Lines of trees, patchwork
patterns made by the fields, and oddly grouped farm buildings swept
along beneath the soaring plane, growing smaller with uncanny
rapidity. The day's work started. That was all it amounted to.
In the airdrome they had left behind, the eyes that had followed
their first moments of flight were turned to other sights nearer at
hand. The men who had seen the plane well away started for other
jobs, forgetting the departed machine.
Both Archie and Carleton, neither novices at the game, settled themselves
snugly in their seats as the needle crept round the altimeter.
Cold awaited them in the higher levels. That they knew. A persistent,
penetrating cold, driven by a keen wind right through some great-coats.
Leather is the best protection from that sort of wind. The face
feels it the most, however. The cheeks become cold as ice. Far below,
the snakelike windings of trenches---trenches of friend and foe---can
be followed from high altitudes. Some parts of the line seem mile-deep
systems of trenches, section on section, transverse here, approach line
there, support line behind, ever joining one with another in wondrous
fashion.
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