thful
pilot leading by mutual consent.

They swept at full speed toward the warships, four of which had by this
time been sent to destruction--one of which had appeared to vanish
utterly in the space of a single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second
or two the shape of its bilge, the bulge of its keel, was visible in the
face of the deep--and openly challenged the aero-subs.

* * * * *

Muzzles of compressed air guns projected from the wing-tips of the
planes. Buttons were pressed which elevated the muzzles of guns arranged
to fire upward from either side the fighting pits, twin guns that were
fired downward from the same central magazine--the only guns in use in
the Americas which fired in opposite directions at the same time.

But for a few moments the aero-subs refused combat. Their speed was
terrific, dazzling. They eluded the thrusts, the dives and plunges of
the American ships as easily as a swallow eludes the dive of a buzzard.

It came to Prester Kleig, however, that the aero-subs were merely
playing with the Americans; that when they elected to move, the planes
would be blasted from the sky as easily as the warships were being
erased from the surface of the Atlantic.

One by one, as methodically as machines, the aero-sub pilots blasted the
warships into nothingness. They had their orders, and they went about
their performance with a rigidity of discipline which astounded the
Secret Agents. They had been ordered to destroy the warships, and they
were doing that first--would go on to completion of this task, no matter
how many American planes buzzed about their ears.

But one by one as the warships sank, the aero-subs which had either sunk
or erased them made the surface and leaped into space with a snapping
back of wings that was horribly businesslike as to sound, and climbed up
to take part in the fight against the American planes, which must
inevitably come.

* * * * *

The last warship, cut squarely in two from stem to stern along her
center, as though split thus by a bolt of lightning, fell apart like
pieces of cake, and splashed down, sinking away while the spume of her
disintegration rolled back from her fallen sides in white-crested waves.

"It exemplifies the policies of Moyen," said Prester Kleig, "for his
conquest of the world is a conquest of destruction."

The last aero-sub took to the sky, and the Americans rushed into battl