murmured.

And then something strange happened. The foremost plane that had been straining to reach them, faltered in midair, seemed to hang there for a moment, then, dropping one wing, went into a spiral dive that increased in speed until it seemed a boy’s top, spinning in the sky.

Dragging her eyes from this fascinating and terrible sight, she looked for the other planes. They, too, were going down, but under control. They had given up the task assigned to them.

“It—it’s all over! Finished!” She sank down in her place beside Sparky. “That first plane,” she said after a time, “it went down in a spin. The pilot didn’t bale out. It just went down, down.”

“I’ve done a lot of duck hunting in my day,” Sparky replied quietly. “Sometimes I’d shoot at a flock of ducks in midair. They’d sail right on, but a mile away, one of them would drop behind, go into a spin and come plunging down.”

“You mean your bullets reached that plane?” Mary asked.

“They might have. Then again the fellow may have climbed too high.”

“Something on his plane froze up?”

“Yes, or he did. Whichever way it was, there’s one less of them for our boys over here to take care of. We won a bloodless battle.”

After that, maintaining their altitude, they flew on for a hundred miles in silence.

Then, after a good look at the empty sky, Sparky tilted the plane’s nose downward. Soon they were dragging off their masks and drinking in the crisp desert air of the upper reaches.

“Have to get back and see how my prisoner is getting on.”

“You—your—oh, yes, that Jap spy.” She took the controls.

There was a strange look on his face when he returned.

“Well?” she asked.

“I didn’t mean to tell you,” he replied, soberly. “You asked for it, so here it is. He’s gone to join his ancestors.”

“You mean—”

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