ey were,
in contrast with the big red cruisers. They attacked in formations;
they drove down and in; and they circled and whirled before they
fluttered to earth....

Dimly, through the stupor that numbed my brain, I heard men about me
shouting with joy. I felt more than saw the fall of a monster red
craft; it struck not far away. The voices were thanking God--for what?
Another red ship fell--and another; and through all the roaring
inferno a sound was tearing--a ripping, terrible scream that went on
and on. And above me, when I forced my eyes upward, was a flash of
white.

It darted like a live thing among the red ones whose guns blazed
madly--and the red ships in clotted groups fell away and over and down
as the white one passed. They had been burst open where some power had
blasted them, and their torn hulls showed gaping as they fell.

For a time the air was silent and empty above; the white, flashing
thing had passed from sight, for the line of red ships was long. Then
again it returned, and it threw itself into the mad whirl in the south
where the air-force of the American people was fighting its last
fight.

I was screaming insanely as I saw it come back. The white ship!--the
blast of vapor from its funneled stern--It was Paul!--Paul
Stravoinski!--Paul the Dictator!--and he was fighting on our side!

* * * * *

His ship had been prepared; I had seen the machine-guns on her bow.
Paul was working them from within, and every bullet was tipped with
the product of his brain--the deadly tritonite!

The white flash swung wide in a circle that took it far away. It came
back above the advancing army of the Reds. It swerved once wildly,
then settled again upon its course, and the raging hell that the Reds
had turned loose upon our lines was as nothing to the destruction that
poured upon the Red troops from above.

A messenger of peace, that ship; I knew well why Paul had painted it
white. And, instead of peace--!

He was flying a full mile from our lines, yet the torn earth and great
boulders crashed among us even then. There were machine-guns firing
ceaselessly from the under side of the ship. What charges of tritonite
had the demented man placed in those shells?

Below and behind it, as it flashed across our view, was a fearful,
writhing mass where the earth itself rose up in unending, convulsive
agony. A volcano of fire followed him, a fountain of earth that ripped
and tore an