“Did not return with the rest of the escort!” gasped George. He felt a peculiar dryness come into his throat and into his heart a sinking feeling. “Were the escorting machines attacked?” he asked.
“Yes; there was a lively scrimmage.”
“Great Scott! This is terrible!” murmured George. Then, speaking into the transmitter again, he asked, weakly: “Have you no news of them at all?”
“None whatever,” came the response. “We have telephoned to the observation post at the front, but they can tell us nothing. Hale, however, has been given credit for preventing the destruction of the Caudron machine.”
By this time several others were crowding around. All had become accustomed to tragic happenings and the occasional disappearance of some of their members; yet every fresh event of the kind brought with it the same distressing pangs.
“This is bad news, indeed!” exclaimed Victor Gilbert. “Poor Don Hale! Poor Albert! I wonder—I do wonder what could have happened to them!”
“I hope it will not be the official communique that tells us,” said George, gloomily, as he replaced the telephone on the hook.
CHAPTER XVIII—THE RED SQUADRON
When Don Hale saw the red planes of Captain Baron Von Richtofen behind him he certainly received the shock of his life. The oncoming storm, the sense of solitude and the great expanse above the clouds had all lulled him into a sense of security.
A moment’s indecision nearly finished his career as a combat pilot. Streams of bullets were flashing past, and one of them, crashing through the little curved wind shield in front of his head, brought him to a realization that only the quickest possible action could save his life.