The healthy roar of the 80 horses of the rotary engine behind him was steady and reassuring to Jake"s ears as he peered over the edge of his cockpit and looked down into the night. But the sluggish controls of the aeroplane worried him. The broken fuel gauge only made the situation more irksome. The gauge was working when he lifted off the field at the French aerodrome, followed by six French Farmans loaded down with bombs, and struggling to climb into the air after him. But twenty minutes into the flight the gauge suddenly sent its needle sliding over to the far right. No amount of tapping on the instrument"s glass would make it work again.
Below, the night was as black as the darkest bottomless abyss. There was only an occasional brush of moonlight across the surface of a river to give
