"Come on! Hurry up!" both aviators kept repeating to their own
advancing air fleet. "No time to waste! Let's get at 'em. They're
going to bomb our front lines."

Almost immediately a number of fast triplanes forged on ahead of the
rest at a speed which a year before would have been deemed impossible.
Joining the two weary airmen who had been up all night, yet were still
full of the battle hunger, they swept low down and straight at the
bombing planes, now beginning to drop their deadly explosives along the
lines of advancing infantry. But only for an instant, as it were, did
they go uninterrupted.

A hail of bullets from machine guns rained down upon them. In almost
no time two of these planes went staggering earthward. Blaine,
forgetting his almost empty sheaves of Lewis gun ammunition, hung upon
the tail of one, while Buck, with side loops and a nose dive, flung
himself almost literally on another.

"Holy Moses!" ejaculated Buck as his last full sheaf went into the
cartridge roll, and he realized that with this gone he would be
absolutely helpless. "I don't want to quit. But if this don't fetch
another one, I'll have to. I'll have to anyhow."

In the meantime, the Boche fighting planes had mixed in with the Allied
fighters, interrupting their assault upon the bombers. And such an
exhibition of diving, darting, nose dipping, looping, and what not had
seldom been seen along that extended front.

Realizing the damage to be done by bombs on the unprotected infantry
charging below, both Blaine and his comrade kept strictly after the