"Lord knows," the pilot shouted back. "She seems to be running all right though. What next?"
"Back where we broke off the shoot," yelled the observer. "Three batteries to put 'em on yet; and look at the time."
The pilot glanced at his clock. It was nearing the "zero hour," the moment when the infantry would be swarming out into the open No Man's Land—and into the fire of those enemy batteries upon which the "Gamecock" had not yet directed our guns. Both pilot and observer knew how much it meant to have those hostile batteries silenced. The word had come from Headquarters and had passed down to the Squadron that it was very certain, from the fact that the batteries had been kept concealed and had not fired up to now, they were meant to be used for repelling the attack, that they would be reserved and unmasked only when the infantry began their advance, that they would then unloose a tempest of destroying fire on the attackers.
And because both pilot and observer had served a time in the infantry before they joined the Flying Corps, they knew just what it meant to the infantry to have such a fire to make way against, and both turned anxiously back to complete their job.
Down below the ground was hidden under a drifting haze of smoke and dust, and the "Gamecock" circled slowly while pilot and observer searched for their objectives. They found the other spots on which they had directed the guns—spots which now were marked by whirling, eddying clouds through which the bursting high-explosive still flamed red at quick intervals. From there at last they found the next target, and the observer hastily signalled back to his battery to fire. The engine was giving trouble again, missing every now and then, running slowly and laboriously, while the pilot fiddled and fretted about throttle and spark and petrol feed and tried to coax her into better running. The observer failed to catch the puffing smoke of the battery's first shot and signalled the code to fire again. Before the next shot came, a stutter of machine-gun fire broke out overhead, and pilot and observer glanced quickly up at the clouds that drifted over and hid the fighters. The machine-gun fire rose and fell in gusts, and then out of the cloud 1,000 feet up a machine whirled and spun down past them, recovered an instant and shot eastward in a steep gliding plunge, fell away suddenly, and crashed amongst the trenches.
Immediately after her there fell out of the sky a cluster of machines, wheeling and circling and diving at each other like a swarm of fighting jackdaws. The "Gamecock" suddenly found herself involved in a scrimmaging mix-up without her crew knowing who or what was in it. A pair of wings, with thick black crosses painted on them, whizzed across the "Gamecock's" bows, and the pilot promptly ripped off a quick burst of fire at her as she passed. "Never mind them," shouted the observer, "get on with the shoot," and leaned out from his cockpit to watch for the fall of the next shell. The "Gamecock" resumed her steady circling, while the fight raged round and over her and drifted in wheeling rushes clear of her and away quarter, half a mile to the south.
But they were not to be left unmolested. A Hun two-seater dropped out of the fight and raced at the "Gamecock," putting in a burst of fire from his bow gun as he came, wheeling round the "Gamecock's" stern and pouring bullets on her from the observer's gun. The hostile was tremendously fast, and the "Gamecock" with her crotchety engine was no match for him. The observer, for all his anxiety to finish the shoot, was forced to defend himself, and he turned to his gun with black rage in his heart. "Brute," he growled, and loosed a stream of bullets at the shape astern. "I'd like to down you just for your beastly interference," and his gun rattled off another jet of bullets. The enemy swooped down and under the "Gamecock's" tail with his gun hammering viciously. The pilot lifted her nose so as to sink the tail planes and rudder clear of the observer's line of fire and give him a shot, but the "Gamecock" had barely speed enough for the manœuvre, lost way, stalled badly, slid backward with a rush, and plunged down.
They were dangerously low for such a fall, and the pilot waited heart in mouth for the instant when she would right herself enough for him to resume control. He caught her at last and straightened her out, and at the same instant her enemy following her down dived past and up under her, where he was out of reach of the observer's gun. The pilot wrenched her round in a narrow circle that brought her pivoting on her wing-tip, and allowed the observer to look and point his gun straight overside and directly down on the enemy. He got off one short burst, and this time saw some of his tracer bullets break in sparks of fire about the fuselage and pilot's cockpit. They did damage too, evidently, because the Hun broke off the action, drove off full pelt to the eastward just as the "Gamecock" dropped in a dangerous side-slip. Again her pilot caught and steadied her, and began to climb her slowly and staggeringly to a higher level. Those last wrenching turns and plunges had been too severe a strain on her shaken frame, and now, as she climbed, both pilot and observer could hear and feel a horrible jarring vibration. They were not more than 3,000 feet up, but the engine threatened to refuse to lift them higher, and when it choked and stuttered and missed again, the "Gamecock" shivered and almost stalled once more. The pilot hurriedly thrust her nose down and swept down in a long rush to pick up flying speed again. "Get on," he yelled back. "Get on with your shoot. I daren't try'n climb her, and there's no stunt left in her if another Hun comes. A brace parted in that last scrap"—and he turned to his engine again, and swung the "Gamecock" in a wide circle.
Once more the observer signalled his battery to fire. This time there was no difficulty in finding his target, because the "zero hour" had come; there were little dots swarming out over the No Man's Land below, and the hostile batteries the "Gamecock" was looking for were flaming out in rapid sheets of vivid fire, and their shells pounding down amongst our infantry. The "Gamecock" circled slowly over the batteries, losing height steadily, because her pilot had to keep her nose down so that the glide would help out her failing engine and maintain her flying speed. Her observer was picking out shell-burst after shell-burst with greater and greater difficulty in the reek below, signalling back the corrections to the guns.