"Yes, it is the same brigand, sir."
Then, with amazement bordering on the supernatural, the little garrison saw the Scorpion moving across the sky at a miraculous speed, and making directly for the secret aerodrome. Once or twice it circled around at three thousand feet, then dived a clean two thousand five hundred upon its objective, silently, like a mysterious phantom bird. At five hundred feet it flattened out, rode gaily above the tree tops, then swooping like a falcon, once more touched the ground lightly, and came to rest within thirty yards of the secret hangar.
"Haende in die hohe!" cried Colonel Tempest, stepping out into the open, and confronting the visitors with a couple of revolvers, as they prepared to leap from the armoured conning-tower.
"Ach Himmel! We are betrayed!" cried Spitzer. "The verdammt English have captured the aerodrome."
Without thought of surrender the brigands tumbled swiftly back into the armoured cell, just as a shower of bullets from both revolvers swept the upper surface of the cockpit.
"Fire!" shouted Tempest, stepping back, as the daring bandits, regardless of the danger, started the propellers once more by means of the self-starting knob, within the conning-tower.
And the next instant, even as the machine turned and raced for safety, a terrific hail of bullets from the two machine guns swept the Scorpion from stem to stern. One of her machine guns was swept from its mountings, and it is believed that one at least of her crew was wounded, probably by the Colonel's revolver shots, but as for surrender, the pirates would have none of it, as, apparently unhurt in any vital spot, the Scorpion recrossed the aerodrome, staggering once or twice under the fierce welter of bullets, managed to leave the ground, and sail over the tree tops out of immediate range.
"Confound it! She's absolutely bullet-proof!" shouted the colonel, who was furious at his failure, for his object had been to capture the machine and its crew wholesale, because of its valuable secrets.
"We shall see no more of her!" exclaimed Captain Hooper.
"Just wait a moment," said the skipper of the air-liner. "She'll have something to say presently. You don't know these infernal brigands."