Our Pilots in the Air | Page 9

too late without a further scrimmage, for no less than
half a dozen Boche planes were swooping around their rear, some
already within range. In maneuvering into position Blaine again picked
up his megaphone, saying:
"I saw you drop those chaps. Oh, you Orry! Here we go -- right for
some more of them! Whoopee!"
It seemed little short of blasphemy -- this uproarious spirit, in the face
of the odds gathering in behind. But Blaine was built that way. Danger,
the closer and more menacing, instead of rousing fear, nerved him to
his best or, as it might turn out, worst.
"Where's your prisoner?" shouted Erwin. "I feared he'd get you."
"Nit, old man! I got hold of a monkey-wrench and knocked him cold.
But he was game, you bet!"
"Where is he then?"
"Cold and stiff under my feet. Watch out, Orry!"
Megaphones cast aside, both Americans now addressed themselves to
the desperate task of fighting these new assailants and reaching their
own lines.
But in the first firing that ensued Erwin's Lewis gun suddenly jammed.
This was probably one result of his having to use the German-made
ammunition tossed to him earlier by Blaine, when his own had been
exhausted. He signaled to his partner:
"Gun jammed! Must cut for home -- understand?"
"All right! Go up - up -"
A burst of flame from Blaine's machine, and the toppling down of the
nearest adversary was the first result of this new encounter. Evidently
that flag waving from Blaine's captured plane had fooled the Boches
again.

Down, down went the hostile machine, its pilot frantically but
ineffectually trying to right himself.
Passing Erwin, the latter saw the Boche, evidently a mere lad, working
at the controls as the plane dropped down like a dead leaf in the air.
"Poor fellow," sighed Orris, beginning to spiral upward. "What a
deadly cruel thing war now is!"
Up, up he climbed, two of the enemy following, while Blaine was
engaging another, the last. The final view Erwin had of his bunkie the
two were engaged in a close duel, dipping, darting, flashing about each
other. Now came interchanging machine gun fire, with both gradually
following Erwin higher, higher, until the latter began to feel that the
thin air of these upper regions was getting on his nerves. A glance at
his own register showed eighteen thousand feet or thereabouts.
Still his adversaries climbed after him. Now and then a spurt of flame
and a spatter of bullets indicated that his own plane was being more or
less perforated. The lad became doubtful as to the wisdom of waiting
longer for his comrade. Evidently Blaine would fight on as long as his
ammunition lasted or until disabled himself. After all, two hostile
planes dropped and the third one brought home with its occupant was
not a bad conclusion for a night's bombing raid on the enemy trenches.
Here a sudden, fierce gust of wind from the north catching him
unawares half tilted his machine and then as he righted it sent him
scurrying at terrific speed southward. At the same time a black cloud,
belching and flaming thunder and lightning, swept down on him with
almost the force of a hurricane.

CHAPTER IV
WINNING PROMOTIONS
Looking back, Orris saw his nearest foe, apparently caught by the same

whirlwind that had nearly unseated him, go side-looping over and over
as if in the grasp of mighty, invisible forces that he was unable to meet
or control.
"It's safety first, I guess, for us all," he thought, at once diving into the
nearing thunder burst that closed round him like a black pall, a pall now
threaded and convulsed with electric forces that showed only in vivid
flashes and deafening thunders.
The winds, too, picked him up, whirled him about and otherwise so
tossed his machine here, there, yonder, that for five fearful minutes he
hardly knew where or what he was. The wind, now bitter cold, would
have frozen his flesh but for his sheathing of wool and leather that
protected his face, arms and body. Blinding gusts of rain, sleet and
frozen snow buffeted the planes, the shield of the fuselage, and all of
himself that was visible.
By this time Blaine, the German planes, his own late adversary, had all
vanished. He was alone, like a buffeted, tossed, shaken twig, in that
wild vortex of darkness and storm.
With his machine gun jammed and his petrol running low, what was
there for him to do but descend and make for the home aerodrome?
"Might as well," he reflected. "We've already overstayed our time."
Pointing gently downwards, he suffered himself to drift. That is, if one
in the midst of a blinding storm and seated in a war-plane may be
supposed to