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The Boy Aviators with the Air Raiders: A Story of the Great World War

The Boy Aviators with the Air Raiders: A Story of the Great World War

CHAPTER I.
NOT FAR FROM THE FIRING LINE

“It seems queer not to have Harry along with us on this trip to the war zone of Europe!”

“Just what Pudge, here, was saying last night, Billy. But you know my brother Harry has been ordered by Doctor Perkins to keep quiet for two whole months.”

“Frank, he was lucky to break only his arm and collar bone, when it might have been his neck, in that nasty fall. But why are you rubbing your eyes like that, I’d like to know, Pudge Perkins?”

“Pirates and parachutes, I’ll tell you why, Billy. Every little while I get to thinking I must be dreaming. So I pinch myself, and dig my knuckles in my eyes to make sure. But it’s the real thing, isn’t it, boys?”

“If you mean that the three of us, here, representing the Sea Eagle Company, Limited, of Brig Island, in Casco Bay, Maine, makers of up-to-date seaplanes, have come over to look up a sample shipment of our manufactures, and find ourselves being pestered by the French and British Governments to take a contract from them, why it certainly is the real thing.”

“It was lucky my father has that arrangement with the French Government to protect our property through thick and thin,” continued the boy called Pudge, who, as his name would signify, was very rotund in build, with a rosy face, and a good-natured twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes, only for that they would have commandeered the boxed seaplane long ago, and by now dozens of fleets made on the same model would be pouncing on the German bases along the Belgian coast,” remarked the boy whose name was Frank, and to whom the other two evidently looked up as though he might be their leader in the enterprise requiring skill and courage.

“But they’ve been mighty good to us since then,” went on Pudge. “They have allowed us to have a substantial hangar built after our own peculiar pattern within reach of the water here at Dunkirk, though we are not so many miles away from where the Allies are fighting the Kaiser’s men who are in Belgian trenches.”

“Yes,” added Billy Barnes, who had once been a lively reporter, now a member of the aëroplane manufacturing company engaged in making the remarkable type of airships invented by Pudge’s scientific father, Doctor Perkins, “and during these weeks we’ve been able to get our machine together, so that right now it’s in prime condition for making a flight on the sea or in the air.”

“Whisper that next time, Billy,” cautioned Frank, casting a quick glance about him as the three boys continued to walk along the road leading out of Dunkirk, which in places even skirted the water’s edge.