“They’ve given up the pursuit,” Billy observed presently, showing that all this while he had been keeping an eye on those swift flying little Taube machines that had continued to dart hither and thither, like angry hornets, yet not daring to make an attack.
Since there was no longer any visible sign of danger, the boys were able to once more observe the checkerboard picture that lay far below them. Accustomed to being up among the clouds, they knew just how to gauge distances, and in this way could get the relative value of things. A novice would have found his calculations along these lines sadly at variance with the facts.
“For one,” said Billy, his voice showing signs of trembling, “I won’t be sorry to hug up to a stove when we get to our hangar once more. This air is bitter up here, and seems to go right through you. We’re in for a decent spell of weather, it strikes me, Frank.”
“Yes, it ought to last another day or so,” the other replied, as though its condition was of importance.
Indeed, when the wind blew the pilots were kept from making their daily reconnoissance. During storms and snow, or even rain, it was useless to take the risks of venturing aloft, because the view would be so limited, with the earth shrouded in fog or snow squalls, that it would not pay to ascend.
So it was that hundreds of daring aviators would welcome this spell of quiet weather as an opportunity that could not be allowed to slip past without being taken advantage of.
“We’ve passed over the trenches along the canal,” announced Billy, still handling the glasses, and as usual telling the busy pilot what he saw. “Now I can hear the British shouting hoarsely and they seem to be waving all sorts of things up at us. Do you think they know we are supposed to be trying out this seaplane which was really contracted for by the French Government before the war broke out?”
“They have guessed that we must be friendly to their cause, because they saw something of what went on back there when we struck that mine field,” Frank explained without the least hesitation.
He had been dropping lower the while, partly because the air was so keen and cutting so many thousands of feet up and also on account of the fact that they had nothing more to fear from hostile demonstrations.
“There’s the road to Dunkirk and Calais that the Kaiser said his men would tramp along in time to be in town at Christmas,” laughed Billy, pointing his gloved hand downward to where could be seen various detachments of marching troops, with scores of huge motor vans taking supplies out along the fighting line for the men who held the trenches, and the bridge-heads across the river.