He glanced a bit anxiously toward Jack as he said this, but if he expected to see the other wince in the least he was mistaken.
“Oh! we’ve grown accustomed to that sort of talk, Neal,” explained Jack quietly. “We know what chances we’re taking, and have made up our minds to accept the worst. If either or both of us are brought down by the Boches it’s no worse a fate than being shot to pieces with one of those big shells. And if Uncle Sam gets in this muddle that’s the fate thousands of us will likely meet.”
The sun sank lower, and night was not far distant. The big guns no longer fretted the air in the distance with their constant booming. The absence of the heavy reverberations was a relief to the tortured ears of the newcomers, as yet all unused to such a tremendous clamor.
Tom was using his binoculars as well as he could, considering the motion of the ambulance, the roadway being far from smooth, with more or less jostling much of the time.
“What interests you up there, Tom?” demanded his chum, noticing the other scanning the heavens in front of them.
“There are planes aloft, a number of them. But I imagine that is pretty nearly always the case when the weather permits. Some are so far away they look like dots. I suppose those are German Fokker and Gotha machines, of which we’ve heard so much, as they do their fighting with them against our Nieuports.”
“Let me have a peep! I want to see my first Fokker; though I suppose in time I’ll get my fill of seeing them, especially when the pilot is pelting me with lead from his machine-gun.”
After a minute of focusing and staring, Jack continued:
“Yes, I guess those far-away ones must be, as you say, German craft hovering over their own lines, and mebbe having an occasional fight with some French or American flier who ventures across No Man’s Land to engage them. But there’s a machine heading this way now, and coming on fast, as if about to land.”
“We are close to the camp,” the ambulance driver assured him. “In fact it’s just half a mile further on. When we’ve rounded that bend ahead maybe you’ll get a whiff of genuine Yankee cooking in the bargain, for I hear the boys have succeeded in finding a chap from the States who used to be a chef in a Broadway lobster palace, and can do things up brown. I wish I had an invitation to join them some evening. I’m crazy for real food, cooked as we cook at home.”