"Where you been, Pete?" she asked. "Why you leave us all?"
"I wanted to learn to fly. Americaines, they give me a chance."
The other plane, now spiraling upward, came within range of the Fokkers, and altogether the united firing from the two big biplanes was too much for the Boches, so they gradually retired with a loss of one plane, whose pilot Erwin had disposed of, as we have seen.
Half an hour later they quietly dropped down at the aerodrome. The first gray hues of morning were just diffusing a lighter pallor and the stars were already dimming when on the deserted levels in front of the hangars the biplanes finally came to rest. Then out from a sentry box came the captain's orderly, who seemed much astonished.
"Well, sir, I didn't look for you all back so soon. I rather feared that you might have to remain away another day."
"We had ladies to look after," remarked Byers. "That made us hurry back sooner. Here is Pete, of whom you thought such dreadful things. Pete is learning. Now, while we take Miss Daskam and her maid to their quarters, I want you to go to the through line to Dunkirk, and ask for Baron Suvahl. He should be somewhere about there, if we have been rightly informed."
After that the captain with characteristic courtesy took the two tired yet grateful women to the women's Red Cross station and left them in kindly, congenial company. It was here Senator Walsen and his daughters were staying. When they and Miss Aida became acquainted at breakfast next morning it was astonishing how many mutual acquaintances they discovered, yet mostly back in the dear old country across the ocean.
About the middle of the morning a tall, spare, resolute young man, accompanied by a plainly garbed lady, his wife, met Captain Byers at the latter's office. Simultaneously there came two other personages plainly garbed in Belgian costume, yet most distinguished aside from that.
There was a certain respect, almost deference, in the way Baron Suvahl and his wife met the King, for one of the visitors was really King Albert of Belgium. His wife, the queen, was even more democratic. In fact, in the manner of all, including the Americans, was that which marked them as fully tinctured with the true democratic spirit that this war has so fully brought out among all the Allies.
Several of the British and French generals dropped in. And there were sundry secret and semi-secret conferences, one result of which was the sending out that night of a number of our airmen on secret scouting trips, none of which, however, resulted in much aerial fighting but embraced a deal of sly spying upon enemy positions and also various "look-ins" behind the lines.