Both of the boys though it a splendid idea, and as the general good-naturedly acquiesced, they went to bed early to get up at dawn and have a trial flight on the two machines which they were to pilot across the channel.

The new machines were in fine trim, and the whole group were in France, at the appointed time and place in due course.  The airdrome where the squadron landed was but four hours’ drive by motorcar from the point from which Bob and Dicky had started the flight that had ended so strangely for them.  The flight commander of the Britishers gladly sent the American lads to their own airdrome in a car, and they arrived at dinner-time.  When they walked into the headquarters’ hut they had a welcome indeed, and half an hour later when they were allowed to join their comrades in the mess building, there was a scene that none of the Brighton boys could ever forget.  Feeling ran too deep to make any of the fellows try to hide wet eyes, and lumps in the throat made handclasps all the more firm.

Bob and Dicky were anxious to know how the rest had fared during their absence, but not a word would anyone of the others say until the two returned heroes of the mess had gone over their story in detail.

As the boys finished the recital of their adventures Joe Little expressed the universal feeling in the hearts of every one of the Brighton boys when he turned to Bob and Dicky, and putting a hand on a shoulder of each, said soberly:  “Fellows, if two of us can get out of a hole like that and get back safe and sound, we can rest mighty secure in the sort of Providence that is looking after us.  It is little we need to worry about what may happen to us, after all.”

“You never know how lucky you can be in this world,” said Bob.

“And you never want to be afraid to give your luck a fighting chance,” added Dicky.

CHAPTER XII

PLUCK AND LUCK

No little change came over the Brighton boys as they developed into seasoned fighting airmen.  They looked older, harder, but they were just as much boys as ever.

The first serious casualty suffered by their little band of six came to Archie Fox.  Archie was doing what he called “daily grind” when Fate overtook him.  That “daily grind” was the sort of work that bid fair to end in disaster one day or another.

Well Archie remembered that day.  It had started much the same as other days experienced by Archie’s unit.  The getting ready of the machine, the brief examination of the controls, first Archie and then his observer, a young officer named Carleton, taking their seats, the word given, and then all other sound shut out by the dull roar of the engine—–­it was always like that.  Lines of trees, patchwork patterns made by the fields, and oddly grouped farm buildings swept along beneath the soaring plane, growing smaller with uncanny rapidity.  The day’s work started.  That was all it amounted to.  In the airdrome they had left behind, the eyes that had followed their first moments of flight were turned to other sights nearer at hand.  The men who had seen the plane well away started for other jobs, forgetting the departed machine.