Every acrobatic performance which he himself had learned at the advanced school at Pau was being used by the rival airmen.
Now and again one or another went down in a spinning nose dive, as though the machine were totally out of control; but instead of crashing to the earth it would right itself, and, with almost incredible speed, rise again to the attack. Fairly leaping over one another, flashing this way and that, narrowly avoiding collisions, they soared upward or swooped down, as a flock of enraged birds fighting among themselves might have done, and, faintly, the enthralled Don Hale could hear the vicious crackling of the machine guns, steadily spurting forth their messenger of death, and see the faint smoking lines left by the tracer ballets.
Were any members of the Lafayette Squadron engaged in the conflict?
The boy mentally voiced this query over and over again as he flew around in a sweeping circle, keeping far above the contenders.
He felt an almost irresistible impulse to join in the fray, and but for the fact that the squadron commander had explicitly ordered him to act only on the defensive probably would have done so. He had seen many a fight from the ground, but then the thrills were of a decidedly different nature from those which came while he was in the pilot’s seat of an airplane.
A moment more, and, just as suddenly as the battle had begun, it ended. One of the combat planes began to fall, turning over and over in the air, now and then the dull gray wings with the Maltese crosses clearly outlined against the floating masses of smoke below.
Into these it plunged and disappeared from view.
Thankful that neither his compatriots no any of the Allied airmen had been the victim, yet shuddering at the thought of the human life which had been sacrificed to the greed of the God of War, Don Hale headed for the west, having satisfied himself that the Allied planes, now rapidly retreating, belonged to a French air squadron.
The black, sputtering “Archies” were beginning to burst beneath him again, one coming so dangerously near that once more a sort of consternation gripped him.
“This won’t do at all!” he muttered. “A little bit nearer the ceiling for me!”