Adventure Magazine Cover — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

It’s Only a Question of Time “else. Even the bridge fours yawned as though they had been playing the same hands for centuries. There were not enough chairs in the mess- tent to lounge in; the major and the doctor sat off and drank by themselves; over half the talk was in a patois of mixed Arabic-_ English, of which he could make no sense at all; and Tunnard, ignoring completely the fact that as the newcomer it was he that _ Should fit into the picture, voted No. X the ' dullest, most ignorant and uninteresting crowd he had ever bumped into and fell to sleep cursing his luck bat he should have been sent to it. Along in the night he was awakened to find, that some one was tugging at his foot, some one with something white tied round his head and apparently dressed in a volu- minous white night gown. “Four ‘clock, Meester Captain, four ’clock!”’ croaked a. voice from the darkness. ~ “Me tellum you fly.” Something moved that was blacker than the night, something which glistened faintly, and Tunnard got his first glimpse of Ahmed, his Nubian batman. - “Get the —— out o’ here!” Tusaaed kicked furiously at the elusive white shape. ‘‘Nono, Meester Captain, nonono, mush- quiece you fly, sabe? Four ’clock! Fly!” A familiar roar from the hangars broke - in upon the blackamoor’s exhortations. Tunnard gasped. What the devil did peo- ple want to go up for at this ungodly hour, anyhow? He crawled out from his blankets and into cold, oily flying togs. were distasteful. He stumbled over guy- ropes and tent-pegs to where the candles guttered on the mess tables. Here, over luke-warm tea and unripe bananas, he was told that he need not have got up at all; he was not yet assigned to a flight. “You fellows are pretty slack down here,” he told the astonished pilots. ‘Why the deuce don’t you post a flying-list?” “Keep your shirt on, old boy,” came a voice form the end of the table. “This isn’t England.” “England!” a hook-nosed Australian lurched across the table in quest of the tea- pot. “Who said it was England? None of your —— London fogs out here. This place i is jakeroo; nice warm weather—190 in the shade—an’ lizards—and you, Smith. Nice animal, you are! Why, back in West Pau we——”’ out. Warmed her. Ugh! They A sailang banana brought on a bass ee _rage of edibles, and Tunnard and his com- 4 : plaint were forgotten. In a surly mood:he stood on the tarmac, | watched the dull red haze of dawn incar- mine the sky and criticized the conduct of | Ait the early patrol. By his flying-school stand- = ards its performance was rotten. The ma- chines took off the ground singly. Nobody stunted. The Australian jerked his Bristol a ees Fighter off the ground, climbed at an alarm- ae ingly steep angle and, flying one-wing-low, — ambled off in the distance like a broken- < down bird. The single-seaters—S. E. 5’s—got off. nicely, however, although Tunnard noticed that the services of a little red-headed cor- Be poral seemed very much in demand, he, ap- parently, being the only one present who knew anything about the scout pilot’s ma- chines. Through it all there was—so Tunnard = . 3 3 decided—an unnecessary amount of tuning = up and minor repairs. And the mechanics = = did not stand at the wing tips and salute the take-off! this! things ought to be done. Perfectly beastly squadron, = eS It was time some one showed how —— He demanded his machine be brought ay = BSc bawl out the little red-headed corporal for _ oe not saluting him and then cork-screwed the oe = : S. E. 5 into the air in a beautiful climbing spiral. shot, only to fall back on himself with an Tmmelmann. At two hundred he roared round and round in a vertical turn, out of which he In a lightning-quick series of ae - oP. 4°75 . Se ¥ = these he gamed another two hundred feet, ae whereupon he rolled most perfectly—and es then threw her about for the space of ten = | minutes. Coming down, he held his side slip to within ten feet of the ground: straightened eut; and with dextrous kicks — = Sages at the rudder-bar shook her into a swish- tail landing. - As pretty an exhibition of flying as one could see in a long day; and, when he got | Bao r out of his machine, the drome was deserted. No one had been there to watch it. At precisely one hundred minutes after = Sas sunrise the heat took up its game with the desert, and it was impressed upon Tunnard that if the night had been wretched the = day was going to be about a thousand times worse. The air over the sands simmered alarmingly. AMG Outlines softened, blurred and - = : _ then wavedabout aimlessly. Inthedistance = COMICHOO! . . >. ~ a“ . =a ( a fe } | cx