Mounting in spirals, as usual, the two boys soon began to have a splendid view, not only of the sea, but of the nearby land as well.
“Oh! look, Frank, over there in the west; those must be the famous white chalk cliffs of Dover across the channel we see. To think that we are looking down at France, and even Belgium, and on England at the same time.”
“That’s about where the Kaiser is aiming to throw those monster shells from his big forty-two centimeter guns, after he has captured Calais, you know,” remarked Frank.
“I guess that dream’s been smashed by now, and there’s nothing in it,” Billy was saying. “Not that the Germans didn’t try mighty hard to get there, and tens of thousands of their brave fellows gave up their lives to carry out a whim of the commander, which might not have amounted to much, after all. Oh! Frank, with the glass here I can see our hangar as easy as anything.”
“That’s good, Billy. I was just going to ask you to look and see if those disappointed spies had done anything to it. I’m glad to hear you say it’s still there in good shape. I expect we’ll have more or less need of that shed from time to time.”
“Well, we don’t mean to spend many nights paddling around on the sea,” affirmed Billy, now beginning to turn his glass upon the country they were approaching, and which lay to the north of Dunkirk.
Frank had changed their course so that they were now over the land. They could easily see the camps of the British troops, though they were so far above them that moving companies looked like marching ants. The tents could not be concealed, and there were besides numerous low sheds, which doubtless sheltered supplies of every description, needed by the army fighting in the trenches further north.
As Frank drew more upon the motors that were keeping up a noisy chorus, the huge seaplane rushed through the air and gave them a change of landscape every little while.
The sun was in plain sight, although just beginning to touch things below with golden fingers. Covering land and water, they could see over a radius that must have been far more than fifty miles.
Billy kept uttering exclamations, intended to express the rapture that filled his breast. In all his experience he had never gazed upon anything to compare with what he now saw spread out below him as though upon a monster checkerboard. African wilds, Western deserts and Polar regions of eternal ice were all dwarfed in interest by this spectacle.