Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/188

 But he went lower and nearer and directly at that patrol. Gerry could see that they were working nearer the road, with plenty of time to intercept that procession from Mirevaux; and, though he gave those German guns a perfect target for a few seconds, he dove down upon the patrol. They were Jaegers, he thought, as he began to machine-gun them—the sort whom the Germans liked to put in their advance parties and who had made their first record in Belgium. Gerry thought of those Jaegers, with the blood fury of battle hot on them, intercepting that blue-eyed girl; and when he had overflown them, he swung back and gave it to them again.

One of the machine guns which had been firing at him from the ground or some of the shrapnel from the German 77s had got him, now; for his ship was drooping on the left; the wings had lost their lift. When he had overflown the patrol the second time and tried to turn back, he could not get around; his controls failed. The best he could do was to half pull up into the wind and, picking a fairly flat place below, to come down crashing that drooping left wing, crashing the undercarriage, crashing struts and spars and tangling himself in wires and bracing cables but missing, somehow, being hurled upon the engine. He was alive and not very much hurt, though enmeshed helplessly in the maze of the wreck; and the German gunners of the 77s either guessed he might be alive or it was their habit to make sure of every allied airplane which crashed within range, for a shell smashed thirty yards up the slope beyond him.

Gerry, unable to extricate himself, crouched below the engine and the sheathing of the fuselage; a second shell