Produced by David Garcia, Odessa Paige Turner and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistencies in the hyphenation and variations in spelling have been
retained as in the original.
WINGS OF THE
WIND
BY
CREDO HARRIS
_Author of_
"TOBY," "SUNLIGHT PATCH,"
"WHERE THE SOULS OF MEN ARE CALLING,"
ETC.
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1920
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
TO
S. THRUSTON BALLARD
WITH WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS SHARED
MANY A PLEASANT CAMP-FIRE
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "TO ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE!" 9
II. THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR 16
III. THE GIRL IN THE CAFE 29
IV. NIRVANA 43
V. "TO THE VERY END!" 54
VI. A VOICE FROM THE WATER 70
VII. A BOMB AND A DISCOVERY 80
VIII. THE CHASE BEGINS 94
IX. A SHOT FROM THE DARK 104
X. A SILENT ENEMY 117
XI. A STRANGE FIND 129
XII. THE HURRICANE 140
XIII. ON TO DEATH RIVER! 153
XIV. SMILAX BRINGS NEWS 161
XV. EFAW KOTEE'S DEN 174
XVI. THE CAVE MAN SETS FORTH 190
XVII. THE RESCUE 202
XVIII. DOLORIA 212
XIX. ENLIGHTENING A PRINCESS 228
XX. SLEEPING BENEATH GOD'S TENT 238
XXI. PLANTING A MEMORY 249
XXII. I LOVE YOU 266
XXIII. THE ATTACK 275
XXIV. GERMAN CRUELTY 289
XXV. A FLYING THRONE 304
XXVI. A TREASURE BOX 319
XXVII. THE FINAL HOCUS-POCUS 330
WINGS OF THE WIND
CHAPTER I
"TO ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE!"
At last out of khaki, and dressed in conventional evening clothes, I
felt as if I were indeed writing the first words of another story on the
unmarred page of the incoming year. As I entered the library my mother,
forgetting that it was I who owed her deference, came forward with
outstretched arms and a sound in her voice like that of doves at nesting
time. Dad's welcome was heartier, even though his eyes were dimmed with
happy tears. And old Bilkins, our solemn, irreproachable butler, grinned
benignly as he stood waiting to announce dinner. What a wealth of
affection I had to be grateful for!
I did not lack gratitude, but with the old year touching the heels of
the new, and Time commanding me to get in step, my return to civil life
held few inducements. Instead of a superabundance of cheer, I had
brought from France jumpy nerves and a body lean with over
training--natural results of physical exhaustion coupled with the mental
reaction that must inevitably follow a year and a half of highly
imaginative living.
But there was another aspect less tangible, perhaps more permanent--and
all members of combat divisions will understand exactly what I mean.
When America picked up the gauntlet, an active conscience jerked me from
a tuneful life and drove me out to war--for whether men are driven by
conscience, or a government draft board, makes no difference in the
effect upon those who come through. Time after time, for eighteen
months, I made my regular trips into hell--into a hell more revolting
than mid-Victorian evangelists ever pictured to spellbound, quaking
sinners. Never in this world had there been a parallel to the naked
dangers and nauseous discomforts of that western front; never so
prolonged an agony of head-splitting noises, lacerations of human flesh,
smells that turned the body sick, blasphemies that made the soul grow
hard, frenzied efforts to kill, and above all a spirit, fanatical, that
urged each man to bear more, kill more, because he was a Crusader for
the right.
Into this red crucible I had plunged, and now emerged--remolded. In one
brief year and a half I had lived my life, dreamed the undreamable,
accomplished the unaccomplishable. Much had gone from me, yet much had
come--and it was this which had come that distorted my vision of future
days; making them drab, making my fellows who had not taken the plunge
seem purposeless and immature. Either they were out of tune, or I
was--and I thought, of course, that they were. What freshness could I
bring to an existence of peace when my gears would not mesh with its
humdrum machinery!
My mother, ever quick to detect the workings of my mind as well as the
variations of my body, had noticed these changes when I disembarked the
previous week, and had become obsessed with the idea that I stood
tottering on the brink of abysmal wretchedness. So, while I was marking
time the few days at camp until the hour of demobilization, she summoned
into hasty conference my father, our family doctor, and the select near
relatives whose advice was a matter of habit rather than value, to
devise means of leading me out of myself.
This, I afterward learned, had been a weighty conference, resulting in
the conclusion that I must have complete rest and diversion. But as my
more recent letters home had expressed a determination to rush headlong
into business--as a sort of fatuous panacea for jumpy nerves, no
doubt--and since the conferees possessed an intimate knowledge of the
mulish streak that coursed through my blood, their plans were laid
behind my back with the greatest secrecy. Therefore, when entering the
library this last night in December and hurrying to my mother's arms, I
had no suspicion that I was being drawn into a very agreeable trap,
gilded by my father's abundant generosity.
We sat late after dinner. Somewhere in the hall Bilkins hovered with
glasses and tray to be on hand when the whistles began their screaming.
In twenty years he had not omitted this New Year's Eve ceremony.
"Your wound never troubles you?" my mother asked, her solicitation over
a scratch I had received ten months before not disguising a light of
pride that charmed me.
"I've forgotten it, Mater. Never amounted to anything."
"Still, you did leave some blood on French soil," Dad spoke up, for this
conceit appealed to him.
"Enough to grow an ugly rose, perhaps," I admitted.
"I'll bet you grew pretty ones on the cheeks of those French girls," he
chuckled.
"Pretty ones don't grow any more, on cheeks or anywhere else," I
doggedly replied. "Materialism's the keynote now--that's why I'm going
back to work, at once."
"Oh," the Mater laughed, "don't think of your father's stupid office,
yet!"
"There's nothing left to think of," I grumbled.
"Isn't there?" he exclaimed. "What'd you say if Gates has the yacht in
commission, and you take a run down to Miami----"
"Or open the cottage, if you'd rather," she excitedly interrupted him.
"I hadn't intended leaving New York this winter, but will chaperon a
house party if you like!"
"Fiddlesticks! Cruise, by all means," he spoke with good-natured
emphasis. "Get another fellow, and go after adventures and romances and
that kind of thing! Go after 'em hammer and tongs! By George, that's
what I'd do if I were a boy, and had the chance!"
They waited, rather expectantly.
"Cruising's all right," I said, without enthusiasm. "But it's a waste of
time to go after romance and adventure. They died with the war."
"Ho!--they did, did they?" he laughed in mock derision. "What's become
of your imagination--your vaporings? You used to be full of it!" And the
Mater supported him by exclaiming:
"Why, Jack Bronx! And I used to call you my Pantheist! Don't tell me
your second sight for discovering the beautiful in things has failed
you!"
"It got put out by mustard gas, maybe," I murmured, remembering with
bitterness some of the fellows who had been with me.
What was romance here to the colorful, high-tensioned thing I had seen
in devastated areas where loves of all gradations were torn and
scattered and trampled into the earth like chaff! Fretfully I told them
this.
They exchanged glances, yet she continued in coaxing vein:
"You're such a big baby to've been such a big soldier! Don't you know
that romance is always just over the hill, hand in hand with
adventure--both lonely for someone to play with? Wars can't kill them!
It's after wars, when a nation is wounded, that they become priceless!"
"By George, that's right," Dad cried. "Come to think of it, that's
exactly right! And Gates has the same crew of six--men you've always
known! Even that rascal, Pete, cooks better 'n ever! The _Whim_, you
can't deny, is the smartest ninety-six foot schooner yacht that sails! I
say again that if I had the chance I'd turn her free on whatever magic
course the wings of the wind would take her! That I would--by George!"
And there was a note of deep appeal in the Mater's voice as she asked:
"Why not get that boy you wrote so much about--Tommy what's-his-name,
the Southerner? I like him!"
This plan, which I now saw had been so carefully prepared--fruit of the
secret conference--was but one in the million or so of others throughout
America nurtured and matured by the brave army of fathers, mothers,
wives, sisters, daughters, who stayed at home and gave their all,
waiting with alternate hopes and fears, looking with prayerful eyes to
the day that would bring a certain one back into their arms. What
difference if some plans were elaborate and some as modest as a flower?
Who would dare distinguish between the cruise on a private yacht and the
cake endearingly made in a hot little kitchen for the husky lad just
returned from overseas? Each was its own best expression of pride and
love. Each said in its tenderest way: "Well done, my own!"
A lump came into my throat.
"It's rather decent of a fellow to have two such corking forbears," I
murmured.
The Mater turned her gentle eyes to the fire, and Dad, clearing his
throat in a blustering way--though he was not at all a blustering
man--replied:
"Perhaps it's rather decent of us to have a son who--er, I mean,
who--well, er----"
"A cruise hits me right," I exclaimed, hurriedly coming to his rescue,
for neither of us wanted a scene. "And I'll wire Tommy Davis, Mater--the
chap you mentioned. He's a corking fellow! I didn't write you how the
battalion started calling him 'Rebel' till he closed up half a dozen
eyes, did I? You see, in the beginning, when we were rookies, the
sergeant had us up in formation to get our names, and when he came to
Tommy that innocent drawled: 'Mr. Thomas Jefferson Davis, suh, of
Loui'ville, Jefferson county, Kentucky, suh.' You could have heard a pin
drop. The sergeant, as hard-boiled as they come, stood perfectly still
and let a cold eye bore into him for half a minute, then gasped: 'Gawd!
What a wicked little rebel!'"
They laughed.
"Why didn't you bring him home with you?"
"Same reason he couldn't take me home with him. There were people
waiting, and turkey, and--but he won't want to go," I added. "He's crazy
about a girl down there!"
"Fiddlesticks," my father chuckled. "Any normal fellow'll want to
cruise! I'll wire him myself--this very night!"
Bilkins entered with the tray, wishing us a happy new year. Outside the
whistles were beginning to blow. After we had pledged each other, and
drunk to 1919, the Mater, a light of challenge in her eyes, looked at me
and gave another toast:
"To a cruise and an adventure, Jack!"
"To romance," Dad cried, gallantly raising her fingers to his lips.
There was no use being a wet blanket, so with a laugh I said:
"To adventure and romance!--Mater, if they're still on earth I'll bring
them home to you!"
I knew it was a very silly toast, but let it go to please them--for why
disillusion those who believe in the actuality of nonexistence?