“All right,” returned the pilot promptly. He pushed the stick and the machine dropped swiftly. Bob could see the Allied emblems now on the tails of three of the planes. They were French scouts, and the other five were German Taubes, distinguished by their shape as well as by the great black crosses painted on their wings. At a little distance another group was swaying in combat. He shifted his glass to these and saw that here Allies and enemies were equally matched. Two French scouts and one American battle-plane were fighting three German fliers.
Jourdin seemed to divine his thoughts, for, without waiting for a signal, he bore swiftly down upon the Taubes which had surrounded the three Frenchmen just below and were pouring a deadly fire upon them. The scouts were willing enough to run away but, unable to do so, were fighting gamely against impossible odds. Another moment and Jourdin had brought his plane and its weapons into range. Bob turned the trigger handle of his machine gun and pumped a hail of bullets into the wing of the Taube nearest him. He saw the German aviator dart a glance upward as he tried to get his plane out of range in a quick climbing turn. But, before he could sheer off, his wing hung warped and crippled, the silk out almost to ribbons. The pilot pointed downward, making a try for a landing on one wing, three thousand feet below. Bob saw no more of him. He turned his gun on a Taube which had abandoned the scouts and was firing at him with furious and accurate aim. The bullets whizzed about the big battle-plane, but Jourdin did not remain an easy target. He took a tail-spin, dropped in short circles for a thousand feet, then came up again behind the enemy. Two more Americans had now arrived to engage the Taubes, and the scouts were out of danger. Jourdin spoke into the tube at Bob’s ear. “We’ll go on west. We’re not needed here. I should like to follow our scouts, who are making for the defenses.”
As he spoke they mounted a little and flew off toward the edge of the town marked by the German trenches. A second plane of the squadron followed them as they crossed the French lines and flew over the enemy’s trenches, above the fortified ridge. Below, the anti-aircraft gunners were sending up a continuous fire of shells to hinder their further descent. Around them hovered the French scouts, vainly endeavoring to catch a glimpse of the camouflaged defenses through the curtain of fire and smoke spread out beneath them.
“It isn’t a bit of use,” Bob thought bitterly, after half an hour of this useless watching. “What can we see from here? We are keeping the Boches from sending more planes after our scouts, but What does that amount to?”
As he fumed in helpless impatience, scheming a desperate attempt to penetrate that curtain of fire, Jourdin’s calm voice, in its deliberate-sounding English, came to him with a shock of reality.
“We’ll go down now, Gordon. I have orders to report at noon through the field telephone station near here, behind our lines. Our squadron can be called together, and at least put some of these Taubes out of the combat. The scouts can accomplish nothing now.”
“All right,” Bob answered reluctantly. He was roused to the point where it was hard to give up without having done anything more than scare off a few German fliers. “Well, the day’s not over,” he consoled himself, casting a resentful glance down at the German defenses along the ridge, where smoke and flame were spouting from a dozen batteries. The pilot’s feet were on the rudder and already the plane was making westward again across the French lines.
Though Captain Jourdin was flying only temporarily with the Americans at Cantigny, he had been given orders to report the morning’s events to headquarters, because he could do so with the greatest ease and dispatch. To most of the American fliers the country along the battle line was still a thing to be puzzled out with the aid of maps and glasses by day, and stars and compass by night. But to Jourdin it was old and familiar ground, for this part of Picardy was his home, and these ruined fields and villages he had known since boyhood. Bob thought of Argenton only as a town half destroyed by shell-fire, a place he could always find easily from above, because of the still-standing towers of the old fort behind the blazing line of German batteries. But to the Frenchman it had a different meaning. It was the little town whose quaint, cobbled streets he had often passed through on summer days in his childhood to visit his grandfather, whose old home outside Argenton was now a ruin. If it was late enough in the afternoon the peaceful townsfolk had brought their babies out to the old fort to hear the sunset bugle and see the soldiers change guard. No one would have believed in those days that the Germans would ever hammer at its gates and take possession.
Behind the French lines the country stretched in rolling fields to a burned wood. Jourdin steered for a little clump of larches beside which was a telephone shack, sheltered by a bit of rising ground. Bob had the glasses at his eyes, and swiftly picked out a landing-place.
“To the right, Jourdin—make it a hundred yards before you dip. There’s a nice level bit before those shell-holes begin.”