Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

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 time of dawn was as safe as any hour for a flight. It is near mid-day when the heat of the sun causes those disturbances in the upper atmosphere strata that the French pilots call remous, meaning actually “whirlpools.” Yet these phenomena can be met at almost any hour.

The machine had gathered speed now. She shook terrifically under the throbbing of the heavy motor – a motor which was later found to be too powerful for the two-seated airplanes.

At fifty miles an hour they rushed westward. Tom was cool now. He was enjoying the new experience. This would be something to tell the girls about. He would wire Ruth that he had made the trip in safety, and she would get the message before she went aboard the Admiral Pekhard, at Brest.

Why, Brest was right over there – somewhere! Vaguely he could mark the curve of miles upon miles of the French coast. What a height this was!

And then suddenly the airplane struck a whirlpool and dropped about fifty feet with all the unexpectedness of a similar fall in an express elevator. She halted abruptly and with an awful shock that set her to shivering and rolling like a ship in a heavy sea.

Tom was all but jolted out of his seat; but the belt held him. He turned, open-mouthed, upon his friend the pilot. But before he could yell a question the airplane shot up again till it struck the solid air.

“My heavens!” shouted Tom at last. “What do you call that?”

“Real flying!” shouted Stillinger in return. “How do you like it?”

Tom had no ready reply. He was not sure that he liked it at all! But it certainly was a new experience.

CHAPTER VII – THE ZEPPELIN

Stillinger was giving his full attention to managing his aircraft now. They were circling in a great curve toward the north. This route would bring them nearer to the lines of battle. The pilot turned to his passenger and tried to warn him of what he was about to do. But Tom had recovered his self-possession and was staring straight ahead with steady intensity.

So Stillinger shut off the motor and the airplane pitched downward. A fifty-mile drive is a swift pace anywhere – on the ground or in the air; but as the airplane fell the air fairly roared past their ears and the pace must have been nearer eighty miles an hour.

The machine was pointing down so straight that the full weight of the two young men was upon their feet. They were literally standing erect. Stillinger shot another glance at his passenger. Tom’s lips were parted again and, although he could not hear it, the pilot knew Tom had emitted another shout of excitement.

The earth, so far below, seemed rushing up to meet them. To volplane from such a height and at such speed is almost the keenest test of courage that can be put upon a man who for the first time seeks to emulate the bird.

Nor is real danger lacking. If the pilot does not redress his plane at exactly the right moment he will surely dash it and himself into the earth.

While still some hundreds of feet from the earth, Stillinger leveled his airplane and started the motor once more. They skimmed the earth’s surface for some distance and then began to spiral upward.

It was just then that a black speck appeared against the clouded sky over the not-far-distant battleline. They had not been near enough to see the trenches even from the upper strata of air to which the airplane had first risen. There was a haze hanging over the fighting battalions of friend and foe alike. This black speck was something that shot out of the cloud and upward, being small, but clearly defined at this distance.

The morning light was growing. The sun’s red upper rim was just showing over the rugged line of the Vosges. Had they been nearer to the earth it would have been possible to hear the reveille from the various camps.

The whole sector had been quiet. Suddenly there were several puffs of smoke, and then, high in the air, and notably near to that black speck against the cloud, other bursts of smoke betrayed aerial shells. Stillinger’s lips mouthed the word, “Hun!” and Tom Cameron knew that he referred to the flying machine that hung poised over No Man’s Land, between the lines.

The aerial gunners were trying to pot the enemy flying machine. But of a sudden a group of similar machines, flying like wild geese, appeared out of the fog-bank. There must have been a score of them.

Taking advantage of the morning fog, which was thicker to the north and east than it was behind the Allied lines, the Germans had sent their machines into the air in squadrons. A great raid was on!

Out of the fog-bank at a dozen points winged the Fokkers and the smaller fighting airplanes. It was a surprise attack, and had been excellently planned. The Allies were ready for no such move.

Yet the gunners became instantly active for miles and miles along the lines. In the back areas, too, a barrage of aerial shells was thrown up. While from the various aviation camps the French and British flying men began to mount, singly and in small groups, to meet the enemy attack.

The raid was not aimed against the American sectors to the east. They were a long way from this point. Stillinger had flown far and was now nowhere near his own unit, if that should come into the fight.