Before them burst the frightful fireworks of their own barrage; behind them, and above, that of the enemy.
Hal shivered in the cold; it was very chill there flying high above the lines, and he wore but the rags of Jean Brosseau. Directly below them the land had become black again, specked only by little points of light, yellow, ruddy, white; some of these, like the lights behind the French lines, perhaps marked hamlets, encampments; others were mere decoy-lights; others—they showed but for the briefest second when the biplane passed overhead were the guiding lights for the French and American pilots. These were set in chimneys by the French behind the German lines; any light, if seen by Germans and recognized, might cost the annihilation of a family, or a neighborhood; many times such lights had cost such savage penalty. Still, they were set.
Hal and Chester warmed at sight of them this night as never before.
They were going to the people who had set those lights.
The biplane banked and circled. Below was the square where the airplane was to be shot down. Troops were moving through those fields, undoubtedly, advancing in single file through communication trenches or dashing from shell hole to shell hole; other troops lingered in dugouts underground. The French batteries played all over those fields, spraying down shrapnel, detonating the frightful charges of high explosives. But at an hour before the appointed time—at 9 o'clock—the French batteries would remit their fire for ten minutes upon the square where the biplane should fall. Hal looked at the clock fastened before him. It was two minutes to 9; he could see, directly below, the crimson splash of the great French shells; a little way to the side showed the flashes of the German heavy batteries making reply.
Now, as though smothered by the German fire, the French batteries ceased. It was 9 o'clock, and Hal circled above the German batteries, which were firing, and Chester released the first bomb. Before it struck and burst, he let go another. He laid a third "egg" close beside a German battery—so close that the battery ceased to fire; but before the fourth dropped the anti-aircraft guns were going. Chester could hear, above the racket of the motor and the air-screw, the "pop, pop" of smashing shrapnel. They ran through the floating smoke of a shell, the acrid ether-smelling stuff stinging their nostrils. The beams of searchlights swept into the air. Hal circled more carefully and deliberately dropped lower; Chester let two more bombs drop near the batteries; he cleared the frames of the last pair of "eggs," and, leaning forward, struck Hal's shoulder to tell him so.
The phosphorus-painted face of the altimeter showed the pointer registering less than 2,000 feet; before the breaking German shells should do, in fact, what it was to be pretended they had done, Chester reached up and ignited the preparation smeared over the top plane. Yellow flames flared up, and, to keep them above and behind, Hal pointed the nose of the biplane far down and let her fall.
He turned, as he let the machine dive, back toward the French lines. Then, as the German antiaircraft gunners saw their target flashing clear in flames and they strewed their shrapnel closer before it, the biplane fluttered and fell, no longer diving under guidance, but out of control.
Chester jerked about to Hal; over the forms strapped between them, he saw Hal's face in the light of the flame. Hal was not hit; he had merely let go of the controls. It was part of the plan to let the machine fall out of control. But, for a moment, it was too much as if Hal had been hit.
The biplane side-slipped, "went off the wing," sickeningly, dropping down spinning. Then, suddenly, with a catch of a well-made, well-balanced plane, the inherent stability asserted itself, and the planes caught; the big "bus" fluttered like a falling leaf, "flattened out," and rested; now, it side-slipped again and fell, and Hal did not touch the controls.
Chester, looking down, saw that the flashes of the guns off to the side had come halfway to him; if the falling plane caught itself again after the same amount of drop, side-slipping, it would hover not too far from the ground before going "off the wing" again. That is, it might.