“What are you going to do to-day, Jack?” asked Tom one morning, as they went out after breakfast to get into their “busses,” as they dubbed their machines.
“Oh, got orders to do some spiral and somersault stunts for the benefit of some huns.” (“Hun,” used in this connection, not referring to the Germans. “Hun” is the slang term for student aviators, tacked on them by more experienced fliers.)
“Same here. Good little bunch of huns in camp now.”
Tom nodded in agreement, and the two were soon preparing to climb aloft.
With a watching group of eager young men on the ground below, in company with an instructor who would point out the way certain feats were done, Torn and Jack began climbing. Presently they were fairly tumbling about like pigeons, seeming to fall, but quickly straightening out on a level keel and coming to the ground almost as lightly as feathers.
“A good landing is essential if one would become a good airman,” stated the instructor. “In fact I may say it is the hardest half of the game. For it is comparatively easy to leave the earth. It is the coming back that is difficult, like the Irishman who said it wasn't the fall that hurts, it was the stopping.”
“Give 'em a bit of zooming now,” the instructor said to Tom and Jack. “The boys may have to use that any time they're up and a Boche comes at them.”
“Zooming,” he went on to the pupils, “is rising and falling in a series of abrupt curves like those in a roller-coaster railway. It is a very useful stunt to be master of, for it enables one to rise quickly when confronting a field barrier, or to get out of range of a Hun machine gun.”
Tom undertook this feature of the instruction, as Jack signaled that his aeroplane was out of gasoline, and soon the former was rolling across the aviation field, seemingly straight toward a row of tall trees.
“He'll hit 'em sure!” cried one student.