How to get the machine down off the roof, where it rested in a mass of broken glass and frames, was a problem. Tom tried to organize a wrecking party, but the French populace which gathered, much as it admired the Americans, was afraid of being cut with the broken glass, or else they imagined that the machine might suddenly soar aloft, taking some of them with it.
In the end Tom had to leave the plane where it was and hire a motor to take him and Martin back to the aerodrome. They were only slightly cut by flying glass, nothing to speak of considering the danger in which they had been.
The result of the disobedience of orders was that the army officials had rather a large bill for damages to settle with the French greenhouse proprietor, and Tom and Dick Martin were deprived of their leave privileges for a week for disobeying the order to keep at a certain height in flying over a town or city.
Had they done that, when the controls jammed, they would have been able to glide down into a vacant field, it was demonstrated. The machine was badly damaged, though it was not beyond repair.
“And that's the last time I'm ever going to be soft with a Hun, you can make up your mind to that,” declared Tom to Jack. “If I'd sat on him hard when I saw he was getting too low over the village, it wouldn't have happened. But I didn't want him to think I knew it all, and I thought I'd take a chance and let him pull his own chestnuts out of the fire. But never again!”
“'Tisn't safe,” agreed Jack. He was rapidly improving, so much so that he was able to fly the next week, and he and Tom went up together, and did some valuable scouting work for the American army.
At times they found opportunity to take short trips to Paris, where they saw Nellie and Bessie, and were entertained by Mrs. Gleason. Nellie was eager for some word from her brother, but none came. Whether the packages dropped by Tom and Jack reached the prisoner was known only to the Germans, and they did not tell.
But the daring plan undertaken by the two air service boys was soon known a long way up and down the Allied battle line, and more than one aviator tried to duplicate it, so that friends or comrades who were held by the Huns might receive some comforts, and know they were not forgotten. Some of the Allied birdmen paid the penalty of death for their daring, but others reported that they had dropped packages within the prison camps, though whether those for whom they were intended received them or not, was not certain.
“But we aren't going to let it stop there, are we?” asked Tom of Jack one day, when they were discussing the feat which had been so successful.
“Let it stop where? What do you mean?”