“Your enclosures, I guess, have saved us many a flesh clip from spent balls,” said the French aviator, who was standing in the fore-cabin with Lieutenant Moppa.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” responded the officer, “yet if we held one position long enough, there is no telling what a shell might do to us.”
But it was the business of Billy and Henri to see that no fixed position was presented to the aim of a long range gun.
“I was just thinking,” remarked Billy, in an aside to his fellow wheelman, “that if a chunk of lead should happen to strike full force one of those magazines forward they’d be picking up pieces of us for a week in Siberia or some other section of nowhere.”
“Far be the dark moment,” fervently declared Henri.
Happening to glance sidewise through the windows of the pilot house, the last speaker saw a biplane lifting from the level between the two forts.
“Say, Buddy,” he called, “they’re going to fight us in our own strata. There’s another of ’em coming up—and yet another. Three to mix with.”
Lieutenant Moppa himself had just sighted the hostile aircraft, and he ordered the gunners to watch for an opportunity to put a check on the flying challengers if they ventured too close. The men serving the airship’s little battery, however, needed no encouragement. They were keyed up to best effort for the difficult test of marksmanship—wing shooting from under wings.
“There goes one of their popguns,” cried Mowbray, as a smoke wreath showed at the bow of the leading Turkish aeroplane.
“Keep the nose right at them,” the lieutenant instructed the pilots, “as long as they come together. Don’t present a side view unless you have to.”