That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
as a young crow or pigeon. A tap on the shoulder, a word shouted in his
ear--and he knew what you wanted! He understood now why his overlord
required the unrestricted use of his arms at this moment. The small
hands twitched as they gripped the lever, and shudders convulsed the
slender frame. Noting this von Herrnung grinned. His qualms had left
him for the present, he was once more master of his stomach and lord of
his cool and steady brain. Through the back of his head the boy could
see him--leaning his big body sidewise--craning his neck over the edge
of the fuselage--his hand hovering over the bomb hanging near in its
wire holder, his keen hard eyes calculating distance--his red brows
knitted, his full mouth smiling under its thatch of red hair. The
devil-egg would burst upon its impact with a roof or with the ground, a
thousand metres under the Taube. How many times since the red dawning of
the Aggressor's Day had he, von Herrnung, not plucked out the pin and
lifted the latch, and sent Death and Destruction speeding earthwards!
Why should this particular devil-egg have exploded five seconds after
its release?
The detonating mechanism had been wrongly set, or the explosive had
suffered some chemical deterioration. With the volcanic upburst of
flaming gases and the fierce blizzard of rending steel splinters, the
Taube was shot upwards like the cork from a bottle of champagne. The
Enemy had cut out the hovering-gear when he had dropped the devil-egg,
and the thrust of the tractor had sent the Taube rushing on. Thus,
though she had been bumped about on waves of rising gases--though
daylight shone through holes in her wings and body,--a wheel had dropped
like a stone from her under-carriage--and a piece of her tail had gone
fluttering and swerving earthwards, no serious damage had been done to
the machine.
Bawne's cheek was bleeding from the scratch of a splinter, but he stuck
manfully to the controls. "Steer south," he had been told, "when I
switch off the hoverer," and he had waited, his teeth set, his brows
knitted, his eyes on the compass, and his heart crying out to God to
save his new-found friend.
He knew it was because he had prayed so hard that the bomb had exploded
prematurely. Would the Enemy try again with the one that yet remained?
But the Enemy made no sign. One dared not look round or speak to him.
Was he in a fit, or sick, or merely shamming? One could feel the big
body heaving at one's back as it lay huddled against the canvas
partition, with rolling head and arms spread wide, and knees that
straddled and sagged.
Jerk! The Taube heaved her after-part as a cow gets up, and nose-dived.
Von Herrnung's feet had slipped from the controls, and her rudder was
flapping free. As Bawne toed the bar and gripped the guide-wheel, and
brought the keel to a level, the blood in his veins tingled and he knew
a thrill of joy.
One had borne a lot, but--Man alive!--a moment like this was worth it.
What Boy Scout could deny the greatness of this boy's reward? To be
master of this giant Bird, rushing at the speed of an express-train over
woods and fields and villages, diminished to the patches on a
crazy-quilt by the height at which one sped. To hear the shrill breeze
harping in the wires and the roar of the flashing tractor, and change
the din at a finger-touch to the silence of a glide.
West, where the sun was setting in red fire were signs by now familiar.
Linked specks that were big grey German troop-trains ran over the
shining gossamer-lines of the railways, going south. Where the shining
lines looked like scattered pins, the railways had been blown up by the
Belgians, or the British. Things like caterpillars crawling over the
white ribbons of the highways were German motor-lorries dragging great
howitzers, or Army Supply and Transport, or marching columns of robust,
bullet-headed German infantrymen.
A blot of grey upon a town was where a Division rested. Strings of grey
spiders hurrying south, would be brigades of cyclist telegraphists or
sharpshooters, and processions of drab beetles scuttling along, Field
Ambulances, or Staff motor-cars. One would have said that a green-grey
blight had fallen upon Belgium, swiftly advancing, stayed by nothing,
devouring as it moved.
East, where the shadow of the Taube raced beside her like a
carriage-dog, black streaks that were barges still crawled on the
canals, and peasants' carts crept over the roads--and there were no
columns of troops in view, nor uglier tokens of the War. Though the red
and brown towns showed scant signs of life, late root-crops were being
harvested; plough-teams were breaking up the stubbles, factory chimneys
were smoking, and acres of linen-web yet spread to bleach along the
river-banks.
Later in the month the grey-green blight was to sweep over all this
region as the Boche retreated before the thrust of the 1st and 4th
British Army Corps, from Houthulst Forest to Menin-on-Lys.
Those voices of the guns were nearer now. They talked on incessantly.
You felt the air that carried you vibrating as you flew. The solid
earth heaved up in waves under the dusty golden smoke-drifts veiling the
south horizon. Black pillars of smoke and _debris_ climbed and collapsed
against the dusty gold. Grey Imperial Staff cars were parked in the
courtyard of a chateau with pepper-box towers. Officers sat at tables on
the vine-covered terrace, while a farm close by was doing duty as a
casualty-clearing station. You could pick out the flutter of the Red
Cross Flag on a broken tree beside the gateway--and the come and go of
the bearers carrying laden or empty stretchers--and the white armlets of
the _Sanitaetskorps_ men who drove the ambulance-cars. To have seen over
and over again what grown folks learned from newspapers was to be a man
seasoned in War, whilst yet one's bones were young. Well worth the
hardships one had borne, this sheaf of ripe experience. Good to know
one had obeyed the Chief who said, "_Quit yourself like a man!_"
So Bawne flew on. The fiery chrism of a strange second baptism was on
his forehead. Gates of wonder seemed opening on the horizon towards
which he hastened, guided by the big broad arrow of the reinforced
compass and the thudding of those nearing guns.
Some perception of great issues at stake and marvellous impending
changes, ushering in the revival of the forgotten days of Chivalry, may
have come at this hour to the child so strangely caught and whirled into
the dizzy circles of the maelstrom of International War. Did a voice
whisper to him that as of old by his Pagan forefathers, babes were
sacrificed to Bel and Odin--so for the cleansing of the sick world of
to-day from the War-madness begotten by greed and materialism a torrent
of rich, warm, generous blood was to be shed from the veins of the
young? Could he dream that the lower mankind sank, the higher men were
to rise--mounting on stepping-stones of obedience and courage, to those
heights where the human may walk with the Divine? That through long
years to come, bright boys in myriads would drain the wine of Death from
the chalice of Self-Sacrifice, and pass to God who kindled in those
clean young souls the fire that made Him burn to die for men.
The Enemy was rousing from his doze or dwam, or swoon, or whatever had
been the matter with him. The big body was heaving into an upright
posture, the big foot was knocking in Morse on the bottom of the
fuselage. The boy looked down and saw blood running there--or was it
the red of the sunset?
"Shut--off--and--look--at me," rapped the foot, and its thrall obeyed
and shrieked at the sight of the horror he was strapped to, glaring with
wild eyes, and spitting unintelligible sentences with bloody splinters
of shattered teeth and red rags of palate and tongue.
"I am damaged, is it not so? Something hit me when the bomb exploded."
Something like this came in strange sounds from that inhuman face. And
the boy shrieked again and again, straining at the belt that bound him
to his terrible companion, conscious of nothing but overmastering fear--
"_Quit yourself like a man!_"
He heard the words through the drumming in his ears and his heart left
off leaping. His brain cleared. He realised that the Taube was diving
to the ground. He switched on power and brought down her tail and
pulled up her nose gamely. They passed through a suffocating mist of
burned chemicals that deposited red powder on your hands and face, and
the glass of your flying-goggles, and parched your lungs like burning
Cayenne pepper--and were over the battle-zone.
As far as the eye could take it in the face of earth was moving. Death,
like a many-handed mole, seemed working underground. Huge geysers of
dirt and mud and stones heaved up in thick black smoke and vapour. The
air shook incessantly with reduplicated concussions. Buildings tottered
and sank away, and railway bridges melted, and spurts of blinding fire
leaped from invisible mouths of guns.
The revolutions were slowing down. The Taube travelled painfully.
Beneath her bobbed a row of sausage-shaped observation-balloons
straining at their spidery cables, beyond these were the third and
second German lines--whitish furrows stretching East and West, with
little zig-zags, that were communicating-trenches, between. A thin blue
haze of rifle and machine-gun fire hung over the pitted ground. The
Advanced lines behind their smear of rust-red barbed wire might have
been sixty yards from the parapet of the British trenches. Friend and
foe were dying there--and over the hurly-burly, dodging Death in puffs
of woolly vapour, belched from vertical mobile muzzles, directing fire,
signalling, wirelessing, scouting, fighting others who assailed
signallers or scouters--wheeled and circled the Birds of War. Their
sharp eyes picked him out flying far down beneath them.
"There goes a Hun somebody's shrapbozzled!" said the pilot of a
R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to speak to his observer.
"Going to crash in a minute," said the observer of the Bleriot
Experimental. "Where, do you suppose?"
"If he keeps on at that angle," said the pilot from behind his glasses,
"he'll pass over that nest of Hun machine-guns in the big shell-pit
behind the German Advanced Line, at about a hundred and fifty--and pile
in that ploughfield behind our Gunners."
The Taube was flying low and crookedly--the high crescendo whine of
shell passed over it--heavy metal sent from German batteries--and other
shells from British guns were crashing and bursting near. The wind was
getting up in the west, and the drift of the machine was trending
eastwards, in spite of anything Bawne could do. Could one keep flying
long enough to pass the first line of British trenches? And how would
one come to the ground, knowing nothing about landing--and with a bomb
on board!
One must get rid of the devil-egg. Should one drop it on the enemy's
trenches? As he flew towards them a rag of white fluttered, and Bawne
caught his breath. A long line of grey-green men were jumping like
grasshoppers over the parapet. They went forwards with their hands up,
waving a White Flag, and from the British trenches came men in khaki
doubling out to take their prisoners....
_Rat-tat-tatt!_
The khaki figures began to fall. The grey men were cheering.... The
_rat-tatt_--came from the German machine-guns, pumping out jets of
murderous lead. Then in a flash Bawne understood, leaned to the right,
and seeing the machine-gun pit beneath him--pulled out the pin, jerked
up the latch, and dropped the devil-egg. Horrible to think, it would
kill Germans!--but then--to save one's own dear Englishmen----
"Good Night! Did you see that?" asked the pilot of the R.A.F.B.E.,