“We must go on,” said Arturus just then, “for we may be overtaken by some of the Turks fleeing from the place.”
“But did you notice, Jack, that the aeroplane seemed to fly away up the coast and not out to sea?” ventured Amos.
“Well, now, I hadn’t thought anything about that until you spoke; but now you have mentioned it, Amos, I believe that’s a fact.”
“Of course we couldn’t see anything,” continued the other, “but I took great pains to follow the sound, and it kept right along ahead of us.”
“From that you figure something out, of course?” asked the other. “I can give a pretty good guess what it is.”
“That aviator must have been the same man who hung over the trenches today, and dropped so many bombs,” Amos ventured. “We know he came from the upper camp; and I feel dead sure he was my brother Frank. If that’s so, then here he’s gone and distinguished himself again.”
“It certainly looks as if Frank might be in the front rank of the Allied pilots if it turns out as we believe,” Jack permitted himself to say; “but now we’d better quiet down again, Amos. Arturus doesn’t like to have us chattering away like this, even if it is in whispers.”
“Because we are not yet out of the bushes,” added the Greek guide suggestively, by which they understood him to mean that with half the distance still to be covered there always existed a possibility that other enemies might be encountered.
Jack, as he walked along in the wake of Arturus, was thinking very naturally of what wonderful things this war had already brought forth, what with its Zeppelins, the submarine raiders which Germany was letting loose to prey upon the fleets and commerce of her enemies; the marvelous big guns which were able to smash the most formidable steel defences known to modern military science; and the amazing trenches made of concrete which existed for hundreds of miles along the fighting line in Northern France and Belgium.
He wondered what would be the next marvel brought out by one side or the other. At that time the asphyxiating gases of the Germans, and the dreadful liquid fire had not been used; but Jack could easily anticipate something along these lines.