"Wait a minute!" McGee seized his arm and turned him around. "There's plenty of time before the curtain. Look, Buzz. See that black fellow over there in French Colonial O.D.? Came from Algiers, I guess, or Senegal, maybe. What brought him here, and what sort of stories will he tell ... when he gets back home? Will he tell about what he did, or will he talk about what he saw and what others did?"
"Well, this has set me to thinking. We're all here on exactly the same business. The uniform doesn't count so much, nor does the branch of the service. It's just a question of getting the job done--a sort of 'Heave Ho! All together, now!' Get me?"
"Yes--I guess so. What are you driving at?"
"This. See that American sergeant over there--the one who carried the flag down the aisle and jumped up on the stage?"
"You said it! The biggest duck in this puddle, in more ways than one. And I want to get into the uniform he is wearing. Understand, Buzz? Oh, I'm proud enough of the one I'm wearing, but when he started the national anthem, and they all came in on that chorus, 'Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,'--well, I felt cold shivers running up and down my backbone. None of the other songs did that to me. Do you get me, Buzz?"
"Sure. I felt it, too." He put both his hands on Red's shoulders, holding him off at arm's length. "You want back under the old Stars and Stripes, don't you? ... you little shrimp!"
"I know how you feel. I'm with you, fellow, when you get ready to make the change."
McGee's eyes lighted with surprise and joy. "Really, Buzz?"
"And you don't think we'd feel like--like--"
"We'd feel like two Americans, _going home_. Shake, little feller! There, I feel better already. Come on, let's go in; that's the curtain bell."
On the following Tuesday morning a group of two Spads and several Nieuports were delivered to Major Cowan's pursuit squadron at Is Sur Tille. A Lieutenant Smoot, one of the ferry pilots who had flown up one of the Nieuports, sought to ease the pain caused by his own lowly calling by taunting Tex Yancey--an extremely dangerous pastime, for Tex had a ready tongue.
"When you buckoes have washed out these planes," he said, "the Old Man will see the error of his way and send us up to do the real flying. What's left of this gang will then be put to ferrying. Did any of you ever see a Spad or Nieuport before?"