That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
in a sobbing whimper.... _That was for me!_ Bawne told himself, as von
Herrnung went on:
"Still, you are not pledged. There is no definite understanding. In
the interests of the wealthy firm I am asked to represent--solely as a
matter of courtesy, because they have been immensely civil to me in
business,--you would not refuse me a test?"
Sherbrand said, drawing off his left glove and showing blood oozing from
under bluish-looking finger-nails:
"I found it uncommonly parky to-day at 10,000 feet. There was a
nor'-east breeze, a regular piercer. Found myself spitting blood rather
badly, and to be candid, I was uncommonly grateful that the French
Consul declined my offer, in case he was not satisfied, to do the thing
again. The fact is, the operation, slight as it was, has weakened me a
little. I wouldn't care to repeat the performance without a good
night's rest to buck me up."
Von Herrnung shrugged and agreed:
"That it is cold at 10,000 I can credit easily. I have had the oil in
my own gauges frozen at 7,000 in midsummer. _Da ist nicht zit strassen_.
Haemorrhage and dizziness are the chief enemies of the aviator. One's
stomach betrays one also, the cursed beast!--after a good hearty meal!"
"I don't give mine the chance!" Sherbrand returned, "but stave off the
pangs of appetite with milk-tablets and meat-lozenges. Do all my flying
on these and chocolate. Keep a little store of the things and a Thermos
of hot coffee, in a _cache_ I've made for them, under the map-desk on
the left of the instrument-frame, facing the pilot's seat. If you will
come over to the Bird I'll show you, and explain the working of the
gyroscopic hoverer." He added, looking squarely at von Herrnung: "Of
course the cutting of the double screw is the chief thing about the
invention. I've registered every way I know and got a trade-mark. They
tell me at the Patent Office that my international rights are secure!"
"They should be, if you have those precautions taken. It does not do to
trust," said von Herrnung, "too much! The monkey proverb is law for most
men." He shrugged. "It comes, by the way, from Namaland in German
South-West Africa. '_Nuts in your pouch are nuts in mine!_'"
The freemasonry of their calling had established a degree of
friendliness between them. They were laughing over the monkey's
philosophy as they went over together to the Bird. The small boy who had
been idly sprawling on the hot turf near them, with his tilted hat
shielding his face from the westering sun-rays, got up and trotted after
them like a collie pup.
"Coming too, young man?" Sherbrand said, glancing back and smiling. The
boy nodded in answer, and thence-forward kept close at the heels of the
men, his ears industriously drinking in their conversation, while his
eyes were glued on the brown leather satchel depending from the German's
gloved left hand. Both men, now leaning over the side of the pilot's
cockpit, examined the gearing of the hoverer, protected by a transparent
casing set in the tough ash, copper-riveted planking of the fuselage.
Then with the aid of sulky Davis they tilted the Bird, and inspected the
pair of thin circular plates of toughened steel with flanged edges that,
revolving at high velocity in different. directions, constituted the
horizontal screw.
"Driven from the engine, as you see, by an endless chain-drive
arrangement. By manipulation of levers, you can throw the tractor out
of gear, and hover, under favourable circumstances and in still weather,
by means of the horizontal screw alone. But as a rule you keep the
tractor working, and the screw acts in one as a lifter and
floating-anchor. That's about all it amounts to!--I've said I don't
pretend to hang immovable in the air like the albatross and the condor,
not to mention the gull and sparrow-hawk and dragon-fly! While I hover
I am making way--but way to an inappreciable amount. One of these days
we shall find out the big Secret of Stability. Until then we must rub
along as best we can!"
Von Herrnung returned:
"I am hellishly interested in your invention. It now occurs to me that
as you happen to know my flying record"--he shrugged his great shoulders
and smoothed his tight red roll of moustache with a well-manicured
finger-tip--"that it is possible you would have sufficient confidence to
allow me to test your gyroscopic hoverer myself?" He laughed again
pleasantly as he finished: "Whatever else I may do, I give you my word
of honour I shall not pile up your machine. Will you consent? It may
lead--supposing you do not close with the French offer--to big
business--done with my friends!"
Sherbrand had looked doubtful, only for an instant. Before the
twelve-year-old eavesdropper had recovered from the shock that had set
his brain spinning and his heart thumping, the situation had been
accepted by the owner of the Bird of War. He held out his left hand,
and von Herrnung gripped and wrenched it, noting with inward amusement
that his grip had brought fresh lines of blood creeping about the edges
of Sherbrand's finger-nails.
"You shake hands with the left," he commented, smiling. "Not for the
first time have I noticed the peculiarity in Englishmen of the younger
breed."
"It is a custom," Sherbrand answered, "with--members of an organisation
to which I had, and still have, the honour to belong."
His eyes, in speaking, went to the bright-haired boy in Scout's uniform
standing near them, but von Herrnung's glance had not followed his. The
boy was staring wistfully at the round-faced clock on the front gable of
the cafe restaurant--ten minutes to the half-hour and no sign of the
Chief's returning. Bawne's courage began to ooze away at the ends of
his fingers and toes.
"Then," von Herrnung was beginning impatiently, when a sallow,
undersized young man, whose hollow chest and inky paper cuffs advertised
his clerical employment, came up, touched a pen sticking out from behind
his ear, and said as Sherbrand turned to him:
"Beg pardon, sir, but the telegraph-cabin is locked up proper, and Mr.
Macrombie 'as carried orf the key."
"Out of sorts to-day, is he?" Sherbrand asked meaningly, and the
telegraph-clerk answered:
"I've never seen 'im so bad before--in the middle of the month!"
As Fate would have it, Macrombie, ex-Petty Officer Telegraphist of the
R.N.--from whose sleeve the golden Crown and thunderbolt had been reft
by reason of his anti-teetotal habits, had received a visit that morning
from a friend who had repaid a debt. Hence the licensed operator of
Fanshaw's experimental and educational Wireless-station had succumbed to
an attack of his intermittent complaint.
Hear Macrombie's assistant continuing the recital:
"He's left the aerial connected to the transmitter and gone out for
lemon-squashes four times since one o'clock grub. 'That's the drink for
men who have souls to save, ye little fag-eater!' he says to me;
'Salvation for soul and body, sucked through a straw! If thae deboshed
and hopeless drunkards at the Admiralty could be induced to swear off
their cursed alcohol and take to it, I wad no longer be deaved to the
point of steeping my tongue in profanity, by the kind o' eediots'
gibberish that is yammering at my lugs!'"
"He'd been raking a lot of Admiralty strays in?" Sherbrand queried. Von
Herrnung, who had been grinding his heel into the turf and gnawing his
lip with ill-concealed impatience, turned his head sharply, and listened
to the colloquy with all his ears.
"Not so much X's as definites, sir," responded Macrombie's assistant.
"He was upset about ten minutes before he broke out by getting an
'Urgent' without a Preparative Call. Then comes 'Important' in
International Code, and 'Administration' and 'Emergency.' Then 'War
Office,' and 'Documents,' and 'Enforcement of the Law.' By that time 'e
was purple in the face and 'arf crazy. 'If I had my way wi' you, ye
bung-nosed intemperates,' he says, groaning-like--'I wad keep ye on
grits an' caller watter for a fortnicht! Oh, that men, as auld Hosea
says in the inspired Screeptures'--an' I 'appen to know myself it was
Shakespeare--'should pit an enemy intil their mooths to steal awa' their
brains!' An' 'e snatches off the telephone 'ead-band and chucks it into
the corner, and just as my own instrument starts to tick out a call, he
ketches me by the neck as if I'd bin a tame rabbit, an' slings me out o'
the office an' locks the door. 'Out o' this!' 'e says, puttin' the
cabin key in 'is pocket. 'I will no' have your lugs, dirr-ty as they
are, polluted by the unclean counsels o' the wicked. I'm awa' to cool
the wrath o' the righteous wi' anither lemon squash!' An' the winder is
blocked by the Morse key instrument, an' even if it wasn't, it's too
small for me to get in through!" Macrombie's victim ended, with an
injured sniff.
"Well, well! Better hang about the cabin a bit and possess your soul in
patience. If any pupils drop along, tell them they'll have to wait!
Perhaps Macrombie'll turn up sober enough to take them on by-and-by. As
for the message in transmission, I daresay it will keep. Mr. Fanshaw's
not expecting any particularly important communication that I know of.
Oh, hang it!" Sherbrand whistled dismally. "I'd forgotten. That's
just what I am!"
"Shall I go and see if I can find Rumball?" suggested Macrombie's
assistant helpfully. "He's at the engine-sheds. He's been a locksmith.
'Twouldn't take him more than a sec. to open the office door!"
"Cut then!" acceded Sherbrand, and the telegraph-clerk touched his
pen--discovering by a jab of the inky nib that he was wearing it--and
set off at a trot in the direction of the engine-sheds.
You are to suppose that von Herrnung's sharp ears had gathered the pith
of the communication. Some meaning in the isolated words the clerk had
repeated had had a palpable effect upon his nerves. His face looked
bluish-grey and streaky, as he said to Sherbrand, stammering in his
eagerness:
"So then, it is agreed about my flying your machine?"
"I see no objection."
"_Gut!_" Von Herrnung went on, concealing a huge joy under a careless
camaraderie: "Can you lend me a cap and coat and a pair of
_Schulzbrille_? Goggles you call them, yes! The coat should better to
be a large one"--he stumbled in his English now through sheer
excitement--"I am so much a bigger man than you!"
"Certainly. We keep Flying rigs in all manner of sizes. It's in the way
of business," Sherbrand said. Then his glance fell upon Davis, whose
little black-avised countenance wore an expression of sulky resentment,
and he uttered a slight exclamation. "I forgot, Davis! I really am
very sorry!" He turned to von Herrnung and explained in a tone of
finality that enraged the hearer: "This is Davis's afternoon off. I
cannot ask him to repeat the climb."
"It is hellishly annoying! But see! Listen, my fellow!" He addressed
himself to little grimy Davis, unhelmeted and unbuttoned, leaning
against the Bird's flank with his hands in the pockets of his oily
overalls, chewing a blade of grass; "You will go up with me if I tip
you? A sovereign! Come then! The gold does it! You will go up with
me, will you not, yes?"
Davis spat out grass and delivered himself:
"Not even for my young guv'nor--and a Bank of England finnup, do I do
the soaring heagle hact again this blooming Wednesday."
Welsh Davis had come to London from a mountain farm in Merioneth,
speaking nothing but his native Cymric, and had culled his Sassenach
from Cockney lips. Von Herrnung bid another sovereign, and then two
more, ineffectually.
"Naow!" Davis was rock. "I've done my day's stunt an' I'm nuffy.
D'yer tumble? Nuffy! Yer knaows wot that means--if you're a Flying
Bloke!"