g forms on the swirling surface.

We swung sharply upward. Again Mercer's platform--its light now
extinguished--swept directly over us. His exultant voice floated down.

"We did it, Alan! We did it! Come on up!"

We rose to the upper air, where the girls were still circling about. The
other boats were keeping on their course, spreading farther apart now to
be out of range of each other's projectors. I had hoped they would turn
back with this catastrophe to their leader, but they did not.

I consulted hastily with Miela, and then we gave the order for a general
attack, allowing each of the leading girls to act as she saw fit.

Like a great flock of birds we swooped downward upon our prey, spreading
out to attack all the boats at once. The girls now turned on their hand
lights--a myriad tiny beams darting about in the semidarkness.

I cannot attempt to describe the scene that followed. It can be imagined,
perhaps, but not told in words. As we swept within range of the lights
that swung up from below to meet us, I saw a girl, flying alone, pass
directly through one of the red beams. It seemed to strike her sidewise.
In an instant she had passed beyond it. I saw the dim outlines of her form
as she fluttered onward, wavering and aimless like a wounded bird. And
then she fell, turning over and over as with one wing she strove vainly to
support herself, until at last, wrapped in the sable shroud of her shield,
she plunged with a great splash into the sea.

The flashing light-rays all about us now seemed mingled in inextricable
confusion. The girls must have passed through them frequently, protected
by their shields; and I know our platform was several times struck by them
from below. The absence of sound was uncanny. Only the whistling wind of
our flight, the flapping of the girl's wings, and the hissing of steam as
our rays struck the water, accompanied this inferno of light.

We swept beyond the boat we had singled out, passing five or six hundred
feet above it, and in the effort to avoid its ray turning so that I was
unable to bring mine upon it. As we rose again, beyond it, I saw a boat
off to the left in flames. A dozen girls had rushed upon it, darting in
among its smaller rays to where their own would be effective. But there
was only one girl above it now, struggling brokenly to maintain herself in
flight. The boat sank with the roar of an explosion of some kind, but in
the sudden darkness about I could still see