Boyd Cable - Air Men o' War

In just such fashion Spotty saw the pilot of the leading machine rise slightly and glance astern at his companion, saw him settle himself in his seat, saw him raise a hand and motion downward. Instantly he jerked the cord fast to Barry's shoulder, signalling "look out," and with swift clockwork motions snatched the almost empty drum of his machine-gun, and replaced it with the full one he held ready clutched between his knees.

Vaguely in the swift ensuing seconds he felt the machine under him sway and leap and reel; but his whole mind was for that time concentrated on his gun sights, on keeping them full on the bulk of the machine astern of him, in pressing the trigger at the exact critical second. He saw the round bow of his nearest pursuer lift and for one long breath saw the narrow tapering length of her underbody behind it. That was a chance, and he filled it full and brimming with a fifty-round burst of which he saw the bullets flash and disappear in the fuselage above him. Then in a flash the underbody disappeared, and the rounded bow of the hostile came plunging down on him, growing and widening as it came full power and speed of engine and gravity pull. He was dimly conscious of her firing as she came, and he kept his own gun going, pumping bullets in a constant stream, his eye glued to the sights, his finger clenched about the trigger. Somehow he knew – just knew, without reasoning or thinking it out – that his bullets were going to their mark, and it gave him no slightest touch of astonishment when he saw his enemy stagger, leap upward, lurch and roll until she stood straight up on her wing-tip, and so, banking and deflecting from the "Marah's" course, flash in a split fraction of a second out of the fight.

He had no more than a glimpse of a gust of fire and gush of black smoke from somewhere about her before she vanished from his sight, and he was training his sights on a second shape that came swooping and plunging down upon him. This second enemy made better play with her gun. With deadly slowness and persistence, as it seemed, she closed, yard by yard. Spotty trained his gun full in the centre of the quivering light rays that marked the circle of her whirling propeller, and poured burst after burst straight at the jerking flashes of the machine-gun that blazed through her propeller. He felt an agonising jar on his ankle … but the drum of his machine-gun snapped out its last cartridge, and Spotty smoothly and methodically whipped off the empty drum, stooped and lifted a full one, fitted it in place, and looking over his sights rapped his gun into action again; while all the time the bullets of his adversary hailed and ripped and tore about and upon the "Marah," riddling the rudder, slashing along the stern, cracking in the whip-like reports of explosive bullets about the observer's cockpit, lifting forward and rap-rap-rapping about the bows and the pilot's stooped head. The "Marah" leaped out suddenly and at full stride in a hundred-foot side-slip, checked, and hurtled upward; and in that breath of time the pursuer flicked past and down and out of the vision of Spotty's sights.

It was all over so quickly that Spotty, looking overside, could still see the first enemy spinning down jerkily with black smoke whirling up from her fuselage, spinning helplessly down, as he knew, to hit the earth 15,000 feet below. Spotty felt suddenly and surprisingly sick and faint. His particular story blurs somewhat from here on, because he himself was never able to supply it in detail. He was able to answer Barry – Barry turning to shout his question while the "Marah" tore along at her full 110 knots – that he'd been hit somewhere about the foot or leg, and didn't feel much, except sick. This Barry was able to gather with some difficulty, after juggling with the wheel beside him that shifted angles of incidence, and more or less stabilised the "Marah's" flight, abandoning his controlling "joy-stick," clambering up on his seat, and hanging back and over to bring his head into the observer's cockpit and his ear within reach of Spotty's feeble attempts at a shout. He himself was rather unfit for these acrobatics, owing to certain unpleasant and punishing wounds just received. While he attempted to carry on his laboured inquiries, the "Marah," her engine throttled down and her controls left to look after themselves, swooped gently and leisurely, slid downwards on a gliding slant for a thousand feet, pancaked into an air-pocket, and fell off into a spinning dive.

While she plunged earthward at a rate of some hundred feet per second Barry finished his inquiries, dragged or pushed back into his seat – it was really down into his seat, since the "Marah" at the moment was standing on her head and his seat was between the observer's and the bows, but the wind pressure at that speed made it hard work to slide down – took hold of his controls, waited the exact and correct moment, flattened the "Marah" out of her spin, opened the throttle and went booming off again to westward a bare 5,000 feet above ground level.

He had, it is true, a moment's parley and a swift summing up of the situation before he turned the "Marah's" bows definitely for home. And the situation was ugly enough to be worth considering. Spotty (Barry thought of him first) was in a bad way – leg smashed to flinders – explosive evidently – bleeding like a stuck pig (wonder would the plates be spoiled, or was the camera built water-tight, or blood-tight?) – very doubtful if he'd last out the journey home. Then Barry himself had wounds – the calf of his left leg blown to shreds, and the toes of his left foot gone, and, most upsettingly painful of all, a gaping hole where his left eye should be, a blood-streaming agony that set his senses reeling and wavering and clearing slowly and painfully. This last wound, as it proved, was the result of a ricochetting bullet which, flicking forward as Barry had turned his head, cut his left eye clean from its socket.

The summing up was very clear and simple. They were a good thirty miles from the lines; Spotty might easily bleed to death in less than that; he, Barry, might do the same, or might faint from pain and exhaustion. In that case done-finish himself, and Spotty, and the "Marah," in a drop of 5,000 feet and a full hundred-mile-an-hour crash below. On the other hand, he had only to move his hand, push the joy-stick out and sweep the "Marah" down, flatten her out and pick a decent field, land, and he and Spotty would be in the doctor's hands in a matter of minutes, both of them safe and certain of their lives at least. In seconds they could be "on the floor" and in safety – and in German hands … the two of them and … and … the "Marah." It was probably the thought of the "Marah" that turned the scale, if ever the scale really hung in doubt. "We can't afford …" – what was it the Squadron Commander had said? – "can't afford to lose the old 'Marah' from the Squadron." No (Barry's vision cleared mentally and physically at the thought), – no, and, by the Lord, the Squadron wasn't going to lose the "Marah," not if it was in him to bring the old 'bus home.

He knew it was going to be a close thing, for himself and for the "Marah"; and carefully he set himself to take the last and least ounce of the chances in favour of his getting the "Marah" across the line. It would be safer to climb high and cross the fire of the Archies that waited him on the line; safer so far as dodging the shells went, but cutting down the limit set to his strength and endurance by the passing minutes. On the level, or with her nose a little down, the "Marah" would make the most of the time left her, or rather left him. His senses blurred and swam again; he felt himself lurching forward in his seat, knew that this was pushing the joy-stick forward and the "Marah's" nose to earth, shoved himself back in his seat and clutched the stick desperately to him … and woke slowly a minute after to find the "Marah's" bows pointed almost straight up, her engine struggling to lift her, his machine on the very verge of stalling and falling back into the gulf. He flung her nose down and forward hastily, and the "Marah" ducked gracefully over like a hunter taking an easy fence, steadied and lunged forward in arrow-straight flight.