Before Don Hale could maneuver his plane, in order to renew the attack, he passed through some instants of terrible suspense.
Had his shots taken effect? Or was the photographic machine doomed, after all?
But what the boy saw when he looked again made him feel like uttering a shout of joy. The machine with the black crosses on its wings was descending abruptly, with erratic movements.
“I got him!” breathed the boy.
Triumphant, with his fighting blood aroused to the highest pitch, the young combat pilot, yielding to the now irresistible call of battle, shot toward another avion de chasse which bore the enemy’s markings. He had not gone very far, however, when he was startled by a fusillade of flaming bullets, passing close to his wings on the right.
A German pilot had stolen upon him from the rear, and Don was in the worst possible position to defend himself.
Instantly he sent the nose of the Nieuport upward, gave the control lever a swift jerk forth and back, and, like a flash, the machine described a complete backward somersault, while its pursuer shot past beneath.
The almost breathless Don Hale realized that his escape had been of the narrowest sort—that he was still in the gravest peril. Other machines were speeding toward him. The odds were entirely too great for an inexperienced combat pilot. Moreover, he had caught a glimpse of three new French planes coming to the rescue. Don’s own safety lay in the clouds just above, and he flew toward them with all the speed of which his Nieuport was capable.
And in that upward journey, brief though it was, he sensed rather than saw that the air close about him was filled with fiercely contesting planes, darting, swirling, almost tumbling over one another. The atmosphere, too, was literally criss-crossed by the multitude of faint bluish lines left by tracer bullets.
When the clouds closed about Don Hale and he found the view completely obscured, he experienced a wonderful sensation of relief. Yet his nerves were pretty badly shaken. Like the game hunter who has momentarily escaped the lion’s claws yet knows that the mighty animal is lurking near to renew the attack, his thoughts of what the immediate future might have in store for him sent renewed tremors through his frame.