"Get up, you snowbirds, and sing for your salt." CHAPTER XIII. CAPTURED BY COSSACKS. "COLONEL, permit me to present a likely pair of air travelers who are never satisfied with the ground space they occupy." Billy and Henri tipped their caps to six-feet-three of superb manhood, in Austrian uniform of dark blue. Roque made the introduction, and the boys felt quite sure that this ceremony only completed advance notice of the character of service they were capable of rendering. The officer, measuring the young aviators with a keen gray eye, nodded approbation. "They will admirably fit in the carrying service," he remarked to Roque; "they are jockey weight, which is a good point for the assignment." Billy assumed from the manner, if not the language used, that Henri and himself had successfully passed inspection. It appeared that airmen here were persons of some importance, as affording the only connecting link with the outside world. Almost every day, the boys were advised, an aëroplane went to Galician headquarters, on the outward flight carrying only letters and postcards, but on the return trip bringing tinned meats and hand grenades for the soldiers. The big biplane piloted by Billy and Henri dwarfed anything else in the way of air machines shown in the fortress. Other aviators, viewing the No. 3's, cheerfully conceded that they were certainly built to be winners. These experts, however, as usual with their kind just getting acquainted with our boys, were inclined to be doubtful of the capacity of the youngsters to rank with themselves as drivers of aircraft. It was up to time--a little time--to convince them of their error of judgment. The crack driver of the Przemysl air squadron, Stanislaws, which name Billy promptly shortened to "Stanny," was the earliest convert to the new belief when he went as observer with the boy from Bangor on the latter's first foraging detail. Lack of knowledge of the country prevented the chums from working together at this period. "He will show me the way, but just hazard a little guess that I'll have a little show of my own on the way." Billy buzzed this in the ear of the grinning Schneider, when the order to get away was received. Henri, with the comfort that his turn was coming, stoutly backed the belief that his partner intended to exceed the speed limit as a lesson to the doubters. "'Stanny' will have a new kink in his whiskers before he gets back," was the expression, to be exact, used by Henri on this evening. The great bird machine, soaring like an albatross in the northern sky, soon vanished from the view of the watchers in the fortifications. "He's six horses and a wagon with a dog under it," Stanislaws earnestly advised the officers at army headquarters, pointing at Billy, who was reducing heat in the propeller by liberal use of the oil can.