"Only one man aboard her, with a machine-gun," commented the Master, eyes at glass, as he watched the flick of sunlight on the attacker's fuselage, the dip and glitter of her varnished wings, the blur of her propellers. Already the roaring of her exhaust gusted down to them.
"Ah, see? She's turning, now. Banking around! We may catch a burst of machine-gun fire, in a minute. Or, no—she's coming up on our tail, Major. I think she's going to try and board us!"
"You going to let her?" protestingly demanded Bohannan. His hand twitched against the butt of the Lewis. "In two seconds I could sight an aft gun, sir, and blow that machine Hell-for-leather!"
"No, no—let that fellow come aboard, if he wants," the Master commanded. And with eager curiosity in his dark eyes, with vast wonder what manner of human this might be who—all alone after having seen more than a hundred comrades plunge—still ventured closing to grips, the Master watched.
The air-wasp was already swerving, making a spiral glide, coming up astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched—and as a score of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed—the lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk stooping at quarry.
A moment she kept pace with the air-liner's whirring rush. She hovered, dropped with a wondrous precision that proved her rider's consummate skill, made a perfect landing on the long take-off that stretched from rudders to wing observation galleries, atop the liner.
Forward on Nissr the wasp ran on her small, cushioned wheels. She stopped, with jammed-on brakes, and came to rest not forty feet abaft the Eagle's beak.
Quite at once, without delay, the little door of the pilot-pit in the wasp's head swung wide, and a heavily-swaddled figure clambered out. This figure stood a moment, peering about through goggles. Then with a free, quick stride, he started forward toward the gallery where he had seen Bohannan and the Master.
The two awaited him. Confidently he came into the wind-shielded gallery on top of Nissr's port plane. He advanced to within about six feet, stopped, gave the military salute—which they both returned—and in a throaty French that marked him as from Paris, demanded:
"Which of you gentlemen is in command, here?"