Bullets whistled around the aeroplane, which by this time had risen several hundred feet higher than the enemy. Adjusting his planes to secure the maximum lift, Pariset began to climb steeply, and for some minutes the Zeppelin gained on him in horizontal direction. But the rapidity of his ascent rendered the task of its marksmen very difficult; and they seemed to realise that they were themselves in danger, for they altered their course, bearing to the east, as if they had abandoned the chase. The parts were now reversed. The aeroplane became the hunter, the airship the hunted. Still rising, Pariset gradually reduced the horizontal distance between them, gaining assistance from the manoeuvres of the Zeppelin, which yawed now and again in order to bring its guns to bear more effectively, thus losing pace. The aeroplane began to close in with it, and Pariset suddenly became aware that he was closing in too rapidly, for the airship either stopped her engines or reduced their speed. Before he had time to meet the manoeuvre he had come within effective range. Bullets pattered around like hail, and only by a swift wheeling movement did he escape destruction. Learning caution, he rose still higher, until he estimated that he was at least 3000 feet above the enemy. At this elevation the swelling bulk of the envelope rendered the machine guns useless, and there was indeed little chance of the aeroplane’s being hit even by the rifles. Pariset’s object was now to get as nearly as possible vertically above the Zeppelin, which the Zeppelin could only prevent by constantly changing its course and its speed. But Pariset was an adept in the handling of his machine. He watched every twist and turn of the enemy, and seemed to Kenneth to anticipate them, as a skilful boxer anticipates the feints and rallies of his opponent. "Get ready!" he shouted to Kenneth at last. "A twenty-second fuse!" Kenneth grasped the bomb, leaning over his seat ready to drop it at the word. He had lost all sense that this was warfare, and throbbed with the same excitement as stirs the batsman or the three-quarter. "Now!" cried Pariset. The bomb fell plumb, but at the same instant the Zeppelin checked, and the bomb burst many yards ahead, though whether above or below the airship he could not tell. Pariset at once wheeled round, and within a few seconds brought his machine once more above the enemy. At the critical moment Kenneth dropped a second bomb. There was a flash and a burst of smoke and metal between the two vessels, momentarily hiding the lower from view. But that no harm had been done was proved by the Zeppelin shooting ahead on another tack. "A little too far away," cried Pariset. "No time to descend. Throw the next, don’t drop it."