Notwithstanding the whirl of excitement, the young pilot had vaguely impressed upon his mind the disturbing truth that the lightning was steadily growing brighter—the reverberations of thunder heavier. To handle the Nieuport successfully in the wind and rain he knew would be a most difficult task.
The boy began to feel, now, the inevitable reaction.
He was seized with a consuming anxiety to be away from the midst of danger. But the rushing currents of air being dead against the Nieuport it seemed to be just crawling along.
For the first time the pilot dared to rise higher. He was passing over one of those desolate stretches which told most eloquently of the terrible conflicts which had taken place. Everywhere great shell-holes, in places overlapping one another, pitted the earth, and the bottoms of many were partly filled with muddy water left by recent rains. Of all the desolate, depressing sights which the eyes of man could look upon this seemed one of the worst. It was as though a blight had descended upon the earth, to wither and destroy everything which lay in its sinister path. Not a village—not a house remained; all were in crumbling ruins. Even the streets themselves could not be traced; and of the trees and patches of woods there remained but grotesque, gaunt trunks, entirely stripped of branches and leaves.
Of course this was not a new sight to the boy, and, under the circumstances, he paid but little attention to it. Thoughts of the trenches over which he must pass, and of the flying “Archies” the plane would be sure to encounter were in his mind. He must ascend still higher.
“This has been a trip, sure enough!” muttered Don. “But if I get through safely I’ll never regret it. To-day, I feel that I have done my bit for the Allied cause.”
Continually, he glanced in all directions. Vigilance was the price of life. Many an airman had been stealthily approached from behind and brought down without ever knowing what had struck him, and in the gloomy shadows cast by the heavy storm-clouds it was doubly necessary to search the heavens for every sign of the foe.
But, in spite of all the pilot’s extreme care, he was destined to make presently another discovery—a discovery which once more set the blood throbbing in his temples. It was the sudden appearance, at about his own altitude, of another of Captain Baron Von Richtofen’s planes. It had approached dangerously near, too, before he was aware of its presence.
It took Don Hale an instant to recover his wits. One moment he had seemed to be alone in the vast expanse, and in the next he was confronted by one of the scarlet enemy.
With lightning velocity the Boche bore down upon the Nieuport, and before Don Hale could make a move to alter his course luminous bullets were cutting a fiery trail through the gloom about him.