“Then let’s hope it can be carried through,” returned the other.

Tom did not lose any more time but hurried away to try to get an opportunity to talk with the kindly old general.  He had always shown an interest in the fortunes of the two Air Service Boys, and they had already received favors from him on several occasions.

The minutes dragged while he was gone.  Jack could not keep still, so nervous did he feel, but continued walking up and down, “like a tiger in its cage,” he told himself.  He ran through the entire gamut of possible troubles and triumphs in his mind, as he tried to picture the whole thing.

“What great luck to have Colin Beverly break in on us just at the time when my fortunes had reached their lowest ebb,” Jack kept saying to himself.

At last Tom came back.  Jack could read success in his looks, even before the other had had a chance to open his mouth and say a single word.

“It’s all right then, I take it, Tom?” he exclaimed impulsively.

“Didn’t have any trouble at all in interesting the general,” replied the messenger joyfully.  “He said he’d see to having an urgent call go out to hurry the notifications along, and almost promised they’d get here by two this afternoon.”

“And how about the plane business?”

“That’s all settled in the bargain.  I have written permission to make use of our plane, turning it over to a certain agent in Dunkirk after we’ve arrived there.  The general will send a message over to us which we’re to deliver at the same time we give up the machine.”

“Great work, Tom!  I’ve always said you’d make a mighty fine diplomatic agent, if ever you tried, and now I know it.”

“No soft-soap business, please.  If it had been anybody but the general I’d have surely fallen down on my job.  But you know he’s always had an interest in us, Jack.”

“Do you think he suspected anything?” asked the other.

“Sure he did, but not the thing, for nobody in the wide world would ever dream we were planning such an unheard of thing as a non-stop flight across the Atlantic.”

Tom dropped his voice to a whisper when he said this; not that there seemed to be any particular need of caution, but simply on general principles.  They could not afford to take any chance of having their great plan discovered in these early stages of the game.

“Well, I don’t know how I’m going to hold out much longer,” complained Jack.  “I can’t keep still five minutes, but have to jump up and walk it off.  Let’s see—­two o’clock you said, didn’t you?  That’ll be nearly three long hours more.  It’s simply terrible, Tom!  Sixty minutes in each hour!”

“But then we’ll have to eat our regular midday meal, remember,” Tom tried to cheer his companion up by saying.  “If you prefer it, we might walk over to the field-hospital, which, by the way, I hear is to be moved ahead to-night, to keep in closer touch with the wounded straggling back from the front.  The Y hut’s close by, too, and we’d enjoy an hour or so with the girls.  Nellie told me she expected her brother, Harry, to be back on our sector any day now, and if he should come before we clear out we’d be mighty glad to see him.”