  From the spot where Dave and Brand stood the ancient playhouse could not be seen. That tragedy might have befallen some member of their household they did not so much as dream. Enough that by some miracle the house and barns had been spared and that the hated enemy plane, having delivered its load, was now speeding away. But not so fast. The speedy British Spitfire had made a broad circle and was prepared to meet the enemy head on. As Brand Ramsey stood stiffly at attention, watching every move of those fighting planes, his fingers clenched and unclenched nervously. Not so his American companion. Standing at ease, smiling a little, his lips parted, he might have been at a tennis match. How often, during his early days on an American farm this boy, Dave Barnes, had watched a fight between two catbirds and a hawk. How insignificant the catbirds had appeared, how terrifying, with curved beak and needle-like claws, the hawk. And yet how often, quite disheartened, the gray intruder had soared away. In the fight being fought above them now he saw the battle of catbirds and hawk. Which would win? His sympathies had ever been with the catbirds. It was so now. And yet he whispered to himself, “It’s not my war.” His war or no, he followed every move of those birdlike things that whirling, zooming, dipping, soaring, appeared at any moment ready to crash head on and burst into flames. Now the Spitfire was beneath the enemy, coming up. Now! Oh! Now! The boy drew a deep breath. Now the Spitfire was on the Messerschmitt’s tail. “Now!” he breathed. Once more a sharp exclamation escaped his lips, for banking sharply, the enemy slid out of the trap. At that instant, with tail to the enemy, the Tomahawk was doing a broad circle to re-enter the scrap. “Oh! Oh! Watch out!” Brand, the English boy shouted, as if he could call a warning to the pilot in the American plane. The Messerschmitt had turned the tables and was at the Tomahawk’s back. Brand wanted to stop his ears from the rat—tat—tat that he knew must come. Instead, he stood there mute, staring with all his might. And then it came, a ripping, tearing burst of sound, as if the very sky was being torn to shreds. “He—he got him!” Brand’s lips went white as the Tomahawk, after banking so sharply it seemed to stand on its right wing, went into a spin. Only then did the American boy realize to the full that this was a battle, not a show affair that these were men and planes, not birds, and that the brave fellow in that spinning airplane was apparently about to be beaten to a pulp on the cruel earth of the hillside. Instinctively he closed his eyes and began to count,—“One—two—three.” Thirty seconds, he thought, then all will be over. He had counted only to fifteen when a sharp cry—“Hooray!” sent his eyes wide open again. “He—he came out of it!” Brand exulted with a wild wave of his arms. It was true. The apparently doomed pilot had somehow pulled his plane out of that fateful spin. What was more, he was not leaving the field. Instead, he was once again climbing rapidly. “Look!” Brand exclaimed. “That Messerschmitt has had enough! She’s climbing! She’s afraid of that Tomahawk. Thinks she can outclimb him. The Tomahawk’s motor is not so good at dizzy heights. But, boy! How they can climb! Half a mile a minute!” They were climbing now, all three planes. The enemy plane had the lead by many hundreds of feet. First after her came the Spitfire. Then the Tomahawk. It was an all but perpendicular race, a glorious thing to see. Slowly, surely, the game little Spitfire, seeming only a nighthawk at that distance, closed in upon the enemy. Behind her, closing in faster, faster, ever faster, was the Tomahawk. “See! What did I tell you!” Brand’s voice rose with enthusiasm. “That Tomahawk is a climber! You Americans should be proud of that ship!” “I suppose we are.” Dave scarcely heard. A born mathematician, he was trying by some occult system to determine the outcome of this strange race. “In twenty seconds,” he pulled out a thin gold watch, “the Tomahawk will pass the Spitfire. Forty seconds more and—well—you’ll see.” His lips trembled as his words trailed off. Hardly had he finished speaking when the small planes were abreast. Brand even imagined he saw the Tomahawk’s pilot wave to the other as he passed. Forty tense seconds and then there came a ripping of the sky, longer, more terrifying than any they had yet heard. Half below, and half on the Messerschmitt’s tail, the Tomahawk was finding sweet revenge. “That’s enough. No ship can take that and keep on flying!” the English boy breathed. At the same instant the attacking Tomahawk slipped away in a graceful spiral glide. “What a ship!” the American boy breathed. “It can take it, and dish it out!” The Messerschmitt had had more than enough. Black bits of wreckage began dropping from the mortally wounded plane. Among these were three larger spots, darker than the rest. Presently above these three white mushrooms blossomed against the sky. “Parachutes!” Brand exclaimed. “They’re coming down! Land somewhere up the slope. Come on! We’ve got to get them!” Gone from Dave’s mind was the thought that this was not his war, as he sped after his companion. Two facts were registered on his mind as he raced ahead—a one-legged man using a crutch had stopped his plow-team in the field and was racing toward the slope—a large collie dog was scooting across a low meadow. The dog appeared intent upon joining the one-legged man. |
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