That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
might be wreaked by the simple act of carrying off the boy, whom he had
regarded until then as a mere bag of ballast; less useful, but certain
to prove less troublesome, than the Cockney-tongued Welshman, who might
or might not carry a cheap revolver in the hip-picket under his overalls
with which to enforce his protest against being taken away.
Von Herrnung was himself armed with a Browning automatic pistol. A
deadly shot, he would have been capable of dealing with half a dozen
Davises upon the solid ground. But, no lover of avoidable risks, he saw
himself steering with one hand and shooting with the other, while Davis
sat astride the chair in the observer's cockpit, and argued with an
eighteen-and-sixpenny Birmingham four-chamber, loaded with the cheap
little cordite cartridges, whose pea-sized bullet can kill a fine big
man.
"What is this? You are sick?"
Even while keeping his ears open and his eyes skinned, as he negotiated
the Bird through a choppy cross-current, conning his course between the
compass and the roller-chart-map, now illuminated by an electric bulb,
his great shoulders shook with merriment as he saw the boy's head sink
helplessly against the side of the fuselage, and his small body
convulsed by throes of the sickness that is indistinguishable from the
dismal malady of the sea. He had shut off the engine to shout to him.
And in the sudden cessation of the tractor's racket, the deep organ note
of the waters rolled in upon the hearing, mingled with the shrill piping
of the wires and the ruffle of the freshening wind. As he switched on
power once more, the broad white ray from the Bull Light leaped forth
again and caught them as it ran eastwards over the tumbling
white-crested billows, flinging a huge shadow of von Herrnung over the
canvas-covered space of deck before him and showing him to the
white-faced boy who had twisted round once more to look at him, as a
featureless human torso shaped out of solid ebony with diamond specks
for eyes and gleams of grinning ivory teeth.
"When are we going home? Why are we over the sea now?"
Von Herrnung shut off again for the luxury of hearing and answering:
"I have told you because we are going home. Our home is--Germany. You
will not be an English boy but German, once I have got you there!"
The shrill cry of anger that came from the open mouth of the white face
was lost to him in the necessity of switching on the engine. He nodded
pleasantly to the white face and, in the darkness of his own shadowy
visage, there was the glimmer of a laugh. Then he applied himself to
other business, for the tide would turn in an hour, and then the wind
might blow hellishly from the nor'-west. Flying lower, he knew his
course the true one, for the white headlight and green starboard-lights
of a big steamer pricked twinkling holes in the thick grey dusk to
northward on his port beam. He told himself she was one of the Elbe
Company's big bluff-bowed liners making from Newcastle for Hamburg
Docks. The stern-lights of a sister-ship hailing from Grimsby, by her
steerings, were also discernible in the mirk ahead, while the lights
from her tiers of cabins made her look like a black water-beetle with
golden legs, hurriedly scuttling over the sea. Following the course of
the Hamburg-bound liners, even if one failed to make connection with
one's accredited pilot, it would not be long before one picked up Borkum
Riff Lightship and in due course, spiring silver grey against the
pink-and-golden sunrise--the twin towers of Nordeich Wireless--marking
the journey's end.
*CHAPTER XXXIV*
*THE BROWN SATCHEL*
The journey's end. A gust, tearing the mist that veiled the livid
waters, showed the shadowy shapes of a procession of battleships,
steaming southwards in single line.
You see the German assailed by the wind, now hard on the aeroplane's
port beam, craning over, counting the speedlights passing diagonally
underneath. Eight steel Leviathans, stabbing bright points of electric
light through fog and funnel-smoke, with an effect of diamonds seen
against a background of dull grey plush.
Eight rushing, neutral-tinted shapes--conveying a formidable impression
of grim power, and force, and ruthlessness. A Squadron of Battle
Cruisers of the British Home Fleet, new from the brine of Lerwick
Waters, or the fierce green surges of Scapa Flow. Bound for Harwich
Roads or Sheerness, or the Solent, to figure in the huge pageant of
steel and steam, electricity, and man-power that would be called the
King's Review.
What a chance, supposing _Der Tag_ were come already, for the delivery
of a consignment of bombs! It warmed like a draught of wine, to think
of the devastating effect of a couple of such German love-gifts,
exploded in the bowels of one of those steel monsters, packed with
complex machinery, high explosives, and inflammable oil. True, there
might be a reverse to the medal, damping even to the spirits of a
Superman. Wireless signals would go forth at the order of one amongst a
little knot of dark figures on the forebridge of the Flagship, warning
each of those grey monsters of its danger. Not an armoured cruiser
scouting for them on the horizon, not one of all the torpedo-boat
destroyers in their vicinity, not a submarine nosing in the thick cold
darkness below the restless white crests, but would join in the man-hunt
that must ensue.
How the dusk would spring alive with the eyes of foes, and long rays of
searchlight would go probing, and the mobile noses of guns great and
lesser would be thrust from their hoods of proof-armour, sniffing
bloodthirstily for the enemy up in the sky. While from the Flagship's
mothering side, a Navy seaplane, armed with a Vickers' machine-gun,
might swing out and plop upon the water, rise from the white snarl of
waves with a vicious scream of her propeller, and, keen as a
gull-hunting sea-hawk, launch herself in chase.
_Pfui_! The thought made one sick at the stomach. Cold, isolation, and
darkness tried a man, no matter how courageous. Buffeted by the bitter
wind, aching and stiff with weariness, lonely with the loneliness of
some small bird of the migratory order, outstripped by its companions on
the wild journey over the North Sea, the Kaiser's messenger drew energy
and cheer from the conviction that the dispatches entrusted to him by
Imperial favour were such as would hasten the arrival of The Day.
The Day, to which all good German officers devoted the second toast on
Mess nights. When the Black Eagle would swoop, and the nodding
witch-hag Britannia would awaken from her whisky-dreams of
World-Dominion to find her armour obsolete, her sword rusted in its
scabbard, the trident of Sea Power stolen from her hand.
Hurrah! for The Day when the programme arranged by the All Highest War
Lord and his War Chiefs should be carried out in the complete overthrow
of British Supremacy, the seizure and domination of British territory,
the solution of the Great German Race Problem, in the transformation of
the United Kingdom into a German dependency,--the annexation of India
and the British Colonies--and the forcible Teutonisation of the hated
race.
Aha! Much to be locked in an Imperial messenger's letter-bag, thought
von Herrnung, greedily. What in the way of guerdon might not be
lavished by a gratified All Highest upon the danger-braving and
to-duty-fearlessly-devoted Flying Officer who should accomplish the
Secret Mission, and lay the brown satchel at the Imperial feet.
Probably the Second--tchah!--the First Class of the Iron Cross--with
military promotion, and a handsome sum in hard cash. Laudatory articles
in the State-inspired Press organs and Service Gazettes presently.
Meanwhile, was it fitting that the future of von Herrnung should lie,
not upon the knees of the gods, but on the lap of a little, seasick
English boy?
True, the brown satchel was firmly strapped to the boy, now lying in an
attitude of complete exhaustion, with one arm thrown over the gunwale,
and his small round head feebly nodding to and fro. The child knew
nothing of the Imperial dispatches. And yet--one would have been wiser
to keep the bag about one, in spite of the danger of fouling the
controls.
It will be gathered that a chilly premonition of imminent disaster
crawled in the veins of the Kaiser's messenger. Hunger and fatigue were
spurring von Herrnung to imaginativeness unworthy of a Superman.
Now he knew his frail winged craft beset by cunning, treacherous
enemies; the invisible air that cradled and supported her, only waiting
to destroy. Other elemental forces, Gale, Lightning, Hail,
Waterspout--in collusion to bring about her swift and speedy ruin. The
Sea, no less than these, was an implacable adversary, reaching up
innumerable greedy hands to drag her down and drown. The hawk-hoverer
would have been a help at this juncture if one had had some previous
experience in the use of it. As things were, it was wiser to leave the
Englishman's invention alone. A labouring beat admonished the man's
quick ear of impending engine-trouble. Ah, if the motor, that was the
living heart in the aeroplane, should break down at this juncture, or
the human intelligence perched behind the roaring tractor falter, the
game was up. Kaput for von Herrnung, he very well knew.
As though the very fear had brought on the catastrophe, the revolutions
dropped. Below 1000, said the indicator's trembling finger, and there
was a miss. The bang!--bang! of a back-fire followed. If one had
believed in God, now, this would have been the time to pray to Him.
But now the aviator's keen eye, peering downwards through Sherbrand's
binoculars, picked up something that had emerged with a sudden yeasty
swirl among the white-crested waves. No handsomer nor bigger than an
under-sized steam-trawler, the casual observer might as such have
accepted her. But a moment more, and fore and aft of the stocky little
pseudo-steamer, stretched the long snaky, whitey-brown hull of a
submarine.
U-18, on observation-service off Spurn Head, or a Britisher? An Evans
signalling-pistol, loaded, and with a supply of spare rockets, was fixed
in a cleat beside the instrument-board, within reach of the pilot's
hand. The altimeter, illuminated by the electric bulb, gave an altitude
of six hundred, as von Herrnung snatched the pistol, and fired, aiming
towards the sky.
The shot was followed by a second detonation, and a brilliant crimson
light illuminated the grey welter, throwing up orange balls of fire as
it ascended, to burst in showers of incandescent sparks. Switching off,
von Herrnung strained both ears and eyes for an answer to his signal.
With the cessation of the motor the diapason of the North Sea rolled
upwards through the twilight with a threatening of storm. As the
weather-cone had presaged, a gale was coming. It blew strongly from the
north-west. The engine back-fired again, and von Herrnung swore at it,
trying to make out the nationality of the submarine running on the
surface six hundred feet below. There were half-a-dozen tallish figures
on the narrow man-railed catwalk running along her hull forward, and one
upon the screened-in platform of her humpy conning-tower.
Then the blue-white ray of a searchlight leaped forth illuminating her
bows and forward torpedo-tubes--revealing the long neutral-coloured hull
with the Wireless mast raised for use and soapy seas hissing off the
armour-plate. A backwash of brilliance picked out the
black-white-and-red Jack of Germany, fluttering from a short pole-mast
sternwards. Signal-lights of white and two colours broke out upon
another slender mast aft of her conning-tower, and winked and jabbered.
U-18 was in touch with her man.