Not for long could we thus remain the target of these masses of cruisers that swarmed about and above and beneath us. Our other column had been swept back and that was surrounded by enemy cruisers and fighting desperately even as we were. Unless we could join them, and reunite our shattered fleet, we must inevitably be destroyed. At that moment the voice of the First Air Chief rang from the distance-phone before me in a high command. "Triangle formation!" he shouted. "North at full speed!" Instantly the ships behind and about us, reforming swiftly and smoothly even under the rain of shells shifted into a great wedge-shaped formation, a great triangle of solid ships whose apex was the First Air Chief's cruiser, and which pointed north, toward the other isolated and struggling half of our fleet. Then the next moment our great triangle had leaped forward straight toward the north at full speed, into the swarming masses of European ships that surrounded us. Our own cruiser hung just behind the First Air Chief's, just behind the triangle's apex. Then with a terrific crash we had smashed into the solid wall of ships before us. Our cruiser rocked and reeled beneath me as its sharp stem rammed at full speed into a European cruiser that had swung broadside in an attempt to escape us. Its side crumpled beneath that awful blow and I saw it reel back and downward, I felt other rending crashes that shook our ship wildly as our triangle crashed through the European fleet. Then suddenly we were through it, had smashed our way by sheer force through its sea of ships and had reached the second half of our fleet, joining with it once more. Scores, hundreds even, of our own cruisers and of the enemy's were tumbling and twisting downward toward the sea, battered wrecks of metal that had been all but annihilated in our mad crash through the enemy armada! Now swiftly our re-united fleet, still almost two thousand strong, were massing together in a single long rectangle, our flagship speeding to its head, and as we moved toward the scattered swarms of European ships about us, that numbered almost four thousand still, they had formed into a similar formation. Then as our own long rectangle or column rushed toward them they were racing sidewise at the same speed as ourselves, so that side by side now our two great fleets sped through the air, our heat-guns detonating again as we held still to the awful struggle. Our cruiser seemed to bear a charmed life, since as we drove headlong through that hail of shining death, behind the First Air Chief's cruiser, we were sometimes missed by inches only. And now as Macklin, his eyes steady but burning, held our ship onward with those about us in this mad running fight of the two great fleets, I was aware that in that fight they were both slanting steadily _downward_, down toward the gray Atlantic far beneath!