Larkin, watching him, chuckled. “Guess he wants to take a spin on the ground,” he commented to himself. “Fancy that bird wanting to go to Paris by motor!” Then to show how little he thought of the ground he advanced his throttle rapidly and took off on far less space than should ever be attempted by one who knows, from experience, how suddenly a crowded Clerget-motored Camel can sputter and incontinently die. And as a parting defiance to his knowledge, Larkin pulled back his stick and zoomed. Altitude was what McGee wanted, eh? Well, here was the way to get altitude in a hurry.
McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. “The poor fish!” was his mental comment. “If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they’ll be needing a lot of replacements–or yelling for a new instructor.”
47But the appreciative ground crew, watching, expressed a different view. “Boy!” exclaimed an envious Ack Emma. “Can that baby fly! I’ll tell the world! Watch him out-climb McGee. Did you see how McGee took off? Like a cadet doin’ solo–afraid to lift her. And they say he’s one of the best aces in the R.F.C. Huh! I think he’s got the pip! Ever since he first touched his wheels to this ’drome he’s been yellin’ about his motor bein’ cranky. And it’s all jake. She takes gas like a race horse takes rein.”
“Yeah,” growled a mechanic by the name of Flynn, who by nature and nationality stood ready to defend anyone bearing the name of McGee, “a lot you know about those little teapots in them Camels. You was trained on Jennies and–and Fords! What you know about a Clerget engine could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Say, do you know why he took her off so gentle? Well, I’ll spread light in dark places, brother. He took off slow because he knew you didn’t know nothin’, see?”
“Say, listen–”
The quarrel went on, despite the fact that the two pilots constituting the meatless bone of contention were rapidly becoming specks in the sky to the northwest.
At five thousand feet McGee leveled off and swung slightly west. He looked back and up. Larkin was 48five hundred feet above him and somewhat behind, but at McGee’s signal he dived down, taking up a position on the left. In this manner they could point out objects below and engage in the sign language which they had perfected through many hours spent in the air together.
As they flew along McGee felt his spirits mounting. It was a good world to live in and life was made especially sweet and interesting by the soft unfolding greens of a land brought to bud and blossom by April’s sun and showers. In the beautiful panorama below there was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint–yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee–troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, these, to be coming from the green fields and woods of a seeming peaceful countryside. Forward, ever forward they made their way. Never, it seemed to McGee, had he seen roads choked with returning men and munitions. Was the maw of the monster there to the eastward bottomless and insatiable? 49Where were the roads that led men back to the land of living, green things?
As they passed over a town, McGee saw Larkin point down. On the outskirts of the village a great cross in a circlet of green marked the location of a military hospital. Ah!... Yes, some came back. But even then they must brand their pain-racked sanctuary with the mercy imploring emblem of the Red Cross so that enemy planes, bent on devastation, would mingle mercy with hope of victory and save their bombs for those not yet carried into the long wards where white-robed doctors and nurses battled with death and spoke words of hope to the hopeless.
It was a sorry world! McGee, who but a few short minutes ago was entranced by the beauty of the world, now felt a sudden, marked disgust. He pulled his stick back sharply. He would climb out of it! He would get up against the ceiling, where the world became a dim, faint blur or was lost altogether in a kindly obliterating ground haze.