He pointed to where the sky was touched with pale rose above the clouds of smoke. Three little specks were darting up toward the blue. “Can you see those planes? The Germans are trying hard to get a detailed plan of our new batteries. Their airmen have been up for hours, but so far our scouts have been too much for them. Look there!”
Above the mounting specks appeared two others, seeming to pounce down upon them. Lucy held her breath as the newcomers swooped and circled, closing in upon the three below, until a feathery cloud cut them off from the eager, watching eyes.
The moment of suspense among the little group changed to a stirring of anxiety and disappointment, felt rather than heard in the cannon’s roar. Most of the hospital staff members tore themselves away to return to their duties, but Lucy could not take her dazzled eyes from that glowing sky. Half unconsciously she followed the little group of townspeople who, seeking a place in the open, away from the pointed towers of the old town hall, moved step by step down the ruined street to the square of which the hospital made a corner. The sun had risen higher now, and beneath it the planes were again visible against a background of pearl and rose. As they gazed breathlessly up at those moving dots that were men in desperate struggle, one of the planes fell swiftly toward the earth. Lucy gave a quick gasp of anguish. She could not bear to watch, but neither could she turn her eyes away. Was the plane just brought down Allied or enemy? She inquired of her nearest neighbor in disjointed shouts of French, but the woman shook her head sadly, knowing no more than she. Was Bob among them? Lucy longed most to know that, for better or worse. “It’s waiting I never can bear,” she had said to Marian Leslie months before. Now it seemed as though the war was all made up of waiting.
The young doctor had left her his binoculars, but she found it hard to use them in the quivering roar of the guns against the glaring sky. If the airplanes would come a little nearer she thought she could find out something. That wish at least was quickly granted. Out of the distance the specks grew bigger with amazing swiftness. Lucy winked her eyes, before which disks of red and black were dizzily floating, from the glowing sunlight. Around her, fingers were pointed in excited gestures, and her ears caught fragments of shouts and exclamations. On came the airplanes, until in what seemed but a breath of time they had grown to big winged objects that hovered in plain sight, far overhead, but not a mile away in horizontal flight. Now they were out of the sun’s path, and the watching eyes could look at them undazzled. There were six, as nearly as Lucy with fast beating heart could count them in among the feathery clouds that flecked the sky. The little crowd had gathered to three times its size, and for all the thunder of the guns, the cries of the excited people could be heard in their anxious expectancy.
Lucy gave a quick look around her as she lowered her head for an instant to ease the aching muscles of her eyes and throat. A few people from the hospital had rejoined the crowd and familiar faces were among them. A queer sensation of having caught a glimpse of some one intently watching her—of a keen pair of eyes looking out from among the group of shawled women and old men and boys gathered from the near-by streets—made her glance around once more. There was no one now whose gaze was not turned upward, and she looked at the clouds again, the strange impression forgotten.
The six planes had separated into two groups. Two were high among the clouds, the remaining four moving here and there below them. Of the four one was clearly out of the fight, for in another moment it turned and veered off in the direction of the French and German lines, sinking slowly as it flew.
“That’s a Boche,” said a voice in Lucy’s ear. Captain Lewis was at her side and, taking the glasses she held, he leveled them at the sky. “Now they are in range again,” he added. “Our men are above in those little Nieuports. The Boches below are in big Fokker battle-planes. They could eat up our little fellows if they could reach them. Luckily the Nieuports can keep above. That fourth who was put out of the game leaves them three to two—pretty close.” Lucy leaned nearer to catch his words, for in his preoccupation he forgot to speak loud enough. A burst of fire from a big German plane made one of the Nieuports veer sharply from its level poise above the enemy. The glasses stiffened in the young officer’s hands, but in a moment the Nieuport righted itself and rose again beside its fellow. From the French trenches anti-aircraft guns were sending shots that burst below the German craft in spouts of flame. But they fell short of the targets, the gunners evidently fearing to hit the little Nieuports so close above them.
As the battle shifted nearer the planes flew over the eastern end of the town. In another five minutes Captain Lewis seized Lucy’s arm, saying, “Come on—come back to the hospital. They may be over us in a moment.” As Lucy, too lost in that terrible and thrilling struggle to even hear his words, stood silent and unheeding he shook her arm and shouted in her ear, “Come on! Look, here’s the patrol come to break up the crowd. You can’t stay here.”
A guard of a dozen French soldiers with a sergeant had arrived to disperse the people, who, oblivious like Lucy to possible danger, still stood gazing spellbound into the sky. Even when ordered with shouts and unceremonious gestures to get under shelter they walked slowly from the spot, turning again and again toward the clouds among which the five planes darted, each pouring a deadly fire upon its enemy.
Lucy got back somehow into the hospital garden, but there she stopped, and Captain Lewis, seeing the planes were not directly overhead, stopped with her. They were not alone, but the few others stood like them in tense silence, watching the two little Nieuports still swooping about their big opponents in quick attack or momentary retreat, and every watcher awaited with eager hopes and prayers the final decision. Lucy’s racing heart beat until her throat ached intolerably and her head began to swim. She clutched at the stone heap that was the gate-post, trying to quiet her panting breath. Suddenly a shout went up around her. One of the big German Fokkers had tilted oddly on its side. One wing was drooping helplessly, its wire supports cut by machine-gun bullets; and now flames darted from the body of the plane and it began to fall. Lucy covered her face with her hands. Then an arm stole around her shoulders and Miss Pearse’s kind voice said in her ear, “Oh, Lucy, don’t tremble so! I know it is awful to see for the first time—but it’s war, you know. And I think the fight is ours!”