own guidance.

Suddenly the Aviatik dipped, and Laval made a gesture with his helmeted
head. There was no Rolland releasing apparatus fitted to the machine,
and the Frenchman's ten bombs were ranged on either side of the
observer.

He knew the moment had come, and with a rapid movement Dennis flung them
over into space! As the sixth left his hand he felt the machine begin to
mount steeply as Laval opened the throttle and put the engines to their
fullest power, and the remaining four death-dealing missiles were
dropped out at random.

Peering down over the edge, three tremendous explosions reached their
ears, followed by another and another; and then everything was drowned
in the mightiest explosion of them all, as Zeppelin and hangar burst
into a sheet of flame.

Wider and wider it spread, and higher it rose, a great red and yellow
roar of lapping tongues, sometimes hidden by dense black smoke, only to
flare out brighter than before.

And still the raider climbed at a perilous angle, and at such a speed
that Dennis gave up all attempts to use his glasses.

As he clung with one hand to a gun bracket, looking giddily down,
something screamed past the aeroplane, missing the wings by only a few
feet, and a shrapnel shell burst overhead.

"I thought 'Archibald' would have something to say to us," muttered
Dennis, as Laval banked away to the right, still rising. "Hallo! Now
they've got us!" And three brilliant beams shot into the night sky, one
of them focusing the Aviatik and the two others instantly joining it, to
show the anti-aircraft gunners their target.

Laval dived--a breathless, daring swoop down--as two shells burst above
their heads; but, quick as he was, a shower of bullets rained through
one of the wings. Dennis could see the holes when the searchlights got
them again, and the side of the fuselage was pitted with dents.

Right and left, above and below, in front and behind them, the whole sky
was suddenly alive with shell bursts; and into the observer's brain came
the recollection that he had an interview with General Joffre at eight
o'clock that morning! He found himself actually smiling at the thought,
and wishing that he could speak to the man in front of him--the helmeted
man with rounded shoulders bent over his wheel, who pressed levers and
bent the control pillar this way and that, as he sent the biplane
zigzagging through the heavens with a suddenness that bumped Dennis
about, and threatened mor