Faint and far off the distant rumble of cannonading came to his ears, but here in the woods it was as calm and peaceful as if war, death and slaughter were forgotten things. At length he came to a place where the woods thinned out and there was a small clearing. He was about to advance across this when he saw something that caused his heart to give a quick leap and stopped him short in his tracks.
At one side of the clearing was an aeroplane!
It was a big monoplane with gauzy, yellow wings and a body painted the color of the sky on a gray day, no doubt to make it invisible at any considerable height.
Any doubt that it was a war machine was removed by the sight of a small but wicked-looking rapid-fire gun that was mounted on its forward part.
Jack was still looking at it, rooted to the spot as if he had been a figure of stone, when there was a sudden crackle on the floor of the wood behind him.
Jack was not a French scholar but there was something in the way the command was given that made him stand without moving a muscle. Footsteps came behind him and then he felt rather than saw a man passing from the rear to face him.
He worked round to the front of the boy and then Jack saw that he was a small man with carefully waxed mustache in whose hand was a particularly serviceable-looking revolver, which he held unpleasantly level at Jack's head.
The man with the revolver gave a sudden cry:
"Great Scott, de Garros!" gasped Jack, recognizing the French aviator. "What are you doing here?"
"I might ask zee same question of you," smiled the other. "I leave you on zee sheep and now, voila! I find you in a Belgian wood wizout zee hat, wiz your face scratched by zee bramble and looking--pardon me, please,--like zee tramp."
"I guess I do," laughed Jack, in his relief at finding that instead of falling again into the enemy's hands, he had met an old friend; "but I'm lucky that there's nobody to say 'how natural he looks'----"
"Pardon, I don't understand," said de Garros in a puzzled tone.
Jack plunged into a recital of his adventures, interrupted frequently by a hail of "_Sacres_," "_Nom d'un noms_," and "_Chiens_," from the Frenchman.
"And now it's up to you to explain how I find you here in the heart of a Belgian wood with a war machine," said Jack as he concluded.