Belinda of the Red Cross

by Robert W. Hamilton

The pursuer was swooping with determination. As Sanderson shot toward the grove of timber he realized that the enemy was coming down upon him so swiftly and with such recklessness that collision was almost inevitable, unless he mounted higher and at once.

The German was evidently willing to accept death himself if he could but bring the American to earth.

The rain of bullets soon ceased, but Sanderson realized that his propeller was riddled as though by a hailstorm. He felt a smart along one cheek, where a bullet had plowed, and there were innumerable shot holes in the wings of his biplane.

He started to mount. The shadow of the enemy aeroplane fell across his own. It was near sunset, and the shadow was huge. It was as though he were being smothered by a giant blanket dropping from the skies.

Sanderson was inured to peril, but he suddenly felt that he was in a very serious situation. A minute more and his course on earth, as well as in the air, might be run. His brain worked alertly. He used a trick he had learned and practised often while over the aviation field on Long Island.

Raising the nose of the Nieuport, he began to climb sharply, intending to loop the loop and so, if possible, pass over his enemy.

The German was right at hand. The two aeroplanes passed each other like veritable coursers of the air—the one soaring upward, the other swooping downward. Sanderson and his enemy opened fire simultaneously with their pistols.

What damage, if any, he did the German aviator the American did not know, but before he had accomplished the upward curve of his loop he saw that a bullet had punctured his gasoline tank.

Flames burst forth, fanned by the swift passage of the air. Sanderson righted his machine quickly. He knew he would be grille, as the French flying men call it, before he could arrive at any safe anchorage.

Shifting the nose of his airplane swiftly, Sanderson plunged directly upon the German, who, likewise, had changed his course. The two machines rushed together at frightful speed—a speed of nearly two hundred miles an hour.