McGee began climbing, and noted with satisfaction that Larkin, on the alert, was waggling his wings as a signal that he too had seen them and was prepared.
Then, for apparently no reason at all, Siddons cut out of the flight and started streaking it for the lines.
For a brief moment McGee felt a burning desire to take after him and turn his guns loose on him.
“Traitorous hound!” he muttered to himself. “I wondered how you could follow when we were strafing those troops. I’ll bet anything he never warmed his guns. Of course he wouldn’t!”
But just now there was business at hand more urgent than chasing after a man whom he felt sure was both a traitor and a coward.
Above him the Spads were engaged in a merry dog fight with the German Albatrosses. But two of the Germans had somehow eluded them and were diving down on Larkin’s flight.
The action of the next moment was too swift for words. The two Albatrosses came bravely on, scorning the odds against them. Larkin’s plane engaged the first one, but the second one got in a lucky burst that sent one of the Nieuports nosing down in a disabled effort to make a safe landing. And perhaps the luckless pilot could have saved his life to spend 198the rest of the war in a German prison camp but for the fact that the German who had crippled him, tasting blood, wanted a more complete victory. Down, down, he followed the plane, spitting lead at the poor pilot who seemed unable to think of anything except getting to the earth.
As the planes came down to a level with McGee’s flight, Red whipped around and closed in on the pursuer. Too late! Flame came curling, licking from the motor of the Nieuport. That second, for the first time, McGee recognized it as Randolph Hampden’s ship. Poor Hampden! The only man in the squadron who ever had a good word for Siddons, and now he was going down in flames while Siddons, supposedly his friend, was high-tailing it for home.
With bitterest venom McGee thumbed his trigger releases as he caught a fleeting glimpse of the Albatross in the ring sight. But that German was not only courageous–he was a consummate flyer. He whipped around with surprising speed and came streaming at McGee with both guns going. Head on he came, and there was something about the desperation of the move that told McGee that the battle-crazed fellow would actually ram him in mid-air.
McGee dived. So close was the other upon him that he imagined he could feel the wheels of the undercarriage on his own wings.