“That will be Wick and his bravest guard,” Dave told himself as a thrill coursed up his spine.
He was all for the fight now. Gladly he would have followed that pair, but it had been agreed that in a case of this kind the flight leader and the Lark, most experienced men of the flight, should step in where danger called most loudly.
With the hot blood of battle at last coursing in his veins, Dave went after a single, fleeing Messerschmitt.
He was faster than the enemy. Now a mile lay between them, now a half mile, a quarter. The enemy darted this way, then that. “Trying to shake me off,” Dave muttered. He was thinking at that moment of their shattered home. He should have sweet revenge.
He was all but upon the Messerschmitt. One more burst of speed. Now it was time to press the button. One thousand shots a minute! No! He’d better drop a little, to come up from below. Three hundred and fifty miles an hour. This was life.
Suddenly the air was torn by the rip and rattle of machine-gun fire, not his fire but another’s. Slugs tore into his right wing. Gripping his emergency boost, he set his plane banking madly to the left. Forty seconds of this, then he let go that emergency lever.
“Shots tore into his right wing”
Standing on one wing, he executed a mad whirl, then righted himself.
“What had happened?” As his eyes swept the sky he heard again that weird whistle, the Fiddler’s, doing “Londonderry Air.”