The moon was shining brightly, and over the plain that stretched out before them on the left the boys could see quite a distance, but no sign of human life presented itself. On the right, however, a half mile away, was a sharp rise of ground and tall trees. Toward this point they decided to proceed. Then it was that they first realized the experience of standing on a battlefield. Crossing the field they saw the ravages of artillery projectiles—deep, conical holes, five or six feet in diameter. Here, too, they found shrapnel cases, splinters of shells, skeletons of horses, fragments of bloodstained clothing and cartridge pouches. The moonlight made the path as open as day, and each object reminding of terrible conflict was apparently magnified by the white shine of the moon. The boys walked as in a dream, and were first awakened by the flapping wings of a huge bird, frightened by their approach from its perch on a broken gun-carriage.
“Let’s get out of this,” mumbled Henri; “it gives me shivery shakes; it’s a graveyard, and it seems like ghosts of dead soldiers are tracking us.”
Billy was short on nerves, but if he had been[25] called on for a confession just then he might have pleaded guilty to a tremble or two.
He managed to put on a bold front, however, and was about to give Henri a brace by telling him they would have to get used to the ways of war, when there was a sound like the roll of distant thunder far to the south.
“What’s that?”
Billy’s sudden question drove the ghosts away from Henri’s mind, and both boys ran like deer up the hill to the line of trees.
“There’s no storm over there,” panted Henri. “You can’t see a cloud as big as a man’s hand.”
“That isn’t thunder!” exclaimed Billy. “That’s cannon! They’re shooting at something!”
“There,” cried Henri, “that sounds like fire-crackers now.”
“Rifles,” observed Billy.
“Look!” Billy was pointing to what appeared, at the distance, to be a speck on the face of the moon.
The sound of gunfire increased, report after report—crack, crack, boom, boom, boom.
Across and far above the moonlit plain, arrow-like, sped a winged shadow, growing in size as it swiftly approached.
“An a?roplane!” The boys well knew that kind of a bird. They called its name in one voice.
[26]
“That’s what has been drawing the fire of those guns.”
Billy had found the problem easy to solve when he noted the getaway tactics of the coming airman.
The boys could now hear the whirring of the motor. Fifty yards away the a?roplane began to descend. Gracefully it volplaned to the earth under perfect control. It landed safely, rolled a little way, and stopped.
The boys, without a second thought, raced down the slope to greet the aviator, like one of their own kind should be greeted, but as quickly halted as they drew nearer.
The airman was dead.
He had been fatally wounded at the very start of his last flight, but just before death, at its finish, had set his planes for a descent. With his dead hands gripping the controllers, the craft had sailed to the earth. He wore the yellowish, dirt-colored khaki uniform of a British soldier.
Billy and Henri removed their caps in reverence to valor and to honor the memory of a gallant comrade who had been game to the last.
Releasing the dead aviator from his death grip on the controllers, the boys tenderly lifted the corpse from the driver’s seat in the machine and covered the upturned face and glazed eyes with the muffler the airman had worn about his neck. The[27] body was that of a youth of slight build, but well muscled. In the pockets of his blouse the boys found a pencil, a memorandum book and a photograph, reduced to small size by cutting round the face—a motherly type, dear to all hearts.
The usual mark of identity of soldiers in the field was missing, but on the third finger of the left hand was a magnificent seal ring, on which was engraved an eagle holding a scroll in its beak and clutching a sheaf of arrows in its talons.
Billy took possession of these effects with silent determination to some day deliver them to the pictured mother, if she could be found.
“The ring shows that he came of a noble house,” said Henri, who had some knowledge of heraldry.
“He was a brave lad, for all that, and noble in himself,” remarked Billy, who had the American idea that every man is measured by his own pattern.
So they gave the dead youth the best burial they could, at the foot of one of the giant trees, and sadly turned away to inspect the a?roplane that had been so strangely guided.
It was a beautiful machine, all the fine points visible to their practiced eyes—a full-rigged military biplane, armor plates and all. The tanks of extra capacity were nearly full of petrol.
“It must have been a short journey, as well as a fatal one,” said Billy. “Very likely the launching[28] was from a British ship, not far out at sea, and the purpose was to make a lookover of the German land forces around here.”
“I’d like to take a little jaunt in that machine,” sighed Henri, who could not tear himself away from the superb flyer.
“It may turn out that you will—stranger things have happened.”
Billy proved to be a prophet, but it was not a “little jaunt,” but a long ride that the boys took in that a?roplane.
An unpleasant surprise was in immediate store for them.
They decided that it was about time that they should return to their friends and the sea-plane, and were full of and eager to tell Johnson and Freeman of the results of their scouting.
“Guess the captain won’t wonder at anything we do since we brought that automobile into camp,” declared Billy. “You know he said that he hadn’t any breath to save for our next harum-scarum performance.”
“I can just see Freeman grin when I tell him that we have found a flying-machine that can beat his sea-sailer a mile. That’s my part of the story, you know,” added Henri.
“I can’t help thinking of the poor fellow who rode her last,” was Billy’s sober response.
The boys were nearing the point where the heavy[29] walking began. Otherwise they would have broken into a run, so eager were they to tell about their adventures.
Coming out of the weeds and ooze, they stood looking blankly at the spot where the sea-plane had rested.
The sea-plane and their friends were gone!