“Better drop the bombs, hadn't we?” cried Jack to Tom, as he slowed down the motor a moment to enable his voice to be heard.
“I guess so—yes. Drop 'em and then shoot over the camp again and let the packages fall. It's getting pretty hot here.”
And indeed it was. Guns were shooting at the two daring air service boys from all sides of the camp.
In the camp itself great excitement prevailed, for the prisoners knew, now, that it was some of their friends flying above them.
There was another danger, too. Not many miles away from the prison camp was a German aerodrome, and scenes of activity could now be noticed there. The Huns were getting ready to send up a machine—perhaps more than one—to attack Tom and Jack.
It was, then, high time they acted, and as Jack again started the engine, he guided the machine over a spot where the anti-aircraft guns were most active.
“There's a battery there I may put out of business,” he argued.
Flying fast, Jack was soon over the spot, or, rather, not so much over it, as in range of it. For when an aeroplane drops a bomb on a given objective, it does not do so when directly above, but just before it reaches it. The momentum of the plane, going at great speed, carries any object dropped from it forward. It is as when a mail pouch is thrown from a swiftly moving express train or a bundle of newspapers is tossed off. In both instances the man in the train tosses the pouch or his bundle before his car gets to the station platform, and the momentum does the rest.
It was that way with the bomb Jack released by a touch of his foot on the lever in the cockpit of the machine. Down it darted, and, wheeling sharply after he had let it go, the lad saw a great puff of smoke hovering directly over the spot where, but a moment before, Hun gums had been belching at him.
“Good! A sure hit!” cried Tom, but he alone heard his own words. Jack's ears were filled with the throb of the motor. He had two more bombs, and these were quickly dropped at different points on German territory outside the camp.