Part 39

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.

Flight makes the world no more joyful, being mainly used for purposes of destruction, but nothing can rob the Flying Man of his shining gloriole of Romance. The boy who was building toy aeroplanes of card and elastic a few years back has rediscovered the Flying Dragon of the Cretaceous period, broken and tamed the winged monster into a War steed, and thundered down the forgotten roads of the Pterodactyl and the Rukh, to reap shining honours upon the battlefields of the mutable Air. And if the girl who chaffed the boy of old worships him to-day as St. George, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and Le Bon Sieur de Bayard rolled into one, who shall blame her? Not I, for one!

In the instant of reunion, when the tall brown figure came swinging to meet her, and the strong hard hands gripped her own, Patrine loved him more than ever. Sherbrand's was not a romantic greeting, but it thrilled her nevertheless.

"They've asked us to lunch here, but it's ready at the Cottage. Shall we accept? It's for you to decide."

His tone had indicated his keen desire for the _tete-a-tete_ in preference. Disappointment had shadowed his clear eyes when Patrine had voted for luncheon at the Air Station, inwardly longing to be alone with him--to be alone.

And yet, despite the longing, the haunting sense of a sword of Fate hanging over her, Patrine found the Wardroom lunch a jolly banquet. They were so young, those sunburnt faces, laughing about the plainly-furnished board. The Wing-Commander in charge of the Station proved to be something under thirty. To Patrine, occupying the place of honour on his right hand, he did the honours like a veteran. One of the navigators of the Batboat sat upon her other side, and Sherbrand was her _vis-a-vis_.