His pistol-point was very urgent and the little man scrambled up behind the pilot's seat.
"Now, you, McClusky," said Tam, following him and deftly strapping himself, "ye'll turn that propeller—pull it down so, d'ye hear me, ye miserable chauffeur!"
The man obeyed. He pulled over the propeller-blade twice, then jumped back as with a roar the engine started.
As the airplane began to move, first slowly and then gathering speed with every second, Tam saw the two men break into a run toward the road and the waiting motor-car.
Behind him he felt rather than heard slight grunts and groans from his unhappy passenger, and then at the edge of the field he brought up the elevator and the little scout, roaring like a thousand express trains, shot up through the mist and disappeared from the watchers on the road in the low-hanging clouds, bearing to the bereaved and saddened staff of One-Three-One Hector O'Brien's understudy.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST LOAD
Along a muddy road came an ambulance. It was moving slowly, zigzagging from side to side to avoid the shell holes and the subsidences which the collapse of ancient trenches on each side of the road had caused. It was a secondary or even a tertiary road, represented on the map by a spidery line, and was taken by driver Vera Laramore because there was no better.