48 TOM SWIFT AND HIS JETMARINE
.zoomed up, skimming the treetops. Banking, he headed straight into the blazing sun. Tom clung fast in pursuit.
Suddenly Dansitt, maneuvering quickly, shot up into a tight loop and came in above Tom’s tail, forcing him lower and lower. Tom countered with a sudden climb of his own and angled so that his enemy had to roll violently to the right.
Tom banked sharply and went in on Dansitt’s tail again.
In a desperate move to get away Dansitt dived his plane, almost cutting the grass in a wide meadow. A split-rail fence loomed ahead of him. Dansitt’s right wing tip nicked it!
“I guess that scared him,” Tom muttered as Dansitt cut his power, lowered his wheels and flaps, and went into a wide gradual turn toward an open field. He timed his approach expertly and touched the wheels on the ground just beyond a high wire fence.
Tom swung around and slipped his plane into the same field, rolling to a stop not more than twenty feet from Dansitt’s ship. By this time Dansitt had climbed out and was running away from his plane.
“Stop!” Tom cried. “I want that film!”
Dansitt paid no attention to Tom. The young inventor darted after his enemy, and being more fleet-footed than Dansitt, soon overtook him.
Dansitt, however, wheeled about suddenly and lashed out viciously with his fists. But Tom nimbly �dodged the intended blows and knocked the other �to the ground with a cross-body block.
“Where’s the film?” Tom cried as he pinned down his adversary’s arms.
A BOLO PUNCH 49
Instead of answering, Dansitt gave a sudden upward lurch, forcing Tom to loosen his grip. But before his opponent could slip completely from his grasp, Tom clamped Dansitt’s arms again in a steel-like grip. This time he straddled the other pilot. In doing so he felt a hard square object press against his thigh. Was it the film?