“Good-by, old top,” sang out the boy from Bangor; “glad everything is on the square now.”
The scouts looked reproof at this manner of address, but as the Cossack did not understand a word of it, no harm was done.
“Farewell, brothers,” called Henri, with more decorum.
“It is our turn now,” briskly broke in Salisky, “and I want some speeding to make our faces good at headquarters.”
“You will get it,” was Billy’s comeback when the young aviators started the buzz in the biplanes.
“It will take a week to get the water out of my eyes,” laughed Marovitch, when the machines dipped that evening into the camp at Brest Litovsk.
Expected orders for the dash back to Warsaw were not forthcoming.
The aviators were destined to view the river Vistula at an entirely different point—to see it again tumbling down from the snow-dad Carpathians, where the titanic war struggle raged with unabated vigor.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AVIATORS’ PLEDGE.
For several days, from behind the lines, the Boy Aviators had watched the Russian attack upon the heights on the north declivities of the Carpathians, in desperate endeavor to open a path to the highest ridges commanding the mountain wall.