Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/192

 slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite certainly those flying-machines will carry folded parachutes, and the last phase of many a struggle will be the desperate leap of the aeronauts with these in hand, to snatch one last chance of life out of a mass of crumpling, falling wreckage.

But such a fight between flying-machine and flying-machine as we are trying to picture, will be a fight of hawks, complicated by bullets and little shells. They will rush up and up to get the advantage of one another, until the aeronauts sob and sicken in the rarefied air, and the blood comes to eyes and nails. The marksmen below will strain at last, eyes under hands, to see the circling battle that dwindles in the zenith. Then, perhaps, a wild adventurous dropping of one close beneath the other, an attempt to swoop, the sudden splutter of guns, a tilting up or down, a disengagement. What will have happened? One combatant, perhaps, will heel lamely earthward, dropping, dropping, the other circles down in pursuit. . . . "What are they doing?" Our marksmen will snatch at their field-glasses, tremulously anxious, "Is that a white flag or no? ... If they drop now we have 'em!"

But the duel will be the rarer thing. There is an enormous advantage for the side that can contrive, anywhere in the field of action, to set two vessels at one. The mere ascent of one flying-machine from one side will assuredly slip the leashes of two on the