The only instructions given the amateur scouts related to the direction of the mysterious shelling point from which so much damage had been inflicted upon the Allies without an open chance to retaliate.
For the treasure the colonel had agreed to act as banker, and, as a balm to Reddy’s wounded feelings, when he rebelled at separation from his friends, that youngster was assigned to duty as special messenger within the lines.
Again our Aviator Boys listened to the vibration of the aëroplane, the rattle, roar and hum of the motor, the music that soothes the nerves of every practiced airman.
The boys hit the high grade at 8,000 feet, and circled in huge ellipses between the allied troops and the positions hostile to them.
Henri had been given a powerful field glass, and he was faithfully using it in acute observation. The roar of the aërial travel was so loud in the quiet of the upper air that it drowned the occasional thunder of the big guns, which fire could be marked by sight if not by hearing.
A few moments of sweeping flight, and the young aviators were looking down on the wood mapped as suspicious.
They hovered about, while Henri worked the field glasses to the limit, but to no avail.
“Let her down a bit!” he yelled to Billy.
Billy cut the height a thousand feet or so.
Nothing but tree-tops was in sight.