The feeling of boundless power, limitless recklessness to dare and do, which flight had first brought to him as a cadet years before, reclaimed him. Flight, that miraculous endowment, was his again. He passed to O’Malley the German pilot’s hood; he protected his own eyes with the goggles, and, watching the ground to estimate the wind drift, he set his course by compass for Mannheim. What he was to do there he did not know; and he no longer attempted to form any plan. The event—inevitable and yet unforseeable—which had brought him this ship had taught him tonight to cease to plan. He was flying, and content to let fate guide him. Somehow—he had no idea at all of how—but somehow this night he would find Ruth Alden and take her with him. Destiny—the confidence in the guidance of fate which comes to every soldier and, more than to any other, to the flying fighter of the sky—set him secure and happy in the certainty of this.
He had climbed above the clouds and was flying smoothly and serenely in the silver moonlight. He was flying solitarily, too; for if alarm had spread upon the ground to tell that escaped prisoners had taken a German machine, it had not yet communicated itself to a pilot in position to pursue. Behind him lay only the moonlight and the stars; below, the sheen of cloud tops, unearthly, divine; the sheen split and gaped in great chasms, through which the moonlight slanted down, lighting great spots of darkness separated by the glinting path of the Rhine. The river made his piloting simple; he had only to sight it when the clouds cleared, and he must follow to Mannheim.
There was a machine gun set in the nacelle before O’Malley, and Gerry saw the Irishman working with it. O’Malley pulled the trigger, firing a few trial shots, and turned back to Gerry and grinned. The noise of the motor and the airscrew prevented Gerry from communicating any plan to his comrade, even if Gerry had one, but he knew that, in whatever happened, he could count upon O’Malley’s complete recklessness and instant wit.
Lights were below—most of them a bit back from the river. That would be the city of Worms; a few more miles, and Gerry must decide what he was going to do. But for the moment the sensation of freedom and of flight together continued to intoxicate him. The Rhine wavered away to the east, straightened south; ahead—far ahead—lights. There was Mannheim.
But O’Malley, in the forward seat, had turned, and, with an arm, pointed him forward and above. And far ahead, and higher, Gerry spied dancing specks which caught the moonbeams—specks set in regular order across the sky and advancing in formation. An air squadron flying north!
Below it mighty crimson flashes leaped from the ground, and through the clatter of his motor Gerry heard the detonation of tremendous, thunderous charges. Now black spots of smoke floated before the flying specks, and from the ground guns spat fiery into action—German anti-aircraft guns replying to aerial torpedoes dropped from the sky.
Others besides the officer prisoners of Villinstein and the German cadets of the nearby airdrome had waited for the moon that night. Allied pilots also had waited; and now, with the moon to favor and guide them, they had come to attack the chemical works and the munition factories of Mannheim! An allied air raid was on that night!
CHAPTER XXI
THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS
Gerry’s feet thrust on the rudder bar, swinging his machine to meet them, while hot rills ran through his limbs, warming him against the chill of the night flight above the clouds. He had thought of the frontier as a hundred and fifty miles away—two hours’ flight at best in this slow, heavy training “bus”—but here his friends were bringing it to him. His excitement prevented him from realizing instantly that to his friends he must appear an enemy—a black-crossed Hun-bird flying to fight them.
A covey of German pursuit planes, flushed up from some airdrome near the raided city, swooped upward in front of Gerry, climbing for the advantage of altitude before starting their attack upon the raiders. Gerry could see them clearly—triplane Fokkers mostly, of the swiftest, best-climbing, and best-armed type. Some of them saw him, but saw, too, that his machine was German. Probably the pilots wondered what that old “bus” was doing there, but no one investigated, while Gerry flew on.