Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/59

Rh said Harry, about to start on once more. "They're just sick and tired of this kind of fighting. Wait till we get Fritz out in the open, and you'll see how we'll rush him back like hot cakes! So long, both of you. Here's wishing you the best of luck and another notch in your stick by nightfall."

Of course Tom had secured another observer in place of the poor fellow who had been so badly injured on that other flight of his. His arm, too, had healed.

Shortly afterwards the air service boys received word to start, and along with four other planes mounted upward like birds on the wing.

So far as appearances went the scene below them did not differ materially from the preceding day. There was the same vast stretch of grim forest known as the Argonne, with occasional openings here and there, "breathing spots," they might be called. These marked sites of farms, timber or cutting authorized at some past day by the French government, that controlled the wonderful tract of woods, possibly the largest in all France. Smoke was already rolling upward in great volumes while the air pulsated with the fearful crash of every imaginable type of gun, both large and small. As the day wore on all this was bound to increase greatly, the impetuous Americans pushing forward and wresting rod after rod of the forest from the enemy, paying