uperior in armament. Their
sky-steeds were faster, more readily maneuverable, though the flying
forces of the Americas in the last five years had made vast strides in
aviation. But what the Americans lacked in power they made up for in
fearless courage.

* * * * *

The plan of battle seemed automatically to work itself out.

The first vanguard of American planes came into contact with the forces
of Moyen, and from the noses of countless aero-subs spurted that golden
streak which the Secret Agents knew and dreaded.

The first flight of planes, stretching from horizon to horizon, vanished
from the sky with that dreadful surety which had marked the passing of
the _Stellar_, and such of those warships as had felt the full force of
the visible ray.

From General Munson rose a groan of anguish. These convertible fighting
planes had been the pride of the heart of the old warrior. To do him
credit, however, it was the wanton, so terribly inevitable destruction
of the flyers themselves which affected him. It was so final, so
absolute--and so utterly impossible to combat.

"Wait!" snapped Prester Kleig.

For the intrepid flyers behind that vanguard which had vanished had
witnessed the wholesale disintegration of the leading element of the
vast armada, and the pilots realized on the instant that no headlong
rush into the very noses of the aero-subs would avail anything.

The vast American formation broke into a mad maelstrom of whirling,
darting, diving planes. Every third plane plummeted downward, every
second one climbed, and the remaining ships, even in the face of what
had happened to the vanished first flight, held steadily to the front.

In this mad, seemingly meaningless formation, they closed on the
aero-subs. Without having seen the fight, the Americans were aping the
action of that one nameless flyer who had charged the aero-sub that had
been destroyed.

* * * * *

Kleig remembered. A score of ships had been destroyed utterly above the
graveyard of dreadnoughts, yet only one aero-sub, and that quite by
chance, had been marked off in the casualty column.

Death rode the heavens as the American flyers went into action. For
head-on fights, flyers went in at top speed, their planes whirling on
the axes of fuselages, all guns going. Planes were armored against their
own bullets, and they were not under the necessity of watching to see
that they did n