That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
was standing near. Von Herrnung, aware of him at the same instant,
turned on him with a scowl and the harsh demand:
"What is this? Do little English boys pry and listen?"
Bawne returned, looking at the other squarely:
"Beg pardon, but Mr. Sherbrand's calling you. He says it's getting
jolly late."
"_So!_" Von Herrnung glanced at his wrist-watch, in the act lifting the
brown leather satchel into fullest view. The boy queried with open-eyed
innocent curiosity:
"Shall I carry that? Are you going to take it with you?"
"_Es mag wohl sein_," von Herrnung answered. Then he clicked his heels
and bowed formally, and kissed Patrine's cold and heavy hand. She felt
his teeth grit as he did it. She knew he was swearing in his way.
"Adieu, then," he said, smiling at her maliciously. "Will you not wish
me _Angenehme Reise_?"
"Certainly. A pleasant voyage, and a safe landing!" Her eyes fell on
Bawne's little, oddly garbed figure and her woman's heart spoke in spite
of her. "Take care of my dearest!" broke from her, and von Herrnung
answered:
"He is your dearest? Ah yes! I will certainly take very good care of
him!"
He bowed, wheeled about and walked from her with his long strides, and
the boy, with a face all flushed and quivering, suddenly jumped at her
neck and hugged her; bringing with the rough little embrace the queer
scent of water-proofed material and dubbined leather, knocking the
silver-spangled hat awry, loosening divers tortoiseshell hairpins and an
amethyst slide-buckle holding up the heavy tresses of the dead
beech-leaf coloured hair, as he whispered:
"Remember I love you, Pat. Don't mind!"
And she shuddered as he freed her, and ran from her, asking herself: How
much had the child overheard of von Herrnung's proposal? What had he
comprehended of what he had heard?
Next, she was aware of the pleasant voice of Sherbrand calling, and saw
von Herrnung imperiously beckoning. A cold sickness of dread assailed
her, and her knees trembled underneath her weight. A mechanic came
running past, carrying away the chair Davis had brought her. He set it
down at a safe distance from the aeroplane, and she staggered to it,
leaning on the long staff of her sunshade, and sat heavily down, feeling
chilly and old....
Saxham had squeezed Bawne's shoulder and kissed him, and then withdrawn
to a distance whence he could see all that took place. He watched Davis
and Sherbrand help the boy into the forward cockpit, and fasten about
him the safety belt attached to the fuselage on either side of the fixed
bamboo seat.
"You are sure you really want to fly again? Mind, I believe you're as
safe with him as houses, but if you don't want to go, say the word, and
you shan't!"
Sherbrand whispered the words as he busied himself with the boy. And
Bawne set his small teeth and squared his sturdy boyish shoulders,
registering an unspoken vow to go in spite of all....
One had been told to drop a word to Sherbrand if one found oneself in a
tight place. But could one ever hold up one's head again before the
Patrol, if one did this? To share one's Mission with another when the
Chief had said "I'd rather you'd carry through on your own" wasn't to be
thought of. Mother--he swallowed hard at the thought of her--would say
so too.
It troubled his faithful little soul that he could no longer see von
Herrnung. He heard him talking in his guttural English, to Davis, whom
Bawne could not see either--as he stood near the nose of the machine, in
readiness to start the tractor--any more than the two mechanics who
steadied the Bird, pressing each a toe on the axle of the under-carriage
as they held on to a steel rod that ran along under the rearward edges
of her single plane.
His final directions sharply given, von Herrnung stepped up on the
under-carriage, threw a long leg over the bulwark of the fuselage, and
stepped into the pilot's pit. Bawne screwed his head round and saw,
through and over a low talc wind-shield, the upright torso of the
German, big, hard, and indomitable, the leather satchel still gripped in
his strapped-up left hand.
"Are you going to take that leather case along with you?" Sherbrand's
voice had a note of surprise in it. "You'll find it a handicap, let me
say. You can't sit on it or lean against it, and if you tried to put it
under you, you'd find it dead-certain to foul the controls."
To Sherbrand's voice, von Herrnung's answered harshly and rather
angrily:
"Surely I shall be able to carry this? It is nott-thing but a folding
camera, with a telephoto lens made especially for Survey and
Reconnaissance. There is still a good light. If I fly with the sun
behind me, I shall be able to take quite a panorama of London
North-West. It is not forbidden--no? Your Government would not
object?"
"I don't suppose my Government would care a little hang!" Sherbrand's
voice answered. "But--this isn't one of your German Army Albatros's or
Kondors, and I don't see where you're to stow your camera, unless in the
observer's pit. Of course the hovering installation takes up a lot of
room, and I can't possibly risk your hampering the controls."
"_Ganz recht_! Very good!" came von Herrnung's voice, giving in with
simulated heartiness. In another moment his long legs, followed by his
great body, came scrambling into the forward cockpit, and his hands
busied themselves about the stout belt of pig-leather that secured the
boy in the observer's seat.
"Look here, my fellow! You will take care of this for me? See, I have
passed the belt-strap through the handle. Do not touch it!" The
guttural whisper had menace in it. "I shall be sure to know if you
touch it, or try to unbuckle the strap."
"What's up?" Sherbrand's head and shoulders came thrusting over the
other side of the cockpit. "Why did you unstrap him?" he demanded
brusquely of von Herrnung. "Don't you know that he is my friend's son,
and that it is my business to see to this?" Sherbrand's hand felt over
Bawne's belts and bucklings before his head and shoulders vanished.
Then von Herrnung's big body withdrew itself. His voice, sounding from
the pilot's pit on the other side of the low wind-shield, gave a
peremptory order, and the tractor began slowly to revolve. An instant
later, with a blinding flash, it began to roar and whizz round
furiously. The Bird, freed from the hands that detained her, leaped
forwards, hurtling over the smooth turf at the speed of a racing
motor-car. The smooth floor of the cockpit unexpectedly tilted up, and
a rough cold wind buffeted Bawne about the head and shoulders, sent
eddies down about his dangling feet, bellowed in his covered ears and
made him gasp for breath. Then--houses and people, trees, and hangars
fell suddenly away, and he knew that the Bird was rushing upwards at the
bidding of its "Gnome" motor--long superseded now, but then the latest
marvel in aerial engineering--towards the blue sky with its lines of
gilt mackerel clouds. On each side of the roaring, flashing whirl that
meant the tractor, spread North Middlesex, with its fields fast
diminishing to the size of billiard tables. That patch no bigger than a
garden-lawn, with a row of wooden things like dog-kennels and
chicken-coops, must be--Bawne knew that it was--the aerodrome. Deafened
by the noise and a little sick, for the roaring, striving, hurtling
Thing in whose body he sat fastened, stank horribly of castor oil, and
seemed to agonise and call on Bawne to suffer with it--he looked up and
took courage from the warm, blue, beautiful, cheerful sky.
He was quitting himself like a man. Nobody could say otherwise. How
high, how much higher was the Bird going to climb?
*CHAPTER XXXII*
*ADVENTURE IN THE AIR*
He looked down, and under his feet, left of the long transparent case
that housed the horizontal hovering gear, was a little steel-framed
glass port. Seen through this, the ground with its trees, fields and
houses, hurried along beneath him as though a comet, travelling in the
opposite direction, had been harnessed to our old earth, and was towing
her away.
The floor of the cockpit suddenly altered its angle. It had tilted
upwards. Now it tilted all to one side. Sick and dizzy, but secure,
the boy hung in his straps as she lay over, and saw on his left hand a
wing of the Bird rising and blotting out the heavens, while on his right
hand the earth reared up so horribly that Bawne could only shut his eyes
tight and hold on to the arms-straps of his seat, and gasp out a little
prayer. Then the cockpit floor became more level, and the wind buffeted
less. The roar of the tractor and the twanging drone of the wires made
one's bones hum and tingle to the very ends of one's teeth and
finger-tips. But nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing would!
He drew a great breath of relief, and his heart left off bumping. His
mouth was cold inside and his tongue felt dry and stiff. Only Our Lord
and Our Lady and his guardian Angel had seen him funky, and for this
Bawne was grateful. They understood, and--people--would not.
He guessed it about a quarter to six o'clock. By the genial warmth on
one cheek and shoulder, and the way his shadow stretched over the pale
grained ash-wood that lined the cock-pit, he knew the west must be upon
the left.
He raised himself, craning his neck, and through the low wind screen
behind him, against the background of a sky all flaming and boiling with
molten gold and liquid amber, he saw the wide square shoulders and tall
helmeted head of von Herrnung, the hard eyes staring unflinchingly
through their round glass goggles, the mouth set in a straight
inflexible line under the tight red roll of the moustache.
The red-moustached mouth opened, and von Herrnung shouted something.
Nothing reached the boy but a sort of muffled roar. He shook his head
vigorously, and then--one does not wear the Signaller's Badge for
nothing!--released a stiff little gloved hand from its grip on the
arm-rest, and rapped out with his clenched right fist on the edge of the
fuselage:
"_I--can't--hear!_"
The Code was understood. The helmeted head, some four feet distant,
nodded. One of von Herrnung's gauntleted hands freed itself from the
steering-bar. Its knuckles drubbed out the question:
"Have you the brown satchel?"
Bawne had quite forgotten the brown satchel. He screwed back his head
and looked down and there it was, lying on the numb knees of him,
buckled to him by the tough strap of pigskin that held him in his seat.
He nodded assent, and signalled:
"All right!"
"Good!" von Herrnung signalled back through the hurly-burly of the
Bird's transit. Bawne mustered courage to knock out:
"Where are we? When shall we go down?"
Von Herrnung's right hand lifted itself, and described a sweeping
half-circle. The brusque gesture answered Bawne's first question,
bidding him look and see.
The boy, impeded in his view by reason of his small proportions,
wriggled in his straps so as to get his chin well over the gunwale of
the Bird's fuselage and the buffetting wind that was dug up and spaded
over her bows by the dizzying revolutions of the tractor, got hold of
him and pummelled and buffetted him again. Her course was still north,
the sun was setting in great smoking lakes of gold and sulphur on her
left as she flew. Thick patches of dark green bushes that probably were
woods, reddish-green blotches that might be heathy commons, shiny,
square patches that he guessed at as reservoirs, toybox villages that
were thriving suburban boroughs, specks that were villas, glittering
ribbons that suggested canals, and one broad shiny stripe that was a
river with tiny boats upon it, were swirling from right to left,