"The beasts haven't seen me, or they wouldn't do that!" Dastral told himself, and he was right, for the enemy had not even suspected his presence yet, or, if they had seen him leave the ground, they had lost sight of him, owing to the tactics he had adopted. They were soon to have a knowledge of his presence, however.
"Now for it," said Dastral between his teeth, as, having reached seven thousand feet, he whizzed away to the attack of the nearest 'plane, one of the enemy's fighting scouts which had accompanied the huge warplane.
"Whir-r-r-r!" went the hornet, as Dastral opened the engine throttle to the full.
The speed of the hornet was terrific, and the sound of the wind rushing past him sounded to the pilot as loud as the noise of the engine.
"One hundred and sixty!" laughed the speedometer.
"They can't beat that," replied Dastral, as though the little dial-face understood. He felt that he must talk, though he had no observer this morning.
Now he was over the fighting scout, and she saw him for the first time. She was the highest of the three, but she was a thousand feet below him, and, relying on her speed, she banked, turned swiftly, and tried to escape, actually leaving the warplane to look after herself.
Dastral pulled over the controls, and down, down he went in a thrilling nose-dive as though he would crash her to the earth with his own fuselage, but that was not his intention. At five hundred feet he opened fire, and gave her three drums in rapid succession, and never was sound more agreeable to his ears than that "rap--rap--rap--rap--rap!" of his machine-gun as he sprayed the enemy from end to end of his fuselage with incendiary bullets.
Before the third drum was exhausted he noticed the flames leap from the doomed German, for Dastral had sent three flaming-bullets through his reserve petrol-tank, and in that moment he knew he had only two enemies left to fight, for the first enemy 'plane went down blazing in a plunging dip, which ended in a spinning nose-dive and a terrible crash, right over the eastern end of the aerodrome.
Dastral looked down, his eyes gleaming with victory, glad he had finished number one, but sincerely hoping in his heart that his comrades on the ground would be able to save the pilot from the burning wreckage, for of all deaths that the daring aviator dreads, to be burnt is the worst of all, and few English pilots, having sent the enemy down, wish him such an end.