Meantime the pursuing planes, both Fokker scouting machines, drew still nearer and began to use their machine guns. The balls pattered all about; but as yet neither he nor his plane was hit. He was zigzagging, mounting, spiraling, but all in a much slower fashion than he had been used to do with this same plane before. "What's the use?" he groaned. "I can't get back at them, even if I am running away. It's got to come. What's the odds? I'll turn and give them one good try for their game, anyhow." He was already turning in his lame evolutions when something like a big shadow darkened the air for an instant overhead. It passed. Then back came the shadow again, and a voice was megaphoning, not from below or in the rear but from right overhead. It said: "Hey, you, Orry! You're crippled! I can see that. But why don't you come up higher? Get a move on!" Erwin knew that voice. It was like a trumpet call to the lad. Fiercely be seized his own megaphone and shouted back, while with one hand and his feet he kept his own flier still going. "Yes? I'm crippled but all right. I can't rise except slowly. Better go while the going's good! Too many Archies below!" While Orris was shouting, another shadow passed overhead. It was Buck Bangs in his Nieuport. For hours they had been scouring the eastern air-zone in a vain search for Erwin, when the sudden roaring of the Archies turned them in this direction. While Orris was turning, trying also to rise, he saw as he faced to the rear that two planes instead of one were now charging the enemy. These had for a minute or more been directing their machine gun fire upon the new arrivals. Erwin had heard the noise of them, and wondered why he was not hit again. This was the reason. "Great boys, they are," he said to himself. "But I hope looking for me has not led them where we all don't want to go," meaning the prison camps of the Huns, from which had oozed stories of starvation and cruelty that were more than bad enough. "Considering how I'm fixed, I'll lay low down here and watch my chance to help. That other chap must be Bangs. Well, those two have got nerve anyhow!" CHAPTER XIII AT THE RUINED CHATEAU Having found the man they were searching for and in so perilous a situation, neither Blaine nor Bangs wasted time. If Erwin was crippled, so much the greater reason for them to relieve him. Only by direct attack could this be accomplished, if at all. Though the Archies were now roaring more than ever, Blaine and his observer, both machine guns pointed f or instant action, started straight at the pursuing planes. Buck was with him at a convenient distance. Instantly the rattle of their guns pattered out in the air as a fusillade of bullets was showered at the foe.