“It would have been good-by if we had caught that solid shot in the business section of this ship,” was Billy’s essay to the stolid pilot in front of him.
If the pilot heard or understood, he did not condescend to answer.
Some forty miles from the German naval stations in the neighborhood of Helgoland, the sea-plane’s own gun was swiveled in the direction of a darting aëroplane scouting from some English warship, on the watch in these waters, but when the machine guns on one of the German cruisers, adapted to high-angle fire, broke loose on the British machine, it turned tail at a speed of seventy miles an hour.
Franz appeared to be greatly amused at this, and started a rapid flow of German humor about the high-dodging machines made somewhere else than in Germany.
Henri did not tell Billy what all the fun was about, for fear of bringing Billy to his feet with an argument as to where the best flying machines were made. But it would not have made any difference, for Franz and Billy were both assured of personal peace, in that neither could understand the other, though they talked until doomsday.
The boys had no fixed idea as to what fate had in store for them on German soil.
“I do hope that it won’t be a military fortress for us,” said Henri. “It would be mighty rough luck to be locked up at Cologne, or some other jail of a place.”
“But you remember the pilot said when we were caught that they might find a place for us in the aviation service.”
Billy found comfort in that memory.
“If I couldn’t have anything else to do but carry oil around a hangar,” asserted Henri, “it would sure be away ahead of looking at the stone walls of a fortress.”