Of a sudden there broke out—there is no other word for it—a silence more startling than all that harsh raving of the propeller that had been stopped. At the same instant Gwenna felt the floor fall away suddenly on her left and mount as dizzily on her right. The biplane was tilted up in the air just as a ladder is tilted against the side of the house. And the engine was giving short staccato roars into the silences as Paul kept her going. He had shut off, and was making a giddy swoop down, down to the left. She heard his voice. Sharply he cried out:
"There! Out to the left! The Taube! There he is!"
The next moment the engine was roaring again. The biplane had lifted to the opposite curve of a swooping figure eight.
And now the girl in the passenger-seat saw in the air beside them, scarcely two hundred yards away, what the pilot had seen.
It was another aeroplane; a monoplane.
CHAPTER VI
THE WINGED VICTORY
Now Gwenna, although she'd been clerk and assistant to the Aeroplane Lady herself, and although she loved the idea of aeroplanes as other girls have loved the idea of jewels, scarcely knew one pattern of monoplane from another.