"Did I--did I do that?" he asked, as though he had been walking in
his sleep, and was just now awake.
"Well, you and the old bus together," said Tom. "And we got off
lucky at that. Didn't I tell you to keep high, if you were going to
fly over one of the towns?"
"Yes, you did, but I forgot. Anyhow I'd have cleared the place if
the controls hadn't gone back on us."
"I suppose so, but that excuse won't go with the C.O. It's a bad
smash."
By this time quite a crowd had gathered, and Tom was trying to
pacify the excitable greenhouse owner by promising full reparation
in the shape of money damages.
How to get the machine down off the roof, where it rested in a mass
of broken glass and frames, was a problem. Tom tried to organize a
wrecking party, but the French populace which gathered, much as it
admired the Americans, was afraid of being cut with the broken
glass, or else they imagined that the machine might suddenly soar
aloft, taking some of them with it.
In the end Tom had to leave the plane where it was and hire a motor
to take him and Martin back to the aerodrome. They were only
slightly cut by flying glass, nothing to speak of considering the
danger in which they had been.
The result of the disobedience of orders was that the army officials
had rather a large bill for damages to settle with the French
greenhouse proprietor, and Tom and Dick Martin were deprived of
their leave privileges for a week for disobeying the order to keep
at a certain height in flying over a town or city.
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