CHAPTER XII—ABOVE THE CLOUDS
On a certain morning, just after sunrise, Don Hale, in his fur-lined combination suit, leather aviation helmet, and provided with heavy goggles and gloves, was strapped in his machine. It was one of a row of six, which, in almost perfect alignment, were ready to go aloft.
There was the greatest activity and noise about the flying field. The air was filled with the roar, the drone and the hum of many motors; and in this sea of sound the reverberations of the distant guns were, for the time being, completely lost.
Don had received his instructions to fly at the rear of a formation of six machines, following one another at a distance of fifty metres. This vol de groupe would patrol the German lines for a period of several hours.
Don Hale found himself murmuring over and over again: “At last!” And though he tried his best to still the rapid pulsations of his heart—to control a hand that had an extraordinary tendency to tremble, it was without avail. He was going up to face peril of the gravest sort.
Was anything going to happen?
Just then he felt almost afraid to think of what the fates might hold in store for him.
Presently he saw the captain wave his hand as a signal, and a moment later the leader of the patrol rose in the air. The others followed.
There was just an instant more of waiting for Don Hale, and then he, too, was rolling over the ground.
As readily as a leaf borne aloft by a gust of wind the Nieuport answered to the controls and began spiraling upward.
The six machines rose directly over the field, and at a height of about two thousand feet the leader headed toward the east, the others taking up their respective places in the formation.
Higher and higher the fleet of wonderful little machines ascended, and Don Hale glancing over the side of the cockpit, saw a wonderful panorama of the rapidly-receding earth, which the early morning sun was tinting with a soft and poetic glow. The most delicate tints of brown and green were broken here and there by darker notes of a purplish hue, indicating patches of woods. Crisscrossing the earth in all directions were the roads—thread-like lines of palish gray, and, as though some giant hand had scattered them carelessly about at widely distant points, were clusters of little glistening dots—villages, or what remained of villages. Now and again the boy’s eyes caught sight of pools, mirroring on their surfaces the delicate tones of the sky or the clouds above, and presently the river Meuse came into view—a faint and hazy line.
His practice in the school at Pau had taught Don how to preserve his place in the vol de groupe, which, when the tremendous speed of the Nieuport is considered, is far from easy, and he had never made a better effort than at the present time. The new member of the Lafayette Squadron remembered vividly the stories he had heard concerning the fate of youthful and venturesome pilots who had disobeyed the commander’s orders.
Eagerly, he kept his eyes open for enemy planes. He could not see any, but he did perceive, far below him, on both sides of the line, numbers of grotesque-looking observation balloons, or sausages, as they have been jocularly christened.
Now the altimetre registered a height of over ten thousand feet—they were approaching the battle-front. Don Hale was about to get his first view of “Germany.”
The boy, however, was too excited—too absorbed in the contemplation of the singular scene below him, and, at the same time, so occupied in handling his plane that he did not feel any tingling sensation of fear.
The battle-ground was covered with a thin veil of purplish smoke, and where the delicate shadows lay thickest on the earth he could occasionally distinguish the flashing lights of the guns or of exploding shells. But it all seemed very distant—very remote. The clouds of smoke from the bursting projectiles and innumerable batteries were but tiny spots amid the surrounding haze. Don realized that a vigorous bombardment from both sides was going on and that a devastating hail of missiles was creating havoc and destruction in the opposing trenches and far to their rear. Then he had a swift glimpse of that irregular brownish stretch of land running between the hostile forces—“No Man’s Land,” the most sinister, the most barren, the most mutilated strip of earth that has ever existed since the world began.
The patrol leader was now mounting higher, and the reason became almost instantly apparent. The air straight ahead had become filled with round puffs of viciously-spurting black smoke. The “Archies” were according the early morning visitors their usual warm reception.
A second more, and not so many yards away there suddenly appeared the largest and wickedest-looking puff of all, and, above the roar of the motor, the startled Don Hale could hear the explosion of the shrapnel shell launched by the German gunners.
The next instant he felt a terrifying thrill. His airplane was falling through space.
Almost stifled by the air rushing past, with a horrifying vision of impending catastrophe, the boy, nevertheless, managed to keep his wits about him. But escape seemed impossible. A perfect hail of “Archies” popped up in the air to the rear, to the side and to the front of the falling machine, the control of which he was desperately trying to regain.
Though his agony of suspense seemed long drawn out it was but a moment when the terrifying descent was over and the machine again flying parallel to the earth.
It was almost miraculous that it had not been riddled with the fragments of the bursting shrapnel shells. The din of their almost continuous explosions was ringing in the aviator’s ears, and in the violently-disturbed air the Nieuport was rocking and plunging like a boat in a heavy sea.
“Never fly in a straight line” was the advice which had been given to Don before setting out on the expedition, and after the first few moments of suspense had passed Don Hale managed to sufficiently calm his jumping nerves and follow this instruction. He turned the nose of his machine upward, and, in a zigzagging flight, shot like a rocket into the blue depths above.
A little later he found an infinite relief in seeing the black thunderbolts exploding hundreds of yards below.
But where was the rest of the patrol? They seemed to have utterly vanished. A strange sense of loneliness such as he had never known before took possession of him. And then, like a flash, he recalled George Glenn’s words: “The Germans have a habit of pouncing down upon any stragglers they may happen to see.”
Were there any enemy scouts about?
He cast a swift, comprehensive glance over the vast expanse of sky.
A number of planes were to be seen far to the rear of the German lines, but whether friends or enemies the new combat pilot could not possibly determine. At any rate, he was sure his companions must have ascended to the cloud level, now close overhead.
Still thrilled at the thought of his narrow escape, he sent the biplane climbing higher aloft. Nothing in his school days could be compared to this flight, a flight in which danger threatened every moment
Plunging into a cloud, the machine became enveloped in soft and fleecy masses of vapor. Not a thing could Don see in any direction. It was a most weird and curious sensation, he found, to be sailing so far above the earth, in the midst of the fog; and though he experienced a certain sense of freedom from danger he had an unpleasant feeling of half suffocation, which impelled him to escape as soon as possible from their enfolding embrace.
Now, through a jagged opening he caught a glimpse of the earth, and just a moment afterward something happened which gave him the greatest scare he had yet had in his brief flying career.
A shadowy object—so faint as to be scarcely discernible—flashed into view to his right, and, while he gazed toward it as though fascinated, in a second of time it had grown into an object of seemingly gigantic proportions, though still so faint in outline that he could scarcely take in its exact form.
Another instant and the phantom-like plane had swept past with lightning speed, leaving in its wake powerful currents o wildly swirling vapor, while the airplane, caught in the eddy, staggered and shook.
“Whew! That was another close call!” breathed Don. “Sure enough!—this isn’t a game for weak nerves. Hello—goodness gracious!”
The Nieuport had shot above the strata of clouds.
Even though his nerves were still tingling, his pulse throbbing violently, the combat pilot could not repress a gasp of admiration as he gazed out over the immense expanse of billowy forms that stretched in every direction in a vast circle against the soft blue field of sky.
It was still early, the sun had not risen high, and its rays, falling upon the clouds, tinted them with the most delicate of rosy hues.
“I almost seem out of the world,” murmured Don, a trifle awesomely.
“And how perfectly safe it looks I—just as though one could float about on the clouds and be in no danger of taking a header to the earth. But where am I in this curious world above? And, more important than all, where are the other planes? I’d be in a nice position, shouldn’t I, if some of Captain Richtofen’s Red Squadron should happen to come along! What shall I do?”
The boy found that skimming close to the fleecy, ever-changing billows, sometimes dipping into them, was a fascinating sport. Up there everything was peace, loneliness and quietude. It seemed almost incredible that only a few miles below, on the earth he had just left, a terrible war was being waged and that every moment tragedies and horrors were taking place.
But the time for decisive action had come.
Boldly, though not without some trepidation, he plunged back into the clouds. Then came a brief period of dense obscurity, followed by a weird, spectral illumination, as the daylight struggled to pierce the masses of moisture-laden air; and presently the Nieuport was again in full view of the shell-torn, battle-scarred earth, far over a hostile country.
Many planes could now be seen, some below, some faint and hazy in the distance, others comparatively near
And while Don was scanning each in turn, hoping to recognize the familiar Indian’s head on the fuselage, he suddenly became conscious of the fact that not very far away a fight in the air had begun. Probably half a dozen or more combat pilots were engaged; and, almost forgetting, in his interest and excitement, the danger of his position, Don Hale watched the wonderful spectacle, with his nerves at the keenest tension.
Every acrobatic performance which he himself had learned at the advanced school at Pau was being used by the rival airmen.
Now and again one or another went down in a spinning nose dive, as though the machine were totally out of control; but instead of crashing to the earth it would right itself, and, with almost incredible speed, rise again to the attack. Fairly leaping over one another, flashing this way and that, narrowly avoiding collisions, they soared upward or swooped down, as a flock of enraged birds fighting among themselves might have done, and, faintly, the enthralled Don Hale could hear the vicious crackling of the machine guns, steadily spurting forth their messenger of death, and see the faint smoking lines left by the tracer ballets.
Were any members of the Lafayette Squadron engaged in the conflict?
The boy mentally voiced this query over and over again as he flew around in a sweeping circle, keeping far above the contenders.
He felt an almost irresistible impulse to join in the fray, and but for the fact that the squadron commander had explicitly ordered him to act only on the defensive probably would have done so. He had seen many a fight from the ground, but then the thrills were of a decidedly different nature from those which came while he was in the pilot’s seat of an airplane.
A moment more, and, just as suddenly as the battle had begun, it ended. One of the combat planes began to fall, turning over and over in the air, now and then the dull gray wings with the Maltese crosses clearly outlined against the floating masses of smoke below.
Into these it plunged and disappeared from view.
Thankful that neither his compatriots no any of the Allied airmen had been the victim, yet shuddering at the thought of the human life which had been sacrificed to the greed of the God of War, Don Hale headed for the west, having satisfied himself that the Allied planes, now rapidly retreating, belonged to a French air squadron.
The black, sputtering “Archies” were beginning to burst beneath him again, one coming so dangerously near that once more a sort of consternation gripped him.
“This won’t do at all!” he muttered. “A little bit nearer the ceiling for me!”
He was approaching the lines and “No Man’s Land” and following its tortuous course with his eyes he observed in many places the sudden bursts of smoke which told of the explosions of high-calibre shells. All about him the atmosphere was hazy and the distance entirely obscured.
Now rapidly becoming familiar with the new game, Don began to feel more like himself. For the first time he could understand how it was that the experienced pilots learned to treat with comparative indifference the angry shrieks of the attacking “Archies.”
At length Don Hale discovered the patrol of Lafayette machines flying in a perfect formation just over the enemy’s line.
After facing the dangers of the sky alone the sense of relief and pleasure that the sight of friends near at hand afforded him was delightful indeed. He felt like uttering a whoop of joy.
“Considering all such experiences as I’ve just had once is too much!” he muttered to himself. “And this time you can just bet I’ll not get separated.”
Nor did he. The patrol, which was only policing the air, led him into no further danger, and, consequently, when the two hours was over and they headed for the aviation field, nothing had occurred to add more thrills to those he had already received.
Don Hale, however, was thoroughly glad to see the great encampment coming into view; and equally glad when he had spiraled down to the earth and made an almost perfect atterrissage.
Waiting machinists helped him out of the cockpit; and as he answered the questions fired toward him the boy felt as proud and happy as any of the “aces” whose fame has spread throughout the world.
His first reconnaissance over the enemy’s line was something he could never forget