Amidst the roar of desperate conflict the biplanes whizzed away like great arrows.
"Some speedy tinkering we did in that ghost town, Mr. Roque?"
"Nothing slow," assented Roque, leaning forward to give Billy a pat on the back.
"Where away now?" asked the pilot.
"Back to the lodge for the night," directed the chief.
No such comfort for the boys in the next flight.
They were booked for a journey to Przemysl, the vast underground fortress of Galicia, about which the Russian right end was then snapping like the tip of a whip around a sapling, and later surrounded on all sides by the Muscovite forces.
While viewing the first back-wash of the Austrian forces from the high tide of Russian invasion, the aviators had hurtled through a maelstrom of noise. The yells and shoutings of wagon drivers, the rattling of thousands of wheels over stony roads, the clatter of horses' feet made an indescribable tumult, and to this were added the sounds of infantry fighting.
Roque had reliable advices during one of the stops in the flight that the fortress defenders were still holding their own, and no Russian charge had as yet crossed the barbed wire mazes that circled the city.
Never since the memorable race at Friedrichshaven had the No. 3 type of biplane attained such velocity as in the finish of this forced run to the Galician stronghold, the final dash over the black-plowed farms through a wet fog and under fire of a Russian battery posted in the hills.