“I don’t believe they will bother us with these aeroplanes showing their teeth,” asserted Billy, “and what’s more, I am going to chance it, anyhow.”
With this declaration, the Bangor boy plumped himself down on rudely constructed stone settee alongside the well and contentedly munched some of the cakes that had been stored against an hour of hunger in the war-plane lockers.
In a land of prophets, Billy was not the least. The aviation party was not “bothered,” and even indulged in slumber, without sentinel, for about the whole night.
“The only thing that is of serious outlook,” declared Billy the next morning, “is just how long the petrol is going to hold out. We can pick up enough to eat, at least enough to keep our bones from showing, but I’ll be blessed if we can run these machines with anything like olive oil.”
“Where are we bound for, anyhow?”—the second or third time that Canby had put the same question.
“‘Ask of the winds that far around with fragments strewed the sea,’” recited Henri, who had never forgotten his original attempt to set the “boy stood on the burning deck” verse to the French language.
“‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on the way,’” sang Billy, with a mixture of flat notes.
“You are not the only clown in this company, it seems, Canby,” chuckled Macauley.
“Couldn’t aspire with you present,” was Canby’s retort.
The petrol question was not settled by this hilarity, and as to the destination of the war-planes, only time could settle that.