He went on saying over the fine solemn words as he swung the Nieuport down again through the fog:
“—It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the flyers
And, but for you, possess the field.”
He was hardly at the last line when a Fokker biplane broke through the clouds in front of him.
The enemy plane had not risen in pursuit of the American. Its guns were not trained on the Nieuport. In that fleeting glimpse Bob saw that the Fokker’s gunner, glasses raised, was observing his own lines below, while the pilot manœuvred the plane over rifts in the cloudy floor. But at sight of the Nieuport the gunner flashed his weapons into range, though no shots followed, for at once the drifting clouds hid the two antagonists from each other.
All his slumbering energies aroused, Bob leaned forward with keenest intentness, trying to see through the treacherous misty curtain. He glanced at his machine-guns, made sure that his motor was running smooth, and rose a little higher, hoping to get above the Fokker and avoid surprise.
He thought swiftly as he prepared for attack, still puzzled by the enemy plane’s appearance. It was a German machine—no doubt about that. He supposed the Bolsheviki had bought or stolen it. Vague suspicions, already aroused during the past few days, stirred him once more, but again he rejected them.
“I think he’s a German because inwardly I’m longing to bring down another German plane,” he told himself.
He tried to picture the faces and figures of the men in the Fokker, as they had flashed close beside him, but they were like himself unrecognizable in fur and helmet. Five minutes passed before the Fokker again appeared, this time greeting the Nieuport with a broadside that sent bullets whizzing past Bob’s ears to cut into the fog behind him.