"There are several moving things over there away up in the heavens," Frank told himself as he gazed in more or less excitement. "Even without a glass I'm almost ready to say they can't be Taubes."
He stood there watching and waiting until the soaring objects drew closer, when their true identity could be discovered.
Frank, being an aviator himself, quickly detected certain things that the common observer might never have discovered; and which told him the half dozen specks in the sky that February morning were birds and not aëroplanes.
"Some gulls flying high," he murmured as he watched. "Yes, there they circle around, which aviators bent on bombarding the city and then running off in a hurry would never think of doing."
He told those near him that there was nothing to fear, as the suspected Taubes were only harmless birds. The cheering word was passed along from mouth to mouth, and some of those who only a few minutes before were looking very peaked and white commenced to laugh, trying to make out that they knew all along the advancing specks were only birds.
By degrees even the shivering inmates of the cellars learned that it was a false alarm, and ventured to appear again.
"And I suppose this happens several times every day," Frank mused as he watched the arteries of traffic once more begin to flow naturally. "While little damage that amounts to anything has been done by the bombs, the coming of the Germans is looked forward to with dread. I suppose if a flier happened to be brought down with a well directed shot from a gun it would give the people more pleasure than anything they could wish for."
It struck him that possibly the other boys might have heard something of all this excitement and would be worried about him. So Frank stepped into a store he knew of and proceeded to get the hangar on the wire. There was some little difficulty at first, as though a good many people were trying to communicate with their homes for some purpose or other. Finally a voice called in good English:
"Yes, that's who it is, Billy. I only called you up thinking you might have heard all the shouting, and wonder what it was."
"Oh! some of the guards here guessed it, and we've been watching the gulls through our field glass. But how about the other business, Frank; is it all fixed?"