Page:Air Service Boys Flying for France.djvu/187

182 they had been lamenting the enforced idleness.

Of course a bombing raid was "tame stuff" to those active members of the fighting escadrille. Aboard one of those heavy and cumbersome big machines, that made such slow progress compared with the speedy Nieuports, going a couple of hundred miles in a night, dumping the load of explosives on some object far below, and then returning to their base, was a mere matter of form. The danger connected with such an expedition could not for a moment be compared with what the fighting pilots risked every day they went up to perform their hazardous duties.

Nevertheless they did not by any means, scorn those who carried out the raiding expeditions. Their work was just as important, if not so exciting, as any other, since every munition dump, or factory, which they could successfully fire, meant hundreds of French lives saved in the end.

As there was to be no rest for them later in the night the chums retired to their room very early and lay down to snatch a few hours sleep. Tom had an alarm clock and set it so as to be sure they would awake on time.

It turned out that Tom was even better than the clock; or else that he was afraid to risk it, for he had shaken his companion, and told him