agile platform of the gondola was a man, seemingly a human mite aiming
a tiny toy gun. His target was one of the Brown aeroplanes.

"They're in danger of cutting their own envelope! They can't get the
angle! The plane is too high!" exclaimed the artillery commander. Both
he and his men forgot their work in watching the spectacle of aerial
David against aerial Goliath. "If our man lands with his little bomb,
oh, my!" he grinned. "That's why he is so high. He's been waiting up
there."

"Pray God he will!" exclaimed one of the gunners.

"Look at him volplane--motor at full speed, too!"

The pilot was young Etzel, who, as Lanstron had observed, would charge a
church tower if he were bidden. He was taking no risks in missing. His
ego had no cosmos except that huge, oblong gas-bag. He drove for it as a
hawk goes for its prey. One life for a number of lives--the sacrifice of
a single aeroplane for a costly dirigible--that was an exchange in favor
of the Browns. And Etzel had taken an oath in his heart--not standing on
a cafe table--that he would never let any dirigible that he attacked
escape.

"Into it! Making sure! Oh, splen--O!" cried the artillery commander.

A ball of lightning shot forth sheets of flame. Dirigible and plane were
hidden in an ugly swirl of yellowish smoke, rolling out into a purple
cloud that spread into prismatic mist over the descent of cavorting
human bodies and broken machinery and twisted braces, flying pieces of
tattered or burning cloth. David has taken Goliath down with him in a
death grip.

An aeroplane following the dirigible as a screen, hoping to get home
with information if the dirigible were lost, had escaped the
sharpshooters in the church tower by flying around the town. However, it
ran within range of the automatic and the sharpshooters on top of the
castle tower. They failed of the bull's-eye, but their bullets, rimming
the target, crippling the motor, and cutting braces, brought the
crumpling wings about the helpless pilot. The watching gunners uttered
"Ahs!" of horror and triumph as they saw him fall, gliding this way and
that, in the agony of slow descent.

"Come, now!" called the artillery commander. "We are wasting precious
time."

Entering the grounds of the Galland house, Marta had to pass to one side
of the path, now blocked by army wagons and engineers' materials and
tools. Soldiers carrying sand-bags were taking the shortest cut,
trampling the flowers on their way.