The tense-faced pilots, however, stopped the engines in time, and, one after another, the “penguins” docilely came to a halt.
“Grand sport, sure enough!” cried Don, delightedly. He would have imparted this thought to others, too, but for the fact that not one among those all around him was paying the slightest attention to his presence. It gave Don a rather unpleasant feeling, as though he was of very little importance. It also served to make him decide to report to the sergeant of the first class at once.
Accordingly, he began walking toward the nearest group; and then, for the first time, he caught a glimpse of several of the Annamites attached to the aviation camp. Picturesque-looking little chaps they were, and unmistakably of the Orient from their yellow complexion and slanting, beady eyes to their small and stocky stature. They were about to cross the field. What was the meaning of that intrusion?
All at once Don Hale understood; and, instinctively, his eyes were turned toward the fallen “penguin,” which, like a wounded bird brought low by the huntsman’s bullet, lay where misfortune had overtaken it. A little crowd was collecting, and soon he discovered three distant figures moving slowly toward the hangars, the one in the centre supported by those on either side.
“The pilot must have been injured,” thought Don, commiseratingly.
In what seemed to be a very short time to him the sun was almost on the horizon, and eagerness to begin his task was gripping him with a strange intensity; no small boy with a lively and joyous anticipation of a visit to the “greatest show on earth” could have experienced more pleasurable sensations, and a glance toward the flying fields beyond served to even further increase them. Above the one adjoining, Bleriot monoplanes were flying at low altitudes; still further in the distance he could see airplanes piloted by more advanced members of the third and fourth class momentarily mounting in the air. The flying fields were beginning to show a pleasant warmth of color, and the Farnum and Caudron machines, high aloft, catching the sun’s reflections, sent them constantly flashing earthward. These planes possessed a certain grace, but they were heavy and clumsy craft indeed compared to several single-seaters—Nieuport or Spad machines. These far outclassing the swiftest of the feathered tribe in their flight, darted in and out, swooped downward from dizzy heights or climbed upward until their wings appeared as the faintest gossamer lines against the soft, purplish tones of the sky.
As Don set off in his quest for the sergeant the majority of the “penguins” were racing and tearing about the field in the most extraordinarily erratic fashion.
Sergeant Girodet was easily found, but, to Don Hale’s intense disappointment, the officer informed him that he would have to wait until the afternoon session, adding rather dryly:
“Monsieur will be safe and sound for several hours longer.”
Don laughed, rejoining: