CHAPTER XXVIII
OVER THE LINES
"You will carry these with you, of course," said Captain O'Neill,"those who will be found in, the plane?"
"Yes, sir," said Hal. "They need not be aviators, but merely inuniform."
"You drop from the machine as she strikes, I suppose?" said thecaptain. "She will run after that, of course."
"Certainly it will leave us unsuspected," said Chester. "It will aidour escape. Certainly no one would suspect a man had planned to fallin flames."
"You have suggested enough," said the captain. "Your idea altersmuch. Meet me in half an hour. Everything will be prepared."
He named a place and left the hut.
Jean Brosseau bent forward in bed, his eyes burning.
"When Captain O'Neill gives you final instructions he may tell you toemploy certain people on the other side. Here!" he motioned for themap again, "I shall point out to you where they are."
He took a pencil and made a dot toward the corner of one of thesquares.
"In the old military maps a house stood there," he said. "My father'shouse it was. There was also a stable; there was also a cellar, whichthe Germans have discovered, but beyond it was an old cellar quiteconcealed. Our people, at different times, have hidden there. Thereare both men and women there now. They will help you if they can."
Jean Brosseau fell back on the bed and closed his eyes.
An hour later Hal climbed into the pilot seat of the biplane thatCaptain O'Neill had placed at their disposal. He felt somewhatuncomfortable in his ragged attire, but he knew that he could not beattired in better costume for the undertaking. Chester also haddiscarded his civilian clothes and donned rags.
The big "bus," as the airplanes were called, with propeller whirling,lumbered over the ground; the smoothness of flying came to it and,deafened to everything but the clatter of the motor and the thrash ofthe air-screw, Hal gazed down. Points of light, yellow and red andsome almost white, glowed on the ground. Some of these markedvillages, encampments; others signified nothing at all--decoys toattract the "eggs" of the German night flying falcons.
They neared the lines, and the strip of "No Man's Land," with thepocked and pitted streaks of defenses on both sides, gleamed white andspectral green under the star-dashed shells. An infantry attack wasgoing on; Hal could see the shapes of men as they flattened; they werepinched to dots when they jumped up and then they spread out again.
Before them burst the frightful fireworks of their own barrage; behindthem, and above, that of the enemy.
Hal shivered in the cold; it was very chill there flying high above thelines, and he wore but the rags of Jean Brosseau. Directly below themthe land had become black again, specked only by little points oflight, yellow, ruddy, white; some of these, like the lights behind theFrench lines, perhaps marked hamlets, encampments; others were meredecoy-lights; others--they showed but for the briefest second whenthe biplane passed overhead were the guiding lights for the French andAmerican pilots. These were set in chimneys by the French behind theGerman lines; any light, if seen by Germans and recognized, might costthe annihilation of a family, or a neighborhood; many times such lightshad cost such savage penalty. Still, they were set.
Hal and Chester warmed at sight of them this night as never before.They were going to the people who had set those lights.
The biplane banked and circled. Below was the square where theairplane was to be shot down. Troops were moving through those fields,undoubtedly, advancing in single file through communication trenches ordashing from shell hole to shell hole; other troops lingered in dugoutsunderground. The French batteries played all over those fields,spraying down shrapnel, detonating the frightful charges of highexplosives. But at an hour before the appointed time--at 9 o'clock--theFrench batteries would remit their fire for ten minutes upon thesquare where the biplane should fall. Hal looked at the clock fastenedbefore him. It was two minutes to 9; he could see, directly below, thecrimson splash of the great French shells; a little way to the sideshowed the flashes of the German heavy batteries making reply.
Now, as though smothered by the German fire, the French batteriesceased. It was 9 o'clock, and Hal circled above the German batteries,which were firing, and Chester released the first bomb. Before itstruck and burst, he let go another. He laid a third "egg" closebeside a German battery--so close that the battery ceased to fire;but before the fourth dropped the anti-aircraft guns were going.Chester could hear, above the racket of the motor and the air-screw,the "pop, pop" of smashing shrapnel. They ran through the floatingsmoke of a shell, the acrid ether-smelling stuff stinging theirnostrils. The beams of searchlights swept into the air. Hal circledmore carefully and deliberately dropped lower; Chester let two morebombs drop near the batteries; he cleared the frames of the last pairof "eggs," and, leaning forward, struck Hal's shoulder to tell him so.
The phosphorus-painted face of the altimeter showed the pointerregistering less than 2,000 feet; before the breaking German shellsshould do, in fact, what it was to be pretended they had done, Chesterreached up and ignited the preparation smeared over the top plane.Yellow flames flared up, and, to keep them above and behind, Halpointed the nose of the biplane far down and let her fall.
He turned, as he let the machine dive, back toward the French lines.Then, as the German antiaircraft gunners saw their target flashingclear in flames and they strewed their shrapnel closer before it, thebiplane fluttered and fell, no longer diving under guidance, but out ofcontrol.
Chester jerked about to Hal; over the forms strapped between them, hesaw Hal's face in the light of the flame. Hal was not hit; he hadmerely let go of the controls. It was part of the plan to let themachine fall out of control. But, for a moment, it was too much as ifHal had been hit.
The biplane side-slipped, "went off the wing," sickeningly, droppingdown spinning. Then, suddenly, with a catch of a well-made,well-balanced plane, the inherent stability asserted itself, and theplanes caught; the big "bus" fluttered like a falling leaf, "flattenedout," and rested; now, it side-slipped again and fell, and Hal did nottouch the controls.
Chester, looking down, saw that the flashes of the guns off to the sidehad come halfway to him; if the falling plane caught itself again afterthe same amount of drop, side-slipping, it would hover not too far fromthe ground before going "off the wing" again. That is, it might.
Anyway, the flames which had caught the wing fabric and were blazingthe breadth of the wings above and jumping back now to the rudder andthe tail were kept above; and to anyone on the ground the illusion of amachine shot down, burning and out of control, must have becomecomplete.
Chester held on, not breathing. The momentary flutter and hover of themachine was over. It was dropping down again in a wild, slidingswoop--yet Hal made no move to stop it even when it half turned over.
Soon, however, he made a move, and, before the slide had gone too far,he caught it as before it had caught itself; it fluttered, hovered, theflames streaking up straight above it; the ground now just below. Thenit went "off the wing" again and crashed.
Chester, leaping clear at the instant of the impact, stumbled and fellon his face and rolled down a shell hole. He caught himself, halfstunned and dizzy, and tried to crawl back toward the burning plane.But Hal blundered against him and carried him back.
"All right," Hal whispered. "Are you?"
"All right," said Chester. "Great landing. I've fixed things backthere. Time to be moving. Got your grenades?"
"You bet."
"All right. Good luck."
Their orders were to part now. Chester crawled one way, Hal theother. The biplane was burning with a great deal of smoke, whichsmothered the glow on the side they had leaped. And no German wasnear; they could be very sure of that. The gasoline now was ignited,and the wreck was blazing beautifully. The machine was known, ofcourse, to be a bombing machine, shot down during operations. No onewould know how many bombs had come down with it; n
o one would comeclose until after the flames had burned down. Then the Germans wouldfind the "pilot" and the "bomber," the two still forms the lads hadstrapped to the machine before leaving their own lines. Everyone wouldbe accounted for; no search for more would be made.
Both boys now were ready for their desperate work.
Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders; Or, the Fighting Canadians of Vimy Ridge Page 28
