So they chatted as they walked, and observed all that was to be seen around them, showing the horrors of modern warfare.
All the same the two young aviators had their busy times. These strolls were only allowable when the weather was bad for flying, and a period of dullness descended on the enterprising escadrille. It might be the fog was too heavy, or else a driving wind made flying too full of peril to send up many machines.
On other occasions the chums took part in numerous tasks. Each in turn served as photographer, accompanying a pilot over the German lines, guarded by a flotilla of fighting planes that hovered above them in a fashion to make Jack compare the situation to an old hen and her chickens.
“Only in this case,” he hastily added, “it’s the nimble little chicks that are watching over the clumsy old hen, so as to keep the German hawks from making a meal off her.”
Whatever they attempted to do was done well. Many times did they receive a word of commendation from the French commander of that sector, when he had seen the splendid fruits of their snapshots; for both youths were expert photographers.
They had now been in almost every type of machine along the front. Even the small and active Nieuport had been used with satisfactory results, though of course both of them had served aboard one at Pau, and knew how to handle such a plane perfectly.
On his part Tom often found his thoughts roving to the subject of his father’s recent loss, and wondering if the fortunes of war would ever again bring him in contact with the treacherous Adolph Tuessig.
He would sit while taking a sun-bath, and allow his fancy to imagine a meeting with the thief somewhere, perhaps even far back of the German lines.
“Wouldn’t it be just grand,” Tom would tell himself at such times, “if only I could swoop down on him like that hawk Jack was speaking about, and carry the rascal back to the French lines with me? Then I’d soon learn if, as I sometimes find myself hoping, Adolph Tuessig still carries that precious paper on his person.”
It seemed like a wild and improbable dream, that could never come true. Even the sanguine Tom admitted to himself that there was hardly one chance in a thousand of such a meeting taking place. Still, strange things sometimes happen.