Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AIR ADVENTURER ae couldn’t speak the language. He knew that all the tribes of Madagascar spoke the same language with different dialects and usages. of them. An exclamation from Sandy tore his eyes from the ground below. “Look, Bill!’ the kid said, excitedly. “Look at that bomber. It’s circling above something along the road.” Bill whipped a pair of binoculars out of a side pocket and glued them to his eyes. The bomber was circling above the Tananarivo-Ankazobe road a few miles away. And along the road toward the capital rose a thin line of dust, a lazy line of dust that Bill knew rose only above a column of lumbering trucks and rumbling caissons. In his mind he could hear the quick, staccato voice of a French sergeant counting the marching time: “Un, deux; un, deux; un, deux; un, deux!” Only these men were not marching. They were being conveyed in the large gray trucks of the French army. He could make out the light-blue of their uniforms and see the sun glistening on their bayonets. He judged by the num- ber of trucks and the uniforms of the men that they were a company of French infantry and two of Malagasy But he couldn’t speak any - The next second Red jerked his stick and zoomed over on his back. Hanging head downward, he opened the throt- tle and was on the gray biplane’s tail. tirailleurs, and a machine-gun detach- ment. Following them were a half dozen French 75s, and a couple of anti- aircraft guns mounted on trucks. A small, fast, armored tank led the col- umn. STURGIS BENTON, the American consul, Bill decided bitterly, had broken his word to him. He had gone to the French officials after all. But perhaps it was just as well. They certainly looked as though they meant business. But what could they do with that handful of men against the thousands of armed natives and artillery in that fort on the plateau? He laughed sardoni- cally. A lot of good the French were going to be to him. “Bill Sandy shouted = fhe biz plane is bombing those trucks !” Bill snapped the binoculars back to his eyes. A bomb had struck beside one of the trucks bearing an anti-aircraft gun. Gun, truck and men had been blown in every direction. The men on the other gun were slapping a shell into the breech. A roar and a white puff of smoke appeared not far away from the bomber. The big plane nosed upward and cir- COmiclbook 5}