One could choke down weak tears and the ache of the lonely heart that
cried for Home and the dear familiar faces, when the Birds of War were
roaring and whirring up the night-field or down out of the sky. But at
night, in the grim, unfriendly dark of the sleeping-cupboard, without
other witness than the thin, sore-eyed white kitten that shared one's
meals and slept beside one on the hard straw mattress under the
foul-smelling grey blanket,--things were harder. One had got through,
after a fashion, by "rotting" and making believe. One did not set down
in the Scout's Note-Book or tell the wounded friend on the stretcher how
one had kissed the back of one's own hand, and whispered, "Good-night,
Mother!" and touched one's cheek with the tips of two fingers and
whispered, "Good-night, and God keep and bless you, my darling boy!"
Amongst other things of interest picked up by day, one found out that
Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung was cold-shouldered by the
officers of the Flight Squadron, which he had captained before his fall.
No longer top-dog, he was made to pay for his domineering and
swaggering. He resented this, by swaggering more. The men talked of
this in the hangars, as they tuned-up wires or cleaned the engines. Von
Herrnung was _Ungluecklich_. Nobody liked him. The Squadron would not
stand him long. Hadn't he insulted the Herr Squadron-Captain Pilot who
had succeeded and challenged him, and got his cartel back again?
"Colossal insolence!" he had fumed. "A challenge from a person of my
rank confers an honour on him who receives it. Not a man among you
stands upon my level. Deny it if you can!"
"True, very true!" the Lieutenant-Observer who had brought back the
challenge was reputed to have retorted. "Not a man among us has ever
been degraded, therefore, Herr Supernumerary Officer, you stand alone.
And we of the Field Flight do not regard your presence among us as a
distinction. You may possibly conceive that?"
He had said it just as though he had had a stink under his nose,
according to the narrator. And he had dropped von Herrnung's letter on
von Herrnung's table, wiped his fingers ostentatiously upon his
handkerchief, given the ghost of a salute--wheeled and gone out. After
that the whilom favourite of Fortune had turned sullen and solitary, and
developed such desperate recklessness that men funked to fly with him.
Subsequently the Bird of War hovering-gear having, after due examination
by Government experts, been relinquished to its captor, he had had the
mechanism adapted to a Taube monoplane, and thenceforward made Her
Dearest the sharer of his flights.
You are to suppose Bawne snatching fearful joys in the realisation of
cherished ambitions. Loathing and fearing, he yet admired the big
red-haired man, so superbly brave in the air that seemed his natural
element. Equally the man, detesting the child, grudgingly acknowledged
his courage and obedience. No queerer companionship may have been than
this between the Enemy, and the son of Saxham and Lynette.
When the Flight Squadron shifted to Aix-la-Chapelle, a huge seething
caldron of military preparation,--"Does England declare War against us?"
people asked the Flight officers. "It is probable," they answered,
"_Gott sei danke!_" Upon the Third of August, starting at night, Bawne
had made a long flight with the Enemy. At midnight the Taube had
hovered over a great, beautiful city twinkling with millions of electric
lights.
"That is Brussels you see down there," shouted von Herrnung through the
voice-tube. "The city is _en fete_ because of the agreement arrived at
between the Emperor and the Belgian King. That means England has lost a
friend, and made another enemy. Do you understand, little English
swine?"
And von Herrnung, who had brought a Wireless outfit, had busied himself
in picking up messages from a low-powered installation at the German
Embassy and transmitting them to Somebody, high in authority, who waited
at Berlin. He had grown more and more peeved as he went about his
business, Bawne could not tell why but Franky understood quite well.
Belgium had not been content that the Red Cock should perch upon her
British neighbour's roof, while her own house remained unscathed by
fire. Franky smiled, knowing this to have been the burden of the song
sung by the tuned sparks. Broad day had found the big city humming with
mobilisation, enormous placards printed in the National Colours, with:
"BELGIUM REFUSES!" and "ROI, LOI, LIBERTE," posted in all the public
places--and a park of heavy Artillery concentrated round the Etterbeek
Barracks, as von Herrnung had flown back to Aix-la-Chapelle on the
morning of August 4th.
Bawne went on:
The Flight Squadron had been attached to a Field Artillery Division of
the Second Corps, under a General named von Kluck. A huge man he, with
a square head and a big mouth full of broken teeth. Bawne had
previously seen him at the Wireless Station where he had been taken on
landing from the submarine.
They had seen little of the aviation-base, from the beginning of
hostilities. The Powers that Were had promptly taken von Herrnung at
his word. For him were the long-distance flights, the delicate and
risky missions, the dangerous reconnaissances over the Allied batteries.
Driven by that gadfly of desire to regain the lost distinctions, he
seemed to have lost all sense of fear and to bear a charmed life.
Thus, while von Kluck's Advance was opposed at Mons by the stubborn
thrust of the British Forces, the Buzzard earned his nickname by his
tireless quest for Death. It eased his grudge against mankind to hunt
men--and he hunted; hovering and observing, wirelessing and spotting,
utilising one machine for many purposes,--in those days when War Flying
was as yet in its infancy--sniped at by the sharpshooters of four out of
seven British Divisions--often waging, with automatic pistol and Krupp
machine-gun, fierce battles with other Paladins of the Wing, on the
boundless lists of air.
How many times the boy's heart had cried for pity when some brave bird
crippled by a spout of lead, or fired by an explosive bullet, had gone
spinning earthwards, showing the Three Crosses of the Union Jack, or the
blue-white-red circles of France's tricolour--or the red-black-yellow of
the Belgian Flag upon its upper and under-wings as it fell.
They had bombed Paris two days before, and bombed Ypres that morning,
starting from a Flying Base near the city of Bruges. Bawne knew the
place was Ypres because it was marked in red on the roller-map. The
British General Headquarters were supposed to be there. All the bombs
had been used except two, and the Enemy must have forgotten to get rid
of these before he landed. He was generally careful, but not so when he
drank much. And lately he had drunk a good deal, there was so much wine
in the country. He had come down and gone into the restaurant to quest
for food and champagne. If he found, he would eat hugely and drink
heavily, and then sleep himself sober. He always slept after a bout
before taking to the air again. But sometimes when he had mixed drinks
he got savage instead of sleepy, and then----
"Do you mean that he thrashes you?" Franky interjected here.
"Rather! Just look!"
There were bright red, newly-made weals and brown and purplish old ones
on the little muscular, boyish arm from which the speaker stripped the
sleeve.
"My back and legs are lots worse," he volunteered with the air of a
showman. "I sometimes think he'd like to kill me. But he won't"--the
blue eyes were shrewd under the white-streaked forelock--"because of
what the Emperor said."
"'Take the boy with you and make of him a decent German.' For fear of
your being sent for, he-- Yes, I understand! ... My Christmas!" Franky
whispered, opening his haggard eyes, and the fire that burned in them
scorched up the water, "If I only had the use of this bashed-up body I'd
jolly soon put the fear of God into the howling brute!" His uncertain
hand fumbled about the butt of his Webley and Scott revolver. "Shoot
him--and make tracks for Headquarters with you in his Taube. Can't fly
for monkey-nuts though. Can you?"
"A little." There was a lightening of pleasure in the sombre depths of
the blue eyes. "He lets me do plain, straight flying when he's sending
Wireless, or photographing or observing. I've never started from the
ground yet, or done a landing, though I'm sure I could if I tried. _He_
has shown me lots and lots. And I do what he tells me." The forehead
knitted under the ragged piebald forelock. "He bluffs about shooting me
if I don't obey. But before I drink brandy or do other things that are
blackguardly--or throw bombs on the British and the Allies, he _shall_
kill me! I've told him--and he knows I'll keep my word."
"I pipe. And can't you manage to do a flip on your own," came back in
the nearly extinguished voice from the sunken chest of the helpless
figure on the blood-soaked stretcher. "One o' these fine days when von
Thingamy isn't wide? What's to hinder your getting away now and pushing
South to meet the British Advance-guard? We blew up the bridge when we
left the town, but it's up to you to swim the river. Or cross with a
barrel or a plank."
"Yes. And I've often planned to bunk it! But--Man alive!--he's
frightfully clever. He knows a Scout sticks to his Word of Honour--and
he always asks for my Parole."
"F'f! That's a poser, old son." Franky considered. "If I were in your
shoes I'd take to givin' the strictly limited parole. Two hours--or
three--or four.... There's a chance if the time expires without
renewal--of being able to--perpetuate a strictly honourable bunk. So,
best Kid, live in hopes and watch out for chances, and one day----"
The speaker's voice trailed off into indistinctness. A deadly vertigo
came upon him. He sank amidst swirling waves of grey nothingness, to
emerge after aeons, to consciousness of the morning sunshine, and the
warm rain dropping on his clammy cheek and hand.
"Oh, oh! I thought you were dead!" It was the wailing voice he had
heard long ages back. "Like all the other people.... The poor men and
women and the little children----"
"Dead! Not a bit of it! Only shamming for a drink," Frankly whispered,
as the cup with its blessing of cool water revisited his baked lips:
"Look here. Where did you tell me your Flying Devil was?"
The boy said, with a scared glance through the breached front wall of
the baker's parlour, out into the street where the golden sunshine
played upon War's havoc and desolation:
"I said he went into the restaurant in the square where the--the dead
people are piled up--to hunt about for wine."
"I remember. What's that?"
The gaunt eyes rolled towards the yawning gap where once had been the
window. The white lips whispered, "Did you hear? I'll swear somebody
laughed."
Both held their breath. Not a sound reached them except the sliding of
some _debris_ from a pile of shattered masonry, and the gurgling of the
water in the broken street-main. Franky mustered breath and went on:
"And now shake hands and scoot, my son, for this spot isn't healthy.
Say 'Good-bye and God bless you!' And--if you didn't mind--you might
kiss me"--the uninjured hand lifted clumsily and pointed--"here on my
forehead.... Steady on! Hold hard! Thumbs up, old man!"
For sobs were racking the thin young frame, and the bright tears were
running. He gasped out:
"I--I--can't go away and leave you--to--to die all alone!"
_Die...._
The dreadful word, at last, dropping with a dull shock through the
wounded man's consciousness as a heavy stone sinks through deeps of
black water. Swirling rings of mist in Franky's brain, threatened to
close down and blot out all things. He thrust back the grey menace of
unconsciousness with a brave effort, whispering:
"Die.... Rats! What are you--talking about? It's me for the gay life
every time! All I've--got to do is to lie here--and--wait until they
fetch me.... They're coming--before to-morrow morning--give you my
solemn word!"
"You're sure?"
"Dead sure. Look here--can you remember my name was Norwater? Captain,
First Battalion Bearskins Plain?" The stumbling voice went on as the
boy nodded: "Well then, I'd like you to put in a word for me when you
say your prayers, sometimes. I might have a little chap of my own,
by-and-by, to do that for his Pater. What's this, best child?"
A black wooden Crucifix with the Figure of Our Lord in white plaster was
being held close to the dimming eyes.
"It's a Crucifix. I think it must have fallen down from the room that
was above here. Won't you keep it--to help you through the
night-time--just as the one on my Rosary helps me? ..."
"Good egg! Do you pray to it--and kiss it?"
"We pray--not to it, but to Our Lord who died for us and lives in
Heaven. We kiss it--because even if it isn't pretty it is His
Image--and has been blessed by a priest."
"Wipe my mouth first, please. You'll find--hanky in my pocket.
Thanks!" He asked, after his discoloured lips had touched the Feet of
the Crucified: "Isn't there something one ought to say? A prayer--or
something! Not much time now--before they fetch me. Tell quick--what
words say!"
"You couldn't have anything better than Our Father. Our Lord made that
prayer Himself. But there are lots of others. The little ones are
easiest. Say: '_Jesu, have mercy upon me!_'"
The weak voice came stumbling after.
"Jesu, have mercy on me!"
"_Jesu, help me!_"
"Jesu, help me!"
"_O Thou who didst die for sinful men upon the Cross, have mercy upon me
a sinner!_"
The glassy eyes stared upwards and past the boy, and a thin scarlet
thread began to trickle from the corner of his mouth....
"O Thou who didst die--upon the Cross--mercy--me a sinner!"
The stumbling voice trailed away into silence. The glazing eyes,
meeting Bawne's, said plainly: "Now go!" And as the boy, blind with
tears, turned in obedience to their order, a dull flame leaped into
them. They had seen the tall half-length of a big man, panoplied in the
goggled helmet and pneumatic jacket of the aviator, bulking in the
window-gap, even before Bawne knew that the Enemy was there.
*CHAPTER LXIV*
*AT SEASHEERE*
The narrow white footpath had suddenly led nowhere. Patrine had found
herself standing at the edge of a four-foot bluff, looking down upon a
grassy plateau that gently sloped to the brink of the cliffs. A wire
fence enclosed an aggregation of stone-grey wooden buildings dominated
by a flagstaff and the latticed steel tower of a Wireless installation.
The White Ensign flapped lazily from the halyards of the flagstaff,
there were three hangars at a little distance away. A row of seaplanes
sat on the grass before them, and some figures of men in overalls or the
familiar Naval uniform moved in and out and about the machines busily as
ants. Where the grassland stopped at the cliff-edge the roofs of other
hangars showed, that were built upon the shingle. A little way out
beyond the line of foam where the long green lips of the sea mumbled at
the wet pebbles, another row of seaplanes lashed to buoys, rocked like
gulls drowsing after a gorge of fish. And far out to sea, where the
heavy trails of smoke bannering from the funnels of rushing grey hulls
betokened the War activities of the Fleet in the Channel, and the
conning-towers of big submarines sometimes pretended to be little stocky
steamers sitting on the swell, two strange bat-like things rose and
circled and swooped, and were hidden in grey-blue mists to rise again,
and swoop and circle.... And a little dinghy with two blue figures in
it was pulling out from the beach in the direction of the anchored
planes.
"Beg pardon! But--aren't you Miss Saxham?"
She craned her long neck, looking for the speaker, and found him in a
youthful Flight Sub-Lieutenant, who, standing below the grassy bluff,
was looking up with very brown eyes at the tall figure in the narrow
skirt of tan, white and rose-pink chequers, the low-cut blouse of
guipure lace, and the knitted silk coat of rose-pink. Buckled pumps
adorned the well-arched feet, clad with navy blue silk stockings of
liberal open-work. She sported a buff sunshade lined with rose, and a
hat of rough tan straw, trimmed with quills of navy blue and rose-pink,
sat coquettishly on the beech-leaf hair. She gave the boy one of her
wide smiles, evading the "Yes" by nodding, and with a cat-like leap and
scramble, he was up the grassy bluff and standing before her, blushing
and saluting and holding out a scribbled paper-pad.
"For me?"
"For you--if you're Miss Saxham. It's a Wireless came this
morning--from your--from a great friend of yours. Somewhere in France."
"Oh--thank you!"
She pulled off a loose buff glove and stretched a large white hand for
the paper-pad. The message ran:
"6 a.m. Now leaving Compiegne for Calais. Seasheere in five hours,
barring accident. All my love to you. Alan."
And the Lieutenant had thought her pale.... She kissed the paper and
smiled at him bewilderingly. "Lucky beggar, Sherbrand," thought the
Lieutenant. "What a glorious woman!" He extorted from Patrine, who
would not be twenty until next August, the penalty for being built on a
grander scale than other daughters of Eve. But she was asking:
"Whom have I to thank for bringing Mr. Sherbrand's message?"
"Flight Sub-Lieutenant Dareless--and the thanks are quite on my side."
He phrased the trite civility punctiliously, while the bold brown eyes
beamed and twinkled: "For you're IT," they said; "just--clippingly--IT!"
"How did you know me?" began Patrine.
"Picked you up through the binnics from the bridge, ten minutes ago."
The slim brown hand flourished, indicating a T-square-shaped space of
well-watered turf marked off in whitewash lines upon the green aerodrome
below. "We call things by their proper names so as not to lose touch,
you understand? The short stretch is the Bridge, and the long strip aft
at right angles--that's the Quarter-deck. The big hut No. 1 is our
Wardroom--the Wing-Commander's cabin is divided off from it. The
officers' cabins are in the small hut, No. 2, and the Warrant Officers
and men divide No. 3. Of course we keep watches and post sentries--just
as if we were at sea. That Territorial on guard near is relieving a man
of ours, do you see?" He jerked his chin towards the moving brown
figure. "What have we to guard? Oh, well, the hangars, and our
Wireless"--another jerk indicating the latticed steel mast surmounting a
telegraph hut wedded to a vibrating dynamo-shed. "We get reports from
our patrols--most of 'em are fitted with radio-apparatus--and we receive
and transmit messages. Long distance? Well, rather! We're frightfully
swanky about our Wireless plant. It's Number One, H.P. Not big, but
jolly powerful. A----"
Six clear, silvery double-notes had sounded from a brass bell, hung
beneath a little white-painted penthouse sitting on the blue strip of
shadow on the westward side of the Wardroom hut. The Petty Officer who
had rung the bell exchanged a brief word with the Territorial, and went
back to the hangars from whence he had emerged. Patrine, with her heart
in her mouth, asked the Sub-Lieutenant:
"Was that a signal?"
"Only ship-time," said the brown-eyed one. "Six bells. Eleven A.M. And
our man ought to be looming up in sight. He might hit Seasheere now at
any minute. In fact, he's nearly an hour late."
"You don't--you don't suppose----?"
Fear had pinched and drawn and bleached her so that she looked forty
behind her white veil with blue chenille dragonflies. Her pale mouth
twitched and her black brows knotted over the haunted eyes that strained
out to sea. The paper-pad, crunched to a mere wad, dropped from the
hand that unconsciously released it. The boy picked it up, thrilled by
this peep behind the scenes of another's romance.
"No, no! There's no fear of an accident, Miss Saxham. Perhaps a bit o'
engine-trouble--you've got to travel slowish if she vibes too much. Or
he might have spotted an Aviatik and delayed to have a biff at him--on
the principle that ten Hun-birds make an evener bag than nine. We know
what a terror he's getting to be with the Maxim. But what puts the fear
of God into the flighty Taube quicker than anything is our R.N.A.S.
Vickers' gun."
Ah, did he know how horribly he tortured her! But a grey speck showed
upon the delicately-misty distance eastwards, growing bigger, coming
nearer, putting miles of green white, heaving water under its throbbing
engine with effortless speed. Her glance leaped to Dareless, studying
the oncomer between narrowed lids, and the hope that had kindled in her
died out as he shook his head.
"One of ours, on the Home-flight from Belgium, Miss Saxham. Your man
will pick up much higher, and to the south-east."
And presently the latest type of Fleet hydroplane, a two-seater Batboat
carrying two bareheaded young gentlemen, moaned into view, chasing its
own wave-skipping, flying shadow at full stretch for the shore, came
down in a long mallard-like glide, skidding over the water as the
wild-duck does, and in a ruffle of glittering spray, continued the
home-journey in the character of a motor-boat.
Then there was a sharp squib-like crack, and from one of the anchored
hydroplanes, a rocket went up and burst in a smoke-puff that hung in a
little cloud of violet-grey upon the sunny air, and from the hangars on
the shingle under the bluff streamed figures in blue overalls or grimy
shirt-sleeves, and cheered and waved, standing ankle-deep in refluent
water, topped with creamy sheets of foam. As the Batboat with her
joyous navigators rushed spluttering to the shallow anchorage and tied
up beside the Station planes, megaphones bellowed, motor-horns tooted,
somebody banged on the ship's bell, a cornet struck up "Rule Britannia!"
very much out of tune....
"Well done, you two beggars! Oh! well done!" trumpeted Dareless,
through his hollowed hands, and turned a beaming face on Patrine to
explain that the hatless navigators of the Batboat were Lieutenants of a
Flight stationed at Antwerp, and had shared in the Air Raid on the
Zeppelin-sheds at Duesseldorf--early on the previous day.
And then a droning song had come drifting down out of the sky to the
south-eastward with a buzzing undernote in it that Patrine remembered
well. Dareless had lifted his head for a rapid upward reconnaissance,
and said with a flash of white teeth in his brown face:
"Thumbs up, Miss Saxham!--this is your particular bird!"
And Patrine had seen, small and high, and shining palely golden in the
sunlight, the shape of the biplane that carried her lover, and her heart
knocked twice in her bosom, heavily, as they knock behind the curtain
before they ring up at the Comedie Francaise. A Clery's
signalling-pistol had cracked and been answered from the Air-Station.
Mechanics in overalls had appeared upon the green. Then the buzzing had
stopped, and the second Bird of War, rising higher to escape the
backwash of light airs from the cliffs, had launched into a splendid
sweeping spiral, ending in a long glide, and alighted on the well-rolled
Station aerodrome--and Sherbrand had come home.
Surely never until the thought of Flight,--formed in the brain-cells of
Man and fertilised by the lust of Adventure,--hatched out in the Bird
that bears the Knight of To-day upon the air-path, did lover return to
his lady after a fashion so wonderful as this.
The Flying Men have always been coming. In the Book of Books you will
read of them. Ecclesiasticus, the Preacher, foretold of the day when a
Bird of the Air should carry the Voice, and That Which Hath Wings should
tell the matter; and how these Winged ones rush and roar through the
prophetic pages of Ezekiel and Daniel, you have but to open them to
learn. Their shapes like locusts, their armoured bodies with great-eyed
headpieces "like those of horses prepared unto battle," the noise made
by their wings in flight "like the noise of chariots and horses running
to battle," the wheels beneath their wings, the human faces appertaining
to them, the inward fire that issues from them in scorching
vapours,--are described with fiery eloquence in the Apocalypse of the
Apostle of St. John, when the Fifth Angel sounds the Trumpet, and the
King whose name is Exterminans, the Destroyer, reaches the culminating
point of his terrific reign upon earth.