And he never--quite--figures the dope!”
CHAPTER XI
KNIGHTS OF THE WING
“Well! we have tumbled into a camp of milk and honey.”
Lieutenant Hayward, the observer, with the binoculars, from whom the young air-scout had taken orders as he flew over the shore, was almost guilty of smacking his lips in relish of the fare set before him in the light of the rainbowing Council Fire and of two camp-lanterns which turned the antique silver of the sands to gold.
“Keep the home-fires burning!”
he chanted. “Ye zephyrs! I don’t think I ever appreciated them so much before. Certainly that’s a corking Council Fire; all those wonderful colors; fairy lilac shading into blue flame, rose, green, and yellow, which the copper-corroded wreck-wood throws off!”
“Corroded! The green is just about the hue of the soldiers’ buttons up--up at Camp Evens, after the chlorine-gas changed them, eh, Olive?” murmured Sara reminiscently under her breath--forbearing to vent upon the banquetting sky-lords the story of a gruesome episode on the day when four of the girls present visited her brother in camp. “Oh! won’t you tell us why you flew over--flew low over our fire, this evening?” she burst forth suddenly, eagerly. “Did you really take it for a spy-bonfire, on this lonely beach, signaling out to sea? Are you--are you air-scouts, patrolling, on the lookout for--for huts in the woods--secret wireless----”
But the observer held up a pleading hand.
“How can you ask me, fair Earth Daughter, to discuss anything at present but--but these wings and camouflage? Aviators’ slang!” he murmured divertingly, beaming upon his forthcoming mouthful of creamed chicken, greenly disguised with the juiciest of young peas.