Mr. Standfast
the air.
I had flown several dozen times before, generally over the enemy lines
when I wanted to see for myself how the land lay. Then we had flown
low, and been nicely dusted by the Hun Archies, not to speak of an
occasional machine-gun. But never till that hour had I realised the joy
of a straight flight in a swift plane in perfect weather. Archie didn’t
lose time. Soon the hangars behind looked like a child’s toys, and the
world ran away from us till it seemed like a great golden bowl spilling
over with the quintessence of light. The air was cold and my hands
numbed, but I never felt them. As we throbbed and tore southward,
sometimes bumping in eddies, sometimes swimming evenly in a stream of
motionless ether, my head and heart grew as light as a boy’s. I forgot
all about the vexations of my job and saw only its joyful comedy. I
didn’t think that anything on earth could worry me again. Far to the
left was a wedge of silver and beside it a cluster of toy houses. That
must be Edinburgh, where reposed my portmanteau, and where a most
efficient police force was now inquiring for me. At the thought I
laughed so loud that Archie must have heard me. He turned round, saw my
grinning face, and grinned back. Then he signalled to me to strap
myself in. I obeyed, and he proceeded to practise “stunts”—the loop,
the spinning nose-dive, and others I didn’t know the names of. It was
glorious fun, and he handled his machine as a good rider coaxes a
nervous horse over a stiff hurdle. He had that extra something in his
blood that makes the great pilot.
Presently the chessboard of green and brown had changed to a deep
purple with faint silvery lines like veins in a rock. We were crossing
the Border hills, the place where I had legged it for weary days when I
was mixed up in the Black Stone business. What a marvellous element was
this air, which took one far above the fatigues of humanity! Archie had
done well to change. Peter had been the wise man. I felt a tremendous
pity for my old friend hobbling about a German prison-yard, when he had
once flown a hawk. I reflected that I had wasted my life hitherto. And
then I remembered that all this glory had only one use in war and that
was to help the muddy British infantryman to down his Hun opponent. He
was the fellow, after all, that decided battles, and the thought
comforted me.
A great exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and mine was
to have a sudden downfall. It was getting on for noon and we were well
into England—I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were
somewhere in the north of Yorkshire—when the machine began to make odd
sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air. We dived and
then climbed, but the confounded thing kept sputtering. Archie passed
back a slip of paper on which he had scribbled: “Engine conked. Must
land at Micklegill. Very sorry.” So we dropped to a lower elevation
where we could see clearly the houses and roads and the long swelling
ridges of a moorland country. I could never have found my way about,
but Archie’s practised eye knew every landmark. We were trundling along
very slowly now, and even I was soon able to pick up the hangars of a
big aerodrome.
We made Micklegill, but only by the skin of our teeth. We were so low
that the smoky chimneys of the city of Bradfield seven miles to the
east were half hidden by a ridge of down. Archie achieved a clever
descent in the lee of a belt of firs, and got out full of imprecations
against the Gladas engine. “I’ll go up to the camp and report,” he
said, “and send mechanics down to tinker this darned gramophone. You’d
better go for a walk, sir. I don’t want to answer questions about you
till we’re ready to start. I reckon it’ll be an hour’s job.”
The cheerfulness I had acquired in the upper air still filled me. I sat
down in a ditch, as merry as a sand-boy, and lit a pipe. I was
possessed by a boyish spirit of casual adventure, and waited on the
next turn of fortune’s wheel with only a pleasant amusement.
That turn was not long in coming. Archie appeared very breathless.
“Look here, sir, there’s the deuce of a row up there. They’ve been
wirin’ about you all over the country, and they know you’re with me.
They’ve got the police, and they’ll have you in five minutes if you
don’t leg it. I lied like billy-o and said I had never heard of you,
but they’re comin’ to see for themselves. For God’s sake get off....
You’d better keep in cover down that hollow and round the back of these
trees. I’ll stay here and try to brazen it out. I’ll get strafed to
blazes anyhow.... I hope you’ll get me out of the scrape, sir.”
“Don’t you worry, my lad,” I said. “I’ll make it all square when I get
back to town. I’ll make for Bradfield, for this place is a bit
conspicuous. Goodbye, Archie. You’re a good chap and I’ll see you don’t
suffer.”
I started off down the hollow of the moor, trying to make speed atone
for lack of strategy, for it was hard to know how much my pursuers
commanded from that higher ground. They must have seen me, for I heard
whistles blown and men’s cries. I struck a road, crossed it, and passed
a ridge from which I had a view of Bradfield six miles off. And as I
ran I began to reflect that this kind of chase could not last long.
They were bound to round me up in the next half-hour unless I could
puzzle them. But in that bare green place there was no cover, and it
looked as if my chances were pretty much those of a hare coursed by a
good greyhound on a naked moor.
Suddenly from just in front of me came a familiar sound. It was the
roar of guns—the slam of field-batteries and the boom of small
howitzers. I wondered if I had gone off my head. As I plodded on the
rattle of machine-guns was added, and over the ridge before me I saw
the dust and fumes of bursting shells. I concluded that I was not mad,
and that therefore the Germans must have landed. I crawled up the last
slope, quite forgetting the pursuit behind me.
And then I’m blessed if I did not look down on a veritable battle.
There were two sets of trenches with barbed wire and all the fixings,
one set filled with troops and the other empty. On these latter shells
were bursting, but there was no sign of life in them. In the other
lines there seemed the better part of two brigades, and the first
trench was stiff with bayonets. My first thought was that Home Forces
had gone dotty, for this kind of show could have no sort of training
value. And then I saw other things—cameras and camera-men on platforms
on the flanks, and men with megaphones behind them on wooden
scaffoldings. One of the megaphones was going full blast all the time.
I saw the meaning of the performance at last. Some movie-merchant had
got a graft with the Government, and troops had been turned out to make
a war film. It occurred to me that if I were mixed up in that push I
might get the cover I was looking for. I scurried down the hill to the
nearest camera-man.
As I ran, the first wave of troops went over the top. They did it
uncommon well, for they entered into the spirit of the thing, and went
over with grim faces and that slow, purposeful lope that I had seen in
my own fellows at Arras. Smoke grenades burst among them, and now and
then some resourceful mountebank would roll over. Altogether it was
about the best show I have ever seen. The cameras clicked, the guns
banged, a background of boy scouts applauded, and the dust rose in
billows to the sky.
But all the same something was wrong. I could imagine that this kind of
business took a good deal of planning from the point of view of the
movie-merchant, for his purpose was not the same as that of the officer
in command. You know how a photographer finicks about and is
dissatisfied with a pose that seems all right to his sitter. I should
have thought the spectacle enough to get any cinema audience off their
feet, but the man on the scaffolding near me judged differently. He
made his megaphone boom like the swan-song of a dying buffalo. He
wanted to change something and didn’t know how to do it. He hopped on
one leg; he took the megaphone from his mouth to curse; he waved it
like a banner and yelled at some opposite number on the other flank.
And then his patience forsook him and he skipped down the ladder,
dropping his megaphone, past the camera-men, on to the battlefield.
That was his undoing. He got in the way of the second wave and was
swallowed up like a leaf in a torrent. For a moment I saw a red face
and a loud-checked suit, and the rest was silence. He was carried on
over the hill, or rolled into an enemy trench, but anyhow he was lost
to my ken.
I bagged his megaphone and hopped up the steps to the platform. At last
I saw a chance of first-class cover, for with Archie’s coat and cap I
made a very good appearance as a movie-merchant. Two waves had gone
over the top, and the cinema-men, working like beavers, had filmed the
lot. But there was still a fair amount of troops to play with, and I
determined to tangle up that outfit so that the fellows who were after
me would have better things to think about.
My advantage was that I knew how to command men. I could see that my
opposite number with the megaphone was helpless, for the mistake which
had swept my man into a shell-hole had reduced him to impotence. The
troops seemed to be mainly in charge of N.C.O.s (I could imagine that
the officers would try to shirk this business), and an N.C.O. is the
most literal creature on earth. So with my megaphone I proceeded to
change the battle order.
I brought up the third wave to the front trenches. In about three
minutes the men had recognised the professional touch and were moving
smartly to my orders. They thought it was part of the show, and the
obedient cameras clicked at everything that came into their orbit. My
aim was to deploy the troops on too narrow a front so that they were
bound to fan outward, and I had to be quick about it, for I didn’t know
when the hapless movie-merchant might be retrieved from the
battle-field and dispute my authority.
It takes a long time to straighten a thing out, but it does not take
long to tangle it, especially when the thing is so delicate a machine
as disciplined troops. In about eight minutes I had produced chaos. The
flanks spread out, in spite of all the shepherding of the N.C.O.s, and
the fringe engulfed the photographers. The cameras on their little
platforms went down like ninepins. It was solemn to see the startled
face of a photographer, taken unawares, supplicating the purposeful
infantry, before he was swept off his feet into speechlessness.
It was no place for me to linger in, so I chucked away the megaphone
and got mixed up with the tail of the third wave. I was swept on and
came to anchor in the enemy trenches, where I found, as I expected, my
profane and breathless predecessor, the movie-merchant. I had nothing
to say to him, so I stuck to the trench till it ended against the slope
of the hill.
On that flank, delirious with excitement, stood a knot of boy scouts.
My business was to get to Bradfield as quick as my legs would take me,
and as inconspicuously as the gods would permit. Unhappily I was far
too great an object of interest to that nursery of heroes. Every boy
scout is an amateur detective and hungry for knowledge. I was followed
by several, who plied me with questions, and were told that I was off
to Bradfield to hurry up part of the cinema outfit. It sounded lame
enough, for that cinema outfit was already past praying for.
We reached the road and against a stone wall stood several bicycles. I
selected one and prepared to mount.
“That’s Mr Emmott’s machine,” said one boy sharply. “He told me to keep
an eye on it.”
“I must borrow it, sonny,” I said. “Mr Emmott’s my very good friend and