Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/175



UT the English were going to fight.

This knowledge came to Gerry through the rush and suck of the final yards of his three thousand foot fall; mechanically, automatically his hands were tugging at his controls, his feet braced firm on his rudder bar as he began to bring his machine out of the fall. He had come down at terrific speed with his motor only partly shut off; he had no time, and no need, to watch his speed indicator; he knew well enough when he was on edge of the breaking strain which his wings and wires could stand. He slanted more directly toward the Germans and he was very low above the ground; still half falling, half flying—and at greater speed than ever he could have flown—he hurled himself at them, flattening out at perhaps fifty feet from the earth.

He knew—not from anything which he consciously saw nor from any conscious reckoning but by the automatism of realization and the reflex from it which guided and coordinated his mind, nerve, and muscle in these terrific instants of attack—he knew that German machine gunners were firing at him; he knew that German riflemen in the ranks which he was charging were giving him bursts of bullets as fast as they could fire; and his fingers which so tenderly had touched the release levers of his bombs,