of the doldrum squall.
The squall passed by, came within an eighth of a mile of the raft,
dipped under the sea rim, and was gone. The sun rode high in a blue
cloudless sky. The snouts were back. Fins rippled the water all about.
Jukes crouched, with the wet scrap of dungaree about his neck. Day
passed. Night came.
Jukes lay prostrate, face downward. Hours passed. Long after midnight
he lifted his head and tried to climb to his knees. A dim green light
winked on the sea far off. He toppled over and was still. Wind ruffled
his hair and blew cool upon his brow.
Alf Jukes saw houses with smoking chimneys, windows aglint. Saw masts
and spars along a waterfront. Heard singing, far away. A wind blew
through green treetops.
* * * * *
When Jukes came to himself he lay in a lamplit forecastle. From near by
came the voices of sailors. “I seen a boat wi’ two dead men in her one
time. None ever knowed wot ship they was from.”
“If you follers deep water long enough, it’ll git ye.”
“Aye. ’Ow many _old_ sailors ’ave you ever seed?”
Jukes raised his head painfully and listened. From neck to ankles his
body was a fiery blister.
“I been eleven blasted year at sea. I got nuthin’.”
“You never will ’ave.”
“W’oo cares?”
“There don’t no one care. You an’ me is dogs.”
“This here’ll be my last v’yage.”
“Aye.--That’s wot you says.--Wait.”
“Wait yerself. I’m done.”
“Haw, haw, haw!”
“There’s one as had ought to be cured leastways,” and a nod toward the
forecastle.
Jukes climbed from the bunk and tottered out into the starlight.
“’Ow are ye, matey?”
“Bring ’im some water.”
Jukes gulped cold water down.
“’Ere, mate--you ’ad it in yer ’and.”
Jukes took the little oilskin package. They led him back and laid him
in the bunk again. They smeared more grease on his burned limbs. They
gave him more water.
“Look at ’im!--I’m done.”
“Me, too.”
As Jukes with fumbling fingers untied the package, they gathered round.
He nodded his head. His lips moved. A sailor bent above him, listening.
“’E’s done. No more o’ships fer ’im.”
Jukes dozed away. They passed the picture from hand to hand. They read
the dog-eared letter over.
“Look at ’ere,” said one, and pointed to the date.
“Three year ago! ’Ee’s been a long time----”
“Shanghaied, maybe.”
“Them crimps.”
“I’m done.”
“Haw, haw, haw! Maybe!”
* * * * *
It was the dog-watch time. The sun was setting. Warm, pearly little
clouds passed overhead. A low wind murmured.
The sailor on lookout leaned on the forecastle rail, watching his
comrades on the deck below. Skipper and mate looked forward from the
poop. The cook and carpenter lolled in the galley doorway.
A dozen sailors gambolled by the hatch, trying themselves, pitting
their strength and skill against each other’s. Alf Jukes was there,
with head and shoulders higher than the rest.
“Here, Jukes!” called one, a lad with an unshaven downy face. “I’ll
race you to the masthead!--Up and back. A pound of baccy to the winner.
You take the main, and I’ll go up the fore.”
“’Ere, Chips! Come on an’ start ’em,” called an eager sailor; and
Chips, the carpenter, stepped up.
“One--two----”
“I’ll bet a pound o’ baccy on young Limbertoes!”
“Me, too.”
Turning to the mate, the skipper said:
“The young fellow’ll win.”
“Aye,” said the mate, “he’s young. It’s in his favour.”
Jukes at the main, the other at the fore shrouds, stood waiting “three.”
“_Three!_” snapped the carpenter.
“Go!--go!--go!”
“Go, Limbertoes! My baccy’s on you!”
“Go, Jukes!--Go, Jukes!”
“Show ’im a sailor! Show ’im, Limber, now!”
Over the futtock shrouds, together, neck and neck, went Jukes and
Limber.
“Two pound o’ baccy--’oo takes me on?--two pound on Limber!”
“Done--an’ my Sunday whack o’ duff thrown in!”
“Lord!--look at that there Jukes! ’Ee’s like a monkey.”
“Some sailor, that,” the skipper said. “Look at him go!”
“But the young man wins,” the mate replied.
“Bully for Limber!”
The youngster touched a hand upon the fore royal truck a touch ahead of
Jukes upon the main.
“Down!--down!--down!” roared all the sailors.
Alf Jukes came sliding down the main royal stay. Down the fore royal
stay came Limbertoes.
“Come on, Limber!”
“Limber wins!”
“A tie! They’re neck and neck.”
“No.--Limber wins!”
A bellow rose from every sailor. Full forty feet above the deck, Alf
Jukes let go and dropped. Hands up and arms above his head, he fell
straight as a plummet and landed on his feet.
“That fellow’s like a bear,” the skipper said.
“There was a feller on my last ship as’d beat both of ’em,” said a
sailor.
“Oh, aye! There’s always fellers on a man’s last ship,” answered
another.
“To-morrer we’ll be in, an’ you’ll ’ave one more last ship,” another
laughed.
“Jukes, was you ever beat at anything?”
Without an answer Jukes walked slowly off and sat alone upon the
bulwarks. His face was grim.
The bell struck eight. The crew strolled aft to answer to the muster
roll. Last came Jukes. He looked like a bear that, peering from
sheltering wilds, wonders what lies in the valleys beyond its great
freedom.
* * * * *
Sails were furled, ropes coiled; the ship at anchor. A chill wind
thrummed in her rigging. Cold rain beat down.
The sailors sat in the forecastle, amidst them a boarding master. While
they drank from his bottles, Alf Jukes paced up and down the deck
outside, alone. Now and again a sailor looked from the forecastle and
called to him. He paid no heed.
The boarding master’s crimp came out, bottle in hand.
“The boys sent it ye, matey,” said he, and held the bottle temptingly
toward Jukes. Jukes answered with a growl. His great right fist shot
out, and, as the bruised crimp climbed to his feet, the sailors looked,
laughing, from the forecastle ports.
The crimp reëntered the forecastle. The boarding master passed the
bottles round. The sailors cursed the ship, all ships, and damned
the sea. Soon, crowding at his heels, they all swarmed out, and
clambered down into the boat ahead of him. Paying no heed to their loud
farewells, Jukes walked up and down in the wind and the rain. Last,
loitering from the forecastle, came the crimp.
The shouts of the sailors faded away. The ship was silent. The wind and
the rain beat on her.
Jukes entered the deserted forecastle. It was gloomy and chill. Water
dripped from him. He sat down, shivering a little. He drew out his
oilskin package and untied it. Dark fell.
Presently, lighting the lamp, Jukes saw a bottle on the table. He
scowled. He picked it up, and stepped to the door. The wind soughed
drearily. The rain whipped by. He hesitated in the doorway, the bottle
in his outstretched hand.
A boat drew noiselessly alongside the ship. The boarding master and his
crimp climbed back aboard and peered unseen through one of the forward
forecastle ports.
Bottle in hand, Jukes leaned in the doorway and looked out into the
night. To-morrow he would be forever done with the sea.
Shore lights glimmered, winking through the rain. The sound of music
reached him, faint upon the wind. Singing came indistinctly from the
waterfront. It was very solitary, very cold in the forecastle.
Jukes moved closer to the lamp and held the bottle up. The crimp nudged
the boarding master.
Alf Jukes put the bottle to his nose. Something to warm him a little;
then toss it over the side.
Jukes tipped the bottle. His Adam’s apple rose and fell. He took the
bottle from his lips, and listened. He looked about him, making sure
that he was all alone.
Jukes sat down, bottle in hand. Outside the wind wailed drearily. The
cold rain hissed. His Adam’s apple rose and fell again.
The boarding master entered the forecastle, the crimp at his heels.
Jukes turned and leaped to his feet. Lifting the bottle to hurl it, he
swayed uncertainly.
The crimp was laughing.
Jukes clutched at the bulkhead. The lamp was grown suddenly dim. The
boarding master and the crimp had disappeared.
Someone struck Alf Jukes just behind the ear. Someone laughed near by.
Stars whirled in a pitch-black sky. The boarding master knelt over
Jukes.
Everything was dark.
FEAR
BY JAMES WARNER BELLAH
From _Saturday Evening Post_
It was a little spot, that fear, but it had ached in his heart for
months--ever since his first solo flight at Upavon Airdrome. It had
come suddenly one morning like the clean pink hole of a steel-jacketed
bullet--a wound to be ashamed of--a wound to fight against--a wound
that never quite healed. Always it was there to throb and to pinch like
the first faint gnawing of cancer. It came with him to the theatre and
rankled his mind: “Enjoy this--it may be your last play.” It crept into
his throat at meals, sometimes, and took away the poor savour that was
left to the foods of wartime.
The fear of the men who fly. Sometimes he pictured it as an imp--an imp
that sat eternally on his top plane and questioned him on the strength
of rudder wires, pointed to imaginary flaws in struts, suggested that
the petrol was low in the tank, that the engine would die on the next
climbing turn.
It was with him now as the tender that was to take him up to his
squadron jolted and bounced its way across the _pavé_ on the outskirts
of Amiens. The squadron was the last place he had to go to. All the
months that were gone had led up to this. These were the wars at last.
This was the place he would cop it, if he was to cop it at all.
He shrugged. Anyway, he had had his four days in London and his ten
days idling at Pilot’s Pool before the squadron sent for him. He braced
one shoulder against the rattling seat and reached in his tunic pocket
for a cigarette. Mechanically he offered one to the driver. The man
took it with a grubby finger.
“Thankee, sor-r.”
He nodded and lighted both cigarettes with the smudge of his pocket
lighter. Anyway, he was not flying up to 44. That was one flight
saved. Funny, that fear--how it came and went like the throb of a nerve
in an open tooth. Sometimes the spot was large, and filled his whole
being; then again it would shrink to a dull ache, just enough to take
the edge from the beauty of the sunrise and the sparkle from the wine
of the moon.
There had been a time when it had jumped in every fibre of his soul. He
had been a cadet officer then, with only twelve solo hours in the air,
under the old rough-and-tumble system of learning to fly. Spinning at
that time was an unsolved mystery to him, a ghastly mystery that had
meant quick death in a welter of blood, flecked with splinters. Fred
McCloud had gone that way, and Johnny Archamboult. For weeks afterward,
Johnny’s screams had rung in his ears like a stab of pain, until the
mere smell of petrol and fabric dope made the fear crawl into his
throat and strangle him. Somehow he had kept on with the rest, under
the merciless scourge that lashed one on to fly--and the worse fear of
seeing cold scorn in the eyes of the men who taught the lore of thin
cloud miles.
The tender twisted and dodged along the hard mud ribbon that ran like
a badly healed cicatrix across the pock-scarred face of the fields.
Gnarled and bleak, they were fields that had held the weight of
blood-crazed men--still held them in unmarked graves, where they had
fallen the year before under the steel flail. He had heard stories
from his older brother about those fields--the laughing brother who
had gone away one day and returned months later without his laugh,
only to go away again, not to come back. He had seen pictures in the
magazines----But somehow no one had caught their utter bleakness as he
saw it now.
The riven boles of two obscene trees crouched and argued about it on
the lead-gray horizon, tossing their splintered arms and shrieking, he
fancied, like quarrelling old women in the lesser streets of a village.
Close to the roadway, there were a torn shoe and a tin hat flattened
like a crushed derby. Poor relics that even salvage could see no
further use in. Farther off, a splintered caisson pointed three spokes
of a shattered wheel to the sky, like a mutilated hand thrown out in
agony. He was seeing it for himself now.
No one could smile at the cleanness of his uniform again and say,
“Wait till you get out. When I was in France----” He was out himself
now. In a day or so he would go over the line with loaded guns. His
instructors at the training ’drome--thin-jawed men with soiled ribbons
under their wings--had done no more, and some of them had done less.
The thought braced him somewhat. They had seemed so different--so
impossible to imitate--those men. Their war had always been a
different one from his; a war peopled with vague, fearless men like
Rhodes-Moorehouse and Albert Ball and Bishop, the Canadian; men who
flew without a thought for themselves.
It occurred to him with a start that theirs was the same war as his
now. Twenty-five miles ahead of him, buried somewhere in rat runs,
between Bapaume and Cambrai, it went on and on, waiting for him to
come--waiting to claw and maim and snuff him out when he did come.
It had seemed so far away from him in England. When he was at ground
school he had seen it as a place where one did glorious things--he was
young, pitifully young--a place that one came back from with ribbons
under one’s wings, with nice clean scratches decently bandaged. And he
had been slightly offended at his brother’s attitude--at the things his
brother had said of the staff. Then he had gone to Upavon to learn to
fly. He had soloed for the first time, and the spot of fear had crawled
into his own heart.
They were rattling into the broken streets of a tottering town; a town
that leered at them and grimaced through blackened gaps in its once
white walls. There was a patched-up _estaminet_ with a tattered yellow
awning that tried bravely to smile.
“Albert,” said the driver.
The new pilot nodded. Some sapper officers were loitering in the
doorways of the café. Their uniforms were faded to a rusty brown and
reënforced with leather at the cuffs and elbows. Their buttons were
leather, too, to save polishing, and their badges were a dull bronze.
He looked down at his white Bedford-cord breeches and the spotless
skirts of his fur-collared British warm--privileges of the flying corps
that men envied. Baths, clean clothing, and better food. The P. B.
I.’s idea of heaven. They called flyers lucky for their privileges and
cursed them a little bit for their dry beds and the wines they had in
their messes, miles behind the line.
The new pilot wondered if they knew what it meant to be alone in
the stabbing cold with no one to talk to, no one to help you,
nothing between you and the ground save a thin, trembling fabric of
cloth and wire and twenty thousand feet of emptiness. That was his
fear--emptiness--nothingness--solitude. Those men under the awning
could die in company. Not so himself--alone, screaming into the cloud
voids, with no one to hear, no one to help, staring with glazed eyes
and foam-flecked lips at the emptiness into which one hurtled to death
miles below. The price one paid for a bath! He remembered seeing
Grahame-White fly at Southport before the war. People had called him an
intrepid aviator. The new pilot laughed harshly inside his throat and
stared out across the bare fields.
The car topped a slight rise and turned sharply to the left. The driver
pointed his grubby finger. “They be comin’ in from affernoon patrol,”
he said. “Yonder is airdrome.”
There were three flat canvas hangars painted a dull brown, and a
straggling line of rusty tin huts facing them from across the narrow
landing space--like a deserted mining village, shabby and unkempt. As
he watched, he saw the last machine of the afternoon patrol bank at a
hundred and fifty feet and side-slip down for its landing. In his heart
he could hear the metal scream of wind in the flying wires. A puff of
black smoke squirted out in a torn stream as the pilot blipped on his
engine for one more second before he came into the wind and landed.
By the time the tender rolled up to the dilapidated squadron office,
the machine had taxied into the row of hangars and the pilot was out,
fumbling for a cigarette with his ungloved hands. A thin acrid smell of
petrol and carbonized castor oil still hung in the quiet air between
the shabby huts. Snow in large wet flakes commenced to fall slowly,
steadily.
The new pilot climbed down from the tender, tossed his shoulder
haversack beside his kit bag, and pushed open the door of the squadron
office. The adjutant was sitting on his desk top, smoking and talking
to someone in a black leather flying coat and helmet--someone with an
oil-streaked face and fingers still blue and clumsy from the cold.
“Paterson, sir, G. K., second lieutenant, reporting in from Pilot’s
Pool for duty with the 44th.”
The adjutant raised a careless finger in acknowledgment. “Oh, yes. How
do? Bring your log books?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Chuck ’em down. D’ye mind?”
Paterson laid them upon the desk top, still standing to attention. The
adjutant smiled. “Break off,” he said. “We’re careless here. This isn’t
cadet school.”
The new pilot smiled and relaxed. “Very good, sir.”
“That’s better,” said the adjutant; “makes me feel more comfortable.
Just give me a note of yourself now.” He reached for a slip of paper.
“G. K. Paterson, Two Lt. Next of kin?” Paterson gave his father’s name.
“Age?”
“Eighteen and four twelfths.”
“Good!” said the adjutant. “You’ll find an empty cubicle in B
Block--that’s the middle line of huts. You’re lucky. Roof only leaks in
three places. I’ll have your duffel trekked over shortly.”
The man in the flying coat blew upon his numbed fingers and smiled.
“I’m Hoyt,” he said. “Skipper of C Flight. I’m going to take you now,
before A gets after you.” He turned to the adjutant. “That’s all right,
isn’t it, Charlie? Tell ’em I intimidated you.” He grinned.
The adjutant shrugged. “Righto!”
“Come on,” said Hoyt. “I’m in your hut block. I’ll show you your hole.”
They went out into the snow flurry. Mechanics were fussing in little
knots around the five tiny machines that had just landed, lining them
up, refilling them, and trundling them into the brown musty hangars.
“Le Rhône Camels,” said Hoyt. “We’ve just been over around Cambrai
taking a look-see.”
Inside one of the hangars, as they passed, Paterson saw something that
drew a thin, wet gauze across his eyeballs. On a rough bench just
beside the open flap sat a man with his eyes closed and his lips drawn
tightly into a straight bluish line. His flying coat was rolled up
behind his head for a pillow, and his tunic had been unbuttoned and
cut away from his left shoulder. The white of his flesh showed weirdly
in the gloom, like the belly of a dead fish. Just below the shoulder,
the white was crumpled and reddened as if a clawed paw had been drawn
across it. One man was holding his other hand, while another probed
and cleaned and dabbed with little puffs of snowy cotton that turned
quickly to pink and then to a deep brown.
Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man. That’s Mallory. He was Number Four this
afternoon. We never saw a thing. Just happened. Funny.” And he smiled.
“That’s why I was so keen to get you. Can’t tell how long it will be
before Mallory gets around again, and I’ve got one vacancy in the
flight already.” He shrugged. “You’ll see a lot of that here--get used
to it. It doesn’t mean a thing as long as you get back alive.”
Paterson looked at him sharply. He wanted to ask him how many didn’t
get back alive. He wanted to know what had caused the other vacancy in
the flight. But people didn’t ask those things. People merely nodded
casually and went on.
“I suppose not,” he said. They tramped on across the airdrome.
“Here we are,” said Hoyt. He kicked open the hut door and groped down
the dark passageway, with Paterson after him. Presently he pushed back
another door and yanked at a tattered window curtain.
The new pilot saw a tiny room, with two washstands, a cot, a
folding chair, and a cracked mirror. In a corner were his kit bag
and haversack. He pulled out his own cot and chair and set them
up; meanwhile Hoyt threw himself down on the other cot and let
his cigarette smoke dribble straight upward into the gloom of the
pine-raftered roof. Presently he spoke.
“This is a queer war,” he said; “full of queer things, and the queerest
of these is charity.” He laughed in the darkness, and the tip of his
cigarette became suddenly pink as he drew the smoke into his lungs.
“What was your school?”
“Winchester,” said Paterson.
“Right,” said Hoyt. “Remember your first day? This is it over again.
They’ve fed you up on poobah at your training ’drome and down at the
Pool. They always do. It’s part of the system. Just take it for what it
is worth and forget the rest. If you want to know anything, come to me
and I’ll tell you as well as I can. I’ve been here three months. When
I came, I came just as you did to-day, pucka green and afraid to the
marrow--afraid of uncertainty. You get over that shortly.
“Our job is a funny one, and we’re not here for ourselves, and we’re
not here to be heroes or to get in the newspapers. The V. C.’s are few
and far between.” He raised himself upon his elbow. “I’m not preaching
self-abasement and a greater loyalty to a cause that is right, mind
you. I don’t know anything about causes or who started the war or why,
and I don’t care. I’m preaching C Flight and the lives of five men.
“You saw Mallory over at the hangar. It was teamwork that put him
there in his own M. O.’s hands. Not much, perhaps”--the cigarette
described a quick arc in the darkness--“just a slight closing in of
the formation--a wave of somebody’s hand--somebody else dropping back
and climbing above him to protect his tail from any stray Huns that
might’ve waylaid him on the way home. That’s what I mean. ‘Esprit de
corps’ is a cold, hard phrase. Call it what you like. It’s the greatest
lesson you learn. Never give up a man.” Hoyt laughed. “They call me an
old woman. Perhaps I am. Take it or leave it.
“Slick up a bit and come into my hutch while I scrape off the outer
layer of silt. Dinner in half a tick and I’m as filthy as a pig.” He
vaulted up from the cot and punched his cigarette out against the sole
of his boot. At the door he paused for a moment.
“Ever have wind up?” he asked casually.
Paterson stiffened against the question and the small spot of fear
danced within him. “No,” he said firmly. Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man.”
And he went out into the passageway.
At dinner he met the rest of the squadron and the other men in C
Flight. Mallory, very pale, with his arm slung in a soft pad of
bandages, sat beside him. They were coming for him later to take him
down to the base hospital. Phelps-Barrington sat on the other side of
Mallory, mourning the fact that the wound was not his, that he might
get the inevitable leave to follow. Phelps-Barrington took Paterson’s
hand with a shrug and asked how Marguerite was in Amiens. “What? You
didn’t meet Marguerite on your way through? ’Struth!” MacClintock
sat across the table beside Hoyt--MacClintock, too young to grow a
moustache, but with a deep burr that smelled of the heather in the
Highlands and huge pink knees under his Seaforth kilts, muscles like
the corded roots of an oak. The other man in the flight, Trent, was
down with mild flu. He was due back in a week or so from hospital.
There was a wild argument on about the dawn patrol the next morning.
Paterson listened to the fragments of talk that flew like sabre cuts
across the glasses:
“He’s in a red tripe. I don’t give a damn for Intelligence. Saw him
this morning myself. Same machine Mac and I had that brush with down at
Péronne.”
“The next time they’ll get an idea for us to strafe a road clear to
Cologne for them. What are we--street cleaners?”
“So I let go a covey of Coopers and turned for home. They had it
spotted for a battery over at 119 Squadron. I saw the pictures. Right
pictures, but wrong map squares as usual. That crowd can’t tell a
battery from a Chinese labour-corps inclosure. I’d rather be a staff
officer than a two-seater pilot.”
“Steward, a whisky-soda for Mr. MacClintock and myself. Have one, Hoyt?
You, Paterson?”
Cruel, thin, casual talk clicking against the teeth in nervous haste;
the commercial talk of men bartering their lives against each tick
of the clock; men caught like rats in a trap, with no escape but
death or a lucky chance like Mallory’s. Caught and yet denying the
trap--laughing at it until the low roof of the mess shack rumbled with
the echo; drowning it in a whisky for the night.