By this time all of the officers were sizing up the objects of the colonel’s unusual comment.
The helpers, with open mouths, had gathered at a respectful distance, but near enough to hear what was going on, and marveled that the great colonel should condescend to familiar terms with boys whom they claimed as of their class and number. Max, the malignant, was in the front row, and none the happier for the new honors conferred upon the fellow-workers whose very presence galled him.
“Trim them up a bit,” said the colonel to the lieutenant, pointing to the slop-chest clothing in which the boys were attired, “and send them over to headquarters this evening.”
“You’ve made a ten strike,” observed the lieutenant, as he sent the boys to a military clothier in the town with a written rush order.
“We could register from Annapolis now and get across with it,” laughed Billy, as they awaited the pleasure of an orderly at headquarters. The boys had been “trimmed up a bit,” and neatly garbed in gray looked as fine as middies on parade.
“Ah, here you are; come in,” invited the colonel. “Gentlemen,” turning to others in the room, “here are the young airmen about whom I was talking. This aviation business, I confess, is a hobby with me. Why, just think of boys this age not only able to completely assemble one of these wonderful machines, but to drive them, under ordinary circumstances, so expertly that safety aloft is about as equally assured as in a railway journey.
“Behold one of the natural enemies of your craft,” continued the colonel, directing the boys’ attention to a smart-looking young soldier, a lean, keen fellow, with captain’s straps, lounging on a sofa nearby. “He’s a fellow who turns balloon cannon loose on about every plane that hasn’t a black cross on its yellow stomach. That’s one of the reasons why a military aviator would have as much chance of getting life insurance at Lloyd’s as would a snowball of holding together in the furnace room of a cruiser.”
“We’ve seen some of the steel noses turned up at us,” volunteered Billy.
“Don’t believe they were exactly of my kind,” interposed the gunman on the lounge. “These are new ones, just out, and they reach further than any other make. We can haul them around at the tail of an automobile at the speed of about sixty miles an hour. Come along when we pull out of here and I’ll show you what a spin of a wheel will do in aiming the little daisy on the steel truck.”
“Don’t let him ever catch you asleep on your perch,” joked the colonel, “or there will be a bird funeral in the aviation family.”