THE GUIDING HAND
Mysterious Dick, or "Mystery" as he was usually called, was a slender,
anaemic-looking boy with deep brown eyes. He was nicknamed "Mystery" for
several reasons. In the first place, he gave every one on first
acquaintance an uncomfortable feeling; no one could explain this, but
every one admitted that he was a "bit queer." When he looked at you his
eyes never appeared to be focused on you, but to be looking at something
back of you; I have seen a man to whom Dick was talking suddenly turn
and look over his shoulder. Another very noticeable trait of Dick's was
to answer an unasked question, or to interrupt a man at the beginning of
an argument with a refutation or agreement, as the case might be.
I remember coming into the mess one morning about five o'clock after an
all-night raid; our machine was the third back. It was a bitter cold
winter's night and "upstairs" it was absolutely numbing. In the mess
there were Mac and Dick and one or two others, thawing their congealed
blood and numbed brains with hot rum. It had been a nasty trip that
night, dense, low clouds and a head wind on the return voyage; there
were many machines still unaccounted for, although the supply of petrol
would "keep them up" but another fifteen minutes. So in the mess we
sipped our hot rum and sat and thought, or just sat.
"I think they were south of Dieuze"; it was Dick who broke the silence.
Mac jumped and looked hard at "Mysterious Dick," and as we all looked at
him inquiringly a faint flush rose to his face, he gulped down his rum
and left the mess.
"It's queer," said Mac, "how often he does that."
"Does what?" I asked.
"Answer your unasked question," replied Mac. "The green balls must have
been south of Dieuze just as 'Mystery' said, for after leaving Mannheim
I followed up the Rhine to Hagenau Wald, turned west and crossed the
Vosges over Zabern; here we went above low clouds and I didn't see the
ground again for over an hour. I steered my course all right, but was
fearing a change of wind when just ahead of me I saw the Hun signal of
two green balls come up through the clouds; as the last 'intelligence'
placed these two balls at Morchange, I changed my course from 270 deg. to
245 deg.. It was only luck that about half an hour later a rift in the
clouds showed me 'F' lighthouse, and as that is about thirty miles
south of 'B' lighthouse, my original course over Zabern of 270 deg. must
have been about right to strike 'B' lighthouse. So the green-ball
signal, as 'Mystery' said, must have been moved from Morchange to south
of Dieuze, and that is just what I was puzzling out when Dick answered
the puzzle for me. He's queer, all right." And Mac called for another
rum.
And "queer" is the best description of Dick that any of the Bedouins
could have given you, if you had asked them, until one night he was
finally coaxed after many "treats" to tell about his earlier war
experiences.
"In 1912 I was a subaltern in the Indian army," Dick said quietly; "a
row over a woman resulted in my court martial and disgrace.
"When the war broke out I joined as a dispatch rider; I was wounded and
was in the hospital for over five months. When I came out I succeeded
in getting into the Royal Flying Corps and eventually was granted a
commission. But as a pilot I was a complete failure; I 'wrote off'
several machines and in my last crash I nearly 'wrote off' myself. I was
unconscious for over a month and it was over eight months before I left
the hospital.
"I finally got back to France as a recording officer to a Handley-Page
squadron; here I ran into an old pal of mine, and one night, when his
navigation officer was sick, my pal took me on a raid without saying a
word to any one. It was the first time I had ever been in a Handley-Page
aeroplane and it was the first time I had ever flown at night, but my
pal was the best pilot in the squadron and the way to the Gontrode
aerodrome was an open book to him, for he had been there many times
before; he took me as a passenger for the experience.
"I remember as we 'taxied' over the aerodrome that the roar of the
engine on each side of me, the flashing of lights, the other machines as
they passed us or waited with slowly 'ticking-over props' for us to
pass, the different-colored lights which were being fired down from
machines already in the air and the lights fired up from the ground, all
combined and whirled through my excited brain like a meaningless
nightmare. Then there was a deafening roar and we shot down a path of
light, bumped hard, bumped less hard, bumped again, and the huge plane
with its great load of bombs was in the air. Lights on the ground and
the lights of machines in the air became mixed until I could not tell
one from the other.
"As we rose higher and higher, ground lights far off in the distance
came hurtling toward us like the navigation lights of a fast approaching
machine; I would clutch Jack, yell, and point out the lights in order
to avoid a collision as it seemed to me; Jack would grin, pull me down
on the seat beside him, and tell me the lights were on the ground and at
least ten miles away. Gradually I got control of myself and tried to
find the aerodrome we had just left; it was nowhere to be seen. There
was a network of white threads on a black background, an occasional
winding silver ribbon with here and there a silver blotch and
queer-shaped blacker blacknesses on the general blackness; these were
roads, rivers, lakes, and woods as they looked from the air at night.
"How long we had been in the air I don't know. Time seemed nothing, or
an eternity. We were suspended in a sphere. Lights or stars rushed at us
or receded or whirled about. Time and distance became mere words without
meaning and I had fallen into a state resembling hypnotic sleep when
suddenly roused by Jack. 'There are the lines,' he shouted, and as far
as the eye could see, to left and right, out of the darkness beneath us
were the constant flashes of the never silent guns of the Flanders
front. Every now and then we got a sudden 'bump' as a shell passed near
us. I had fallen into an almost semiconscious state when
'tut-tut-tut-tut-tut' jumped me off my seat; I realized that I was
surrounded by a dazzling whiteness; the machine itself was brilliant.
Amidst the 'tut-tut-tut' of our own machine guns shooting down at the
searchlights there was a constant dull 'whonk,' 'whonk,' 'whonk,' and
the whole machine seemed to be enveloped in puffs of black smoke as the
anti-aircraft batteries found the range.
"Suddenly the nose of the machine went down and my breath left me in the
crazy rush, my hands grasped at anything, and somehow, momentarily
blinded with fright as I was, my right hand involuntarily clutching Jack
conveyed the truth to my brain. Jack was dead. He had fallen forward on
the wheel and the giant plane was rushing, roaring down to destruction.
With a spasmodic effort I pulled his body from the seat onto the floor
at my feet and pulled back the wheel. With a sickening change and a
shrill singing of wires we were climbing. How the fuselage and tail
plane stood the strain of it, God knows. I was in Jack's seat now
pushing the wheel from me, pulling it toward me, turning it to the
right, then to the left, pushing the rudder bar with my right foot, then
with my left. Panic was in control. We must have dropped three thousand
feet before a sudden calmness came over me and I found this aerial
monster as gentle to manage as a perfectly bitted horse.
"But there was Jack, huddled on the floor at my feet with part of his
head gone. I remember leaning down and trying to pull him out of his
cramped position, and then came an eternity of stargazing. I wondered
why the stars didn't run into each other and crash. I leaned across the
fuselage and turned a pet-cock; a little spray of petrol came out with
the escaping air; the hands of two dials on the left side of the
cock-pit began turning slowly anti-clockwise; I forgot them and looked
at the stars. Later I pressed a button on the dashboard and looked out
at my starboard engine; a small dial was lit up. I looked at the port
engine, a similar dial was lit up. I took my right hand from the wheel
and pulled the throttle slightly back; again I star-gazed as if in a
dream and without any volition I closed the pet-cock which I had
previously opened.
"This was my first time in a Handley-Page, and I knew nothing of
pressures or temperatures. How long I flew I don't know; what direction
I should have flown I did not know at that time. Occasionally I glanced
at the compass and as well as I can remember the needle pointed west
generally, but I gave it no thought. Finally I pulled back the throttle
and began to glide. I leaned over the next seat and pulled two levers.
Remember that at this time I had never heard of shutters for the
radiators. Down I came into heavier and heavier atmosphere. I was calm
and happy. I never even gave the ground a thought, never even glanced at
it. I remember taking from a rack on my left a stubby revolver with a
huge bore, pointing it over the side and pulling the trigger, and I
watched a green light go slowly down and searchlights that were blinking
up at me went out. A few seconds later a knob on the dashboard seemed to
rivet my attention; it was a small knob exactly like an electric-light
switch. I began to play with this. To do this I had to lean forward and
stretch out my left arm; this action brought my face around to the
right, and as I played with the knob I saw a light blinking on my right
wing tip. I remember laughing at this.
"The plane took a sudden dip and I sat up. Just off to my right and very
little below me were lights on the ground in the shape of a 'T,' and
other lights were flashing at me. I turned toward the 'T' and stuck down
the nose of the machine; I pulled the throttle farther back, and just as
I seemed to be running into dense blackness I leaned forward and pressed
a button; a brilliant light sprang up under the machine; there was the
ground not two feet away, apparently. I yanked back the wheel and a
moment later there was a great bump, another and another, and we came to
rest on our own aerodrome.
"The doctor told me that he had never seen such a collapse. I had been
unconscious for hours after being lifted from the machine together with
my dead pal. I was awarded this decoration, gentlemen, for bringing that
machine home safely. Since that time I have been awarded these other
decorations for feats you have all heard of. But I want to tell you,"
and "Mystery Dick" stood up with flushed face and blazing eyes, "that I
have never flown an aeroplane in France. Jack, my old pal, dare-devil
Jack, whose head was blown off beside me during my first trip across the
lines, flies my machine. Jack, dear old Jack, has won these medals I
wear."
And Dick, no longer "Mystery Dick," left the mess. I say no longer
"Mystery Dick" because from that day on there was nothing mysterious
about Dick to the "Bedouins."
Explain it as you may, call it God, the spirit of a dead friend, or a
thought vibration to which their mind is attuned, explain it as you
choose, or try to explain it not at all, every member of the "Bedouin"
Squadron has felt the "Guiding Hand" and every "Bedouin" knew, as every
man who makes constant companions of danger and death must eventually
know, that the dead still "carry on."
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A