Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/186

176 And then, high up and at a vantage point, while below them hovered their photographing planes, the two young aviators beheld a curious sight.

In German-occupied territory, but on French soil, they saw near a railroad junction, where they were fairly well hidden in a camouflaged position, not one, but three monster Hun cannons. The guns looked more like gigantic cranes than like the accepted form of a great rifled piece of armament. The guns were so mounted that they could be run out on a small track at the moment of firing, and then propelled back again, like some of the disappearing cannon at Sandy Hook and other United States forts. Only the German guns advanced and retreated horizontally, while the usual method is vertically.

"We've discovered 'em! There they are!" cried Tom, but of course he could not hear his own voice above the roar of his motor. But he knew that he and Jack were over the very spot where the night before they had seen the colored flares from the great guns.

And they had, indeed, by a most lucky chance, located the big German guns, for there were three of them. They were placed almost mid-way between the railroad station of Crepyen-Lannois and the two forts known as "Joy Hills," forts which had fallen into German hands. There