"Yes, sir!" And through the phone the Master heard the snick of a switch being hastily thrown.
"What's the idea, now?" demanded the major, astonished. "Going to let that plane close in on us, and maybe riddle us?"
The Master smiled, as he made answer:
"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a man on board that plane. A man! And we—need men!"
The Master smiled, as he made answer:
"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a man on board that plane. A man! And we—need men!"
CHAPTER XVI
LECLAIR, ACE OF FRANCE
Swooping, rising, falling like a falcon in swift search of quarry, the last plane of the Azores squadron swept in toward the on-rushing Eagle of the Sky.
Undismayed by the swift, inexplicable fall of all its companions, it still thrust on for the attack. In a few minutes it had come off the port bows of the giant air-liner, no more than half a mile distant. Now the watchers saw it, slipping through some tenuous higher cloud-banks that had begun to gather, a lean, swift, wasplike speedster: one of the Air Control Board's—the A.C.B.'s—most rapid aerial police planes. The binoculars of the Master and Bohannan drew the machine almost to fingers' touch.