That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
frightfully clever. He knows a Scout sticks to his Word of Honour--and
he always asks for my Parole."
"F'f! That's a poser, old son." Franky considered. "If I were in your
shoes I'd take to givin' the strictly limited parole. Two hours--or
three--or four.... There's a chance if the time expires without
renewal--of being able to--perpetuate a strictly honourable bunk. So,
best Kid, live in hopes and watch out for chances, and one day----"
The speaker's voice trailed off into indistinctness. A deadly vertigo
came upon him. He sank amidst swirling waves of grey nothingness, to
emerge after aeons, to consciousness of the morning sunshine, and the
warm rain dropping on his clammy cheek and hand.
"Oh, oh! I thought you were dead!" It was the wailing voice he had
heard long ages back. "Like all the other people.... The poor men and
women and the little children----"
"Dead! Not a bit of it! Only shamming for a drink," Frankly whispered,
as the cup with its blessing of cool water revisited his baked lips:
"Look here. Where did you tell me your Flying Devil was?"
The boy said, with a scared glance through the breached front wall of
the baker's parlour, out into the street where the golden sunshine
played upon War's havoc and desolation:
"I said he went into the restaurant in the square where the--the dead
people are piled up--to hunt about for wine."
"I remember. What's that?"
The gaunt eyes rolled towards the yawning gap where once had been the
window. The white lips whispered, "Did you hear? I'll swear somebody
laughed."
Both held their breath. Not a sound reached them except the sliding of
some _debris_ from a pile of shattered masonry, and the gurgling of the
water in the broken street-main. Franky mustered breath and went on:
"And now shake hands and scoot, my son, for this spot isn't healthy.
Say 'Good-bye and God bless you!' And--if you didn't mind--you might
kiss me"--the uninjured hand lifted clumsily and pointed--"here on my
forehead.... Steady on! Hold hard! Thumbs up, old man!"
For sobs were racking the thin young frame, and the bright tears were
running. He gasped out:
"I--I--can't go away and leave you--to--to die all alone!"
_Die...._
The dreadful word, at last, dropping with a dull shock through the
wounded man's consciousness as a heavy stone sinks through deeps of
black water. Swirling rings of mist in Franky's brain, threatened to
close down and blot out all things. He thrust back the grey menace of
unconsciousness with a brave effort, whispering:
"Die.... Rats! What are you--talking about? It's me for the gay life
every time! All I've--got to do is to lie here--and--wait until they
fetch me.... They're coming--before to-morrow morning--give you my
solemn word!"
"You're sure?"
"Dead sure. Look here--can you remember my name was Norwater? Captain,
First Battalion Bearskins Plain?" The stumbling voice went on as the
boy nodded: "Well then, I'd like you to put in a word for me when you
say your prayers, sometimes. I might have a little chap of my own,
by-and-by, to do that for his Pater. What's this, best child?"
A black wooden Crucifix with the Figure of Our Lord in white plaster was
being held close to the dimming eyes.
"It's a Crucifix. I think it must have fallen down from the room that
was above here. Won't you keep it--to help you through the
night-time--just as the one on my Rosary helps me? ..."
"Good egg! Do you pray to it--and kiss it?"
"We pray--not to it, but to Our Lord who died for us and lives in
Heaven. We kiss it--because even if it isn't pretty it is His
Image--and has been blessed by a priest."
"Wipe my mouth first, please. You'll find--hanky in my pocket.
Thanks!" He asked, after his discoloured lips had touched the Feet of
the Crucified: "Isn't there something one ought to say? A prayer--or
something! Not much time now--before they fetch me. Tell quick--what
words say!"
"You couldn't have anything better than Our Father. Our Lord made that
prayer Himself. But there are lots of others. The little ones are
easiest. Say: '_Jesu, have mercy upon me!_'"
The weak voice came stumbling after.
"Jesu, have mercy on me!"
"_Jesu, help me!_"
"Jesu, help me!"
"_O Thou who didst die for sinful men upon the Cross, have mercy upon me
a sinner!_"
The glassy eyes stared upwards and past the boy, and a thin scarlet
thread began to trickle from the corner of his mouth....
"O Thou who didst die--upon the Cross--mercy--me a sinner!"
The stumbling voice trailed away into silence. The glazing eyes,
meeting Bawne's, said plainly: "Now go!" And as the boy, blind with
tears, turned in obedience to their order, a dull flame leaped into
them. They had seen the tall half-length of a big man, panoplied in the
goggled helmet and pneumatic jacket of the aviator, bulking in the
window-gap, even before Bawne knew that the Enemy was there.
*CHAPTER LXIV*
*AT SEASHEERE*
The narrow white footpath had suddenly led nowhere. Patrine had found
herself standing at the edge of a four-foot bluff, looking down upon a
grassy plateau that gently sloped to the brink of the cliffs. A wire
fence enclosed an aggregation of stone-grey wooden buildings dominated
by a flagstaff and the latticed steel tower of a Wireless installation.
The White Ensign flapped lazily from the halyards of the flagstaff,
there were three hangars at a little distance away. A row of seaplanes
sat on the grass before them, and some figures of men in overalls or the
familiar Naval uniform moved in and out and about the machines busily as
ants. Where the grassland stopped at the cliff-edge the roofs of other
hangars showed, that were built upon the shingle. A little way out
beyond the line of foam where the long green lips of the sea mumbled at
the wet pebbles, another row of seaplanes lashed to buoys, rocked like
gulls drowsing after a gorge of fish. And far out to sea, where the
heavy trails of smoke bannering from the funnels of rushing grey hulls
betokened the War activities of the Fleet in the Channel, and the
conning-towers of big submarines sometimes pretended to be little stocky
steamers sitting on the swell, two strange bat-like things rose and
circled and swooped, and were hidden in grey-blue mists to rise again,
and swoop and circle.... And a little dinghy with two blue figures in
it was pulling out from the beach in the direction of the anchored
planes.
"Beg pardon! But--aren't you Miss Saxham?"
She craned her long neck, looking for the speaker, and found him in a
youthful Flight Sub-Lieutenant, who, standing below the grassy bluff,
was looking up with very brown eyes at the tall figure in the narrow
skirt of tan, white and rose-pink chequers, the low-cut blouse of
guipure lace, and the knitted silk coat of rose-pink. Buckled pumps
adorned the well-arched feet, clad with navy blue silk stockings of
liberal open-work. She sported a buff sunshade lined with rose, and a
hat of rough tan straw, trimmed with quills of navy blue and rose-pink,
sat coquettishly on the beech-leaf hair. She gave the boy one of her
wide smiles, evading the "Yes" by nodding, and with a cat-like leap and
scramble, he was up the grassy bluff and standing before her, blushing
and saluting and holding out a scribbled paper-pad.
"For me?"
"For you--if you're Miss Saxham. It's a Wireless came this
morning--from your--from a great friend of yours. Somewhere in France."
"Oh--thank you!"
She pulled off a loose buff glove and stretched a large white hand for
the paper-pad. The message ran:
"6 a.m. Now leaving Compiegne for Calais. Seasheere in five hours,
barring accident. All my love to you. Alan."
And the Lieutenant had thought her pale.... She kissed the paper and
smiled at him bewilderingly. "Lucky beggar, Sherbrand," thought the
Lieutenant. "What a glorious woman!" He extorted from Patrine, who
would not be twenty until next August, the penalty for being built on a
grander scale than other daughters of Eve. But she was asking:
"Whom have I to thank for bringing Mr. Sherbrand's message?"
"Flight Sub-Lieutenant Dareless--and the thanks are quite on my side."
He phrased the trite civility punctiliously, while the bold brown eyes
beamed and twinkled: "For you're IT," they said; "just--clippingly--IT!"
"How did you know me?" began Patrine.
"Picked you up through the binnics from the bridge, ten minutes ago."
The slim brown hand flourished, indicating a T-square-shaped space of
well-watered turf marked off in whitewash lines upon the green aerodrome
below. "We call things by their proper names so as not to lose touch,
you understand? The short stretch is the Bridge, and the long strip aft
at right angles--that's the Quarter-deck. The big hut No. 1 is our
Wardroom--the Wing-Commander's cabin is divided off from it. The
officers' cabins are in the small hut, No. 2, and the Warrant Officers
and men divide No. 3. Of course we keep watches and post sentries--just
as if we were at sea. That Territorial on guard near is relieving a man
of ours, do you see?" He jerked his chin towards the moving brown
figure. "What have we to guard? Oh, well, the hangars, and our
Wireless"--another jerk indicating the latticed steel mast surmounting a
telegraph hut wedded to a vibrating dynamo-shed. "We get reports from
our patrols--most of 'em are fitted with radio-apparatus--and we receive
and transmit messages. Long distance? Well, rather! We're frightfully
swanky about our Wireless plant. It's Number One, H.P. Not big, but
jolly powerful. A----"
Six clear, silvery double-notes had sounded from a brass bell, hung
beneath a little white-painted penthouse sitting on the blue strip of
shadow on the westward side of the Wardroom hut. The Petty Officer who
had rung the bell exchanged a brief word with the Territorial, and went
back to the hangars from whence he had emerged. Patrine, with her heart
in her mouth, asked the Sub-Lieutenant:
"Was that a signal?"
"Only ship-time," said the brown-eyed one. "Six bells. Eleven A.M. And
our man ought to be looming up in sight. He might hit Seasheere now at
any minute. In fact, he's nearly an hour late."
"You don't--you don't suppose----?"
Fear had pinched and drawn and bleached her so that she looked forty
behind her white veil with blue chenille dragonflies. Her pale mouth
twitched and her black brows knotted over the haunted eyes that strained
out to sea. The paper-pad, crunched to a mere wad, dropped from the
hand that unconsciously released it. The boy picked it up, thrilled by
this peep behind the scenes of another's romance.
"No, no! There's no fear of an accident, Miss Saxham. Perhaps a bit o'
engine-trouble--you've got to travel slowish if she vibes too much. Or
he might have spotted an Aviatik and delayed to have a biff at him--on
the principle that ten Hun-birds make an evener bag than nine. We know
what a terror he's getting to be with the Maxim. But what puts the fear
of God into the flighty Taube quicker than anything is our R.N.A.S.
Vickers' gun."
Ah, did he know how horribly he tortured her! But a grey speck showed
upon the delicately-misty distance eastwards, growing bigger, coming
nearer, putting miles of green white, heaving water under its throbbing
engine with effortless speed. Her glance leaped to Dareless, studying
the oncomer between narrowed lids, and the hope that had kindled in her
died out as he shook his head.
"One of ours, on the Home-flight from Belgium, Miss Saxham. Your man
will pick up much higher, and to the south-east."
And presently the latest type of Fleet hydroplane, a two-seater Batboat