"Suppose I ought to go back to the early stages of the war," said Athol. "You see, one yarn does for both of us, since we share and share alike. Fifteen months ago we were at a boarding-school in the south of England. It was only a small affair. We were prefects and all that sort of thing, and had practically finished our education before entering an engineering college. Dick's father is a major serving in Mesopotamia, my governor is a lieutenant-colonel and a prisoner of war at Meseritz. We have no relatives left in England. After a time we ran away from school and enlisted. You see, we are fairly big fellows and somehow we couldn't hang back. The training part wasn't half bad, although we had a couple of gypsies, an ex-convict, and a solicitor as billet-mates. Then we did five months in France, and got on jolly well until we were both offered commissions. That put the hat on the show."
"How was that?" asked Mr. Blake.
"The colonel sent us back to the regimental depot, and while our papers were under consideration the War Office made us produce our birth certificates. Then they found out that we were both under eighteen, so they pushed us out of the army—worse luck."
"Wouldn't even give us a chance to go back to the ranks," added Dick. "And we were having quite a good time. We'd stuck it through the best part of the winter, and the warmer weather was coming; but it was no use. They turned us down."
"And so we thought we'd have a fling before we settle down to engineering," continued Athol. "We both have a little money. We bought the motor-bike and side-car—got it dirt cheap from a fellow who was going to join up. We started off through the Midlands, were in the thick of the last Zepp raid in Northampton, went on through Newark, York, Halifax, and Lancashire, and then to Cheshire. From thence to Shrewsbury and here we are."
"What regiment were you in?" enquired their host.
The lads produced the documents that had effectually floored the recruiting sergeants at Shrewsbury. They were their discharges from the Loyal North Lancashires.
"Wonder, with your mechanical turn of mind, that you hadn't tried for the Royal Engineers or the Flying Corps," remarked Mr. Blake.
"We did have a shot at the R.F.C., but there were no vacancies at that moment," explained Athol. "We were rather cut up about it. But we did see some flying out there. Once we saw our monoplanes bring down a couple of Taubes one after the other; but sometimes we saw what we didn't want to see—our machines outclassed by those Fokkers. The brutes have the advantage, you know. They climb much more quickly than ours. It's not that they are more powerfully engined. It's the design. Our fellows are frightfully keen, but they are handicapped."
"You seem keen on aviation?"