He tried a side-slip, and as he did so he had an instant’s vision of yet another machine, a Frenchman this time, falling like a bolt out of the blue upon his assailant. The biter was bit.
Peter tried to come round and help, but he turned right over sideways and dropped, and suddenly found himself with the second Hun plane coming up right ahead of him. Peter blazed away, but God! how his wrist hurt him! He cursed life and death. He blazed away with his machine going over more and more, and the landscape rushing up over his head and then getting in front of him and circling round. For some seconds he did not know what was up and what was down. He continued to fire, firing earthward for a long second or so after his second enemy had disappeared from his vision.
The world was spinning round faster and faster, and everything was moving away outward, faster and faster, as if it was all hastening to get out of his way....
This surely was a spinning nose dive, the spinning nose dive—from within. Round and round. Confusing and giddy! Just as he had seen poor old Gordon go down.... But one didn’t feel at all—as Peter had supposed one must feel—like an egg in an egg-whisk!...
Down spun the aeroplane, as a maple fruit in autumn spins to the ground. Then this still living thing that had been Peter, all bloody and broken, made a last supreme effort. And his luck seconded his effort. The spin grew slower and flatter. Control of this lurching, eddying aeroplane seemed to come back, escaped again, mocked him. The ground was very near. Now! The sky swung up over the whirling propeller again and stayed above it, and again the machine obeyed a reasonable soul.
He was out of it! Out of a nose dive! Yes. Steady! It is so easy when one’s head is whirling to get back into a spin again. Steady!...
He talked to himself. “Oh! good Peter! Good Peter! Clever Peter. Wonderful Mr. Toad! Stick it! Stick it!” But what a queer right hand it was! It was covered with blood. And it crumpled up in the middle when he clenched it! Never mind!
He was in the lowest storey of the air. The Hun and the Frenchman up there were in another world.
Down below, quite close—not five hundred feet now—were field-greys running and shooting at him. They were counting their chicken before he was hatched—no, smashed.... He wasn’t done yet! Not by any manner of means! A wave of great cheerfulness and confidence buoyed up Peter. He felt equal to any enterprise. Should he drop and let the bawling Boche have a round or so?
And there was a Hun machine smashed upside down on the ground. Was that the second fellow?