For now above us the European ships, whirling aimlessly about in that terrific fire that raked them from either side, were falling faster still! Their own shells burst and flared along the sides of the great air-forts, but were too few in number to cripple or destroy any of those gigantic, heavily-armored edifices. And at that moment, even as the European ships strove to mass together to escape from that great death trap of the air, the First Air Chief's ship was slanting up toward them, and now we needed no orders to follow as we raced up after him. Up until our great fleet rushing upward in a single mass was pouring up before us a third terrific fire of heat-shells which, added to that of the air-forts on either side, sent blinding death-flares dancing and leaping over all the mass of ships above us.
And now above us the European ships, whirling about aimlessly in the terrific fire that raked them from either side, were falling faster still. And even as they massed together to escape that great death trap, we were slanting up after them.
"They're turning!" cried Hilliard. "They're fleeing!"
Homeward
Fleeing! Even as our fleet shot up toward them the European ships, reduced now to hardly more than two thousand in number, and unable to bear the terrific fire concentrated upon them from three directions, were soaring frantically upward above the air-forts, up and away to the eastward, massing together in a close-bunched, irregular formation. And our fleet had shot up after them, sending a rain of shining messengers of death among them as we shot after them, pursuing them with bow-guns firing just as minutes before they had pursued us. Then, broken and disorganized and incapable of further resistance for the time being, the great European fleet was drawing away from us as an order from the First Air Chief halted our wild pursuit. Outnumbered still as we were by two to one we could not carry the pursuit too far from our supporting air-forts.
As we halted, we saw the European ships racing on in a struggling mass, dwindling and vanishing from us quickly against the gathering dusk eastward. Then our own battered cruisers were turning, heading back westward, back toward the brilliant, waning sunset, and with our flagship at our head until we paused above the air-forts. There, with the wild exultation of victory we three in the bridge-room, Macklin, Hilliard and myself, and our crew and all the cruiser crews about us, expressed ourselves in great roaring shouts. And then, once more, there came from the distance-phone before us the voice of the First Air Chief.