Mr. Standfast
wavered. From time to time I glanced at my watch. Eight minutes
gone—ten—seventeen. If only the planes would come into sight! Even the
certainty of failure would be better than this harrowing doubt. They
should be back by now unless they had swung north across the salient,
or unless the miracle of miracles—
Then came the distant yapping of an anti-aircraft gun, caught up the
next second by others, while smoke patches studded the distant blue
sky. The clouds were banking in mid-heaven, but to the west there was a
big clear space now woolly with shrapnel bursts. I counted them
mechanically—one—three—five—nine—with despair beginning to take the
place of my anxiety. My hands were steady now, and through the glasses
I saw the enemy.
Five attenuated shapes rode high above the bombardment, now sharp
against the blue, now lost in a film of vapour. They were coming back,
serenely, contemptuously, having seen all they wanted.
The quiet was gone now and the din was monstrous. Anti-aircraft guns,
singly and in groups, were firing from every side. As I watched it
seemed a futile waste of ammunition. The enemy didn’t give a tinker’s
curse for it.... But surely there was one down. I could only count four
now. No, there was the fifth coming out of a cloud. In ten minutes they
would be all over the line. I fairly stamped in my vexation. Those guns
were no more use than a sick headache. Oh, where in God’s name were our
own planes?
At that moment they came, streaking down into sight, four
fighting-scouts with the sun glinting on their wings and burnishing
their metal cowls. I saw clearly the rings of red, white, and blue.
Before their downward drive the enemy instantly spread out.
I was watching with bare eyes now, and I wanted companionship, for the
time of waiting was over. Automatically I must have run down the knoll,
for the next I knew I was staring at the heavens with Archie by my
side. The combatants seemed to couple instinctively. Diving, wheeling,
climbing, a pair would drop out of the melee or disappear behind a
cloud. Even at that height I could hear the methodical rat-tat-tat of
the machine-guns. Then there was a sudden flare and wisp of smoke. A
plane sank, turning and twisting, to earth.
“Hun!” said Archie, who had his glasses on it.
Almost immediately another followed. This time the pilot recovered
himself, while still a thousand feet from the ground, and started
gliding for the enemy lines. Then he wavered, plunged sickeningly, and
fell headlong into the wood behind La Bruyere.
Farther east, almost over the front trenches, a two-seater Albatross
and a British pilot were having a desperate tussle. The bombardment had
stopped, and from where we stood every movement could be followed.
First one, then another, climbed uppermost and dived back, swooped out
and wheeled in again, so that the two planes seemed to clear each other
only by inches. Then it looked as if they closed and interlocked. I
expected to see both go crashing, when suddenly the wings of one seemed
to shrivel up, and the machine dropped like a stone.
“Hun,” said Archie. “That makes three. Oh, good lads! Good lads!”
Then I saw something which took away my breath. Sloping down in wide
circles came a German machine, and, following, a little behind and a
little above, a British. It was the first surrender in mid-air I had
seen. In my amazement I watched the couple right down to the ground,
till the enemy landed in a big meadow across the high-road and our own
man in a field nearer the river.
When I looked back into the sky, it was bare. North, south, east, and
west, there was not a sign of aircraft, British or German.
A violent trembling took me. Archie was sweeping the heavens with his
glasses and muttering to himself. Where was the fifth man? He must have
fought his way through, and it was too late.
But was it? From the toe of a great rolling cloud-bank a flame shot
earthwards, followed by a V-shaped trail of smoke. British or Boche?
British or Boche? I didn’t wait long for an answer. For, riding over
the far end of the cloud, came two of our fighting scouts.
I tried to be cool, and snapped my glasses into their case, though the
reaction made me want to shout. Archie turned to me with a nervous
smile and a quivering mouth. “I think we have won on the post,” he
said.
He reached out a hand for mine, his eyes still on the sky, and I was
grasping it when it was torn away. He was staring upwards with a white
face.
We were looking at the sixth enemy plane.
It had been behind the others and much lower, and was making straight
at a great speed for the east. The glasses showed me a different type
of machine—a big machine with short wings, which looked menacing as a
hawk in a covey of grouse. It was under the cloud-bank, and above,
satisfied, easing down after their fight, and unwitting of this enemy,
rode the two British craft.
A neighbouring anti-aircraft gun broke out into a sudden burst, and I
thanked Heaven for its inspiration. Curious as to this new development,
the two British turned, caught sight of the Boche, and dived for him.
What happened in the next minutes I cannot tell. The three seemed to be
mixed up in a dog fight, so that I could not distinguish friend from
foe. My hands no longer trembled; I was too desperate. The patter of
machine-guns came down to us, and then one of the three broke clear and
began to climb. The others strained to follow, but in a second he had
risen beyond their fire, for he had easily the pace of them. Was it the
Hun?
Archie’s dry lips were talking.
“It’s Lensch,” he said.
“How d’you know?” I gasped angrily.
“Can’t mistake him. Look at the way he slipped out as he banked. That’s
his patent trick.”
In that agonizing moment hope died in me. I was perfectly calm now, for
the time for anxiety had gone. Farther and farther drifted the British
pilots behind, while Lensch in the completeness of his triumph looped
more than once as if to cry an insulting farewell. In less than three
minutes he would be safe inside his own lines, and he carried the
knowledge which for us was death.
Someone was bawling in my ear, and pointing upward. It was Archie and
his face was wild. I looked and gasped—seized my glasses and looked
again.
A second before Lensch had been alone; now there were two machines.
I heard Archie’s voice. “My God, it’s the Gladas—the little Gladas.”
His fingers were digging into my arm and his face was against my
shoulder. And then his excitement sobered into an awe which choked his
speech, as he stammered—“It’s old—”
But I did not need him to tell me the name, for I had divined it when I
first saw the new plane drop from the clouds. I had that queer sense
that comes sometimes to a man that a friend is present when he cannot
see him. Somewhere up in the void two heroes were fighting their last
battle—and one of them had a crippled leg.
I had never any doubt about the result, though Archie told me later
that he went crazy with suspense. Lensch was not aware of his opponent
till he was almost upon him, and I wonder if by any freak of instinct
he recognised his greatest antagonist. He never fired a shot, nor did
Peter.... I saw the German twist and side-slip as if to baffle the fate
descending upon him. I saw Peter veer over vertically and I knew that
the end had come. He was there to make certain of victory and he took
the only way. The machines closed, there was a crash which I felt
though I could not hear it, and next second both were hurtling down,
over and over, to the earth.
They fell in the river just short of the enemy lines, but I did not see
them, for my eyes were blinded and I was on my knees.
After that it was all a dream. I found myself being embraced by a
French General of Division, and saw the first companies of the cheerful
bluecoats whom I had longed for. With them came the rain, and it was
under a weeping April sky that early in the night I marched what was
left of my division away from the battle-field. The enemy guns were
starting to speak behind us, but I did not heed them. I knew that now
there were warders at the gate, and I believed that by the grace of God
that gate was barred for ever.
They took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his
twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and left
his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills. In
his pocket was his old battered _Pilgrim’s Progress_. It lies before me
as I write, and beside it—for I was his only legatee—the little case
which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can
be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.
It was from the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ that I read next morning, when in
the lee of an apple-orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft
spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale in the end
not of Mr Standfast, whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but
of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down
the words as a salute and a farewell:
_“Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great
difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the
trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him
that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him
that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness
for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.’_
_“So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other
side.”_