Down the bank scrambled the distinguished party and in a few seconds the cars were streaking homeward.
The circus was now climbing desperately, but the watcher on high had a big margin of safety.
"Whoom!"
Just to the rear of the last staff car fell the bomb, blowing a great hole in the paved road and scattering stones and débris over a wide area.
The cars fled onward, skidding at every turn of the road, and the bombs followed or preceded them, or else flung up the earth to left or right.
"That's the tenth and the last, thank God!" said the sweating aide-de-camp. "Heaven and thunder! what an almost catastrophe!"
In the amazing spaces of the air, a lean face, pinched and blue with the cold, peered over the fuselage and watched the antlike procession of pin-point dots moving slowly along the snowy road.
"That's ma last!" he said, and picking up an aerial torpedo from between his feet, he dropped it over the side.
It struck the last car, which dissolved noisily into dust and splinters, while the force of the explosion overturned the car ahead.
"A bonnie shot," said Tam o' the Scoots complacently, and banked over as he turned for home. He shot a glance at the climbing circus and judged that there was no permanent advantage to be secured from an engagement. Nevertheless he loosed a drum of ammunition at the highest machine and grinned when he saw two rips appear in the wing of his machine.