The whole metal-plated frame of the _Flyer_ shook violently and careened wildly to one side from the concussion of another lyddite shell. Only quick action on Ned’s part prevented their capsizing.
“We won’t ever get home to tell anybody about anything if you don’t drive the ship higher pretty soon,” yelled Alan.
“All right,” said he, “but I do wish that you could manage to signal some of these aeroplanes skimming around us that we are friends instead of enemies, and that we want to alight down there in the city.”
Alan looked doubtful, but finally agreed. As Ned jammed the elevation lever down hard in its socket and forced the _Ocean Flyer_ slowly forward on a decided up-slant, his chum made his way out onto the runway which encircled most of the _Flyer’s_ hull, and there, clinging firmly to the iron taffrail with one hand, wig-wagged pacific signals with a white flag gripped in the other.
Either the circling French aviators did not understand his signals, or thought that the white flag was merely intended to deceive them, for all save one of them totally disregarded it. That single dare-devil bird-man drove his monoplane--like a flea going against an elephant--straight, head-on, at the _Ocean Flyer_ the moment Alan made his appearance outside. His face was set in frantic determination.
A startled cry of warning escaped the boy clinging in the terrific wind there on the narrow runway, who thought that the madman intended to crash into the bigger airship and so sacrifice his own life in the attempt to disable the supposed enemy.
But that was not the daring Frenchman’s intent. When the roar of his whirling tail propellers deafened Alan’s hearing and it seemed as if in another second the little monoplane would be dashed against the _Flyer_, the Frenchman tilted his planes sharply, swerved on a perilous angle that almost overturned his light craft, and, as he swept past in a rush of wind, jerked a revolver from his belt with one hand and fired full into Alan’s blanched face. A second later he swooped down towards the watching city below.
Alan felt a sudden stinging sensation on his cheek and could not suppress a cry of pain. Something warm began to trickle down his cheek. A sudden giddiness made his head swim. His eyes blurred and he felt that he might topple over the narrow taffrail at any moment.