Well, considering that one airplane engine makes as much noise and keeps it up longer than the shooting of a machine-gun, and that now no less than three airplanes made their appearance low down and came on at a tremendous rate, the quiet sector suddenly took on a different character. And then Susan Nipper commenced to talk out loud and to do things spitfire fashion.
At the very first shot, timing the shell fuse long or short, the foremost plane was hit precisely in the center; a long range wing shot with a single projectile at that. The German taube went to pieces and to earth as though it had been a dragon-fly smashed with a brick-bat, and there could hardly have been enough of the propeller and engine left to take up with a pitchfork. As for the poor driver and bomber, they passed into the other world without knowing a thing about it.
But this was no check to the other machines, for the quality of mind that makes or permits a man to go aloft at all makes of him no coward under any circumstances. On the two came, straight for the side of the hill, at such a furious speed that Corporal Letty had time only for one more shot at them. Hastily timed, this was a clean miss, the shell bursting high in the air beyond. And the gun squad was making a record to get in another shell as the machines, one a little above and behind the other, swept almost over the pit.
Two of the gun squad were working the Colt rapid-fire gun now, but they did not seem to swing it fast enough, all their stream of missiles being wasted.
Watson, farther down the slope than Whitcomb, now held to his shoulder a rifle that was hot with repeated action, and yet he, too, had scored no hits. Though an airplane, if not over three hundred feet in air and flying steadily ought to be scored on, its height makes it look mighty small and hard to hit, and moving objects are no cinches for a single bullet. As the disappointed fellow stopped to slip in still another cartridge clip he heard a yell from Herbert.
"Lookout, Watson! Dodge!"
Watson did dodge just in time. He saw a conical-shaped thing descending toward him and, a baseball player of skill with an eye for sky-scraper flies, he gauged correctly where that thing was going to hit and he got away from that place. And when the thing did hit and tore up the earth and gravel and stones Watson was glad he had dodged.
Another was flung down at him, but it went wide, and a third was started toward Herbert, who stood, spread-legged, gun to shoulder.
There is an art in aiming at a moving object that probably estimates its speed and direction, the speed of the bullet and allows for all of this. Herbert's skill with his little .22-caliber at objects tossed in air stood him in good stead when at rifle practice in the training camp and, however excited and eager with the necessity of shooting straight, it did not fail him now.