area of swaying wings seemed to jerk upward.
He felt his aeropile had dropped clear, that the monstrous fabric, clean
overturned, hung like a sloping wall above him.

He did not clearly understand that he had struck the side float of the
aeroplane and slipped off, but he perceived that he was flying free on
the down glide and rapidly nearing earth. 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 vans crumple with the weight of its
descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down,
upon the sloping wheels. Throb, throb, throb, pause. Suddenly from
the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the
zenith. And then 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