But Jack was hard to repress.  Especially just then did he feel as if he must find some answer to certain doubts which were beginning to oppress him.

“There’s no way of telling,” Tom answered promptly.  “We’ve already seen that the fellow is a clever, as well as desperate, rascal.  He may be an American, though I’m rather inclined to believe your cousin has found a native better suited to his needs.  And such a treacherous Frenchman would prove a tricky and slippery sort.  Yes, he may have overheard us say something that would put him wise to our big game.”

“I hope not, I surely do,” Jack continued, looking serious again.  “Fact is, Tom, I’ll never feel easy until we see the ocean under us.”

At that Tom laughed heartily.  He even put a little extra vim into his merriment in the hope of raising his chum’s drooping spirits.

“That sounds mighty close to a joke, Jack, for a fact,” he said.

“I’d like to know how you make that out?” demanded the other.

“Why, most people would be apt to say our troubles were likely to begin when we have cut loose from the land and see nothing below us as far as the eye can reach but the blue water of the Atlantic.”

“All right,” cried Jack, showing no sign of changing his mind.  “I’ll willingly take chances with nature rather than the perfidy and treachery of mankind.  Somehow, I can’t believe that we’re really launched on the journey.”

“Wake up then, old fellow, and shake yourself.  You’ll find we’ve made a pretty fair start.  Already we’ve put thirty miles behind us.  Unless we run up against some snag, and have engine trouble, we ought to get to the Channel long before dark sets in.”

So Jack relapsed into silence for a time.  As he was not needed in order to run the motor or guide the plane in its progress westward, Jack could amuse himself in using the powerful binoculars.

They were at the time far removed from the earth, but through the wonderful lenses of the glasses objects became fairly distinct.  So Jack could see much to interest him as they sped onward.  Finally he again broke out with an exclamation.

“Nothing but the ruins of towns and villages down below, Tom,” he called.  “The fighting has been fierce along this sector, I should say.  Why, even the woods have been smashed, and it looks like a regular desert.  Poor France, what you must have suffered at the hands of those savage Huns.”

“Yes,” replied the pilot, over his shoulder, “here is where much of the most desperate fighting of the British took place.  Some of those ruined places were beautiful French towns only a few years ago, where laces and such things were made for most of the fashionable world.  Now they look about like the ruins of Ninevah or Babylon.”

Fortune favored them during the next hour, and even Jack’s spirits had begun to improve.  Then came a check to the sanguine nature of the outlook.