There was nothing to do but drift along. Gravity alone urged the craft on. As he swept over the German trenches Tom was greeted with a burst of shrapnel, and he was now low enough to be vulnerable to this. But luck was with him, and though the plane was hit several times he thought he was unharmed. But in this he was wrong. He received a glancing wound in one leg, but in the excitement he did not notice it, and it was not until he had landed that he saw the blood, and knew what had happened.
On and on, and down and down he volplaned until he was so near his own lines, and so low down, that he could hear the burst of cheers from his former comrades.
Then he aimed his craft for a level, grassy place to make a landing, and as he came to a gradual stop, and was surrounded by a score of eager aviators, he cried out, as soon as he could speak, “I'm all right! But look after Jack! He's hurt!”
A surgeon bent hastily over the huddled form, and with the aid of some men lifted it from the cockpit. Jack's legs were covered with blood, and when the medical man saw whence it came, then and there he set hastily to work to stop the bleeding from a large artery.
“You got back only just in time, my friend,” he said to Tom, as Jack was carried to a hospital. “Two minutes more and he would have been bled to death.”
CHAPTER XVII. A CRASH
Not until a day or so later, when Jack was able to sit up in bed and greet Tom with rather a pale face, did the latter learn all that had happened. And it was a very close call that Jack had had.
As Tom had guessed, it was some of the bullets from the Hun machine gun that had stricken down his chum. One had struck him a glancing blow on the head, rendering Jack unconscious and sending him down, a crumpled-up heap in the cockpit of his machine. Another bullet, coming through the machine later, had found lodgment in Jack's leg, cutting part way through the wall of one of the larger arteries.
It was certain that this bullet, the one in the leg, came after Jack was hit on the head, for that first wound was the only one he remembered receiving.