WINNING PROMOTIONS

Looking back, Orris saw his nearest foe, apparently caught by the same
whirlwind that had nearly unseated him, go side-looping over and over
as if in the grasp of mighty, invisible forces that he was unable to
meet or control.

"It's safety first, I guess, for us all," he thought, at once diving
into the nearing thunder burst that closed round him like a black pall,
a pall now threaded and convulsed with electric forces that showed only
in vivid flashes and deafening thunders.

The winds, too, picked him up, whirled him about and otherwise so
tossed his machine here, there, yonder, that for five fearful minutes
he hardly knew where or what he was. The wind, now bitter cold, would
have frozen his flesh but for his sheathing of wool and leather that
protected his face, arms and body. Blinding gusts of rain, sleet and
frozen snow buffeted the planes, the shield of the fuselage, and all of
himself that was visible.

By this time Blaine, the German planes, his own late adversary, had all
vanished. He was alone, like a buffeted, tossed, shaken twig, in that
wild vortex of darkness and storm.

With his machine gun jammed and his petrol running low, what was there
for him to do but descend and make for the home aerodrome?

"Might as well," he reflected. "We've already overstayed our time."