"Come on, then; we haven't a second to lose."
The next instant they were over the top, and making a dash for the spot already hidden in the fog.
"Come back there, you fellows!" cried a sergeant of the Wiltshires, whose company lined the trench. "Where the deuce are you going to?"
"To save Lieutenant Dastral and his observer, sergeant! Don't let your men fire on us. We'll be back in five minutes," shouted Bratby.
"Devil a bit of use you fellows throwing your lives away like that. The Boches are sure to attack under cover of the fog. Come back, the pilot must have been dead an hour. The machine was ablaze when it crashed," called the sergeant again.
To this they returned no answer, but scampered as fast as they could across the broken ground, creeping under barbed wire, and stumbling into shell holes, for the ground had been torn and rent by the morning's bombardment, and huge gaps had been made in the barbed wire defences.
Now, when Dastral, his ammunition expended, his machine damaged to such an extent that it scarcely held together, had reached the British lines that morning, after the brilliant reconnaissance he had carried out with his Flight, he made a steep gradient to get to earth at the first possible landing-place, but even as he made the attempt he knew he would fail. The wasp's fuselage was plugged in a hundred places. The petrol feed had been severed by shrapnel, and a shell from the German lines, hitting the reserve petrol tank, set it ablaze, just at the moment when he was making for the ground.
Half-blinded by the flames and scorched by the heat, he, nevertheless, held the joystick firmly, and tried to reach his objective, but, when near the trenches, the machine nose-dived and crashed, side-slipping to the earth, so that the left aileron struck the ground first. Then she rolled over, and crumpled up. She did not strike the ground with any great force, because Dastral had kept her so well in hand.
Disentangling himself from the wreckage first, bruised, and burnt, he yet remembered Jock, who had received still greater injury.
"Jock!" he called. "Are you hurt?"