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.