To perform before General Joffre! Our Aviator Boys fairly gasped at the idea. So closely had they been allied with military doings, and so easily does the war spirit expand by such association, that a great field commander was just about the very top of the list with them. Legions gave devotion to General Joffre and General Sir John French.
From the first line of fortifications, over the enceinte (works forming the main inclosure), to the detached forts still beyond, there was a splendid natural theater for the aërial exhibit, 430 square miles thus enclosed, with an encircling line of 77 miles.
“These machines are certainly the very ‘last word’ in aëroplane construction,” observed Henri, when Gilbert, Billy and himself moved about the hangars engaged in the “tuning up” process.
“Something like the machine in which young Bainbridge took his last ride,” recalled Billy.
In all their lives the boys could never forget that sad incident.
To demonstrate the passenger-carrying capacity of the new aircraft, Gilbert was accompanied in the leading flight by a comrade airman, while Henri took Reddy, and Billy chummed with Jimmy.
The graceful evolutions, and, particularly, the lightning speed shown by the up-to-date machines, excited admiration and wonder. Practically the entire length of the encircling line was traversed in an hour—that is, 77 miles an hour!
Jimmy and Reddy had never before traveled like a ball from a cannon, and even for the practiced aviators it was a little more than their limit.
“The general can’t say that there was anything slow about this,” asserted Billy, when he climbed down from the wheel-seat at the close of the thrilling performance.
“It was good work.”