Читать книгу Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in France and Belgium. Or, Saving the Fortunes of the Trouvilles онлайн

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“You young daredevils, how does this strike you?”

An answering high note from Billy:

“You’re doing bully, Captain, but mind your eye and don’t knock a hole in Dunkirk by flying too low.”

“Well, of all the nerve,” chuckled the veteran wheelman, “‘flying too low,’ and the sky almost close enough to touch.”

A pressure forward on the elevating lever shot the sea-plane downward, and the turn again to level keel was made a scant five hundred feet above the choppy surface of the Channel.

“We’ll take to boating again at Dunkirk,” observed the captain, but the observation was heard only by himself, for now the wind and the waves and the motors and the straining of the aircraft combined to drown even a voice like the captain’s.

There was destined to be no landing that night at Dunkirk. An offshore gale, not to be denied, suddenly swept the Channel with howling force. Rising, dipping, twisting, the sea-plane dashed on in uncertain course, and when at last it had outridden the storm, Ostend was in sight—the Atlantic City of the Belgians.