That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
It was quite time, for the Bird's engine hiccupped more and more
disastrously, and her pilot's frozen hands could only guess the
steering-wheel. He grunted relief. _Sapperlot_! One's star had not
deserted one. Once more the Prussian Field-Flying Service would, with
reason, quote von Herrnung's hellish good-luck.
Meanwhile the submarine's three lights chattered volubly in German Navy
Code. Do Not Attempt Make Harbour. Heavy Weather Coming. Original
Orders Cancelled. Heave To. Will Stand By To Take You Aboard. To which
von Herrnung, keeping pace with U-18, replied with long and short
flashes of an electric signalling-torch. Understood! What Is the Sea
Like? Keep Off and On. Am Coming Down!
And he came forthwith. The Commander of U-18, standing on the little
platform over which furious seas were slashing, watched him critically
through a pair of Zeiss binoculars. You, too, are asked to see him;
pulling round the Bird's head into the teeth of the nor'wester; shutting
off her hiccupping engine, implacably thrusting her nose seawards, and
diving with a splendid swoop into the widening paths of spirals that
ended amidst the angry surges below.
Hitting the North Sea with so shattering a slap that the Bird's
landing-carriage crumpled and buckled, and the frail spars of her wings
crunched like the bones of a small bird in the jaws of a hungry cat.
A fierce green sea leaped, towered, and broke, dumping a ton of water on
von Herrnung, and knocking the breath out of the man. He tore open the
safety-belt as consciousness left him, and recovered in the warm
benzine-flavoured stuffiness of the officer's cabin aboard the U-18, to
the stinging of schnapps in his mouth and gullet, and the cheer of
German words in his ear.
"Hey now, hey now, we are coming about. That is well! Drink another
draught, comrade! You have had a hellishly narrow squeak. Another
time, when flying oversea with dispatches, start early, pick your
weather, and ship a life-belt, if you are wise!"
Thus Lieutenant Commander Luttha of Undersea-boat No. 18. You see him
as a spare, weather-bitten, black-bearded officer in a full panoply of
yellow oilies, and a sou'wester shading little eyes, sharp as
lancet-points and now twinkling with his bit of fun.
But the word "dispatches," coupled with the jest about the life-belt,
volted through von Herrnung like the discharge from an electric battery.
He gulped and choked, collecting enough tinned air to talk with, and at
last got out:
"The boy--the boy, with the satchel! Where is he, in the devil's name?"
Thus adjured the Commander answered pithily:
"If you mean the half-drowned little English rat Petty Officer Stoll
found washing about in the bows of your aviatik, he's alive. Don't
worry about that!"
Through the churning foam upon his lips, von Herrnung spluttered
furiously:
"_Himmelkreuezbombenelement_! What is the _verdammt_ boy to me? It is
the satchel that was strapped about the boy's middle I am asking
for--the Emperor's--_Herr Gott!_--I shall go mad!"
He staggered to his feet, hitting his head a stunning crack against the
low white painted overdeck. The incautious reference to the Emperor
electrified those who heard, squatting on the little folding bunks, or
kneeling on the palpitating deck of the little officer's cabin, into
desperate activity. Von Herrnung found himself boosted up a ladder and
through a manhole, guided along a narrow slippery catwalk, washed by the
surges of the North Sea, to where a collapsible boat was being emptied
of a lot of shipped salt water, and the battered wreck of the Bird of
War, lashed to the U-18's forward man-rail, was waiting the Commander's
order to be finally abandoned to her fate.
*CHAPTER XXXV*
*NUMBER EIGHTEEN*
They launched the collapsible, and ransacked every cranny of the Bird's
waterlogged fuselage. Not the ghost of a brown leather satchel rewarded
their feverish search. In the forward cockpit the belt swung loose, the
patent fastening had been opened by pulling the pin out. Clearly the
boy had released himself when the Bird hit the sea.
"Let us go look at this boy!" suggested the Commander, on receiving the
news that the Kind had breathed, and vomited sea-water. Luttha promptly
led the way to the men's cabin, where Petty Officer Stoll and an
earringed first-class seaman were working over a little limp naked body,
outspread on the jiggetting deck-plates, in the raucous glare of the
electric light.
Bawne was questioned, but nothing could be got out of him just then,
except North Sea, so they wrapped him in a blue Navy blanket, and left
him in charge of Petty Officer Stoll.
"This is hellishly unfortunate, you must know, Count," said the
Commander, alone with von Herrnung in the vibrating steel box over the
upper accumulators, called the officers' cabin, and separated from the
men's quarters by a paper-thin sliding bulkhead of painted steel. You
are asked to consider it furnished with seven narrow folding bunks, a
trestle-table about as wide and long as a coffin-lid, some folding
chairs, a marvellous array of charts on spring-rollers, fixed against
the steel walls, a row of wooden lockers, a chronometer and auxiliary
gyro-compass, several cylinders of oxylithe for respiratory emergencies,
an electric stove of small size, a log-book and writing materials, a
shelf of German literature, chiefly nautical reference-books; sets of
dominoes, a violin and a cornet, speaking-tubes and a telephone, a
gramophone and a giant cuspidor.
Von Herrnung, having swapped his water-logged flying-kit and soaked
underclothes for dry flannels lent by the Second-in-Command, topped off
with a pair of the Commander's spare trousers, and a guernsey frock
belonging to the biggest man on board. You can see him supplementing
the shortness of the trousers with a pair of long sea-boots: thrusting
his huge arms into the guernsey, beginning already to be superior to his
rescuers upon the strength of his family rank and wealth and his
flying-record, his bulk and handsomeness, and his magpie pearl. He was
of the Prussian top-dog breed and let others know it, even whilst
smarting under his loss. That he felt it was shown by the livid pallor
testifying to mental disquiet and physical exhaustion. But he judged it
wisest to bluff, and did.
"The cursed machine would have drowned me if you had not arrived in the
nick of time," he said suggestively, smiling under the red moustache
that hung uncurled over his full sensual lips: "Suppose you say you
found me swimming in the water--the aeroplane having foundered--it is
merely rewording a report!"
"So many thanks!" ... returned the Commander, chewing hard at an
unlighted cigar, sending a jet of saliva into the cuspidor, and smiling
in a wry and dubious fashion. "But when I said things were hellishly
unfortunate, I meant unfortunate for you!"
He moved to the green baize-covered plank that served as a cabin table,
and took from a weighted document-file a pencilled paper-slip.
"As far as they concern you I will read you them as taken down by our
Wireless operator. 'To Undersea-boat No. 18, on observation-duty off
Spurn Head. Stand by to get in touch with, act pilot, and render aid if
necessary to German Imperial Secret Service Messenger, crossing to
Nordeich in British aeroplane.' The message comes from the German
Embassy in London and the sender is Grand Admiral Prinz Heinrich. I
have carried out my instructions to the letter. There is only _one_ man
going to be broken over this affair!"
Von Herrnung knew who the man was. The Commander chewed some more of
his cigar, picked his oozing yellow oilskins off the deck, thrust
himself into them, crowned himself with his sou'wester, and said, taking
a farewell shot at the cuspidor:
"And to brew more thunder-beer for you is not my desire! I am sorry for
you, _bei Gott_! But to make game of those who command me is not the
purpose for which I am commissioned, Herr Count. Nor have I any
experience in doctoring reports. I rate only as Lieutenant in the
Imperial German Navy--a man born of plain people--without fortune or
even _von_ before my family name!"
Von Herrnung sensed that he had bitterly offended the only human being
who could help him. He apologised subserviently, and catching at the
straw afforded him by the Commander's admission of poverty, offered him
the pickings of the wrecked aeroplane.
"For her instruments and signalling outfit--the seats and vacuum flasks
even--are well worth the having, and her engine and tractor will sell
for----" he named the sum in marks. "There is a patent stabiliser under
her belly that I reserve for Majesty--the French have bought it or think
they have!"
The speaker rubbed his hands. The hoverer might yet prove a sop for the
All Highest. Imperial displeasure thus averted, all would go well. He
added, feeling that he might actually afford the luxury of grumbling:
"As for me, I am what the English call 'fed up' with special missions.
Conceive it. I am at a Hendon Flying School,--chatting with a handsome
Englishwoman who has taken me for her lover--as I am waiting to get an
inkling of the sort of invention the French War Ministry think worth
buying for use in their Service Aeronautique. I am summoned by a groom
of our Embassy to speak to some Excellencies--I follow and find myself
clicking my heels before Prinz Heinrich, von Moltke, and Krupp von
Bohlen in an Embassy auto-car--to be sent off at a moment's notice in a
little cranky devil of an English monoplane--with secret dispatches for
the All Highest--on a journey over the North Sea. With the barometer
falling and the hour past five meridian. That's my luck!" The speaker
paused for breath.
Luttha said, pulling his black beard through his fingers with a crisp
sound, a trick of his when in meditation:
"There was no time to lose. And you have a wonderful record for
long-distance flying. And luck it was!--if you had been of my mind.
Tell me, did not _they_ give you plain instructions?"
"Do 'they' ever speak plainly?" von Herrnung scoffed; and Luttha
answered calmly:
"Yes, to an ordinary man, who does not understand obscure language, they
would have said: 'Lieutenant Commander Luttha, here is a brown leather
satchel, with something inside it belonging to the Emperor. You will
convey the satchel to Nordeich and deliver it to His Majesty's hands.
And from the moment I entrust it to yours, it shall be close as your
very skin to you. If you meet Death upon your errand, die with it next
your heart!'"
The speaker added with a wounding accent of irony:
"Perhaps that marks the difference between a plebeian and a nobleman! I
would have lashed it to my body, under my clothing. You strapped it
about the boy! By the way, what is the boy?"
"The boy! ... Nothing! ... A piece of ballast, merely!"
Von Herrnung, warmed by dry clothes and exhibitions of schnapps, was
fast recovering his characteristic arrogance. He added, with a shrug and
a wave of the hand:
"As for the lost satchel, it may well be that duplicates of the
dispatches contained in it have been sent to the Emperor by another
messenger. That is the usual method, perhaps you are not aware?"
"Duplicates exist, but in only one place on earth will you find them,
and that place is the London War Office!"
The Commander pitched his cigar-butt into the cuspidor, snapped the
three stud-clips that secured his yellow oilskin storm-coat, and dug his
piercing little eyes into von Herrnung's as he asked:
"Have you never heard of the War-engine of Robert Foulis, the Scottish
sea-captain who first suggested to the British the use of steam as