Hendon to Salisbury Plain, the question of the future of war in the air has been removed a stage further-from the duty of fighting to the duty of supply. The dirigible and the aeroplane are already instruments of modern warfare, and each modern army must complete its equipment. Next, we may suppose, we may look for a manual of aerial tactics. "HEAVEN LIES ABOUT US." Wordsworth, in the immortal Ode, appears to us to have misjudged humanity in two respects. At least, he may have been right for himself, but he was not right for everyone, as a poet should be. It is not true-not true for everyone that, with the passing years, the vision splendid fades into the light |