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 hands, her small, helmeted head. She never moved her head; she never looked up at me; but she began climbing, aimed at me. Climbing, she gained on me; she had the wings of us; she had the better plane.

I went to the left and for a few seconds my shift of direction seemed to escape her. Then, without looking up at all, she veered to the left in one of her queer, sudden stabs and climbed closer to me.

She seemed bent on striking at me from below.

The madness of such a purpose no longer denied it in my mind. I had to think of her as mad, that girl who had flown down to us on the sea and now, having drawn us fourteen thousand feet into the sky, attacked us. The sea, nearly three miles below and with the vessels veriest specks upon it, spread beneath me as a floor upon which I must fall. Sickeningly, it spread beneath me. It was a moment when the sensation of height, which a pilot learns to ignore, re-imposed itself upon me. My palms sweated cold; I could feel the sweat on the soles of my feet. Struck, as Selby