"Guess he had a pretty good bird's-eye view of the whole thing," said Joe, as they passed on, to meet again before mess.
Except for spasmodic outbursts here and there, the trench duel had almost entirely subsided, and the heavy roar of the artillery also was punctuated with longer pauses. Whatever the morrow might bring, the night promised to be fairly quiet, while each side took account of stock and made necessary repairs, or altered their plans to meet the new situation.
Our young friends were busy with wash basin, soap and water, taking off the grime in preparation for the evening meal and wondering where Jerry was keeping himself all the while, when suddenly a very strange thing happened beyond the enemy's line.
Lieutenant Mackinson was the first to discover it and call the attention of the others.
A Taube, one of the smaller, lighter, and more easily handled aeroplanes, and used in great numbers by the Germans, shot into the air at great speed from behind the Boche entrenchments. In its upward course its path was a dizzy spiral, and, if one on the ground might judge, its pilot seemed to be seeking a particular air channel. At least that was the way it looked.
Then, from almost the same point from which it had come into view, half a dozen other planes rose into the air, following in the path of the first, and also flying at top speed. Up to then there was nothing so very strange about the whole procedure. It simply indicated that those manning the American and French anti-aircraft guns, and the aviators of those two armies, should get ready to repel an enemy air raid.
But the queer thing occurred when every one of the pursuing planes opened up their machine-guns almost simultaneously upon the first. And even this might have been considered a well-designed hoax, were it not for the unmistakable evidence that the first aeroplane, the Taube, had been hit.
Still going at maximum speed, and now on a straight line toward the American side, without seeking a further height, the Taube several times wavered, and, a moment later, almost turned over.
But the pilot righted her, and even as the pursuers began gaining, and still kept up an incessant fire, he pointed her nose downward toward the American lines.
Four American planes sailed off and upward to meet the oncoming German air armada. But from the ground it could be seen that the man in the observer's place in the Taube was making desperate signals.