Page:Air Service Boys Over Enemy's Lines.djvu/132

124 Immediately Tom shaped a new course. No longer were they heading toward the north by east, but directly east. There some forty miles, more or less, away, lay the city of Metz, the object of their mission.

After moving along in this fashion for a short time Tom drove his machine more slowly. He was watching for the rising of the old moon ahead, where the horizon was already lighted with her near approach.

How strange she looked peering above the edge of the world as though curious to see all that was going on in this troubled hemisphere. Jack thought he had never witnessed a more peculiar spectacle. But at least this fragment of a moon would be likely to afford them the necessary illumination required when they attempted to land in a field that neither of them had ever seen before, and only knew through information imparted by means of their chart, and its accompanying notes.

Some other pilot had doubtless been over this same route on previous occasions; yes, and even landed in that identical field. He had made the chart; and the accompanying memoranda consisted of his personal experiences.

Already the moon had dispelled some of the cheerless gloom round about them. It was still cold up in that upper strata of rarefied air;