Dastral of the Flying Corps

"Yes, the Ehrenbreitstein Forts are down below; just a little way ahead on the left. They have plenty of guns down there."

This place, called the Gibraltar of Central Europe, is a towering fortification, overlooking the town of Coblentz, and defending the line of the Rhine. The river runs between the fort and the town, and the two are connected by a bridge of boats.

"Better skirt the town, else they will think we are going to attack the place, and some of our fellows might get winged."

"Poch! They can't hit us. All their best gunners are miles away at the front. Let's go straight on. We shall be out of their range in five minutes."

Before they reached the town the white puffs of the 77's made a line of smoke ahead of them, and, intermingled with this, they saw the black cloudlets caused by the bursting of the enemy's 105 calibre shells. In fact they were ringed with a curtain of shell fire.

Dastral gave the signal by a sudden clip of his 'plane, which was leading.

"Ninety degrees left and dip 500 feet!"

The Flight-Commander led the way through a gap in the curtain fire, and the rest followed, swerving rapidly to the left, then down, down in a fearful nose-dive of hundreds of feet, before they flattened out.

"Bravo! Well done, boys!" yelled the leader, waving his hand to the daring men behind. For they had outclassed the Boche, and before he could rectify his aim, the machines were out of range once more.

On the other side of the town, however, they came in for the same treatment, but they once more evaded the enemy's fire, and soon they left the town of Coblentz, with its Denkmal of Wilhelm der Grosse, and the forts of Ehrenbreitstein behind them.

"Three hundred shots for nothing, Jock," shouted Dastral, who was highly pleased with himself.

Jock did not hear, however, for the wind carried the words away, and the observer was otherwise engaged, searching the skies with his glasses. A moment later, however, having discovered what he was looking for, he turned and shouted:

"One, two, three of them climbing to attack us!"

"Where are they?"

"Down below there to the left. Two yellow fat 'planes with black crosses on them, and a white one."

Dastral looked serious for a moment, as, holding the joy-stick with his right hand, he raised his glasses with the other and looked down, to where, from an aerodrome just by the river, three enemy 'planes were rising up to fight with them.

The shadow passed from the fair, young face of the chief pilot, as he gazed upon the enemy, and a calm smile wreathed his face.

"Humph! Let the devils come. We are not afraid of them. Sorry I can't stay to fight them, Jock. Our first business is to bomb the arsenal, not to pick a stray quarrel with these beasts, who are asking for trouble."

Then, opening out his engine once more to the full, he waved his hand coolly to the enemy, and called out:

"Good-bye, Mr. Boche. Some other time, if you don't mind, but to-day I'm busy."

His followers understood, and opened the throttles of their engines accordingly, and, speeding on, soon left the enemy behind, for they were slower machines, all the enemy's best fighters being on the western front.

Again and again Dastral looked round to see that his comrades were all right. Eagerly he looked for the red, white and blue cocarde on the wings, and felt very happy, for there was no need to be miserable and lonely with those brave fellows so near. Had they not sworn to follow him to the "Gulfs," if necessary?

The chief enemy, however, so far, was the biting cold. The thermometer was showing sixteen degrees below zero. Even with the thick leathern coats, pilots' boots and padded helmets, it was impossible to keep warm. The cold intruded everywhere. The thought which consoled them, however, was this:

"We shall soon be there, now! And we shall be the first raiders to bomb the enemy's citadel, where he manufactures his enormous supply of shot and shell to keep the war going."

They were following the Rhine still. Every now and then they could see long strings of barges being towed up and down the river between Coblentz and Dusseldorf.

"Cologne!" shouted the observer, and Dastral nodded, as he looked ahead and saw the twin spires of the wonderful cathedral, and close beside it the ancient Rathaus.

"What a target!" shouted Jock, as the great city lay beneath them.

"Yes, but there are women and children down there, Jock, and I am not a pirate. When we get to Essen we will begin."

"All right, old fellow. It was only a joke," came back the reply through the speaking-tube.

They received another baptism of fire as they reached the outskirts of the city, but, skirting round to the right, they avoided the heavy fire of the forts at Deutz, for Dastral knew that the brutes were not shooting badly to-day, and he was anxious not to have a single machine crippled before his mission was completed.

"There'll be plenty of fighting soon, my boy!" called Dastral. "The enemy will have guessed our objective by this time and they will be preparing a reception for us."

The observer nodded, for he knew that the fires down below would be busy, and the various German Commands would be communicating with Essen and the arsenal at Krupps'. There was no time to lose, and so, despite the cold, they were still doing about one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

"Dusseldorf!" soon came from the observer's nascelle, for they had passed Coblentz, and many other towns and villages that lay about the slopes of the Rhine.

"See that!" shouted Jock.

Dastral again looked in the direction pointed out by his comrade, and he beheld a great blur of smoke on the right, which blotted out the landscape.

It was Germany's black country. Here the towns were clustered thickly together. Elberfeld, Barmen, Essen, and to the west of the last-mentioned town lay the mighty works of Krupps. Somewhere in that cloud of smoke lay the object of their long flight.

The Flight-Commander pointed his machine in the direction indicated, and the rest followed. The real fight was about to begin at last. How would they come out of it?

They were all eager to begin, for each machine carried a couple of the new land torpedoes, in addition to a number of twenty pound bombs.

It was well they had arranged a proper plan of campaign, else their labour would have been half in vain. Now, with the information which had come to hand by the mysterious Captain Scott, they knew the exact location of the very buildings on which they were about to concentrate their fire.

"Now we're going to be strafed! I thought so!" cried Dastral.

"Phew! We're in for it now!" replied Jock, as the shot and shell began to scream past them, bursting with red spurts of flame, followed by white puffs and black clouds.

Where was the huge powder factory? They were all searching keenly for it now, for the atmosphere was smoky, which was partly their defence, and partly their disadvantage, making it difficult to place their bombs correctly.

It would never do to fail now. They must go lower down and risk the heavy fire from the "Archies."

The T.N.T. sheds, where are they? The nitro-glycerine works, and the huge dump?

Oh, yes, there they were. Not all the smoke could hide them. Not all the enemy's fire could stop those daring and intrepid raiders.

Dastral gave the pre-arranged signal, and each 'plane dived to the objective for which it had been detailed.

"Boom-m-m!" went the first land torpedo.

Yes, the Flight-Commander had found the powder works. A flame of fire shot up hundreds of feet, and the place began to burn fiercely. The "Archies" roared louder than ever.

"Boom-m-m! Boom-m-m! Boom-m!"

The others had found their objectives too. Four huge blocks were burning fiercely. Down below the crowds were surging out of the doomed buildings, running hither and thither to escape those terrible bombs which were now being dropped in a dozen places, in rapid succession, and the still more terrible explosions which must shortly come unless the fierce fires which were now raging could be quickly subdued.