Presently the flying Nieuport carried him to another world equally as strange as the one through which he had just passed. Just below him, to the limits of vision, there extended, like a soft and moving blanket, the billowing forms of the wind-swept clouds.
And skimming across their surface was the grotesquely-shaped shadow of the speeding aeroplane.
Then it suddenly occurred to Don that his situation wasn’t so very much improved after all. During the mêlée and his subsequent experiences he had totally lost track of his bearings. In which direction was the aviation camp? That was a question he could not begin to answer. One thing alone cheered him—he was, at least, headed for the French lines.
And while debating in his mind how soon he might dare to make a plunge through the vapor he happened to glance behind him. And that single glance was the means of causing him to make a discovery—a discovery that was so startling, so terrifying that the blood seemed to almost freeze in his veins.
Bearing down upon him, and almost within firing range, were two great Albatross planes—both of a scarlet hue.
There could be no doubt about it—they belonged to Captain Baron Von Richtofen’s Red Squadron of Death.
CHAPTER XVI—THE EMPTY HOUSE
During the afternoon of the same day that Don Hale was destined to have his great adventures George Glenn and Bobby Dunlap, off duty, decided to take a little jaunt about the surrounding country.
Leaving the main highway the boys struck off toward the southeast.
The road sometimes took them past stuccoed walls, gray, chipped and broken by the ravages of time; and here and there, rising high above the faded red coping, were the tall and graceful poplars so characteristic of the landscapes. Once in a while, the two, their youthful curiosity aroused, peeped between the bars of the entrance gates to get a look, if they could, at the mansion so secluded from public gaze.