The next moment all the air about us seemed filled with whirling, striking cruisers, as the two scouting lines met and crashed. In that first moment a score of our cruisers crumpled and collapsed in headlong collisions with European cruisers. And then as Macklin threw the wheel up at my hoarse cry, our own ship heeled over with sickening speed to avoid two European cruisers hurtling straight toward us. Then as we rushed by them there came the swift sharp detonations of their great heat-guns and a storm of shining cylindrical heat-shells rushed from them toward us. At that moment Macklin swung our cruiser back upward and over the two rushing European ships, and as there came a word from Hilliard to the crew, our own keel heat-guns rained down a score of heat-shells upon the two ships. One of those ships the heat-shells missed, but the other was struck squarely by three of them. Instantly there was a blinding flare of white light as the striking heat-shells burst, releasing upon the luckless European ship all the terrific heat contained within them, the vast vibrations of radiant heat. For this was the most deadly weapon of modern air-warfare, these shining shells in which, by special processes, the vibrations of intense radiant heat could be concentrated. And as those shells struck and burst upon the luckless ship below we saw the ship hang motionless for a moment in the midst of that blinding flare, its metal sides glowing and fusing. Then we saw it plunge downward like a great meteor toward the gray Atlantic! But now our own cruisers were whirling up and backward, back toward the struggling ships that hung now in a mighty, struggling line. Like swooping hawks our own craft flashed, diving down upon that battling line with bow and keel guns raining heat-shells upon the European ships below, racing down at a giddy angle into that wild melee of struggling ships and heat-shells that the combat there had become. So wild and fierce had been the combat in the few moments since we had met the European scouts that already scores of ships had plunged down in white-hot destruction toward the ocean. But we had, I saw, well accounted for ourselves in those moments, since almost twice as many of the European cruisers had fallen as our own, and they seemed staggered. Then as our ships leapt like angry birds of prey after them, there came a quick order from the distance-phone that abruptly halted us. "Main body of European forces approaching! All front and side scout-squadrons rejoin our fleet!" Trapped!