“There is no other way then,” decided Billy, “but to get the tip, somehow, to the Cossack in the morning.”
If Nikita got the “tip” it did not happen in Warsaw, for the boys were informed in response to their break-of-day inquiry that the lance-bearing cavalryman had, the afternoon previous, been urgently summoned by aerial messenger to report at the headquarters of the greatest of Russian military commanders, a hundred miles east of Warsaw.
On steeds of tireless breed, and racing with the wind, the red riders had a long start of now these many hours.
“And that’s the end of it,” declared Henri, when told that the Cossack band was by this time far away, and by route known only to themselves.
Billy was as deep in thought just then as were his hands in his pockets.
“What’s the matter with chasing them in the biplanes?” he suddenly asked.
“Man alive,” cried Henri, “it is the very ticket!”
CHAPTER V.
STRIKING IT RIGHT.
How to bring about the flying assignment that would put them on the trail of the otherwise doomed Cossack was the next problem to engage the young aviators.
The boys well knew that aeroplane connection was being constantly maintained between Warsaw and the center of Russian operations at Brest Litovsk, one hundred miles east, even though numerous telegraph instruments, in the schoolhouse there occupied as headquarters by the mighty commander, ticked messages every minute day and night.