“Hard luck for one of our best flying men. Ralph Stillinger. You’ve heard of him? The French call him an ace, for he has brought down more than five Hun machines.
“I hear that he took up a passenger the other day. An army captain, I understand, but I did not catch the name. There was a sudden raid from the German side, and Stillinger’s machine was seen to fly off toward the sea in an endeavor to get around the flank of the Hun squadron.
“Forced so far away from the French and American planes, it was thought Stillinger must have got into serious trouble. At least, it is reported here that an American airplane was seen fighting one of those sea-going-Zeppelins – the kind the Hun uses to bomb London and the English coast, you know.
“Hard luck for Stillinger and his passenger, sure enough. The American airplane was seen to fall, and, although a searching party discovered the wrecked machine, neither its pilot nor the passenger was found.”
Charlie Bragg had no idea when he wrote this that he was causing Ruth Fielding, homeward bound, heartache and anxiety. She dared tell Helen nothing about this, although she read the letter before the Admiral Pekhard drew away from the pier and Helen and Jennie went ashore.
Of course, Stillinger’s passenger might not have been Tom Cameron. Yet Tom had been going to the aviation field expecting to fly with the American ace. And the fact that Tom had allowed her, Ruth, to sail without a word of remembrance almost convinced the girl of the Red Mill that something untoward had happened to him.
It was a secret which she felt she could share with nobody. She set sail upon the venturesome voyage to America with this added weight of sorrow on her heart.
CHAPTER VI – A NEW EXPERIENCE
Tom landed from a slowly crawling military train at a place some miles behind the actual battleline and far west of the sector in which his division had been fighting for a month. This division was in a great rest camp; but Tom did not want rest. He craved excitement – something new.
In a few hours an automobile which he shared with a free-lance newspaper man brought him to a town which had been already bombarded half a dozen times since Von Kluck’s forced retreat after the first advance on Paris.
As Tom walked out to the aviation field, where Ralph Stillinger’s letter had advised his friend he was to be found, all along the streets the American captain saw posters announcing Cave Voûteé with the number of persons to be accommodated in these places of refuge, such number ranging from fifteen to sixty.
The bomb-proof cellars were protected by sandbags and were conveniently located so that people might easily find shelter whenever the German Fokkers or Tauben appeared. Naturally, as the town was so near the aviation field, it was bound to be a mark for the Hun bombing planes.
Sentinels were posted at every street corner. There were three of the anti-aircraft .75‘s set up in the town. Just outside the place were the camps of three flying escadrilles, side by side. One of these was the American squadron to which Ralph Stillinger, Tom’s friend, was attached.
Each camp of the airmen looked to Tom, when he drew near, like the “pitch” of a road show. With each camp were ten or twelve covered motor-trucks with their tentlike trailers, and three automobiles for the use of the officers and pilots.
Tom had not realized before what the personnel of each équipé was like. There were a dozen artillery observers; seven pilots; two mechanicians to take care of each airplane, besides others for general repair work; and chauffeurs, orderlies, servants, wireless operators, photographers and other attachés – one hundred and twenty-five men in all.
Tom Cameron’s appearance was hailed with delight by several men who had known him at college. Not all of his class had gone to the Plattsburg officer’s training camp. Several were here with Ralph Stillinger, the one ace in this squadron.
“You may see some real stuff if you can stay a day or two,” they told the young captain of infantry.
“I suppose if there is a fight I’ll see it from the ground,” returned Tom. “Thanks! I’ve seen plenty of air-fights from the trenches. I want something better than that. Ralph said he’d take me up.”
“Don’t grouch too soon, young fellow,” said Stillinger, laughing. “We’re thirty miles or so from the present front. But in this new, swift machine of mine (it’s one of the first from home, with a liberty motor) we can jump into any ruction Fritzie starts over the lines in something like fifteen minutes. I’ll joyride you, Tommy, if nothing happens, to-morrow.”
It was not altogether as easily arranged as that. Permission had to be obtained for Ralph to take his friend up. The commander of the squadron had no special orders for the next day. He agreed that Ralph might go up with his passenger early in the morning, unless something interfered.
The young men were rather late turning in, for “the crowd” got together to swap experiences; it seemed to Tom as though he had scarcely closed his eyes when an orderly shook him and told him that Lieutenant Stillinger was waiting for him out by Number Four hangar – wherever that might be.
Tom crept out, yawning. He dressed, and as he passed the kitchen a bare-armed cook thrust a huge mug of coffee and a sandwich into his hands.
“If you’re going up in the air, Captain, you’ll be peckish,” the man said. “Get around that, sir.”
Tom did so, gratefully. Then he stumbled out into the dark field, for there were no lights allowed because of the possibility of lurking Huns in the sky. He ran into the orderly, the man who had awakened him, who was coming back to see where he was. The orderly led Tom to the spot where Stillinger and the mechanician were tuning up the machine.
“Didn’t know but you’d backed out,” chuckled the flying man.
“Your grandmother!” retorted Tom cheerfully. “I stopped for a bite and a mug of coffee.”
“You haven’t been eating enough to overload the machine, have you?” asked Stillinger. “I don’t want to zoom the old girl. The motor shakes her bad enough, as it is.”
“Come again!” exclaimed Tom. “What’s the meaning of ‘zoom’?”
“Overstrain. Putting too much on her. Oh, there is a new language to learn if you are going to be a flying man.”
“I’m not sure I want to be a flying man,” said Tom. “This is merely a try-out. Just tell me what to look out for and when to jump.”
“Don’t jump,” warned Stillinger. “Nothing doing that way. Loss of speed —perte de vitesse the French call it – is the most common accident that can happen when one is up in the air in one of these planes. But even if that occurs, old man, take my advice and stick. You’ll be altogether too high up for a safe jump, believe me!”
They got under way with scarcely any jar, and with tail properly elevated the airplane was aimed by Ralph Stillinger for the upper reaches of the air. They went up rather steeply; but the ace was not “zooming”; he knew his machine.
There is too much noise in an airship to favor conversation. Gestures between the pilot and the observation man, or the photographer, usually have to do duty for speech. Nor is there much happening to breed discussion. The pilot’s mind must be strictly on the business of guiding his machine.
With a wave of his hand Stillinger called Tom’s attention to the far-flung horizon. Trees at their feet were like weeds and the roads and waterways like streamers of crinkled tape. The earth was just a blur of colors – browns and grays, with misty blues in the distance. The human eye unaided could not distinguish many objects as far as the prospect spread before their vision. But of a sudden Tom Cameron realized that that mass of blurred blue so far to the westward, and toward which they were darting, must be the sea.
The airplane mounted, and mounted higher. The recording barometer which Tom could easily read from where he sat, reached the two-thousand mark. His eyes were shining now through the mask which he wore. His first perturbation had passed and he began actually to enjoy himself.
This