“Look!” Billy was pointing to what appeared, at the distance, to be a speck on the face of the moon.
The sound of gunfire increased, report after report—crack, crack, boom, boom, boom.
Across and far above the moonlit plain, arrow-like, sped a winged shadow, growing in size as it swiftly approached.
“An aëroplane!” The boys well knew that kind of a bird. They called its name in one voice.
“That’s what has been drawing the fire of those guns.”
Billy had found the problem easy to solve when he noted the getaway tactics of the coming airman.
The boys could now hear the whirring of the motor. Fifty yards away the aëroplane began to descend. Gracefully it volplaned to the earth under perfect control. It landed safely, rolled a little way, and stopped.
The boys, without a second thought, raced down the slope to greet the aviator, like one of their own kind should be greeted, but as quickly halted as they drew nearer.
The airman was dead.
He had been fatally wounded at the very start of his last flight, but just before death, at its finish, had set his planes for a descent. With his dead hands gripping the controllers, the craft had sailed to the earth. He wore the yellowish, dirt-colored khaki uniform of a British soldier.