Air Stories — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

FOOTLIGHT ACE A figure came out of the darkness, and then Peggy Malone was standing beside him. She was rather white, but her eyes were smiling with a strange tenderness. ‘* Stout show, Basil,’’ she said, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat. ‘‘ The Harlows have always been—good theatre.’’ CHAPTER VI The Last Act ITH his nerves stretched almost to breaking-point, Basil took-off after a perilously short run. He felt the controls go soggy and for a horrible moment he thought the Camel was going to stall into the ground. The shock steadied him, and he eased off the machine until the engine revs. picked up. Climbing steadily, he watched the moving lights which were the crimson exhausts of the Friedrichshafens circling ponderously to renew their attack on the Airoraft Park. He could not hope to drive the bombers away from their objective. But the very audacity of his attack might deceive the pilots of the Kampfgeschwader that his Camel was the spearhead of an assault, the forerunner of a large forma- tion of British fighters plunging down from the night sky. No doubt an emergency Zone Call was already, in fact, bringing every available fighter in the sector to the defence of Rely. But something had to be done quickly to prevent the bombers unloading their devastating cargo on the long line of hangars packed with reserve machines. If only he could divert the attention of the bomber pilots from those hangars until rein- forcements arrived | He had reached the bombers’ ceiling and now he was edging round the arrow- head formation to climb above his quarry. The air reverberated with the nocturnal dirge of massed engines. The clamour grew fainter as he clawed for altitude and then he flattened out above the white-crossed black wings of the 71 clustering Friedrichshafens. He drew a deep breath and, pushing forward the stick, went down in a powet dive. He warmed his guns with a trial burst as he plunged down the sky into what seemed a vast suspended cage of black wings whose glossy dope gleamed suddenly with the flame of tracer as a score of guns converged on the crazy Englander. The Camel hurtled through an inferno of lead and flame, and only the darkness which confused the gunners’ aim and the Camel’s terrific speed saved Basil from immediate annihilation. As the line of mammoth invaders flashed past him, he splayed a stream of lead into a pilot’s cockpit which swirled across his sights. He had a fleeting glimpse of the pilot reeling back, his arm clamped across his shattered face. The huge bomber reeled drunkenly, and the machine flying on its star- board side banked desperately to avoid the yawing mass that came side-slipping towards it. The two machines met with a rending crash and went down with locked wings, trailing spars and fabric. IRST blood! Basil ran his tongue over his dry lips and, pulling out of his dive, rocketed upwards with the velocity of the Camel’s zoom. Hanging on to his prop., he pounded away with his Vickers, and he saw his tracer etching a jagged line beneath an iron-crossed fuselage. There was a flicker of fire and then flaming petrol was pouring from a shattered tank as the bomber fell over on one wing to go spinning down into the abyss of darkness. Basil kicked on rudder and wrenched the Camel into a vertical bank to escape the flaming mass which threatened to engulf him—only to find himself caught in a murderous hail of converging fire from swivelling Spandaus. The Camel shivered under the violence of the attack. It fell away with slashed fabric and bracing wires snarling round its wings. In the cockpit Basil crumpled as something struck his head with a fierce blinding pain which subsided into CO LDOO)