The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in Russia, by Horace Porter

THE GREAT AIRSHIP WAS GOING A MILE A MINUTE, FOLLOWING THE WATER LINE BETWEEN THE TWO CONTINENTS.

Our Young Aeroplane Scouts

In Russia

OR

Lost On The Frozen Steppes

By HORACE PORTER

AUTHOR OF

“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In France and Belgium.”

“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In Germany.”

“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In Turkey.”

A.L. BURT COMPANY

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1915

By A. L. BURT COMPANY

OUR YOUNG AEROPLANE SCOUTS IN RUSSIA

OUR YOUNG AEROPLANE SCOUTS IN RUSSIA.

CHAPTER I.
THE SIGN OF THE THUMB.

“Well, my young skyscrapers, I hear that you were lost in Petrograd, but the special messengers tell me that if anything else was lost it was not time on the way back.”

The aviation chief in Warsaw had this greeting for Our Young Aeroplane Scouts, Billy Barry, U. S. A., and his chum Henri Trouville, when the young airmen completed an interview with Colonel Malinkoff, the officer who had selected them as pilots for the dispatch-bearing aerial trip to the Russian capital.

“Maybe you think we are like bad pennies—always sure to turn up,” laughed Billy. “But, believe me,” continued the boy, “it was no merry jest to us when the strange streets seemed to have no end, and we knew that we were counted upon to pull out by daylight.”

“I can’t figure, upon my life, why you tried to foot it alone; at night, too, in a city like that.”

The aviation chief had another think coming to him, if he imagined for a minute that he was going to hear the real story of the Petrograd adventure from the youths he addressed.

“We thought the walk would do us good.”

Henri had some difficulty in keeping a serious face when Billy offered this plea as an excuse for the performance that had almost brought nervous prostration to Salisky and Marovitch, the dispatch bearers.

In a quiet corner later on, Henri had no desire to even smile when Billy gravely reviewed the possibility of the vengeful Cossack tracing them to Warsaw.

“You know,” said the boy from Bangor, “those fellows hang on like grim death when they have a grudge against anybody, and this wild and woolly scout is evidently anxious to stick his claws into us.”

“Maybe after all,” suggested Henri, “it is just because he thinks we are spies, having seen us working with or, rather, for the other side.”

“Why, then, didn’t he make his spring when we were within easy reach?”

“You forget, Billy,” replied Henri, “that by the time he had patched up his memory we were in Malinkoff palace, and even the tiger of the plains would hesitate before attempting to rough it with a Russian duke.”

“And there was a good reason why he did not have it out with us when we left the palace,” added Billy.

“A backway reason,” concluded Henri.

The Russian secret service, reputed to be a wonderfully efficient system, had now advices of the activities of that eminent arch-schemer, Roque, or whatever other name by which he was known, in this section of the war zone.

The blowing up of the war depot in Warsaw was less a mystery since the authorities had learned of the presence of this dreaded operator even so close as the width of a river.

If the wily Cossack could connect our boys with the previous movements of the aforesaid Roque, then, as Billy would say, “good night.”

In Colonel Malinkoff would be vested their only hope.

That the boys were not crazy about making another journey at present to Petrograd, goes without saying. They would be insane if they did, of their own accord.

But, luckily, their next flying assignment was the piloting of scouts sent out daily to observe the maneuvers of the great army in gray, then working on a new tack to break into the coveted city of Warsaw.

The aviators operated near a battle front nearly forty miles wide, and above a veritable hurricane of gunpowder, but in this experience Billy and Henri had grown old.

Once away from the city, and up in the air, their chief worry was behind them—their Cossack Nemesis could go hang!

From Salisky, now acting as observer in one of the biplanes, the boys learned of the fall of the great underground fortress of Przemysl, in and out of which they had served as aerial messengers, and where they had, not so long ago, bidden farewell to that gallant soldier-aviator, Stanislaws.

“I hope that ‘Stanny’ will be given a soft berth as a prisoner,” said Billy to his chum.

In the presence of the other airmen, however, the boys kept discreetly silent as to their acquaintance with the Austrian fort and town now overrun by the Russian forces.

Now and again there were days when Billy and Henri were relieved of the strain of constant aeroplane driving, and which was given to wandering about the streets of busy Warsaw.

One afternoon their steps inclined to the well remembered square with the tall column and heroic statue of bronze. In the door of a shop bearing the symbol of a silversmith, the proprietor happened to be standing when the boys strolled by.

This tradesman, at the time without trade, suddenly changed from sleepy attitude to one of alert anticipation after second view of the strollers. Under a skull cap of silk gleamed a pair of keen, blue eyes, and the smooth-shaven face of the man was alight with a half-smile of recognition.

He lifted his right hand with a peculiar gesture, the thumb folded into the palm.

Billy, idly glancing at the performer, remarked:

“That fellow wants to sell you a dinner set of fifty pieces, Buddy.”

“That hole in the wall wouldn’t hold half of it,” joked Henri.

The tradesman seemed puzzled at the lack of response to his thumb signal, but he was evidently determined to have a word with the boys.

With a low bow he stepped to the middle of the sidewalk, as if soliciting custom, and in English, with peculiar accent, softly mentioned a familiar term—Two Towers!

Billy started as if a torpedo had exploded underfoot.

“Where have I seen that face before?”

This thought wave was instantly merged into the sense of knowing:—

The coal heaver who had presented the soiled scrap of paper which summoned the young aviators to the twin towers on the day of the destruction of the war depot!

That face, though now clean of grime, was the same that had burned itself into the lad’s memory when the stirring message was delivered.

“I gave you the sign and you did not respond. Why?”

“Blest if I know what you mean,” Billy told the supposed silversmith.

“But it was to you that I was sent when the hour of need was near.”

“Now see here, for good and all, let me say that neither my chum nor myself has any knowledge of the inside workings about which you are trying to talk, and what’s more we don’t want to know anything about them. Mr. Roque showed us a lot, but I guess he stopped somewhere this side of the inner circle.”

Billy did not care to assume any new responsibility which might lead Henri and himself into some maze of mystery far beyond their depth.

The man addressed appeared to be puzzled at the boy’s reference to “Mr. Roque.” He evidently believed that Billy was fencing with him. “Kindly step into the store for a moment; I will not detain you long.”

Though both the boys had reached the same conclusion, that it was a sort of spider and the fly game, they impulsively followed the leader into the little shop.

Spreading a few articles of jewelry and silverware upon the top of the counter, as a cloak for the line of talk he was pursuing, he quickly remarked:

“I sometimes fear that I am a suspect, and we cannot be too careful in these times.”

Billy darted a look at Henri full of apprehension—“we cannot be too careful.”

“It is no use to hide behind the bush, one from the other, my young friends,” continued the man behind the counter; “of course, I do not blame you for being cautious, but now that we are past the limit of assurance, let us get together and talk straight.”

“You still have the advantage of us,” insisted Billy, glancing uneasily toward the door, as if contemplating a hasty move in that direction.

The keen blue eyes under the skull cap flashed a threat of growing irritation.

“Perhaps you do not appreciate, young man,” and the voice of the speaker sounding a harsh note, “that we sink or swim together. It is no ordinary tie that binds us, and woe to the one who breaks it.”

“Say, old scout,” interposed Henri, “this isn’t a theater.”

“Or an asylum,” added Billy.

How the silversmith would have resented these strokes at his manner of dramatic declaration was left for surmise, for at the moment his whole expression changed to one of bland greeting at the sight of a newcomer in the shop—a man who presented a wide front view, wearing a military cape and fairly bristling with authority, evidenced by his manner of pushing open the door and his heavy tread, which raised a creak from the floor as he strode to the counter where the boys were standing.

“They have just dug something that looks like a clock out of the ruins up there, Ricker, and as you are the nearest time tinker around here, I want you to come alone and see what you think of it.”

The boys saw the hue of ashes in the face of the tradesman, but the words that gave him the scare were as Greek to them.

“Certainly, sir; certainly,” the silversmith was saying, as he reached for his hat and greatcoat, hanging on a convenient peg. Turning to the boys, he politely directed them to the door, with an excellent imitation of regret that their expected purchase must be delayed by this emergency call.

On the sidewalk the boys watched the turn of the corner of the burly cape wearer and the silversmith, the latter walking like a weary soldier on a forced march.

“Here’s a pretty howdy-de-do, Buddy,” observed Henri, “getting twisted up with a fellow that evidently has a price on his head, and who thinks we are as deep in the muddle as he is. Did you ever see such luck?”

“If I knew a single word in the outlandish language spoken by that fat policeman I could tell better about our chances of being bothered again by the man with the thumb sign.”

It was not the first time that Billy had been stumped by the various lingoes in the war zone.

While the boys were dreaming that night of lurid initiation into some bloody brotherhood, there came riding into Warsaw a bevy of splendidly mounted horsemen, brilliantly attired in scarlet, gold-braided caftans, white waistcoats and blue trousers—imperial Cossacks from Petrograd!

CHAPTER II.
BETWEEN TWO FIRES.

The boys were aroused in the early morning by the shrill neighing of horses in the courtyard underneath the windows of their sleeping quarters, and other sounds indicating the incoming of a cavalry troop, created sufficient inducement, at least, for an after-waking peek at the night-riders who had cut off a good hour of slumber.

Billy, the first at the window, drew back with a sharp note of alarm.

“The fancy Cossacks!” he exclaimed.

“Quit your jollying,” cried Henri, unbelieving, bouncing out of his cot and barefooting it to the lookout point. “Jumping jimminy,” he excitedly admitted, when he saw one of the red horsemen in the act of dismounting, “you are right, sure enough.”

“But what are they doing here?” questioned Billy. “This is no stableyard.”

“Looking for us,” slyly insinuated Henri.

“Maybe there is more truth than poetry in that proposition.”

The boy from Bangor was taking the matter seriously.

In the interval several Cossacks, trailing their lances, crossed the courtyard to the main entrance of the building where the aviators were housed, and vigorously thumped for admission. These knights of the plain evidently held themselves to be privileged characters.

Billy and Henri, getting into their clothes as quickly as possible, poked their heads over the stair railing, from which location they could see and hear all that was happening in the spacious hall below.

By what they heard, however, they were not enlightened, for it was in the speech unknown to them, but enough and plenty in the sight of no other than the Cossack who had given them the evil eye in Petrograd.

The aviation chief seemed to be strenuously saying “no” to some question put by the giant in scarlet, shaking his head and handsweeping over his shoulder in directing manner.

The insistent intruder finally accepted the advices given, and with his companions again took to saddle, spurring their horses into a clattering gallop out of the paved enclosure.

Just as if they had not been watching and listening, the boys descended the stairs, giving their usual good morning salutations to their fellow aviators, who had all been attracted to the hall by the discussion just concluded.

To give the lads an understanding with the rest as to what it had all been about, the chief mingled French and English in his explanation.

“That big fellow is Nikita, who has been attached to the imperial service on account of his skill and daring as a scout. I heard a story about him only the other day. Along with ten comrades, he was captured through falling into an ambuscade. Three days later he turned up at the camp of his command with two bullets, one through his clothes, and one through his thigh. He was horseless, but carried his long lance. Without horse or weapons, he had crept during darkness from the tent in which he slept, got safely past the German sentries, and then reflected that it was a shame for a Cossack to lose his horse and lance. So, as the story goes, he crept back, recovered both horse and lance and galloped away. The horse was killed by a shot from an outpost, but I see that Nikita still has his lance. I tell you that this is a breed that never lets go.”

This last comment had a jarring effect upon both Billy and Henri. The latter, however, did not restrain a desire for some direct information:

“That’s a fine story, lieutenant, but it doesn’t tell what this wonderful warrior wanted here this morning.”

“He demanded an interview with the dispatch bearers who aeroplaned into Petrograd on a certain date—the same date, by the way, upon which you were detailed as pilots for Marovitch and Salisky. I had difficulty in convincing the Cossack that the men he was seeking were at present scouting along the Vistula south of Warsaw.”

“Where I wish we were this very minute.”

Billy had edged close to Henri to say it.

The aviation chief further advised that the Cossacks had gone to the general’s quarters, and would probably remain in Warsaw until they had completed a mission, of which he (the chief) knew nothing about, but which apparently had to do with some recent happening in Petrograd.

Right there the boys made up their minds that they had all the rest they needed, and Billy, as spokesman, so informed the lieutenant.

“If there are any air scouts going out to-day,” said the boy, “we want to be on the job.”

“All right, my birds,” agreed the lieutenant, “you will be marked first on the list.”

When at last the aerial assignment of the boys for the day was made they were greatly interested to learn that the flight was to be directly across the river, in which direction they had never traveled since the day they came into the city by the written directions of Roque.

The observers they were to pilot were immediately identified with the general’s staff, and the young aviators were duly advised of the rank of their passengers.

“They all look alike to me,” remarked Henri, as he and his chum waited at the hangars for the order to start—“all except Colonel Malinkoff, and he’s my pick every time.”

Nevertheless, the pilots showed proper deference when the officers boarded the aircraft, after briefly outlining the plan of journey. The boys did not take the time nor assume the trouble of telling that they needed no guide notes for this particular voyage!

The same old entrenchments skirted the mud-colored river, but thinly populated now, for the main body of German soldiery there had joined in the new move upon Warsaw from the northwest.

Billy and Henri had each an eye for their former earthy lodging, and marked in memory the very spot in the battlefield where the French boy had landed the firebrand Schneider for his desperate dash in rescue of the grounded colors.

Of the fate of the secret agent and his fighting attendant, however, no tidings came up from the mottled plain.

Somebody might know in the clean, white lodge-keeper’s kitchen, where the canary sang, but there was no available excuse to turn downward the swiftly sailing biplanes when they swept over the one bright spot in all that forbidding surface.

“I can recommend your license as master pilots,” jovially observed one of the officers when the machines again rested in the aviation field, just at sunset.

The other observer nodded approval of the compliment to the youngsters, and both found it not beneath their dignity to give Billy and Henri a hearty handshake.

The young aviators had hardly completed the housing of the biplanes when they were accosted by a loutish lad attired in a smock-frock and leather leggins.

With a pull at his forelock, the boy handed Billy a fold of notepaper, and then shuffled away.

“Some more shady business,” muttered Billy, opening the message.

One line, that was all:

“To-morrow noon. Sign of thumb.”

“Why can’t that fellow let us alone?”

With the petulant words Billy tore the note to shreds and cast them to the wind.

“Between the Cossack and this alleged silversmith,” complained Henri, “we will have more than enough practice as artful dodgers.”

“Got us both going and coming,” gloomily added Billy, “and no show for argument.”

“We don’t have to respond to that message, anyhow.”

“I don’t know about that, Henri; we might be able to convince the crank at the shop that we haven’t any hold on underground wires, and so get rid of him.”

“And then prove an alibi when we meet that Cossack.”

Henri wore a grin as he put this extra spoke in the wheel of hope that his chum was turning.

Humor, however, was not catching to Billy this evening. The boys sat in silence at the mess table, and as silently stole away to bed.

The young aviators had no call for their services the next day, and Billy insisted that they play a quitting visit to the little shop in the square. Besides, he had urged, they were less likely to encounter the Cossack out in the big city than if they idled about headquarters. His motion prevailed, and shortly before the tower clocks sounded the twelve strokes, the chums were rounding the tall column and nearing the symbol of the silversmith.

Ricker had an assistant on duty in front this day, a wild-eyed individual literally overgrown with hair on head and face. When the boys entered the shop the queer-looking clerk spoke not a word, but simply pounded with his knuckles on the counter.

The proprietor of the place quickly appeared from a curtained recess at the rear of the shop, and crooked a finger in beckoning invitation to the visitors to come back and join him.

The hairy assistant went to the street door, and after peering up and down the avenue, nodded clearance to his chief.

The boys perched themselves on a couple of high stools in the work room, while Ricker leaned against a low and broad shelf covered with equipment of the clockmaker’s trade.

Billy was determined to settle matters there and then and get clear of an annoying and dangerous complication.

“This is the last time,” he bluntly stated, “that we will stand for a call here. Just as I told you before, there was a limit to our knowledge of Mr. Roque’s affairs, and as he did not choose to take us all the way, we have no desire to be dragged along by any stranger. Running aeroplanes is our business, and we are not seeking to acquire any other profession. So it’s farewell on the spot.”

Ricker showed a red flush of anger rising to his cheekbones, but he tempered his reply to the boy’s declaration. “Stick to your flying trade, young man, as you will, but on your service the Cause has a claim, and the penalty for ignoring that claim will be exacted to the last farthing, be it blood or bones.”

The implied threat put a tingle in Billy’s spirited makeup, and, jumping from the stool, he impetuously took up the challenge of the silversmith with wordy proclamation:

“When we leave this place, understand me, we don’t return, and, again, not the slightest bit of attention do we pay to any further communication from you. You get me?”

Ricker put another curb on his temper, and his tone was even and subdued, slightly tinged with mockery as he replied to Billy’s forceful speech:

“You bluff beautifully, my young friend, but for one who was hand and glove with the great Herr Georges you wear your chains too lightly.”

“Herr Georges? Is he another growth in your mind?” Billy happened to think at the instant that “Georges” and “Roque” were one and the same person—as the secret agent changed his name as many times and as easily as he changed his clothes. But he let the question go as put, for a feeler, if nothing else.

“Oh, you know the one I mean, though you and I are seemingly at odds in naming him,” confidently asserted Ricker.

“But what of that?” argued Billy. “For all we know, Roque or Georges is beyond interest in the doings of earth, and, what’s more, we have paid our score and have been acquitted of the service.”

The silversmith turned thoughtful for the moment, hesitating as to his next word. Then, deliberately, he questioned:

“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing of the plot to blow up the war depot?”

The boys stared at the questioner in affright!

CHAPTER III.
TRAILED BY RED RIDERS.

The silversmith seemed satisfied that he had effectually unseated Billy from his highhorse position, and in cat and mouse attitude awaited complete surrender.

“You—you dare to voice that suspicion?” gasped the boy. “We never heard or even dreamed of such a plot, and with the coming of the shock hadn’t the least idea what caused it.”

“Is it not true that the pair of you at the very moment of the explosion were preparing to speed in aeroplanes to the rescue of at least two of the plotters?”

Ricker smiled as he presented what appeared to him to be a poser.

“Only half a truth,” cried Henri, “with the worst half added by you. We did intend to offer Roque a saving turn in one of his own machines, for old acquaintance sake, but not in the connection that you put it. For even that much, I know, you have us against the wall, but let me tell you, sir, if the worst comes to the worst we will confess our part to our friend Colonel Malinkoff and he can weigh the testimony that the three of us can give.”

This dropped Ricker, not only to a seat on a workbench, but in point of argument. Just back of him were the battered remains of a time-clock, with twisted wires still attached, for the custody of which he was responsible to the authorities, and about which, as an expert, he was expected to report the next morning. It was a part of the infernal machine dug out of the ruins of the war depot!

Both Billy and Henri were quick to observe that the silversmith was about all in, so to speak, and more than willing to play quits.

The man who had missed his reckoning an hour in the setting of a spring was not now disposed to perpetuate the error!

As the boys were about to push aside the curtain and get out into the open, a small bell suspended from the ceiling of the workroom softly tinkled. Ricker was on his feet in an instant and holding a finger to his lips.

At the store entrance some rapid-fire Russian was being exchanged, and Billy took the liberty of peeping through a slit in the drapery behind which he was concealed. The look was a blood freezer.

Nikita, the Cossack, and the hairy clerk were having it hammer and tongs about something, when all of a sudden the red rider unhanded one of his heavy leather gloves and with it struck the queer shop attendant full in the face.

Of all the malignant looks that Billy had ever seen on human countenance the blackest was pictured in the glaring eyes of the fierce servitor, who, retreating before the assaulting Cossack, had backed against the counter.

Ricker, catching the drift of the quarrel in front, turned quickly, and noiselessly pushed aside, in well-oiled grooves, a solid-back plate case, and to the opening revealed in the wall he beckoned the boys. “He is evidently after you, for some reason,” whispered the silversmith; “claims that he trailed you here. Is he friend or foe? Tell me quick.”

Without a word, Billy and Henri classed the hunter outside as a decided enemy by hurriedly slipping through the aperture, the case smoothly shutting the way behind them.

It was not in the program of Ricker that his shop should be the scene of an arrest, and, too, it was now in his interest that the boys should escape the probe of any investigation.

Having disposed of this dangerous exhibit in his back room, the silversmith hastened to the front to pacify, if possible, the unruly intruder.

Ricker, showing his best professional smile, stepped between the frowning Cossack and the enraged clerk, speaking a sharp word of warning to the latter, and asking the former what it was that he desired.

“Ah, two boys, air drivers, you say? I know them not. Reported to be in my shop? There cannot be good eyesight around here. Everything is open. This way, please.”

The silversmith moved backward, closely followed by the Cossack and several others of his kind, and pulled the curtains aside, with a sweeping gesture of invitation to search at will.

Though the keenest of trackers in the great outdoors, the red riders were at a loss when it came to detective work within four walls. They prodded with their lances bundles of wrapping paper in the several dark corners of the workroom and poked their heads into all of the packing cases, but with cunningly designed entrances into secret apartments they had no experience.

At last, scowling and grumbling, the baffled searchers marched themselves out of the shop. As the Cossack, Nikita, passed out the queer clerk shook a fist at the crimson-clad back, mumbling frightful maledictions to himself.

The silversmith assumed a busy manner, shifting the stock display on the shelves, winding clocks, and generally bustling about as if making up for lost time.

All this time the boys were completely shut off from every sight and sound in the musty room behind the plate-case.

“Wonder how long this lockup is going to last, Henri?”

“Until the shutters are put up in front, I suppose, Billy.”

“That’s entirely too long for me,” impatiently asserted the boy from Bangor. “Let’s see if there isn’t some other outlet to this den.”

But with all the sounding and pounding they could do, the lads found no back way to the dismal room.

And, too, they were baffled again and again by the mechanism of the sliding door by which they had entered.

Nothing more to do than to await the pleasure of the silversmith, and so they awaited, hour upon hour, seated on a rickety sofa, nursing their chins in their hands.

The one little, cobwebby window at the top of the dingy wall in front of them no longer showed light.

Then there was a click, a faint squeak, and Ricker appeared in the opening, cleared by the movement of the sliding case.

“Have they gone?” eagerly inquired Henri.

“Apparently so, but Hamar is out now to make sure that they have not set a watch on the place.”

“There’ll be somebody else hunting for us if we don’t get away pretty soon, and that will be a squad from headquarters. The lieutenant,” concluded Billy, “is mighty particular about the off-duty hours that the aviators keep.”

Hamar, the hairy lieutenant, had been a long time gone, and Ricker had difficulty in persuading the boys to lay quiet until positive assurance came that the coast was clear. With the next striking of the big clock in the square—it was eight—Billy declared against further delay.

“I really believe that Marovitch and Salisky have returned, without reason to the contrary have given the Cossack what they know of our history and identified us with the last trip to Petrograd. So what’s the use of further dodging? It will all come out, and if they hitch us onto the explosion plot—well, you can guess the rest.”

Ricker squirmed in his chair. “Say,” he pleaded, “hide here for a day or two and we will find a way to get you both across the river.”

“No,” declared Henri. “I’m going to put it up to Colonel Malinkoff this very night. He can, and I believe he will, save us from the fate of spies.”

“But what about me? Am I to be betrayed?”

The silversmith’s right hand was buried to the wrist within the breast-front of the loose coat he wore.

There was a muffled knock at the front door, twice repeated.

“Hamar,” muttered the silversmith, lowering his hand. “Stay where you are,” he hissed to the boys. With the turning of a ponderous key the wild-eyed servitor, hooded to the shoulders, pushed his way through the space in the half-opened door.

“Where in Satan’s name have you been?” growled Ricker.

The hairy man laughed—and it was a laugh to curdle the blood.

CHAPTER IV.
THE POISONED RING.

“Stow that yelp,” commanded Ricker; “it sets one’s teeth on edge. What are you playing the clown for, anyhow?”

Hamar threw back his hood, and with the black mane draping his temples and mingling with the mat on his face, eye and tooth glittering in the shaded glow of the swinging lamp overhead, he was the living picture of a fabled fury.

In words that ran in a stream of gutturals, deep in his throat, he told the story of the adventure that had prolonged his street scouting-mission, and here liberally translated.

“I sold him the ring—the very red man that struck me in the face—it was a rare work; he knew me not, my head down and covered. His dirty roubles—see?” (Hamar opened a clenched hand, in the palm of which were several silver coins.) “He has it on his finger. I told him it would bring him good luck—bring him to the worms I meant. Ha, ha. Go you,” addressing the boys; “no fear now.”

Ricker stood dumfounded at the completion of this outburst. Then he faced the young aviators, who had been held spellbound by the weird performance—meaning the actions, for the words were mere gibberish to them.

“Do you know what he has done?” exclaimed the silversmith—“why, he has put the death ring on the Cossack!”

Going behind the counter, Ricker took from under the glass case a tiny chamois bag and shook it over the polished surface. The bag was empty.

“This man, I tell you,” the silversmith cried, aiming an index finger at Hamar, who had relapsed into sullen indifference, “is a fanatic, not a patriot, and serves not for any government, but against all governments. That blow in the face went to his very soul, and here’s the result. What he has taken and used to wreak personal vengeance is known as a possession of mine, a curio, and often displayed to the curious, for the ring had this peculiarity—it is poisoned. The heat of the finger starts a poison to work that lies in the setting—whoever decorates his hand with it is dead in two weeks!”

“Yes, dead, dead,” mumbled Hamar.

“And woe to me if the foxes from the division of justice are in at the death; is it not enough,” groaned the silversmith, “that I am now beset on all sides?”

The passing thought to Billy and Henri—the wearing of the terrible jewel would rid them of their savage foe and avert a trial for their lives.

But, shuddering, the boys resented even the thought of such a relief.

The one overpowering impulse with both of them at the moment was to get out and away from this ferment of intrigue and passion, out into the free air, anywhere that offered a change.

With this end in view the lads had been slowly but surely edging, inch by inch, foot by foot, nearer the door, under cover of the exciting controversy between Ricker and his hairy henchman.

One twist of the key, a pull at the knob, and the trick was done.

But any mishap, a stumble, a catch in the lock, and Ricker and Hamar would be on their backs.

It was Henri, lightning fast in every movement, who essayed the first jump for the door. It was done in an instant when the silversmith, who was nervously pacing the floor, had faced the curtain in the rear of the store, and while Hamar had lifted his arms in the act of unfastening the loops that closed the collar of his heavy greatcoat.

The work of a second, and the bolt snapped back in the lock, the door rattled on its hinges by the force of its opening, and two lithe figures leaped out into the night!

If they were pursued they never knew it, for a deer would hardly have been in the running with them as they dashed across the square.

Once in the great avenue diverging northward, the lads again breathed freely, but wasted no time in making their way to aviation headquarters. If they had expected to be immediately hauled before stern judges to show cause why they should be permitted to live, they were agreeably disappointed. Not even the lieutenant was there to inquire about their overstay of leave.

“I can’t get that horrid ring business out of my mind,” said Henri, half rising from his cot, after the tired boys had supposedly settled for much needed rest.

“Neither can I,” promptly agreed Billy, who was just as wide awake as when he first jammed the pillow under his head.

“Do you suppose it might have been that those fellows invented that story just for our benefit?”

“Not a chance, Henri,” replied the U. S. A. boy; “that man Ricker is an actor all right, but in this show he was real; I’ll lay my life on that. And don’t tell me that the long-haired guy wasn’t in earnest. Steer me clear of him on a dark night.”

“What do you think we ought to do about it?”

No sleep for Henri until this question was settled.

“There you are,” said the sorely perplexed chum; “if we go to warn the Cossack it may not blunt the claws he has sharpened for us; if we tell it straight it will put Ricker on the rack, for nobody would believe that the crank who wished the ring on the red man did it of his own accord, and with Ricker against the wall there’s no telling how far he would go to fix us good and plenty.”

“If it was a fair fight like Schneider put up,” argued Henri, “it would be no strain of conscience, but to let slow poison work when we could stop it, it seems to me, would class us as first-aid assassins.”

“There is no other way then,” decided Billy, “but to get the tip, somehow, to the Cossack in the morning.”

If Nikita got the “tip” it did not happen in Warsaw, for the boys were informed in response to their break-of-day inquiry that the lance-bearing cavalryman had, the afternoon previous, been urgently summoned by aerial messenger to report at the headquarters of the greatest of Russian military commanders, a hundred miles east of Warsaw.

On steeds of tireless breed, and racing with the wind, the red riders had a long start of now these many hours.

“And that’s the end of it,” declared Henri, when told that the Cossack band was by this time far away, and by route known only to themselves.

Billy was as deep in thought just then as were his hands in his pockets.

“What’s the matter with chasing them in the biplanes?” he suddenly asked.

“Man alive,” cried Henri, “it is the very ticket!”

CHAPTER V.
STRIKING IT RIGHT.

How to bring about the flying assignment that would put them on the trail of the otherwise doomed Cossack was the next problem to engage the young aviators.

The boys well knew that aeroplane connection was being constantly maintained between Warsaw and the center of Russian operations at Brest Litovsk, one hundred miles east, even though numerous telegraph instruments, in the schoolhouse there occupied as headquarters by the mighty commander, ticked messages every minute day and night.

No weather conditions served to check modern aircraft, and hostile wire-cutters had nothing but the laugh due them when it came to intercepting or destroying aeroplane communication.

How much they would be compelled to tell to create an emergency for their journey, the boys had no fixed idea.

“Let’s try it first on the lieutenant,” suggested Billy, “and if he doesn’t see the way, have a talk direct with Colonel Malinkoff.”

“Whatever is to be done must be done at once,” declared Henri.

So they jointly proceeded in search of the aviation chief.

As though a change of luck had succeeded the recent adverse fortune assailing the lads, whom should they meet in crossing the aviation grounds but Salisky and Marovitch, the scouts and special messengers lately back from important mission to the front.

“Joy of my heart,” was the hail of Salisky, at sight of the pilots who had made the record flight from Petrograd, “if here isn’t the salt of the earth in two good packages.”

His companion observer showed equal pleasure in greeting the lads, and the four of them had a busy moment voicing questions and answers.

“Thought you had skipped with the Cossacks,” bantered Salisky; “the big chief of the riders put me through a regular course of sprouts in trying to get a line on you. I knew precious little, except that you were the right stuff and more than full hands in an aeroplane. Did he find you?”

“Not that anybody knows about,” replied Billy, “but we would like to find him just now.”

“You would have a noble chance of making that discovery if you were going with us,” put in Marovitch.

“Where are you going?” was Henri’s eager query.

“In two hours we will be in full sail for Brest Litovsk,” announced Salisky.

The boys each took an elbow grip on the speaker.

With one voice they cried: “Count us in on the flight, if you can!”

“Suits me all right,” promptly agreed Salisky, “but it is the lieutenant who names the pilots, and we are hunting for him now.”

“He’s the very man we have been looking for ourselves,” said Billy, “and we are more in a hurry than ever to get hold of him. Come along.”

The aviation chief had just emerged from the house quarters of a brother officer when the searchers surrounded him, Salisky presenting a written order, and the boys with difficulty refraining from putting their request in advance of the reading.

Indeed, the lieutenant had barely comprehended the text of the official billet before Henri was talking in one ear and Billy in the other. It was breach of discipline for which any of the veterans in the aviation corps would have forthwith been called down, but exuberant youth could not be denied.

The upshot of it was that the young aviators carried their point, having the hearty endorsement of the two men directly responsible for the success of the mission assigned to them.

“Talk about striking it right,” rejoiced Billy as Henri and himself were getting into suitable outfit for a long drive in the cold; “it certainly seems as if our good fairy were on the job to-day.”

“Maybe it was good intent that had something to do with the shaping of this venture,” added Henri. “It isn’t just like we were backing this effort with a solely selfish motive. If we have nothing to gain we might have everything to lose.”

“Come to think of it in that light,” said Billy, “if we don’t gain as much as the point at which we are aiming, it is somebody else that will lose—the Cossack will be minus his life.”

A corporal was calling from the hall below, and the pilots hastened to report themselves at the hangars where the military biplanes—the famous No. 3’s—were in trim for instant flight.

Salisky and Marovitch were ready and waiting, and at the signal from the aviation chief the aeroplanes were off like a shot, soon to be in touch with the directing power of the biggest army under one command in the world’s history of warfare—the Russian forces maneuvered by Grand Duke Nicholas along a battle front of 1,500 miles.

Yet in all the legions before them the hooded pilots, holding hard to the compass-set course of the winged cyclones, would first have eyes for but one equestrian figure, scarlet clad, with a sleeping death coiled in his hand.

From the observers behind them the Boy Aviators had withheld all mention of the original incentive for this particular service—but the time was approaching when this confidence must be extended. As well address an Eskimo in Arabic as to trip the tongues the lads knew over the language knowledge of Nikita, the wild horseman.

They must speak through the city-bred Muscovites with whom they were traveling—friends in need.

The main thing was to locate immediately the man they would warn and save, and with this end in view, a plea had been made to the observers to give note if in the sweep of their glasses they caught the ground picture of the crimson cavalcade.

But not once during the flight was there even a snapshot of anything like that picture—and it must needs be a waiting game, to be finished with the journey’s end.

CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF THE CHASE.

A thin, spare figure rising to a height of over six and a half feet, in field uniform, without a show of ribbon, cross or medal, grim, silent and determined—this was the remarkable personality pointed out to the boys as the military head of the enormous army of seven million men.

The aviators had landed within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the Russian commander-in-chief.

When Salisky and Marovitch had reported to an adjutant and turned over the contents of their dispatch boxes to the proper authority, the time was opportune for the young airmen to solicit the aid of the veteran scouts in accomplishing that which they had set out to do.

“You are sure that nothing has turned your head?” anxiously inquired Salisky, when he had heard, in part, the thrilling story of the death ring and its secret menace to the life of Nikita.

“I am not cracked,” earnestly assured Billy, so earnestly indeed that his hearers’ unbelief was considerably modified, and both observers began to realize that the strange tale was not altogether the creation of a disordered mind.

Marovitch even recalled hearing some talk at one time of some such historical jewel owned in Warsaw, but memory failed him when it came to placing it.

The boys had said nothing to specify the former ownership of the dread decoration, and so did not repair this defect in the scout’s recollection.

“Taking it all seriously,” remarked Salisky, now about convinced that it was no myth with which they were dealing, “there is the duty of getting to the Cossack chief without delay. Death is an everyday visitor around here, but not in the form of slow poison, and there is peculiar interest enough in this idea of rescue to key us all up to high pitch.”

Marovitch, too, shared his comrade’s growing concern as to the importance of quick action. The driving force of intense interest inspired them all.

Consider their disappointment, then, when it was learned at headquarters that Nikita and his band had been but an hour in this camp, and were already pushing on toward Petrograd.

“Here’s where we stop, according to orders,” regretfully stated Salisky, “and I don’t know for how long, either.”

“Is there no earthly way to get a release?”

Billy was hoping against hope.

“Not unless by new instruction,” responded the scout.

“Do you suppose the ring story would let us out?” asked Henri.

“Don’t believe at all that they would swallow it,” advised Marovitch; “besides, it would probably take a lot of time to hit the trail of the red riders. Too much space out there.”

The speaker referred to the vast and trackless territory at the north.

Their first night in Brest Litovsk was not a happy one to the young aviators. They had set their hearts and minds to the mission of nullifying the vengeful scheme of Hamar, the very knowledge of which spelled guilt to them.

And here all their plans were as naught in the face of inexorable military rule, which held them fast until new commands succeeded the original order.

An attempt to steal away in one of the biplanes would be simply reckless folly, and of no avail—they had no definite advices as to the direction even that the Cossack band had taken in their proposed journey to the Russian capital, direct or roundabout, and, in addition, there was the fear that without an interpreter it would be equally foolish to approach Nikita, even though they located him.

The measure of life for the Cossack, with the death ring encircling his finger, fixed by Ricker as two weeks, and handed down, no doubt, with record of the ancient jewel, was still an uncertain quantity. It might be in this very hour that the slowly coursing venom had done its work.

The favor of just another day for the boys’ venture was needed to save it from hopeless failure. Once on the trail there was always the chance of making timely discovery; a continued internment in this camp, and there was left nothing but the distress of defeat and the reverse flight to Warsaw.

Would the streak of luck that in the first place had shunted the lads into the coveted aeroplane space be extended?

It so developed that that was just what happened, and Salisky was the early bird who brought the good news to the blanket bedsides of the drowsy pilots.

“There is a regiment of Turkomans reported on the move, riding up to the north line, and there is an order out for aeroplane service to convey directions to these troops from headquarters. Marovitch and I have the assignment—and that means our pilots, too.”

“Doesn’t that cover the route to Petrograd?” quickly questioned Billy.

“As far as two hundred and fifty miles,” advised Salisky.

“Bully! Do you hear that, Henri?”

“Well, I guess yes, Buddy.”

“Who are the Turkomans, anyhow?”

Billy wanted to learn a little every day.

“They are our new cavalry force,” explained Salisky, “and they are even quicker to ride at a fence of bayonets than the Don Cossacks, and that is saying something. They came from the desert, the oasis and the steppes of the Trans-Caspian provinces, as well as Caucasia, and they come of their own accord.”

“A famous fighting lot, that,” added Marovitch, “and of all the horsemen I have ever seen, these fellows are in the lead as whirlwind riders.”

“They’ll look good to us,” exclaimed Billy, “especially as they are the means of getting us out of here.”

While the scout-messengers were waiting for their orders, the boys put the biplanes in flying trim, and the party were off for the frozen north within the hour.

The young aviators had never seen entrenchments laid out on such a tremendous scale as in the early passing of this flight, and noted with wonder the fortifications set up by the Russians in the open field.

What Napoleon had once called the “fifth element”—Russian mud—was now sheeted with snow, and the great rivers and swamps were covered with ice—an impressive outlook with a real chill in it.

But of dead white scenery the young pilots had grown weary; with them the miles they left behind were of chief consequence—and full many a league had then been rolled backward under the top-speeding aeroplanes.

It was at Vilna, where the observers had been directed to go, that first landing was made by the aviators, and following which the scouts had advices of the near approach of the Turkomans.

Upon sight of these picturesque cavalrymen, who feared neither hardship nor danger, the boys were surprised at the youth of most of them, and for whom it had been said, “war is the great and only poem, their unique dream and faith.”

These bold riders wore dark-brown caftans, and full headdress, instead of the usual lambskin cap.

The sons of princes, khans or beks, the officers of these troops were keenly shrewd and intelligent, as well as fiery and impetuous.

They gave the envoys from army headquarters a respectful hearing, and in every way set back a common belief that the Turkomans generally were merely hordes without discipline.

Of greater interest than all else in the proceedings, as far as Billy and Henri were concerned, was the statement from a Turkoman chief brought out by inquiry from Salisky, and by the latter interpreted, that only the day before, traveling due northwest, the brown riders had met the red-clad Nikita and his comrade Cossacks at the crossing of the Duna River.

“One day’s ride, he says,” translated Salisky, “but he measures by the gait of a horse. Even counting upon the fact that the Cossacks have done some galloping since this meeting, it is no task to overhaul them now in our aeroplanes, providing, of course, we do not miss their trail. I will tell you what we will do,” continued the scout; “Marovitch and I will chance an extra dozen hours for this side expedition, but that is the limit of our discretion. We have no choice but to return to headquarters, and depend upon you drivers to make up most of the lost time.”

“You will get all there is in the motors,” assured Henri.

The upshoot of the biplanes presented a spectacular leave-taking to the horsemen, and they raised their lances on high in appreciation of the show.

The twelve hours allotted would have been all too brief in which to serve the purpose intended had the searching party been dependent upon ordinary means of locomotion, and with less wide range of vision.

But in less than three hours the biplanes had swept across the river mentioned by the Turkoman as the place of meeting with Nikita, and onrushed, with occasional deviations right and left from straight course, at hurricane speed.

The machines had traveled some fifty miles on the north side of the Duna, when a shout from Marovitch, in the craft driven by Henri, caused the pilot to suddenly set the planes for descent.

On the glittering white surface of the steppe there appeared a new color effect—moving discs of scarlet!

CHAPTER VII.
BROTHERS OF THE BLOOD.

The Cossacks rode in a wide circle, ’round and ’round the settled aeroplanes, at which the wild ponies snorted and seemingly feared to approach.

When, however, Salisky and Marovitch each gave vent to one of those weird calls peculiar to the denizens of the desert, the tribesmen drove their shaggy mounts full speed toward the searching party.

Nikita was the first to dismount. He knew the scouts, and gave them guttural greeting. The question in his keen eyes, though, did not sound from the lips. He had caught a glimpse of the boys, still seated in the biplanes. The tall chief was instantly a-quiver with a certain fierce joy of possession—that which he desired had apparently been delivered into his hands.

“You bring these young dogs to me?”

“We bring to you, chief, brave lads who have risked much for your welfare—for your life, chief, for your very life!”

Salisky, who had no knowledge of that past, wherein had crossed the paths of Nikita and these boys, and sizing only the present purpose of his young friends, was inclined to indignantly resent the address of the Cossack.

“With my life what have they to do?”

To the red rider the reply of Salisky was a riddle.

“They are but spies,” he continued accusingly, “and upon the heads of their kind is the blood of my brother.”

The speaker supplemented his words with a menacing movement toward the young pilots, who were wholly ignorant of the nature of this parley.

“Hold!”

The voice of Salisky had a hard note, and conveyed no double meaning.

Marovitch ranged alongside of his comrade, and each of the scouts rested a hand on the holsters attached to their belts.

The Cossacks, with lowered lances, closed in behind their chief.

Anything might have happened in the next minute if Billy, noting the trend of action, had not pushed himself to the front, and made eloquent plea to Salisky to avoid the threatened encounter.

“Explain to him,” cried the boy; “tell him right off the bat what we are here for; ask him about the ring; spar for time; scout, spar for time!”

Nikita, seeing this new breeze blow into the squall, was curious to know what the pleading was about. He grounded his lance, and his companions followed suit. The scouts relaxed their grip on their side arms.

The atmosphere had cleared a bit.

Acting upon the urgent suggestion of Billy, the scout, Salisky took the straight line in his talk to the Cossack.

“You bought a ring in Warsaw, chief?”

Nikita nodded, tapping a leather pouch at his girdle.

“He is not wearing it,” whispered Henri to his chum.

“We are on time then,” said Billy, with a sigh of relief.

“Of what concern of yours is this bauble?” Nikita was asking. He had taken the jewel from the pouch, and the glittering circlet was exposed in the open palm of his gauntlet.

“It is beautiful enough for a courtier to offer to his emperor,” murmured Marovitch.

“Save the thought!” exclaimed Salisky. “There is death in it!”

Nikita, holding the ring between thumb and forefinger, as if admiring its brilliancy, awaited further speech from Salisky.

“Of what concern, I say,” he repeated, “is it of yours that I paid my roubles for this shining thing?”

“Of this concern, chief,” impressively declared the scout addressed, “that with it on your finger you would be pointing your way to the grave; that with it on your finger in a few days the wolves might be snarling over your swollen corpse.”

The Cossack shook his head, and turned to his comrades, with a significant shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say that somebody’s mind was wandering.

“Tell him that the man of whom he bought the ring,” urged Billy, “had sworn revenge for a blow inflicted.”

Salisky put the information in form of understanding to the Cossack.

Nikita dropped his manner of incredulity like a shot.

“A blow. Now I remember; it was in the place where led the trail of these spies.”

“Drop that last, chief,” angrily challenged Salisky. “These boys, as I told you, have sought you day and night to save your life. Were they what you claim, is it likely that they would so desperately attempt to overturn that which would quietly remove one who hungered to lay them low? Have a thought, chief.”

Nikita was thinking, the savage in him was receding. He looked attentively at the death ring poised in his finger.

Then he cast the jewel downward to the ice-encrusted surface at his feet, and ground its shimmering facets under the pointed heel of his cavalry boot.

The Cossack had accepted as the whole truth the story of the ancient ring, and as fully realized the stated intent of these strange boys, who had raced with death that he, their deadly enemy, might retain the boon of life.

He spoke rapidly to his comrades, queer phrases that even the scouts did not comprehend.

That some sort of ceremony was under way was demonstrated by the next move of the tribesmen, when Billy and Henri became centerpieces in the parti-colored cluster of lance bearers.

The scouts, showing no disposition to interfere, the boys were convinced that the attentions paid to them were now wholly of a friendly nature.

But a severe test of such belief was furnished by Nikita, as the latter drew near to the lads, carrying in his right hand a dagger, with the point turned forward.

Only a reassuring glance from Salisky kept the young aviators from giving ground before the threatening advance.

Nikita, pausing before Billy, reached for the latter’s wrist, lifted it, made a tiny puncture near a smaller artery, and with the same dagger point slightly scarified his own wrist.

With Henri identically the same transfer of blood corpuscles passed from himself to the Cossack.

Upon each of the boys the Cossack then bestowed an amulet—lance points of flint, curiously marked, and with holes in the center, through which thongs had been drawn.

Translating the words of presentation, Salisky with due solemnity advised the young friends that “now and thereafter they were protected from anything that cuts or points, knives or daggers, carbines, long or short rifles, lances, against all kinds of metal, be it iron or steel, brass or lead, ore or wood, when in the hands of the Don Cossacks. This day and forever they were the adopted of the tribesmen of Southern Russia.”

“All the degrees at once,” said Billy, in undertone to Henri, while the latter was alternating a wondering eye between the thonged charm he was holding and the stern-visaged giver thereof.

“You never can tell but what these things might prove useful in a pinch around here,” was the side remark of the French boy, who had taken the ceremony more seriously than his chum.

He had occasion later on to remind Billy of this observation.

“How do you suppose he resisted the temptation of decorating his fist with that showy band?” was a new query that just occurred to the irrepressible one. “Put it across, Salisky.”

The scout, in his own way, made the inquiry.

“To one of our great, far away, had I planned to give it—and woe to me if I had.”

Salisky satisfied Billy’s curiosity by rewording the answer.

“There is one thing I am sorry about, now that the deck is cleared,” said Henri, “and that is the forced implication of Hamar—he’s a gone gosling, I fear.”

“Don’t worry about that,” replied Billy; “from the way things looked when we skipped the shop, I am pretty sure that the whole outfit has disappeared by this time. We could not help it, anyhow.”

While the boys were exchanging confidences, the Cossacks had mounted their ponies, preparatory to resuming their interrupted journey. As a last reminder of their new relations, the red riders, headed by the chief, rode in single file past the initiated brethren, giving each the sign of the lifted lance—the “high sign,” as Billy put it.

“Good-by, old top,” sang out the boy from Bangor; “glad everything is on the square now.”

The scouts looked reproof at this manner of address, but as the Cossack did not understand a word of it, no harm was done.

“Farewell, brothers,” called Henri, with more decorum.

“It is our turn now,” briskly broke in Salisky, “and I want some speeding to make our faces good at headquarters.”

“You will get it,” was Billy’s comeback when the young aviators started the buzz in the biplanes.

“It will take a week to get the water out of my eyes,” laughed Marovitch, when the machines dipped that evening into the camp at Brest Litovsk.

Expected orders for the dash back to Warsaw were not forthcoming.

The aviators were destined to view the river Vistula at an entirely different point—to see it again tumbling down from the snow-dad Carpathians, where the titanic war struggle raged with unabated vigor.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE AVIATORS’ PLEDGE.

For several days, from behind the lines, the Boy Aviators had watched the Russian attack upon the heights on the north declivities of the Carpathians, in desperate endeavor to open a path to the highest ridges commanding the mountain wall.

Their own inaction on the edge of terrific combat, pouring in and out of Uzsok, Lupkow, and Dukla passes, had been nerve-racking. The roar of battle never ceased, day or night, and among all the Slav contenders swarming in the camp there were but two with whom they could commune, the familiar scouts, Salisky and Marovitch.

A welcome word then from the latter was the word “move.”

The flight of the aeroplanes from this point, where Lupkow pass pierced the Carpathians, followed the Vistula River in that part of its course which forms the boundary between Austria and Russia.

It was in the little town of Sandomir that the aviators rested after a continuous flight of 200 miles, and where the pilots met an old friend of the Przemysl time, none other than Stanislaws, in the guarded procession north of the defenders of the late Austrian fortress.

Billy and Henri did not hesitate in making a rush to greet this former comrade of the aerial profession, and eager to hear of the last days in the surrendered stronghold.

“Here you are again, Stanny,” cried the U. S. A. boy, “and, though the luck has run tough against you, we can’t help being glad of the chance to see you.”

The Austrian airman for the moment had a look askance at the green garb of the lads, indicating Russian service, but he could not long withhold hearty response to the advances of his young friends.

“I did not know you first, you gay turncoats,” he jovially quizzed, “but it’s a happy break in the gloom for me, I assure you.”

“As for that,” said Billy, touching the green sleeve of his coat, “we have simply been tossed about from one to the other of you until the Joseph we read about could scarcely have worn more colors on his back. But how did they get to you, Stanny? I thought the old fort didn’t have a hole in it.”

“There was an opening, though, my boy, and wide enough for famine and fever to crawl through. That was the combination that got to us first and there was nothing else to do but to give up. The rank and file did not know how near the rations were gone until Breckens, you remember him, was starting in his aeroplane with distress messages for Vienna. The Russians shot him down, and he fell within our line. The situation was then revealed. Well, my young friends, it is all over, and we have only one glow ahead—they have promised not to send us to Siberia.”

“But how was it that the aeroplanes could not bring in enough concentrated foodstuff to keep you ahead of hunger?”

Henri had recalled the many expeditions in which Billy and himself had participated to serve that purpose.

“An impossible task,” asserted Stanislaws. “With the rations entirely exhausted, there were one hundred and twenty thousand mouths to feed in the garrison alone, and civilian inhabitants, too, clamoring for food.”

“It must have been awful,” was Henri’s sympathetic comment.

Stanislaws passed a hand before his eyes, as if to shut out the terrible memory.

“Is there anything we can possibly do for you, Stanny?” earnestly asked Billy.

The haggard soldier in faded blue at first gave the negative by shaking his head. Then he suddenly asked:

“By any chance, do you suppose that you will visit Przemysl in your present routing?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Billy, “though it is evident that our scouts started here to get in touch with the Russian forces whose strength may be diverted elsewhere, now that the fortress has surrendered.”

“If it be so, and you are again privileged to move at will within the enclosure, there is a favor that you may safely, I believe, do for me.”

“Name it,” urged Billy.

“In the bastion at the extreme right of the west rampart of the inner fort is a loose stone, rough-faced, and marked by powder burn, cross shape. The stone can be moved with knife blade. Behind it you will find a moleskin belt, containing a decoration of great value to me and mine; a ruby-set sword hilt of far more value to a jeweler; a packet of letters, and several roleaux of gold. I would that you could accept the gold without danger, owing to its place of minting, but otherwise I pledge you to deliver this belt to the man, Fritz, at the Steiber Coffee House. Say to him, ‘It is for Eitel,’ and you will have fulfilled your promise.”

“What if there are no ‘Fritz’ and no ‘Coffee House’?”

Billy spoke like the critic of a contract.

“In that case,” wearily stated Stanislaws, “return the belt to the place I left it. In no event must you assume any further risk.”

“I don’t see why you didn’t get away in your aeroplane when you saw the jig was up. You could have done it with honor.”

Henri could not suppress his regret over this lost chance on the part of the Austrian.

“That was officially suggested to me more than once in the fort just before the storm broke,” said Stanislaws, “but the idea did not appeal to me. My duty was to sink or swim with the balance.”

It was not remarkable that the boys should be permitted to hold such lengthy converse with the prisoner, for as the companions of the noted scouts from headquarters they roved without hindrance, and, besides, had not the Muscovite troops themselves, but a short time previous, cheered the unarmed Austrians after their parade out of Przemysl?

That Salisky and Marovitch finally interrupted the interview was not a move of official interference, but due only to the emergency of their travel plan. The scouts attributed the interest taken by the lads in the trooper under guard solely to the fellowship of airmen.

“All aboard,” hailed Salisky, at sight of the young pilots; “we must be pushing on.”

“Where away?” called Billy.

“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’” quoted the scout. “But,” he instantly added, good-naturedly, “we expect to visit some new birds in an old nest.”

The inference was plain enough that the aeroplanes would be headed for the Przemysl fortress, and the direction taken by order speedily proved it.

Billy and Henri did not realize what a shake-up there had been in and about the stronghold since their leaving with Roque, until the machines they were driving hovered over the once familiar ground.

Heaps upon heaps of débris marked all that remained of the strongest of the outlying forts, which the Austrians had blown up preparatory to surrender.

Only the inner sections and the town itself, the boys observed, were intact.

Over all now the black double-headed Eagle of Russia—gone the long-resisting garrison of von Kusmanek.

Clearing the trenches and the barbed-wire entanglements, the pilots volplaned to the old landing place, where they had first met Stanislaws, the friend to whom they had just pledged their services for the only favor they could grant.

“Some changes here, pard,” remarked Billy, as they looked out and around from the rampart to which they had climbed.

“I should say,” commented Henri; “I see that all the bridges are gone, and that pontoon one leading out of the town, I suppose, was set up by the Russians immediately after the surrender.”

“Speaking of the town,” said Billy, “reminds me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go over and see if the Coffee House is yet standing, and if Fritz is still on his pins.”

“I expect Fritz has many times tightened his belt since the picking grew thin, let alone feeding the public as he used to do.”

“Well, old top, and what of it?” laughed Billy. “Fritz could buckle up a foot or two and then would never be mistaken for a fairy.”

The Steiber Coffee house, the boys soon discovered, was no longer a center of good cheer, bright fires and sanded floors, but an improvised hospital, crowded with the sick and wounded. Fritz, however, was there as large as life, and apparently none the worse for the horse-meat diet during the weeks of want and woe in the town.

Like Stanislaws, he had an extra look at the transformed aviators before he began to thaw into former genial address, a warning process instantly and wholly completed when Billy sounded in his ear the words, “It is for Eitel.”

This friend of many travelers, credited with speaking knowledge of seven different languages, probably used a little of all of them in the greeting inspired by the magic sentence.

“The same flying boys you are that sat at my fireside with the Herr Georges” (Roque) “and the red giant” (Schneider) “on that first dark night when the great guns were roaring across the river and you came in with the wind. Ah, how different now,” sighed the heavyweight host; “the good days are no more. And,” he concluded, “what of Eitel; what word of him?”

Henri told of the trust imposed in them by Stanislaws, and of the charge that they deliver to him (Fritz) the belt and the valuables therein.

“He knows, he knows,” murmured the innkeeper, with eyes moist and a tremor in his voice, “that old Fritz will find a way to reach his loved ones at home.”

“The next thing,” asserted the practical Billy, “is to pass you the trinkets, for we never know when the call will come to pull out for another station. Keep a happy thought, old man, until we see you again.”

With these parting words the lads sauntered back toward the fort, with a studied air of careless unconcern.

All the time they were figuring on the quickest way to get to the earthwork where Stanislaws’ treasure was concealed.

CHAPTER IX.
AN UNEXPECTED ORDER.

Within the fortress enclosure the boys took their bearings from memory and soon stood in the shadow of the west wall, in the location described by Stanislaws. They could see a sentry moving with measured tread on the narrow walk above them, and waited until he passed beyond the turret in the first turn of the circular parapet.

Billy led the way in setting foot on the elevation, with Henri close at his heels. In quick step they were within the angles of the bastion, and Billy took a peep along the wall to see if the sentinel had commenced his backward beat. But the guard was taking it leisurely, for no armed foe was known to be lurking without, and the duty of patrol this evening was a matter of military form.

Henri in the meantime had been casting about for the loose stone marked by the cross-shaped powder burn.

He had evidently found it, for Billy heard a whispered request for the loan of his knife.

Inserting the blade in the thin line where the mortar had crumbled, Henri dexterously twisted the stone out of its socket.

“It is here all right,” he said, holding up the belt for the inspection of his chum.

Billy, as a matter of precaution, replaced the stone and smoothed away with his foot the earth particles which had fallen with the knife chiseling.

When the guard finally approached, the belt was safely tucked away in Henri’s blouse, and both of the innocents were idly leaning over the parapet, apparently viewing the activity in the Russ encampment, across the San river.

The Slav soldier challenged the intruders in his own language, but in answer the boys simply shook their heads, indicating lack of understanding.

Looking downward, the guard hailed a number of Cossacks engaged in some lance-tilting game in the stone square.

The Dons surrounded the boys the minute they descended to the level, and failing to get satisfaction in their jerky string of questions, began to pull and haul the captives in a roughly sportive way.

The boys vigorously protested, but to no avail, and Billy even resorted to a real kick or two at savage shins. In the scuffle it so happened that the amulet which Nikita had given Henri fell out of the torn front of his blouse and under the feet of the tormentors.

The sight of the thonged lance-point had magic effect. The Cossacks ceased their badgering as one man quitting. The Don in authority had lifted a hand high above his head.

As Henri stooped to recover the flint talisman, the chief anticipated him, presenting it with a grave salutation to the bewildered lad.

It dawned then upon the aviators that they had been recognized as “brothers of the blood.”

Henri turned an “I told you so” glance at his chum. That “useful in a pinch” prediction had been verified in most opportune manner.

Salisky and Marovitch had no honor as a rescue party when they later arrived in the enclosure, completing a hurried search for their pilots, who had failed to report for the evening distribution of rations.

But the scouts could have exacted the credit of being a surprise, or, rather, surprised party when they plumped upon the seated group of Cossacks dividing the contents of their knapsacks with two youthful recruits occupying the center space at the feast.

“By my sainted ancestors,” exclaimed Salisky, “look at the lion tamers!”

He was careful, however, to say it in other than the native tongue.

“Been looking for us?” asked Billy in the most innocent way imaginable.

“No, we are just trotting about for our health,” ironically replied Marovitch.

“Better come along, however,” advised Salisky, suppressing an inclination to laugh, owing to the presence of the seriously gazing tribesmen.

“All ready,” cheerfully announced Billy, after Henri and himself had made a handshaking round of the circle.

Marching away with the scouts, it had been made up between the chums that the details of their adventure were strictly private business.

While particularly anxious to get Stanislaws’ belt to Fritz that very night, Henri concluded that the early morning would do, especially in view of the fact that Salisky had made no mention of any move immediately contemplated.

It developed, however, that the boy missed his reckoning, and proving the old saying that “delays are dangerous.” Hardly an hour of sleep, it seemed to the boys, had been granted them when the hand of Salisky dragged the pilots out of slumberland. In reality, it was cold, gray dawn which accompanied the awakening process.

“Orders to backtrack,” was the brief statement of the scout, himself already attired for flight, and with dispatch case swung over his shoulder.

“You don’t mean right away?” Henri sat up in his cot to put the question.

“Just as soon as you can get outside of some rations,” replied Salisky, “so there is no time for napping. It is a long ways to Warsaw and only two stations for food and fuel in between.”

“But you didn’t say a thing to us about it last night,” argued Henri, greatly disturbed by the prospect of failure to fulfill their pledge to Stanislaws.

“Come out of your dream, boys; it is not like you to question orders.”

The scout stood by while the boys prepared for the journey, and they were never alone again in this last hour in Przemysl.

Stanislaws’ belt weighed like a chunk of lead against the heart of Henri.

As Salisky had stated, the aviators had but two brief rest periods in the flight to Warsaw, and they traveled at lightning speed.

At the end of this air voyage, the aviation chief peremptorily ordered them off duty for at least two weeks. “No use of killing these birds,” he said to Salisky, with a chuckle, “when you have taken all the fat off their bones.”

In their old quarters that first night of their return to Warsaw from the Galician fortress, Henri looked about for a safe place to hide Stanislaws’ belt, which not only produced worry of mind but a positive irritation in the several days’ wearing. The chums lay awake long after the other aviators in the dormitory were deep in slumber, and cudgeled their brains to invent a way of shifting their new responsibility to some likely cache for the time being.

Billy happened to think of the rusty, dusty portrait of some long departed inmate of the house, hanging just outside the door which opened on the stair landing.

He transferred the thought into Henri’s ear, and the pair cautiously tiptoed across the room, taking advantage of the intermittent shafts of light sifting through the tall windows nearest the lamppost at the street corner.

“Gee whiz!” muttered Billy, halting in momentary anguish, after stubbing his toe against a chair leg.

“Ssh!” sibilantly warned Henri; “you’ll wake the dead with your clatter.”

Noiselessly drawing back the door, the boys stood under the iron-framed likeness of the early day representative of the household, Henri holding the moleskin girdle in the crook of his arm.

Billy did the squirrel act in mounting the newel post, and could easily reach behind the picture. His chum passed up the belt, and the climber hooked the brass buckle over the wooden peg from which the portrait was suspended.

“Safe enough now,” he whispered, sliding down from his perch, getting a helping arm from Henri.

Five minutes later the young aviators were sleeping the sleep of the satisfied.

CHAPTER X.
HUNTING FOR TROUBLE.

The sun was ten o’clock high when Billy hoisted himself with his elbows and realized that Henri and himself had been singularly favored by the usually exacting aviation chief, who tolerated no lazybones around quarters.

“Hi there, sleepy head,” he called to his chum, who was still drawing long breath through a wide-open mouth.

“Hold your peace,” growled Henri, turning for another snooze.

But Billy, now wide awake, and in frolicsome mood, had his comrade out of bed by the heels, and it was not until they had knocked over about everything in the room that they desisted from their riotous wrestling.

“Blame your gaiety,” panted Henri; “why couldn’t you let a fellow rest?”

“You’d be a Rip Van Winkle if you had half a show,” guyed Billy.

In more serious turn the boys went out to look at the picture above the stair landing, to see if any telltale strap of the concealed belt was showing. Nothing, however, to betray their secret to the curious eye was in evidence.

“A good job for a dark night,” observed Billy, going down the stairway, two steps at a time.

“All the grub gone?” he inquired of Corporal Romeroff, on mess duty.

The latter grinned, and showed the boys two well-filled platters on a near-by table.

“The chief is a first-rate boss,” was the enthusiastic expression of Henri, between attacks on the provisions.

“None better,” admitted Billy, sitting back from the table, with a sigh of repletion.

“What’s the program for to-day?” queried Henri, “seeing that we are freelances for a while?”

“I’ve just been thinking that I’d like to know for sure whether or not Ricker got out of town.”

“Say, Buddy,” broke in Henri, “I don’t believe we had better toy with that buzz-saw again.”

“Only a bit of scouting, old pal,” wheedled Billy, “a sort of look over and not in. I confess that my bump of curiosity is not growing less as I grow older.”

“Oh, well, let it go at that,” agreed Henri, with an air of resignation. “Maybe it wasn’t intended that we should live long enough to wear carpet-slippers.”

The boys strolled to the square of the memorial column, and halted at a point directly opposite the shop of the silversmith. The front of the establishment was sealed by closed shutters.

“Evidently nobody at home,” said Billy; “and, really,” he added, “I didn’t expect there would be.”

“How do you know but what the old fox is still in his den and not using the front entrance?”

“If I were guessing,” replied Billy, “it would be that Ricker has long since crossed the river. Yet I wouldn’t mind finding out for certain.”

“There it is,” commented Henri; “I knew you wouldn’t be satisfied to let well enough alone. Come on, then; let’s look in the alligator’s throat to see if he has teeth.”

“Easy now, pard,” chided Billy; “there is nothing rash in my mind at this moment. If a little closer view doesn’t serve the purpose we will just be ladies and ask a policeman.”

Crossing the street, the lads tried the shop door. It stood as tight as wax.

A passerby tried to tell the boys something, but gave it up in despair when they looked as blank as a person stone deaf.

“Why didn’t you add the Slavonic to your language list, young man?”

Billy shook his finger at Henri in mock severity.

“You’ve no room to call me down in that regard,” retorted the French boy.

“True enough, pal,” apologized Billy; “it’s only a case of two babes in the woods in Russia instead of one.”

Between the silversmith’s shop and the next adjoining building, a warehouse, apparently deserted, was a narrow, covered walk, running back and the full apparent length of both structures.

Billy, evidently forgetting his original determination not to cross the line of discretion, started to explore this cul-de-sac, this passage open only at one end.

His chum accepted the inevitable and doubled up with the leader.

“It’s an even bet that we will be yanked up for attempted burglary,” he gloomily predicted.

“Here’s about the point, I think,” mused Billy, “where we lay behind that revolving door; that is, providing we were now inside.”

“Well, what of it?” impatiently demanded Henri. “We certainly don’t intend to break in to prove your deduction.”

Billy had no response for this. He was curiously examining a postern, or door, in the wall cutting off the vaulted passage.

“Wonder if there is a combination to this thing?” He put the question to the test, closely inspecting every panel in the door from top to bottom.

“Old thumbs up surely had a way of getting through from this side,” continued the Bangor boy, “and it was not by key, either—no sign of a keyhole anywhere.”

The mechanician in Henri was aroused. The door puzzle was something in his particular line. With no less interest now than that displayed by his comrade, the expert began tapping up and down the solid surface with the haft of his pocket-knife.

Directly he turned a bright eye and a complacent smile upon the interested Billy.

“Nothing to it at all, Buddy,” he advised, putting his hand on one of the little iron plates that studded the doorway in two rows from jamb to hinges. “The hollow is behind this one. See?” Henri illustrated by thumb pressure on the edge of the metal disc, which turned upward, exposing to view a steel ring slightly more than finger size.

Without waiting for further demonstration, Billy promptly tried a pull on the hoop in the hole. It was lost motion, for the ring had no forward give to it. An experimental push, also, was without result.

“Turn it,” was Henri’s rather impatient suggestion.

That was the trick that drew the bolt. The boys heard the click of the hidden spring, and so sudden was the giving of the barrier that Billy, using an arm prop against it, went in like a diver. The recoil was equally speedy, and Henri saved himself a shutout by using his foot as a preventing wedge.

With both boys inside, the postern closed behind them without a sound. The passage here was so narrow that it enforced single file proceedings. At the right was the wall of the silversmith’s shop, to the left the barred windows of the warehouse. The structures might have been houses of the dead for all the signs of occupancy then shown.

Billy was uncertain in his mind as to the first tackle of the mystery that he had conjured to while away an idle hour. He was not particularly anxious to run afoul of Ricker and his hairy retainer. Indeed, had he glimpsed the heads of either of them in window or doorway it would have been back to the square for him, and if there was any talking to be done, that conversation would have to be exchanged in the open.

But it was just that bump of curiosity, of which Henri had more than once jokingly said “could only be reduced by a smash with a sandbag.”

Billy’s conclusion favored further exploration of the vaulted walk, which no doubt had been originally designed simply as an air shaft, and later converted to some other use. It was the latter supposition that appealed to the would-be explorer.

With continued progress between the walls, the boys marked gradual descent, becoming more pronounced at every step. Then the path curved abruptly and ended at the base of a tower-like brick chimney, built outside of the warehouse wall and making the first opening in the hitherto overlapping cornices of the buildings running parallel.

“The silversmith’s shop is considerable of a bluff when you come to compare the known front with the unknown rear,” remarked Billy, who had been mentally figuring the distance from street to postern, and from postern to this chimney obstruction.

“It has just occurred to me that Ricker must have been in charge of the whole block. The way it looks, all the rest around here have marched off to war.”

Henri had no proof up to the minute that the warehouse was or ever had been a hive of industry.

“Come here, pal,” called Billy, who had stepped from the front to the side of the chimney base; “I believe there’s a way to get to the basement of this old shack.”

His discovery was a rusty grating set in the floor close to the foot of the chimney, and it was surprising how easily it could be moved.

“For our special convenience,” chuckled the Bangor boy, when he noted a number of iron spikes protruding from the masonry in order for descent.

“The same sort of fire escape arrangement runs up the chimney; didn’t you notice?” asked Henri.

“But that’s for the lookout, pard; I tell you this is a bully plant in which to prowl. But let’s go below now and aloft later.”

Billy was already legging it, spike to spike, into the depths of the old warehouse.

CHAPTER XI.
GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK.

“What a place for a ghost dance,” commented Billy, peering into the shadowy beyond, as he waited for Henri to join him in the big cellar.

Henri, letting go the last hand-hold, immediately announced that the briefer the stay here the better it would suit him. “Trot along, Billy,” he urged, “and get it over with.”

They had passed under several arches in half-seeing endeavor to locate a way to the floor above, when Billy came to a quick halt.

“I thought I heard voices!”

“You’re likely to hear anything in this catacomb,” replied Henri.

“No, it isn’t nerves, Buddy; it’s talking. Listen!”

The lads, standing mute and with ears attuned to acute pitch, were soon impressed with the fact that there was a mumbling medley of conversation somewhere about, but whether at hand or more remote they could not decide.

So in tremor and doubt they moved with less haste, and stopping at intervals to analyze every suspicious sound. But now it was only their own breathing and footfalls that disturbed the tomb-like stillness.

At the bottom steps of a broad flight of stairs, which they had finally located, to their great relief, the boys made resolve that the first opening at the top that presented itself, offering opportunity of escape from the building, would not be neglected for the space of even a half minute.

The excitement of breaking in had now no show with the desire to break out.

At the top of the stairway the climbers saw before them an immense platform, very likely the place of loading, for several trucks in advanced state of disuse were here and there in view.

But what most interested the lads was a clearly outlined path, through the heavily settled dust, stretching across and beyond the platform, and leading to a door of white pine.

“I expect the voices we heard belonged to the same parties who made this trail,” was Billy’s low-toned opinion.

“Whoever they belonged to,” softly observed Henri, “I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt, and if there is a window handy, opening on the good old outside, it’s me for it.”

“I’m with you this time, Buddy,” promptly agreed the Bangor boy; “I’ve had my full of this expedition, and ready to play quits.”

If Henri had anything further to say, it did not reach utterance, for quite distinctly now the lads could hear in varying strain the muffled intonation that had at first startled them in their stumble through the lower regions beneath.

Stealthily skirting the platform, the boys took to their knees in the dust, with their eyes on a level with the raised flooring, at a point immediately to the right of the big door.

It had been their intention to make their way past the door to the first turn of the counting room enclosure, which they were sure would set them going in the direction of the street flanking the west side of Memorial Square.

Off the platform they were afforded better opportunity for quick concealment in case any of the mysterious inmates of the supposedly deserted warehouse should suddenly appear on the higher plane.

From the near point of hiding the boys got a new idea of the center plan of the working floor, as adapted to the business for which it had been designed.

The counting house was arranged like a deck cabin of a ship, open space all around, a fact not apparent to the boys when they first emerged from the cellar.

“It’s a cinch,” whispered Billy, “that we can get by on one side or the other if we haven’t forgotten how to do the Indian crawl.”

“If it wasn’t for that talk buzz,” asserted Henri, “I’d be inclined to tell the neighbors that the old plant was as empty as a last year’s bird nest.”

“Not to mention the tracks on the platform,” reminded Billy.

“No definite telling when those marks might have been made,” continued Henri, “and as I was saying, the talkfest mystery is the one absolute assurance that we are not alone in these diggings.”

“In the passing,” intimated Billy, “there may be a crack in that hut in which an eye would fit, and there is no use leaving an unsolved problem behind.”

Henri grinned. “I’ve been expecting that, Buddy,” he said.

Alongside the counting house the boys moved on all fours, and it did not take Billy long to find a place to put his eye. Just over his head was the checking window—a small aperture, masked by a curtain of green baize, from which projected a rounded shelf. There had been a warp between this projection and the window setting, and through the open seam a free view of the enclosure was presented.

When Billy had completed his look-in, he resorted to the sign language as a means of conveying the word that the room was occupied. Henri, surmising as much from the fragments of conversation sifting through the loose lines of the wooden wall, took his turn as an observer.

In the same rough garb of coal heaver that he wore on the day of delivery to the young aviators of the summons to the twin towers, Ricker was lolling on a rickety bench, and another man equally shabby in makeup was perched upon a dingy counter. On the floor at their feet, gagged and bound hand and foot, was the heavyweight policeman, who had officially invoked the services of the silversmith as an expert examiner of the battered remains of the time clock dug out of the ruins of the explosion-rent military storehouse.

Ricker had occasion to several times admonish his companion for getting too high a pitch in his rumbling voice. These vocal lifts at intervals, no doubt, were the sounds that had from the first convinced the boys of the presence of other life than theirs in the building.

“This carrion,” Ricker was saying, prodding the prostrate officer with the toe of a hobnailed boot, “is too much of a blunderhead to kill outright, and it would be a shame to deprive the rats of such a splendid spread of live meat. But, after all, seeing that the game is up here as far as I am concerned, I will let the palace of justice keep their numbskull. There’s a lout that will let them know in twenty-four hours after we are gone.”

The man on the floor spluttered in his gag and strained at his bonds.

“Heigho, Casper,” yawned Ricker, rising and stretching himself, “it’s soon farewell to Warsaw for us; we were good citizens, eh, Casper? We leave our mark, too—and we will also leave that crazy Hamar if he does not show his ugly face within the next ten minutes.”

Ricker consulted a heavy gold watch, which he produced from the folds of his woollen shirt. Two gunny-sacks, bulging at both ends and roped in the middle, might have furnished evidence that the silversmith was taking most of his stock with him.

The boys, taking turn about at the look-in point, concluded to sheer off for the time being, when Ricker bestowed a parting kick upon the trussed policeman, shouldered the gunny-sacks and started for the door of the counting house.

“I suppose Hamar will know where to find us?” questioned the man called Casper.

“Blast him for a crank, there is no telling anything about him,” fumed Ricker; “he had the hour pounded into his addled brain, and it is nobody’s fault but his own if he misses fire.”

Billy and Henri were prepared for the sport of hide and seek, until they could learn the direction that Ricker and his companion proposed to take.

Each took a corner of the counting house at the rear, and each on the alert to work the disappearing act.

CHAPTER XII.
AN EXHIBIT OF NERVE.

Ricker and his companion, however, took a route that relieved the wary watchers of the necessity of doing lively footwork to keep out of sight. The path followed was that across the platform toward the top of the stairway descending to the basement. Through the opening there the pair disappeared.

The first thought then with the boys was to immediately release the prisoner in the counting house from his uncomfortable predicament, but a second thought made this preceding one for debate. Through no fault of their own, and, unconsciously, the lads had been indirectly connected with recent Warsaw operations of Ricker, and to be well rid of him was a matter of self-protection. Having squared themselves with the Cossack, Nikita, the passing of the silversmith would be a final clearance of old scores.

“Let’s give them an hour’s leeway, and then we’ll cut his nobs loose,” suggested Henri; “the chap in there would start something mighty quick the minute he got on his feet, and there’s no telling what might be coming to us if Ricker was brought to bay. He’d surely think we had betrayed him.”

“Yes, and come to think of it, as we did before, the authorities here might not accept graciously our plea of innocence. We’d get it both going and coming. Plenty of time to untie the policeman. He ought to be thankful that it is only one hour instead of twenty-four, and maybe a good sight longer than that, if we did not interfere.”

Billy’s conclusion would have stood as satisfactory but for a startling development of the instant. Some intuitive process of the mind caused him to cast a glance over his shoulder, and within twenty feet of him, coming with cat-like tread from the far front of the warehouse, was the threatening shape of Hamar. It is doubtful if the hairy henchman of Ricker was then aware of the presence of the boys, and if he had any special purpose for carrying an unsheathed knife in his hand, the reason must be accounted for in the person of the unfortunate policeman on the counting house floor. Hamar was of the fiery brand of conspirator who resented any application of law, and woe to the man who affronted him. The poisoned ring episode was an instance in point.

Henri, gazing in another direction, for the moment, was wholly oblivious of the new peril at hand until apprised by a hiss from Billy. Half turning, the French boy was looking full into the malignant face of the velvet-footed oncomer.

With a side leap that covered several feet, Henri dashed around the cabin, meeting his chum, who had jumped on the other side, at the front entrance, both crossing the threshold at one step, and banging the door behind them. Billy grabbed at the bolt just over the latch, and sent it with a snap into its socket.

“Gee whillikens,” he panted, “that was some acrobatic act!”

The door creaked and cracked with the outside pressure that a powerful and infuriated man was exerting against it.

The boys hastily dragged forward the several heavy benches in the room and stacked them up for an additional and supporting barrier.

The next move was to free the policeman, who, though carrying a lot of surplus flesh, would apparently make a fair bid as a full hand in a fight.

Relieved of the gag, what the officer had to say about his late captors was red-hot Russian. When Henri had severed, with his pocket-knife, the last strand of the confining cord, the big policeman regained his feet with astonishing alacrity for such a heavyweight. He speedily worked the stiffness out of his joints by swinging his arms about like a windmill and vigorously stamping up and down the few feet of floor space.

Shrewdly surmising that his rescuers were not conversant with the native tongue, he asked in French: “How many of them out there?”

The door was rattling ominously, and one of the hinges gave way with a scattering of screw fastenings.

“One,” answered Henri, “but he’s a corker—the fellow with the hair mattress around his ears.”

“Oh, oh,” exclaimed the policeman, “I gave him a rap with my stick before they downed me. He’s of strange breed, not like the rest.”

The thought came to both Billy and Henri that Hamar was here to exact blood atonement for the mentioned blow.

The policeman wrenched a heavy oak brace from one of the benches, tested its heft by a long arm swing over his head, and grimly remarked:

“This will drop him if he comes through.”

The door gave way with a crash, the piled up benches toppling with the impact, and on top of the whole mass the tiger man with dagger drawn.

Before the fierce intruder could recover his balance, the policeman with bench brace poised for action brought the oaken weapon down with terrific force on the raised right arm of Hamar, a muscle-numbing stroke, which relaxed the latter’s grip on the haft of the glittering blade and sent it spinning under the counter across the room. A second blow cut into his forehead.

The men grappled, swayed to and fro in interlocked fury, rolled over the fallen door and out upon the platform. Hamar was at a disadvantage by reason of the blinding effect of blood from the forehead wound, and it was evident that he was seeking to break away from his burly antagonist.

Billy and Henri, wildly excited over the fray, danced around the combatants, narrowly escaping at times a bruising jab from whirling heels.

The fight ranged closer and closer to the head of the basement stairway, the plain intent of the policeman’s hairy adversary.

Here it was, by some cunning wrestler’s trick, that Hamar broke the hold of the heavyweight, bounded through the opening and down the stairs with an agility that baffled interference.

The policeman, though winded by exertion, did not delay pursuit, and he was not far behind his wily foe when the latter paused for a second as though hesitating over the course to take.

The boys, in the immediate wake of the doughty officer, saw that the fugitive was making the run back in the same direction that they had followed in coming. Speeding along with the policeman, their judgment as to this was verified in the passing under an arch out of which several large stones had fallen.

“He’s making for the chimney grating,” advised Billy.

The policeman, under ordinary conditions, might have yielded to detective instinct and asked the boy how he knew so much, but this was no time for cross-examination by him, racing through a cellar after a fight for life, and in eager pursuit of a desperate and dangerous enemy.

Hamar had climbed the spikes to the chimney base, and by the time the policeman got his head through the grating was shinning up the big smokestack like a monkey.

The trio in the rear swarmed up the handholds in close pursuit, the fat officer puffing and growling at every reach.

From the wide expanse of the warehouse roof could be seen, quite near, the channel of the Vistula river. Hamar had reached the extreme west line of the elevation, and was looking down into the void that effectually blocked further flight.

“I have him now,” exulted the big policeman, hurrying forward.

But it was not a sure thing, after all.

Directly beneath the coping, over which Hamar was leaning, rose the rigging of a great crane, the mighty arm of which was lifting with mechanical regularity to swing heavily weighted sacks from the wharf into the hold of a waiting collier.

Hardly ten feet separated the pursuer and the pursued, when Hamar bestrode the coping—now he is over and hanging by his hands—now he drops into the crane rigging—then crawling out on the swinging arm, he is swept in wide circle over the dizzy height—now he slides down the chains, now astride the sack just hooked—now lowered with the weight of coal into the vessel!

During the exhibit of daring, from the first sight of the perilous descent on the chains to the final dump, the stevedores stood aghast and open-mouthed.

As for the policeman and the boys, looking out and down upon the astonishing performance, none of them had a word to say for several minutes after it was all over.

“Gee whiz, but wasn’t that the limit?”

It was Billy who broke the breath-holding period.

When the policeman awakened from his temporary trance, he was very much awake.

“There is still a live chance to nab him,” he exclaimed, “if we can only get down there before the collier clears. Once out in the channel and that fool is liable to drown himself.”

If the officer had only known it, the man he most wanted, and upon whose head was the far greater price, even now was a stowaway in the very ship into which Hamar had been tumbled.

CHAPTER XIII.
FOILED BY A FALL.

Such was the haste of the officer to get to ground that he started down the spike row in the chimney regardless of the fact that a slip for him might spell dire consequence. It was not exactly a slip, however, that actually brought him to grief, but the outpulling of one of the big nails, owing to the drag of unusual weight, and resulting in about a twenty-foot fall. Had it not been for the assumed leadership of the ponderous policeman, either or both of the boys who might have immediately preceded him would either or both probably have ceased to take any further interest in the doings of earth.

Billy, next in the line of descent, almost took a drop himself, when he heard the gasp of alarm and the thud of the heavyweight on the stone pavement below.

The fallen man was unconscious when the boys reached his side, and blood was flowing in thin streams from his nostrils. He groaned when an attempt was made by Henri to raise his head for pillowing on the boy’s coat, which he had removed for the purpose.

“One of us had better go for help right away,” suggested Billy, “and I guess it will be me, for you are better on the nursing part of the job.”

With the utterance the self-elected seeker for aid ran at a lively clip up the passage toward the street front.

The runner was hardly through the spring-locked door before Henri, left behind as nurse, noted in his patient signs of returning consciousness. Indeed, the policeman had opened his eyes and was staring at his attendant.

“Where am I?” he hoarsely questioned.

“You will remember it yourself in a minute or two,” cheerfully replied Henri. “Take a brace, cap., and you’ll be going again like a top before the supper bell rings.”

“Now I have it,” cried the victim of the jarring fall; “we were just closing in on that wild man when he jumped onto the derrick. Why are we not at the wharf to stop that boat?”

“Take it easy, cap.,” cajoled Henri; “you’ve had a bit of a tumble, but you’ll be there on time. Don’t worry.”

The policeman raised himself on his elbows, fired by a spirit averse to delay, twisted himself about, and succeeded in making a back rest against the chimney.

“What has become of the other boy?” was his next inquiry.

“Gone for a doctor or anybody else that he can pick up in a pinch,” advised Henri. “But you can see for yourself—here he comes now.”

Billy was accompanied by a tall, slender man with a clean-shaven face, swinging a leather case in his hand in the usual professional way, and indicating readiness for any surgical or remedial emergency.

Bringing up the rear were two policemen in uniform and a short-legged apothecary from the nearest drug store.

The company entire sounded a note of recognition when they saw the injured man sitting at the foot of the chimney base.

“Strogoff, by my soul,” ejaculated the doctor; “this young messenger said that a policeman had been hurt, but I had no reckoning that it was the fighting sergeant of headquarters staff. Let me have a look at you, man.”

“Ah,” he said, after quick examination, “a little concussion, that is about the extent of it; no bones broken; lucky, sergeant, that you were so well-cushioned by nature, and good feeding, I might add. You will be sore from this shake-up, but far from the hospital, my dear sir.”

“Here, give me a hand,” broke in the sergeant, addressing the officers standing behind the physician. “Now,” he continued, stiffly rising with the assistance rendered, “I want the pair of you to use your legs to best gait and give order of detention to the master of the wharf back of these buildings, to hold at all hazards the collier there loading. Go!”

With the doctor’s arm aid on one side and the druggist’s on the other, the sergeant was led, slowly and limping, out to the street.

Hailing a hack, passing through the square, Strogoff, aided by vigorous boosting, climbed in and motioned the boys to follow.

“Drive like the devil around to the river front,” he commanded the reinsman on the box, and the way the vehicle rattled over the pavement showed that the officer inside was not considered the kind of individual with which to trifle.

When the sergeant reached the wharf, a big transport occupied the offing, upon which troops were embarking, and small mountains of military supplies also being loaded with all possible dispatch.

Strogoff’s brother officers, who had been sent in advance to the wharf, had made no progress in their mission, owing to the martial preemption of the premises, and the sergeant’s attempt at argument with the irate lieutenant-colonel directing the getaway proceedings fell upon deaf ears.

It was not until the transport was in mid-channel and swiftly steaming up the river that the wharf master could be reached.

The sergeant, for the time being, had no regard for his aching head and back, and with renewed vigor was on the trail of the suspect who had given him the slip on the warehouse roof. “You saw the way that ape got into the coal boat, didn’t you?” was the first interrogation fired at the wharf master.

“I’m not blind,” responded the official addressed.

“Has the collier cleared yet?”

“No, and it will not until morning.”

This last answer to his questioning set the sergeant up in confidence that he would be soon dragging Hamar out of a dust pit.

The vessel which he was seeking was readily located, out at anchor, by an obliging stevedore, and the three officers, accompanied by our boys, reached the hulk in the wharf master’s launch.

It was in the deepening dusk that the searching party went aboard of the dingy craft, and the skipper was inclined to be surly until the rays from the mainmast lantern were reflected in the shining badges of authority on the breasts of two of the officers.

“What’s wanted?”

“A fugitive from justice.”

Strogoff’s declaration was snappy. He did not approve of the sullen attitude of the skipper.

“I will call the crew; you can choose your man.”

“The rascal I am after came on board with a sack of coal this afternoon.”

“That oaf,” sneered the shipper, “have him hide and hair for all of me. Druski, ho, Druski,” he called.

From between the decks slouched the brawny mate of the vessel.

“Druski,” repeated the skipper, “is the dolt still below?”

“No,” answered the mate; “I kicked him, along with two hiding heavers, out of the bunkers two hours ago, just before the transport forced us to move. One of the heavers carried a good lot of dunnage over his shoulder, but he did not steal it here.”

Another sailor just at the moment came over the side, completing shore leave. “While you are asking, sir,” he stated to the skipper, “I saw the three of them go aboard the transport. A matey with me on the wharf said the big bark was short-handed in the engine room, and anybody with a pair of shoulders was liable to be nabbed.”

“Three of them!”

The big sergeant made a bee-line for the informer. He reeled off a minute description of Ricker.

Looking to the skipper for permission to speak, and getting a nod, the sailor expressed the view that one of the three might fit the illustration if he were dressed differently.

“One net for them all,” almost shouted Strogoff, “and in the stew they will make a pretty kettle of fish. Look alive; into the launch with you!”

The little steamer was showing all its lights, fore and aft, as it hummed through the pitchy darkness, heading straight for the wharf.

Piling into the hack the five were driven furiously to police headquarters—there is no speed limit in Warsaw—where the sergeant reported the situation in brief to his long-headed superior in the inner circle of surveillance.

“Show me the way to catch the transport,” declared Strogoff, bringing his knuckles down with a bang on the table, “and I will show you the spy who blew up the storehouse!”

The chief was on his feet in an instant. “Telephone the shipping bureau,” he sharply ordered, as a desk man responded to an insistent buzz signal, “and ascertain if a high-speed dispatch boat is available for immediate service.”

Five minutes had elapsed when the desk man reappeared. “Sorry, sir,” he said, saluting, “but numbers four, seven and nine, the only fast travelers retained here, are to-night somewhere near Plock, and are not due to return inside of six hours. No other steam vessels in harbor but the slow colliers.”

“Ask them, then,” impatiently commanded the chief, “if the transport can be reached by wire this side of Vloclavek?”

Another wait of several minutes. Again the voice at the door:

“No, sir; the vessel has no wireless apparatus, and the first land station is Vloclavek.”

“Might as well be Siberia,” lamented the sergeant; “those foxes will be off the boat long before the land telegraph can spot them.”

The chief made no reply. He was wrapped in meditation, with lowering brow and thin lips compressed.

Then his eyes lifted and his entire expression changed.

“There is nothing on land or sea, sergeant,” he triumphantly asserted, “that can outspeed an aeroplane.”

CHAPTER XIV.
AGAIN ON THE WING.

Sergeant Strogoff’s elation over the solution of the pursuit problem was manifested by a sounding slap on his knee, forgetting that it was the leg most bruised by his recent fall, and his beaming face was comically twisted by a wince of pain.

“Have at them, chief!” he cried. “But we must appeal to the military authorities for the airships, and the experts to guide them. With your permission, sir, I will put the emergency to Colonel Malinkoff this very hour.”

The chief, undisturbed, checked this proposition of hasty action with a gesture of dissent.

“Daylight will do for that, sergeant, and a few hours more or less will not matter. With sixty or seventy miles an hour as our advantage, there is no question as to the outcome of the chase.”

The cold-gray eye of the chief, lighting upon the boys, standing with Strogoff’s comrades near the door, he imperiously demanded:

“Are these new recruits in your service, sergeant?”

“Bless me, sir,” quickly responded the officer addressed; “let me tell you that if it had not been for them I might have been filling an uncovered grave to-night.”

“Put it all in your report, sergeant. You had better be eating and sleeping while I prepare a statement that will induce the military branch to act and aid promptly.”

The summons for the chief’s secretary was sounding when the sergeant and his young companions left the office.

“I think a half hour in the chop house around the corner will be good medicine to start with,” remarked the big officer, who was a famous feeder, and who had missed several meals since his hold-up in the rear of the silversmith’s shop.

In the continuous run of excitement following their discovery of Strogoff trussed up on the counting house floor in the old warehouse the policeman had never made a single inquiry as to the boys’ identity. If he had noticed them on the day they were posing as would-be customers in the shop of the silversmith, and when he served summons on Ricker to appear as an expert witness, there had been no sign of the fact.

As Billy said, in an aside to his chum, “He thinks, maybe, that we dropped out of the sky just to help him out of a scrape.”

Strogoff, having gorged himself with a mammoth beefsteak flanked by onions, and the boys fully satisfied with their own prowess at table, the trio hied themselves back to police headquarters.

“Andreas,” said the sergeant to the desk man, “we are going to take a snooze in the rest room, and if the chief wants me never stop shaking until you get my eyes open. And, what is more, do not come too soon if you can help it, but by the powers do not come too late if you know it.”

The desk man grinned and nodded understanding. Three hours later he fell like a fire alarm on the snoring officer, and as the latter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, handed him an envelope, sealed with red wax. It was addressed to Colonel Malinkoff.

It was in the gray dawn that the sergeant and the boys set out for army headquarters.

Stopped by a sentry, Strogoff displayed his badge and also produced the letter from the police chief.

They were passed without further question, and found the colonel, ever an early riser, preparing for breakfast. Such was the bulk of the policeman that the boys in line behind him were completely hidden from view.

Opening the envelope, Colonel Malinkoff noted the contents, penciled a few words on the margin, and instantly remarking:

“Request granted forthwith. Orderly,” turning to a soldier in the room, “go with this officer to aviation quarters.”

As Strogoff stepped aside, that the aide might lead, the colonel saw the boys.

“’Pon my word, young men, you are early visitors. What has gone wrong with you?”

Much to the astonishment of the policeman, the colonel extended a welcoming hand to each of the youngsters.

“You know them, colonel?”

“Rather well acquainted,” laughed Malinkoff. “Hope you have not arrested them, officer.”

“Not me,” stoutly declared the sergeant; “I owe them my life. But may I tell about that later, colonel? Time presses.”

Malinkoff waved consent, and a few minutes later Strogoff handed the letter and order to the aviation chief, with the presentation, saying:

“If it pleases you, sir, we would ask the services of aviators who can go the route with the greatest skill and speed.”

“There is a pair of them behind you this minute,” was the quick answer.

Strogoff simply stared at the youths, who now stepped forward to salute their chief.

“What next?” The question was in his eyes.

The arrangement was that two biplanes were to go, it being deemed essential that there be carried one observer vested with the authority of the military branch.

Captain Walki was assigned to the duty, and to the biplane which Henri was to pilot.

“I am the boy with the ballast,” joked Billy, when he learned that Strogoff was to ride behind him.

“Don’t you think for a second that he is entirely new as an air passenger,” quietly advised the aviation chief, who had heard Billy’s facetious remark; “several times to my knowledge, and for hours at a time, he has leaned over the side of a speeding aeroplane, watching city roofs for contraband wireless apparatus.”

Within twenty minutes after the order had been presented by Strogoff, such is the efficiency and expedition of all proceedings with which trained soldiers have to do, the aviation party were off in swift and unerring pursuit of the transport, now many miles away churning against the current of the river Vistula.

In the open country near Gombin, having encountered a fierce gale which whirled them out of the line of the river course, the aviators decided to alight, and wait for a lull in the storm.

Though chafing at the delay, Strogoff wholly agreed with Captain Walki that possible overstraining of the rigging and mechanism of the aircraft was something that must be avoided.

As it was, Billy and Henri had their hands full in repairing some damage already done.

“You boys wear a couple of level heads,” admiringly commented the big policeman, when landing was made; “there is more ventilation aloft this morning than I have ever experienced, but perhaps you are used to it—at least it did not seem to bother you much.”

“If it had, Mr. Strogoff,” jollied Billy, “you might have been spread all over the ground by this time.”

Shortly after the noon hour the high wind shifted, and when flight was resumed the gusty force was behind the biplanes, which served to increase their speed to a tremendous degree.

Notwithstanding this, however, the long stop had served to vastly increase the lead of the transport, which had never ceased to plow ahead by the impulse of its powerful propellers.

The vessel was steaming into Vloclavek harbor when the onrushing biplanes neared this port.

By the time the aviators could reach the ground, the ship was at anchor, with many small boats plying about her.

Captain Walki immediately approached one of the ship’s officers, who was standing on the quay, and explained the situation.

“There was quite a number shoveling below as we came up,” said the official addressed, “and the only thing to do is to go on board and look them over. There’s a gig at your service.”

Strogoff was the first in the proffered boat, and the rowers that manned it did not pull any too fast to suit him.

With a file of soldiers the searching party went below, but among all the smutty-faced, stripped-to-the-waist workers in the furnace room the men wanted could not be found. No more successful was the further and thorough search made in every conceivable hiding place on upper and lower decks.

“Duped again,” raged Strogoff. “What is your opinion, captain?” he appealed to Walki.

Captain Walki, who had been fully advised of the clue which had caused the pursuit of the transport, reflectively stroked his short beard and laconically remarked:

“I think the sailor on the collier lied!”

CHAPTER XV.
THE SERGEANT’S VOW.

“Do you know what I believe, Buddy,” said Billy to his chum, while they were having a little quiet discussion of their own about the way Strogoff had been misled; “I believe, sure and certain, that it was a phony crew on the collier—not a man jack of them regularly on the job.”

“Report at once, pard, and get your badge,” laughingly urged Henri. “Why don’t you tell it to the sergeant?”

“I’m not taking any chance of getting on his toes just now,” was Billy’s reply, shaking his head.

Strogoff, though somewhat crestfallen over the collapse of his eagerly conceived plan to put the irons on the adroit Ricker and the lesser lights with him, had lost none of the bulldog tenacity of purpose which characterized his every movement.

“I will yet put every last one of them against the wall,” he earnestly vowed; “the chief by this time has received my wire, and that coal boat will be a marked craft wherever it goes. Strange, though,” he continued, “that the skipper should have been so indifferent as to inspection, when he well knew what he would get if caught at deception.”

Billy tipped a significant wink to Henri.

The sergeant, having obtained positive assurance that no man unaccounted for had either boarded or left the transport from start to finish of its passage, agreed to the proposal of Captain Walki to immediately return to Warsaw, and there frame a new course of action.

With clearing sky and no countering winds, the young pilots made the most of the remaining hours of daylight, and there was safe landing in Warsaw while the night was yet young.

Strogoff’s reception at police headquarters was not such as rejoiced his soul—the chief had a piece of news for him that had stunning effect.

The regular master and crew of the collier, No. 49 in the shipping record, the very vessel upon which the sergeant had been hoodwinked, were even now still in the slow recovery stage from drugging. Only the night before the whole seven, captain, mate, engineer and deck men, had been found deep asleep in a dinghy, drifting about the harbor.

“You seem to be losing your grip, Strogoff,” snapped the chief in that steely voice of his.

The sergeant hung his head for a minute, and then, advancing, looked his chief straight in the eyes.

“For every inch I have gained in unearthing the spy den in our midst, sir, I have risked again and again that precious possession called life, and while I may have proved for the once a dull blade against overly keen ones, it is no sign that I am through.”

“Well, well, Strogoff,” hedged the chief, “they have had a fall out of you; that cannot be denied, but, perhaps, after all, you are not through. The credit of locating the nest is still yours, and you shall have a free hand to complete the work.”

“Thank you kindly, sir;” there was renewed vigor in the tone and manner of the sergeant; “may I ask what became of the coal boat that was in the offing when I left?”

“With the discovery of the stupefied sailors, and their identity established, the harbor patrols were put to work, but no trace of the vessel was found along the city front.”

“No question, then, sir, but that she immediately weighed anchor and made off down stream—it was not up, I assure you, for I had my glass on the river from the time we started from Vloclavek.”

“That was the theory upon which we acted, sergeant; two dispatch boats have already taken up the chase.”

“And me not in the forefront,” cried Strogoff, sounding a note of disappointment.

“You still have the aeroplane route,” suggested the chief.

The sergeant brightened at this. “But no use of a blind run,” he sighed; “in the dark we might overrun a dozen boats like the collier, and never know it.”

“Get your boy wonders and start as soon as you can see, then.”

“That is just what I will do, chief, and I would like to have Lowiez assigned with me.”

“Just the man, if there is any fancy shooting to be done,” agreed the chief.

“It might come to that,” grimly observed Strogoff.

At sunup the Young Aeroplane Scouts had their second early call within three days.

“We haven’t signed up with the police for the league season, have we?” inquired Billy, with a slight touch of rebellion.

“They have the colonel’s orders back of their request,” explained the aviation chief, “and the officer with the wide front positively declares that nobody will suit but the pair I see before me. Climb out, boys, and hustle, or he is likely to have a fit.”

“Some lively vacation this, eh, Billy?”

Billy did not catch Henri’s remark, for he was over ears in a basin of ice-cold water.

“I had intended to take a peep behind the picture and see if the belt is there all right,” said Billy, as they passed out of the mess hall in the direction of the hangars.

“No need,” replied his chum; “nobody ever touches that wall relic, and Stanny’s girdle is safe.”

Henri’s new flying partner, Lowiez, was of swarthy type, and with the keenest pair of black eyes the boy had ever seen over a human nose. The outside pockets of his greatcoat bulged with the heft of two heavy revolvers, and if the carrier should have shown a hesitancy in using them, if occasion served, a surprise would be coming to any person who had sized them up.

It might also be stated that Officer Strogoff, with all his cares and strenuous activities, had lost no flesh overnight.

The young aviators had not been given any advance notice of just where this day’s journey was expected to take them; they only knew that there was to be a beginning. The end was not until they reached it.

Strogoff was not inclined to be bubbling with information, either, this crisp morning. Following the boys’ usual careful inspection of the flying machines, the startling words were simply: “Down the river.” Additional orders were to fly low.

Having no trouble to compass a course, merely to follow the flow of the broad Vistula, the pilots were completely at ease. Under them were the famous No. 3’s, the finest military biplanes, in their opinion, that ever crossed the country.

In the current below could be seen at intervals all sorts of steam and sailing craft, iron-sided or slab-sided, modern and ancient, but the space-filling observer in Billy’s biplane, with constant level of field glasses, had no disposition to waste a word upon any of them.

A certain slow-moving tub, with “49” showing at the beam, would have caused lung expansion for the heavyweight, but that particular brand of boat had yet to be discovered.

It was 10:20 o’clock by Billy’s watch when a smart tap on the shoulder roused him from some day dream of far-off Bangor or Boston, and made him set a little tighter grip on the steering wheel.

At the junction of the Vistula and one of the numerous smaller rivers emptying into the big channel, several little dispatch boats were chugging around a large freighter, plowing northward. The hulk was easing its way at the challenge of the mosquito fleet.

“To the ground,” commanded the sergeant, when he had secured the attention of the pilot.

Billy nicely figured a stop on the river bank within a stone’s throw of the watercraft argument. Henri followed suit with equal exactness of placing.

Megaphoning through the hollow of his joined hands, Strogoff brought one of the light draught dispatch boats close to the shore.

A gangplank bridged the way to the deck, and the big policeman lumbered aboard in a hurry.

“What’s the row?”

The officer in command of the boat, detailed from the river patrol, explained to Strogoff that before passing the mouths of any of the tributary rivers in the course down, they had been holding up each and every north-bound vessel for the purpose of inquiry. In every instance but this one of the freighter, Collier No. 49 had been reported.

“My opinion, sergeant, is that right here the coal tub dodged out of this channel. The master of the freighter has not spoken a single craft of collier build below this point.”

Strogoff thought a minute. “I am not going to put all of my eggs in one basket this time,” he finally observed, “no matter how fair the quotations. Two of your boats may proceed, and two are to follow me up this tributary.”

Leaving to the officer addressed the duty of arranging details of the plan, the sergeant regained the river bank and advised the pilots of the new course of the biplanes.

Hardly twenty-five miles had been traversed, when the aviation party, even as one man, caught sight of a hull at a dead standstill in the sluggish stream. The bow of the big boat listed in a way to suggest that it had been stranded on a sand or mud bar. There was no sign of life on her decks.

Strogoff shouted an order to descend, and the pilots circled in prompt endeavor to land as near as possible to the apparent derelict. No chance whatever for a deck fall on this old hunker with its topside barrier of crowding masts.

Once on the ground, Strogoff and Lowiez cast about for a way to reach the vessel, bow-ended in an extensive marsh between the shore and river channel.

It was not long before Lowiez discovered in the drift, a hundred yards or so downstream, one of the ship’s boats, by means of which, no doubt, the bogus crew had landed from the stolen craft. The hulk had been instantly identified at closer range as the collier sought for—“49” showing at the stern.

If either of the policemen feared ambush on the hunker, it was not apparent in their manner of proceeding, except that Lowiez, the pronounced “fancy shot,” kept both hands in his overcoat pockets while the stout sergeant volunteered to pole the skiff out to the stranded collier.

Billy and Henri watched them from a perch on a pile of driftwood.

“I can’t see to save my neck,” observed the Bangor boy, “why that Ricker crowd, with all their daring and cunning, didn’t paint a new number on the collier, change the papers to suit, and bluff their way nearer to the Austrian border before they shook the ship.”

“For the reason,” argued Henri, “that the live-brained leader counted upon aeroplane pursuit and no chance in the world to escape capture on the open waterway.”

“There’s something in that, come to think of it,” admitted Billy, “but there is also some pretty hard sledding ahead of them in the bleak country back of us,” indicating by an overshoulder look at the great barrens stretching away to the horizon.

“All the more room to hide,” observed Henri.

“And to starve and freeze,” added his chum.

They could see the two policemen moving about the upper deck of the collier, but the fact that their search was soundless made it plain to the watchers that it was a sure thing that the hull had been deserted.

Now in the distance could be heard the chug, chug of the fast-coming dispatch boats.

As they finally drew alongside the stranded vessel, Strogoff and his comrade lowered themselves by the side chains to the deck of the first comer, which then turned toward the shore.

The boys were wondering what the next move would be.

The answer was embodied in a pair of long, sinuous shapes, tawny-hided and slather-jawed, sleepily stretched full length in the cuddyhouse of the little craft.

The fugitives were to be trailed across the steppes by Siberian bloodhounds!

CHAPTER XVI.
LOST ON THE FROZEN STEPPES.

Yelping and tugging at leash, the hounds were given the scent at the shore point where the ship’s boat had been found. It was decided to let them run free, and to follow the fierce trailers in the biplanes.

Thus it was that Henri was compelled to take on an extra passenger in his machine, no other than the handler of the dogs, who alone could be depended upon to bring the animals to heel if the men pursued should be brought to bay. As luck would have it, the additional weight was that of a little man, who could have been wrapped twice, and some over, in Strogoff’s coat.

All three of the officers were armed to the teeth with modern repeating rifles, taken from the supply on the dispatch boats, and supremely confident of their ability to cope with the estimated small party, however desperate, which they expected to encounter.

The dogs, too, were allies that would make a goodly showing if it came to a clash in close quarters.

The young aviators had been impressed by the sergeant that their business was solely that of pilots.

“Let anything happen to you,” he said, “and my day of self-forgiving would never come. Besides, I am now accountable to Colonel Malinkoff for your safety on the ground, the same as you are responsible for mine when you get me on high. Understand?”

“We get you, sergeant,” was Billy’s reply; “you have our promise not to butt into any shindy where we are not invited.”

“Turn them loose,” was the sergeant’s order to the little man, who was struggling to restrain the leaping hounds.

Two streaks of brown and yellow flashed across the plain.

“All aboard!” shouted Strogoff.

There was a scramble into the biplanes, and a lightning-like getaway.

The hounds were already far afield, but nothing on two feet or four, on wheel or keel, can stay ahead of an aeroplane, and the scampering animals were overhauled in a jiffy, and the pilots holding to low speed to even up the chase.

Along a marshy stretch of ground the dogs seemed at fault, going at zigzag, but ever returning to the spot where first the scent was lost.

The little man, crouching behind Henri in the biplane, requested the pilot to descend forthwith, and as it was simply a ’round and ’round operation to keep in sight of the baffled hounds, there was really nothing else to do but stop.

Billy had already anticipated the situation, and had started to volplane even before his chum had set the planes for landing.

The master of the hounds, whom Strogoff addressed as Petro, was forced to literally drag his canine charges away from their persistent adherence to the one spot on the high side of the marsh.

Lowiez, he of the keen eye, had been doing some scrutinizing on his own account, and read an explanation by certain marks on the flinty ground.

Addressing the sergeant, he briefly disposed of the puzzle:

“Horses here not long since; the men we have been trailing went no further on foot. That is why these beasts are out of the running.”

“Cossacks, I’ll be bound,” exclaimed Strogoff.

“On that theory, sergeant,” continued Lowiez, “we have two surmises, one that the band was on the way to the nearest army command, and the other that they were free riders and traveling as the wind listeth. In either event, does our service extend so far?”

“The arm of the Russian police system,” proudly declared Strogoff, “has no limit within the realm of the Czar. And, too, our special mission is backed by both civil and military authority.”

“As you will,” conceded Lowiez; “it is needless to state that I am with you to the death.”

Turning to Petro, the sergeant said:

“As the dogs can no longer be of use, and as it is practically impossible to safely carry them in the aircraft, I must bid you back with them to the dispatch boats, which had orders to await, for a period of three days, our return.”

Without comment, the master of hounds faced about and started on his long march, with the dogs capering at his heels.

“Well, we have a roving commission now.”

Strogoff had his field glasses glued to his eyes, and taking in the range of open country. The powerful binnacle, however, showed him nothing of interest. It was a dreary outlook at best.

“Fly east, fly west, fly south,” he repeated—“a choice broad enough for an empire maker. It is well that we know what is behind us. Are we prepared for a longer journey, my pilot?”

“We can easily do three hundred miles with our petrol supply,” assured Billy, who had just completed inspection of the tanks in both machines.

“There are two days’ rations in the lockers,” volunteered Henri.

“So far, so good,” commented Strogoff; “there is no use standing here cooling our heels. Let’s be off!”

For three hours the aviation party was continuously on the wing, traveling a southwesterly course, a trying experience owing to the frigid atmosphere and the cramped position maintained.

Toward evening another stop was in order. A bivouac must be established for the night. The aviators had been hoping against hope that a settlement would be reached, where, at least, the privilege of a shakedown before a peat fire would be accorded.

It was a bitter disappointment to Strogoff that fortune had not favored him in these long hours of vigilant outlook with a sight or sign of the horsemen he was pursuing. Almost a monomania with him was that one overwhelming desire to lay his hands upon the arch-plotter Ricker.

The truth was, he had no fixed idea when to quit, and now was so far beyond his reckoning that he did not know how to back out.

When that night the weary four sat huddled together and blanketed to the ears on the frozen plain, Lowiez, who since his first venture and rebuke had offered no remonstrance, suggested that the early morning ought to see them well on the way to the Vistula, and then homeward bound.

“We won’t get anywhere, sergeant,” asserted Billy, upholding Lowiez, “if we wait until the petrol’s all gone—and another day without filling, that will be exactly the condition.”

“Have it over, then, as you will. If you know the way, take it.”

Strogoff had spoken, and resignedly.

When they slept, or how long, none of the party could have told, at first awakening. Their disturbance it was that filled the full measure of mind.

Billy was picked for the initial shock. He opened his eyes against the nose of a horse! That a Cossack was looking at him from higher up did not serve, either, to reduce his pulse rate.

A prod with a lance put Henri in the line of sitting up and taking notice, and similar applications hastened wakefulness on the part of both Strogoff and Lowiez.

“Filimonoff!”

This cry of recognition from Lowiez.

One of the greatest of all Cossacks—Michail Filimonoff, of whom the boys had heard so much in Galicia—the man “who sits his horse like a Petrograd bank clerk, but leads like the devil.”

The Don chieftain, a little to the rear and apart from the other horsemen, gravely inclined his head, when convinced by the uniform that the speaker was a fellow countryman.

Strogoff, too, had once seen the noted free lancer at the staff headquarters of Duke Nicholas, and he followed the lead of his comrade in proclaiming the name.

He then stepped forward to address the Cossack leader, telling him in a torrent of words how and why he had come to grief as a lost man in these frozen steppes.

Filimonoff shook his head. “None of this company,” he gravely advised, “has seen those whom you seek. It may have been Nikita, who rode this way, I am told, not long since. But I did not meet him, and I do not know that he had prisoners.”

Out of the chief’s address the boys singled the word “Nikita.”

“Tell him,” requested Billy, looking to Strogoff, “that Nikita took us into the brotherhood.”

The sergeant turned a gaze of anxiety upon the young aviator, as if in fear that his mind had been affected by overstrain.

“Tell him,” repeated the boy, in form of earnest demand.

Strogoff then complied, but in apologetic manner.

If the big policeman had any further doubt of the propriety of his statement as interpreter it did not stay with him long.

Billy and Henri capped the climax by a joint display of the amulets they carried, and every lance in the Cossack company was raised, including that of the leader.

Filimonoff beckoned the boys to his side, having dismounted to give them greeting.

Said Strogoff to Lowiez:

“The next thing we know those lads will be taking lunch with Duke Nicholas. They started in on familiar terms with a commanding officer at Warsaw the second day I knew them, and have already worked on through to a prince of the desert!”

But by the grace of it all, the pilots were given their bearings and carried the policemen passengers out of the barren maze.

CHAPTER XVII.
A FREAK OF FATE.

One afternoon, a few days subsequent to their return from the last air voyage with Strogoff, and while the boys were engaged in making repairs and generally overhauling the No. 3’s, who should appear on the aviation grounds but the selfsame sergeant wearing a brand-new uniform and a profoundly long face.

“I do not really know,” he said, drawing closer to the young aviators, “why I should want to tell you anything about the latest jolt I have received in connection with that Ricker deal, but as you were in the game from first to last, it just seems as though you have a right to share in all the details, though it sort of rubs it in on myself.”

“What’s the news, sergeant; give it to us straight.”

Billy’s bump of curiosity was apparently incurable.

“Neither that prince of rascals, Ricker, nor any of his lieutenants were in the party that gave us the slip on the plain. One of our ‘quiet friends’ in the Bzura river region has just reported the presence there of the one-time silversmith, another of the spies we know as Casper, and the Tartar crank, blast his whiskers.”

“Who then ran off with the collier?” inquired Henri.

“That is where I am still guessing,” continued the sergeant, “but I am letting the Cossacks take care of them. No doubt they were bought, body and breeches, and delivered the goods by putting the marked men across the Vistula.”

“Why didn’t you nip Ricker at the outset?” asked Billy.

“Never suspected him until the time the clock was found in the fallen walls of the storehouse, and he failed to report with it for investigation. The whole affair had been charged up against the men who jumped from St. Michael terrace into the river.”

Billy was about to state that he knew all about Strogoff’s official visits to the silversmith’s shop, but it suddenly occurred that the least he said the safer for Henri and himself.

“My first bad break,” asserted Strogoff, “was the night I went alone to that den to take Ricker into custody. I had handled, I thought, worse than he. But I got a biff from the rear with a sand-bag—and you know the rest. I will have to admit,” he concluded, “that for once in my life, at least, I have been bested all around.”

The boys might have told the Warsaw sleuth that they were acquainted with a secret service worker called Roque, who was even a slyer fox than any the big policeman had ever encountered—but, of course, they did not tell him anything of the kind.

The aviation chief was responsible for a break-up of this review of recent adventures, when he called to the young aviators to report immediately at headquarters.

Hastily laying aside the tools with which they had been working on the aircraft, the boys instantly responded to the summons of their chief, while Strogoff started on his way downtown.

“You are booked to pilot a couple of old friends of yours in another flight to Petrograd,” announced the boss airman; “that is if you are ready to resign from the police force.”

He was smiling when he submitted the last proviso.

The “old friends” were the scouts Salisky and Marovitch, who had just sent another pair of tired aviators to the rest ward, after a gruelling trip along the firing line in the southwest.

“Are you up to snuff, my laddybucks?” was Salisky’s jovial greeting.

“In the pink of condition, Brother-never-wear-out,” gaily rejoined Billy.

“None of your duke’s palace entertainments this time,” broke in the other iron man, Marovitch.

In destiny had been indelibly written a certain happening that would be, and was, and in the great capital city of the Russians resulted in the translation of our boys into an entirely new sphere of action.

But the pilots set out on the familiar route without other thought than that, if no unforeseen peril of aeroplaning intervened, they would slide again into these grounds in the same old way. The scouts had orders to return within three days, if it were by consent of the powers that be at Petrograd.

When the biplanes had winged their way along the flow of the Neva to the fixed point for the flight’s finish, there was goodly margin on the right side of the time limit.

Once more the young pilots climbed the marble steps of Admiralty Place, preceded by the veteran scouts and special messengers—this time, however, without encountering in the imposing interior any former fierce foe in parti-colored uniform. By the blood ceremony elected to the Cossack brotherhood, the boys could now look without tremor into the somber eyes of each and every knight of the desert in imperial service that they might pass in the wide and high corridors.

But as none of the Dons with whom to exchange the high sign happened to be about, Billy and Henri soon wearied of the waiting assignment on the outside of carved and brass-knobbed doors. They flatly informed Salisky that this part of the contract belonged to himself and Marovitch, and if the scouts did not consent to letting their pilots go out and knock around for a while it would certainly result in two clear cases of St. Vitus dance.

“Get along with you, then,” ordered Salisky, with a grin, “but, mind what I say, you are not to leave the immediate vicinity, and must return within the next two hours. There is no telling at what o’clock we may be called upon to sail out of here.”

Talk to the winds, old scout, the boys were on the way to the open before you had turned the last period.

It was a glorious afternoon on the great Nevskoi Prospekt, the magnificent street overflowing with life.

“There’s more people out on runners here than I ever saw before in one procession,” observed Billy.

“Doesn’t look as though all the fine horses were stopping bullets on the battlefields.”

If Henri had not early gone into training as an aviator, he could easily have passed muster as a premium giver in an equine show.

“They couldn’t drive ’em like this through the streets of Boston,” further commented the U. S. A. boy. “Patrolman Maguire of the traffic squad would have a picnic on this avenue.”

Hark! What tumult this in the block beyond—this mad haste of fur-muffled reinsmen to guide toward the curb lines—these shrill cries of warning!

A pair of splendid Orloff stallions, black as Erebus, red nostrils agape, foam-flecked, raising, with the frantic pounding of their iron-shod hoofs, upshooting fountains of ice and snow particles, were running a frenzied course directly towards the spot where our boys had been viewing the unceasing sweep of sleighs.

Behind the maddened animals, swaying and now and again skimming sidewise on one runner, and as often lifted clear of the ground, was a sledge of swan-like outline, from which trailed the dragging ends of furry robes.

As in the span of a clock-tick the young aviators had sight of a child clinging to the high back of the sleigh, a little girl, her hood fallen and twisted over shoulder, and her bright crown of curls tangling about her set, white face.

With every nerve tense, and as if strung on one wire, Billy and Henri had a second to think, and in the next time flash to act.

In the passing the sleigh swung dangerously close to the curb, upon which the lads were poised for a spring at the wildly careening conveyance.

With the opportunity, the boys leaped together—Billy went sprawling into the pile of furs in the bowl of the vehicle, while Henri had a close call in getting aboard at all, just managing to grasp the hand-curve of the rear seat, and his knees were sweeping the street surface for twenty or thirty feet before he attained foothold on the runners.

The U. S. A. boy leaned far out of the bed of the sleigh, with lowered hands, striving to reach the trailing reins, whipping about in the wake of the racing steeds.

Two men ahead tried for the curb bits of the high-checked horses, but were hurled aside like featherweights. Billy had a fleeting glance at one of the brave fellows, lying quite still, face down, in the street.

The width of the avenue—about 150 feet—and its straight length—more than five miles—had so far afforded a fighting chance of escaping death-dealing collision.

The action in this saving venture of our boys cannot be followed in its rapidity by the telling of it. When Billy found, with a grab or two, that the reaching of the reins was a long shot, he was up with a jump and at the scroll-turned front of the sleigh.

The crupper of one of the runaways was at his hand—this horse was lagging a little. The next instant, and the boy was clinging to the rein rings of the top harness and digging his heels into the heaving flanks of the laboring animal. Working forward with the same celerity, Billy got a hand-twist on the reins where they doubled to the bit.

Sawing for dear life, he forced the horse’s jaws with the killing curb—but then it was that the free running steed swerved into the path of its mate, and the team went down in a crashing mix-up.

The Bangor boy was catapulted forward, clear of the thrashing hoofs, yet with a falling force that jarred him into oblivion.

CHAPTER XVIII.
A NEW ASSIGNMENT.

When Billy regained his senses he found himself in a clean, enameled white bed, and was conscious of a black silk sleeve with snowy cuff when a deft hand tenderly adjusted a bandage that lay damp upon his aching forehead. These little details were impressive in the way of assurance to the patient that he had awakened this side of the grave.

“Where’s Henri?”

The nurse made no reply to this first question from the bed, except the mute expression of putting a finger to her lips, enjoining silence.

“I say, nurse, I mustn’t be wasting time here; my chum and I have a flying contract on hand, and this very minute ought to be sticking around that big building down the street.”

Getting more and more impatient, Billy essayed a sitting posture, but the effort forced a groan. At this the attendant hastened to settle the boy in comfortable position.

“You must be quiet, monsieur,” she softly admonished in French.

“Guess I’ll have to be,” weakly conceded Billy. “But can’t you tell me whether or not my pal is all right? And—that’s so; did the child in the sleigh come out safe?”

“No one hurt but you,” gently assured the woman.

“Bully for so much,” rejoiced the boy.

“Surely enough,” murmured the attendant.

A portly surgeon entered the room, reached for the wrist of the patient, and his smiling face indicated that the case looked good to him.

“Out in a week,” he announced to the nurse.

Billy did not understand the words, but the manner was satisfactory.

To some whispered inquiry by the nurse, the surgeon nodded his head.

“To-morrow will do,” he advised.

With the passing of the surgeon, the nurse told Billy that he might expect a visit from his comrade in the morning. “You can be sure,” she added, “that it has been no easy task to keep him out.”

The patient grinned. Since he had learned that Henri had escaped unhurt, he had really wondered how they had worked it to keep his chum away from him.

When the morning brought Henri, the French boy was not alone—and the rather boisterous greeting between the reunited inseparables was witnessed by a tall, broad-shouldered man of most distinguished bearing and a beautiful child with a shower of bright curls over her shoulders.

In the presence of the important visitor the surgeon and the nurse were all deference, and eager to give information that would interest.

But the tall stranger then had eyes for no other than the boy propped up among the pillows of the hospital bed.

“My brave lad,” he said, leaning over the boy with the bandaged head, and lifting Billy’s hand from the coverlet, “what I might say would poorly express my gratitude and admiration for your heroic action. Fredonia, my daughter, would add her tribute of heartfelt thanks to mine.”

The child shyly extended her hand, which Billy touched as he would a flower.

With an arm over the shoulders of Henri, the tall man amended the initial address by saying:

“What I most desire now is to have both of you in the service at Odessa, that I may have opportunity to advance your interests and in some substantial way emphasize my grateful appreciation of your splendidly courageous action on behalf of my child.”

“But we are already spoken for in Warsaw,” intimated Billy.

The man smiled as he quietly remarked:

“Perhaps they may not speak louder than Sergius. Until you have mended, then, my lad, we will await final decision.”

When the surgeon had bowed these interesting visitors to the door, he briskly returned to the bedside, and put Billy in possession of some facts regarding the gentleman whose high favor the boys had won.

“A master of money, my lads,” declared the doctor, “and allied with the most powerful elements of the empire, of blood rank most high, and none the less a prince of finance for all that. He ought to know what is in the war chest, for he has wonderfully helped to fill it. To Odessa with Sergius? Thank your lucky stars, lads, for the chance. He has airships without rest at his command, as well as the other kind.”

The surgeon had been told by Henri that aviation was the profession of both his chum and himself, and so in exploiting the opportunities open to the boys through their new acquaintance he naturally laid stress on the aircraft inducement.

In the doorway now appeared Salisky and Marovitch who within the hour had been apprised of the exact whereabouts of their pilots, and having also earlier learned of the thrilling scene on the Prospekt, in which their young friends had been the principal actors.

“Come alive, son, but it is good to see you with your head still on your shoulders.”

The greeting by Salisky, though on the surface of the lighter vein, had nevertheless an undertone of deep feeling. That the veteran scouts were greatly attached to these boys was a fact not open to argument.

“You will be wanting somebody soon to drive you home, old top,” cried Billy, evidencing his pleasure at the sight of the hardy observers.

“Two flyers of the Admiralty corps have already been detailed to take us back, and we start in the morning.”

“Nothing slow about the way you are replacing us.”

Billy was inclined to be a little piqued at this ready acceptance of new service on the part of the scouts, though he was well aware that he would be in no condition to take his turn at the wheel within the prescribed time limit.

Salisky leaned toward the boy, and said:

“The truth of it is, if you do not already know it, that your next move is not of our choosing. Your assignment to Warsaw has been cancelled, and your custody, if it might be called that, has been transferred to another center of operation.”

“The result of a long reach,” supplemented Henri.

“Just so,” concluded Salisky. “Good-bye, my young friends; luck be it that some day we may meet again.”

The speaker turned away without another word, and Marovitch was equally brief in his farewell. Both of the scouts, strange to state, were seized with a joint spell of coughing as they passed out.

“Now, let’s have a bit of a confab all by ourselves,” invited Billy, “before the nurse fires you. Tell me what happened after I took the count in front of those black space-killers?”

“When you started that circus act on the horse’s back,” narrated Henri, “I was hanging on by my eyebrows. Then I managed to get a leg inside the sleigh and had rolled over on the pile of robes; then a sudden stop as the sleigh bumped into the fallen horses—so sudden that my head cracked the dashboard. You sure found the combination in the nick of time, with an open drawbridge less than twenty yards ahead. While about a dozen men were sitting on the heads of those flopping beasts, who should come galloping up on a big gray horse but the little girl’s father, and they had a time together, for a minute or two, I tell you. When we picked you up, limp and bleeding, I prayed like a good fellow that you would open your eyes and say ‘All right, pard.’ The prince, duke, or count, I didn’t know which, had you in a carriage in a brace of shakes, and you have been here ever since, with me hanging around like a lost soul.”

“Where was the driver of the runaways all this time? How did they get away from him?”

Billy was a stickler for details.

“Oh,” continued Henri, “all I know about that is hearsay; the rig was in front of a palace up the way, the little one waiting for her father to come out. The moujik, or driver, was standing at the horses’ heads when a passing auto blew up a tire. The fellow in front of the wild ones that you pulled down counted for as much as a piece of paper string. They left him in the road. That’s how we got into it. There’s one thing more, Buddy, believe me—those Sergius horses are not city broke; they’re too nervous for even a joy ride.”

The nurse came in on the talk about this time and banished Henri.

A week later, when Billy was himself again, the boys, so long accustomed to the plain fare, and often no fare, the hardships, the makeshifts, the discomforts and dangers of military campaigning, began to believe that they had hitched up with another Monte Cristo. Nothing was too good for them in the well-ordered train of Sergius.

“If we don’t get out of here pretty soon,” declared Billy, “we will be afraid to sit near an open window on account of the draught!”

Here was a pair not built for coddling.

But the days of ease were slipping into the scroll of time. It was not intended that the flying boys should too long linger in the lap of luxury. Their patron had another side to his make-up, and that was adamant and of boundless determination.

The call of the Black Sea was in the air—there was plenty of powder burning in and about those strange waters, and another belligerent nation involved, the like of which the young aviators had never before encountered during their varied experiences in the great war zone.

CHAPTER XIX.
A CRUCIAL TEST.

Strong winds were raising clouds of chalky dust over the great seaport when the boys caught their first glimpse of Odessa, the terraced city, rising nearly 200 feet above the level of the surrounding steppes. By all manner of conveyance, by land or water, but ever in continuous motion, the Sergius party made remarkable progress from Petrograd to the borders of the Black Sea. Behind the expedition was that power which, as Billy observed, “makes the wheels go ’round.”

The last leg of the journey landed the travelers at the basins of the mighty rivers Dnieper and Dniester, upon which floated fleets of Sergius’ ships, and more of the same vessels controlled by the master of money lay in the two harbors of the Bay of Odessa. These latter the boys viewed from the head of the superb flight of steps descending from the central square, adorned with a statue of Richelieu, to the sea. On the chief embankment was the magnificent residence of Sergius, fronted by a fine promenade.

“Some mixture in this town,” remarked Henri, marking movement in Odessa streets, through which they were passing—Great Russians, Little Russians, French, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Roumanians, Servians, Bulgarians, Tartars, Armenians, Lazes, Georgians, and so forth, and so forth.

The Turk in his fighting clothes, however, was an acquaintance the young aviators had yet to make—the time drawing nigh, though, and a veritable storm of explosives to make the occasion memorable.

Billy and Henri were to work with the Black Sea air fleet, their expert services as a contribution from Sergius, which made them, in a sense, independent factors as pilots.

As untried recruits, and on account of their youth, the boys had the usual doubt on the part of aviation chiefs to overcome—and, based upon past experience, it is perfectly safe to anticipate that they passed the crucial test, literally speaking, with “flying colors.”

While the lads regretted that they would not have the No. 3’s under them in their trial trip, all types approaching the same lines looked alike to them.

With two noted aerialists and high-range bomb-throwers, Lieutenants Moppa and Atlass, behind them, within three days after their arrival in Odessa, the newly assigned pilots set out in two specially designed seaplanes for scout duty that would take them far across the waste of waters.

The bombardment of Novorossisk was in progress as the aviators sped that way, and the pilots were compelled to run at great altitude to clear the mass of flames that lit the lowering sky for miles around. German gunners in Turkish warships had shot a hundred oil tanks into blazes. At Poti another Turkish cruiser was exchanging shells for the shore pepper of machine guns, and cannon were thundering from the fortress of Sevastopol.

Lieutenant Moppa, from the aircraft Billy was driving, sent down a couple of bombs on the Turkish battleship “Midirli,” but the missiles missed and splashed into the sea far to the right of the vessel.

A couple of marine riflemen took a chance at the seaplane in return, and more than one bullet flattened against the armored bottom and side of the big flyer. The observer seemed to revel in the game, and shouted defiance at the air, for with the hum of the motors the biggest voice for distance counted no more than a penny whistle.

The officer at the rear of Henri, however, made himself heard by the pilot, when directing attention to a cloud of smoke lifting high above the lower strata of mist, and urging speed in that direction. It was a Russian fleet hastening from its bombardment of Turkish Trebizond to give battle to the Ottoman disturbers of the Russian coast line—“two, three, four, five, six, seven,” counted the aviators—all of them big ships, and five smaller ones completing the naval procession.

At the two Turkish vessels, five miles away, the oncomers plugged big shells at a lively rate, and about the craft under fire the aviators could see that the water jumped and churned and rose in columns. To port and starboard, fore and aft, above and below, there was nothing but shot and shell. It looked like the Turks did not know which way to turn, but by some hook or crook they got things to running smoothly, and made a clean getaway.

The mist curtain had grown so dense that the aerial bomb-throwers did little execution, in their turn, and soon abandoned pursuit of the fleeing cruisers, pushing hard for the Turkish coast.

The seaplanes settled in the path of the rapidly approaching Russians, and Billy and Henri rested after their introductory dash along a new line of strenuous endeavor.

Billy turned to Lieutenant Moppa, with the inquiry:

“Did everything work all right?”

“As far as you are concerned,” promptly advised the officer, “it could not have been better managed. I was a little off, though, in the matter of landing bombs in the right place.”

The observer with Henri had just told the lad that he was engaged for life.

The Russian warships, among which they were drifting, the boys learned, were in the Slav naval movement to approach the strait of Bosphorus from the north, and related to mighty effort of the allied forces to pound their way through the Dardanelles on the other side—that the fleets of all three powers might shell Constantinople from two directions.

“If we get through the Bosphorus, and I am wagering we will,” said Lieutenant Moppa as the seaplanes, side by side, gently undulated with the waves, “it will be the first hostile fleet that has done the trick for more than four centuries.”

“It will be getting by some 120 guns, I have heard,” remarked the brother officer, “and they are pretty near all Krupps, shooting irons not in the toy class.”

“I remember once reading a five-cent tear-me-up entitled ‘The Bride of the Bosphorus; or, the Fourteen Corpses of the Caspian Sea,’ and if the passage is as exciting as that story, count me in.”