“Is Tom here yet?” was Jack's first inquiry after he had divested himself of his togs and men had rushed to the developing room the camera with its precious plates.
“Not yet,” some of his chums told him. “They're having a fight upstairs I guess.”
Jack nodded and looked anxiously in the direction in which Tom was last seen.
It was an hour before the scouting airplanes came back, and one was so badly shot up and its pilot so wounded that it only just managed to get over the French lines before almost crashing to earth.
“Are you all right, Tom?” cried Jack, as he rushed up to his chum, when he saw the latter getting out of his craft, rather stiff from the cold.
“Yes. They went at me hard—two of 'em but I think I accounted for one, unless he went into a spinning nose dive just to fool me.”
“Oh, they'll do that if they get the chance.”
“I know,” assented Tom. “Hello!” he exclaimed as he noticed a splintered strut near his head. “That came rather close.”
And indeed it had. For a bullet, or a piece of shrapnel, has plowed a furrow in the bit of supporting wood, not two inches away from Tom's head, though in the excitement of the fight he had not noticed it.
There had been a fight in the upper air and one of the French machines had not come home.