“How do you know that they won’t shoot at us, Buck?” asked Alan.
“I guess that we’re pretty safe on that score,” Bob broke in. “These people are evidently honest countrymen who’ll be far more afraid of us than we need be of them.”
“Yes, and besides,” added Buck, “we can find out from them just where we are and how near we are to the battle front.”
“That’s a good point,” Ned said, “but they’re probably Russians or Poles, and they wouldn’t understand what we wanted to know. None of us speak their outlandish language.”
“I know a little Russian—at least enough for our needs,” volunteered Bob. “If you boys think that it’s safe to make a landing, I’ll guarantee to do all interpreting.”
“Fine!” chorused the others, and so the landing was made in the meadows within a stone’s throw of the first cottages.
There was, of course, immediate excitement throughout the town. The rusty bell in the steeple of the weather-beaten old church pealed an alarm, lights were immediately extinguished, and everybody came rushing out from their house-doors. At sight of the monster airship settling down there in the pasture with the blood-red rays of the sunset turning her metal body into the seeming of molten steel, a genuine panic ensued.
The women and children fled within, slamming and barring their doors behind them. The male villagers hastily caught up the first objects of defense that came to hand—flails, pitchforks, scythes, an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket or two. They huddled together like so many frightened sheep in front of the town church, uncertain whether to fly or fight.
“Look!” called Buck. “We’re frightening these poor people to death. Show a white flag, some of you, and show them that we mean to be friendly.”
Alan complied by jumping down from the lower runway, waving a flag of truce, and both Buck and Bob followed him, holding their empty hands high in the air to show that they were unarmed. The trio walked slowly straight towards the group of peasants, while Ned remained on one of the outer galleries of the Flyer, rifle in hand, ready to defend them if need be.