The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps Part 12

Something to do with the plane itself, I think. I understand the plane did not do so well as the engine, and they are getting out a new thruster to take that engine. When it comes along it will be a daisy. We had been doing what my observer called dog work. By that he meant just plain reconnaissance. We had taken in a given area, and followed all the roads to watch for traffic. We had noted nothing of particular interest, and at last we turned for home.

"We had not gone far when right ahead came a Boche flier pounding for home himself, apparently. It was a two-seater. He evidently liked our looks but little, and started to climb for safety. But we could climb, too. He had never met one of that pusher type, I guess. We kept on going up, getting higher and higher, and gaining on him all the time. It must have been a big strain for the men in that enemy machine.

"I could imagine them discussing us."

"What is it?" one may have asked.

"He will quit soon; we will be at twenty thousand feet before long,"

the other may have replied.

"It was at just about twenty thousand feet that we at last got within range. We had both been in chases before. We were cool enough about this one, I think. My observer was. He sat there calmly enough waiting till I could get near enough for him to let fly. I was too busy watching the fellow in front to think about much else. I have always thought that he must have miscalculated the distance that I had gained. Maybe something went a bit wrong with his engine that took his attention. He was about as far up as he could get his bus. Twenty thousand feet is nearly four miles, you know. We are likely to forget that. It is a long way up, even now, and it seemed further up then.

"I am afraid I am stringing the story out, rather, but it strung itself out that way. It was 'most all climb, climb, climb, with an eye on the two men in the plane ahead. Then I got him in range, and before I realized it." "Brrr-r-rr-rrr-rrrr!" started the quick-firer behind me. That was the most exciting moment I have gone through out here.

"They moment the machine-gun started something truly extraordinary happened. The Boche pilot, at the very first burst of fire from us, either jumped out of his seat or fell out.

"I could hardly believe my eyes. Yet there could be no mistake. He went over the side of his fuselage and dropped like a man who intended dropping just a few yards. I could see that he fell feet first, head up, and arms stretched up above his head, holding his body rigidly straight. Neither I nor my observer saw him the moment he left his seat, but both of us saw him leave the side of his machine and start down, down, down on that long four-mile drop.

"He disappeared, still rigidly straight, with something about his position that made us both remark afterwards that he looked as though he was doing it quite voluntarily and had planned it all out just that way. It was weird.

"Of course it all happened in a twinkling. The big plane in front of us went on uncannily, without a tremor, apparently. An instant afterwards my observer and I exclaimed loudly together. The observer in the enemy plane had not fired a shot, probably for the reason that his gun was fixed and we were never in range of it. Suddenly we saw him climb out of his seat on to the tail of the plane. My observer had a good target, but his gun was silent. Perhaps that Boche observer had an idea of climbing into the seat vacated so curiously by the pilot, dropping, dropping, dropping, down that trackless four mile path we had come up. If he had such a plan it failed almost before he started to put it into execution.

"He had no more than climbed out on the tail proper than he lost his hold and plunged headlong after his comrade. He went down pawing and clutching into the void below like a lost soul, in horrible contrast to the rigid figure of the pilot. Then the aviatik turned its nose down with a jerk and fell after its human freight, all the long twenty thousand feet to the earth below.

"We did not say a word to each other till we landed. It gave me a nasty shock. I had seen enemy planes go down with enemy fliers in them, but that rigid figure got me. The struggling chap I forgot long before I did the other. We more than once discussed what might have happened to him, and what his idea might have been---but without being able to frame any explanation. It was just weird. We let it go at that."

As Will ended his story he pulled out his khaki handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. The night was anything but warm, and the room in which they sat was quite cool; but the memory of that scene, four miles up, brought the moisture to Will's brow, after months had pa.s.sed since the occurrence.

Two young officers in the mess had been interested listeners. One of them, a slight youth named Mason, who hailed from the Pacific Coast, now joined in the conversation.

"There has been an instance of an observer taking control of a plane and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the back. It did not kill him instantly, but he was not long in succ.u.mbing to his wound. He had just energy enough left, after he realized that he was very badly hurt, to tell his observer that he was going off. Before he actually relinquished control of the machine, the observer, who was a daring chap, climbed right out of his seat, pulled himself along the fuselage, and half-sitting, half-lying, managed to stick there, within reach of the control levers and the engine cut-off.

"He was an old-time flyer himself, and understood aeroplane construction pretty well, and he made a very decent landing not very far from our front lines. Fortunately he was on the right side of them, though from what he told us afterward that was more luck than judgment. He thought he was much further back than he was.

"He had become very tired, owing to his strained position on the body of the plane, and was afraid he would fall off. So he came down.

He had a bad shock when he found that his pilot was stone dead, and had been for some time. He must have died when the observer took over the control of the plane, but the observer, oddly enough, never thought of him as dead, and quite expected to be able to bring him around if he once got him safely landed."

"Well, that was enough to give anyone a shock," said Will. "But he would have had a worse shock if he had come down on the Boche's side. More than one chap has done that just through not knowing exactly where he was. I can't imagine anything more tough than to get yourself down when something has gone utterly wrong, thanking your lucky stars that you are down with a whole skin, and then discover you are booked for a Hun prison, after all. I could tell you a thriller along that line, but it'll keep. You've had enough now to make you believe that the Air Service demands of a man the very best there is in him, brawn and brain."

The hour was late before the boys knew the evening had pa.s.sed, and they were most cordial in their invitation to Will Corwin to come and pay them another call. Will said he would do so when he could, but that next visit was to be long deferred.

Less than a fortnight later Will took part in a gallant fight against three machines that had attacked him far within the German territory.

He accounted for one, crippled another, and outsped the third---but when he landed his machine in his home airdrome he settled back quietly in the driving seat as the machine came to rest. When his mechanics reached him he was unconscious!

Examination showed that Will had been hit by a machine-gun bullet, that had lodged in his shoulder. In spite of his wound, which was increasingly painful and made him fight hard to retain consciousness until he got home with his plane, he made a fine nose-dive that gave him a clear road to his own lines, and managed to dodge cleverly once on his way back when the German Archies began to place sh.e.l.ls unpleasantly close.

Will was given much credit for his pluck and tenacity, was recommended for a special decoration, and was packed off to a hospital to recover from his wound, which fortunately gave the doctors little worry, though it put Will on his back for a long time.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

d.i.c.ky Mann became more interested in the study of maps and their making than he would have thought it possible. When he came sufficiently closely in touch with the intricate system by which the air-photograph and accurate map of every point behind the enemy line is carefully tabulated and filed away for reference, he developed a keenness for the work which made him a valuable member of the organization.

The Brighton boys found, as time went on, that they had, quite frequently, some spare hours in which they could do as they wished.

Soon after their arrival in France they had envied Bob Haines his knowledge of the French language, which, while rudimentary, was sufficient to enable him to make himself understood at times when the boys were quite at sea as to what he was trying to say to the French people to whom he was talking.

No sooner had the boys noticed that Bob had a decided advantage over the rest of them on this score, than they set about to catch up with him. But Bob was equally set on keeping the lead he had gained. Joe Little and d.i.c.ky Mann were his only real rivals in this field. d.i.c.ky had one a.s.sistant that was of the greatest use to him in the frequent companions.h.i.+p of Dubois, the French officer attached to headquarters.

While d.i.c.ky's French was often ungrammatical, his p.r.o.nunciation was good, much better, in fact, than either Joe's or Bob's.

One day d.i.c.ky was sent as an observer with Richardson, the little major who usually accompanied that clever pilot being away on temporary leave. d.i.c.ky pleased headquarters so much with his initial report that more and more observation work was given him. Thus he gained valuable experience which bade fair to ensure that he would be kept at observing most of the time.

The boy was inclined at first to regret this, for the obvious reason that those who did the flying work were much more "in the picture,"

as d.i.c.ky put it, but the real fascination of the observation work soon weaned him from any genuine desire to give it up. To his great delight he was at last put on the observation staff permanently, or at least was given regular work with that department---and who should be a.s.signed to pilot him but Bob Haines! To be with Bob, of whom d.i.c.ky was especially fond, was a genuine pleasure to him, and the combination proved a very good one from every standpoint. Bob's pa.s.sion for photographic work and d.i.c.ky's absorbing interest in mapping operations resulted in their approaching their joint work in a spirit of splendid enthusiasm for it, which could not but produce good results.

Aeroplane work in war-time, however, has its "ups and downs," as Jimmy Hill would say in his weekly letters home. He rarely missed a fortnight that this sage observation did not appear in some part of his four-page epistle. Jimmy stuck religiously to four pages, though he knew enough of censors.h.i.+p rules to avoid mention of his work, except in vague generalities. This necessity made writing four pages dull work at times, and resulted in Jimmy's adoption of various set phrases as filling matter. His mother, who knew Jimmy as only mothers know their sons, read into the often repeated sentences Jimmy's ardent desire to show himself a ready and willing correspondent, when he was nothing of the kind. She loved those letters none the less for their sameness, thereby showing her mother-wisdom.

Thus far in the career of the Brighton boys with the aero forces at the front their fortune had been on the side of the ups. The time came when the downs had an inning.

Bad luck overtook Bob Haines and d.i.c.ky Mann while on an observation flight far over the firing lines and well inside territory occupied by the enemy. They were on their outward journey, bound for a point which they hoped to photograph quickly and then run for home. The day was not an ideal one for flying, as s.h.i.+fting clouds gathered here and there, some high up, some low. When they were in the vicinity of their objective the clouds beneath them obscured their view to an annoying extent. They had seen no other plane, friend or enemy, since they had left their own lines. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the engine stopped. Bob switched off the power, switched it on again, and repeated the maneuver again and again while volplaning to preserve their momentum.

Try as he would, he could not get a single explosion out of the motor.

Of fuel he had plenty. His wires and terminals---so much as he could see of them---were apparently in good order, but the engine had just coolly stopped of its own accord, and could not be coaxed to start again.

d.i.c.ky looked round at Bob from the observer's seat in the fuselage and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. His glance fell on Bob's white, set face, and he saw that Bob was methodically going over one thing after another, and trying first this, then that, as if examining every part of the plane's mechanism that he could reach. They were still above the low-lying clouds that hid the earth.

"Engine?" queried d.i.c.ky.

Bob nodded. Still he ran his hands over the controls, as if loath to believe that he had exhausted every possibility of finding and rectifying the trouble. It was all in vain.

Still they swept lower and lower. Soon they would be below the clouds, and soon after that, landing so far inside the German lines that by no possibility could they hope to regain their own. It was a bitter time for Bob. d.i.c.ky, curiously enough, took the first realization of their predicament less hard. He was all eyes to see what fate had in store for them in the way of a landing place.

As they swept through the last bank of clouds and the country below spread before them, they saw that it was level pasture land for the most part, divided by green hedges, with here and there a cultivated field. A village lay some distance to the left, a mere cl.u.s.ter of mean houses. No chateau or large building was in sight, but small cottages were dotted about here and there in plenty.

"Not much room in one of those pastures," commented d.i.c.ky. "Mind you pick a decent one. Don't spoil the hedge on the other side of it, either."

d.i.c.ky's mood was infectious. Bob was sick at heart, but his friend's joking way of speaking had its effect.

"Would you rather be starved to death or neatly smashed? Do you prefer your misery long drawn out or all over in a jiffy?" Bob was joking now, though grimly enough.

"You tend to your part and let the Huns tend to theirs," answered Jimmy.

They were almost down now. As they approached the field which Bob had chosen for landing, what was their horror to see, but one field away, two German soldiers in their field gray! They were armed with rifles, and appeared to be carrying full field kit.