Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/185

Rh swift little Nieuports, dashing here and there, swooping and rising, attacked the other planes vigorously.

It was give and take, hammer and tongs, fire and be fired on, smash and be smashed. It was not as one-sided a battle as it would seem it might have been owing to the superiority of numbers in favor of the French—at least at first. Several of the Allies' planes were sent down, either gut of control, or in flames. But the Huns paid clearly for their quarry.

Jack and Tom ran serious risks, for the Germans, realizing that the two leading planes had some special mission, attacked them fiercely. Tom managed to shake off and disable his antagonist. But Jack's man shot with such good aim that he pierced his gasolene tank, and had it not been that Jack was able to thrust into the hole one of some wooden plugs he had brought along for the purpose, he might have had to come down within the German lines. But the wood swelled, filled the hole, and then the petrol came out so slowly that there was comparatively little danger.

And having, with some of their companions, fought their way through the German air patrol, and having escaped with minor damage to their guns. Jack and Tom looked down at the place where they had seen the queer lights.