“All aboard,” hailed Salisky, at sight of the young pilots; “we must be pushing on.”
“Where away?” called Billy.
“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’” quoted the scout. “But,” he instantly added, good-naturedly, “we expect to visit some new birds in an old nest.”
The inference was plain enough that the aeroplanes would be headed for the Przemysl fortress, and the direction taken by order speedily proved it.
Billy and Henri did not realize what a shake-up there had been in and about the stronghold since their leaving with Roque, until the machines they were driving hovered over the once familiar ground.
Heaps upon heaps of débris marked all that remained of the strongest of the outlying forts, which the Austrians had blown up preparatory to surrender.
Only the inner sections and the town itself, the boys observed, were intact.
Over all now the black double-headed Eagle of Russia—gone the long-resisting garrison of von Kusmanek.
Clearing the trenches and the barbed-wire entanglements, the pilots volplaned to the old landing place, where they had first met Stanislaws, the friend to whom they had just pledged their services for the only favor they could grant.
“Some changes here, pard,” remarked Billy, as they looked out and around from the rampart to which they had climbed.