“He’ll be killed!” screamed Betty, now fairly beside herself. “There! There he goes!”
But the little plane did not drop. It wobbled and twisted, turned half a flip-flop, righted itself and was at the dark antagonist once more.
Again the pop-pop-pop-pop of shots.
This time, however, it broke short off as the black plane, after an instant of seeming to hang motionless in air, suddenly went into a tail spin.
“There! There!” Betty closed her eyes.
When she opened them the black plane was gone.
“Where—where—” she stammered.
“Gone to the bottom,” said Ruth solemnly. “We’ll get over there at once. They may rise. It—it’s terrible to think—”
“Poor fellows,” said the little man. “They will never come up. The plane, with her heavy motors and her loaded tanks, took them straight to the bottom. They deserved little enough. They were the enemies of law and order and all government. Since men must live as neighbors, laws of conduct cannot be avoided. They were blind to all this. They saw wrongs in every land; men rich and living extravagantly who deserved to live on hard bread and wear rags, other men living in poverty, and they said, ‘We must destroy.’
“Nothing was ever gained by destruction. Wrongs must be righted by laws, and by instilling into the hearts of all men a feeling of brotherly kindness. Those who will destroy will in the end bring destruction upon themselves.”