After
the two aviators hurried the girls, meeting their father, and telling
him what was occurring.
"And Captain Byers said that airman was about to drop - or fall out; I
don't know which." This from Andra. "Let us hurry after them, father,
and see what has happened."
Senator Walsen, evidently used to these sudden whims on the part of his
daughters, turned and followed them, still in pursuit of the captain.
If he objurgated the haste, he did it silently.
By the time the girls caught up with Byers, what had been a trim
airplane came thumping to the ground not more than two hundred yards
off in an unused corner of the big enclosure, its wings a mere mass of
tattered rags, its body riddled by many perforations of machine gun
bullets, fragments of shrapnel and so on. It was a marvel how it had
stayed up for so long, but it happened that neither the engine nor
petrol tank were vitally harmed.
Still lashed to his seat, his arms hanging loosely, his head resting on
the rim of the small manhole, was the pilot, to all appearances
lifeless or else in a swoon. It was Stanley, Blaine's observation man.
CHAPTER XII
THE ADVENTURES OF ERWIN
In the meantime, what had become of the two adventurous planes with
their occupants that had so blithely started out in search of the still
missing pilot and friend? Whither had their search carried them? How
was it that of the three who went forth only one had come back, perhaps
lifeless or barely alive, and in a German machine!
Verily in this new warfare of the air strange are the daily happenings
on that fated West Front; nor can anybody foretell what stranger things
may happen than have happened before, even to the best pilots of them
all.
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