10 Short Novels Magazine — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

100 * * * Ten Short Novels Magazine aerial barrage a thousand feet below. Ma- chine guns came into action, and the advancing infantry, split up into small groups which doubled forward from cover to cover, offered no such target as had the massive columns of the morning. But Sexton had anticipated all this. He had foreseen just about what the Ger- man tactics would be, and he had, through Dorn, issued certain instructions to his pilots. They assailed the small groups with machine-gun fire, scattering sev- eral. Then, instead of pulling quickly up and away, they flew low above the Ger- man positions, at a height where ordi- nary camouflage was of little use, and bombed such of the hidden German ma- chine guns as they could locate. Having disorganized this section of the German defenses, they zoomed away, formed a column, and came sweeping down again above the trench in which the greater part of the advancing infantry had taken refuge. With machine gun fire they raked the crowded trench-bays, do- ing terrific execution. But they were not unscathed. Owens, flying behind Sexton, crashed to the ground with startling speed. His plane dissolved into a mass of wreckage. Sexton, climbing at last with the pa- trol at his tail, discovered the loss of the cheery little pilot and resolved on one more dive to expend the last of his am- munition—and get a few more Huns to follow Owens to the Valhalla of brave airmen. He looked around for Dorn, and found him, flying high, yet not so high that any of the other pilots, in the furor and excitement of ground-strafing, could have sworn there was an absentee. Things would be all right yet, Sexton felt, as he led the flight downward for a last. machine gunning of the German trench. He was met with a vicious burst of fire, not only from the remaining Ger- man Maxims, but from automatic rifles in the trench itself. Nevertheless, he strafed them savagely. .The following ships managed to get in their bursts of fire and pull away without loss. But as Sexton zoomed, he saw wings above him, dark against the sky—wings which bore the black crosses of the en- emy. Fokkers! They were all around him, three or four of them attacking him at once. Trac- ers smashed viciously into Sexton’s in- strument board, spattering him with stinging splinters. He managed to fling his ship aside just in time to save him- self, only to see another Fokker swoop- ing upon him. He was cold meat. He knew that mo- ment of terrible anticipation which comes to the flyer attacked without hope of escape. And then, as he braced his body to take the smash of bullets, the attack- ing Fokker swerved and side-looped away. Hot on its tail, guns blazing, roared a Nieuport. EXTON recognized his own ship, and knew that it was Dorn who had come to his rescue. Dorn—yes, Dorn was brave when it wasn’t a question of shell-fire. And he could hardly afford to have Sex- ton shot down in the flight commander’s ship while he had to report home in Sex- ton’s bus. That thought flashed through Sexton’s mind even as, with a quick bank, he swung away from another Fokker and poured in a vicious burst at still another which was just coming out of a luckless dive at Dorn. Below, a Fokker was falling, black smoke tinged.with flame whipping out behind. Dorn had a victory of his own at last. The other Fokkers were drawing off. Far to the eastward, the khaki wings of reinforcing Nieuports were appear- ing in the bright sky; the remaining ships of B Flight were climbing into the scrap. And at that moment Sexton’s engine gave one expiring gasp and conked. Too many bullets in its interior had proved indigestible. Machine guns and rifles were spitting at him from below. He tried to pierce with his eyes the smoky battle-veil, but he could not be sure who held the welter of trenches and wire which he saw through the drifting gaps. He was going down fast. He saw the brown shell-tor- tured earth just beneath him. There was no time to pick a place to land, nothing to do but just let her hit—and hope. He landed on a fairly flat piece of ground, rolled perhaps ten feet; then he crashed into a shell-hole with a shock that bruised him from head to foot. His wings crumpled as his tail went up. Dazedly he struggled with his safety belt, won free, — climbed out of the wreckage of his plane. As he wriggled over the edge of the hole, a shell burst just beyond him. The blast of it threw him back against the wrecked ship. He felt the bite of steel in his side, felt a leg give way beneath him. The numbness that marks a bad wound seized upon his right leg from hip to an- kle. He could feel the hot blood running down his side as he lay there, half- stunned, unable to move. And he realized that he had come down in No-Man’s-Land, for bullets were whis- O00) com (E