Bob rose again, filled with ardor, and determined, more than ever in the presence of this menacing intruder, to accomplish what he had come out for and get the rest of his sketch of the new Bolshevik lines. He climbed at high speed, darted about until he saw the Fokker cruising through the clouds below, then plunged down above it and delivered a hail of bullets on its broad spreading wings.
As he dodged and rose again he watched the enemy sway and nose-dive into a cloud-bank. He noticed that the wings were bare of emblems. The German crosses—if they had been there—were gone. The Fokker recovered and rose again, the fabric of its upper planes slashed by the Nieuport’s bullets.
Bob was uncertain what tactics to follow. So far he could not be sure whether his adversary was sly or stupid. The Fokker’s pilot seemed to have little initiative, yet he manœuvred the heavy plane skillfully. It dipped and climbed almost at the little Nieuport’s speed. Unless the pilot were a clumsy Bolshevik amateur Bob could never hope to disable the Fokker from his own light craft. The best he could hope was to scare him off or lose him in the clouds.
Suddenly all doubt of the enemy’s skill vanished, for the Fokker headed straight for the Nieuport and, firing repeatedly with well-aimed volleys, circled about the little monoplane, which turned tail and retreated up into the sky, where the heavy Fokker could but slowly follow.
At 9,000 feet Bob paused, for the enemy had stopped rising 1,000 feet below him and seemed to be awaiting developments. Bob was too high for convenient observation and the drifting clouds annoyingly obscured his vision. He peered down at the Bolshevik lines, nevertheless, keeping one eye on his enemy, who was all but in range and waiting inexorably. After ten minutes’ more sketching, by frequent change of position and some clever guesswork, he had got most of the information he wanted. Now he began to cast uneasy glances toward the Fokker which flew back and forth on the watch, just above the clouds.
Bob had never been good at a waiting game, and this cat-like proceeding got on his nerves. He began to feel trapped, and in consequence defiant. He reloaded both guns, speeded up his motor, and without warning dropped like a plummet over the cruising Fokker and emptied both guns over cockpit and rudder.
This done, however, he was obliged to fly still lower before he could attempt a climbing turn. The Fokker, though bullet-riddled and one plane sagging, followed him down, spraying the little Nieuport with a deadly fire. Bob realized now his own rashness in not fleeing at once before an enemy who so outmatched him. The truth was he had not been able to convince himself that any Bolshevik flyer could outmatch him, even in a battle plane twice the Nieuport’s size.
He hid in the clouds, looking with anxious misgiving at his torn wings and suddenly aware that his rudder did not obey him with exactness. Once more the Fokker passed him, slowly this time, for to Bob’s tremendous relief, he saw that the enemy plane was badly crippled and had lost some of its speed. In the same breadth of time he saw at last the pilot’s face. Hidden by helmet and goggles, he recognized the shape of that big chin, the turn of the head, the stoop of the broad shoulders. He had seen that man a thousand times over the battle-fields of France,—Rittermann, one of the last of Germany’s veteran flyers.
Bob turned the Nieuport westward, put on what speed he could and ran away at eighty miles an hour. He steered for his own station, east of Archangel, following the river which wound below him, the water gleaming darkly through the ice in the approaching twilight. But the Nieuport’s rudder did not obey his touch. The monoplane veered northward, slackened speed. Bob looked back, his mind whirling a little, then drew a long hard breath. The Fokker had lost him. He was within the American lines again, but north of the Dwina, above a rough, ice-covered plain cut into hummocks and ridges, broken just beneath him by the bare branches of a wood.
He wanted badly to land but saw no possible landing-place in sight, and the familiar home field was far away. He turned with difficulty and began flying back toward the American trenches, seeking the village by the river where the companies of infantry were billeted. But in the past half hour the early Arctic night had begun to fall. By his wrist-watch it was quarter to three, and he knew that by three o’clock it would be almost dark. The cold was so intense it numbed his power to think, and his rudder, struck by the Fokker’s bullets, responded more feebly every moment.