A few minutes later Dastral pointed to a cluster of red roofs about a little church.
"What is that place?"
The observer, with one finger still on the little waterproof map in front of him, shouted back, "Beugny on the left. Haplincourt on the right."
"Yes, yes!" nodded the pilot, edging a little more south-east, as though the railway were not his objective. In so doing he alarmed Fisker, his companion, who feared he had misunderstood him.
"What's the matter?" he shouted. "You're leaving the target. The bridge-head and the ravine is over there, east-nor'-east. That's where the junction is, at Velu."
"Right-o, old man! Glad you're awake. Keep your eyes well skinned away to the east for Fokkers and Rolands. This is Himmelman's favourite hunting-ground. He'll be down on us from the clouds like a thunderbolt, if we're not careful. I want to get up to twelve thousand, and come back on to the junction from the east."
"Oh-ay!" came the laconic rejoinder from Fisker, who quickly understood the manoeuvre. Then, leaving his map for a moment, he swept the horizon for any signs there might be of the enemy's 'planes.
So for nearly an hour the machines, playing at "follow-my-leader," swept round and round, watching and waiting in an altitude where, to put it mildly, it was cold enough to freeze a kettle of boiling water in ten minutes.
Cold? Yes, it was bitterly cold. Both Dastral and Fisker felt it through their thick leather, wool-lined coats.
They patrolled the country behind the German lines, and watched the smoke curling upwards from a dozen French villages in the enemy's possession. At length they crossed the loop line near Barastre, skimmed along over Ytres, and the Bois Havrincourt; sailed lightly across the silvery streak of the river Exuette, until, beyond the wood and the village they espied the main railway line that threaded its way to Bapaume.