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Page:Air Service Boys Over Enemy's Lines.djvu/138

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130
LANDING CLOSE TO METZ

awe to see the vast shadowy form come between him and the starry heavens, with the light of the moon silvering its extended wings.

One trip failed to show them just what they wanted, and so Tom, knowing that the field must be somewhere in that immediate neighborhood, immediately swung around and started in again.

The second search failed to bring success. Jack began to experience a sensation akin to dismay. Was their work doomed to meet with no result and would they find themselves compelled to start back to Verdun without having accomplished the important errand on which they had been dispatched?

It was not Tom Raymond's way to feel discouraged because things did not always go as he wished from the start. He believed in the old motto, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." And he would circle around that vicinity for a full hour if only in the end he might find that for which he searched.

Three times however, was the limit. Then Tom felt certain he had "struck pay dirt"; and that the opening lying below was the identical field to which he had been directed.

After that it resolved itself into a simple landing by moonlight. There were no ready mechanicians waiting to lend a hand; and every-