Page:Air Service Boys Flying for France.djvu/159

154 heavy machine since the first year of the great war. He had had many narrow escapes from death, but for all that he never took unnecessary chances under the conviction that he bore a charmed life.

Circling upward they finally reached an altitude of about five thousand feet. Tom knew this partly from intuition, and then again he could see the face of the altimeter used to register height. After that for ten minutes they flew almost directly north.

Then the sergeant throttled down to await the coming of other machines that were expected to take some part in the venture. Tom busied himself in looking down upon the region of Verdun—a name ever to be inscribed on the pages of French history as commemorating deeds of unequaled valor on the part of her heroic sons.

The country could not be distinguished in detail from such a height. It presented a flat surface of varicolored figures. The woods were irregular blocks, dun-colored, with patches of dark green where evergreen trees grew; the roads could be traced running this way and that in white lines, often crossing. Fields were in geometric squares, and at another season of the year might have looked green.

Over beyond lay the Meuse, sparkling in the