There were many vacant places that evening in the building that served as a mess. Youngsters who, a few hours previously, had left the aerodrome like modern knights of the air, were lying crushed beyond recognition amidst the wreckage of their trusted steeds. The price of victory was a heavy one; the toll of airmen\'s lives enormous; yet the sacrifice had not been made in vain. The soil of Flanders and Picardy, drenched with British blood, was hourly becoming a wider and stronger barrier between the modern Hun and the shores of Great Britain—shores that, held inviolate from the feet of a would-be invader, had nevertheless felt the effect of German shells and bombs.
The worst was over. Fritz was done. The stranglehold of the British fleet had paralysed the most highly-trained military nation in the world, and now the civilian armies of Britain, France, and the United States were reaping the benefit, and were steadily driving the Hun towards the Rhine. No longer was it possible—thanks to the ever-increasing efficiency of the R.A.F.—for German machines to bomb the capital of the British Empire, or even to make "cut-and-run" raids upon the south-eastern ports. Outclassed and outnumbered, Fritz was a back number on land, on the sea, and in the air.
There were constant rumours of the Huns clamouring for an armistice, and the fear of an armistice filled the Allies with alarm. They felt themselves in the position of a man who, having caught a burglar on his premises, is compelled to hand the criminal over to be tried by a notoriously lenient judge. They realized that Germany might come to terms that would undo the result of four years\' fighting. The diplomat would upset the carefully-laid plans of the soldier; therefore it was imperative to continue to strike hard while there was yet time.
From the North Sea to the Swiss frontier the German line had cracked. British and Belgian troops were in possession of Bruges; Ypres was no longer a salient; Cambrai, the scene of a grave reverse that paved the way for a gigantic German offensive, was in British hands; the French had overrun the debatable Chemin des Dames and had put Rheims beyond the range of the German heavy artillery; Big Bertha and her sisters could no longer disturb the equanimity of the citizens of Paris; while the Americans had flattened out the Saint Mihiel salient, and were enveloping the fortress of Metz. After years of trench warfare, the news seemed too good to be true.
Secret orders taken on the captured ground gave abundant evidence of the effect of the predominating weight of the Allies. Frantic appeals for reserves and munitions—appeals that, read between the lines, showed a mistrust between German officers and men—orders for the strictest conservation of shells; these and a hundred other signs told of the crisis through which Imperial Germany was passing—a crisis which was bound to tell against her.
Derek Daventry\'s period off duty was of short duration. In the circumstances he reckoned himself lucky to have twelve hours, most of which he spent in sleeping soundly. In those strenuous times, when every available man and machine had to spend hours in the air with but brief intervals of rest, it was only through sheer exhaustion that pilots and observers were excused duty.
He was off again at five in the morning, flying in another EG machine, almost identical with his much-regretted No. 19. The biplanes composing the "flight" were ordered to harass the Germans holding a series of defensive works at a distance of about five miles farther back than the ground captured by the tanks on the previous day.
In the present phase of the operations the employment of tanks was out of the question. Tanks are capable of surmounting many obstacles; those they cannot surmount they can frequently demolish; but the mastodons have their limits. They don\'t like marshy, boggy ground; while a canal or river offers an impassable barrier unless a bridge is available.
Eight hundred yards in front of the Huns\' position ran a broad canal, seventy-four feet in width and six feet in depth. Every swing-bridge had been blown up and the lock-gates destroyed.
Earlier in the day British and French infantry, under cover of a strong artillery-barrage, had succeeded in crossing the canal by means of pontoons, and had established themselves securely on the opposite bank; but so severe was the German machine-gun fire that the advance was held up and the troops compelled to dig themselves in.
Already thousands of sand-bags were being dropped into the canal to form a means of getting the tanks across, but a considerable time would necessarily elapse before the work, carried out under fire, could be perfected; while it was evident, from the determined resistance of the enemy, that the attackers were being held up by a crack Prussian division.
The attacking \'planes flew well to the east of their objective, and, turning, bore down, with the light of the rising sun well behind them. It meant flying against the wind, but when engaged in raking a trench, speed is not of paramount importance.
Five thousand feet above the machine-gunning biplanes hovered a squadron of battleplanes, ready at the first appearance of a Hun to swoop down and wipe him out of existence should he have the temerity to attack. But not a German machine showed itself, and the huge battleplanes had to be content with affording moral support to their smaller sisters of the air.
The German infantry had no stomach for the swift death that threatened from the sky. At the first appearance of the biplanes, the field-greys promptly abandoned their fire-steps and dived into their dug-outs. This was hardly what the British airmen expected, since it is to little purpose to fire thousands of rounds of small-arm ammunition into an empty trench.
Almost simultaneously three batteries of Archies opened fire, and soon the biplanes were rocking, lurching, and side-slipping in the air-eddies caused by the bursting shrapnel.
It was now the battleplanes\' opportunity. Leaving two of their number to wireless the news that the enemy trench was no longer held, the remainder dived steeply at the troublesome anti-air-craft batteries. Although one British machine was shot down completely out of control, the remainder attained their objectives. With bombs of terrific explosive power they wiped the Archies out of existence, and then proceeded to drop more bombs upon the dug-outs in order to induce Fritz to bolt from his lair.
Meanwhile the British infantry were advancing in open order with fixed bayonets and preceded by bombers. Viewed from aloft, the movement lacked vigour. A battle photograph, taken from an aeroplane, is a very tame picture compared with the results obtained by daring cinematographers, who frequently film the process of "going over the top". The absence of sound—or rather the drowning of it by the roar of the engine—the grotesque foreshortening of the figures, and their relatively slow rate of progress all fail to convey any picturesque aspect of a modern battle when observed from a machine flying high overhead.
Derek was describing a series of circles, ready to traverse the line of trenches at an instant\'s notice, when he saw a sight that bore testimony to the stubborn nature of the Prussian infantryman. It was not without a set purpose that the German High Command had manned this sector with picked troops. Apparently the underground works were of a very extensive nature, and concealed not only the troops presumably in the trench, but very stiff reserves as well. At a signal, the Prussians issued in swarms from their subterranean retreats. Along the parapet flashed a crackling line of fire, as machine-guns by scores and hundreds of rifles loosed their leaden hail upon the advancing khaki troops.
No living creature could last for long in that fire-swept zone. The ground was dotted with dead and wounded, many of the latter still using their rifles against their foes. Individual courage was of no avail against the diabolical scientific devices of the Huns, who used petrol-bomb, flame-thrower, and poison-gas with horrible effect.
Stolidly the khaki-clad infantry retired to their former positions. Here, on the defensive, and with their backs to the broad canal, they must wait and sit tight until heavy artillery and tanks turned the scale of battle.
It was a chance for the airmen. Up and down, often at less than twenty feet above the densely-packed German lines, they flew, their machine-guns cutting broad swaths in the field-grey masses. Often hidden in clouds of smoke, risking collision with other British machines, the biplanes soared and swooped until red-hot guns and empty ammunition-trays called a halt.
Derek had just fired his last round, and was preparing to climb and fly back for more ammunition, when, like a blow from a titanic hammer, a fragment of shell shattered the swiftly-revolving blades of the propeller. Other pieces of flying metal severed the aileron-controls, cut jagged rents in the doped canvas fabric, and damaged the tail planes.
Switching off the now useless motor, which had begun to race furiously, Derek vainly endeavoured to glide back to the other side of the canal. The effort was beyond the power of the crippled \'bus. It was evident that, if not exactly out of control, there was very little tractability in its nature.
"She\'s bound to crash," thought Derek. "Hope to goodness I can get clear of Fritz\'s line."
In spite of imminent peril, and the possibility of a tremendous crash, the young pilot\'s nerve did not desert him. Bullets were flying past in showers of metal, for nothing pleases the Hun better than to riddle a tricolour-circled machine that is falling helplessly to earth.
The actual fall was of short duration, although to Derek it seemed of interminable length. He mentally marked the spot where the ill-fated machine would crash—a shell-pitted piece of ground about one hundred and twenty yards from the first-line German trench.
"Now for it!" muttered Derek, as the ground appeared to rise to greet the disabled mechanical bird. "What an unholy mess of things there\'ll be!"
Relaxing his hold of the now useless joy-stick, and unfastening his quick-release belt, Derek raised both hands above his head, grasped and bore down the muzzle of his after machine-gun. Then, sliding under the decking of the fuselage, he waited.
With a thud that shook every bone and muscle of his body, and well-nigh wrenched his arms from their sockets, the biplane struck the ground obliquely and nose first. The under-carriage splintered into matchwood, while both tyres burst with reports like that of a six-pounder gun. Then, rearing until the damaged tail stood completely on end, the distorted fuselage poised in the air like a grotesque obelisk, while the pilot, shaken and bruised, but otherwise unhurt, scrambled as quickly as he could from the wreckage and literally rolled into a shell-hole.
For some considerable time Derek lay motionless, listening to the rattle of musketry and machine-gun fire, and the crackling of his burning \'bus, until the increasing heat compelled him to make for another crater.
Somewhat to his surprise, he found that he could move; he could even have walked, but for the fact that it was highly desirable to keep close to Mother Earth. So close together were the craters that at one place their lips interlocked and formed a shallow gap. Through this passage Derek began to make his way, noiselessly and stealthily.
If he had hoped to escape detection by the alert and vengeful Huns, he was vastly mistaken. Already streams of bullets from half a dozen machine-guns were playing upon the calcined earth that formed the rims of the craters, while bombs were being lobbed into the burning debris of the crashed biplane on the off-chance of "doing in" the pilot should he have escaped being battered to death by the fall.
Even as he crawled a hot searing pain swept across his forehead. Involuntarily he clapped one hand to his eye. His fingers were wet with a warm fluid. It was his blood welling from a wound. A machine-gun bullet had inflicted a clean gash on the lower part of his forehead, completely cutting away the left eyebrow. It was a mere scratch, but very painful, the worst result being the flow of blood that, running into his eyes, temporarily blinded him.
It was some moments before Derek re............