LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- [“The bear’s grease proved to be as potent as it smelt.”]
- [“They sat side by side on a small heap of straw”]
- [“‘He was figgerin’ to lose ye in the woods’”]
- [“It was hard work and slow progress”]
- [“He ... thrust his head and shoulders out of the window”]
TOM AKERLEY
CHAPTER I
THE FLIGHT
The night was hot and hazy. The aerodrome was in darkness save for a moving light in the black maw of one of the hangars and a shine from the open window of the office on the other side of the ground. All the machines were down and in.
Two men were in the small hut which served as field-headquarters and office for this particular unit of the Dominion Air Force. They sat at opposite sides of a large table, one leaning back in his chair with a cigar in his mouth, the other stooped forward over a map which he studied intently. Clerks, orderlies, pilots, observers and mechanics all were gone, with the exceptions of these two and the man with the lantern across at the hangars.
“Ottawa seems determined to decorate every one who ever flew, be he alive or dead,” remarked the elder of the two, without removing the cigar from his mouth and still gazing upward at the low ceiling. “We seem to have more Military Crosses and such things than we know what to do with.”
“Yes, sir?” returned the younger officer inquiringly, looking up from the map.
“It seems so to me,” continued Colonel Nasher. “You knew a fellow named Angus Bruce, I believe.”