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 

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