CHAPTER XVI
A Monstrous Procession
Slowly the sound of battle faded away in the distance. With fingers that trembled violently, Gale drew the blind before her window aside and started her radar set working again.
Now instead of a great formation of enemy planes advancing upon her, she picked up one here, another there, and always rapidly fading off into the distant sky. Now and then she caught sudden movements of planes, indicating that some daring American fighters were still after the retreating enemy. Was Jimmie one of these? She dared hope a little, but not too much.
“Golly!” Jan exclaimed. “Was that a battle!”
“It was a great defeat for the enemy.”
“God be praised for that,” was Gale’s solemn comment. “More than half their bombers must have been shot down. The others dropped their bombs where they did no harm, and fled.”
“Did some of their fighters get away?” Jan asked.
“Yes. Several of them.”
“That’s bad.” Jan’s knees trembled. “It scares me. I’m funny, I guess. I could drive a jeep almost over a precipice and not be scared at all. But just to think of a bomb dropping on me, that’s terrible! There would be nothing left of me,—just nothing at all. But if that Jap in the fighter plane spotted us—”
“Perhaps he didn’t,” was Gale’s quiet reply. “Besides, something tells me we won’t be here much longer.”