Dick Martin became frantic when he saw what was about to happen. He
fairly tore at the various levers and controls, and even increased the
speed of the motor, but this last only had the effect of sending the
machine at a faster rate toward the big expanse of glass, which was the
greenhouse roof.
“Shut it off! Shut off the motor!” cried Tom, but his words could not
be heard, so he punched Martin in the back, and when that frightened lad
looked around his teacher made him understand by signs, what was wanted.
With the motor off there was a chance to speak, and Torn cried:
“Head her up! Try to make her rise and we may clear. I can't do a thing
with the levers back here!”
Martin tried, but his efforts had little effect. For one instant the
machine rose as though to clear the fragile glass. Then it dived down
again, straight for the greenhouse roof.
“Guess it's all up with this machine!” thought Tom quickly. He was not
afraid of being killed. The distance to fall was not enough for that,
and though he and his fellow aviator might be cut by broken glass, still
the body of the aeroplane would protect them pretty well from even
this contingency. But there was sure to be considerable damage to the
property of a French civilian, and the machine, which was one of the
best, was pretty certain to be badly broken.
And then there came a terrific crash. The aeroplane settled down by the
stern, and rose by the bow, so to speak. Then the process was reversed,
and Tom felt himself being catapulted out of his seat. Only his safety
strap held him in place. The same thing happened to Dick Martin.
Then there was an ominous calm, and the aeroplane slowly settled down
to an even keel, held up on the glass-stripped frames of the greenhouse,
one of the very few in that vicinity, which was considerably in the rear
of the battle line.
Slowly Tom unbuckled his safety strap and climbed out, making his way to
the ground by means of stepping on an elevated bed of flowers inside the
now almost roofless house.
Martin followed him, and as they stood looking at the wreckage they had
made, or, rather, that had been made through no direct fault of their
own, the proprietor of the place came out, wearing a long dirt-smudged
apron.
He raised his hands in horror at the sight that met his gaze, and then
broke into such a torrent of French that Tom, with all the experience he
had had of excitable Frenchmen, was unable to comprehend half of it.
The gist was, however, to the effect that a most monstrous and
unlooked-for calamity had befallen, and the inhabitants of all the
earth, outside of Germany and her allies, were called on to witness
that never hid there been such a smash of good glass. In which Torn was
rather inclined to agree.
“Well, you did something this time all right, Buddie,” Tom remarked to
Dick Martin.
“Did I--did I do that?” he asked, as though he had been walking in his
sleep, and was just now awake.
“Well, you and the old bus together,” said Tom. “And we got off lucky at
that. Didn't I tell you to keep high, if you were going to fly over one
of the towns?”
“Yes, you did, but I forgot. Anyhow I'd have cleared the place if the
controls hadn't gone back on us.”
“I suppose so, but that excuse won't go with the C.O. It's a bad
smash.”
By this time quite a crowd had gathered, and Tom was trying to pacify
the excitable greenhouse owner by promising full reparation in the shape
of money damages.
How to get the machine down off the roof, where it rested in a mass of
broken glass and frames, was a problem. Tom tried to organize a wrecking
party, but the French populace which gathered, much as it admired the
Americans, was afraid of being cut with the broken glass, or else they
imagined that the machine might suddenly soar aloft, taking some of them
with it.
In the end Tom had to leave the plane where it was and hire a motor to
take him and Martin back to the aerodrome. They were only slightly cut
by flying glass, nothing to speak of considering the danger in which
they had been.
The result of the disobedience of orders was that the army officials
had rather a large bill for damages to settle with the French greenhouse
proprietor, and Tom and Dick Martin were deprived of their leave
privileges for a week for disobeying the order to keep at a certain
height in flying over a town or city.
Had they done that, when the controls jammed, they would have been able
to glide down into a vacant field, it was demonstrated. The machine was
badly damaged, though it was not beyond repair.
“And that's the last time I'm ever going to be soft with a Hun, you can
make up your mind to that,” declared Tom to Jack. “If I'd sat on him
hard when I saw he was getting too low over the village, it wouldn't
have happened. But I didn't want him to think I knew it all, and I
thought I'd take a chance and let him pull his own chestnuts out of the
fire. But never again!”
“'Tisn't safe,” agreed Jack. He was rapidly improving, so much so that
he was able to fly the next week, and he and Tom went up together, and
did some valuable scouting work for the American army.
At times they found opportunity to take short trips to Paris, where they
saw Nellie and Bessie, and were entertained by Mrs. Gleason. Nellie
was eager for some word from her brother, but none came. Whether the
packages dropped by Tom and Jack reached the prisoner was known only to
the Germans, and they did not tell.
But the daring plan undertaken by the two air service boys was soon
known a long way up and down the Allied battle line, and more than one
aviator tried to duplicate it, so that friends or comrades who were
held by the Huns might receive some comforts, and know they were not
forgotten. Some of the Allied birdmen paid the penalty of death for
their daring, but others reported that they had dropped packages within
the prison camps, though whether those for whom they were intended
received them or not, was not certain.
“But we aren't going to let it stop there, are we?” asked Tom of
Jack one day, when they were discussing the feat which had been so
successful.
“Let it stop where? What do you mean?”
“I mean are we going to do something to get Harry away from the Boche
nest?”
“I'm with you in anything like that!” exclaimed Jack. “But what can we
do? How are we going to rescue him?”
“That's what we've got to think out,” declared Tom. “Something has to be
done.”
But there was no immediate chance to proceed to that desired end because
of something vital that happened just about then. This was nothing more
nor less than secret news that filtered into the Allied lines, to the
effect that a big Zeppelin raid over Paris was planned.
It was not the first of these raids, nor, in all likelihood, would it
be the last. But this one was novel in that it was said the great German
airships would sail toward the capital over the American lines, or,
rather, the lines where the Americans were brigaded with the French
and English. Doubtless it was to “teach the Americans a lesson,” as the
German High Command might have put it.
At any rate all leaves of absence for the airmen were canceled, and they
were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to repel the “Zeps,” as
they were called, preventing them from getting across the lines to
Paris.
“And we'll bring down one or two for samples, if we can!” boasted Jack.
“What makes it so sure that they are coming?” asked Tom.
It developed there was nothing sure about it. But the information had
come from the Allied air secret service, and doubtless had its inception
when some French or British airman saw scenes of activity near one of
the Zeppelin headquarters in the German-occupied territory. There were
certain fairly positive signs.
And, surely enough, a few nights later, the agreed-upon alarm was
sounded.
“The Zeps are coming!”
Tom and Jack, with others who were detailed to repel the raid, rushed
from their cats, hastily donned their fur garments, and ran to their
aeroplanes, which were a “tuned up” and waiting.
“There they are!” cried Torn, as he got into his single-seated plane, an
example followed on his part by Jack. “Look!”
Jack gazed aloft. There was a riot of fire from the anti-aircraft
guns of the French and British, but they were firing in vain, for the
Zeppelins flew high, knowing the danger from the ground batteries.
Sharp, stabbing shafts of light from the powerful electric lanterns shot
aloft, and now and then one of them would rest for an instant on a great
silvery cigar-shape--the gas bag of the big German airships that were
beating their way toward Paris, there to deal death and destruction.
“Come on!” cried Tom, as his mechanician started the motor. “I'm going
to get a Zep!”
“I'm with you!” yelled Jack, and they soared aloft side by side.