"So I've heard. Well, here's hoping neither of us, nor any more of our friends, falls over the German lines. But look, Tom!" and Jack pointed excitedly. "Are my eyes seeing things, or is that another Caudron looming up there, the last in the line? Take a look and tell me. I don't want to hope too much, yet maybe we have lost only one, and not two."
Tom changed the focus of his powerful glasses slightly and peered in the direction indicated by his chum. Then he remarked, with the binoculars still at his eyes:
"Yes, that's another of our machines! But she's coming in slowly. Must have been hit a couple of times."
"She's lucky, then, to get back at all. But let's go over and hear what the news is. I hope they blew up a lot of the Huns last night."
"Same here!"
The aircraft were near enough now for the throbbing of their big motors to be heard, and Tom and Jack, each an officer now because of gallant work, hurried across the landing field.
It was early morning, and they had come, after a night's rest, to report for duty with others of the brave Americans who, during the neutrality of this country in the great conflict, went to France as individuals, some to serve as ambulance drivers, others to become aviators.
The Caudron is the name given to one type of heavy French aeroplane carrying two or more persons and tons of explosive bombs.
An air raid on the German lines by a fleet of these machines had been planned. It had been timed for an early hour of the night, but a mist coming up just as the squadron of heavy machines, each with two men and a ton or more of explosives, was ready to set out, the hour had been changed. So it was not until after midnight that the start had been made.
And now the boys were coming back—that is all who were able to return. One machine was missing. At least, that was the assumption of Tom and Jack, for they could count but nine where there should have been ten. And of the nine one was coming back so slowly as to indicate trouble.