“I reckon it also means a machine smashed to bits in landing,” chirped Peur Jamais. “They say it costs the French government an average of five thousand dollars to train its aviators. I’ll bet in your case, Drugstore, they’ll get off cheap at ten thousand.”
Don Hale, his head thrust out of the window, now saw the returning aviators tumbling off the big camion which had halted before the door.
In another moment they bustled into the barracks, and the yellowish rays of the oil lamps fell with strange and picturesque effect across their forms. Each was encased in a great leather coat and trousers and wore a helmet made from the same heavy material. Several, too, still had on their grotesque-looking goggles.
“They make me think of Arctic explorers,” declared Don, with a delighted little laugh.
Don was experiencing a pleasurable sensation, not unmixed with a certain sense of awe. Here, right before him, were actually some of the men who but a short time before had been piloting their machines at dizzy heights in the sky. The fascination of it all seemed to grip him strangely—to make him impatient and anxious to begin his initiation into the art of flying.
“Another little eaglet, sir, ready to carry terror into the heart of the Kaiser.”
In these words Tom Dorsey was introducing him to one of the “real birds.”
The aviator was only a young chap, not many years older than Don, but, like many of the Americans and Frenchmen present, he had allowed his face to remain unshaven, and the resulting growth of beard gave him quite an appearance of maturity.
“There’s a big lot of difference between the way flying schools are conducted over here and in America and Canada,” volunteered the aviator, whose name, Don learned, was Hampton Coles. “On our side of the big pool discipline is probably as strict as in any other branch of the army. We go in for drills and all that sort of thing, while in France, at least at present, the schools are only semi-military in character. The object is to turn out flyers as quickly as possible, which means casting a whole lot of theories, red tape and non-essentials into the junk heap. Flyers are needed—badly needed. The ‘eyes of the army,’ they call them.”
“At what time does work begin?” asked Don.