The last attacker appeared a feeble gnat to dance thus alone in the eye of morning.  That one plane should, unaided, drive on at Nissr’s huge, rushing bulk, seemed as preposterous as a mosquito trying to lance a rhinoceros.  The major directed a careful lens at this survivor.

“He has his nerve right in his baggage with him,” announced the Celt.  “Sure, he’s ‘there.’  There can be no doubt he’s seen the others fall.  Yet—­what now?  He’s turning tail, eh?  He’s on the run?”

“Not a bit of it!  He’s driving straight ahead.  That was only a dip and turn, for better air.  Ah, but he’s good, that fellow!  There’s a man after my own heart, Major.  Maybe there’s more than one, aboard that plane.  But there’s one, anyhow, that’s a real man!”

The Master pondered a moment, then again picked up the phone.

“Enemark?” he called.  “That you?”

“Hello!  Yes, sir!  What orders, sir?”

“Cut off the ray!  Quick, there!”

“Yes, sir!” And through the phone the Master heard the snick of a switch being hastily thrown.

“What’s the idea, now?” demanded the major, astonished.  “Going to let that plane close in on us, and maybe riddle us?”

The Master smiled, as he made answer: 

“I’ll chance the bullets, this time.  There’s a man on board that plane.  A man!  And we—­need men!”

The Master smiled, as he made answer: 

“I’ll chance the bullets, this time.  There’s a man on board that plane.  A man!  And we—­need men!”

CHAPTER XVI

LECLAIR, ACE OF FRANCE

Swooping, rising, falling like a falcon in swift search of quarry, the last plane of the Azores squadron swept in toward the on-rushing Eagle of the Sky.

Undismayed by the swift, inexplicable fall of all its companions, it still thrust on for the attack.  In a few minutes it had come off the port bows of the giant air-liner, no more than half a mile distant.  Now the watchers saw it, slipping through some tenuous higher cloud-banks that had begun to gather, a lean, swift, wasplike speedster:  one of the Air Control Board’s—­the A.C.B.’s—­most rapid aerial police planes.  The binoculars of the Master and Bohannan drew the machine almost to fingers’ touch.

“Only one man aboard her, with a machine-gun,” commented the Master, eyes at glass, as he watched the flick of sunlight on the attacker’s fuselage, the dip and glitter of her varnished wings, the blur of her propellers.  Already the roaring of her exhaust gusted down to them.

“Ah, see?  She’s turning, now.  Banking around!  We may catch a burst of machine-gun fire, in a minute.  Or, no—­she’s coming up on our tail, Major.  I think she’s going to try and board us!”

“You going to let her?” protestingly demanded Bohannan.  His hand twitched against the butt of the Lewis.  “In two seconds I could sight an aft gun, sir, and blow that machine Hell-for-leather!”