"Now that you are here," broke in the colonel, "you must not be allowed to get out of practice. I expect that one of you will have to give me a ride along the front before long. I have lost three horses this week."
"We'll do our best to oblige you, colonel," volunteered Billy.
It was no merry jest, that ride Billy gave the colonel!
At the time, the French retained a foothold north of the river at only one point—St. Paul—where the bridge from Soissons crosses, and this by a perilous margin, since the bridgehead was completely commanded by German artillery on the heights.
The battlefield entire covered a front of about seven miles, the center and eastern flank a high, level plateau rising steeply a couple of hundred feet from the valley of the Aisne. On the western side a deep valley ran northward, bounded on either side by turnpikes. An airman taking the big curve of the river would not be considered a good risk for a well-regulated insurance company.
But it could be done—and Billy Barry furnished the proof.
When the next day broke a bloody conflict was raging between the two turnpikes, the French infantry attack on German trenches preceded by a terrible artillery bombardment, a storm of shell and shrapnel.
Colonel Muller beckoned Billy to his side. They stood together on the heights from which the French had been expelled only the day before.
"My boy," was the brisk address of the officer, making a field-glass survey of the smoke-crowned landscape, "I am going down the line, and I am to do the distance in an aëroplane. Is it you or Schneider who will do the driving?"
"You gave me the first call yesterday," reminded Billy.