"A stay cut! ... Two holes in the upper plane! ... Four in the lower! ... Chips and dents galore! Still, we can fall back on the old wife's consolation: it might have been worse."
"All the same, it's precious awkward," said Captain Rolfe, putting his finger through a hole in the lower plane. "The Bosches will be here in ten minutes."
"Not under twenty. They've some difficult country to cross. But, of course, there's no time to lose. It's lucky there's a village close by."
Edward Burton, airman, with Captain Rolfe, who accompanied him as observer, had just made an enforced volplané and landed safely after running the gauntlet of German rifles and machine guns. At the moment when he was flattering himself on being out of range, a shell burst close beside the machine, bespattering it with bullets and putting the engine out of action.
Rolfe had seen cavalry galloping in their direction. The sudden descent would apprise the enemy of what had happened. Whether in ten minutes or in twenty, there was no doubt that the arrival of the Germans would place the airmen in a tight corner.
The first thought of the trooper is for his horse. The airman is concerned for the state of his aeroplane. It was not till long afterwards that Rolfe and Burton discovered that they, too, had not come off unscathed. Luckily it was only Rolfe's sword-hilt that had been shattered, not his groin; while Burton examined with a wondering curiosity two neat black holes in the loose sleeve of his overalls.
It did not occur to either of them that there was at least plenty of time to slip away and hide before the Germans came up. Their instinct was to save the aeroplane--a hopeless proposition, one would have thought.
Along the road from the village, a quarter of a mile away, half the population was already speeding to the scene. The half, alas! was now the whole. There were women old and young, boys and girls, old men and men long past their prime; but there was no male person from seventeen to fifty except the village idiot, who flung his arms about as he ran, making inarticulate noises.
"Hang it all!" Burton ejaculated. "A crowd like this will dish any chance we might have had."
The crowd suddenly parted; the men doffed their hats, the women bobbed, as they made way for a horseman. It was an old straight figure, with short snow-white hair and a long grizzled moustache. He cantered through the throng, turned into the field on which the aeroplane lay, and reined up before the Englishmen.