consistently hotter than an aero engine should run. Twice it had gone
up to a dangerous temperature. One other time it had gone up for a
minute or more as if the oiling system had failed altogether. But it
still ran, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon and shadows were
lengthening, and Bell began to look almost hopefully for a clearing in
which to land before the dark hours came.

Then it was that he saw the planes that had been sent for him and for
Paula.

* * * * *

There were three of them, fast two-seaters very much like the one he
drove. They were droning eastward, with all cockpits filled, from that
enigmatic point in the west. And Bell had descended to investigate a
barely possible stream when they saw him.

The leader banked steeply and climbed upward toward him. The others
gazed, swung sharply, and came after him, spreading out as they came.
And Bell, after one instant's grim debate, went into a maple leaf dive
for the jungle below him. The others dived madly in his wake. He heard
a sharp, tearing rattle. A machine-gun. He saw the streaks of tracers
going very wide. Gunfire in the air is far from accurate. A
machine-gun burst from a hundred yards, when the gun has to be aimed
by turning the whole madly vibrating ship, is less accurate than a
rifle at six hundred, or even eight. Most aircraft duels are settled
at distances of less than a hundred yards.

It was that fact that Bell counted on. With a motor that might go dead
at any instant and a load of passengers and gas at least equaling that
of any of the other ships, mere flight promised little. The other
ships, too, were armed, at any rate the leader was, and Bell had only
small arms at his disposal. But a plane pilot, stunting madly to dodge
tracer bullets, has little time to spare for revolver work.

* * * * *

Bell had but one advantage. He expected to be killed. He looked upon
both Paula and himself as very probably dead already. And he
infinitely preferred the clean death of a crash to either the life or
death that Ribiera would offer them. He flattened out barely twenty
yards above the waving branches that are the roof of the jungle. He
went scudding over the tree tops, rising where the jungle rose,
dipping where it dropped, and behind him the foliage waved wildly as
if in a cyclone.

The other planes dared not follow. To dive upon him meant too much
chance of a dash into th