McGee, satisfied with the sound of his own motor, nodded to the wing boys to remove the chocks, and taxied to a quick take-off. At two or three hundred feet he turned, came back across the 'drome and headed in the general direction of Paris, climbing steadily and maintaining the direction until to the watching ground crew he became lost to view.
Then McGee swung north and began working back eastward. He passed to the west of La Ferte, and having gained an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, headed directly for the front, intending to cross the line to the north of Belleau and proceed toward Fere-en-Tardenois. Then, if fortune favored him, he could decide upon a deeper thrust into enemy territory.
The cloud strata was exceptionally deep and yet ragged enough to provide frequent glimpses at the world below. The one great danger lay in the fact that he might any minute come unexpectedly upon a German pursuit group. It was probable, however, that on such a morning they would be operating at a lesser altitude.
The trenches, as he crossed the line, were only faintly discernible, the detail obscured by the blue ground haze so common to the eyes of the pilot operating at high altitudes. But the strip of barren land on each side of the trenches gave visible evidence of the grimness of the struggle far below, and here and there along the line, miniature geysers spouted fan-shaped eruptions of earth with a grotesque, unexpected suddenness. Then a second later a new pock-mark on the face of an already over-tortured earth showed where the shell had exploded.
It was fascinating to watch. Nerve-racking and ear-splitting as it must be to the mud-splashed creatures in the trenches below, from on high the land within the neighborhood of the zig-zag trenches took on the appearance of a pot of boiling mush--here a crater, there a crater, springing into being with an amazing suddenness that lured the observer into the game of guessing when the next crater would appear.
McGee was engaged in exactly such mental speculation when he was brought to the realization of his own nearness to war by the plane-rocking explosion of a well-placed Archie. Then two other giant black roses bloomed directly in his path. Now he was presented with his own guessing game. Where would the next one be?