When he threw up the nose, bringing the forward machine gun to bear, O’Malley loosed a burst of bullets, though the target German plane was five hundred yards away. A range of that length was all right for machine-gun work on the ground, but in the air--with firing gun and with the target flying--it was sure waste. Gerry bent forward and pummeled O’Malley’s back to tell him so. But the Irishman did not turn; while Gerry climbed, the raiders and the Germans dropped, bringing the battle nearer, and O’Malley had a target now at two hundred yards from which he would not be withheld. The range still shortened, and bullets streaked down past Gerry. He gazed above and tried to dodge; O’Malley looked up; he saw the tricolor circle and did not reply. One of their own people, having sighted the black cross, was coming down upon them, taking them for German. And at the same instant the far-off Fokker at which O’Malley had been firing realized that there was something wrong about this big, slow, black-crossed machine; the German swung upon it, his machine guns going. Gerry’s engine went dead and he found himself automatically guiding the “bus” in a volplane which he was keeping as slow and as “flat” as possible as he glided below the battle and sought upon the ground for a place to land. He examined his altimeter and learned that he was still up four thousand feet, and with the flat gliding angle of the wide-winged training biplane, he knew that he had a radius of more than two miles for the choice of his landing. The battle was still going on above Mannheim, as the allied bombers had swung back. A machine flashed into flame and started down, with its pilot evidently controlling it at first; then too much of the wing fabric was consumed and it dropped. Other machines, too, were leaving the battle; some of them seemed to be Germans damaged and withdrawing; others appeared to be all right--they had just spent their ammunition, perhaps. One got on the tail of Gerry’s machine, looked him over, and then dropped past him. Gerry was gliding north and west of the city, making for wide, open spaces shown on the map which he had been studying--the smooth spaces of the fields of the Schloss von Fallenbosch. Five hundred yards away through the moonlight, and at almost his same altitude, he saw another machine gliding, as he was, with engine shut off; the circle of their volplane swept them toward each other. In the forward seat pit of the English machine--for Gerry steered close enough not only to see the allied insignia but the distinctive details of the British bombing plane--the man who had been bomber and machine gunner was lying back with head dropped; and the pilot, too, had been hit. He seemed to be half fainting, only spurring himself up for a few seconds at a time to control his glide.