It was indeed an extraordinary situation: two aeroplanes wheeling round and round in a cup-like hollow, with less than two hundred feet of space between them. The Kalmucks had not as yet fired or dropped a bomb: Lawrence imagined them gloating over their helpless victim, awaiting a favourable moment for one crushing stroke. The first shot was fired by Fazl; the enemy replied, but instead of keeping up a continuous fire, they ceased after a few shots, which riddled the planes, but hit no vital part. Lawrence wondered at their abstinence, until, following them with his eyes, he had a sudden conviction that they were in difficulties. The machine was banked up to the extreme limit of safety, and it flashed upon him that the enemy, and not himself, were caged. They could not ascend, for, a few hundred feet above them, the cliff on the west side of the stream hung forward in a jagged bluff that came within the circle of their flight. Contact with it would hurl them into the river. Nor could they leave the bay by either of the exits north or south without the risk of colliding with the cliffs, for the space was so narrow, and the speed of the machine so great, that the movements necessary for unbanking and steering could hardly be performed in the fraction of a second between their quitting the bay and running into the straight. It is one thing for a wasp to fly into a bottle, and quite another to fly out again.
The machines had completed several circles before Lawrence had grasped the situation. During this time Fazl had been steadily firing, but the enemy had been silent. Suddenly the Gurkha uttered a shout; one of the Kalmucks fell from the aeroplane, and whirled over and over in the air until he struck the river and disappeared.
"Don't fire again!" cried Lawrence.
He had become conscious that the perpendicular distance between the two planes was rapidly diminishing. The enemy's engine had not failed; their speed was the same; yet it was plain that moment by moment they were drawing nearer to the plane below. If the machines had been ships, Lawrence would have been tempted to believe that the enemy were trying to board; but he knew that a collision would be fatal to both. He was at a loss to explain the strange movement; indeed, he had little time to think of it, for he realised that unless he himself made his escape, his machine would be soon hurled to the bottom by the impact of the larger. He had not found it necessary to bank so much as the Kalmuck pilot. His lesser speed and the greater handiness of his aeroplane enabled him to fly out at the exit without the almost certainty of dashing against the cliff. At his next round he steered straight through the northern gap, and flew back in a flush of wonder and excitement to the platform.
As he expected, the enemy did not follow him. Alighting he rushed to the projecting buttress and gazed up the valley. He could see the doomed aeroplane as it flashed across the opening of the bay. It was still whirling round and round, but falling, falling with ever increasing velocity. He shuddered with horror as he contemplated the inevitable end. He did not witness the actual close of the tragedy. The aeroplane as it neared the bottom was hidden from him by the rocky banks of the river. But half a minute after he himself stood in trembling safety a tremendous explosion shook the ground, and a cloud of smoke and broken rocks shot high into the air. Then there was a burst of flame, and he knew that all was over.
Overcome with sickness at the terrible end of these gallant airmen, and with nervous exhaustion after his own wearing efforts, he lay flat on the rock to recover his composure. Thinking over the recent scene, he hit upon a conjectural explanation of the uncontrollable descent of the enemy's aeroplane. He supposed that, with the machine so critically banked up in order to navigate the narrow cup, the pilot had been quite unable to make those delicate adjustments of the planes and the elevator that were necessary to counteract the dragging force of gravity. Later on, when he had an opportunity of discussing the matter with his brother, Bob scouted his theory, declaring that while the petrol lasted nothing could have prevented the machine from whirling round and round. But Lawrence stuck to his opinion, and Bob very naturally declared that it was not a matter he would care to put to the test.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH
AD INFIMOS
Just as the ticking of the household clock is unnoticed, but its cessation is immediately remarked; so it was not until the coughing roar of the field guns, which had continued ever since Lawrence last soared over the bend, suddenly ceased, that he was roused to full consciousness of the critical situation at the mine. Springing up, he ran with Fazl along the pathway until he came to a spot where the whole theatre of the combat could be viewed.
The noise of the guns had been followed by a hoarse babel of cries mingled with the crackle of rifles. He was just in time to see a swarm of Kalmucks surge over the breastwork, and Bob with his devoted band rushing up the track to the second rampart a hundred yards away. The machine gun beneath the north wall of the mine was silent; nobody was to be seen in the compound; and Lawrence's heart sank with dread lest the gun had been smashed, and Gur Buksh and his voluntary assistants slain.