ered line of the Germans, who seemed to open out
to give way to them. Some sort of manoeuvring began, but Bert could
not grasp its import. The left of the battle became a confused dance
of airships. For some minutes up there the two crossing lines of ships
looked so close it seemed like a hand-to-hand scuffle in the sky. Then
they broke up into groups and duels. The descent of German air-ships
towards the lower sky increased. One of them flared down and vanished
far away in the north; two dropped with something twisted and crippled
in their movements; then a group of antagonists came down from the
zenith in an eddying conflict, two Asiatics against one German, and were
presently joined by another, and drove away eastward all together with
others dropping out of the German line to join them.

One Asiatic either rammed or collided with a still more gigantic German,
and the two went spinning to destruction together. The northern squadron
of Asiatics came into the battle unnoted by Bert, except that the
multitude of ships above seemed presently increased. In a little while
the fight was utter confusion, drifting on the whole to the southwest
against the wind. It became more and more a series of group encounters.
Here a huge German airship flamed earthward with a dozen flat Asiatic
craft about her, crushing her every attempt to recover. Here another
hung with its screw fighting off the swordsman from a swarm of
flying-machines. Here, again, an Asiatic aflame at either end swooped
out of the battle. His attention went from incident to incident in the
vast clearness overhead; these conspicuous cases of destruction caught
and held his mind; it was only very slowly that any sort of scheme
manifested itself between those nearer, more striking episodes.

The mass of the airships that eddied remotely above was, however,
neither destroying nor destroyed. The majority of them seemed to
be going at full speed and circling upward for position, exchanging
ineffectual shots as they did so. Very little ramming was essayed after
the first tragic downfall of rammer and rammed, and what ever attempts
at boarding were made were invisible to Bert. There seemed, however,
a steady attempt to isolate antagonists, to cut them off from their
fellows and bear them down, causing a perpetual sailing back and
interlacing of these shoaling bulks. The greater numbers of the Asiatics
and their swifter heeling movements gave them the effect of persistently