have met with the most thrilling adventures again
and again."

Jack managed to hide his bitter disappointment. He realized that he
would never be in the same class as his more brilliant chum. Tom fitted
for becoming an expert in the line had chosen for his calling. On the
other hand Jack began to believe that he was a little too slow-witted
ever to make a shining success as a fighting aviator, where skill must
be backed by astonishing quickness of mind and body, as well as
_something else_ within the heart that is an inherited birthright.

"Anyhow," he consoled himself by saying, not aloud, but softly, "I can
be the pilot of a bombing machine, and perhaps in time they'll give me
charge of a plane used as fire-control during the battle. That is as far
up the pole as I ought to aspire to climb. These chaps in the Lafayette
are one and all picked men, the very cream of the entire service."

CHAPTER VIII

OVER THE ENEMY'S LINES

"I say, Tom, it looks like a poor day for flying I'm afraid," Jack
called out in the chill of the early dawn the next morning, he having
been the first to get out of bed and step over to the window of their
sleeping room.

It was of course in the villa placed at the disposal of the escadrille,
many miles back of the first line of trenches.

Tom, however, did not bother his head about the weather to any
appreciable extent.

"It's likely to turn out a fair day for work," he told his chum, in his
cheery way, as he followed Jack to the window. "You know that's happened
lots of times. So far we've been lucky enough not to get caught in a
storm while aloft. Yes, I can already see that there isn't going to be a
stiff breeze; and what would a sprinkle of rain amount to?"

"I suppose the thing has to be pulled off, no matter what the weather
is," mused Jack, as he proceeded to dress, since breakfast had been
ordered at an unusually early hour that morning.

"Well, the High Command has made all arrangements for a big time. You
know what that means, when tens of thousands of poilus have to be
transferred during the darkness of night, so that the enemy pilots can't
glimpse the movement and give warning? So, unless the skies fall, we are
bound to get busy this morning."

The air service boys were soon at the hangars, where an animated scene
was taking place. Any one could see that something unusual was about to
take place, because of the numbers of men rushing this way and that,
while moto