n.

So they attacked with fury, and the engagement soon became general.
Right and left there was continual firing going on, as the giant planes
wheeled and circled, shooting out flaming tongues like so many blast
furnaces in action.

The formation was not broken even then, each battleplane continuing to
cover its individual bombing plane with the shelter of its wings, so to
speak, though at the same time fighting off the aggressors.

Of course the bombers were also fitted to ward off attack, each being
armed with two machine-guns, one forward, and the other aft where the
man who handled the bombs could manipulate it. Slower and much less
agile than the fighting planes, they were expected to defend themselves
but not to attack.

The advance had slowed up, but not entirely stopped while the battle was
joined. As yet no bomb had been slipped from its leash, for the right
moment still held off.

Looking down Jack could see where the searchlights that sent such
broadening streamers aloft were stationed. He could also make out a dim
pile that must be the German fortress, strengthened particularly to hold
up the Americans, even as that at Verdun had held up the Huns.

Let the "Archies" bark below and the shrapnel burst all around them as
it pleased, no one in all that vast armada of the air was paying the
slightest attention to such things. They all, in their carelessness of
danger, seemed to themselves impervious to the storm of flying missiles.

The slower-moving bombing machines bore the brunt of this furious
onslaught, and Jack could tell that the wings of their plane were being
cut by the bullets.

It was almost a miracle that so far no one aboard any of the ten big
planes seemed to have been struck; or if such a thing had happened the
injury did not appear to be serious. They continued to move forward as
if all the Huns in Northern France, backed by every sort of gun that
could hurl shrapnel aloft, would not be sufficient to stay their
progress.

Presently, however, the formation was broken at a signal. To try to
maintain it any longer would be little short of suicidal, for the
gunners below were getting their range better, and the bursting shells
came alarmingly close now.

Tom kept his eyes constantly about him. Each bomber tried to keep at a
given altitude in making the evolutions, since in that way they were
better able to avoid a collision that would be fatal to both machines.

At last Tom caught his s