“Oh! if there were only half a dozen of those aeroplanes instead of just the lone one, I believe they’d soon have the victory clinched. The Turks never could stand a rain of bombs from the skies, and they’d skedaddle over the brow of the hill like scared deer.”
“Are you looking at the man in the flier, Amos?” asked the other.
“You may be sure I am, Jack, as hard as ever I can.”
“And do you think it can be your brother Frank; because this machine must be the one we heard had landed on the peninsula at the upper camp?”
“I wish I knew; I certainly would give a heap to be sure. Jack, you see he’s got his head all muffled up; and with goggles on even his brother wouldn’t know him in that disguise. But something tells me it must be Frank. From all we’ve heard about his dashing work I feel that no other air pilot could take such desperate chances as that fellow does, and carry it through. Frank was known for a bold boy years and years ago. He would stay all night in a house they said was haunted; and Jack, he found out that the noises came from the air whistling through a knot-hole. Now his scare held off the Turks. They can’t win!”
CHAPTER XIX.
AFTER THE FIGHT WAS OVER.
“Why do you say that, Amos?” demanded Jack, quickly.
“Oh! because our reinforcements have arrived,” replied the other, exultantly. “Look further down the hill and you’ll see them leaping forward like tigers. They act as if wild to get in the scrap; and when they do it’s all over with Mr. Turk on this day. They have made up their minds to take those trenches and they’ve just got to do it, that’s all.”
Jack had felt all the thrills that such a picture is apt to bring in its train when the heart beats in full sympathy for one or the other of the combatants. He had tried his best to keep from taking sides, but found it impossible, when he believed that the principles for which the Allies were fighting were the same as those of the big republic across the sea.