hat raged about the red ships above.

I saw meteors that fell, the red flames that enveloped them no redder
than the bodies of the ships. And, as I leaped from my plane that I
had landed back of our lines, I sensed that the enemy was withdrawing.

There was a colonel of artillery--I had known him in days of
peace--and he threw his arms around me and executed a crazy dance.
"We've beaten them back, Bob!" he shouted, and repeated it over and
over in a delirium of joy.

I couldn't believe it; not those cruisers that I had seen over Paris.
Another brief moment showed my fears were all too rational.

A shrieking hailstorm of torpedoes preceded them; the ships were
directing them from afar. And, while some of the big shells went wild
and overshot our lines, there were plenty that found their mark.

I was smashed flat by a stunning concussion. Behind me the place where
Colonel Hartwell had stood was a smoking crater; his battery of guns
had been blasted from the earth. Up and down the whole line, far
beyond the range of my sight, the eruption continued. The ground was a
volcano of flame, as if the earth had opened to let through the
interior fires, and the air was filled with a litter of torn bodies
and sections of shattered guns.

No human force could stand up under such a bombardment. Like others
about me, I gripped tight upon something within me that was my
self-control, and I marveled that I yet lived while I waited for the
end.

* * * * *

Beyond the smoke clouds was a hillside, swarming with figures in red;
solid masses of troops that came toward us. Above was the red fleet,
passing safely above our flame-blasted lines; there were bombs falling
upon those batteries here and there whose fire was unsilenced. And
then, from the south, came a roar that pierced even the bedlam about
me. The sun shone brightly there where the smoke-clouds had not
reached, and it glinted and sparkled from the wings of a myriad of our
planes.

There was something that pulled tight at my throat; I know I tore at
it with fumbling hands, as if that something were an actual band that
had clamped down and choked me, while I stared at that true line of
sharp-pointed V's. The air-force of the United States had been ordered
in; and they were coming, coming--to an inevitable death!

I tried to tear my eyes away from that oncoming fleet, but I could not
move. I saw their first contact with the enemy; so small, th