The sea had now been left far behind, and Frank was veering their course somewhat toward the southeast, as though he meant to cover a different field from the first land journey.
Billy noticed this, and asked questions in order to settle matters in his own mind.
“I reckon now, Frank,” he began, “you’ve got some plan up your sleeve to make a wide circuit and see something of what’s going on down along the border of France? How about it?”
“We’re covering a strip of Belgium right now,” said the pilot, “and you can see the unfinished canal used by the Kaiser’s troops as trenches, besides all sorts of other sights where the water has flooded the lowlands when the dikes were cut in the fall by the Belgians. Now we might like to take a peep at Lille, and see what is going on in a different kind of country—where there are hills and valleys.”
“That would be fine!” exclaimed Pudge, thinking only of the wonderful pictures that would be spread out beneath them as they sailed over just below the occasional fleecy clouds.
“Of course it would be more dangerous work,” Frank hastened to tell them.
“You mean we would be shot at by batteries on the hilltops, don’t you, Frank?” Billy questioned.
“Partly that,” he was told, “and also from the treacherous cross-currents of air we would be apt to strike in such a hilly country. You never know when you may hit an air pocket, a vacuum in which danger lies for the aëroplane that is loafing, since it is apt to drop like a plummet. But we’ll have to risk all those things. If we come through all right, we’ll consider that we were well rewarded.”
“Here’s another of those nasty snow squalls heading this way, Frank!” burst out Pudge. “That makes the sixth we’ve struck. Say, let me tell you this one looks like business, too, it spreads out so wide.”
“Isn’t there any way to avoid it, Frank—by climbing up higher, for instance?” demanded Billy, as he drew his hood closer around his cheeks, and made ready to “take his medicine,” as he called it.