I have told you of the last part of this astonishing flight in Archer’s
own words, as well as I could transcribe them from my shorthand notes,
because I think it gives a very good idea of his own impressions. How
Tom Slade felt throughout that exciting night I can only conjecture. You
knew him and I did not. Imperturbable, resourceful, strong-willed, a
little dash of grim humor (at least, in his relations with the
irrepressible Archer), and with the spirit of adventure born in him, I
can form some sort of picture of him in my own mind—the scowl, the big
mouth, the towhead—but at best he is something of a mystery to me. I can
fancy him on that wild night, one hand upon his stabilizing control, the
other on the handle by which he communicated his dogged will to the
rudders, a keen eye always fixed upon his altimétre or his compass.
Sometimes I fancy that I can hear that “soberr, kind of” voice of his.
But as I say, you knew him and I did not.
I must now tell you of the practical results of his deed. You know
already of the movements which followed immediately upon the discovery
of his warning messages, and if you have read the papers I suppose you
know of the iron wall which the Germans found confronting them. Archer’s
messages were opened and read and such parts of them as required
transmission were wired on to General Pershing, who was then in Paris.
But these, important though they were, are not a part of my story. You
will recall that when the souvenir-loving Archer first inspected the Hun
plane in quest of booty, his longing fingers lingered upon something
which looked like a shade roller, hung before the pilot’s seat and which
Slade had wound in oilskin. It was typical of Slade that he should have
thought to do this even in the excitement of his escape, and this little
act of foresightedness and caution was destined to have far-reaching and
memorable consequences in which he was to be involved.
They spent the balance of the night in the barracks of this aviation
centre and, according to Archer, were treated royally by the student
airmen, who, I suspect, found him an amusing youngster for several of
them gave him a sentence to say which he repeated to their great
delight. It ran something like this: _Roaring, raging, rampant,
rambunctious rhinoceroses ran round rugged rocks, recklessly raising
ridiculous reverberating rows._ If he repeated it to them as he did to
me, it must have been very entertaining. He also sang them “Peterr
Porkerr’s Pig,” a ballad of the Catskills, I suppose, which won him
great applause. He says the airmen slept in the long dormitories, in
rows on either side, and that it was just like camping to be among them.
In the morning he and Slade watched some ground flights, made by
beginners in machines with “clipped wings,” which could not leave the
ground. They wriggled around this way and that, he said, and were very
funny—like a “barrnyarrd full of chickens.” Several new men came in from
their brevet, cross-country flights during the morning and were loudly
acclaimed, he said. It was fun to see them chase each other round the
field.
That afternoon Archer went into Troyes to have a new cycle issued to
him, and said goodbye to the comrade whom he was destined never to see
again. Slade, he said, was to remain there for another day while the
instructor (Lieutenant Tanner) endeavored to have him transferred from
the messenger corps into this branch of the service. He thought it would
not be difficult in the circumstances, and surely it ought not to have
been.
And thus Archibald Archer passes out of the story. He remained my cot
neighbor here in the hospital until the day before yesterday, when he
was discharged as cured. He knew nothing of Slade after their parting at
the aviation school and it was not until he became a patient in the
hospital and saw the mended place in the roof that he learned of his
former comrade’s having been there before him and of how the stolid
partner of their great exploit had later gone to his last adventure high
among the clouds. But of the intimate circumstances of this he knew
nothing.
You will think it rather a coincidence that all three of us should have
been patients in this same hospital, but such things are not unusual
here in France. I could tell you of four brothers who met in one of the
big hospitals in Paris, and of a father and son who met on sentry duty
when one supposed the other to be in Mexico—such a kaleidoscope is this
great war.
I began by being merely amused at Archibald Archer but I came to be
greatly interested in him and to like him immensely. He is the kind of
young fellow who is putting pep into this war, and I never dreamed until
after he went away how keenly we should miss him. Even the “cross red
nurses,” as he called them, who frequently had occasion to chide him,
wish that he would be brought back with a _slight_ wound. I shall never
forget his souvenirs and his apple-eating and the good old up-country
roll of his R’s. If his luck doesn’t change (and I don’t think it will
ever change) and he gets home safely, I mean to hunt him up on his farm
in the Catskills and hear him sing “Peterrr Porrkerr’s Pig” once again.
If all goes well, I promise you a meeting with him and you can put him
into one of your famous stories if you wish to. It has been pretty
lonesome here these last two days, and I thank goodness that I am
leaving the hospital myself on Friday.