The moon was shining brightly, and over the plain that stretched out
before them on the left the boys could see quite a distance, but no
sign of human life presented itself. On the right, however, a half mile
away, was a sharp rise of ground and tall trees. Toward this point they
decided to proceed. Then it was that they first realized the experience
of standing on a battlefield.
Crossing the field they saw the ravages of artillery projectiles--deep,
conical holes, five or six feet in diameter. Here, too, they found
shrapnel cases, splinters of shells, skeletons of horses, fragments of
bloodstained clothing and cartridge pouches. The moonlight made the
path as open as day, and each object reminding of terrible conflict
was apparently magnified by the white shine of the moon. The boys
walked as in a dream, and were first awakened by the flapping wings of
a huge bird, frightened by their approach from its perch on a broken
gun-carriage.
“Let’s get out of this,” mumbled Henri; “it gives me shivery shakes;
it’s a graveyard, and it seems like ghosts of dead soldiers are
tracking us.”
Billy was short on nerves, but if he had been called on for a
confession just then he might have pleaded guilty to a tremble or two.
He managed to put on a bold front, however, and was about to give Henri
a brace by telling him they would have to get used to the ways of war,
when there was a sound like the roll of distant thunder far to the
south.
“What’s that?”
Billy’s sudden question drove the ghosts away from Henri’s mind, and
both boys ran like deer up the hill to the line of trees.
“There’s no storm over there,” panted Henri. “You can’t see a cloud as
big as a man’s hand.”
“That isn’t thunder!” exclaimed Billy. “That’s cannon! They’re shooting
at something!”
“There,” cried Henri, “that sounds like fire-crackers now.”
“Rifles,” observed Billy.
“Look!” Billy was pointing to what appeared, at the distance, to be a
speck on the face of the moon.
The sound of gunfire increased, report after report--crack, crack,
boom, boom, boom.
Across and far above the moonlit plain, arrow-like, sped a winged
shadow, growing in size as it swiftly approached.
“An aëroplane!” The boys well knew that kind of a bird. They called its
name in one voice.
“That’s what has been drawing the fire of those guns.”
Billy had found the problem easy to solve when he noted the getaway
tactics of the coming airman.
The boys could now hear the whirring of the motor. Fifty yards away the
aëroplane began to descend. Gracefully it volplaned to the earth under
perfect control. It landed safely, rolled a little way, and stopped.
The boys, without a second thought, raced down the slope to greet the
aviator, like one of their own kind should be greeted, but as quickly
halted as they drew nearer.
The airman was dead.
He had been fatally wounded at the very start of his last flight, but
just before death, at its finish, had set his planes for a descent.
With his dead hands gripping the controllers, the craft had sailed
to the earth. He wore the yellowish, dirt-colored khaki uniform of a
British soldier.
Billy and Henri removed their caps in reverence to valor and to honor
the memory of a gallant comrade who had been game to the last.
Releasing the dead aviator from his death grip on the controllers, the
boys tenderly lifted the corpse from the driver’s seat in the machine
and covered the upturned face and glazed eyes with the muffler the
airman had worn about his neck. The body was that of a youth of slight
build, but well muscled. In the pockets of his blouse the boys found a
pencil, a memorandum book and a photograph, reduced to small size by
cutting round the face--a motherly type, dear to all hearts.
The usual mark of identity of soldiers in the field was missing, but
on the third finger of the left hand was a magnificent seal ring, on
which was engraved an eagle holding a scroll in its beak and clutching
a sheaf of arrows in its talons.
Billy took possession of these effects with silent determination to
some day deliver them to the pictured mother, if she could be found.
“The ring shows that he came of a noble house,” said Henri, who had
some knowledge of heraldry.
“He was a brave lad, for all that, and noble in himself,” remarked
Billy, who had the American idea that every man is measured by his own
pattern.
So they gave the dead youth the best burial they could, at the foot of
one of the giant trees, and sadly turned away to inspect the aëroplane
that had been so strangely guided.
It was a beautiful machine, all the fine points visible to their
practiced eyes--a full-rigged military biplane, armor plates and all.
The tanks of extra capacity were nearly full of petrol.
“It must have been a short journey, as well as a fatal one,” said
Billy. “Very likely the launching was from a British ship, not far
out at sea, and the purpose was to make a lookover of the German land
forces around here.”
“I’d like to take a little jaunt in that machine,” sighed Henri, who
could not tear himself away from the superb flyer.
“It may turn out that you will--stranger things have happened.”
Billy proved to be a prophet, but it was not a “little jaunt,” but a
long ride that the boys took in that aëroplane.
An unpleasant surprise was in immediate store for them.
They decided that it was about time that they should return to their
friends and the sea-plane, and were full of and eager to tell Johnson
and Freeman of the results of their scouting.
“Guess the captain won’t wonder at anything we do since we brought that
automobile into camp,” declared Billy. “You know he said that he hadn’t
any breath to save for our next harum-scarum performance.”
“I can just see Freeman grin when I tell him that we have found a
flying-machine that can beat his sea-sailer a mile. That’s my part of
the story, you know,” added Henri.
“I can’t help thinking of the poor fellow who rode her last,” was
Billy’s sober response.
The boys were nearing the point where the heavy walking began.
Otherwise they would have broken into a run, so eager were they to tell
about their adventures.
Coming out of the weeds and ooze, they stood looking blankly at the
spot where the sea-plane had rested.
The sea-plane and their friends were gone!