"Take cover!" shouted Dacres to his comrade. "Don't worry about the engine: she's stopping, worse luck."
The comparatively rapid diminution of speed on the part of the locomotive resulted in the aeroplane overshooting the limit at which it could use the automatic gun. The respite from the missiles was welcome until Dacres noticed the observer making ready to drop a bomb.
Three cartridges only remained in the Englishman's rifle; after that he would have to trust to his revolver. Beyond a range of fifty yards that weapon was practically useless for deliberate aiming.
Once again Dacres raised his repeater. He lingered over the sights till the biplane was almost overhead, then pressed the trigger.
"Missed, by Jove!" he ejaculated disgustedly. "Try it with your revolver, Henri."
Before Dacres could reload the Frenchman emptied four of the chambers of his revolver. The Valderian aeroplane, swinging like a wounded bird, began to fall towards the earth. The left aileron, bending upwards, threw the tottering fabric more and more on one side. The pilot, still grasping the wheel, was wedged against the padded rim of the chassis. His companion, hurled from his seat, fell to the ground with a dull thud thirty seconds before the biplane crashed upon the track.
Then with a detonation that shook earth and sky the six dynamite bombs exploded, blowing the wrecked aircraft to atoms and leaving a hole six feet in depth where the railway lines had been.
Almost at that identical moment the locomotive came to a standstill a hundred yards from the scene of the disaster. Fortunate it was that Dacres and his companion were sheltered from the blast of the explosives by the riddled hood of the cab, for stones and fragments of metal flew all around them.
Well-nigh deafened and with their senses dulled by the awfulness of the termination of the encounter the two men rose to their feet. The engineer was still lying face downwards upon the foot-plate.
"Now what's to be done?" asked Dacres, more of himself than with the idea of asking Henri's opinion. "Here we are stranded fifty miles from the 'Meteor' and with that rotten town of La Paz between us and our friends."