Aces Up. Covington Clarke
right, but on a day like this I could get more pleasure out of just wandering through the countryside than in seeing all the cities of the world rolled into one. Look!” he pointed to the flying field as the car turned from the highway. “There are the Camels, 43warming up, and filling this good, clean air with their sickening fumes. Bah! I hate it!”
“Say, have you got the pip? You talk like a farmer. Snap out of it! We’re headed for Gay Paree!”
The car had rolled to a stop at the edge of the field. McGee climbed out slowly. “All right, big boy. You lead the way. And no contour chasing to-day. I’m too liable to get absent-minded and try to reach out and pick some daisies. Besides, this motor of mine has been trickier than usual in the last few days despite the fact that the Ack Emma declares she is top hole. So fly high and handsome. Know the way?”
Larkin was crawling into his flying suit and did not answer.
“Know the way?” McGee repeated.
“Sure. That’s a fine question to ask a pilot bound for Paris. We land at Le Bourget field, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Where’d you think you’d land–in the Champs Elysees?”
“I’m liable to land on a church steeple if that motor cuts out on me as it did yesterday afternoon–for no reason at all. Remember, no contour chasing and no dog-fighting. We’re going to Paris.”
Larkin grinned. Rarely did they go into the air together but what they engaged in mimic warfare–dog-fighting–before their wheels again touched the ground. It was the airman’s game of tag, the winner 44being that one who could get on the other’s tail and stay there. It was a thunderous, strut singing game wherein the pursued threw his plane into fantastic gyrations in a frenzied, wild effort to shake off the pursuer and get on his tail. It was a game in which McGee excelled. Although Larkin recognized this fact, he was always the first to start the dog fight and had never found McGee unwilling to play. As for contour chasing–well, they had broken regulations times without number, and to date had paid no penalty.
McGee, knowing what thoughts lurked behind Larkin’s grin, wagged a prudent finger under his nose.
“Mind your step, Buzz,” he warned. “We are supposed to be sedate, dignified, instruction-keeping instructors. Fly northwest to Auxerre, then follow the railroad toward Sens and on to Melun. Then swing straight north and come into Le Bourget from the east.”
“All right. All set?”
“Yes. You lead off and I’ll follow. Wait! On second thought I think I’ll lead and pick my own altitude. And if you start any funny business, I’ll leave you flat!”
They climbed into the waiting planes, whose motors were still warming idly. Members of the ground crew took up their stations at the wing tips. McGee was on the point of nodding to the crew to remove 45the wheel chocks when he remembered that for the first time in his experience as a pilot he had climbed into the cockpit without first casting an appraising eye over braces, struts and turn buckles. He promptly cut the motor and climbed from the plane, saying, half aloud; “I must be getting balmy. It’s the weather, I guess.”
“How’s that, sir?” asked the air mechanic.
“I say, it’s balmy weather we’re having.”
“Oh! Yes, sir.”
“You’ve checked her all over, Wilson?”
“Yes, sir. And fueled her according to Lieutenant Larkin’s instructions.”
“Hum.” McGee slowly walked around the plane, giving every functional detail a critical look, nor was he the least hurried by the fact that Larkin was displaying impatience. Satisfied at last, he climbed back into the plane. A member of the ground crew took his place at the propeller.
“Petrol off, sir?”
“Petrol off.”
Whish! Whish! went the prop as the helper began pulling it over against compression.
“Contact, sir!”
“Contact.”
The motor caught, coughed, caught again and the prop whirled into an indistinct blur. The sudden blast of wind sent clouds of dust eddying toward the 46hangar, but ahead lay the cool, fresh, dew-washed green of the field. McGee turned to look once more at the wind sock which, for want of a breeze, hung limp along its staff. He nodded to the men at the wheel chocks, waved his hand to Larkin and gave her the gun.
No pilot in the service could lift a Camel off the ground quicker than could McGee, but this morning he taxied slowly forward and was getting dangerously near the end of the field before he began to get the tail up.
Larkin, watching him, chuckled. “Guess he wants to take a spin on the ground,” he commented to himself. “Fancy that bird wanting to go to Paris by motor!” Then to show how little he thought of the ground he advanced his throttle rapidly and took off on far less space than should ever be attempted by one who knows, from experience, how suddenly a crowded Clerget-motored Camel can sputter and incontinently die. And as a parting defiance to his knowledge, Larkin pulled back his stick and zoomed. Altitude was what McGee wanted, eh? Well, here was the way to get altitude in a hurry.
McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. “The poor fish!” was his mental comment. “If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they’ll be needing a lot of replacements–or yelling for a new instructor.”
47But the appreciative ground crew, watching, expressed a different view. “Boy!” exclaimed an envious Ack Emma. “Can that baby fly! I’ll tell the world! Watch him out-climb McGee. Did you see how McGee took off? Like a cadet doin’ solo–afraid to lift her. And they say he’s one of the best aces in the R.F.C. Huh! I think he’s got the pip! Ever since he first touched his wheels to this ’drome he’s been yellin’ about his motor bein’ cranky. And it’s all jake. She takes gas like a race horse takes rein.”
“Yeah,” growled a mechanic by the name of Flynn, who by nature and nationality stood ready to defend anyone bearing the name of McGee, “a lot you know about those little teapots in them Camels. You was trained on Jennies and–and Fords! What you know about a Clerget engine could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Say, do you know why he took her off so gentle? Well, I’ll spread light in dark places, brother. He took off slow because he knew you didn’t know nothin’, see?”
“Say, listen–”
The quarrel went on, despite the fact that the two pilots constituting the meatless bone of contention were rapidly becoming specks in the sky to the northwest.
At five thousand feet McGee leveled off and swung slightly west. He looked back and up. Larkin was 48five hundred feet above him and somewhat behind, but at McGee’s signal he dived down, taking up a position on the left. In this manner they could point out objects below and engage in the sign language which they had perfected through many hours spent in the air together.
As they flew along McGee felt his spirits mounting. It was a good world to live in and life was made especially sweet and interesting by the soft unfolding greens of a land brought to bud and blossom by April’s sun and showers. In the beautiful panorama below there was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint–yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee–troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, these, to be coming from the green fields and woods of a seeming peaceful countryside. Forward, ever forward they made their way. Never, it seemed to McGee, had he seen roads choked with returning men and munitions. Was the maw of the monster there to the