“More yet!” shouted Henri.
Dangerously near now, if there was a hidden battery below.
Henri bent further over the frame of the machine, with the glasses aimed at a certain point, which had suddenly become of special interest to him. He had seen something that was not a tree-top.
The glasses revealed the location of the battery. The guns, two in this particular position, stood behind a screen of thickly branching trees, the muzzles pointing toward a round opening in this leafy roof. The crew as suddenly discovered their visitors, and instantly, as busy as bees, sprang to their posts.
“Turn her loose!” screamed Henri in Billy’s ear, and Billy did “turn her loose,” up and away.
The gunners were not quick enough to catch this winged target, but they burned a couple of large holes in the air in trying.
Billy drove the aëroplane into a protecting cloud that closed white and moist around them.
Twenty minutes later the excited flyers told their story to the colonel.
“That ride was a bully treat,” declared Billy; “but really I’d like to have stopped in a chummy way with those fellows on the hill long enough to see them work the guns. They’re some hustlers with the big irons, I tell you.”
“Next time you can send in your card,” laughed Henri.