There was another bath of light from below as one of the bombers dropped another, and with a shout Dorman snatched at his stick and squared his feet on the rudder bars. He leaned forward in his seat and strained his eyes through the darkness; his motor whined on a rising note and the ship leaped away into the night.
Off to the right there was a dull red puff and the village lighted grotesquely like a toy town in a Christmas window. That would be the Archies.
Dorman climbed until the drone of his motor told him he was nearing a stall, and then he leveled off and picked out the flashes from the exhaust of the Gotha. The big ship was banking wide to evade the Archie fire, but Dorman nosed over and tried his guns.
The crimson and yellow flashes spurted over his hood; he took his finger off the trigger and picked out the Gotha. The gunners of the Boche had located him and he could tell from their fire they were slowly getting him into their range. He banked wide and in a moment the huge black moth was in his nose. His finger raced forward to the trigger and his guns chattered.
Whether he had hit or not he couldn’t tell. The flashes from his guns half-blinded him, so after the first burst he pulled his stick and zoomed. Down below a battery of Archies began their bombardment and bursting shells filled the air.
“You damn fools!” Dorman shouted. “Lay off!”
Both Gothas were below Dorman now, and one of them turned loose with his swivel gun and Dorman saw he was out in front and evidently was headed for home. He came down again in the darkness, figured the speed of the Gotha and his own bus and fired when he thought he should have the bomber centered. He was firing from dead reckoning, but in a moment there was a flame from the big ship. It fanned out and reached along the fuselage hungrily; and made a perfect target out of the enemy.
The Gotha crew evidently realized it was their last stand, for two men could be seen in the front nacelle wrestling with a mounted gun. It spit fire up at him, but he rolled over and got altitude.
The fellow was doomed. Dorman wanted the other one.
He went up to two thousand meters and looked out. The Gotha was blazing through the middle and around its edges he could see the outskirts of Toul. There were many white spots against the black ground; they would be faces.