wer, two-row, radial motor.

Allison dipped his wings as Stan went boring past him. It was really a
salute and it meant a lot, coming from Allison with his dislike of
radial motors.

They roared out over the channel at 15,000 feet. As the French coast
line began to show through a thin mist, Stan laid over and started to
climb again. Very soon they were nipping at their oxygen, flying at
26,000 feet. They saw no planes at all and the excursion seemed doomed
to be no more than a spring frolic.

O'Malley growled into his intercommunication phone. "The Jerries must o'
heard we were comin' out for a spin."

"There's a cloud or two down and to the east," Stan answered. "We'll
drop down and pick up Allison, then go have a look."

"That's where the bushwhackin' spalpeens will be lurking," O'Malley
agreed.

They knifed over on one wing, peeled off, and roared down. The
gyro-horizon did a lot of strange maneuvers and the altimeter was
unrolling like ticker tape off a Wall Street machine. They picked up
Allison and Stan decided to give the Irishman a lesson. He set the air
flaps, and before the startled O'Malley could save himself, he had lost
a couple of inches of skin off both shins. The Hendee Hawk seemed to
have decided to stop in mid-air. She was pointing her nose straight at
the ground, but she had slowed to a steady 350 miles per hour.

"Mother o' pearl!" O'Malley shouted. "What a nice day for dive bombing.
Show me how you do it."

"Just watch." Stan pulled the Hawk out of her dive and then sent her in
again with O'Malley watching him closely.

Then Allison's voice cut in. "You fellows better cut out the
grandstanding and have a look west."

Stan looked and saw that Allison was streaking away toward a formation
of nine Junkers Ju 87's. The Stukas were bent upon business and were
moving toward the English coast, undoubtedly bent upon intercepting a
ship they had received a spotter's report upon.

"Me bye, you may now show Mrs. O'Malley's son a few things," O'Malley
bellowed. Stan sent the Hawk sizzling away after the Stukas. The Jerries
had now sighted the two fighters, but they were keeping on their course,
which meant that up in the big clouds above lurked a fighter patrol of
Messerschmitts. The Junkers were slow and low-powered, not being able to
exceed 170 miles per hour. Stan zoomed up and passed Allison who was
also going up with the cloud ambush in mind.

Suddenly the Stukas broke formation and scattere