Then he was pushed on by a firm, unrelenting hand which reminded him vividly of that of a policeman. As he was propelled through the door he had a glimpse of Bill being hoisted bodily on to his feet by several of the strange soldiers. Behind him, Oswald was asking imploring questions in his thin expostulating voice. They received no reply. The trio were pushed swiftly, inexorably, into the street.
Outside in the bright sunshine they perceived that the village was full of cavalrymen garbed in an unfamiliar uniform. Their position was obvious. They had been captured by the enemy's advance-guard. Just without the door they were halted and the danger of any movement was explained to them in dumb show by a soldier who allowed them a disconcerting view down the muzzle of a rifle.
In front of the inn was a rustic bench and table, occupied at the moment by a big, fair-moustached man who bent over a map. Around him a group of officers stood waiting in respectful attitudes. Presently the fair-moustached man looked up and said a few words to one of the officers. He had a good-humoured, smiling face, that man. The trio contemplated it anxiously and drew some comfort from its jovial appearance.
Sam turned to his companions.
"Mates," he said huskily, "we're copped. But mind, we don't know nuffink. We ain't goin' to give the boys away, are we?"
"No, Sam," replied Bill, even more huskily. "Wot'll they do to us, d'yer think?"
"Nuffink," was the answer. "We're soldiers—they don't shoot prisoners."
Oswald drew a long breath of relief at this. Sam looked at him sharply.
"Mind—not a word, you little skunk—or I'll bash yer 'ead in."
"All right, mate," said Oswald. "I ain't goin' to peach."
The good-humoured officer on the bench spoke a couple of sharp words. Immediately the prisoners were pushed in front of him. A pair of very blueeyes looked over them, seemed to smile at them, they thought and hoped.
"What are you?" he asked sharply in English.
"Soldiers, sir," replied Sam quickly. Not very confident of the discretion of his companions, he was anxious to make himself the spokesman of the party.
"Indeed? What corps?"
The blue eyes smiled on Sam. He felt them dangerously fascinating. It was with an effort that he kept himself from a reply and remained silent. His dull faculties were desperately on the defensive.
"What corps?"
No answer.
The officer drew out a heavy gold watch. He smiled outright at them.
"I give you five minutes. If you do not reply, you will be shot against that wall."
"We're soldiers—prisoners of war, sir," said Sam. "You can't shoot prisoners of war."
"Indeed!" The blue eyes above the fair moustache looked innocently amused. "You call yourselves soldiers—to what corps do you belong? To what regiment? Where are your shoulder-straps?" He got angry suddenly. "Tell me at once what regiments—what time they passed here, or you go against that wall!"
Sam set his teeth and went pale. The consequences of their anonymity became plain to him. He met the eyes of the quick-witted little Cockney rogue. The cunning, ill-shaped face was lit with a feverish excitement.
"Don't yer see, mate?" he whispered eagerly."Our chaps 'ave give 'em the slip. 'E wants to find out wot corps passed through 'ere——"
"Silence!—Answer, you!"
The fascinating blue eyes looked at Sam, almost mesmerised him.
"We're soldiers—prisoners o' war," he repeated doggedly.
"Soldiers! Soldiers without regiments—without corps! Prove it then, my man. Quick! I have no time to waste. Where are your shoulder-straps? Your identification papers?"
The trio remained silent. The officer adopted a more cajoling tone.
"Come, come, my man. You don't want to throw your lives away on a trifle. I am willing to treat you as prisoners of war if you prove to me that you are soldiers. Tell me your regiments."
The trio stood in stubborn silence, the ex-navvies rather sheepish, the Cockney rogue watching the questioner with quick and knowing eyes. "No? Then you are spies." He turned to his men and uttered a brief order, pointing to Sam.
On the instant the ex-navvy found himself pushed with his back against the wall, looking into a grim row of rifle-barrels. The squad that menaced him stood equably waiting the word of command. The officer rose, walked across to him and smiled in his face. Once more he drew out his watch.
"One minute," he said pleasantly. "One minute to prove that you are a soldier and no spy."
Sam stood as erect as suddenly enfeebled knees would let him. He felt the bricks of the wall pushingagainst his back in the instinctive retreat of his body from the imminent danger. His eyes were fixed on the officer who stood calmly regarding his watch. He felt sick and dizzy and very cold. He shivered as in a mantle of ice. His mouth went dry. The panic-stricken part of his brain began an attempt to count the seconds without any revolt at the stubborn decision of his directing self. One, two, three—twenty—thirty—the minute seemed endlessly long. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, striving desperately to bring himself to speech in the fraction of time which remained to him. He succeeded.
His voice came raucously, an agonised appeal.
"Mates!—Remember—the Ole Kent Road!"
The officer uttered a sharp sound and the windows shook with the loud report of the rifles. In a thin haze of smoke, the prisoners saw Sam lurch forward, his arms outstretched, swaying on his toes for one ghastly moment ere he pitched.
The officer calmly replaced his watch and brushed past Oswald. He seized Bill by the arm.
"You!" he said, with that sudden and disconcerting anger of his. "Will you speak?"
Bill stood sheepishly staring at him.
"The Ole Kent Road—'Ome!" he mumbled to himself. Relentless hands pushed him against the wall. At his feet lay Sam, a dark pool forming under him.
"Will you speak?" vociferated the officer.
"'Ome," mumbled Bill. "'Ome!—Oh, Gawd!"
He ignored the demand—seemed not to hear it.
The officer, exasperated, stamped upon the gravel. Again he uttered the sharp order, again the windows shook. Bill slid down the wall with his head on his breast.
The officer turned to the survivor, the petty rogue, nurtured fatherless in a London slum. "Now, my man," he said cheerfully. "You see I am not to be trifled with. Come—tell me what corps passed through here yesterday." He added with a smile of contempt, "These scruples are absurd in a deserter."
A cunning grin came over Oswald's face.
"Yah!" he said. "Deserter, am I? So I am, but I ain't goin' to peach on my pals. They've give yer the slip right enough—an' yer knows it. Yah!" He finished with an ugly grimace.
A moment later, he also stood with his back to the wall.
"Yah!" he cried, and grinned as at some private joke.
The rifles spoke and he spun and fell. In his pocket was the officer's gold watch.
At the foot of a bullet-marked wall lay three worthless soldiers. Far away, a beaten army, lost for the nonce in the fog of war, rallied itself without molestation for another struggle.
NERVES!
A heavynorth-east gale was setting with a flowing tide into the River Ems. Out at sea dark grey rainclouds blew raggedly over a background but little lighter in colour. The distant sea stretched away, cheerless and leaden, to a horizon that was whelmed in a grey mist where the elements met, indistinguishable. The nearer waters broke in a confused turmoil of white-caps on either hand. A heavy swell rolled dark between these shoals. Up the estuary a blur of dirty brown smoke, rising from behind a line of bleak sand-dunes, smudged the sagging sky. It rose from the little town of Emden, round the corner. A couple of tall posts, wireless "aerials," stood out black against the smoke.
In the river, just off the low sandy point, lay a long, four-funnelled cruiser. In the heavy rain-squalls which swallowed her every few minutes she looked like a thing of mist, so well did the grey of her hull and superstructure blend with the grey of sea and sky. She pitched slowly and gently at the taut-stretched cables of her bow anchors, her nose pointed seawards towards the incoming tide. From her steam-pipes the white vapour which issued, deafeningly stridulant, was torn violently away in horizontal pennons. At her peak a small flag blew out stiffly.At her stern, the ensign—black rectangular cross on white, centred with the crowned eagle and quartered with a small black cross upon the national colours, black, white and red—flattened itself out in the wind with loud claps as the gale half-released it for a second and then seized upon it again.
To and fro upon her navigating bridge the oilskin-clad officer of the watch paced restlessly. Under his sou'-wester, anxious, strained eyes peered from a haggard face whose weather-beaten brow was paled to an unhealthy yellow. Up and down he went, but never for a moment did he take those anxious eyes from the dark channel ahead of the ship's bows. The look-outs, posted at each end of the bridge close behind the canvas "dodger," gazed with equal fixity towards the sea. On their faces the same tension, the same evidence of sleepless nights, was visible. Behind them, in a wheelhouse from which the glass panels had been removed, stood a couple of quartermasters. Stiffly motionless behind the steering telemotor they conversed in low nervous voices. The hands of one of them, a giant of a man, shook continuously as he held them pendent against his thighs.
A blue-uniformed officer with gold bands across his cuffs appeared upon the bridge and approached the lieutenant. They saluted each other with a friendly nod after the formal fingers to the brow.
"Any orders yet, Herr Leutnant?" asked the new-comer. He was a heavily built man with a bluish nose that bent birdlike from between protruding eyes. He worried continually with thumband finger at a ragged grey moustache. He followed the lieutenant to a position in the centre of the bridge.
"We start directly," said the navigating lieutenant in a weary voice. "When the Herr Kapitän returns."
Both stared silently down at the roof of the conning-tower just below them, and at the two long guns which emerged from the turret in front of it. The open manhole in the conning-tower vitalised the familiar objects with a touch of grim expectation.
"Ach!" said the engineer at last gloomily. "It is perhaps better—I cannot sleep here—I cannot read."
"Sleep!" echoed the lieutenant. "I have not slept for a week. I see always those cursed destroyers slipping through the mist—I see them when I close my eyes—I see them when I am on duty—I know no longer whether I see them or not—and worse than the destroyers——" he broke off suddenly.
"Ach, ja," said the engineer, "you have had a bad time—but you can at least see the danger coming—sometimes, down there, I begin to imagine things—I have not let myself imagine, Herr Leutnant—I have read the sublime words of Zarathustra—I could always read them—but now I can, no longer. How long have we been here, Bielefeld?" he finished abruptly.
"Four days."
"Ach so! I thought it was a week—what days!"
"Jawohl!"
The two men fell silent again, staring at the sea. Once the lieutenant made a quick movement of alarm, whipped out his binoculars, and gazed intothe grey distance. He put them back after some minutes without a word. On the whole ship was no other sound than the strident rasp of the escaping steam and the drone of the gale through the wind-tautened stays.
The engineer spoke again.
"What does Borkum say?"
"Enemy disappeared into the offing—could not keep their stations in this weather."
"It is our chance, then."
"Yes—perhaps."
"You fear——?"
"Everything—in this rat-trap. The picket-boats are all in. If only we could start!"
"Jawohl—anything is better than this—besides, the movement of the engines is soothing—this stillness day after day is unnerving. If only we had some good Welsh coal! This soft stuff! One burns and burns and gets no heat!"
"And advertise ourselves to every cursed scout in the North Sea!"
A sailor, heavy in oilskins, drew up and saluted.
"The Herr Kapitän is coming, Herr Leutnant."
The engineer disappeared. His friend went to the starboard rail of the bridge and looked over. A motor-boat was approaching in a smother of flying spray.
A boatswain's whistle shrilled loudly. A minute later the captain came up the ladder onto the bridge, shaking the water from his oilskins like a wet dog and dabbing at his square reddish beard with a handkerchief. The lieutenant saluted, searching hiscommander's face for a hint of the orders he bore. The captain's eyes were hard, the eyes of a man who had been contemplating desperate possibilities. His bluish lips cut in a thin straight line across his beard. He spoke curtly.
"Get the starboard anchor up. Tell the Herr Stabs-Ingenieur I wish to speak to him."
He went heavily into the wheelhouse and bent over the chart. Outside, the lieutenant blew his whistle and shouted an order. An instant later the shrill piping of the boatswain repeated the call. There was a scurry of men along the deck towards the bows and the clank of a capstan hauling in the heavy chain.
The staff-engineer stood in conversation with the captain. In the low murmur of their voices certain words were emphasised by repetition—"Knots—this coal—revolutions—coal." The captain nodded.
"Do your best," he said briefly.
"We make a dash for it?" queried the engineer. Still he worried at his ragged moustache and the protruding eyes above his beaklike nose moved with little quick stares like a frightened bird.
The captain smiled grimly.
"We rejoin the fleet—while we can—those are the orders. We will do our best and God be with us—do you find that maxim in Zarathustra, Herr Wollenmetz?"
The engineer shrugged his shoulders.
"Ach! I know no longer, Herr Kapitän—anything is better than this—anything!"
"We start at once," said the captain and went out onto the bridge without more words. The ship'sbugler saluted and stood stiffly to attention as he emerged.
"Battle stations!" said the captain.
The howl of the gale in the rigging was lost in the sternly joyous run of brazen notes, taken up and repeated all over the vessel. For a minute or two the erstwhile deserted decks swarmed with hurrying men. They disappeared rapidly into turrets, fighting-tops, fire-control stations or stood, alert, behind the unprotected anti-torpedo guns.
There was a buzz of excited voices which would not easily be hushed. At last the never-diminished tension of four long days of inaction was broken. They were going to move, to do something. No longer were they to lie there, waiting, waiting, while perhaps at any minute destruction was creeping stealthily towards them under the surface of the water. They forgot the wearing vigils of the previous weeks at sea, the unrelieved strain of watching the horizon for a grey spot in daytime or a blur closer at hand in the obscurity of the night. They forgot the awful minutes which dragged out, heavy with their lives, as they approached an unknown ship, forgot the paralysing uncertainty when the wireless began on its mysterious message, reporting her. They forgot the night alarms, the perpetual dodging of the hostile cruisers, the chases and the escapes and the last fierce pursuit, which had driven them, all but out of coal, behind the shelter of Borkum Island. The memory of these things was blotted out by the nerve-sapping suspense of the past four days, while they waited for a chance to elude the hostile cruisers watching forthem in the offing. Now they experienced the gladness of a release as from an untangible but none the less close prison. Nevertheless, all of this emotional and mental strain was marked in eyes dark-rimmed and faces that had grown thinner. The alacrity of their movements now was not the alacrity of men who leap, calm-souled and confident, to test their strength in a crisis; it was the fussiness of neurotics who are glad to translate their nerve force into physical action as an escape from the barren travail of their brains.
Volumes of black smoke rolled heavily from the four funnels of the cruiser, were blown rapidly by the gale in one thick all-obliterating mist towards the low shores. An engine-room telegraph clanged harshly while the port anchor, dripping black mud, came slowly up to the hawse-hole. Again the telegraph clanged. There was a flurry in the water astern, and the long grey cruiser commenced to move along the dark fairway into the stormy grey of the autumn afternoon.
Quickly she got into her stride. On the port bow the island of Borkum was beginning to loom up just distinguishable through the driving scud. The wireless was talking with it. Borkum reported with steady regularity: "No enemy in sight." The cruiser hurried down the eastern branch of the Ems, meeting a heavy swell that rolled darkly towards her to be divided into two thin translucent curtains of water poised like wings on either side of her bows. The shoals to port and starboard glimmered away into the distance, wide stretches of running, leaping,jostling white-caps. The water under their lee showed an ugly, dirty yellow that contrasted with the black waves of the channel. On the bridge the navigating lieutenant still peered anxiously into the veiled horizon. Every now and then he glanced back at the welter of black smoke issuing from their funnels and muttered fluent curses that were the perverted expression of the prayer in his heart. Behind him stood the captain and the commander, conversing in the intervals of raising their binoculars to their eyes.
At every minute a message from the wireless room was brought to the captain. Borkum was still talking. Suddenly the tenor of its messages changed. "Two British cruisers passing the minefield in the Western Ems." A moment later Emden reported three submarines at the fork of the channel behind. The captain smiled grimly. He could not now go back, but apparently he had given his warders the slip. He went to the engine-room telephone and spoke a few words to the chief. In answer the masses of black smoke from the funnels rolled out even more densely than before. The curtains of flying water at the bows rose a little higher and remained at the elevation. Borkum announced: "Mines evidently swept or damaged—cruisers untouched." In fact, in slight lulls of the gale, slow dull booms were audible to leeward. The batteries on the island were firing. The captain turned and laughed with the commander. The situation could not be more favourable. They had as good as escaped.
A few long minutes and they had reached the opensea. Borkum was a grey blur on their port quarter, the land to the east of them passed into invisibility. Here they felt the full force of the gale. The cruiser nosed into great waves that leaped green above the bows and fell with a heavy thud upon the deck. She endeavoured to combine a steady roll with violent pitching, and the officers on the bridge clutched at the rail with one hand while with the other they pressed their glasses hard against their eyes. The veils of driving mist which swept continuously across the waters might hide a menace that would loom up at any instant as destruction. Suddenly a telephone bell rang in the wheelhouse behind them. A man ran out, saluted and reported:
"Submarine right ahead—about 1000 metres."
The message came from an observing station on the foremast. The three officers on the bridge searched the sea in front of them with their binoculars. Yes! No! Yes! The navigating lieutenant saw a flitting patch of foam on the dark sea, a splash in the air as a wave lifted. He recognised it instantly as a periscope cutting through the water, coming straight towards them. They must shoot—shoot at once! He turned to his superiors. The captain had already shouted one order, was now yelling instructions to the men at the port anti-torpedo guns. The cruiser turned slightly to starboard. Onward drove the patch of foam, aiming apparently at their side. The lieutenant felt his left hand hurt him—it was the intensity of his nervous grip upon the rail. Behind him he heard a sudden order, followed instantly by the sharp, splitting report of the light guns. Atthe same moment the circle of a conning-tower broke the surface of the sea, followed by a glistening whale-back. As it emerged he saw it veiled in a sheet of flame, a film of smoke. He had a glimpse of a great hole in the whale-back and then the submarine dived nose foremost, kicking up her stern in the air as she went. For one awful, ghastly second the lieutenant had a view of the large initial in her conning-tower. It was U—Unterseeboot!—They had sunk one of their own submarines!
He turned to see the face of his captain fixed in an expression of horror. Everyone on the bridge was trembling. They had lost command over themselves, and they knew it. No one spoke. With a fierce effort of will the lieutenant pressed his glasses to his eyes, scanned the horizon. What was that? He saw a dark spot rising and falling, circling against the grey sky like a black gull wheeling in the gale. It was a seaplane, daringly reconnoitring even in this weather. It was discovery. Borkum confirmed the fear. "Cruisers turning back to sea—difficult to range in this weather."
The guns' crews at the anti-torpedo armament had also seen the aeroplane. A shot cracked out, automatically, without orders. The captain, losing all control over his nerves after the last shock, ran along the bridge to the port rail and excitedly ordered them to continue. "Fire!" he shouted. "Fire! A hundred marks to the crew that brings it down!" His face worked with an insane hatred, his voice was the voice of a man out of himself. It seemed that he wished to revenge his terrible mistake upon theaeroplane. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the guns, while the men behind the rubber shoulder-pieces swore violent oaths. The firing had continued for a couple of minutes or more when the telephone bell rang again.
"The lieutenant in the observing station wishes to know what you are firing at, Herr Kapitän!"
The captain was about to discharge a volley of oaths upon the man when a sharp cry from the commander stopped him. The captain looked again through his glasses. It was suddenly obvious to everybody that the aeroplane was no aeroplane but in actual fact a wheeling gull.
"Cease fire, you—(objurgatory)—fools!" yelled the captain. In a nervous rage he bit furiously at the red beard below his lip. "Tell the Herr Leutnant Feldmann to keep a better look out!" he said savagely to the messenger.
Eight bells sounded. The navigating lieutenant was relieved. He descended from the bridge and stood for a moment in a warm spot in the lee of the forward funnel, trying to achieve a yawn that kept opening his mouth without filling his lungs. His blood, drugged with fatigue-toxins, was in urgent need of more oxygen, but his overtaxed nerves failed to synchronise the action of the muscles. His eyes burned in his head. He stumbled down the companionway, rubbing at them, and took off his dripping oilskins outside the wardroom door. His servant appeared and was ordered to bring him a stiff tumbler of brandy. Then he entered the empty wardroom and flung himself full length upon a sofa. He triedto shut his eyes, but found himself obstinately staring wide awake at a paint-blister on the bulkhead. Disconnected thoughts—visions, rather, of craft of various types driving through the gale passed through his brain. Especially the black dot of the seaplane which was no seaplane danced before his eyes, maddening him with its refusal to be banished. Behind a door in his consciousness was the horror of the sunk submarine—he fought hard to keep that door closed, and caught himself staring into it in intervals of relaxed vigilance. He could not sleep, try as he would. Even the strong spirits failed to narcotise him. If anything they spurred his harassed brain into greater activity. He fretted for a drowsiness that would not come. At last, with a curse, he rose and walked out of the wardroom.
Outside he stood for a moment, hesitating, craving for companionship like a sick man who lies awake at night. He ran over the list of his comrades at their battle stations. Then he made his way down to the engine-room.
A stifling atmosphere, hot, damp and thick with the smell of oil, assailed him as he descended the steep iron ladder. The sweat broke out on his brow as he passed along a gloomy narrow corridor, just wide enough for a man, between packed boiler-tubes ranged on both sides to the roof like bottles in a wine merchant's vault. He emerged finally into a large space, brilliant with electric light. On a platform at one end stood the staff-engineer with some of his assistants, surrounded by a formidable array of indicator-dials, telegraphs, telephones, speaking-tubes, and other fittings of whose use he had but a vague idea. The engineer still worried at his little grey moustache as he gazed below him to where the turbines hummed in their casings. It was comparatively quiet down here. Only a few men were visible, but the lieutenant knew that a hundred or so were labouring fiercely in the bowels of this mass of mechanism which gave the ship her life. From a manhole at the other end of the engine-room a couple of men were drawing out what seemed to be a corpse, its naked torso black as with an explosion. It was a stoker who had collapsed. The staff-engineer frowned as the limp body was carried off to the sick bay. He turned and snarled irritably at the question of the lieutenant.
"250 revolutions and not a turn more can we get out of this Gott-verfluchte coal. That is the tenth man in the last quarter of an hour. There's no use in worrying us. We can do no more. Go and tell that to the Herr Kapitän and leave us to our work."
"It seems clear in front, but there is a couple of cruisers somewhere behind," observed the lieutenant in a placatory voice.
"I don't care if Hell's in front of us and the Devil himself behind!" roared the engineer, losing self-control in the exasperation of his nerves. "We should at least get something that would give some heat there.Gott sei dank!Do you know how many tons of this muck we are burning per hour?" he finished savagely.
The lieutenant waited for the answer.
"Thirty tons per hour—and we are only getting250 revolutions—go and tell that to the Herr Kapitän!"
The lieutenant's own irritation was inflamed by this display of temper.
"We didn't supply the coal——"
The engineer overwhelmed him with a roar of curses, and finished with an angry order to leave his engine-room. His bulging, birdlike eyes glared with an insane hatred.
The lieutenant returned a bitter retort that had no justification in fact and climbed up the ladders to the deck. There he stood swaying for a moment or two, chilled to the bone by the change in temperature, although he was on the lee side of the superstructure. Raindrops splashed heavily upon him from above. The ship was plunging and rolling more than ever, and he noticed the motion after the comparative quiet below. The gale had evidently freshened. He shivered with cold and half-turned to go below again. Then he changed his mind and stumbled forward, slipping at every step on the wet, unstable deck.
In the forward turret was his friend Gunnery Lieutenant Arenschmidt. He opened the steel door and entered. The narrow metal box into which the breeches of two 8·2 guns protruded was lit by electric lamps behind wire guards. It was filled with the crews of the two guns, seated comfortably on the floor with their backs against the walls. In the shell-bins at the top of the ammunition-hoists a projectile lay ready for each gun. The gunnery lieutenant rose as his friend entered and held out his hand witha smile. He was a jolly young man, this lieutenant, whose manly beauty, marred though it was by a student sabre-cut, fluttered many a female heart. He spoke now with all his usual boisterous good-humour.
"Hallo, Bielefeld! Glad to see you! Giving them the slip after all?"
Despite the buoyancy of his tone the navigating-lieutenant noticed that his lips trembled and that his eyes were deadly serious.
Ere any reply was possible, a bell rang sharply. The gunnery lieutenant jumped away from his friend. The indicators from the forward fire-control station marked a direction, an elevation and a range. The navigating lieutenant stood back away from the alert groups behind the breeches. He felt the floor turning with him while the ship lurched heavily. A moment later he heard a muffled thud and everything shook. The starboard gun had been fired. He heard the hiss of the air-blast clearing the fumes from the firing-chamber, and then the breech was swung open. The hydraulic chain-rammer, jointed like a foot-rule, pushed another shell into place, followed by its charges. The hoists rattled as another projectile came up in readiness. The bell rang again. The crew at the port gun were suddenly busy. There was another shock. What was happening? What were they firing at? The navigating-lieutenant dashed out of the turret, closing the door quickly behind him.
As he ran up the ladder to the bridge, he heard a roar in the air, and a moment later a great sheet offlame leaped up just in front of the forward funnel with a colossal detonation. The blast of the explosion flung him to the deck. He picked himself up, bruised, dazed, but uninjured, and looked for the enemy. The turret had swung its two guns over to starboard, and as he followed their direction they discharged with a couple of almost simultaneous reports. He steadied himself and gazed hard into the distance. In the mist on the horizon he thought he distinguished a long, low band of brownish smoke, and at one end of it a dark spot and a tiny twinkle of flame. A minute later the roar of heavy projectiles tearing through the air came to his ears. Instinctively he flung himself flat upon the deck in the shelter of a gun-turret of the starboard battery. The sharp, splitting report of the gun in that turret was blotted out on the instant by a fearful upheaval that leaped from the centre of the ship with such a blast of noise as seemed to burst his ears. He had a glimpse, he knew not how, of a sheet of lurid flame and of a mighty upspout of water on the ship's flank. In the awful silence which ensued—a silence so profound that he wondered if he were permanently deafened—he staggered to his feet. The turret in front of him had been burst open, the gun protruded askew at a curious angle. He gazed at it, motionless, as though rendered imbecile with the shock. Then a chorus of agonised screams and shrieks came from the turret and continued. He heard them with a sense of relief, so terrible was that unbroken silence. Recovering his wits, he looked about him. The second gun-shield of the starboard battery had also been destroyed, the bridge was a hanging mass of contorted scrap-iron, the wireless "aerials" streamed away to leeward in the gale. The two forward funnels had disappeared and torrents of black smoke were welling up from the level of the deck, obliterating everything. In that smoke, tongues of fire licked upwards, whether from the furnaces or from a conflagration he did not know. Automatically he began to run towards the conning-tower. Without defining itself, the thought that the captain should be informed of the state of affairs impelled him. As he went he heard again the roar of projectiles. Again he flung himself flat. This time the enemy was not so successful. A shell burst somewhere on the fore-castle. The rest flung up spouts of water all around that fell again with a heavy splash. An instant later he was hammering at the lid of the manhole in the conning-tower.
The lid was unfastened from within. He pushed it aside and slid in, feet foremost. The round steel box was filled with fumes. Through them he perceived several bodies stretched out upon the floor. He stumbled over one of them, and the handkerchief over the man's face slipped aside. It was the commander. He heard the voice of one of the gunnery-lieutenants at a telephone communicating with a fire-control station, followed by rapid orders to the electricians turning the handles of the range indicators. At another telephone a man was making frantic but ineffectual efforts to get a reply from the wireless room. A junior officer at the steering wheel gave him a slow strained grin, almost like an expression of pain. The captain glared at him with eyes in which there flamed a Berserk madness.
"Well!" he shouted, sticking his red beard into the lieutenant's face.
The navigating lieutenant gave his information, staggering with the heavy lurches of the ship. It flashed on his mind while he spoke that she no longer rose so buoyantly to the waves. The captain listened, his face twitching insanely, puckering his fierce eyes. When the lieutenant spoke of the blur of smoke on the horizon he sprang round and peered out through the narrow slit between the wall and the roof. Then he turned with a cry of panic.
"They are all round us! Starboard your helm! West-by-north-west!"
The ship came round on her new course with a wallowing roll. The captain peered again through the observation slit.
Suddenly there was a fearful shock, a deafening roar, and the slit was vividly illuminated. The conning-tower had been again struck. The captain toppled backward on his heels, an object of sickening horror. The top of his head was gone. The gunnery-lieutenant sank quietly to his knees and slid over sideways. The officer at the helm was leaning over the wheel, motionless and staring. A splinter had gone through his brain. Lieutenant Bielefeld sprang to take his place. Three men beside himself, rangetakers and electricians, were left alive in the conning-tower. They seemed in a stupor, dazed by the shock.
"Telephone to Lieutenant von Waldkirch that he is now in command!"
An electrician roused himself, attempted to obey, and reported:
"The communications are broken, Herr Leutnant."
"One of you go and fetch him—he is in the after fire-control station."
A man wrenched at the lid of the manhole.
"It will not open, Herr Leutnant—it is jammed."
The lieutenant glanced at the observation slit. The aperture was no longer regular. In front of him it gaped, behind him it was closed.
"So!—then we will carry on!" His face had gone deathly pale, but his lips were tight-pressed. "Telephone to such guns as you can—independent firing!" He himself leaned over to the voice-funnel from the engine-room. "Wollenmetz!—Wollenmetz!"
The reply came in a gush of fluent curses, evidently roared with full lung-power at the other end and terminating with: "What is it?"
"Are you all well down there?" shouted the lieutenant.
"All well! We have a shell in the engine-room, the men in the forward stokeholds are all suffocated—and we have dropped to 100 revolutions—what is happening with you above? Tell me for God's sake! It is hell here!"
"We carry on—für Gott und Kaiser!" yelled the lieutenant in reply.
At the helm, he kept the cruiser steadily on her new course. Every moment he expected to feel the shock of more hits but none came. Evidently they were getting out of range. It seemed curious with the known lessening of the ship's speed, but there wasthe fact. Encouraged, he shouted down the tube to the engine-room to get all the speed they could. "We are running out of danger!" he added cheerfully. "Find out what has happened to the ship if you can—all communications are broken." For a long time he waited for a reply, but none came. His shouts down the tube elicited no response. Thus isolated from the life of the ship of which he was actually in command he kept on his course, bearing every now and then a little more to the west in his fear of the ships towards the north-east. How long he continued thus he could not tell. Every now and then he glanced at the clock in front of him. It marked always the same time. It was broken.
Rolling heavily, the cruiser ran onward, unmolested. The three men began to converse cheerfully. The possibility of escape now seemed to them a probability. The lieutenant also began to indulge the same hope, but the whereabouts of the ship which had engaged them worried him.
Suddenly there was a terrific shock, another red illumination of the slit at the top of the armour-wall, another tremendous roar. Two men who had been leaning against the wall fell dead without a scratch. The impact had killed them. The other man had sprung to the lid of the manhole, was beating against it with his fists and screaming like a maniac. Presently he sank down and hid his face in his hands, moaning like a terror-stricken child. The lieutenant ignored him in an agony of apprehension. Were they overtaken?
Outside, explosion followed explosion. The floorof the conning-tower listed steeply to starboard, and with every lift and drop of the vessel the bodies about his feet slid towards the wall. Suddenly, to his horror, he saw a wisp of smoke issuing from the voice-tube leading to the engine-room. What had happened? Had they stopped? As the ship dived down a wave he tuned himself to sensitiveness. He felt the momentary race of the screws threshing the air, just perceptible. Thank God, they were still moving! The succession of detonations outside never ceased. He could only guess at their effect and the direction from which the projectiles came. Assuming the enemy to be still to starboard, he put the helm hard over in a last despairing effort to run out of range. The compass card whirled round in the wrong direction! The steering-gear had gone.
The ship no longer rose to the seas. She rolled heavily from side to side in the trough of the waves. The lieutenant looked around helplessly at the bodies on the floor, at the wrecked indicators, at the useless wheel, at the man who rocked to and fro with his head in his hands. His continuous pitiful moaning exasperated the lieutenant to madness. He drew his revolver and commanded him, with frenzied vehemence, to be quiet. The man stared wildly at the muzzle of the revolver, opened his mouth as though about to shriek, and collapsed in a dead faint.
The lieutenant turned from him and went to the observation slit. As the ship lifted clumsily sideways on a wave he had a view of a dark grey cruiser driving through the mist, quite close—on the port side! This was a new unsuspected enemy. Water wasstreaming from her decks as she rose buoyantly on the sea. A string of flags fluttered along a halyard from her mast. She seemed as normal as a ship on manœuvres. Suddenly half a dozen spurts of bright flame broke from her dark sides. The lieutenant felt the ship under his feet shiver and stagger in a deafening roar. Then he felt the weight of his body heavy against the wall of the conning-tower. He was lying almost horizontal against that wall. Through the slit he looked out upon confused water only, in the place of sea and sky. A great wave rolled straight towards him, splashed against the conning-tower, poured through the slit in a torrent. He sprang back in pitch darkness, fighting with both hands in a last instinctive struggle for life. The solid floor went from under him, human hands clutched at his legs, blindly feeling up his trousers. He kicked—choking—in a rayless night.
Hull-down on the horizon a German battle-cruiser was reporting a strange vessel that had suddenly appeared, challenged and received her fire, and then run back into the midst of British cruisers which had immediately sunk her. Emden sent disquieting answers to urgent enquiries.
The great wireless station at Nauen received the news of another inexplicable disaster.
THE AIR SCOUT (1914)
A largelevel meadow bit squarely into the edge of the woodland. The centre of the space enclosed on three sides by trees as by a wall was an empty stretch of turf, browned by much traffic and littered with scraps of paper which are the inevitable deposit of any congregation of human beings. The left-hand side was occupied by a neat row of slate-grey motor-lorries. The right showed an equally neat array of tents and sheds over which hung a faint film of wood-smoke. At regular intervals along the third side a series of placards was affixed to the tree-trunks, each exhibiting a conspicuous number like stands at a cattle-show. The stands, however, were vacant. In front of the sheds on the right stood a little group of men in khaki, and near them two men in shirt and trousers were busy at a portable forge whence issued the film of smoke. The hammer-strokes of those men were visible and evidently delivered with force, yet, curiously enough, at a little distance they appeared to fall in silence.
[This description must not be taken as representing the vastly developed organization of the flying services to-day (1917). The incident is, of course, quite imaginary. The story was written some time before the war.]
A vast noise that came from beyond the wood swallowed all other sounds. The drowsy air of thehot noon trembled with concussions so rapid that they merged into one deep-throated, deafening roar. The field was the aeroplane depot of the Army. The roar was the roar of the battle which that Army was fighting.
Despite the apparent nearness of the strife, there was little of military spectacle about the depot. At the corner of the wood a squadron of dismounted troopers stood by their horses. A little further back, along the rough lane which led into the field, a gun mounted on a motor-lorry stuck its nose perpendicularly into the air. Three or four men sat on the lorry in easy attitudes and one stood up, glasses to his eyes, scanning the blue sky. The group of khaki-clad men paid no more attention to them than they did to the battle-din which swelled over the woodland. They were absorbed in contemplation of a large curious-looking bush which stood a few yards in front of them.
A closer look at that bush revealed that it was artificial. It was, in fact, a largish shed whose walls and roof were composed of green boughs. Men were busy within it and a shaft of sunlight that penetrated the leaves fell in a patch of gold upon some yellow fabric. The object thus illuminated was the wing of a small, single-seater monoplane.
A little apart from the other members of the group a slightly-built young fellow, garbed for the ascent, stood in earnest colloquy with a tall, lean staff-officer. Behind them the others conversed in tones just loud enough to be heard in the incessant roar. They were discussing the disaster of the dawn.
The blow of the enemy had been terrible. The Army had been smitten in its eyes. It was now only a blind giant striking at an adversary whose vision was unimpaired. The entire air-squadron of the force, rising from its harbourage at the break of day, had been suddenly assailed by a superior fleet that dropped out of the clouds upon them. Watchers from below had seen short lightning flashes stabbing the grey mist, had heard a sharp outbreak of firing, had seen phantom aeroplanes rising, circling, swooping, colliding in thin cloud, had seen the machines one after another tumble and dive, lapped by flames, in a sickening rush to earth. Not theirs alone now lay, crumpled and contorted masses of scrap-iron, over the countryside, but of theirs none had escaped. The rear of their battle-line was a picture that his scouts could report upon at leisure. What lay at the rear of his? None knew, but the vehemence of his fire told that he was pressing his advantage. The presentiment of defeat lay heavy on the little group as they disputed on the blame to be allotted for the catastrophe.
The staff-officer tugged impatiently at his little grey moustache. His teeth champed at a bit of grass that was no longer there. In his anxiety he had not noticed that it had fallen from his mouth.
"I wish those chaps would be quick," he said. "The General is most anxious to have that flank cleared up."
"They are being quick, sir," replied the aviator, with a smile. His keen, thoughtful face showed that he was not indifferent to the urgency of the situation,but his calm mouth told of nerves that nothing could shake. Within that green bower lay the one hope of the Army—its lightest and swiftest monoplane, damaged in landing the day before, now being repaired as fast as skilled hands could do the work.
"You quite understand, don't you?" said the staff-officer, repeating himself for the tenth time. "The General thinks that a movement is in progress against our right flank. A screen is extending there which he cannot penetrate. If they are moving a large force round us he can detach the Sixth Division to hold them, and with a massed attack he'll crumple up their left centre which they must have weakened. He'll repeat Salamanca, that's what he said—I don't know what happened at Salamanca," he concluded irritably, "but anyway he daren't move a man till he's sure. I wish your chaps would get finished." He looked up into the air above him with a circling glance. "How many have they got now?"
"Four, I make it," replied the aviator equably. "They had ten yesterday. Five were smashed up this morning. One got winged an hour ago."
At that moment a dirty and perspiring man came out of the bower and, approaching them, saluted.
"Ready, sir," he said.
"Right. Get her out, then," said the aviator. "No! Wait!" His gaze had gone up to the sky. "There he comes again."
"D—n!" said the staff-officer, staring upwards also.
High in the air an aeroplane was coming towards them, parallel with their own battle-line. In theswollen roar of the conflict, the hum of its engine was inaudible. It seemed to drift onward leisurely enough, sinking slightly as it approached but well above effective gun-fire. Tiny white dots of smoke that sprang into the air below it were a proof of that. Slowly, as though making a careful examination, it passed overhead. Suddenly it turned and dropped still lower, coming back towards them. Something had awakened suspicion in the men up there. The reason for that artificial bush became apparent. The staff-officer gazed at the aeroplane, now rapidly enlarging itself in his vision, as though mesmerised. Anxiety for that precious machine under the leaves paralysed him.
The aviator had turned to look at the gun on the motor-lorry. The group about it sat in quiet expectation. Its muzzle moved gently, came a little out of the perpendicular. The aviator looked up again at the machine drifting overhead. He heard a sudden heavy detonation on his left and almost simultaneously he saw a bright flash appear in the dark body of the aeroplane. The machine lurched, toppled, dived, and, falling rapidly, turned bottom up in the air. A couple of dark figures fell out, raced it in its rush to the ground. A long minute later it struck the centre of the field. Flames burst out of a shapeless wreck. The aviator did not heed it. He ran towards the bower.
"Quick!" he cried. "Get her out!"
Torn down by twenty pairs of eager hands, the bower fell apart. The little monoplane was run out, lay like a dragon-fly resting lightly on the earth.
The aviator climbed into his seat between the wings, sent a glance from the compass to the map held open in its frame, saw that the message bags were ready to his hand, tested the strap of the field-glasses hanging from his neck with a sharp tug. He was ready. In front of him two soldier mechanics stood holding the long blades of the tractor screw. Over there, beyond the wood, the uproar of the battle mounted in violent paroxysms each of which surpassed its predecessor. The tall staff-officer approached and held out his hand.
"Good-bye—and good luck," he said, "and for Heaven's sake let us know what's happening on that flank. Don't wait to get back—drop the message." He looked at his watch. "It's now twelve—if we don't know something within an hour it's all over with our chance. Can you manage it?"
"I'll try, sir," said the aviator, checking the hour with a glance at his own clock.
The staff-officer turned an anxious pair of eyes upward for a swift look into the sky, seemed about to make a remark and then obviously refrained. "Good luck!" was all he could trust himself to say.
The aviator smiled and nodded cheerfully. Then he ejaculated a sharp order to the mechanics. They flung the blades of the tractor into revolution. The machine, emitting a series of riflelike reports, commenced to run across the field. The tractor became a blur.
The woodland appeared to rush towards him and then suddenly dropped away in a diagonal underneath. His eyes on the dial of the barograph, theaviator warped the machine round and set the planes to an acute angle of elevation. Confident in the power of his engine he mounted steeply in a spiral. The record on the dial rose with every second—100 feet—200—400. In two and a half minutes he had risen 1000 feet. He cast a swift look below him. He was still over the field, had a glimpse of a group of tiny figures clustered in front of the sheds. The rim of the horizon came up, the earth fell into a great concavity. It was like looking down into a vast bowl containing woods and fields and flattened hills. From the bowl clouds of yellow-grey dust arose like smoke and out of the dust came a multiplicity of heavy crashes that detached themselves from a background of unceasing clatter mingled with one long rolling thunderous roar.
It was but a hasty glance the aviator threw below him. Still mounting, his eyes searched the blue air on a level with himself, above him. The enemy's three machines where were they? Far off to his left a dark speck hung in the sky. He watched it intently as his machine climbed. It was a biplane. It appeared to be drifting away from him, engaged in a reconnaissance of their left flank, he decided. At any rate as yet they seemed not to have perceived him. The others were not visible. He shot a glance at the barograph—3000 feet. He had been climbing for five and a half minutes. Almost immediately he saw a trail of smoke ascending with incredible velocity in the air a little below him to his right. The trail finished abruptly in a vivid flash, a burst of white smoke and a violent detonation. The monoplanerocked from side to side in the sudden disturbance of the air but continued to climb. A second later a similar trial ended in an explosion at a level with him on his left. He saw a gash appear suddenly in the fabric of one of his planes, and the needle of the barograph switch back 50 feet with a jerk. Then the altitude record mounted again steadily—3250—3500—4000. The noise of the battle diminished as he rose, dropped to a point where it was all but obscured by the roar of his own engine. Below him the smoke trails leaped up at him and burst viciously in vain.
Four thousand five hundred—he glanced at the hostile biplane to his left and saw that it hung larger in the sky. Even in the moment for which he watched it it dilated. It was approaching at top speed. He was discovered, pursued. Instantly he turned off to his right and raced across the battlefield in the direction of the threatening flank. As he did so, he perceived another aeroplane rising from the enemy's lines. It climbed swiftly in bold swoops and then shot off towards him in a great upward slant. Two! Where was the third? He failed to discover it and held on his course.
His direction was at an angle across the battlefield which took him towards the enemy's left flank rather than to their own right. As he sped over it, he looked down upon a broad miles-long belt of yellow-grey dust that rose raggedly into the air, and was spotted with an innumerable multitude of white puffs that renewed themselves as fast as they were dissipated. In many places these puffs congregated thickly and,as they broke, linked themselves with others until they floated like little narrow clouds in the air below him. As he looked down into the great concavity of the earth he seemed to be over some enormous smoking fissure in a crater whose circumference was the horizon. The rumble and roar which ascended from it assisted the illusion. Tiny sparks of flame darted and flickered in the fumes of that inferno, and here and there flashed a number of glittering points, the reflection of the sun from advancing bayonets. To distinguish men was impossible, but in occasional rifts in the dust curtain he could make out brown patches of varying size, and, over to his left, on the enemy's side, similar though darker patches.
He could permit himself no sustained scrutiny of the scene below him for the management of the machine began to claim all his attention. Even at that great height above the battle, the air on that windless day, shaken and riven by the unceasing concussions of the massed artillery of two armies, was full of flaws. The needle of the barograph flickered, oscillated violently in leaps to and fro. The monoplane, tilted dangerously, now on one side, now on the other, in eddies of the tortured atmosphere, slid downward dizzily ere it could be brought up to climb a bank of air. It needed strong arms at the controls, a quick brain and nerves of perfect tone to keep her upon the appointed course. Glancing back, the aviator saw that the flight of the nearer of the two hostile machines, the one which had risen from the enemy's lines and was now approaching him on his left, was similarly erratic.
An overpowering heat, as from a vast open furnace, arose from the battlefield below. It was the heat from thousands of explosions, renewed incessantly and sustained over many hours. Stifling gusts blew on to the aviator's face, carrying with them a peculiar smell of burning cloth. With these gusts the roar of the battle seemed to leap up to him. The air was oppressive despite the speed at which he clove it, highly charged with electricity, heavy with the menace of a storm. Yet no cloud broke the monotony of the blue sky. The machine raced onward, was now crossing the battle lines of the enemy's left flank.
Suddenly he heard a faint rattle behind him. The hostile aeroplane, realising that it had failed to head him off, was firing furiously. He felt the machine shiver under a quick succession of hard raps. Instinctively, he pressed upon his accelerator, and, with a touch on the warping lever, the machine shot forward at terrific speed. The raps ceased. He turned his head and saw his enemy rapidly diminish in size behind him, saw that the other aeroplane, the one he had seen first, had fallen far in rear. A confident smile came on the tight lips of the aviator. He could outpace them both.
He was now above the enemy's left flank—a little to the right of the spot that the Commander-in-Chief had designated as the object of his possible attack. The scout switched off his engine and commenced to drop along a slant towards the centre of the enemy's position. With the sudden silencing of his engine the roar of the battle came up at him in a crash and stayed there. He glanced at the time—12.13—andgave himself a limit of two minutes in which to reconnoitre. For the moment he ignored his adversaries in the air. As he gazed down through the transparent panel between his feet, his glasses to his eyes, the ground that slid away under him appeared to be subjected to a constantly increasing magnification. Fields, houses, roads grew momentarily more distinct. Without taking his gaze from the scene below the aviator checked the drop of his machine and drove forward. Quickly his trained eye took in the details of the ground, the position and approximate numbers of the men that he saw massed in dark patches here and there. Over a long stretch of the position the enemy's line was obviously thinner. The country behind it was empty of troops. The General's intuition was correct. The enemy had weakened his left centre. Point Number One was settled. Now what had he done with the troops he had withdrawn?
As the aviator turned his machine to reconnoitre in the new direction, he was surprised to see the hostile aeroplane between him and his objective. Absorbed in his scrutiny of the ground, he had all but forgotten it. It was slightly higher than himself and about half a mile distant. He could not carry out his reconnaissance without coming into fatal proximity to its machine-gun, and he could not return directly over the battle lines without passing between the crossed fires of this and the other machine now drawing close. Even as the realisation of his position flashed on him, a narrow slit appeared in one of his planes. The nearer of his foes was already firing.
Quicker than thought he turned and raced off into the country behind the battle. A plan, the only one with a possible chance of success, had sprung into his mind. He had no intention of failing in this all-important mission of his. But first he must get out of the range of that deadly machine-gun. He dared not rise across it at barely half a mile range. At full speed he raced away, inclining his machine downwards. The hostile aeroplane followed, depressing her course likewise, to get him into the zone of her fire or to force him to the ground. The scout's speedometer registered 100 miles an hour. Beneath his feet he had glimpses of trees and houses and fields flitting past in a stream where salient features prolonged themselves into long blurred lines. They looked oddly large after the altitude at which he had been contemplating them. He threw a glance over his shoulder at his pursuers. The nearer was now rather more than a mile away. The other had apparently given up the chase. The clock showed 12.15; in less than two minutes he distanced his adversary by nearly a mile—he had therefore a superiority in speed of about twenty-five miles per hour. He did not consciously deduce this result. His trained mind working with incomputable swiftness under the stimulant of imminent danger gave the result like an intuition. His plan presented itself to him completely formed. At this distance he could risk the danger zone of the machine-gun for the few moments he would be in it. He swerved his machine upward and climbed steeply. In a minute the other aeroplane was level with him; beneath him. Thescout rose along a slant, slowing down his engine until his pace was almost equal to that of the machine below. Both rose steadily.
The battle din ceased altogether behind him. He flew in the seeming silence of the roar of his own engine and the deeper bass of the other machine, just audible, below. He bent forward over his map and picked out his approximate position. Then he noted a village some twenty miles in rear of the battle, and drew an imaginary line from it south-westward to the enemy's left flank. That village was to serve as turning-point. He should reach it, he calculated, at 12.27. The barograph indicated 3000 feet and still rising.
12.25—the scout bent his eyes on the ground. A couple of minutes later a handful of white cottages flitted past as he looked down between his feet. His enemy could not be seen. The body of the monoplane hid him as he flew below and slightly in rear, but the roar of his engine, louder than the scout's own, could just be heard.
Now was the time—the scout turned off abruptly at a tangent along the line he had marked out for himself and drove his engine at its fastest. The speedometer needle oscillated over 101 miles an hour. He calculated that he had approximately twenty miles to go ere he reached the patch of country he wished to explore. He should reach the commencement of the enemy's left flank at 12.39, and be able to spend six minutes in flying over five miles of ground and then have a couple of minutes in hand. To the trained intellect behind his keen eyes sixminutes were amply sufficient. Having run along the left flank it was simplicity itself to turn to the right and glide down into his own lines. There seemed nothing to stop him. The pursuing machine was being quickly left behind. The slow biplane now far off to his right could not possibly arrive in time. The sky in front was clear of any menace.
Again he began to draw close to the great belt of dust-cloud which stretched out to his right and again the din of battle began to overpower the roar of his engine. Directly ahead was a dark mass of woodland. It was from thence that the enemy's screen around the right flank of the scout's army commenced. He swerved slightly to the left, behind it. The hour was a second or two over 12.38.
Below him was a network of country roads, and from four strands of that network which ran in an approximately parallel direction, coincident with his own course, arose long dense clouds of dust. It was the dust of marching columns. The scout shot a glance back at his pursuer, assured himself that it was five or six miles in rear, and slowed down his engine as he entered upon a long, gradual descent over the route of those marching columns.
For mile after mile on those four roads the dust cloud continued. The scout checked off the distances by villages on his map. Adding the length of the four roads together he estimated that about twenty miles of road was occupied by the marching force. It was a whole army corps, then, that was endeavouring to turn their flank. In the open fields between the roads he could distinguish small bodiesof cavalry advancing in the same direction. The mass on the roads was certainly infantry, broken here and there by long columns of artillery. The low dense clouds of dust kicked up by the tramp of thousands of feet were cut into short sections where the guns and wagons of the batteries rolled onward. From a rough calculation of those intersected clouds he decided that four brigades of artillery were on the march. He had descended now to 2000 feet, and he kept at that height as he roared over the plodding columns. Behind him his pursuer had lessened the distance between them, was getting dangerously close. The biplane on his right was also approaching. Nevertheless, the scout held on his way comfortably. There was nothing to prevent him carrying out his plan.
He was already well beyond the prolongation of his own army's line of battle when he reached the head of the marching infantry. Contrary to his expectation, however, they were not wheeling to the right. They continued straight on, marching away from the battle, it seemed. The scout was puzzled for a moment. He searched the ground in front of him for more troops. It was apparently empty. Then, from a fold in the landscape considerably ahead, he saw another, smaller dust cloud arise. At his highest speed he raced towards it, overtook it in less than a minute. Below him a cavalry brigade, accompanied by two batteries of horse artillery, was trotting sharply forward. What was their objective? He scanned the country in front of them intently. Some three miles ahead of the cavalry was a woodedhill. He picked it out on the map, saw instantly that it commanded the main avenue of retreat of his army. The enemy's plan was clear. He would occupy it with the cavalry and the two batteries until the infantry got up. The threatened army, then attacked in flank and rear, would find its retreat cut off. If the scout's commander was aiming to repeat Salamanca, the enemy was endeavouring to repeat Jackson's march at Chancellorsville. The danger was pressing. The scout reckoned that within half an hour the hostile cavalry would be in possession of that hill. In an hour the infantry would begin to come up in support. Where was the Sixth Division that he had been told would check the flank movement of the enemy? He searched for it, saw a brown mass about two miles from the wooded hill. Its cavalry might get there in a quarter of an hour by a rapid dash. He had then a quarter of an hour to deliver his message and get the division set in motion. The hour was 12.46.
He wheeled towards his own line and commenced a downward glide at a gentle angle. Then, taking his hands from the controls, he rapidly wrote down a clear concise statement of the case in his report book. Even if he did not reach earth, his message might. He glanced up to see that his indefatigable pursuer was now swooping down to cut him off. Moments were precious. He ripped out the page, thrust it into the weighted message bag and tied it up. Then he started his engine again, aiming for the brown mass of the Sixth Division.
Something made him look to his left. He wasstartled to see a large biplane rushing up at him from the direction of the wooded hill. It had evidently descended to effect some repairs and had lain hidden far behind his own line. He recognised it at once. It was by far the swiftest and most powerful machine possessed by either army. On his present course a few seconds would bring him within range of its machine-gun. To his right the other machine was rapidly growing larger. In front, the slow biplane had sailed over the battle lines, was heading straight for him. The three machines were converging on him. The scout saw that he would either be forced away from the battle or destroyed, his message undelivered in either case.
He swerved his machine and climbed. If only he could get above the Sixth Division for an instant, he would throw over the message-bag, chance its being picked up. To do that it was necessary to get higher. On his present or a lower level he would be riddled with machine-gun bullets. His adversaries on either hand rose also, but he got the lead of them.
As they rose in circles he watched for his opportunity when both should be turned away from him. The moment came. He seized it and dived, with his engine running at full speed. The earth rushed upwards, its features enlarging themselves as though they swelled to burst. The brown mass of the Sixth Division spaced itself out into battalions, squadrons, below him, in front. They were exactly underneath. He flung out the message-bag, with something like a prayer in his heart. On either hand his adversaries were swooping down upon him. He thought heheard the rattle of their machine-guns, but in the roar of his own engine he could not be sure.
Down and still down the three machines rushed. Suddenly he noticed the slow biplane in front—on an even lower level than himself. It was very close. He saw the pale dot of the face of the man behind the gun. If he swerved he would be under its fire in a moment. If he kept on his course he must crash into it. His decision was instant, instinctive. He held on. One thought dominated him as he dived straight at it. Had his message been picked up? If not——? He saw the gleaming backs of the outstretched plane almost under him. He set his teeth for the impact. A second more—the wide stretch of yellow canvas suddenly jerked to the left and crumpled in a blinding flash. He had not touched. He swerved to the right with all his force in the tiniest fraction of a second and shot past something that fell, flaming.... A shell from below had hit the biplane at the moment almost of collision.
He had a confused sense of other shells exploding in the air. A battery was seizing its chance to get the enemy's aircraft in a cluster, regardless of the danger to him. He continued his rush downward, feeling rather than knowing that the other two machines were in close pursuit. If he could only be certain that his message had been picked up!
He flung a glance back over his shoulder. The powerful biplane that had risen from behind the wooded hill was close upon him. Why did they not fire? He felt himself a target, was surprised not to see the gash of bullets on his machine. The explanation flashed on him. The gun had jammed. The biplane came at him as though it were itself a projectile. Its crew had desperately resolved to ram him, to sacrifice themselves rather than to allow him to bring his precious information to the ground. They were almost upon him. He swerved and dodged. The biplane shot past.