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Scarcely had she seated herself when a great copper-plated ball alighted upon the lawn in front of her. A heavy steel door snapped open and a powerful figure clad in aviator's leather, the face completely covered by the hood, leaped out.
Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of the banner. Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one to rest. Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures a lance with a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steel helmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown.
As to what the fallen aviator's real fate was, time alone could disclose. "I can only wait!" sighed Nellie, as the boys took their leave. "The days will be anxious ones days of waiting. I shall help here all I can. You'll let me know the moment there is any news good or bad won't you?" she begged; and her eyes filled with tears.
They put me in an aviator's rig with the addition of a life-belt in case we should get a ducking in the channel and I climbed up into my position for the long run, a roomy place in the semi-circular bow of the beast which was ordinarily occupied by a machine gun and gunner. "She's a good old 'bus, very steady. You'll like her," said one of the group of youngsters looking on.
It becomes a matter of discounting the aviator's speed and guessing from experience which way he will turn next. That ought to have got him the burst was right under. No! He rises. Surely that one got him! The puff is right in front, partly hiding the Taube from view. You see the plane tremble as if struck by a violent gust of wind. Close! Within thirty or forty yards, the telescope says.
The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master nodded to himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be a valued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There might be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case that should be necessary. The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the cliff.
She mended his clothes, and made fancy dishes for him, she knit him everything that could be knitted, including an aviator's helmet for which he had no possible use. She talked about "my soldier" to any one who would listen. Bowinski accepted her attention with grave politeness.
How perfectly ducky to ride home in an aeroplane! Oh, Johnny wants your goggles, Mr. Halliday." Mary V reached down quickly and lifted them off the irate aviator's head before he knew what she was after. "Here they are, Johnny. Sit down, and Mr. Halliday will crank up or whatever you call it. I'll send him right back, Mr. Halliday, just as quick as ever he can make the trip!" Mr.
In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an American aviator's career. Another American aviator, also a Harvard man, who met death in the air, was Victor Chapman of New York, a youth of unusual charm, high ideals, and indomitable courage. At the very outbreak of the war he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion a rough entourage for a college-bred man.
Still a youth, only twenty-three years of age at the time of his death, and only flying for twenty-one months, he had lived out several life times in the mad excitement of combat in mid-air. Within three weeks after getting his aviator's license he had become an "Ace."
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