Part 22

Lawrence had resolved not to imitate the enemy in hurling a bomb while the machines were flashing past in opposite directions. His missiles were too precious for one to be wasted. As the aeroplanes met, he heard two cracks, followed by two metallic thuds on the iron plates below his chassis: the enemy had fired. What effect their shots had he knew not, but neither the engine nor the occupants suffered any injury. He had already commenced a turning movement. Completing his circle, he steered straight after the enemy, who were heading directly up the valley. There had been no explosion on the track or in the mine compounds as they passed: so far his tactics had justified themselves.

But Lawrence had not been more than a few seconds in pursuit before he found that in speed his machine was utterly outclassed. The enemy seemed almost to leave him standing. This was not unexpected; but as soon as he was sure of it he felt that his course of action was clearly marked out. It would be a fatal mistake to give the enemy enough air-room to take advantage of their superiority. If they got plenty of space for manoeuvring they could rise as far above him as they pleased, and either shatter the aeroplane with a well-placed bomb, or, having two rifles to one, could wait an opening for a shot that would incapacitate himself or Fazl, perhaps both. He must devote all his energy and skill to dodging and deluding the enemy, attacking them if occasion offered, in any case keeping them constantly employed. Their engine must consume a much larger quantity of petrol and lubricant than his. They must have used up a great deal in flying from their starting-place--Tash Kend, he presumed--and it was unlikely that there was any supply with the army at the end of the valley from which they could replenish their tanks. If he could only manoeuvre so as to starve them out of fuel, all their superiorities would be nullified and their usefulness would have vanished.

It was a question now of calculating chances, or rather of guessing--like the children's game when one brings his closed fists from behind his back and asks another to guess which hand holds the concealed object. When the two aeroplanes were out of sight, the occupants of neither could know what the others were doing. They could only make a random shot at the probabilities. Lawrence felt pretty sure that the enemy would seek to rise to a greater altitude than they supposed him to be attaining. He therefore decided to descend at once, and hover in the lower part of the valley. A long vol plane northward brought him within a short distance of the struggle going on at the bend. As he sped by, he ordered Fazl to drop a bomb among the enemy beyond the breastwork, then swooped past, three or four hundred feet above the river, turned at the first possible spot, and flew back to meet the enemy. As he expected, they had risen to a great height. Flying low as he now was, they were probably two thousand feet above him. When they saw him, they at once began to descend; but the machines were rushing in opposite directions so swiftly that the vertical distance between them was lessened by only two or three hundred feet when they met. A few seconds after they had passed, Lawrence heard two explosions, and Fazl reported that the enemy's bombs had fallen, one in the river, the other on the cliff-side. Again they had missed their aim.

Lawrence knew that they could not return within fifteen minutes. While it was important to him that they should waste their petrol, it was equally important that he should husband his, for he had very little left at the shed. It occurred to him that there would be time to alight on the platform, run to the mine to see how things were passing there, and get back in time to fly off before the enemy came in sight. He therefore wheeled round at his usual place, and in less than a minute slid gently on to the ledge. Leaving Fazl to look to the engine, he ran along the pathway, and on turning the corner saw with some astonishment that hostilities had apparently ceased. The breastwork was still manned by Bob and his party: Lawrence almost winced as he noticed how large a number of bodies lay prostrate around them. The enemy were invisible: it seemed certain that their attack had been repulsed.

The mine compounds were deserted, except by Gur Buksh and two other men, whom Lawrence recognised in a moment as Chunda Beg and Shan Tai. These three were reclining against the wall near the machine gun. Every other fighting man had crossed the bridge to bear his part in the holding of the track. Lawrence felt a thrill of pride in the courage and loyalty of the cook and the khansaman, who, house servants as they were, often held in scorn by the warriors, had in this hour of peril given their assistance to the steadfast havildar.

He hurried on to the compound, noting as he passed the havoc wrought by the one bomb from the hostile aeroplane which had hit the mark. Gur Buksh and the others saluted as gravely as if it were the prime of peace.

"What has happened?" asked Lawrence breathlessly.

The havildar related how the appearance of the enemy's aeroplane had been the signal for a more ferocious bombardment than had before taken place. When the breastwork was half ruined by the shells, a swarm of Kalmucks rushed to the attack with yells of anticipated triumph, while the defenders, who had remained in comparative safety some distance away, leapt back to their places at the shattered rampart. The enemy, coming unawares on the wire entanglements, had been thrown into an unwieldy and disordered mass; and after a few minutes of desperate efforts to break through the obstacle, with partial success, they had been so withered by the defenders' fire that flesh and blood could endure no more. They had fled, a confused rabble, to their own entrenchment.

There was no time for Lawrence to hear more, or to discuss with the imperturbable Sikh any measures that might be devised to assist the heroic fighters on the other bank. He knew well that the check could be only temporary, and could not think without distress of the issue of the next attack. Hurrying back to the ledge, he and Fazl got into their places, ready to fly off directly they heard the returning aeroplane. The Gurkha's ears first caught the throbbing drone, and as the machine once more rose into the air, the field guns recommenced to bark and spit.

As soon as Lawrence reached his turning-place he began to climb. In a few moments he caught sight of the enemy's aeroplane skimming round the bend below the mine. It was much lower than before, probably no more than three hundred feet above Lawrence, and as soon as the airmen caught sight of him, they dipped so suddenly as almost to suggest that the machine was beyond control. But Lawrence realised that the descent was intentional. They meant to come as close above him as they could in the half mile between them. He ceased to mount, and steered straight down the valley, hugging the cliff on the left hand. The enemy followed his manoeuvre, edging to their right in order to pass immediately above him. The two aeroplanes were only about a hundred yards horizontally apart when with a quick movement of his rudder, which threw a hazardous strain upon the planes, Lawrence shot out over the river. Before the enemy could alter their own course he had passed well outside them. Their bombs, dropped hurriedly while the pilot was striving to cope with Lawrence's sudden movement, fell harmlessly into the river.

The enemy's turning-place up stream being much nearer the mine than that in the opposite direction, there was no time to alight again and save expenditure of petrol. But there was time to lend aid to the defenders at the breastwork. Lawrence flew on, instructing Fazl to hurl a bomb among the enemy as he passed the bend. Two teams of horses were dragging more field guns up to the rampart. It was among these that Fazl let fall his bomb, and looking back, he shouted gleefully that one of the teams had stampeded and dashed with their gun over the bank into the river, while the other were plunging furiously amid a smother of smoke. At the same time the rattle of the machine gun announced that Gur Buksh was again at work.

Lawrence did not wish to fly six or seven miles down the river to the wide bay in which he was sure the enemy had turned. To wheel round earlier involved some risk, but it was a risk from which his strung-up nerves did not flinch.

About three-fourths of a mile beyond the bend, at the spot where the enemy had established themselves after their first repulse, the gorge curved to the west, and in the cliff-face there was an extensive depression, scooped out as it were by a landslip. He resolved to try his luck there. The margin was perilously narrow, and only a man absolutely familiar with the spot, as he was, and prepared for the turning movement at the very moment of reaching it, could have hoped to wheel in the space.

At the critical point he banked up at a sharp angle, and for one brief moment felt a cold shudder of fear as he recognised the beginning of the sideslip that had brought disaster on so many reckless or unfortunate airmen. But the planes recovered their grip; the machine swung round across the river, having shaved the cliff on the left by an appallingly fine margin; and flew lightly and evenly up stream again.

By this daring feat Lawrence had saved nearly ten miles and the equivalent quantity of petrol. He had also avoided a meeting with the enemy on the north side of the mine, where manoeuvring to dodge them would have been much more difficult. By alighting when they next passed him he would again save while they were expending, and however large their supply had been when they started, it could not much longer stand the drain of continual flight up and down the river. Even now, since entering the valley, they must have travelled a good deal more than a hundred miles; their flight from headquarters might have been three hundred. No doubt a further supply of fuel and oil had been despatched after them, but it would take a week or more to reach them over such rugged country. If he could only keep them fruitlessly employed until they were forced to leave the gorge through failing petrol, he would gain perhaps just enough time for the garrison to prolong their defence until the expected relief force arrived.

Thought is quicker even than an aeroplane's flight: these hopes, conjectures, volitions flashed through Lawrence's mind in the interval between his venturesome circuit and his arrival at the bend. The bombardment had recommenced. Two guns had been got into position; others were being hauled up the track. A hot rifle fire was opened upon the aeroplane, and both pilot and passenger were struck by fragments of bullets that had splintered on the metal work. Their great speed soon carried them out of further danger, but the bomb which Fazl dropped missed its aim, exploded on the rocky bank instead of on the track, and did little harm.

Lawrence guessed that the Kalmuck airmen would now suppose him to have risen, and would themselves be mounting in order to keep above him. He therefore resolved to keep low. The sequel showed that the enemy had been cunning enough to guess at his guess. When they reappeared, so far from ascending they were descending, yet gradually, so that they might adapt their course to the exigencies of the moment. They were now only two hundred feet above him.

This time he decided not to rush past and continue his flight up stream, but to wheel at the turning-place, and save time and petrol by flying back in their wake to his platform. He realised afterwards that he began his turning movement a trifle too soon, though, as the event proved, his indiscretion served him well. The enemy had not quite met him when he shifted his rudder for circling round the bay. He expected them to flash by as usual at express speed, but to his intense astonishment and alarm he found that instead of continuing on their direct course they had suddenly banked over, and were wheeling above him in the same direction as himself. It was a manoeuvre of extraordinary daring, for the larger aeroplane required a much wider circle than the smaller, and in order to clear the cliffs it had to remain banked up at a dangerously sharp angle.

Lawrence felt himself trapped. He could not fly out at either end of the bay, he thought, without being immediately followed by the enemy, who would then have him at their mercy. Yet he was in equal danger if he remained circling below them, for though their flight was swifter than his, at some moment their machine would be vertically above him, and they would doubtless seize that moment for hurling a bomb. He could not descend without shattering the aeroplane on the banks or plunging into the river. He felt as helpless as a pigeon beneath an eagle.

It was indeed an extraordinary situation: two aeroplanes wheeling round and round in a cup-like hollow, with less than two hundred feet of space between them. The Kalmucks had not as yet fired or dropped a bomb: Lawrence imagined them gloating over their helpless victim, awaiting a favourable moment for one crushing stroke. The first shot was fired by Fazl; the enemy replied, but instead of keeping up a continuous fire, they ceased after a few shots, which riddled the planes, but hit no vital part. Lawrence wondered at their abstinence, until, following them with his eyes, he had a sudden conviction that they were in difficulties. The machine was banked up to the extreme limit of safety, and it flashed upon him that the enemy, and not himself, were caged. They could not ascend, for, a few hundred feet above them, the cliff on the west side of the stream hung forward in a jagged bluff that came within the circle of their flight. Contact with it would hurl them into the river. Nor could they leave the bay by either of the exits north or south without the risk of colliding with the cliffs, for the space was so narrow, and the speed of the machine so great, that the movements necessary for unbanking and steering could hardly be performed in the fraction of a second between their quitting the bay and running into the straight. It is one thing for a wasp to fly into a bottle, and quite another to fly out again.

The machines had completed several circles before Lawrence had grasped the situation. During this time Fazl had been steadily firing, but the enemy had been silent. Suddenly the Gurkha uttered a shout; one of the Kalmucks fell from the aeroplane, and whirled over and over in the air until he struck the river and disappeared.

"Don't fire again!" cried Lawrence.

He had become conscious that the perpendicular distance between the two planes was rapidly diminishing. The enemy's engine had not failed; their speed was the same; yet it was plain that moment by moment they were drawing nearer to the plane below. If the machines had been ships, Lawrence would have been tempted to believe that the enemy were trying to board; but he knew that a collision would be fatal to both. He was at a loss to explain the strange movement; indeed, he had little time to think of it, for he realised that unless he himself made his escape, his machine would be soon hurled to the bottom by the impact of the larger. He had not found it necessary to bank so much as the Kalmuck pilot. His lesser speed and the greater handiness of his aeroplane enabled him to fly out at the exit without the almost certainty of dashing against the cliff. At his next round he steered straight through the northern gap, and flew back in a flush of wonder and excitement to the platform.

As he expected, the enemy did not follow him. Alighting he rushed to the projecting buttress and gazed up the valley. He could see the doomed aeroplane as it flashed across the opening of the bay. It was still whirling round and round, but falling, falling with ever increasing velocity. He shuddered with horror as he contemplated the inevitable end. He did not witness the actual close of the tragedy. The aeroplane as it neared the bottom was hidden from him by the rocky banks of the river. But half a minute after he himself stood in trembling safety a tremendous explosion shook the ground, and a cloud of smoke and broken rocks shot high into the air. Then there was a burst of flame, and he knew that all was over.

Overcome with sickness at the terrible end of these gallant airmen, and with nervous exhaustion after his own wearing efforts, he lay flat on the rock to recover his composure. Thinking over the recent scene, he hit upon a conjectural explanation of the uncontrollable descent of the enemy's aeroplane. He supposed that, with the machine so critically banked up in order to navigate the narrow cup, the pilot had been quite unable to make those delicate adjustments of the planes and the elevator that were necessary to counteract the dragging force of gravity. Later on, when he had an opportunity of discussing the matter with his brother, Bob scouted his theory, declaring that while the petrol lasted nothing could have prevented the machine from whirling round and round. But Lawrence stuck to his opinion, and Bob very naturally declared that it was not a matter he would care to put to the test.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH

AD INFIMOS

Just as the ticking of the household clock is unnoticed, but its cessation is immediately remarked; so it was not until the coughing roar of the field guns, which had continued ever since Lawrence last soared over the bend, suddenly ceased, that he was roused to full consciousness of the critical situation at the mine. Springing up, he ran with Fazl along the pathway until he came to a spot where the whole theatre of the combat could be viewed.

The noise of the guns had been followed by a hoarse babel of cries mingled with the crackle of rifles. He was just in time to see a swarm of Kalmucks surge over the breastwork, and Bob with his devoted band rushing up the track to the second rampart a hundred yards away. The machine gun beneath the north wall of the mine was silent; nobody was to be seen in the compound; and Lawrence's heart sank with dread lest the gun had been smashed, and Gur Buksh and his voluntary assistants slain.

In a moment, however, Fazl drew his attention excitedly to three men lying flat on their faces upon the drawbridge. He recognised them at once as the havildar, Shan Tai and Chunda Beg. But what were they doing? Their arms were moving swiftly this way and that, like the arms of tailors sewing.

"See, sahib!" cried Fazl, lifting his hand and pointing in still more excitement.

And then Lawrence saw that the bridge was no longer a bridge. The end which had rested on the rock in mid stream had been shattered by a shell, and Gur Buksh and his companions were working with might and main to replace the broken portion with rope. Fortunately, prone as they lay, they were for the present concealed from the enemy by the breastwork manned by the diminished garrison; but they would be in full view when they rose to return to the compound. When the time should come for the whole party to beat a final retreat, it would be almost impossible for a single man to escape being shot down.

Lawrence looked down the track. Fighting had ceased. The Kalmucks who had sprung over the breastwork had been recalled. A great number were engaged in repairing and strengthening the rampart, so as to render their gunners secure from enfilading fire. Behind, another crowd was dragging more guns into position, and Lawrence noticed that there were now machine guns as well as field pieces. The fact that Bob's men were not firing seemed to indicate that their ammunition was failing. The captured field gun was now useless for lack of shells; Gur Buksh had very little ammunition for his gun, and in any case he could not return to it until his work on the bridge was finished. It was of vital importance that the retreat to the mine should be kept open. What alarmed Lawrence most of all was his certainty that, even with the bridge repaired, the little band of thirty fighters were practically cut off because they could only cross under the enemy's fire. As soon as the enemy's guns were placed, the second rampart would be knocked to pieces in a few minutes at so short a range. The garrison would be swept up the track, or shot in attempting to regain the mine. The siege would be at an end, for so determined an enemy would doubtless find some means of crossing the river, even if the defenders escaped destruction and cut down the bridge behind them. They might hold out for a little, perhaps, in the dark and narrow galleries; but as soon as the enemy played on these with their artillery, they would be rendered untenable by the deadly fumes. It seemed that before the sun went down the whole place would be in the hands of the Kalmucks, and there would no longer be any impediment to their march.

The one thing needful, to prolong the struggle even for a few hours, was to bring the garrison back into the compound. There were still a few bombs left; by attacking the enemy with these Lawrence thought he might gain just enough time for the retreat. When he had done that he would fly southward to look for the relief force, and if it were in sight, urge it to haste. The mere knowledge that it was approaching would put heart into the weary garrison, and nerve them for prolonged resistance.

"How much petrol is left?" he asked Fazl.

"Eight or nine gallons, sahib--and a little paraffin also."

This might suffice for a couple of hours' flight; then the aeroplane would be out of action. Anything further that Lawrence could do must then be done at his brother's side.

He told Fazl what he proposed to do.

"I will run across the bridge and let Bob Sahib know," said the Gurkha.

"No; it's too dangerous. Just give a shout to attract his attention, and I will semaphore to him."

A piercing cry rolled across the river. Behind his rampart Bob turned and waved his hand. Lawrence instantly signalled that he had a message to give. At the spot where he stood, while in full view of Bob, he was invisible to the enemy a hundred yards farther north. He began to work his arms in the movements of the flag-signal code. Fazl meanwhile returned to the aeroplane, tested the engine, put on board the whole remaining stock of petrol, together with lubricant and a couple of gallons of paraffin left from the quantity brought from the frontier house, and all the bombs.

The conversation by semaphore took some little time. Bob wanted to know what had become of the enemy's aeroplane. Lawrence replied merely that it was out of action, without giving particulars. Having explained what he proposed to do, and obtained Bob's assent, he returned to the platform, and was soon flying up the river. At the turning-place he saw on the bank below the blackened ruins of the enemy's machine. When he wheeled round and approached the bend, he became the target for the Kalmucks' rifles, and as he had not risen very high the bullets whistled around unpleasantly near. Just before he reached the enemy's breastwork Fazl dropped two bombs; there was a double explosion, and the man reported that they had fallen apparently at the right spot, though the dust and smoke prevented him from seeing the effect.

Lawrence flew on. In spite of the necessity of economizing fuel, he did not again attempt his previous risky turn, but went on until he reached the place where wheeling could be performed without danger. The track was swarming with the enemy. They did not now fire at him; he guessed that these men could hardly distinguish his machine from their own.