He—Kinvarra, who had held me in his hand a half minute ago—was after me. He followed, firing, trying now to shoot me down; but I expected it and dodged him.
I cut to the right, confusing him by flying through the fleet which did not know that I was free.
The biplane from beside the ship was rising from the water with big bulges below its wings. These were not bombs nor bomb-shaped; they were cubes—steel boxes, undoubtedly, which had been carried in collapsed form and now were expanded to contain the cargo of loot. Jewels, they bore away and the platinum and a ton or two of the treasure of gold. But tons of bullion—actually tons by dead weight—remained aboard the Wotan; and a second biplane descended for its share.
It was the one which had laid the third frightful egg of TNT which, bursting, had swamped the little boats and swept the specks into the sea. A fourth bomb also it must have deposited. How or where it had exploded, or whether it had plunged harmlessly into the ocean, I did not know. I saw only that this biplane lacked both bombs; it, too, was become a cargo carrier descending, light, to take its tons of treasure.
I twinged to attack it; but it was no mark for me. It no longer dangled death over the specks on the sea. If I had a drum of machine-gun bullets to fire, I must spend them on the biplanes, with their eggs below them, swinging about and about on their beat over the ship.
I passed the cargo carrier and climbed with Kinvarra after me but not gaining upon me; my plane was swift as his.
I must try to attack, I knew, when the bombers reached an end of their orbit furthest from the ship. Attack? First I must escape attack; for a two-seater, with a machine-gun, flew at me.
It had detached itself from the flight of six machines which I had considered Bane's immediate command. I dodged, climbed and dived, zooming past a three-seater and next a single-seater.
I had only a flash of the face of the pilot but I knew it was she—she in a single seater! It meant—it must mean that Bane had brought her along as he had Pete and me.
I flew beyond the formation over the sinking ship and contours of other airplanes confronted me—contours familiar, contours of my comrades, navy contours! They were single-seater biplanes like my own and Pete's of three days ago in which we had flown to sea; but this was a combat patrol armed with machine-guns and arriving ready to fight.
They were only six; but it was clear that they flew with some realization of what was happening here. In attacking formation, they came; and I banked about, as I saw them.
Kinvarra, on my tail, fired through my wings; he made a pepper-pot top of the metal beside me. I could not get him in front of me but I pointed at and trained my machine-gun upon the two-seater; and fired. Then, at three angles we flew away from each other.
Overhead, the pursuit and combat planes of Bane's fleet moved to westward. The squadron mustered six machines, since Kinvarra and I had left it.
Three of the planes were piloted by men; three by automatons; or rather, two by wood figures and the third by Pete, held helpless as any effigy. No one had sent him, in a napkin, the key to the lock on his wrists.
The six machines were flying in pairs, in strange formation for combat—if you did not know their plan for the fight. They flew in fore-and-aft alignment, by pairs—in front a radio-controlled plane, in the rear the pilot. They flew fast and straight for the navy planes, offering frontal attack; and fast and straight, the six planes from the shore flew to accept it.
They had good view now of the sinking ship and of the little boats about it; they could see the bombers in the air above it; and they meant to waste no minute in manœuvering. If these pirate planes offered frontal attack, the navy would meet them. Plane would single out plane for duel direct to shoot down or be shot down in the first seconds of the fight. On they flew, pointed straight at each other.
In each airplane, a machine-gun was fixed which pointed with the airplane. It had no other aiming. You pointed your plane and fired; so you put your target directly before you; you flew at it, as you fired.
If you took time, you manœuvered, of course, to get behind your target, to put your self on his tail and shoot him down without enabling him to fire at you; but when you had no time, you flew at him, firing, and he, firing, flew at you.
You flew at each other with frightful speed, firing. Your first bullets were bound to miss; it would be the bullets fired last, when you were flying straight at each other and nearer by eight hundred feet each second, which would send one plane, or the other, down. That meant that the man who kept his nerve for a second longer than the other, would kill the fellow who faltered. These, as I knew while the squadrons dashed at each other, were the conditions of the fight; and I knew that of the six pirate planes, the three leaders had no nerves at all—they were automatons.
No; two were automatons; but the third was Pete!
I saw him in one of those three leading planes flung headlong into the fight. His control pilot, flying behind him, aimed him at the first of the oncoming navy planes; and the first of the navy planes aimed straight for him, head on at each other and firing, they flew; and I stared, sick at the sight.
Straight on, without faltering, the navy plane flew; some friend of mine, a classmate, the pilot! On, straight on for another split of a second; for he would not lose nerve first. On!
They crashed! It was head on, flying each at five miles the minute. For the navy man would not first swerve; and Pete's control sent him into the crash.
With my eyes, I followed them down; and falling and fluttering near them, dropped wings from another plane; a wingless fusilage shot into the sea. The survivors of the six whirled above me, fighting. I followed falls no longer. I was in the fight.
Two-seaters and three-seaters, armed with extra machine-guns and gunners, re-inforeced the blue monoplanes. Bane's command had moved up and was engaged. A navy plane plunged past me, trailing smoke. Another went into a tail-spin beside a falling doubleseater. I joined a navy plane and he or I shot down a blue single-seater—Donley, I thought.
By the reckoning that ran in my mind, there could be but three navy planes in the air. But I saw more than three. I realized that another squadron had arrived.
Below, the bombing biplanes had left the ship; they were seeking to escape with Bane's two- and three-seaters trying to fight a way clear for them. I joined an attack against the two-seaters and a three-seater which, I was sure, carried Bane—and controlled the automatic plane which bore Helen Lacey. I got close enough to see Bane fighting a machine-gun; I saw, then the three-seater shot down.
I flew for a blue monoplane on the edge of the fight which was climbing wildly with full throttle and pointed out to sea. To the other pilots, it appeared that I pursued a pirate plane which was attempting to escape; but I saw what it was—a blue monoplane without a machine gun which never had taken part in the fight. It was the radio-controlled seaplane in which Bane had brought her to see the show of his power. He was shot down; so it was flying wild, without control or possibility of control.
What had been his word to her on the lake? "You'll come back—if I do." So he had planned this, in his broken brain; so he had arranged to bring her back with him, if he was to return; if he was shot down—this.
He had left her flying with full throttle; for with full throttle I pursued and scarcely gained. I would not have overtaken her at all except that, having no control, she did not fly straight. She shot away in a series of zigzags which were caught and corrected only by mechanical balances and wind strains. Similarly she climbed and dropped, climbed and dropped again.
I came close to her. Clearly I could see her in her seat. She saw me and faced me, and her countenance might have been the effigy's; it had no expression at all. No fear for herself; none after what she had seen on the sea.
She gestured with her head in appeal to me not to help her, not to try to do anything for her. I was putting myself above her and she was forbidding me the madness of attempting a leap to her plane.
I did not try it. I left my seat but before I could crawl on a wing, we were separated. The business required another pilot in my plane and steady steering of hers. I dropped back into my pit and pursued and watched her. Watched, that was all I could do.
I shot ahead of her, far in front, with her falling behind me. I banked about, staring back and praying—for what already had happened.
Her engine had stalled. From failure of fuel, or whatever cause, her motor was stopped and she was slipping, without the frightful force of the airscrew to speed her, down to the ocean. She fell fluttering, with wings spread to the air currents and catching them like a dropping leaf. Down, down she went but not in the awful plunge of an airplane zooming with motor full on nor in the plummet drop of a plane with smashed wings. With her wings intact, and catching at the air, she went into the sea.
I found her under the wreck of her wings, floating with her face out of the water; and I felt, as my hands lifted her, a stir of life.
Her eyes did not open but as I worked at her to free her, she spoke to me. "Don't," she said. "Don't . . . take me out." Then she said, "You saw it? You see what I see?"
"The specks on the sea," I said.
"'The specks on the sea!'" And she spoke no other word during all the time I worked to free her, except once, "father". And she gave me no help at all; she did not want to be freed. But I had her out; I took her up in my arms and bore her to my pontoon. I stood holding her, dripping and cold and small. Her head drooped limp but she breathed; and her body was not broken.
I stood with her in my arms surrounded by quiet and calm. Silenced was the whirr of airscrews, motor-roars, shots and bombs—except as they rang in my ears. The sea lapped in little wavelets upon the pontoons; externally it was like the morning she had spoken to Pete and me on the sea.
She roused and shuddered from no shock or sound without her. Her dark lashes lifted from the chalk of her cheek and her grey eyes gazed aghast into the sky and searched it only to see it empty. Her eyes, then, came to me. "He's killed?" she whispered to me.
Bane was this he. "He must be."
She stared at me, trying to think. "Your—friend?" she next asked.
"It's all over for him."
She jerked in my arms. "The specks in the sea," she said and twisted.
To the west, whence we had flown, distant Vs lettered the sky, new squadrons standing sentinel over the sinking ship. The funnels of liners lay on the horizon where the Wotan had been.
A bow pointed for us and a steamer stopped with passengers pressed shoulder to shoulder at the rail as they stared at us. I was aseat upon my float holding her in my arms; throughout an hour, though she was conscious and had not slept, she had not spoken to me.
"A ship is here," I told her; and she asked, "You must take me aboard; can't you leave me here?"
They sent a boat for us and asked: "What happened to you?"
"Haven't you heard of the Wotan?" I said.
"Heard? Man; the Wotan's been bombed and sunk by airplanes! They bombed her boats, too! It was worse than the Titanic and the Lusitania. . ."
I hugged her to me, trying to stop her ears. So I took her aboard and gave her in charge of a physician.
The air was full of Wotan news. Two thousand passengers were missing. They had gone down with the ship or been in the boats which were bombed—the specks on the sea. Of the twenty airplanes in the raid, eleven had been shot down; of the nine, five had fled pursued and their final fate was yet to be known. Four only had escaped—one, the biplane which had dropped the first bombs and taken away two tons of treasure. Where it had flown with its diamonds and rubies and platinum and gold, no one knew—nor who would be the survivors to share the loot.