"Ah, Renaud! The top of the morning to you! Now, let's aboard. We'll have a gang of Boches down upon us if we don't."
He ran to take the extra seat upon the Nieuport, waving his hand cheerfully. His spirit of reckless courage seemed to inspire them all. Sanderson helped Belinda to mount into the Voisin, which was able to carry their weight besides that of the pilot and the machine gun.
Renaud remained behind as the aeroplanes ascended, one after the other. He still had work to do within the enemy's lines. In the gray dawn he stood, a dim figure in the clearing as the airplanes spiraled upward.
Yet somehow he seemed a dominating figure, too. It is by the work of such men as well as the bravery of the aviator-observers that the Allies are to conquer in this war.
The squadron of French airplanes had now drifted over the battleline while up from the German camps had sprung tauben and Fokkers in swift pursuit.
The Voisin and its accompanying Nieuport rose higher in an attempt to escape the observation of these enemy craft. Both Sanderson and Belinda, unprepared for the aerial journey, soon began to suffer from the cold.
Renaud had, in the end, forced his farmer's smock upon the girl. She cowered under this, her teeth chattering, her extremities fast becoming numb. The pilot saw their suffering and made himself heard above the noise of the motor.
"Which shall it be, Monsieur and Mademoiselle? Frost or bullets?"
"It is a slim choice," groaned Sanderson. "But we may escape shrapnel and mitrailleuse pellets. The cold takes her breath, Monsieur. I beg of you, descend!"
The great machine volplaned. It moved so slowly compared with the Nieuport, that the latter craft winged circles about the Voisin, ready to stave off attack.