The Huns were getting ready to send up a
machine--perhaps more than one--to attack Tom and Jack.
It was, then, high time they acted, and as Jack again started the
engine, he guided the machine over a spot where the anti-aircraft
guns were most active.
"There's a battery there I may put out of business," he argued.
Flying fast, Jack was soon over the spot, or, rather, not so much
over it, as in range of it. For when an aeroplane drops a bomb on a
given objective, it does not do so when directly above, but just
before it reaches it. The momentum of the plane, going at great
speed, carries any object dropped from it forward. It is as when a
mail pouch is thrown from a swiftly moving express train or a bundle
of newspapers is tossed off. In both instances the man in the train
tosses the pouch or his bundle before his car gets to the station
platform, and the momentum does the rest.
It was that way with the bomb Jack released by a touch of his foot
on the lever in the cockpit of the machine. Down it darted, and,
wheeling sharply after he had let it go, the lad saw a great puff of
smoke hovering directly over the spot where, but a moment before,
Hun gums had been belching at him.
"Good! A sure hit!" cried Tom, but he alone heard his own words.
Jack's ears were filled with the throb of the motor. He had two
more bombs, and these were quickly dropped at different points on
German territory outside the camp.
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