. What had he done? His heart
throbbed like a noisy engine in his throat and for a perilous instant he
could not move his levers because of the paralysis of his hands. He
wrenched the levers to throw his engine back, fought for two seconds
against the weight of it, felt himself righting, driving horizontally,
set the engine beating again.

He looked upward and saw two aeroplanes glide shouting far overhead,
looked back, and saw the main body of the fleet opening out and rushing
upward and outward; saw the one he had struck fall edgewise on and strike
like a gigantic knife-blade along the wind-wheels below it.

He put down his stern and looked again. He drove up heedless of his
direction as he watched. He saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabric
strike the earth, saw its downward vanes crumple with the weight of its
descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down,
upon the sloping wheels. Then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of
white fire licked up towards the zenith. He was aware of a huge mass
flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to
escape the charge--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled
by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the
gust of its close passage.

He became aware of three others rushing towards him, aware of the urgent
necessity of beating above them. Aeroplanes were all about him, circling
wildly to avoid him, as it seemed. They drove past him, above, below,
eastward and westward. Far away to the westward was the sound of a
collision, and two falling flares. Far away to the southward a second
squadron was coming. Steadily he beat upward. Presently all the
aeroplanes were below him, but for a moment he doubted the height he had
of them, and did not swoop again. And then he came down upon a second
victim and all its load of soldiers saw him coming. The big machine
heeled and swayed as the fear-maddened men scrambled to the stern for
their weapons. A score of bullets sung through the air, and there flashed
a star in the thick glass wind-screen that protected him. The aeroplane
slowed and dropped to foil his stroke, and dropped too low. Just in time
he saw the wind-wheels of Bromley hill rushing up towards him, and spun
about and up as the aeroplane he had chased crashed among them. All its
voices wove into a felt of yelling. The great fabric seemed to be
standing on end for a second among the heeling a