“Oh! they did it after all!” Pudge cried out as they saw the reckless British birdmen in the seaplane start to run the gantlet of gunfire preparatory to rising once more to a safe height.
That was about the feeling of relief that seized upon them all. The deed had been so wonderfully daring that Frank and his two chums would have cheered its successful culmination no matter whether a Frenchman, a Britisher or a German had piloted the aircraft that carried it out—it was the men they applauded, not their nationality.
“How long is this terrible bombardment going to keep up, do you think, Frank?” asked Billy, for it seemed to him he had been gazing on the astounding picture for an hour, so many things had followed fast on each other’s heels.
“I expect that was the crowning stroke,” replied Frank, making himself heard only with some difficulty, owing to the clamor all around them from bursting shrapnel, accompanied by the duller sounds coming up from the distant earth.
“Then the aviators are getting low in their stock of ammunition,” affirmed the observant Billy, “because I can see lots of things they’d still like to smash.”
“Most of them have already stopped throwing bombs,” Pudge declared. “That looks as if they’d reached the end of their resources.”
“Yes,” added Frank, “there goes a signal from the chief, and it must mean the time has come to start on the return journey.”
Even the seaplane that had undertaken the perilous task of dropping down so as to make a sure job of blowing up the magazine had by now managed to climb to the level of the other fliers. A general movement was noticed, heading toward the south, and which must have been observed with great satisfaction by the sadly harassed defenders of Zeebrugge, who could now proceed to count up damages.
“It’s been a wonderful trip for us,” remarked Billy, as they again soared above the fleet, and kept up “without half trying,” as he himself would have said.
“The greatest thing about it, according to my mind!” Pudge declared, “is that not a single plane was brought down with all that firing. Why, even up where we were I heard a queer singing noise several times, that must have been made by parts of the bursting shrapnel shells. They’re filled chock full of bullets and all that sort of thing, I understand. How about that, Frank?”
“Yes,” the pilot told him, “as far as I know what is called shrapnel to-day is pretty much the same as grape and canister used to be in the time of our Civil War. It scatters in every direction, but is driven now by a much more powerful explosive than in the old days when gunpowder alone was used.”
“Now that you mention it, Pudge,” said Billy, “I heard some of those whining noises myself. It must have been our swift movements that kept us from being struck; and that’s what makes it so hard for ground guns to fetch an aëroplane down.”
“Yes,” Frank continued, “anyone who has tried to stop a duck speeding past at the rate of seventy miles an hour knows what small chances he has to wing the quacker. It takes nice judgment and a quick eye to do it.”
“So our excursion with the air raiders is all over, is it?” Billy asked, with a tinge of regret in his tone; for being engaged in the building of aëroplanes he naturally took the keenest interest in seeing such a fleet of the aircraft in action.
“I was thinking of making a proposition to M. Le Grande here,” ventured Frank, without, however, taking his attention from his levers.
The experienced French aviator had been observing everything that occurred with almost breathless interest. He had clapped his hands enthusiastically and cried “bravo! bravo!” when the bold British birdmen made that death dip, and succeeded in blowing up the magazine, taking terrible risks of perishing themselves when the air waves caused their machine to dance madly.
At hearing Frank say this he showed a keen interest in the possibility of something new developing that had not been on the program.
“I should be pleased to hear what it is, young m’sieu,” he now hastened to say.
“Since the raid is over with,” Frank commenced, “and the fleet bound for Dunkirk and Calais, where we understand the tired pilots will rest a few days before returning across the Channel, how would you like to have me take you out over the battle lines as we saw them yesterday?”
Pudge showed uncommon interest immediately. He had heard so much about the astonishing sights witnessed on that occasion by his two chums that it would always be a source of bitter regret to him should he have no opportunity to see the war picture for himself.
The Frenchman did not let a second go by, such was his eagerness to accept the proposition advanced by Frank.
“That is charming of you, I must say, young m’sieu,” he declared enthusiastically. “If you would be so kind it would place me under heavy obligations. To see how your wonderful Sea Eagle can act under new and novel conditions would complete my day, the most memorable of all my experiences, and they have been many, I assure you, messieurs.”
“Then there is really no need of our going down the coast any further,” Frank explained. “We might as well make a sharp turn to the east here, and say good-by to our gallant companions.”
As they did this, the action was noted by many of the speeding airmen; and while they could only guess at the object of the change, this did not interfere with their calling out and waving to the boys.
Looking back, Billy and Pudge could see the flock growing smaller in the distance as they scurried along like a covey of partridges. Well had they done their duty for the homeland on that day, and their hearts were beating proudly as they could see, in imagination, their names on the Roll of Honor for Britain’s sons.
Then Billy and Pudge tried to forget all about the late raid, for they knew they would have plenty of excitement to the square inch with what lay before them.
Just below where they broke away from the fleet of birdmen lay Ostend, basking in the February sunshine. It may have been fairly comfortable down there, but it was pretty cold half a mile up in the air, and the boys had reason to be thankful for their warm clothing and head hoods.
Attention was now called to the land over which they had commenced to fly, leaving the coast line behind. The Frenchman and Pudge in particular were observing everything with undisguised eagerness. While the experienced aviator had doubtless taken many a trip himself over just such a landscape, the conditions had never been just the same as they were now. As for Pudge, this was his baptism of fire in a seaplane, and as far as he had gone he rather liked it.
The great checkerboard lay below them. A hundred different phases of the landscape engaged their attention. They could see villages, towns, railway lines, and even fortifications that may have been erected by the German invaders in order to defend some monster gun that was aimed seaward, so as to give trouble to men-o’-war passing along the Belgian coast.
Billy and Pudge kept up a running fire of comment. Dozens of things were constantly attracting attention which had to be pointed out. Frank was not trying to make any great speed since there was no need of haste.
When they felt that they had gone far enough, and the spirit moved them, he changed the course, and they once more struck for Dunkirk on the French coast.
“No Taubes in sight yet, I notice?” Billy cried out gleefully; for he remembered how those German aëroplanes had risen like a swarm of angry hornets on the occasion of their previous visit.
“The news of the great raid must have been wired all over the country before now,” Frank explained. “Orders may have been given to keep all their Zeppelins and other aircraft housed until the danger is over.”
“Can you blame them?” laughed Billy. “They heard that as many as fifty seaplanes—for things are always stretched, you know, in the telling—were chasing up and down their coast, smashing everything to pieces. They therefore would wait and then raid the Allies’ quarters with a vengeance.”
“Yes,” added Pudge, “and right now I warrant you many a pair of field glasses is turned up this way, and all sorts of guesses are made about what sort of queer craft is whizzing over them. If your Government gets this seaplane, Mister Le Grande, and makes a bunch of them from the sample, you’ll give the enemy cold feet right away.”
“It is a wonderful machine, I am ready to declare; superb, beyond anything that I had ever dreamed could be made. I have only praise, I assure you,” was what the Frenchman told them in his explosive way.
“I guess that settles the business then,” remarked Pudge to Billy, meaning that the report made by the aviator must convince the French Government it was greatly to their interest to conclude the bargain with the Sea Eagle Company, Ltd., as originally entered into, for the delivery of this sample seaplane, and the privilege of making as many others, on royalty, as they chose within a given time.
This would be the only way of settling the matter, since no machines could be shipped from America without a breach of neutrality, as the Government at Washington had recently declared.
The sea had now been left far behind, and Frank was veering their course somewhat toward the southeast, as though he meant to cover a different field from the first land journey.
Billy noticed this, and asked questions in order to settle matters in his own mind.
“I reckon now, Frank,” he began, “you’ve got some plan up your sleeve to make a wide circuit and see something of what’s going on down along the border of France? How about it?”
“We’re covering a strip of Belgium right now,” said the pilot, “and you can see the unfinished canal used by the Kaiser’s troops as trenches, besides all sorts of other sights where the water has flooded the lowlands when the dikes were cut in the fall by the Belgians. Now we might like to take a peep at Lille, and see what is going on in a different kind of country—where there are hills and valleys.”
“That would be fine!” exclaimed Pudge, thinking only of the wonderful pictures that would be spread out beneath them as they sailed over just below the occasional fleecy clouds.
“Of course it would be more dangerous work,” Frank hastened to tell them.
“You mean we would be shot at by batteries on the hilltops, don’t you, Frank?” Billy questioned.
“Partly that,” he was told, “and also from the treacherous cross-currents of air we would be apt to strike in such a hilly country. You never know when you may hit an air pocket, a vacuum in which danger lies for the aëroplane that is loafing, since it is apt to drop like a plummet. But we’ll have to risk all those things. If we come through all right, we’ll consider that we were well rewarded.”
“Here’s another of those nasty snow squalls heading this way, Frank!” burst out Pudge. “That makes the sixth we’ve struck. Say, let me tell you this one looks like business, too, it spreads out so wide.”
“Isn’t there any way to avoid it, Frank—by climbing up higher, for instance?” demanded Billy, as he drew his hood closer around his cheeks, and made ready to “take his medicine,” as he called it.
“Too late to try that now,” Frank told him. “All we can do is to hold tight, and keep pressing straight along. We’ll hope it isn’t so very big a cloud. Steady now, everybody!”
“Do your prettiest, old Sea Eagle,” Pudge was heard to call out as the beginning of the snow squall struck them. Ten seconds later they were shrouded as in a white pall by the scurrying flakes, urged on by a wind that made the seaplane rock and dance in alarming manner.