Surprised as they were by our swift maneuver comparatively few fired upon us as we raced past them, but even those few shells found their marks among the cruisers of our rushing column. Cruisers of my own squadron were struck and hanging there glowing and fusing from the terrific heat released upon them, unable to avoid the fast-speeding ships behind them which raced headlong into the white-hot wrecks. Then our columns were past them and as behind us their ships fell thick in white-hot melting ruin, I turned toward Macklin, exultant. "We're beating them!" I cried. "Another blow like that one and----" A cry from the second officer cut me abruptly short, and quickly I gazed back to where he was pointing, toward the mighty ring of the European fleet. Our two columns had converged inward toward each other after that deadly blow, when the great ring-shaped formation of cruisers behind us had halted abruptly its own forward flight, and had shot back a great double file of its cruisers between our own two racing columns! And then, before we could see and forestall its menace, before we had time to obey the swift command that the First Air Chief shouted from the distance-phone, that double tongue of ships had split, each line moving sidewise with terrific force and speed toward our own two lines, pressing them outward from each other, separating them, rolling them sidewise and backward in two great enveloping motions. In that moment I felt our cruiser reel madly as a European cruiser shot against it, saw Macklin clinging madly to the wheel as I was thrown down and backward, while about us in that mad moment the heat-shells were speeding forth from ship to ship to burst in flaring destruction about us. Then as Macklin swung our cruiser up to a level keel, our heat-guns beneath detonating now as our gunners worked them like mad beings, we were fighting the remorseless lines of the enemy that swept us back and I was aware that our fleet's two columns had been swept hopelessly apart, that our forces had been fatally divided and that each division of them was now completely encircled by the outnumbering masses of cruisers of the European fleet! Cruisers on all sides of us now seemed to fill the air, enemy cruisers that tossed about us in a great sea of ships and that made our own ships the target now of their unceasing volleys. Our column, rolled together by that irresistible maneuver, had massed into a solid group, the silver-striped flagship of the First Air Chief just beside our own. The air around us was livid with flares of blinding light as the heat-shells broke and burst in unceasing destruction, as the thunder of our detonating guns seemed to drown all other sounds in the universe.