GAME TO THE LAST
HAVING covered a considerable distance Athol sat down behind a tree
and made a hearty meal of some meat pies which he had taken the
precaution to buy in Weert. By this time the excitement and lack of
sufficient sleep were beginning to tell very forcibly. Even as he ate
he felt himself nodding drowsily.
It was growing very warm as the sun rose higher in the heavens. The
air was close and oppressive. Away to the southward, dark
copper-coloured clouds were working up against the light breeze.
There was every indication of a thunderstorm breaking at no distant
time.
Presently a dull intermittent buzzing sound fell upon the lad's ears.
"An aeroplane," he muttered drowsily, hardly able to evince any
interest in the familiar noise, until by the erratic sound of the
engine he knew that something was amiss.
"Another Aviatik out of its bearings, I suppose," he said to himself.
Then he looked upwards, trying to detect the plane against the
dazzling light overhead.
The sound of the motor increased in volume. Chagrined at his failure
to locate the source of the noise, Athol's interest deepened. He
scanned the sky until he perceived the hitherto elusive machine.
It was a monoplane, flying fairly low, and proceeding in a westerly
direction with a decided tendency to describe a right-handed curve.
Although not immediately overhead, it was sufficiently close for the
lad to distinguish the marking on the wings, fuselage, and vertical
rudder.
Greatly to his surprise the monoplane bore the familiar red, white
and blue concentric rings that denoted it to be a British machine.
"Whatever is that fellow doing over here?" wondered the lad. "He's
placed the whole of Belgium between him and our lines. By Jove, if he
starts dropping bombs about here there'll be trouble!"
But the airman made no attempt to let fall his cargo of explosives.
Still describing a long erratic curve and decreasing his altitude as
he did so he was soon almost invisible from the place where Athol
stood--merely a shimmer of silvery-grey against the dark sky.
"Wish the fellow, whoever he is, had stopped to give me a lift," said
the foot-sore subaltern as he resumed his dusty journey. "It's jolly
rotten having to pad the hoof after one has been used to a hundred
miles an hour or more through the air."
A few minutes later he noticed that the monoplane had swung round and
was almost retracing its former course, and heading toward the
east--in the direction of Germany.
"Perhaps he's trying to find Essen," thought Athol. "Krupp's place
can't be much more than sixty miles away. Evidently he's lost his
bearings and has just picked up a landmark. Yet it's strange that
he's flying alone and right over a neutral country."
It was not long before the lad was forced to admit that his theory
was at fault, for the monoplane suddenly executed a sharp turn and
making a nose-dive was within an ace of crashing violently to the
ground. Only in the nick of time did the machine "flatten out,"
alighting at a distance of almost two miles from the now
highly-interested lad.
To see whether the pilot had effected a safe landing, or otherwise,
Athol was at that time unable to determine, owing to the slight
irregularity of the ground. He took to his heels along the highway in
the direction of the settled monoplane.
Hitherto the road had been little frequented that morning, beyond a
few market carts and knots of country-folk making their way to town.
But now people appeared as if by magic. Every field seemed to
disgorge two or three, every house half a dozen or more, including a
large proportion of children--all intent on hurrying to see the
foreign aircraft.
In less than twelve minutes Athol arrived upon the scene. The
monoplane was apparently undamaged save for a buckled landing-wheel,
until closer inspection revealed the fact that the 'plane was
honeycombed with bullet-holes. Jagged holes, too, were visible in the
fuselage, as well as the splaying marks of bullets that had failed to
penetrate the light steel armour.
The pilot, a boyish-looking lieutenant, was behaving in a most
eccentric fashion. He had alighted and had discarded his yellow
leather coat and helmet. Across his forehead was a dark streak of
dried blood. With one hand in his trousers pocket he was walking
rapidly round and round the stranded monoplane, wildly waving his
disengaged hand and shouting in unmistakable and forcible English for
someone to oblige him with a match.
As he walked he tottered slightly. More than once he collided with
the tips of the wings and brushed awkwardly against the rudder. The
crowd, keeping a discreet distance, watched with amazement; giving
back whenever a collision with the eccentric Englishman appeared
imminent.
"Come on, you fellows!" he appealed. "Who'll oblige with a match?
Quickly, before those strafed Bosches come on the scene! A match.
Does no one understand?"
To his intense satisfaction Athol saw that there were no soldiers or
civil guards amongst the throng, although at any moment the Dutch
military officials might appear upon the scene. The spectators were
for the most part men and women of the agricultural class.
"Can I bear a hand?" asked the lad, elbowing his way through the
crowd.
"Thank God, a British voice!" exclaimed the airman, coming to an
abrupt halt, and holding out his hand--not towards Athol but towards
a man some feet to his left.
In a flash Athol understood. The luckless pilot of the monoplane was
almost blind. He grasped the airman's hand, and drew him back from
the crowd.
"You are in Holland," he said. "I saw you descend, and I guessed
something was wrong. You've been hit pretty badly, I fear?"
"Got it properly in the neck this time," declared the lieutenant
grimly. "Across the forehead--one eye gone, worse luck, and the other
almost bunged up. Much as I could do to see the land. Couldn't do it
now, by Jove! I've a chunk of one of their strafed Iron Crosses in my
thigh, too. It's not much, but mighty unpleasant. Wanted to burn the
machine, but found my matches had gone. Pocket of my coat shot clean
away. But who are you?"
The flying man spoke in quick jerky sentences. His wounds were giving
him acute pain. Already he was bordering upon delirium, his injuries
aggravated by his inability, as he imagined, to prevent his machine
falling into the hands of he enemy.
"Yes, you are in Dutch territory," Athol reassured him. Then, seized
with an inspiration he asked, "Is the plane all right?"
"Far as I know," was the reply. "Why?"
"Because I belong to the R.F.C.," announced Athol. "Came a cropper
near Hasselt yesterday and managed to get clear. If you can hold out
for a couple of hours we'll fetch our lines, barring accidents. I'll
take her when we're properly up, but it's the take-off and the
landing part that are beyond me."
"Come along, then," exclaimed the other, his injuries forgotten in
the prospect of saving his machine. "She's only a single-seater, so
you'll have to perch up behind me."
Athol had to assist him to his seat. Deftly the almost sightless man
tested the controls, and put the self-starter into operation. Without
a hitch the propeller began to revolve, the crowd giving back at the
first explosions.
"Hurry, man, hurry!" exclaimed Athol. "There are Dutch troops coming
along the road."
"No internment for me, if I can help it," shouted the other, in order
to make himself heard above the roar of the propeller. "So here
goes."
Accelerating the engine, the lieutenant set the monoplane in motion,
Athol shouting directions into his ear to enable him to avoid various
obstructions in the way. For nearly two hundred yards the machine
rolled over the ground, wobbling under the erratic revolutions of the
buckled landing-wheel, until gaining sufficient momentum it rose
steadily in the air.
"Now take her," exclaimed the pilot in a strong voice that surprised
his companion by the volume of sound. "Let me know when your
aerodrome is in sight. You'll find it easier than you would mine, and
after all it doesn't much matter so long as it is a British one."
At a mean altitude of five thousand feet Athol steered the monoplane
on a compass course. The wounded pilot had changed places with the
lad, and was resting one hand lightly on the latter's shoulder.
Beyond the few sentences he had spoken on relinquishing the
steering-wheel the lieutenant maintained silence.
The monoplane proved a veritable flier, for in a little more than
half the time Athol had estimated it was over the lines of the
opposing armies.
Far beneath them a squadron of British aeroplanes was actively
engaged, for the British guns were strafing the Huns with terrible
violence. Not a single German aircraft appeared to join in combat
with the intruders over their lines, for the British machines were
doing good work by registering the results of the heavy shells.
"The flying ground is in sight," reported Athol. "Will you take her
now?"
"Right-o," replied the lieutenant. "Tell me when to flatten out."
He depressed the aerilons. The monoplane's tail rose as it swept
landwards at terrific speed. Athol, holding the pilot's binoculars,
brought the glasses to bear upon the landscape.
"Wind's dead against us," he announced.
"That's good," rejoined the wounded man. "It will save us making a
turn. Say when."
The ground seemed to be rising to meet them. Objects, a few seconds
before hardly discernible, resolved themselves into buildings of
various sizes, most of them roofless owing to the effects of repeated
bombardments. Little mud-coloured specks developed into khaki-clad
figures. And--a cheering sight indeed--there was the secret
battleplane just folding her wings before returning to her hangar. In
his imagination Athol felt certain that he could distinguish Blake
and Dick superintending the labours of half a dozen men as they
guided the huge bird into its nest.
There was no time to use the binoculars. The ground seemed perilously
close.
"Now," exclaimed Athol.
With a perceptible jerk the direction of downward flight was checked.
Then, giving a decided bump as the buckled landing-wheel touched the
ground, the monoplane "taxied" for full fifty yards, and halted
within ten feet of a group of officers, who scattered right and left
as the machine bounded awkwardly towards them.
Athol, kneeling on the deck of the fuselage, touched his companion in
order to guide him to the ground. The pilot, still holding the
steering-wheel, made no effort to move.
"Do you want me to give you a hand?" he asked, touching him again,
Still no response.
"What's wrong with your pilot?" enquired one of the officers
anxiously.
Athol crawled forward and looked into his companion's face. The
lieutenant's blood-rimmed eyes were wide open and staring fixedly in
front of him, but they were the eyes of a corpse. The gallant pilot's
mind had triumphed over his physical injuries up to the very moment
that he had brought the monoplane safely to earth. He had gained at
least one desire: he had brought his machine back to the British
lines.
* * * * *
"Never expected to see you so soon, old man," was Dick's candid
greeting to his chum.
"Nor did I," admitted Athol. "For that matter I wasn't at all sure
that you got away all right. I heard the bombs drop, so I knew that
the battleplane had set to work. In fact the last bomb you dropped
nearly settled my hash. Instead it did me a good turn."
"And I went for Sergeant O'Rafferty for being such a clumsy
blighter," said Blake. "By Jove, Athol, you seem to have had a run of
luck. Sorry I can't say the same for the poor fellow who brought you
back."
"Most remarkable case that," remarked an Army Medical Corps officer.
"Not only was his sight injured, he had received a piece of shrapnel
in his groin and a bullet lodged in his body in the region of his
heart. All the while he was piloting that machine back he was
bleeding to death internally. No wonder, with men of that stamp, that
we hold the individual mastery of the air."