The French had been massing their troops by forest paths, from Verdun
and Toul, to throw them against the Germans in desperate endeavors to
break the lines which protected the sites for the German heavy siege
artillery and the Austrian automobile batteries of twelve-inch siege
guns.
To join in this movement the command of Colonel Bainbridge was
preparing.
For days the French aviators had repeatedly scrutinized every acre of
land looking for a concealed battery of growlers, snugly hidden in a
wood on the rolling heights of the Cote Lorraine. These aviators had
failed to mark a find.
The conference that the boys had witnessed at headquarters, when
summoned by Colonel Bainbridge, had to do with this battery problem.
They had then heard mention of the doings and failure of the flying
corps, but further had not been taken into the confidence of the
officers.
When the sergeant directed them to get their bundles, Billy and Henri
began to hope that they might run into an opportunity to once again get
near a flying-machine, if not into one.
“I’d like to get above ground once more, for sure I’ve had enough
underground work lately to last me a lifetime.”
The desire of Billy to do some lofty sailing was twin with the wish
that haunted Henri.
“Let’s volunteer to scout for that battery,” urged the latter, aroused
by his chum’s suggestion.
“No use,” was Billy’s discouraging reply. “The colonel won’t stand for
it.”
“But, maybe he would, after all,” reasoned Henri, “if we put it up to
him the right way. His own son was in that branch of the service.”
“If you can convince the colonel, well and good.”
Billy appeared to think that there was a conspiracy afloat to keep him
tied fast to the ground.
“I’m going to make the try,” said Henri, “as soon as we join the other
force.”
He did make the try next day, and finally persuaded the colonel that
under the constant battery fire Billy and himself would be at least as
safe in the air as on the march.
“Just think, colonel, what a chance for us to do something worth while,
and do it the only way we can. As soldiers we don’t count. As aviators
we’re the lucky number.”
When the French commander heard that one of our Aviator Boys had an
idea that his eyes were better than those of the military flyers, he
amusedly assented to the proposition, but only because of the fact that
there was a shortage just then in the aviation corps--two of them only
the day before having sailed in the way of a shell from one of the big
mortars of the enemy.
“It’s our job!”
This was the joyful announcement of Henri to his flying partner.
The next argument was with the sergeant, but he, too, was compelled to
throw up his hands in surrender.
The French aviator who directed the corps told Henri that their detail
was for “artillery reconnaissance.”
When Henri translated the name of their job to Billy, the latter said
that “gun hunting” would serve just as well, and it could be spoken in
one breath. “I haven’t enlisted on either side, mind you,” added Billy.
“I am just aching to fly--that’s all.”
The French outfit included a machine “built for two,” and of a make
with which the boys were familiar.
The only instructions given the amateur scouts related to the direction
of the mysterious shelling point from which so much damage had been
inflicted upon the Allies without an open chance to retaliate.
For the treasure the colonel had agreed to act as banker, and, as a
balm to Reddy’s wounded feelings, when he rebelled at separation from
his friends, that youngster was assigned to duty as special messenger
within the lines.
Again our Aviator Boys listened to the vibration of the aëroplane, the
rattle, roar and hum of the motor, the music that soothes the nerves of
every practiced airman.
The boys hit the high grade at 8,000 feet, and circled in huge ellipses
between the allied troops and the positions hostile to them.
Henri had been given a powerful field glass, and he was faithfully
using it in acute observation. The roar of the aërial travel was so
loud in the quiet of the upper air that it drowned the occasional
thunder of the big guns, which fire could be marked by sight if not by
hearing.
A few moments of sweeping flight, and the young aviators were looking
down on the wood mapped as suspicious.
They hovered about, while Henri worked the field glasses to the limit,
but to no avail.
“Let her down a bit!” he yelled to Billy.
Billy cut the height a thousand feet or so.
Nothing but tree-tops was in sight.
“More yet!” shouted Henri.
Dangerously near now, if there was a hidden battery below.
Henri bent further over the frame of the machine, with the glasses
aimed at a certain point, which had suddenly become of special interest
to him. He had seen something that was not a tree-top.
The glasses revealed the location of the battery. The guns, two in this
particular position, stood behind a screen of thickly branching trees,
the muzzles pointing toward a round opening in this leafy roof. The
crew as suddenly discovered their visitors, and instantly, as busy as
bees, sprang to their posts.
“Turn her loose!” screamed Henri in Billy’s ear, and Billy did “turn
her loose,” up and away.
The gunners were not quick enough to catch this winged target, but they
burned a couple of large holes in the air in trying.
Billy drove the aëroplane into a protecting cloud that closed white and
moist around them.
Twenty minutes later the excited flyers told their story to the colonel.
“That ride was a bully treat,” declared Billy; “but really I’d like to
have stopped in a chummy way with those fellows on the hill long enough
to see them work the guns. They’re some hustlers with the big irons, I
tell you.”
“Next time you can send in your card,” laughed Henri.