Page:Air Service Boys Flying for France.djvu/177

172 So they chatted as they walked, and observed all that was to be seen around them, showing the horrors of modern warfare.

All the same the two young aviators had their busy times. These strolls were only allowable when the weather was bad for flying, and a period of dullness descended on the enterprising escadrille. It might be the fog was too heavy, or else a driving wind made flying too full of peril to send up many machines.

On other occasions the chums took part in numerous tasks. Each in turn served as photographer, accompanying a pilot over the German lines, guarded by a flotilla of fighting planes that hovered above them in a fashion to make Jack compare the situation to an old hen and her chickens.

"Only in this case," he hastily added, "it's the nimble little chicks that are watching over the clumsy old hen, so as to keep the German hawks from making a meal off her."

Whatever they attempted to do was done well. Many times did they receive a word of commendation from the French commander on that sector, when he had seen the splendid fruits of their snapshots; for both youths were expert photographers.

They had now been in almost every type of machine along the front. Even the small and