His glasses traveled to and fro, sweeping the fringelike fan of the attackers, still five or six miles away.

"Faith, but this is--" The binoculars lowered slowly, as Bohannan watched a falling plane.
Everywhere ahead there in the brazier of the dawn, as the two men stood watching from the wind-lashed gallery of the on-roaring liner, attackers were dropping.

All along the line they had begun to fall, like ripe fruit in a hurricane.
Not in bursts of flame did they go plunging down the depths, gyrating like mad comets with long smoke-trailers and redly licking manes of fire.

Not in shattered fragments did they burst and plumb the abyss.
No; quite intact, unharmed, but utterly powerless they fell.
Some spiraled down, like dead leaves twirling in autumnal breezes, with drunken yaws and pitches.

Others in long slants volplaned toward the hidden sea, miles below the cloud-plain.