“If you’re going up in the air, Captain, you’ll be peckish,” the man said. “Get around that, sir.”
Tom did so, gratefully. Then he stumbled out into the dark field, for there were no lights allowed because of the possibility of lurking Huns in the sky. He ran into the orderly, the man who had awakened him, who was coming back to see where he was. The orderly led Tom to the spot where Stillinger and the mechanician were tuning up the machine.
“Didn’t know but you’d backed out,” chuckled the flying man.
“Your grandmother!” retorted Tom cheerfully. “I stopped for a bite and a mug of coffee.”
“You haven’t been eating enough to overload the machine, have you?” asked Stillinger. “I don’t want to zoom the old girl. The motor shakes her bad enough, as it is.”
“Come again!” exclaimed Tom. “What’s the meaning of ‘zoom’?”
“Overstrain. Putting too much on her. Oh, there is a new language to learn if you are going to be a flying man.”
“I’m not sure I want to be a flying man,” said Tom. “This is merely a try-out. Just tell me what to look out for and when to jump.”
“Don’t jump,” warned Stillinger. “Nothing doing that way. Loss of speed—perte de vitesse the French call it—is the most common accident that can happen when one is up in the air in one of these planes. But even if that occurs, old man, take my advice and stick. You’ll be altogether too high up for a safe jump, believe me!”
They got under way with scarcely any jar, and with tail properly elevated the airplane was aimed by Ralph Stillinger for the upper reaches of the air. They went up rather steeply; but the ace was not “zooming”; he knew his machine.