"We too heard the sound of an explosion," Beverly told him in reply. "It came from further down the shore. There's some sort of British airdrome in that quarter, I'm informed; and possibly they had an accident there. As for the shooting, that's easily explained. My men were the cause."
"Spies hanging around, probably?" hazarded the major, in disgust. "We've been bothered with the slick beasts right along—shot several, but even that didn't keep the coast clear."
"There have been skulkers around for some time," continued the lieutenant. "Baxter tells me he'd warned them off until he grew tired, and threatened that the next one who was caught trying to peep would be fired upon. So to-night when a sentry reported suspicious movements in the brush we sent in a few shots, more to give them a scare than to do any damage."
"Have they tried to injure your plane, Colin?" asked the major.
"I understand that once my men discovered a fire had been started in a mysterious way, which they succeeded in putting out. Only for prompt work it would have at least disabled the bomber so that its usefulness for the present would be nil."
"The ways of those German spies are past finding out," complained Major Denning. "They seem to take a page from Indian tactics, and resort to all species of savage warfare. It wouldn't surprise me if you found they had shot an arrow with a blazing wad of saturated cotton fastened to its head, and used your hangar as a target. History tells us your redskins used to do something like that in the days of the early colonies."
Shortly afterwards the monster bombing plane was wheeled out of its hangar, and became an object of vast interest to the two Air Service Boys.
Tom and Jack were of course familiar with its working, but needed a few hints from Lieutenant Beverly with respect to certain new features that it possessed.
"What do you think of it, boys?" was the natural question asked by the intrepid flight commander, who of course meant to do his share of the handling of the giant plane during its long flight.
"A jim-dandy! That's what!" exclaimed the delighted Jack, almost awed by the tremendous size of the up-to-date machine, with its wonderful expanse of planes and its monster body in which the vast amount of stores, as well as surplus gasoline, could be stowed.