A prolonged spell of steady westerly winds delayed the British air squadron's return to the Western Front. A week or more had passed since the arrival of Blake and his companions on Russian soil, and although the hospitality of their hosts exceeded all expectations, the airmen eagerly looked for a favourable breeze to aid them on their lengthy flight.
Especially was there anxiety when they learnt the news—a widespread secret—that the great Anglo-French offensive was shortly to take place. On the Eastern Front, especially in Bukovina, the Muscovite troops were displaying great activity. Already the Austrians were being pushed back in headlong rout towards the Carpathians. In Italy, too, their frenzied offensive, which in the first instance had pushed Cadorna's troops from the Trentino Mountains, had been checked and hurled backwards by the magnificent valour of the Italian armies.
On the Western Front Verdun was still proving the grave of thousands of the Kaiser's troops, who, in hopes of being able to announce a splendid though costly victory, had been ineffectually hurled day after day upon the grim, determined lines of Frenchmen backed by their tremendously effective "Seventy-fives."
Meanwhile in the neighbourhood of Riga Hindenburg had to be watched. More, his projected offensive had to be met and broken. Here, too, there was a good prospect of success for the Allied arms, for not only had the Russians vast reserves of men and munitions, but since the bad smashing of the German Fleet off the Jutland shore, the danger of a naval attack upon Riga was at an end. And not only that; the almost intact Russian Baltic Fleet, aided by a number of British submarines, could co-operate with the land forces and seriously menace the left flank of the German armies in Courland.
Private Thomas Smith, who was now putting on weight rapidly and was fast recovering his normal health and spirits, had been made a supplementary member of the battleplane's crew. On learning the names of his new officers he made the announcement that for three months during his incarceration at Meseritz he had been acting as servant to Athol's father.
There were, he reported, four British officers at the prison camp, on whom the task of maintaining discipline devolved; for, owing to the horrible sanitary conditions and totally inadequate food, typhus had broken out in the camp. It was Wittenburg all over again. The Prussian guards, terrorised by the thought that they were exposed to the dread disease, had kept well aloof from their prisoners, supplying them food by means of iron trucks that were hauled in and out of the camp by endless ropes. To make matters worse the trucks were liberally sprinkled with chloride of lime, which had the effect of making the already unwholesome food absolutely unpalatable.
"Not a single man of us left the camp alive during those days," continued Smith. "Afterwards it got a lot better, so they hired us out like a lot of cattle. As things went it turned out all right for me. No, sir, I haven't seen anything of Colonel Hawke for nearly six months. He was all right then—as well as could be expected in that horrible den."
At daybreak on the following morning the rumble of guns, that for the past week had been intermittent, increased into a continuous and terrific roar. All along the Courland Front dense clouds of smoke drifted slowly across the Russian lines. The ground, twenty miles from the actual scene of the furious cannonade, trembled under the pulsations of the concentrated artillery.
"Would you like to have a nearer view of the action?" enquired the courteous Russian colonel who acted as the British officers' principal host. "To-day we hope to achieve something."
"Our battleplane is at your service, sir," replied Blake.