"Especially," Tom went on to say without the ghost of a smile, "when on a night-bombing expedition; for a thousand things are apt to come up, all calculated to bother the best of pilots, and throw him out of his reckoning."
"Why, we've been through that mill more than a few times, you remember, Tom. I could mention at least three occasions when we couldn't tell where we were and had to go it blind for a time. Fortunately, we got home all right where some fellows might have been less lucky."
"Well, that's all I'm going to tell you now, for the reason that it's the extent of my own information," Tom wound up with. "And since the hour is growing pretty late I reckon two tired fellows I know had better be getting over to their bunks."
"One thing more, Tom," urged the other.
"All right, but hurry along, for I saw Bessie looking this way as if she had something to say; and you interrupted our conversation in a very interesting part."
Jack grinned, and said:
"It will stay interrupted, too, for I am going to have the last word with Bessie. But I was wondering whether the officers would want us to work to-morrow, and keep up this flying for victory business, as the boys have taken to calling the work we're doing here over the Argonne these days?"
"Oh! How careless of me to forget to tell you about that! No, all of those who have been selected for this enterprise are to get a holiday to-morrow, so they can be fresh for the night work. We're to lie around, take things easy, eat doughnuts as fast as the Salvation Army girls can fry them, and get in trim for strenuous work."
Jack sighed.
"Suits me all right," he admitted. "Haven't had much vacation for three weeks or so now, and it gets a bit monotonous buzzing over those treetops, asking Fritz to pop away at you so as to coax him to betray his warm nest down below, and then making signs to our boys so as to locate it for them."