“We’re not in the soldier business,” explained Captain Johnson to the boys; “it’s just a ‘trying out’ on contract on which we are now engaged. The old machine is somewhere in Ostend, and I[158] guess it’s going to be a dead loss to us. You ask how we broke out of Ypres. Well, we convinced a good sport in authority that it was just the wind that blew us into the German lines, and we would favor any gale that would blow us out again. “He had seen us as a?rial performers once upon a time at Ostend, and being an infantryman of the old school, he privately regarded the whole flying fraternity in the light of circus stars. He did, however, concede that if anything counted for much above ground, it was the invention of his friend, Count Zeppelin.
“As matters warmed up around Ypres, we were hustled back to Ostend, and hung around there for some time, on parole, they called it, until one day we were permitted to board a hospital ship bound for Calais.
“We can’t show any scars, nor bullet holes in our clothes—not a thing to add to our glorious achievement of turning you boys loose in the war zone.”
The captain by this time had heard all about the adventures of his young friends.
“In this fuel test,” he continued, “we can give you a lift that may pretty near, if not quite, land you where you want to go. I wouldn’t mind sailing into Paris myself, but there are no free agents at the working end of a contract. I don’t know yet.”
[159]
“Wake me and shake me at the mouth of the Thames,” exulted Jimmy, “show me the docks at Tilbury, see that there is a light in the window for me at Dover, and then won’t I be the horse for the Paris wagon!”
“Bully boy!” applauded Josh.
“Now get snug, you youngsters,” said the captain—“two in the bow and two aft with Josh.”
“Give her power, Freeman.”
The planes were set for the upward flight, and the course for the Straits of Dover.
Reddy was the only “cat in a strange garret” when the sea-plane cut through the air. The little Frenchman had never had a like sensation, and he soon began to revel in it, even though he could look sheer down through 3,000 feet of space and see the heaving sea.
The captain lowered the flight along the French coast, for the soldiers all down the line had been warned not to fire on the sea-plane, it having been generally announced in wireless orders that it was an English airship out on a trial run. The schedule included Boulogne, and the boys had the opportunity of looking down upon the city where Napoleon had once encamped his troops.
Swinging ’round and circling backward, the sea-plane hovered over Calais. Somebody had evidently forgotten orders, for when the big machine was directly above the military governor’s headquarters[160] a half dozen or more soldiers seized their rifles and commenced firing at the aviators. Out rushed an officer, crying:
“C’est un Anglais! C’est un Anglais! Ne tirez plus!” (It is an Englishman! It is an Englishman! Stop firing!)
The sea-plane dropped into the harbor off Calais, and all except Josh, remaining as faithful guardian of his precious motors, went ashore.
The captain there hoped to solve the problem of getting his young friends safely to Paris, and the boys certainly wished him the best kind of luck in the effort. Both French approval and English backing would help some in the way of hastening unmolested progress.
On R............