few who leaped the barrage got away and
ultimately reached Nu-yok.

It was those who managed to jump the barrage who gave us the most
trouble. With half of our long-guns turned aloft, I foresaw we would not
have enough to establish successive ground barrages and so ordered the
barrage back two miles, from which positions our "curtains" began to
close in again, this time, however, gauged to explode, not on contact,
but thirty feet in the air. This left little chance for the Sinsings to
leap either over or under it.

Gradually, the two barrages approached each other until they finally
met, and in the grey dawn the battle ended.

Our own casualties amounted to forty-seven men in the ground forces,
eighteen of whom had been slain in hand to hand fighting with the few of
the enemy who managed to reach our lines, and sixty-two in the crew and
"kite-tail" force of swooper No. 4, which had been located by one of
the enemy's ultroscopes and brought down with long-gun fire.

Since nearly every member of the Sinsing Gang had, so far as we knew,
been killed, we considered the raid a great success.

It had, however, a far greater significance than this. To all of us who
took part in the expedition, the effectiveness of our barrage tactics
definitely established a confidence in our ability to overcome the Hans.

As I pointed out to Wilma:

"It has been my belief all along, dear, that the American explosive
rocket is a far more efficient weapon than the disintegrator ray of the
Hans, once we can train all our gangs to use it systematically and in
co-ordinated fashion. As a weapon in the hands of a single individual,
shooting at a mark in direct line of vision, the rocket-gun is inferior
in destructive power to the dis ray, except as its range may be a little
greater. The trouble is that to date it has been used only as we used
our rifles and shot guns in the 20th Century. The possibilities of its
use as artillery, in laying barrages that advance along the ground, or
climb into the air, are tremendous.

"The dis ray inevitably reveals its source of emanation. The rocket gun
does not. The dis ray can reach its target only in a straight line. The
rocket may be made to travel in an arc, over intervening obstacles, to
an unseen target.

"Nor must we forget that our ultronists now are promising us a perfect
shield against the dis ray in inertron."

"I tremble though, Tony dear, when I think of the horrors that are ahead
of us.