Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/287

Rh the old man was made to stand, blind-folded, against a wall. While he still marvelled over the miracle of his success in saving the airman he was sent abruptly to probe the greater miracle.

In the early days when there was retreating and advancing, before the neutral zone had narrowed itself to the few sinister yards of No-Man's Land, the aeroplane gathered its intelligence well in advance of the troops. At night, pilots and observers were frequently condemned to strange lodgings, filled with apprehension, where sleep was uneasy. Sometimes they came back with shaken nerves.

I was told of such an experience. A machine was caught ahead of its division by the sudden approach of a storm at nightfall. The darkness possessed a resistive power. The first rain made it like a soggy, smothering garment. The machine descended in a country still smoking from the devastation of war. To struggle back to the blackness and the rising wind would be an invitation to disaster, and with their own eyes the pilot and the observer had seen the enemy retreat beyond this point.

"At least," the pilot said, we can't sleep in the fields."

The observer indicated a tiny gleam of light not