Henri, with the comfort that his turn was coming, stoutly backed the belief that his partner intended to exceed the speed limit as a lesson to the doubters.
"'Stanny' will have a new kink in his whiskers before he gets back," was the expression, to be exact, used by Henri on this evening.
The great bird machine, soaring like an albatross in the northern sky, soon vanished from the view of the watchers in the fortifications.
"He's six horses and a wagon with a dog under it," Stanislaws earnestly advised the officers at army headquarters, pointing at Billy, who was reducing heat in the propeller by liberal use of the oil can.
"Stanny" had already made good with the American boy, not so much by his frank expression of admiration for the youngster's handling of the military biplane as for the reason that the Austrian talked plain United States when they were alone. Billy was dead-set against the trial of eternally groping for the meaning of foreign phrases.
"Do you know why we aviators are running a freight line just now?" queried this new friend.
Billy acknowledged that he had not the least idea on that subject. "Why?"
"Filimonoff."
"Who in the dickens is Filimonoff?"