Henkel was the first to recover himself.

‘Shoot it down!’ he bellowed.  ‘Shoot it down!’ And the Turks, perhaps not altogether sorry to find some other use for their bullets than the slaughter of two helpless prisoners, raised their muzzles to the sky, and began blazing away furiously.  Even Henkel, Hartmann, and Von Steegman hauled out their pistols from their belt holsters and fired for all they were worth.

But a plane travelling at a mile a minute is not the easiest thing in the world to hit, especially when it seems to be coming right at you.  Possibly some of the bullets pierced the widespread wings, but no harm was done to the observer or his pilot.

Suddenly Ken seized Roy with his manacled hands.

‘Down!’ he cried sharply.  ‘Down!’

Roy understood and flung himself flat upon the ground, and Ken instantly followed his example.

Only just in time.  Next second a black streak darted from the plane and shot earthwards.  Followed an earth-shaking roar, and a blinding flash of flame.

[Illustration:  ‘All, even Henkel, glanced upwards.’]

Ken, flat on his face, felt the blast of it, and covered his head with his arms.  Earth, small stones, debris of all kinds rained upon him, then followed silence, broken only by the rapidly diminishing roar of the engine exhaust.

Ken ventured to roll over.  This is what he saw.

Between him and the spot where the firing party had stood, but nearer to the latter, was a great cavity in the ground, a hole ten feet across and perhaps a yard deep.  Beyond, half buried in the mass of rubbish flung up by the explosion, were the broken remains of the firing party.  All but one were dead, and most were blasted to fragments.  The one survivor lay helpless and groaning.

Farther away the three officers were prone and still upon the ground, but whether dead or merely damaged, Ken could not tell.  He hoped the former.  Farther still, half a dozen other Turkish soldiers lay, twisted in ugly fashion, covered with blood.  They had been badly cut by the jagged fragments of stone flung up by the bursting bomb.  The survivors, a score or so in number, were running in blind panic towards the village.

‘Roy, Roy!  Quickly!  We’ve a chance still,’ cried Ken, his voice tense with excitement.

He sprang up as he spoke, and Roy staggered dazedly to his feet.

‘This way!’ said Ken, and in spite of the hampering handcuffs he managed to scramble over the low wall into the vineyard.

Roy followed.

‘It’s no use, Ken,’ he said.  ’We can’t run with these beastly handcuffs, and they’ll be after us in two twos.’

‘Not they!  Look!’

He pointed to the plane.  It had circled wide over the town and was now coming back.  The faint popping of rifles was followed by another terrific crash.  A second bomb had dropped clean upon one of the larger houses, and exploding on the flat roof had scattered the whole building as a man’s foot might scatter an ant’s nest.  With a roar half the house toppled outwards into the street, blocking it completely.