Dick saw that he held a big advantage. The Mohawk, though slightly slower, could rise and go forward at the same time under the influence of both propellers.
As they sped over Kent, Dick began to realise with joy that he was gaining. Slowly the poison-fiend began to come back to him.
Then came the critical moment. Five hundred yards ahead and a thousand feet below, Barakoff, close to the ground, must rise soon to gain the elevation he required.
That was the moment for which Dick had been waiting. He called on his machine for the last ounce of effort he had been holding in reserve.
The Mohawk shot forward. A few seconds later Dick was directly above the Russian. So far as air tactics went he had won; the Russian was entirely at his mercy.
Then began surely the strangest aerial combat ever witnessed. To and fro the machines dodged, Barakoff striving to gain height and succeeding for a moment only to find his pursuer above him again and bullets whining round him; Dick striving to force the Russian down to the ground where he must either land or crash. For fully half an hour the machines flitted backwards and forwards around the town of Ashford. Dick had no fear of the result; his only risk was whether he could send Barakoff down before dusk came. Unless he could do this there was every danger that the Russian would escape under cover of darkness.
At last the end came.
Dick had forced his antagonist so low that, as a last desperate resort, Barakoff had to leap upward to clear a big group of elms. He miscalculated by a few feet, his machine touched the upper branches and went smashing to earth. Three minutes later Dick was standing beside the body of the death-dealer.
Barakoff’s machine was a complete wreck and was blazing furiously. The man himself had been flung clear and lay in a crumpled heap, stone dead.
There is little more to tell.