“If that creation has a tail,” he thought with a touch of desperation. “A regular headless horse of the air! No propeller, a sound like a siren. What can you expect?”
One thing he could expect was speed. They were after him and climbing like the wind. They were nearly upon his tail before he knew it.
Banking sharply to the left, he went into a terrific dive. As he flashed past them they fired from some swinging gun, and missed.
“I’ll make the island before they get me or crash,” he swore to himself. Then he saw a cloud. It was just ahead of him, not large, but at least a haven. He darted into it, and for the moment was safe.
But the enemy was persistent. The freak began crisscrossing the cloud. Circle as he might, Ted could not quite escape contact. There came the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire.
“Shooting at my shadow,” Ted guessed. “That’s a game two can play.” Ten seconds later, catching a dark streak passing through the misty cloud, he released a burst of fire. The shriek of the enemy plane changed instantly. Had he registered a hit? He dared hope so.
But the fight was not over. The wild terror still circled, its shriek becoming sharper and more piercing each instant.
“There never was such a plane as that,” Ted mused desperately. “It’s supernatural, an inhuman thing, the work of no man, but of the devil himself. I’ll dive and keep right on going, level off at last, and land on the sea. It’s my only chance.”
Going into a steep dive, he found himself almost at once in bright, tropical sunlight. The change was startling. Like going to a party with no clothes on, he thought.
He went straight on down, and the shrieker followed him.