CHAPTER V.
STRIKING IT RIGHT.
How to bring about the flying assignment that would put them on the trail of the otherwise doomed Cossack was the next problem to engage the young aviators.
The boys well knew that aeroplane connection was being constantly maintained between Warsaw and the center of Russian operations at Brest Litovsk, one hundred miles east, even though numerous telegraph instruments, in the schoolhouse there occupied as headquarters by the mighty commander, ticked messages every minute day and night.
No weather conditions served to check modern aircraft, and hostile wire-cutters had nothing but the laugh due them when it came to intercepting or destroying aeroplane communication.
How much they would be compelled to tell to create an emergency for their journey, the boys had no fixed idea.
“Let’s try it first on the lieutenant,” suggested Billy, “and if he doesn’t see the way, have a talk direct with Colonel Malinkoff.”
“Whatever is to be done must be done at once,” declared Henri.
So they jointly proceeded in search of the aviation chief.
As though a change of luck had succeeded the recent adverse fortune assailing the lads, whom should they meet in crossing the aviation grounds but Salisky and Marovitch, the scouts and special messengers lately back from important mission to the front.
“Joy of my heart,” was the hail of Salisky, at sight of the pilots who had made the record flight from Petrograd, “if here isn’t the salt of the earth in two good packages.”
His companion observer showed equal pleasure in greeting the lads, and the four of them had a busy moment voicing questions and answers.
“Thought you had skipped with the Cossacks,” bantered Salisky; “the big chief of the riders put me through a regular course of sprouts in trying to get a line on you. I knew precious little, except that you were the right stuff and more than full hands in an aeroplane. Did he find you?”
“Not that anybody knows about,” replied Billy, “but we would like to find him just now.”
“You would have a noble chance of making that discovery if you were going with us,” put in Marovitch.
“Where are you going?” was Henri’s eager query.
“In two hours we will be in full sail for Brest Litovsk,” announced Salisky.
The boys each took an elbow grip on the speaker.
With one voice they cried: “Count us in on the flight, if you can!”
“Suits me all right,” promptly agreed Salisky, “but it is the lieutenant who names the pilots, and we are hunting for him now.”
“He’s the very man we have been looking for ourselves,” said Billy, “and we are more in a hurry than ever to get hold of him. Come along.”
The aviation chief had just emerged from the house quarters of a brother officer when the searchers surrounded him, Salisky presenting a written order, and the boys with difficulty refraining from putting their request in advance of the reading.
Indeed, the lieutenant had barely comprehended the text of the official billet before Henri was talking in one ear and Billy in the other. It was breach of discipline for which any of the veterans in the aviation corps would have forthwith been called down, but exuberant youth could not be denied.
The upshot of it was that the young aviators carried their point, having the hearty endorsement of the two men directly responsible for the success of the mission assigned to them.
“Talk about striking it right,” rejoiced Billy as Henri and himself were getting into suitable outfit for a long drive in the cold; “it certainly seems as if our good fairy were on the job to-day.”
“Maybe it was good intent that had something to do with the shaping of this venture,” added Henri. “It isn’t just like we were backing this effort with a solely selfish motive. If we have nothing to gain we might have everything to lose.”
“Come to think of it in that light,” said Billy, “if we don’t gain as much as the point at which we are aiming, it is somebody else that will lose—the Cossack will be minus his life.”
A corporal was calling from the hall below, and the pilots hastened to report themselves at the hangars where the military biplanes—the famous No. 3’s—were in trim for instant flight.
Salisky and Marovitch were ready and waiting, and at the signal from the aviation chief the aeroplanes were off like a shot, soon to be in touch with the directing power of the biggest army under one command in the world’s history of warfare—the Russian forces maneuvered by Grand Duke Nicholas along a battle front of 1,500 miles.
Yet in all the legions before them the hooded pilots, holding hard to the compass-set course of the winged cyclones, would first have eyes for but one equestrian figure, scarlet clad, with a sleeping death coiled in his hand.
From the observers behind them the Boy Aviators had withheld all mention of the original incentive for this particular service—but the time was approaching when this confidence must be extended. As well address an Eskimo in Arabic as to trip the tongues the lads knew over the language knowledge of Nikita, the wild horseman.
They must speak through the city-bred Muscovites with whom they were traveling—friends in need.
The main thing was to locate immediately the man they would warn and save, and with this end in view, a plea had been made to the observers to give note if in the sweep of their glasses they caught the ground picture of the crimson cavalcade.
But not once during the flight was there even a snapshot of anything like that picture—and it must needs be a waiting game, to be finished with the journey’s end.