Meanwhile Miss Daskam was whispering to Erwin:
"Do you remember the last night at the chateau, how you would not take all the quilts I wanted you to, though the night was cold and we had plenty?"
"Indeed I do, miss!" Orris was grinning now. "I just knew we did not leave you and Brenda enough! Did we, Brenda?"
Turning to that stalwart guardian in petticoats who watched over the two sisters from Chicago, one of whom had married a Belgian nobleman, Brenda shrugged her massive shoulders.
"You must ask Mademoiselle Aida. I was mooch too warm; yes, vera mooch. Yes la — la! We Flemings know what cold is more than what it is to be too — too warm. Don' you bodder, sar!"
And so the many more or less friendly, even solicitous conversations went on until the midnight hour had fled. By then the groups of friends and visitors had melted back to the rear into the misty regions where lay the small French village that had sheltered them together with the aerodrome itself.
It might have been one o'clock or later when a bugle sounded. Up and down the long, long line aviators were scrambling into their machines while the sputter and throb of many engines punctured the night air. Some of these engines had as much as three hundred horse-power. The long continuing roar was nerve grating, yet inspiring. Swarms of small scouting machines were humming, spitting; these were the vipers or wasps of the air service.
The fleet commander and his observer had taken their places and soared into the night air. The other machines, some fifty odd in number, swiftly followed him into the misty heavens, all maneuvering like a flock of swallows until the air formation was at last right. Then a crack from the commander's revolver, and they were off like bees, following the queen, straight for the far-off enemy lines.
Much ammunition had been distributed, for they were going on a general bombing and foraging expedition over those trenches upon which the now ready offensive was to be let loose. Dimly they rose up, up, still up, six thousand, eight, even ten thousand feet, the last height mainly for the fighting scouts, the battle and bombing machines keeping lower down.
Over No-Man's-Land they flew towards the battle-torn trenches behind which lay the Boches. Tiny specks began to rise up far to the eastward in the German rear. They were the enemy planes coming to meet them. In number they seemed to be somewhat equal to our own fleet. The Allies might have fought these, but such was not the present game. They were there to protect their side; while the Allies were out first to destroy, to smash the morale of the soldiers below, to shatter and mutilate and terrorize those in the trenches before our infantry, now probably starting out, should be where their own conclusive work would begin.