That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
Taubefeld, in West Hessen. Flight Station XXX was here on a vast
stretch of heath. There were rows of great hangars, and a vast army of
motor floats and lorries, upon which machines, hangars,
telegraph-installations, workshops, mess-houses, and quarters for
officers and mechanics, could be placed when the mobilisation-order came
and transported by road or rail.
One had fallen sick at Taubefeld--the effects of that North Sea ducking.
One had waked up with a skin-cropped head wondering where one was. A
woman who helped in the cookhouse had given one broth and gruel and the
medicine prescribed by the doctor. One had crawled off one's straw
palliasse weakly and shakily, and so won forth into a new, unfriendly
world.
One's parole had been taken--and one was thenceforth free to move about
and see things--when one was not wanted to help oil or clean wires or
sweep up the hangars. There was grub enough: bacon-soup, potato-salad,
and sausage, queer but not uneatable. Nobody was really brutal as long
as one didn't speak English, or even German with a British accent, too
much at one time. _Keine Unterhaltung da!_ ("No conversation there!")
some officer or N.C. would yell at one, and the rebuke was generally
accompanied by the swishing cut of a cane.
Consequently the Saxham Pup had bent himself to acquire German, as
spoken by Germans, and schooled himself to employ his eyes and ears
while maintaining economy in the use of his tongue. He had found out
his whereabouts from an envelope he had picked up, and other things from
listening to the officers' conversation, and the talk of the mechanics
in the big hangars.
War was the thing everybody talked about. There was going to be bloody
War in a twinkling. The German Navy was going to smash the British Navy
into matchwood, everybody was quite sure. The German Army was going to
walk over the miserable little British Army--and then would be expiated
the sins of the British Government and the diabolical plottings of Sir
Edward Grey. Throat-cuttings, shootings, and hangings were mentioned in
connection with the above, and other personages whom British Boy Scouts
hold in reverence. But one had had to bear it and hold one's tongue,
and keep smiling. That was the method of the Chief who had said to one:
"Quit yourself like a man."
Brave advice, possible to follow by day when alien eyes were watching.
One could choke down weak tears and the ache of the lonely heart that
cried for Home and the dear familiar faces, when the Birds of War were
roaring and whirring up the night-field or down out of the sky. But at
night, in the grim, unfriendly dark of the sleeping-cupboard, without
other witness than the thin, sore-eyed white kitten that shared one's
meals and slept beside one on the hard straw mattress under the
foul-smelling grey blanket,--things were harder. One had got through,
after a fashion, by "rotting" and making believe. One did not set down
in the Scout's Note-Book or tell the wounded friend on the stretcher how
one had kissed the back of one's own hand, and whispered, "Good-night,
Mother!" and touched one's cheek with the tips of two fingers and
whispered, "Good-night, and God keep and bless you, my darling boy!"
Amongst other things of interest picked up by day, one found out that
Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung was cold-shouldered by the
officers of the Flight Squadron, which he had captained before his fall.
No longer top-dog, he was made to pay for his domineering and
swaggering. He resented this, by swaggering more. The men talked of
this in the hangars, as they tuned-up wires or cleaned the engines. Von
Herrnung was _Ungluecklich_. Nobody liked him. The Squadron would not
stand him long. Hadn't he insulted the Herr Squadron-Captain Pilot who
had succeeded and challenged him, and got his cartel back again?
"Colossal insolence!" he had fumed. "A challenge from a person of my
rank confers an honour on him who receives it. Not a man among you
stands upon my level. Deny it if you can!"
"True, very true!" the Lieutenant-Observer who had brought back the
challenge was reputed to have retorted. "Not a man among us has ever
been degraded, therefore, Herr Supernumerary Officer, you stand alone.
And we of the Field Flight do not regard your presence among us as a
distinction. You may possibly conceive that?"
He had said it just as though he had had a stink under his nose,
according to the narrator. And he had dropped von Herrnung's letter on
von Herrnung's table, wiped his fingers ostentatiously upon his
handkerchief, given the ghost of a salute--wheeled and gone out. After
that the whilom favourite of Fortune had turned sullen and solitary, and
developed such desperate recklessness that men funked to fly with him.
Subsequently the Bird of War hovering-gear having, after due examination
by Government experts, been relinquished to its captor, he had had the
mechanism adapted to a Taube monoplane, and thenceforward made Her
Dearest the sharer of his flights.
You are to suppose Bawne snatching fearful joys in the realisation of
cherished ambitions. Loathing and fearing, he yet admired the big
red-haired man, so superbly brave in the air that seemed his natural
element. Equally the man, detesting the child, grudgingly acknowledged
his courage and obedience. No queerer companionship may have been than
this between the Enemy, and the son of Saxham and Lynette.
When the Flight Squadron shifted to Aix-la-Chapelle, a huge seething
caldron of military preparation,--"Does England declare War against us?"
people asked the Flight officers. "It is probable," they answered,
"_Gott sei danke!_" Upon the Third of August, starting at night, Bawne
had made a long flight with the Enemy. At midnight the Taube had
hovered over a great, beautiful city twinkling with millions of electric
lights.
"That is Brussels you see down there," shouted von Herrnung through the
voice-tube. "The city is _en fete_ because of the agreement arrived at
between the Emperor and the Belgian King. That means England has lost a
friend, and made another enemy. Do you understand, little English
swine?"
And von Herrnung, who had brought a Wireless outfit, had busied himself
in picking up messages from a low-powered installation at the German
Embassy and transmitting them to Somebody, high in authority, who waited
at Berlin. He had grown more and more peeved as he went about his
business, Bawne could not tell why but Franky understood quite well.
Belgium had not been content that the Red Cock should perch upon her
British neighbour's roof, while her own house remained unscathed by
fire. Franky smiled, knowing this to have been the burden of the song
sung by the tuned sparks. Broad day had found the big city humming with
mobilisation, enormous placards printed in the National Colours, with:
"BELGIUM REFUSES!" and "ROI, LOI, LIBERTE," posted in all the public
places--and a park of heavy Artillery concentrated round the Etterbeek
Barracks, as von Herrnung had flown back to Aix-la-Chapelle on the
morning of August 4th.
Bawne went on:
The Flight Squadron had been attached to a Field Artillery Division of
the Second Corps, under a General named von Kluck. A huge man he, with
a square head and a big mouth full of broken teeth. Bawne had
previously seen him at the Wireless Station where he had been taken on
landing from the submarine.
They had seen little of the aviation-base, from the beginning of
hostilities. The Powers that Were had promptly taken von Herrnung at
his word. For him were the long-distance flights, the delicate and
risky missions, the dangerous reconnaissances over the Allied batteries.
Driven by that gadfly of desire to regain the lost distinctions, he
seemed to have lost all sense of fear and to bear a charmed life.
Thus, while von Kluck's Advance was opposed at Mons by the stubborn
thrust of the British Forces, the Buzzard earned his nickname by his
tireless quest for Death. It eased his grudge against mankind to hunt
men--and he hunted; hovering and observing, wirelessing and spotting,
utilising one machine for many purposes,--in those days when War Flying
was as yet in its infancy--sniped at by the sharpshooters of four out of
seven British Divisions--often waging, with automatic pistol and Krupp
machine-gun, fierce battles with other Paladins of the Wing, on the
boundless lists of air.
How many times the boy's heart had cried for pity when some brave bird
crippled by a spout of lead, or fired by an explosive bullet, had gone
spinning earthwards, showing the Three Crosses of the Union Jack, or the
blue-white-red circles of France's tricolour--or the red-black-yellow of
the Belgian Flag upon its upper and under-wings as it fell.
They had bombed Paris two days before, and bombed Ypres that morning,
starting from a Flying Base near the city of Bruges. Bawne knew the
place was Ypres because it was marked in red on the roller-map. The
British General Headquarters were supposed to be there. All the bombs
had been used except two, and the Enemy must have forgotten to get rid
of these before he landed. He was generally careful, but not so when he
drank much. And lately he had drunk a good deal, there was so much wine
in the country. He had come down and gone into the restaurant to quest
for food and champagne. If he found, he would eat hugely and drink
heavily, and then sleep himself sober. He always slept after a bout
before taking to the air again. But sometimes when he had mixed drinks
he got savage instead of sleepy, and then----
"Do you mean that he thrashes you?" Franky interjected here.
"Rather! Just look!"
There were bright red, newly-made weals and brown and purplish old ones
on the little muscular, boyish arm from which the speaker stripped the
sleeve.
"My back and legs are lots worse," he volunteered with the air of a
showman. "I sometimes think he'd like to kill me. But he won't"--the
blue eyes were shrewd under the white-streaked forelock--"because of
what the Emperor said."
"'Take the boy with you and make of him a decent German.' For fear of
your being sent for, he-- Yes, I understand! ... My Christmas!" Franky
whispered, opening his haggard eyes, and the fire that burned in them
scorched up the water, "If I only had the use of this bashed-up body I'd
jolly soon put the fear of God into the howling brute!" His uncertain
hand fumbled about the butt of his Webley and Scott revolver. "Shoot
him--and make tracks for Headquarters with you in his Taube. Can't fly
for monkey-nuts though. Can you?"
"A little." There was a lightening of pleasure in the sombre depths of
the blue eyes. "He lets me do plain, straight flying when he's sending
Wireless, or photographing or observing. I've never started from the
ground yet, or done a landing, though I'm sure I could if I tried. _He_
has shown me lots and lots. And I do what he tells me." The forehead
knitted under the ragged piebald forelock. "He bluffs about shooting me
if I don't obey. But before I drink brandy or do other things that are
blackguardly--or throw bombs on the British and the Allies, he _shall_
kill me! I've told him--and he knows I'll keep my word."
"I pipe. And can't you manage to do a flip on your own," came back in
the nearly extinguished voice from the sunken chest of the helpless
figure on the blood-soaked stretcher. "One o' these fine days when von
Thingamy isn't wide? What's to hinder your getting away now and pushing
South to meet the British Advance-guard? We blew up the bridge when we
left the town, but it's up to you to swim the river. Or cross with a
barrel or a plank."
"Yes. And I've often planned to bunk it! But--Man alive!--he's