Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 89: what you’re looking at

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

AIR ADVENTURER streaming. He saw it barely in time to throw the Stormer out of range. The plummeting biplane screamed past him. Bills gaze followed it and saw the hideously scarred face of the pilot. He watched the man bring it out of its dive and zoom upward. He could tell by the steadiness and precision of the maneuver that the hand on the stick of the biplane was a hand that had guided a thousand planes in battle. Bull’s hand tightened on his own stick. His eyes gleamed as he swung the Stormer around to head back. The biplane came sweeping around in a tight Immelmann. Bill eased up on his throttle and pulled back on the stick. He fingered his firing trips while his eyes squinted along the gun sights. He heard Sandy’s voice in his ears: “Get him, Bill!’ the kid said. The gray fighter charged furiously down correcting his aim with his trac- ers as he came. Bill held his fire and opened his throttle wide. His powerful motors bellowed as the Stormer leaped upward. The bullets tearing at him from the biplane churned past under- neath them. As the two’ ships passed one another Bill kicked his rudder and threw the stick. over, The Scarlet Stormer whipped around like a prancing horse whirling on its hind legs. Then he dove. The pilot of the gray fighter threw his biplane into a frantic side slip. But Bill’s speed was terrific. Before the enemy plane could get from under his sights Bill’s fingers clamped down. The two guns roared. A deadly stream of lead swept across the biplane’s en- gine, and then it was past. When Bill swung back to the attack his eyes opened wide in amazement. Smoke was sweeping back from the bi- plane’s engine housing. His first burst of fire had drilled through the engine block. As the gray fighter pulled steeply around and headed back 87 Bill pulled his stick back. He pointed the nose of the Scarlet Stormer to meet it. Black smoke and fire were billowing back from the engine of the onrushing plane as it dove with its guns stream- ing wildly. Its speed was terrific. Bill did not realize until the piane was almost on him what the pilot was trying to do. Then he threw the Stormer desperately to one side. A sheet of paper could not have been in- serted between the wing tips of the two ships as they passed at terrific speed. Bill leveled his ship off. For a moment he became dizzy. The madman in the other plane had tried to ram him head- on! It was a last desperate effort. The little gray fighter never came out of that last, wild plunge. It kept straight on toward the earth with the scar-faced pilot either dead or helpless at the controls. Straight into the heart of the jungle it plunged to shoot flames fifty feet into the air as the ball of fire crashed. Bill wiped the perspiration from his forehead and glanced back at Sandy. The kid was grinning! He didn’t realize how close he had come to death. “That was swell going, Bill!” he said. “There’s something funny down there below, in the fort.” Bill looked downward to see that the anti-aircraft guns had been silenced. Also the howitzers. The place seemed to have gone mad. Black troops were fighting to get out of the fort! - Then he saw that men were running in every direction, away from the round, brick building that was the arsenal. On top of the arsenal were two white men and a woman! The men had machine guns and they were spraying the inside of the fort with their fire. The crews of the ma- chine guns around the walls of the fort had deserted their posts. The gates of the fort crashed in as the heavy French tank drove through it. oO CON) Ghook CO