CHAPTER XII--ABOVE THE CLOUDS
On a certain morning, just after sunrise, Don Hale, in his fur-linedcombination suit, leather aviation helmet, and provided with heavygoggles and gloves, was strapped in his machine. It was one of a row ofsix, which, in almost perfect alignment, were ready to go aloft.
There was the greatest activity and noise about the flying field. Theair was filled with the roar, the drone and the hum of many motors; andin this sea of sound the reverberations of the distant guns were, forthe time being, completely lost.
Don had received his instructions to fly at the rear of a formation ofsix machines, following one another at a distance of fifty metres. This_vol de groupe_ would patrol the German lines for a period of severalhours.
Don Hale found himself murmuring over and over again: "At last!" Andthough he tried his best to still the rapid pulsations of his heart--tocontrol a hand that had an extraordinary tendency to tremble, it waswithout avail. He was going up to face peril of the gravest sort.
Was anything going to happen?
Just then he felt almost afraid to think of what the fates might hold instore for him.
Presently he saw the captain wave his hand as a signal, and a momentlater the leader of the patrol rose in the air. The others followed.
There was just an instant more of waiting for Don Hale, and then he,too, was rolling over the ground.
As readily as a leaf borne aloft by a gust of wind the Nieuport answeredto the controls and began spiraling upward.
The six machines rose directly over the field, and at a height of abouttwo thousand feet the leader headed toward the east, the others takingup their respective places in the formation.
Higher and higher the fleet of wonderful little machines ascended, andDon Hale glancing over the side of the cockpit, saw a wonderful panoramaof the rapidly-receding earth, which the early morning sun was tintingwith a soft and poetic glow. The most delicate tints of brown and greenwere broken here and there by darker notes of a purplish hue, indicatingpatches of woods. Crisscrossing the earth in all directions were theroads--thread-like lines of palish gray, and, as though some giant handhad scattered them carelessly about at widely distant points, wereclusters of little glistening dots--villages, or what remained ofvillages. Now and again the boy's eyes caught sight of pools, mirroringon their surfaces the delicate tones of the sky or the clouds above, andpresently the river Meuse came into view--a faint and hazy line.
His practice in the school at Pau had taught Don how to preserve hisplace in the _vol de groupe_, which, when the tremendous speed of theNieuport is considered, is far from easy, and he had never made a bettereffort than at the present time. The new member of the LafayetteSquadron remembered vividly the stories he had heard concerning the fateof youthful and venturesome pilots who had disobeyed the commander'sorders.
Eagerly, he kept his eyes open for enemy planes. He could not see any,but he did perceive, far below him, on both sides of the line, numbersof grotesque-looking observation balloons, or sausages, as they havebeen jocularly christened.
Now the altimetre registered a height of over ten thousand feet--theywere approaching the battle-front. Don Hale was about to get his firstview of "Germany."
The boy, however, was too excited--too absorbed in the contemplation ofthe singular scene below him, and, at the same time, so occupied inhandling his plane that he did not feel any tingling sensation of fear.
The battle-ground was covered with a thin veil of purplish smoke, andwhere the delicate shadows lay thickest on the earth he couldoccasionally distinguish the flashing lights of the guns or of explodingshells. But it all seemed very distant--very remote. The clouds of smokefrom the bursting projectiles and innumerable batteries were but tinyspots amid the surrounding haze. Don realized that a vigorousbombardment from both sides was going on and that a devastating hail ofmissiles was creating havoc and destruction in the opposing trenches andfar to their rear. Then he had a swift glimpse of that irregularbrownish stretch of land running between the hostile forces--"No Man'sLand," the most sinister, the most barren, the most mutilated strip ofearth that has ever existed since the world began.
The patrol leader was now mounting higher, and the reason became almostinstantly apparent. The air straight ahead had become filled with roundpuffs of viciously-spurting black smoke. The "Archies" were accordingthe early morning visitors their usual warm reception.
A second more, and not so many yards away there suddenly appeared thelargest and wickedest-looking puff of all, and, above the roar of themotor, the startled Don Hale could hear the explosion of the shrapnelshell launched by the German gunners.
The next instant he felt a terrifying thrill. His airplane was fallingthrough space.
Almost stifled by the air rushing past, with a horrifying vision ofimpending catastrophe, the boy, nevertheless, managed to keep his witsabout him. But escape seemed impossible. A perfect hail of "Archies"popped up in the air to the rear, to the side and to the front of thefalling machine, the control of which he was desperately trying toregain.
Though his agony of suspense seemed long drawn out it was but a momentwhen the terrifying descent was over and the machine again flyingparallel to the earth.
It was almost miraculous that it had not been riddled with the fragmentsof the bursting shrapnel shells. The din of their almost continuousexplosions was ringing in the aviator's ears, and in theviolently-disturbed air the Nieuport was rocking and plunging like aboat in a heavy sea.
"Never fly in a straight line" was the advice which had been given toDon before setting out on the expedition, and after the first fewmoments of suspense had passed Don Hale managed to sufficiently calm hisjumping nerves and follow this instruction. He turned the nose of hismachine upward, and, in a zigzagging flight, shot like a rocket into theblue depths above.
A little later he found an infinite relief in seeing the blackthunderbolts exploding hundreds of yards below.
But where was the rest of the patrol? They seemed to have utterlyvanished. A strange sense of loneliness such as he had never knownbefore took possession of him. And then, like a flash, he recalledGeorge Glenn's words: "The Germans have a habit of pouncing down uponany stragglers they may happen to see."
Were there any enemy scouts about?
He cast a swift, comprehensive glance over the vast expanse of sky.
A number of planes were to be seen far to the rear of the German lines,but whether friends or enemies the new combat pilot could not possiblydetermine. At any rate, he was sure his companions must have ascended tothe cloud level, now close overhead.
Still thrilled at the thought of his narrow escape, he sent the biplaneclimbing higher aloft. Nothing in his school days could be compared tothis flight, a flight in which danger threatened every moment
Plunging into a cloud, the machine became enveloped in soft and fleecymasses of vapor. Not a thing could Don see in any direction. It was amost weird and curious sensation, he found, to be sailing so far abovethe earth, in the midst of the fog; and though he experienced a certainsense of freedom from danger he had an unpleasant feeling of halfsuffocation, which impelled him to escape as soon as possible from theirenfolding embrace.
Now, through a jagged opening he caught a glimpse of the earth, and justa moment afterward something happened which gave him the greatest scarehe had yet had in his brief flying career.
A shadowy object--so faint as to be scarcely discernible--flashed intoview to his right, and, while he gazed toward it as though fascinated,in a second of time it had grown into an object of seemingly giganticproportions, though still so faint in outline that he could scarcelytake in its exact form.
Another instant and the phantom-like plane had swept past with lightningspeed, leaving in its wake powerful currents o wildly swirling vapor,while the airplane, caught in the eddy, staggered and shook.
"Whew! That was another close call!" breathed Don. "Sure enough!--thisisn't a game for weak nerves. Hello--goodnes
s gracious!"
The Nieuport had shot above the strata of clouds.
Even though his nerves were still tingling, his pulse throbbingviolently, the combat pilot could not repress a gasp of admiration as hegazed out over the immense expanse of billowy forms that stretched inevery direction in a vast circle against the soft blue field of sky.
It was still early, the sun had not risen high, and its rays, fallingupon the clouds, tinted them with the most delicate of rosy hues.
"I almost seem out of the world," murmured Don, a trifle awesomely.
"And how perfectly safe it looks I--just as though one could float abouton the clouds and be in no danger of taking a header to the earth. Butwhere am I in this curious world above? And, more important than all,where are the other planes? I'd be in a nice position, shouldn't I, ifsome of Captain Richtofen's Red Squadron should happen to come along!What shall I do?"
The boy found that skimming close to the fleecy, ever-changing billows,sometimes dipping into them, was a fascinating sport. Up thereeverything was peace, loneliness and quietude. It seemed almostincredible that only a few miles below, on the earth he had just left, aterrible war was being waged and that every moment tragedies and horrorswere taking place.
But the time for decisive action had come.
Boldly, though not without some trepidation, he plunged back into theclouds. Then came a brief period of dense obscurity, followed by aweird, spectral illumination, as the daylight struggled to pierce themasses of moisture-laden air; and presently the Nieuport was again infull view of the shell-torn, battle-scarred earth, far over a hostilecountry.
Many planes could now be seen, some below, some faint and hazy in thedistance, others comparatively near
And while Don was scanning each in turn, hoping to recognize thefamiliar Indian's head on the fuselage, he suddenly became conscious ofthe fact that not very far away a fight in the air had begun. Probablyhalf a dozen or more combat pilots were engaged; and, almost forgetting,in his interest and excitement, the danger of his position, Don Halewatched the wonderful spectacle, with his nerves at the keenest tension.
Every acrobatic performance which he himself had learned at the advancedschool at Pau was being used by the rival airmen.
Now and again one or another went down in a spinning nose dive, asthough the machine were totally out of control; but instead of crashingto the earth it would right itself, and, with almost incredible speed,rise again to the attack. Fairly leaping over one another, flashing thisway and that, narrowly avoiding collisions, they soared upward orswooped down, as a flock of enraged birds fighting among themselvesmight have done, and, faintly, the enthralled Don Hale could hear thevicious crackling of the machine guns, steadily spurting forth theirmessenger of death, and see the faint smoking lines left by the tracerballets.
Were any members of the Lafayette Squadron engaged in the conflict?
The boy mentally voiced this query over and over again as he flew aroundin a sweeping circle, keeping far above the contenders.
He felt an almost irresistible impulse to join in the fray, and but forthe fact that the squadron commander had explicitly ordered him to actonly on the defensive probably would have done so. He had seen many afight from the ground, but then the thrills were of a decidedlydifferent nature from those which came while he was in the pilot's seatof an airplane.
A moment more, and, just as suddenly as the battle had begun, it ended.One of the combat planes began to fall, turning over and over in theair, now and then the dull gray wings with the Maltese crosses clearlyoutlined against the floating masses of smoke below.
Into these it plunged and disappeared from view.
Thankful that neither his compatriots no any of the Allied airmen hadbeen the victim, yet shuddering at the thought of the human life whichhad been sacrificed to the greed of the God of War, Don Hale headed forthe west, having satisfied himself that the Allied planes, now rapidlyretreating, belonged to a French air squadron.
The black, sputtering "Archies" were beginning to burst beneath himagain, one coming so dangerously near that once more a sort ofconsternation gripped him.
"This won't do at all!" he muttered. "A little bit nearer the ceilingfor me!"
He was approaching the lines and "No Man's Land" and following itstortuous course with his eyes he observed in many places the suddenbursts of smoke which told of the explosions of high-calibre shells. Allabout him the atmosphere was hazy and the distance entirely obscured.
Now rapidly becoming familiar with the new game, Don began to feel morelike himself. For the first time he could understand how it was that theexperienced pilots learned to treat with comparative indifference theangry shrieks of the attacking "Archies."
At length Don Hale discovered the patrol of Lafayette machines flying ina perfect formation just over the enemy's line.
After facing the dangers of the sky alone the sense of relief andpleasure that the sight of friends near at hand afforded him wasdelightful indeed. He felt like uttering a whoop of joy.
"Considering all such experiences as I've just had once is too much!" hemuttered to himself. "And this time you can just bet I'll not getseparated."
Nor did he. The patrol, which was only policing the air, led him into nofurther danger, and, consequently, when the two hours was over and theyheaded for the aviation field, nothing had occurred to add more thrillsto those he had already received.
Don Hale, however, was thoroughly glad to see the great encampmentcoming into view; and equally glad when he had spiraled down to theearth and made an almost perfect _atterrissage_.
Waiting machinists helped him out of the cockpit; and as he answered thequestions fired toward him the boy felt as proud and happy as any of the"aces" whose fame has spread throughout the world.
His first reconnaissance over the enemy's line was something he couldnever forget