But we had made one mistake, for this was not the hole of our late victim. It belonged instead to another bee, who suddenly appeared angrily on the scene. If we had not been warned by his whistling, we should have been out of luck; and as it was, we barely had time to scramble aboard and rise from the ground before he was upon us. Then began a repetition of our former fight, but with a difference, as we soon noticed, for this bee was a master of aerial tactics. Once, when we were nearly upon his back, he darted ahead, and then rose and halted, so that we nearly drove our ship onto the point of his sting. But fortunately, our pilot caught the idea of the maneuver almost before it was executed, and quickly threw us into a left-handed spiral, thus not only escaping the deadly sting, but also giving the bee a bad bruise with one of our wings as we shot by. A move like this would, of course, be rendered entirely impossible by the steadying influence of the gyroscopes, were it not for the fact that the control apparatus is so arranged that the gyroscopes maintain their position, while the whole rest of the machine spirals around them. For a while thereafter we had the advantage, and finally by a clever shift descended squarely upon the back of the bee. But, just as our hooks were about to take hold, the bee again darted forward and looped in front of us, turning over at the same time, so that he was right side up above us. Then, as we passed under him, he dropped upon the front of our machine out of reach of our tail. “My, but that was a well executed move!” one of the bar-pootahs exclaimed. “I never saw a whistling bee do _that_ before.” Airmen are ever appreciative of a clever opponent, on Poros as on Earth, and even in defeat. These were the last words my friend ever spoke, for at that moment he was impaled by the enemy. The next stroke punctured the fuel tank, the other ant-man jumped, and the plane crashed to earth, pinning me beneath it. I lay stunned for a few moments, and then the angry bee bunted the wreck to one side, pulled me from beneath it, and brandished his sting above me, preparatory to driving it into my vitals. _8_ the conspiracy Just as the sting was about to pierce my breast I recognized the bee. It was the same one which had been my companion in the spider web, and which I had rescued. There was the leg-stump and the scarred abdomen. What irony of fate that this bee should have now returned to kill me! “Don’t!” I shrieked aloud. “Was it for this that I saved you from the spider?” And it almost seemed as though he heard me and understood me, for he stayed his rapier in mid air. Then he recognized me, too. At least he must have done so, for in no other way can I explain his sudden clemency. Instead of finishing his stroke, the bee withdrew his sting, gazed intently on me for several seconds, and then flew heavily away. Once more my life was saved!