Chapter VIII: Along the Battle Line

WITH the arrival of the biplanes from the factory, the Boy Aviators were kept busy with brief test flights over valley and plain, awaiting the convenience of Roque for the wider sweep he was planning. It developed that the boys were expected to navigate separately on this occasion, Billy to pilot Roque himself, and Henri to be accompanied by one Renos, who had been awarded a service badge of honor for his work as an aërial observer in giving first warning of the advance of a French division against Burnhaupt, which saved the day for the Germans.

"The seaplane is the rig for weight carrying," exclaimed Roque, in accounting for this assignment, "but these machines, as you know, are solely in the speed class, and it is many chances to one that we will be compelled to tax every ounce of power before we get through. So we have no use for deadwood."

Renos, who was to sit behind Henri, was the silent man of the expedition, as far as talking was concerned, but when it came to be up and doing he could be counted on to the limit. He was a human route-box of the Sundgau, the fighting territory, and very much at home in a flying machine. When the two machines one morning flew over the German frontier, in compliance with the "ready" order of Roque, Renos' knees were crossed by a wicked-looking rifle, and of the party he was the only one armed.

Billy, observing this war-like figure, asked Roque if he expected to get into close quarters on this trip.

"Not unless some of the bomb-throwing crowd that scarred the landscape the other night should cross our path," replied the secret agent.

As Renos was the qualified guide, the biplane bearing him went to the front, and Henri received overshoulder directions as to the course to be maintained.

The apparent reason why the German expert did not pilot the craft himself was that he wanted a loose hand in case of emergency, and a free eye for the panorama below. He was satisfied, too, that one as good as the best was doing the steering.

Henri was instructed to keep a respectful distance from the near mountain peaks, where the French had mounted artillery, for one round from these guns, close enough, would have ended the flight and the flyers there and then.

But Roque and Renos kept constant vigil with glasses, and Billy wondered that the pair did not get a crick in the neck with all the head-turning they did.

A sharp order advised the pilots to send the biplanes farther aloft, and circle. The French fortress of Belfort could be seen directly underneath.

The aviators well knew that an explosion close to an aëroplane is often sufficient, through the force of the air concussion alone, to bring it down, and they knew they could not chance a close shot from the long-range guns in the fort.

Though the machines now evoluted at greater height, the powerful glasses enabled the observers to plainly distinguish the movements below.

It was quickly manifested that the garrison lookout had become aware of the aërial visitation, and that they did not approve of the color of the hovering aircraft.

A couple of smokeballs ascended and burst in the center of a cloudrack far to the right of the machine. Renos broke his record for silence with a shrill cackle.

"Save your powder, you numbskulls," he shouted for his own satisfaction.

Roque seemed oblivious of the gunplay below. As the biplane described great circles over the fort, he kept his glasses steadily aimed at a point in the enclosure over which the flag was floating.

The men who emerged from the officers' quarters all wore the French uniform.

Roque had evidently cleared up a disturbing point in his mind as he muttered something about a "fool story," and "I might have known there was nothing to it."

Having satisfied himself that it was still an independent little war at this remote point from the main field of operations, and that he had been misled by some advices previously received, the chief observer passed the word to his pilot to back-track, at the same time giving signal to the companion biplane.

As the machines swung around for the return flight, and drew closer together, Renos gave a megaphone yell through a hollow formed by his hands:

"Speed for your lives, they're on the wing!"

Above the gentle slopes on the west, leading to the summit of the mountain ranges, aircraft had arisen, looking, at a distance, like black dragonflies.

At the same moment, the invading biplanes also had a reminder to hurry from the fortress they were leaving behind.

A shell burst seemingly quite close to the machine Henri was driving, and the craft dipped far to one side.

Billy's heart beat up to his throat when he saw the break in the flight.

But his was an exulting cry when the momentarily stricken flyer righted, and bored ahead.

"Glory be!" hoarsely rejoiced the boy from Bangor, when his chum again drew to the upper level.

Seventy miles an hour was the clip of the fleeing biplanes, and no less speedy the onrush of the aircraft from the slopes.

"Steady, and a little to the right," Renos instructed Henri.

The observer was resting the rifle barrel on the rigging, awaiting a broadside target.

Sping! One of the attacking aviators was first with his rifle, and the bullet nicked the armored side of the German craft. Sput! Henri heard an angry exclamation behind him, and shifted an eye long enough to see that Renos was nursing a bloody wrist on his knee.

"How hard are you hit?" was the anxious question of the young pilot.

"Nothing to kill," replied the observer, as he used his uninjured fingers and his teeth in knotting a handkerchief above the wound so as to compress the severed artery.

With the utmost calm he then deliberately used his left hand in rifle aiming, and sent a bullet into the nearest hostile machine.

Whether the shot crippled the pilot of the leading pursuer, or whether it was the menace of the heavy howitzers on the German frontier, which was now of short approach--the French flyers suddenly ceased to be aggressive, and with a parting salute of rifle practice, turned back toward their mountain station, while the German machines dashed across the line of safety.

Upon landing Billy indulged in a sort of war dance around his chum.

"Thought you were gone that time, sure, Buddy," he cried, "and it was simply great the way you pulled out of the hole."

"I guess I was stunned for a minute, as though somebody had hit me with a hammer," explained Henri, "but when I found the controls were still working, it was a bracer, I tell you. And if there isn't a cool head" (nodding toward Renos, who was inspecting his wounded wrist) "I never saw one. He stretched his arms over me ready to take hold if I failed to rally, and did it as a matter of course. Not a tremble about him, either."

"What do you think of the No. 3's now, boys?" queried Roque, when he had dispatched Renos in search of a surgeon.

"They're dandies, all right," promptly agreed the happy pilots.

"They will do to hunt trouble with, anyhow," laughed the secret agent, who was immensely pleased with the flying achievements of the day.

Roque, pluming himself with the idea that, though he did not hold Ardelle when he had that artful dodger under his thumb, he had at least chased his rival out of the empire; and, having also eased his mind as to the report of a new element in the Alsace campaign, he was impatient in his preparation for departure. Master of detail though he was, the big moves only appealed to him.

A great battle was raging at Soissons, on the Aisne river, in France, and Roque had in mind an aërial journey north, and quick flight across the border to the scene of the fierce artillery duel, following the line of march of the mighty force under General von Kluck.

The crippled Renos was replaced in the observer's perch by an aviator known as Schneider, a very daredevil, and who was at first inclined to doubt that the boy with whom he was paired had sufficient skill and courage to pilot a military biplane in an active war zone. Henri very quickly convinced the doubter that he was very much older than he looked when it came to the fine points of aëroplaning, and, too, that when there was an emergency demand for "sand" the youngster had plenty to spare. Schneider had additional assurance of capacity when he was advised that both of the lads carried Roque's indorsement of efficiency.

It was a bitter struggle that the Aëroplane Scouts were to witness at Soissons, and six days of it had already passed. The earth was still dropping on many graves of the German fallen, and yet, sprawling in attitudes along the heights, in the deep-cut gorges of the plateau, and across the flat valley bed were French infantrymen in their far-to-be-seen red-and-blue uniforms, swarthy-faced Turcos, colonials, Alpine riflemen, and bearded territorials.

At staff headquarters, in the first officer that passed near them the boys recognized a familiar figure, no other than Colonel Muller, whom they had first met in far-away Texas, U. S. A., on the day of the record flight, and again in the hangar camp at Hamburg.

Billy impulsively stepped forward. "How do you do, Colonel?"

The officer instantly turned in his stride to inspect the speaker. "Hello, Boy Aviator," was his hearty greeting. "How under the sun did you ever get here?"

"Same old way," said Billy, "the airline, of course."

"And here's the other one," the colonel reaching for Henri's shoulder.

"By the way," continued the big soldier, "this must be a field day for flyers. Here, Hume, come and see what the wind brought in."

The officer addressed moved at quickstep in response to this invitation. It was the aviation lieutenant from Hamburg. He grinned from ear to ear when he laid eyes on his former charges.

"Can't lose you if I try," he exclaimed. "Have you enlisted with us?"

"No," laughed Billy, "we're still driving cars for the good merchant from your town," with the backward point of the thumb at Roque, who was engaged in close confab with a group of staff members near by.

"Did you blow in with Schneider, too?" asked the lieutenant. "I just want to say that you will bore a hole in a stone wall sometime if you train with that fellow. Nature didn't give him red hair without reason."

"Now that you are here," broke in the colonel, "you must not be allowed to get out of practice. I expect that one of you will have to give me a ride along the front before long. I have lost three horses this week."

"We'll do our best to oblige you, colonel," volunteered Billy.

It was no merry jest, that ride Billy gave the colonel!

At the time, the French retained a foothold north of the river at only one point--St. Paul--where the bridge from Soissons crosses, and this by a perilous margin, since the bridgehead was completely commanded by German artillery on the heights.

The battlefield entire covered a front of about seven miles, the center and eastern flank a high, level plateau rising steeply a couple of hundred feet from the valley of the Aisne. On the western side a deep valley ran northward, bounded on either side by turnpikes. An airman taking the big curve of the river would not be considered a good risk for a well-regulated insurance company.

But it could be done--and Billy Barry furnished the proof.

When the next day broke a bloody conflict was raging between the two turnpikes, the French infantry attack on German trenches preceded by a terrible artillery bombardment, a storm of shell and shrapnel.

Colonel Muller beckoned Billy to his side. They stood together on the heights from which the French had been expelled only the day before.

"My boy," was the brisk address of the officer, making a field-glass survey of the smoke-crowned landscape, "I am going down the line, and I am to do the distance in an aëroplane. Is it you or Schneider who will do the driving?"

"You gave me the first call yesterday," reminded Billy.

"That was my intent, and it still holds. I was only seeking to learn if you were of the same mind since that powder mill let loose down there."

"I well know the odor of it," stoutly maintained Billy, "and it doesn't weaken my knees."

The young aviator, accepting the matter as settled, hastened toward staff headquarters. "Mr. Roque," he excitedly called, "Colonel Muller wants to try one of the No. 3's this morning, and I'm to pilot."

The secret agent lifted his eyebrows as though surprised, but he really was not. The arrangement had already been made.

"Say, Buddy, this is rough that we can't both go; and suppose something should happen to you?" Henri had just realized that something was up, in which his chum was vitally concerned.

"Don't you worry, pard," consoled Billy, "it is only a little spin of a few miles, and we'll be back in no time."

"Wish it was me," sighed Schneider, for this firebrand guessed that it would be a red-hot journey.

As the biplane swept into the breeze current, trending to the river, which then was running brimful, and in many places overflowing its banks between the two armies, Colonel Muller advised Billy to keep the machine climbing for the time being, as a terrific fusillade was in progress in the distance of the next two miles, the shells hurtling through the air like lighted express trains. In the three steep-sided ravines that deeply notched the plateau on the east French troopers swarmed like bees, and at this cover the big German guns were blindly banging.

"We can't see much, Colonel, at two thousand feet," complained Billy.

"You would see nothing at all if we ran into one of those fragments of shells," coolly suggested the officer, "but never mind, you will do some diving in a few minutes."

Billy got the signal to dip at the juncture of the turnpikes, and to hold a level and lower course along the line of battle, marked here by infantry fighting between the seemingly crawling columns far below.

"Down!"

The colonel's order was peremptory, and Billy forthwith volplaned toward the earth.