"I'll go down in a spinning nose dive," he reasoned. "They'll be less likely to hit me then. I'll have to go back, I guess, and get some more shots. I used more than I thought."
He sent his last drum at the persistent German, and, noting that the other was swooping around to attack again, went into the dangerous spinning nose dive.
The Germans may have thought they had disabled their antagonist, for this dive is one a machine often takes when the pilot has lost control. But in this case Tom still retained it, and when he had dropped out of the danger zone, he prepared to straighten out and fly back over his own lines.
It is not easy to straighten an airplane after such a dive, and for a moment Tom was not sure that he could do it. Often the strain of this nose dive, when the machine is speeding earthward, impelled not only by its propellers, but by the attraction, of gravitation, is so great as to tear off the wings or to crumple them. But after one sickening moment, when the craft seemed indisposed to obey him, Tom felt it beginning to right itself, and then he started to sail toward the French lines.
He was not out of danger yet, though he was far enough away from the two German machines. But he was so low that he was within range of the German anti-aircraft guns, and straightway they began shooting at him.
To add to his troubles his engine began missing, and he realized that it had sustained some damage that might make it stop any moment. And he still had several miles to travel!
But he opened up full, and though the missing became more frequent he managed to keep the motor going until he was in a position to volplane down inside his own lines, where he was received with cheers by his comrades of the camp.
"How goes it?" asked Major de Trouville anxiously.
"I think we are holding them off," said Tom.
He was the first one who had had to return, much to his chagrin. He leaped out of his craft, and was about to ask for another to go back and renew the battle of the clouds, when he saw the big photographing machine returning, accompanied by all but two of the escorting craft.