another cloud-bank, but the
Fokker had seen them, and plunged downward in their direction.

The instant the cloud swallowed them up Dennis concentrated all his
efforts on the foot-bar which controlled the vertical rudder, and,
grasping the wheel at the same time, swung sharply to the left, leaving
their pursuer to dive down five hundred feet into space before he
discovered that he had missed his mark.

Neither of them knew that the nose of the Fokker had been within twelve
inches of the Aviatik's tail-planes; and but for the fact that the
German suspended his fire at the moment of diving, it would have been
all over with the raiders.

Dennis reverted to his old tactics when he found that they had escaped,
and turning to the right again, with an anxious eye on the compass, saw
no more of the enemy for nearly a quarter of an hour, until, emerging
into a burst of bright sunshine and looking down, he found himself
immediately over a fierce engagement on the eastern crest of the Vosges
mountains. Shells were bursting below them, and though he did not know
it, they were passing above the Col de la Schlucht, from which the
French guns were bombarding Munster. He could see the enormous puffs of
smoke--white, black, and some of them tinged with yellow--but what was
of greater moment to them both was the presence of the enemy machines a
few miles to the southward.

They, too, were just leaving the cloud-bank, which ended there, misled
by the idea that their prey would make a bee-line for safety; but they
saw the Aviatik at the same moment that Dennis saw them, and circled
round to cut him off from home.

Dennis realised that he was now above French soil. His engines were
working magnificently, and dropping to an altitude of two thousand
metres, which gave him a clear view of towns and buildings, he consulted
his chart, identified Nancy far away on his right front, and trusted all
to Providence.

He had judged wisely, as it proved, and knew that he was out-distancing
the enemy aircraft tearing in hot pursuit--all but one persistent Fokker
that evidently meant business. He even found time to glance backward at
his companion, who, with the folds of the French flag wrapped round his
shattered shoulder to dull the force of the keen air, sat huddled up in
his cockpit, apparently insensible.

Once a shell came up from the ground, and burst between pursuer and
pursued, and a gleam of fierce hope shot through the lad's heart as he