MAJOR-GENERAL E. D. SWINTON, D. S. O.
*This story, which was first printed in June, 1906, is here reproduced by permission of the author.
"Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire."—(Ecclesiastes.)
I
Three dirty and breathless soldiers scrambled painfully through a gap in the hedge on the brow of the rounded slope of the hill and, taking out their maps and field-glasses, lay down prone on their stomachs. So dirty were they that it was hard to realize that they were officers. Placing both elbows squarely on the ground, to counteract the unsteadiness of hand caused by their heaving bodies, their thumbs were soon busily twisting the focussing-screws as they directed their glasses on to a large patch of scrub away below, some three miles to the west. On a rise in this rough country a long line of intermittent flashes could be seen with the naked eye.
The hedge stretched for some distance along the brow of the hill. About one hundred yards behind, and parallel to it, between hazel hedges, ran a country road. This—hardly more than a lane—was, to the south of this point, sunken, but just here was flush with the ground. On the near side of it, immediately behind where the officers were lying, was an open gate, and close to this gate a young poplar tree, against which was propped a motor-bicycle. In the lane itself were a motor-cyclist and a couple of orderlies, the latter dismounted and holding the horses of the party. Down below, in the direction in which the three were gazing, stretched a peaceful panorama of undulating country, fading into bluish heat-haze in the distance. The different crops gave a many-hued appearance to the landscape, the richer colour of the uncut hay alternating with the still crude green of the young grain and the reddish purple of the beetroot fields. The few fleecy clouds floating lazily in the sky here and there cast vague shadows, which slowly moved over hill and dale. The white walls and shining roofs of the homesteads dotted about stood out gleaming in the sunlight, and these, with the patches of woodland, caught the eye and assisted in some estimation of distance, otherwise impossible upon the variegated background with its network of hedges.
It was an almost perfect day in early June. Yet, in spite of the brilliant sunshine, there was an oppressive sultriness in the air which gave more than a hint of a coming storm.
Far off, in the same positions they had occupied all day, hung three war-balloons, motionless in the still air. They were of a curious shape, and as the sun glistened on their distended skins they had the appearance of three monstrous and bloated yellow caterpillars. Upon the youngest of the three men under the hedge they had a disquieting effect of oppression. He felt that they were the eyes of the enemy—as indeed they were—and was uneasy under their silent gaze; at times he even imagined that those menacing eyes could read not only his actions, but his very thoughts and desires.
Though the elements seemed at peace, there was clear evidence that man was not, for here and there could be seen the angry glow of a conflagration with its pall of black smoke. In places the dirty-white dust-clouds betrayed the movement of masses, though the masses were not visible, while over certain spots thick clusters of smoke-puffs, suddenly breaking out like signal flags from the halliards of a ship, showed where shrapnel shell were raining down destruction. These puffs were of different colours—the majority pure white, but others were of a purple and magenta hue as violet as aniline dyes. An occasional bright flash, followed by a dull detonation and an upshooting trefoil of black smoke, marked the fall of high-explosive shell. From the clamour that filled the air, one might have imagined that the whole countryside formed one large shipyard or boilermaker's shop, so metallic was the sound of musketry close at hand. Every moment this body of sound was stabbed by the nearer rifle-shots which rang out separately, and broken by the occasional throb of machine-guns, the mechanical beat of pom-poms, and the booming of artillery. But to an ear used to the noise of battles, there was one fresh sound—that of the quick-firing field-guns; for as they seized some fleeting occasion to pour out their squalls of shell, individual shots could not be distinguished in the continuous roar.
Notwithstanding this din in the air, it was difficult to see any signs of life. Of the work of man there was ample evidence; but of man himself—save those on the hill—there was no trace. Had a curious observer, however, walked some way down the bellying slope of the hill, he would have seen the backs of a long line of infantry digging for dear life near the bottom.
From all this turmoil down below, the little group at the top of the hill seemed strangely detached. No shell flew screeching over their heads, no bullet sang near them—they gazed on undisturbed. At last one put down his glasses and sat up with a grunt.
"We've been looking at the wrong place all along. We've been watching their flashes and bluff trenches on that rise. The guns are using flameless powder, and are a good deal closer—more to the left of the rough. I can just make them out, but cannot see how many there are."
"I can't see anything except the flashes which appear just where the trenches are," replied a second.
"Yes, of course, that's their game! D'you see that red and white farm?"
"Yes."
"Above that there's some water."
"Yes."
"Above that, still more to the left, on that hump covered with—"
"Yes, yes, I have them now; I should say there was more than one battery. They don't seem to be entrenched, either; but it is hard to tell on that background."
"There are more like twenty guns there," continued the first. "You may be certain they're entrenched—they're no fools. They have shown the dummies and hidden the real emplacements, which would not require much work on such a place as that—an ideal spot for guns."
"And so is this," added the third, the youngest of the three. "If it were not for their balloons, we could get a whole brigade up here unseen all the way, and suddenly open fire from behind this hedge. Even if they are entrenched, we could enfilade them and give them a bad time—enough to keep them quiet. If they're not, Lord help them, once we start!" He chuckled softly, and muttered fervently to himself, "Yes, Lord help them!" He was a Gunner.
He stared for a minute at the nearest balloon, silently and in deep thought, then taking off his hat, began absently to mop his head. Suddenly he stopped quite still, his head turned to one side as if listening.
"My God! it is rising!"
The two gazed at him in blank amaze, and, startled, at once seized their repeating-pistols.
"The wind, I mean—the wind. I feel it on my damp head!"
They still looked blank.
"Don't you see? If the wind only rises, down go those cursed balloons, and then—" There was no need to finish the sentence. The others jumped to their feet; one sucked his finger and held it up; the other picked a puff-ball and threw it in the air; all watched it gently wafted up the hill.
"Yes, look over there; that's more than haze—it's cloud!"
Toward the west there was now a low bank of gray cloud stretched across the horizon, against which the intermittent flashes showed bright.
"Whistle up the cyclist!" snapped out the eldest of the three, sitting down with notebook and pencil.
As the cyclist came up, he said, "Take this as quick as possible to the General of the 10th Division: he must be found; but if on the way you get near the officer commanding the Corps Artillery, show it to him and say I want him to read it."
After a minute they heard, as they got up, the snort of the motor breasting a rise on their left, and after three minutes there was nothing but the reek of petrol to show that any one had been on that hilltop.
They had gone and no one had noticed two small scoops in the ground—one under the hedge and the other farther along near the road—where ranging shell had fallen.
II
The wind has risen with the coming storm, and, above, the white clouds begin to chase each other across the blue sky. Out in the open and on the hilltops the trees are stricken by gusts of wind which rob the hawthorns of the last of their bloom. In the sheltered valleys there is peace and quiet, and under the lee of the hill the sultriness of the whole morning seems to have been concentrated.
The artillery brigade has now been waiting some time in that hollow lane between the high banks covered with wildflowers. Long enough to breathe the panting gun-teams, and for some of the gunners to dismount and pluck dog-roses, which they have stuck in their hats.
The still air in this little heat-trap, heavy with the smell of horses and the overpowering scent of May-blossom strewn on the ground, combined with the drowsy buzzing of the bumblebees—the gentle murmur of a hot summer's day—has a somnolent effect on all except the animals, as they stand there zigzagged across the lane, the guns and limbers slewed to ease the strain. They present a succession of shiny quivering skins, and tails switching in a vain endeavour to drive off the hovering swarms of flies who divided their attention between the backs of the men and the horses. Though there is no conversation, for the men—here and there chewing a biscuit or taking a sparing drink from their water-bottles—are all tired, yet there is a general air of pleasurable expectancy, for the nature of their present errand is now known to all. It is their first experience of active service, and the event now awaited is to be their baptism of fire. In the minds of the more serious, a slight though vague feeling of apprehension—running like the coloured thread through the lay of a rope—adds zest to their suppressed excitement, for many and wonderful have been the yarns going the round of the barrack-rooms as to the powers of the enemy's quick-firing artillery. Here a more phlegmatic man has lit his pipe and wastefully thrown the match away, to burn to the end among the nettles on the bank—a thing which alone is sufficient to show that these are the early days of operations.
How the sun's rays pour down between the trees! How mercilessly they betray, even through the cloud of dust still hanging in the air, a hint of the more unpleasant side of war! The weary and lathered horses, the red and strained faces of the men, their peeled noses, the little runnels made in the grime on their cheeks by the perspiration as it streams down, the purple sweat-patches in the greenish-yellow uniform. Now and again, as if maliciously to accentuate the contrast between its dainty self and the crowd of men and animals sweating below, a pale butterfly flits aimlessly in and out of the shadows—sometimes nearly, but never quite, settling on a horse or gun.
The windings of the lane only permit a view of some hundred yards of its length at one time; but even this short distance offers an impressive sight. It is apparent, in spite of the dust and dirt, that the greater number of these men—some still on their horses, some standing, and some stretched out on the shady side of the road—are seasoned and in the prime of life; no mere boys, but men in the best sense of the word, sturdy and full-set. Even for gunners they are a fine lot; and during this lull preceding the coming storm, the sight of this little collection of splendid men and horses raises thoughts as to whether any other army in the world can produce their equal. Both men and animals are the last word in continuous training and scientific preparation applied to picked material. Not only are they good to look upon, but good to act. From the showy prettiness of a tournament driving competition to the serious business of getting on to the target, they excel; for here at this moment is collected the smartest brigade of field-artillery in the army—and that means, as they think, the smartest brigade in the world: they are armed also with the best guns in the world. There stand the guns one after another slewed across the narrow road, almost blocking it with their length. Wicked they look in their dusty greenish paint, with an occasional glint of steel where it has been scraped off. Even to the uninitiated these quick-firers have a more venomous appearance than the simple old guns; for, with their long, low-hung bodies peering mysteriously from behind their shields, they look like monstrous grasshoppers crouching on a hill. Ugly and venomous looking, they are the pride of their owners. Though he may not talk much about it, never has there been a true gunner who did not love his weapon and thrill with the idea of using it.
To those, now a little thoughtful on account of the legends concerning the enemy's wonderful quick-firing artillery, the sight of their own, whose powers they have so often tested on the practice-ground, is reassuring. They have the best gun ever invented, and at speed of ranging and accuracy of fire they are unequalled. What more? Are they not going to catch the enemy unawares? And to be caught unawares by a squall of shrapnel from modern quick-firers means extinction.
To the officers, the exact nature of the present task is known, and the possibilities of the occasion better appreciated—for though as yet without personal experience in war, they know to what a pitch all the nations have brought their quick-firing artillery, and what is expected from its "rafales," "tir rapide," "schnell feuer"—call it what you will—upon an exposed and unsuspecting enemy. They are standing alongside the horses, one feeling his animal's legs, another loosening a girth, but the majority cheerfully talking in little groups.
At last the dreary wait is over, a flag flickers from one hill to the other. "The enemy's balloons are down." With a sigh of relief the order is passed, and the brigade moves on, slowly at first, then breaking into a trot, for its destination is still some way off, and time, tide, and the chances for quick-firing artillery wait for no man.
The message has come down from the youngest of the three officers who were making the reconnaissance under the hedge two hours ago. For the past hour he has been watching those malignant balloons from that same spot, and whistling for the wind. As the wind has risen, so have his spirits. It is a difficult thing to gauge the height of an object in the air, and several times he has thought that the balloon nearest the enemy's guns seems lower than it was, only to find out he is wrong.
The cloud-bank to the west grows larger, and as its ragged edge creeps up over the blue sky, the dark background shows up the glistening balloons the more brilliantly. The two farthest off are coming down—there is no doubt about it—and at last the nearer one seems lower. Yes—it is! Down, down it sinks. When it is quite close to the ground he waves to a signaller behind the road, who passes on the message, and so back it goes to the waiting brigade.
He crawls behind the hedge for a moment to watch the range-takers, who have been up here for the past half-hour and have taken and checked and rechecked the distance to the enemy's guns. Some men with tools also, who have uprooted the gate-posts, and widened some openings from the lane on to the hilltop, are now cutting little windows through the hedge on the brow. A few officers arrive ahead of the batteries, and to these he points out their positions and the target and range.
All is ready, and the head of the column is even now jangling up the hill.
III
The same landscape as watched by the three under the hedge, but viewed from the other side. In the foreground, half hidden among the patches of gorse on a gentle slope, is a long irregular line of perhaps twenty guns. It is difficult even at this short distance to count their number, for they are dotted about here and there amongst the clumps of cover. Though of a grayer hue, they have a strong family resemblance to those others resting in the little lane on the hillside. By each is a water-bucket, the purpose of which is shown by the damp earth round the gun, and the absence of dust. Alongside also are little shelter-pits dug for the gun detachments, the bright yellow of the freshly turned earth artfully concealed with pieces of bush. The guns, the limbers, and the very horses themselves—over there in the rear—are embowered in greenery. The incongruous Jack-in-the-Green appearance thus given to these engines of destruction seems at first ill-timed foolery. It strikes a jarring note, as does laughter in the presence of death. Overhead, to one side of the line of guns, a huge yellow balloon sways in the rising wind and strains at the cable which slants away down to a small collection of wagons in a convenient hollow.
To the general din of battle all round is periodically added the roar of some of the guns in the line as a target worthy of a "rafale" of shell is found. The paroxysms of noise indulged in at intervals by these quick-firers are the only sign they give of their action, for they neither belch out flame nor kick up dust. Each fresh outburst seems to call up an echo from the direction of some absurdly ill-concealed earthworks about half a mile to the rear. The enemy are shooting badly. Few shells fall near the guns, though many pass over with a shriek to burst in the neighbourhood of those conspicuous earthworks, whose parapet must be a very shell trap, so continuous are the explosions on it. An occasional heavy shell rumbles up from the South, and, passing over with the noise of an electric tram, detonates in a fountain of yellow earth near the same target.
Near the focus of these explosions are a number of men sitting at the bottom of deep holes, and from their occupation it appears that not all the explosions so close to them are caused by hostile shell. They are busily employed in setting off flash bombs just outside their yellow parapet whenever their own artillery fires. And as two more shrapnel from different directions whistle high above the much-decorated guns, and burst over the pits, it is clear that the latter are the targets aimed at.
This is the method in the madness of these troglodytes in their pits and of the other stage effects.
Some little way from his guns is a dried-up saturnine sort of man, dirty and anything but smart—the commander of the artillery. He is talking to a staff-officer, with occasional pauses as he stoops to gaze through a telescope mounted on a tripod, not to the southeast, in which direction his guns are firing, but toward the hills to the east. Close by sits another officer at a field telephone in a hole in the ground; such work is at the present moment too important for an orderly. From the instrument a cable, sagging from one bush to another in loops, leads toward the wagons near the balloon anchorage: this cable is the nerve leading from the eye up aloft to the nerve centre below. A few soldiers are sitting about. Not only do these men wear a different uniform from those other gunners now perspiring on that hillside, but they are unmistakably of a different race.
The Commander again takes a long look toward the hills where something seems to excite his apprehension, for he converses earnestly with the staff-officer, and the two look more than once toward a poplar tree the top half of which is visible above that hill on the East. The wind increases.
The distant balloons are already gradually descending, and a message shortly comes down from the observer above that it is too windy to remain up. The word is given, and slowly the great mass is hauled down to the depression near the wagons, where it is practically hidden, its approach to the ground being the occasion of special attentions from the enemy. Here, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, it is seized by many hands and bound. Hardly has it nestled, with much heaving of billowy sides, into its hollow, when the eye is attracted by something dancing up and down among the brushwood close to it. It is an oblong framework, partially covered with dirty gray canvas, which has commenced to make sundry abortive little swoops up into the air, ending in abrupt dives down again to earth. Finally this weird kite—for kite it is—makes up its mind and sails steadily upward to the tune of its whining cable-drum. Up, up it goes, holding well in the strong breeze till it becomes a mere speck in the sky. Another kite follows, then another, and again one more, threaded on the same cable, till with the combined pull it is stretched as taut as a piano wire, and hums in the breeze like the weather mainstay of a racing yacht.
The Commander walks over to the starting-point of the kites, where, sitting near an exaggerated clothes-basket, is a young officer. He is unshaven, his face is pale and drawn, and he appears worn out as he sips slowly from the cup of his flask, but as his senior approaches, he rises, salutes, and listens attentively to his somewhat lengthy instructions. He is an exceptionally slight man, and his general air of fatigue is explained by the fact that he has been observing from the balloon for the past three hours; the dark rings under his eyes show where the constant strain has most told. In spite of this he is again to go up in the kite, not because there is none other capable, but because the advantage of having up aloft a pair of eyes that already know the lie of the country is at the present juncture of greater importance than the fatigue of any man.
As the Commander concludes his harangue, a shell bursts on the ground close to him, covering him with sand. He does not pause to shake the sand off, but finishes his sentence: "Of course it is a chance, but they may not notice you go up against this cloudy background, and may be tempted to take up that position by seeing the balloon go down. If they do, well—" and he looks toward his guns and smiles thoughtfully.
The younger man nods, takes one more pull at his flask, feels if both pairs of field-glasses are hanging round his neck—he carries two—straps a telephone receiver and mouthpiece round his head, and climbs into the clothes-basket which is held by the men. The basket is attached to the rigid kite cable by runners. After the gear is tried, another large kite, which is harnessed to his prosaic-looking chariot, is thrown into the air. Making one or two ineffectual dives, it catches the wind and begins to pull. Slowly at first the observer rises, then faster as the great wings above him catch more of the breeze. Now they feel it, and up he sails like a pantomime stormfiend, to the accompanying moan of the wire vibrating in the wind. In a few moments he is a stationary spot far up on the slanting wire.
How insignificant in contrast to the great bulk of the balloon does the whole collection of kites appear—yet—the eye is there.
IV
The commanding officer goes back to his station by the telephone, and waits. Prrrrrt, grumbles the instrument, and this time it is he himself who takes the receiver. He listens attentively, for it is difficult to hear along an aerial line, and there is much repetition before he finally replies "All right!" to his subordinate up above. A word to a staff-officer, who at once waves to some one near the guns. Then ensues much activity. Within three minutes every muzzle has been switched round by hand so as to face the hills on the East, at half a right angle from its former direction. The gun-layers at once start laying at the range obtained by those few shots fired some hours back, and buckets are emptied on the ground, but no effort is made to dig shelters, for they will be unnecessary. The exposure of and loss to be caused by the new position is ignored. When all are at their stations ready to open fire, a whistle sounds.
The suppressed excitement is catching. That the Commander himself is not unaffected is shown from the manner in which he ostentatiously, and with almost too great deliberation, selects a cigar from his case and begins chewing the end of it....
"Prrrrrt," rattles the telephone: the Commander drops the chewed cigar and listens.
"Are you ready?" gurgles down the wire.
"Yes."
"The head of their column is not far off the poplar tree."
A pause.
* * * * * * *
Meanwhile, on the hilltop, the watcher has again sat down. Now there is nothing to watch in the sky, he sets himself to study the enemy's guns, amongst which he seems vaguely to discover some movement. Can they have suspected anything? As he sweeps his glass carelessly across the gray cloud toward its terrestrial object, something—a midge probably—in the upper corner of the object-glass catches his eye. He puts down the glass and rubs the lens with his handkerchief. He looks again. The midge is still there. He looks directly at it—it is a collection of midges. Good God! These are no midges—they are a covey of war kites high up in the sky! Yes, and there is the observer hanging some distance below, who must have seen all!
By this time two or three guns have turned out of the lane and are unlimbering.
He rises and tries to shout—it is too late.
* * * * * * *
"Now they're turning out of the road, through three or four gaps, to come into action—now two guns have left the road—hullo!—are you there?" continues the thin metallic voice down the wire.
"Yes."
"Let them have it."
The Commander, from his lowly position, looks up and nods to a signaller standing up on a mound; the latter drops his flag.
The air is split by the noise of the whole line of guns as they open rapid fire. It is like the report of one piece prolonged into a continuous long note.
Upon the brow of that hill of doom, hiding the sky-line for perhaps 400 yards to the right of the now obscured poplar, appears a crown of magenta-coloured smoke, out of which a succession of light flashes sparkle.
* * * * * * *
By those up on that hill is heard a faint roar in the distance, followed by a whistling sound, and the air above—all round—is full of crackling reports, shouts, oaths, and groans. Bullets tear the earth on all sides, and the steel gun-shields ring out like gongs under their blows. Everything except the dreadful sounds becomes blurred in the puffs of acrid, tinted smoke which the wind drives across the hilltop.
* * * * * * *
In a minute, automatically, the fire ceases—a long period for quick-firing guns which pour out fifteen shells a minute, and much ammunition, but this is an opportunity given by the gods.
The Commander puts the telephone to his lips:
"Hullo!—is that enough?"
"Wait a minute. My God! It is."
V
Not one return shot has been fired.
The smoke is dissipated by the wind as soon as the squall of shell ceases, and the scene of the butchery stands revealed.
Behind the hedge are three guns unharmed except for splintered wood. Their green tint is all mottled with oval patches of shining silver, plated by the metal of the glancing bullets. Men are lying about singly, nearly all wounded in the head, and nearly all dead. A few who still crouch paralyzed behind the shields seem unhurt. Horses lie tied together by their harness in kicking, screaming bunches. At the gateway is a tangle of capsized gun, limber, man, and beast, which entirely blocks that part of the lane.
This is an abattoir better undescribed in detail—a medley of dead and dying men and animals, and of vehicles jammed into a solid mass. At intervals guns lie upturned or wedged across. The mass still struggles and heaves. Here and there drivers have half succeeded in driving their guns up the bank, in a gallant attempt to get out of the shambles, with the result that the horses lie dead on the top, and the guns lie overturned in the hollow. A few unharmed and dazed officers and men still shout orders and shove and push at the guns. There, where an ammunition wagon, hit direct by a shell, has exploded, is a cleared space. Branches and twigs are splintered in all directions, and the shrapnel balls have stripped the leaves from the trees and scattered a sparse shower of green over their handiwork.
Though at least one of the shells has not burst exactly, for on its back, under the hedge on the brow of the hill, lies the headless body of the young gunner officer—the glasses still in his left hand, a handkerchief in the right—yet, as the small voice had squeaked down the telephone wire 5000 yards away—it is enough!
BY DONN BYRNE
*Reprinted by permission of the author and of Charles Scribner's Sons.
The lights of Dunkirk slipped rearward, vibrating like a lantern at a ship's stern. They became a vague yellow splotch, like a hazy harvest moon; they became a dim halo, and narrowed down to an orange pin-point, like a smoker's match in a fog. Ypres showed southward in a pale aureole. Afar off the guns of Flanders thundered like drums.
Meriwell, as he leaned over the middle car of the dirigible, lowering his masked head to the wind, watched the black country skim by as if it were being pulled along by a rope. A spring wind cut past like a hurricane, and in it Meriwell could taste the sharp tang of gunpowder mingled with the scent of April flowers. Ypres flashed by beneath them and Cambrai rose like a star. The noise of the artillery discharges came nearer. It took on the heavy, booming tones of a March sea beating hollowly on cliffs.
"We're coming near the firing-line," Meriwell said to himself. "We ought to be rising now."
He glanced across to where the steersman stood cowled and rigid at his wheel, his slim, tall form suggested more than defined by the hooded electric lights. Beside him poring over compass and map, his pale lawyer's face showing up like that of a hunting-bird, was the navigating lieutenant. In the shadows, leaning over the edge of the car, as a captain leans over his flying bridge, was the flight commander, old Colonel Sanderson. Meriwell glanced surreptitiously at his square-cut, tow-like beard and bowed engineer's shoulders. They seemed to droop more than ever to-night.
"Poor old skipper!" Meriwell muttered sympathetically.
The guns of the firing-line crashed into the air with heavy, shattering blasts. In the distance there showed the faint shadows of lights. Green shadows, that were lyddite; and infinitesimal pin-points of yellow, that were the flashes of rifles; and the pretty orange of shrapnel; and the blinding white of magnesium flares.
"Eighteen degrees up," the navigating lieutenant ordered. He watched his plumb-line while the steersman heaved on his switch. "Easy! Steady! Right-o!"
The floor of the car tilted like the deck of a steamer rising to the swell. The huge dirigible nosed her way upward like a mounting dragon-fly. They passed through a fleece of cloud that touched them caressingly like soft fingers. The noise of battle beneath them faded into a vibrating bass chord. The propellers purred like giant cats.
"She answered like a blood mare," said the navigator, pride ringing in his voice.
"If only my guns and bombs go as well as your planes," Meriwell told him, "I'll be satisfied."
"They will, never fear," the navigator laughed.
They were all proud of her, navigator, gunnery lieutenant, engineers, and crew. Full-fledged, like Minerva from the head of Jove, she had appeared from the tousled brain of the queer, misshapen Scotch engineer of the Clyde, who had come knocking at the door of the war-office when the slug-shaped Zeppelins were pouring fire on the heart of London and the British airmen were relying on frail, insufficient biplanes—sparrow-hawks competing with eagles. They had, thank God! trusted that little man with the Scots accent and the brier pipe, and here they had her now in the air, three hundred feet of her, a miracle of aluminum and gas and oiled silk, rigid, dependable, fleet as a bullet from a sharpshooter's piece. Meriwell studied her lines through the darkness with a throb of pride: her graceful length, like some wonderful night insect; the wide sweep of her planes, like a jinn's wings, the shelf-like horizontal ones to send her nosing upward like a hawk or to let her down in a gliding sea-gull's swoop, the vertical one like the rudder of a gigantic vessel; the three great baskets, attached to the keel with the trellised runway between them; the four propellers, humming like a nest of bees, two to the forward car, two to the aft; the platform above the many-jointed aluminum-covered balloons, with its emergency bridge and rapid-fire gun.
"We're up seven thousand feet," the navigating lieutenant grinned. "How do you like it?"
"Don't like it at all," Meriwell answered. His teeth were chattering.
"You'll like it less in a minute. I'm going up to ten."
The din of fighting below had vanished into a faint murmur and the flashing guns and flaming artillery had become small, flickering lights, like fireflies on an August night. Occasionally a cloud flicked past below them and shut off even the pinpoints of light. Here and there a group of stars showed, coldly lustrous, while southward toward Reims one fell sheer, like a bomb.
"I'd rather be shot than as cold as this," Meriwell grumbled. Beneath his leather suit and woolen mask his skin had become rough as sandpaper.
He looked about the car. The navigator stamped his feet and swung his arms with the cold. The steersman crouched low behind the wheel. Four of the crew huddled in blankets against the walls of the basket. Only the commander stood imperturbable and grim, looking into the night. The shaded electric bulbs threw a sickly yellow light over the mechanism of the dirigible; over the black signal-board, on which green, red, and white circles and triangles showed, messages to and from the engineers fore and aft; over the row of switches, like those in a railroad tower, that opened the cages beneath the cars to release the pear-shaped bombs; over the navigator's map and compass. They outlined dimly the machine gun that peered over each side swathed in their oilskin coverings. They drew strange, green glints from barometer and spirit-level, and made silver sparkles on the frost crystals that were forming, parallelogram on parallelogram and triangle on triangle, among the twisted riggings of the car.
"What time is it?" Meriwell asked.
"It's ten-thirty," the navigator jerked. "We'll make Mainz by two and be back about dawn."
The cold became more dry and piercing. It seemed to ooze in at the pores and mingle with the blood and compose itself into a mixture that chilled flesh and bone. Meriwell felt his limbs going numb. The countryside beneath was becoming darker. There were no longer great chandeliers of light to show towns and small clusters that were villages. To the left a faint geometrical array of arc lamps rose dimly. The navigator crossed to the side of the car and looked at it for a moment. He shook his head grimly. Meriwell knew it was Brussels. A cloud enveloped them and dashed them with particles of dew that were like a shower of frost. Through the thick spray the figures of the steersman and commander loomed up gigantically, like visitors from another world showing vaguely through a misty dawn.
There was something eerie, Meriwell thought, in the immobility of the commander. He should have shown more eagerness, more of a sense of satisfied ambition. For years the old engineer officer had lived in the hope of seeing England recapture her lead in the aviation of the world. He had worked night and day in his laboratory, testing gases, testing metals, working out models for a battleship of the air that would thrust aside the Zeppelin and the Schutte-Laenze as the steamer put aside the barkentine. And now to-night he was commanding his dream for the first time in action. He was to raid the great railway network of Mainz, over which German corps were entraining night and day for the last supreme effort to gain the coast towns. In two hours he would be tearing the mighty terminal to shreds of twisted rails and charred wood, and distorted lumps of iron that had once been panting locomotives. Meriwell was proud to be with him, and the commander should be proudest of all. The gunner remembered how the old man had pleaded for the detail. The chief of staff had argued he was too old; he was too valuable. The chief had had in mind a thing Meriwell had forgotten and which suddenly came back to him with stunning force. But the old aviator had won.
"The old sportsman!" Meriwell said to himself, and his throat choked with pride; "the great old sportsman!"
He remembered how, on the first raid of the leprous-white Zeppelins from over the channel, the first house to be struck was the house of the old commander, a square, uncompromising, soldier-like house on Notting Hill, where his wife—the gray-haired, motherly lady with the dignified eyes—dwelt, and his widow daughter, mourning her husband dead somewhere in France. His soldier son, of the Sherwood Foresters, home on leave, was sleeping at the time. There were heard the high whir of propellers and the desultory crashing of anti-aircraft guns. Then, accurate as a thunderbolt, the great pear-shaped bomb had dropped, with the crash of lightning striking a tree. A colleague of the Royal Artillery, a blunt old fighter, with a cropped gray moustache, had told him about it, tactfully, laconically, with a fighter's sympathy. He told him how the gray-haired lady had died—very dignified, as she had been in life; very peaceful, as befitted an upright gentlewoman, her calm features mercifully unmarked. He stumbled as he spoke of the young captain, for a soldier should die on the battlefield, with guns roaring and his men about him, instead of being potted like a rat in a corn-stack. When he came to the daughter his face diffused to purple and his gray eyes flashed.
"Curse them!" he swore viciously, "curse them night, noon, and morning! living and dead! the rotten gallows-birds!"
"That's all right, Carter," the aviator had said. "Thank you for telling me." And he had walked off, fumbling pitifully at his sword-belt. What black hairs he had left had turned white since then, and his gray eyes were more sunken, but his beard jutted savagely since, and his voice snapped commands to his airmen with a ring like that of steel.
"I wish we were over that railway station," said Meriwell to himself, grimly. He squinted across at the switches of the bomb-cages and at the silent machine guns in their oilskin swathings. "He's going to get some good work in to-night, if I can help."
The officer at the compass straightened suddenly. He punched at the indicator buttons in a quick burst of energy.
"Up planes," he shouted. "Nine degrees down."
"Nine down!" the steersman repeated. He heaved on his switch with a long, graceful pull. The notches clicked successively like a clock in winding. The car tilted forward gradually. Meriwell grasped at a support to keep himself from sliding. Wind flew against them in a strong upward sweep. The steersman braced to his wheel like a wrestler. The propellers purred less loudly. Meriwell had the sensation of being gently pulled downward. He looked over the side of the car fearfully. A few desultory lights showed dimly, like the lamps of a train in the distance. An engineer officer dropped into the car from the passage, electric torch in one hand and oil-can in the other. He reeked pungently of gasolene.
"Time you were going down," he remarked peevishly to the navigating lieutenant in strong Scots. "Do you want all my engines to freeze?"
"It'll be hot enough pretty soon," the navigator jeered at him.
"Where are we?" Meriwell asked.
"South of Maastricht," the lieutenant answered. He was as excited as a schoolboy. "We'll be over the border in a minute." He leaned toward the wind-gauge. "Doing seventy-two miles an hour," he shouted after the engineer.
It was warmer now. Meriwell glanced at the scale beside the barometer and saw it registered two thousand five hundred feet. Vague, clean scents stole through the wind—the white odour of hawthorn and the freshness of spring grass and early flowers, and the transparent odour of the wind, like the transparent taste of water. Sounds rose vaguely into the air—the shadows of sounds, it seemed—the baying of an uneasy dog and the twitter of startled birds. An automobile-horn screamed raucously and somewhere there was the cutting whistle of a train. As he leaned over the side of the car, the gunnery lieutenant saw the sparsely lighted land slip away beneath them as a pier slips away from a liner. Occasionally there was a brightly lighted municipal building; occasionally a microscopic point that Meriwell felt was a man with a lantern. Here and there a forge licked like flames on a volcano—a mute suggestion of war in which labour ceased neither night nor day. Afar off a flashing line of lights, like the lighted fuse of a crude mine, showed a train speeding. Meriwell felt himself looking at these things as a disembodied spirit might—the last odour and sound and sight of an earth that years of dwelling in had invested with a great affection. He felt himself shiver.
He moved slightly against the edge of the car, and as he did he discovered, with a sense of shock, that his hand had grasped the rail so tightly that he could hardly move it. The horrible intent nervousness that airmen know was lapping itself about him. He felt a wild desire to find himself on earth again, so wild that he had to clinch his teeth to prevent himself from jumping over the side of the car. He was suddenly conscious of his nerves—they seemed to spread all over his body like the veins of an ivy leaf, to be writhing, to be crying at his finger-tips. A great fear came on him, as it might come on a man swimming in the ocean far from sight of land or sail. They had no right to be there, he said to himself fiercely, no right to be high among the winds. They were intruders, impertinently encroaching on the domain of some Power whose inalienable domain the air was. They might irritate It, who had placed them on the earth to walk with feet on it and not above it to fly with wings. At any moment It might arise and smite their meagre human device of gas and steel as a man might smash a fly on the wall. He cowered suddenly, as if expecting a blow.
A faint exhalation of pale light showed to the northeast like a phosphorescent cloud—Aix-la-Chapelle! So they were over the border at last! Meriwell's teeth set and his eyes glinted. A sense of danger seized him, and suddenly there began running in his head the full sonorous rhythm of the "Watch upon the Rhine." They were over the iron wall at last, over the impregnable ring of steel. In spite of singing, in spite of all boasting—and as he felt his blood pulse proudly another chilling terror came over him. He felt as if the souls of all the dead fighters of the empire were rising up against them in a vast current of wings, Saxon men and Prussian and Hessian, soldiers of Bavaria and of Würtemberg, levies of the Hansa towns—striking at the steel bird with ineffectual, spiritual fingers, clinging pathetically to rigging and nacelle and plane, gazing hatefully at the invaders with horrible bloodshot, unbodily eyes....
The navigator turned suddenly to the man at the wheel.
"What the deuce is wrong with you?" he raged. "Starboard, I said. Starboard!"
The steersman bent to the wheel. He tugged and pushed until the veins stood out on his forehead like ropes.
"Can't do anything, sir," he stammered, "I'm jammed."
The navigator jumped to the signal-board. He snapped switches like fingers cracking. He leaned into the shelter-box of the speaking-tube.
"Cut off," he shouted, "the rudder's jammed. Engineer-lieutenant amidships!"
The hum of the propellers died away musically. The dirigible glided easily like a bird volplaning. There was the shuffle of feet along the metal-latticed passage. The dour Scots lieutenant dropped into the car, cotton waste in one hand and oil-can in the other. His second, a bright-cheeked Suffolk lad, leaped agilely after him.
"Oil on the hinges all evaporated—with your seventy-two miles an hour," the lieutenant snapped at the navigator. "I'll go aft and oil up."
"I'll do that," the second urged. He caught at the oil-can and plucked his torch from its scabbard. They heard him patter aft in the rear car. They saw his light flicker for an instant as he swung into the rigging. The Scotsman looked after him with an affectionate eye.
"A fine lad!" he murmured, "and a fine nerve he has!"
As he looked over the rail of the nacelle Meriwell saw the earth swing beneath him gently like a cradle rocking. The swaying lights gave him a sense of dizziness. He felt suddenly that the earth was a small thing, bowling through space like a tossed ball.
"Right!" he heard the engineer's second hail faintly.
"Right-o!" came the cheery call of the navigator. He watched the light of the boy's torch as he crept along the rigging to the main car. He heard him bandy a hearty word with somebody. He heard a gruff word of caution, a laugh, and a choked scream. Meriwell sprang to his full height and grasped the rail with both hands. He saw the flicker of the shadow as it plunged downward.
"My God!" he blurted. "He's gone!"
The navigator rushed to the side of the car like a maniac. The steersman half-turned from the wheel. The engineer officer stiffened like a pointing dog.
"He's gone!" the navigator said stupidly. "Poor Conroy's gone!"
They stood a moment silent, looking at each other in white horror. The commander came out of the shadows. He took his peaked cap off.
"God be good to a gallant officer!" he said.
"Amen!" Meriwell answered.
The engineer strode forward silently through the passage. The commander touched the navigating officer on the arm.
"Ahead, Mr. Brennan," he said simply.
The navigator caught up his tube.
"Full ahead," he ordered. He turned to the steersman. "Southeast by east," he directed.
"Southeast by east," the steersman repeated mechanically. The propellers throbbed, whirred, hummed. The night air cut against them like a whip. A lone star showed up for a moment in a break of cloud, and then disappeared again, as a stage disappears between closing curtains.
Meriwell felt dazed. War—this wasn't war! This was a puny fooling with the engines of destiny, children pulling the triggers of firearms. He remembered how a great-uncle of his had died at Balaklava: a bright morning with the battle-drums beating; guns pealing, soldiers cheering; Cardigan riding gallantly at the head of the Light Brigade. Pro patria mori! Yes—but to fall two thousand feet in the night-time and to strike an alien ground with a sickening thud—that was not war. That was horror. He remembered inconsequently how he had heard that a man would be dead before he struck the ground and the thought consoled him somewhat.
Stollberg slipped past dreamily in a murk, Lamersdorf, Blankenheim, Adenau and Honnigen. Carts rattled as they flashed over Dumpelfeld. At Naub an alert sentry fired his Mauser, a whip's crack and a bullet's futile ping. Coblenz flitted past and they were over the Rhine, black, undulating, reflecting mistily the lamps of unsleeping barges. They swung over Wiesbaden, and Mainz came toward them, ambling like a man into ambush. The dirigible tilted upward at an angle of thirty. Meriwell sprang to the centre of the car. The commander climbed forward.
"Remember," he warned. "Not a second to waste!"
Doubt and nervousness dropped from Meriwell like a cloak. His brain sprang into action like a boxer's muscles at the call of the gong. He clambered forward along the passage toward the first arc. Already the gun crew had stripped the covers from the machine guns. Men stood alongside the rails with queer umbrella-like things in their hands—the asbestos parachutes, with their naphtha-soaked torch in the handle, flares that would light up every cranny in the ground beneath and protect the dirigible from the light of the flares themselves.
"Ready, gunner?" asked the navigating lieutenant.
"Ready," Meriwell sang back.
They swung toward the town easily as a ship comes to its pier. Beneath them they could see the lights of the railroad station, big violet globes that radiated like stars. Men hurried to and fro along the concrete platforms—queer, squat, huddled figures. Two engines fussed in and out like busy housewives. In one corner was a massed city of railroad-cars. Rails shone in a bewildering intricacy like a metal puzzle. Long, lank sheds showed like barns.
"Ease up," the commander ordered. He stood square in the centre of the car, his beard jutting, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. It was as if some main nerve had suddenly come into play, electrifying the great steel vessel. The navigator sprang to the speaking-tube.
"Cut off," he shouted. He thrust the steersman away from the wheel and caught at the spokes. "Figure of eight," he muttered. The dirigible swung gracefully in a curve leftward. Meriwell looked over the side again and raised his night-glasses. On the platforms beneath men were running to and fro excitedly. As they looked upward they had the appearance of a child's tin soldiers gazing fearsomely at a human being. A whistle cut metallically into the air. A carbine cracked. A searchlight shot skyward in a broad ribbon of white and began casting about like a fisherman's line. Somewhere there was a thudding boom, a whining scream, and a white star opened like a flower three hundred yards away with a crash like wood breaking.
"Go ahead, Mr. Meriwell," the commander directed.
Meriwell raised his megaphone to his lips.
"Overboard, the parachutes," he thundered.
There was a burst of murky, yellow flame fore and aft. Six flaming torches floated downward like snowflakes falling. The town cowered darkly to the rear of them. Beneath, to the right, the station showed as if lit up by some great conflagration. Above, everything seemed to have gone grotesquely black. Meriwell could hardly see across the car. Another searchlight leaped in to the air and crossed the first one. They stabbed about like the tentacles of an octopus. The anti-aircraft guns shot six white stars to port in rapid succession like revolver shots. Along the concrete platforms a brace of sharpshooters dropped to their knees and cuddled their pieces to their cheeks. The dirigible moved with easy dignity toward the station. Meriwell calculated a moment. The bombs in the fall would carry forward in the direction the dirigible was headed for. He would have to wait a moment. Weights, distance, heights, flashed through his head like the dots and dashes of a Morse code.
"Sections A and B, lanyards 3 and 4, fore and aft," he bellowed. "Heave on!"
The dirigible shivered and jumped like a restive horse as the gunners heaved on their switches and the weighted bombs dropped from their cages. A searchlight caught the great hawk for a moment and showed it gray and lustrous like a battleship at sea. The navigator swung his wheel about with a jerk. The dirigible turned like a hare. The propellers burst into a wild, spasmodic hum. They oscillated dangerously. Meriwell clung onto the side and looked over.
Eight great splotches of red flame burst suddenly on the ground, sideways, like water splashing. They showed red and angry like a man's wound. There were dark streaks among them—earth thrown up, men, metal, concrete. A puff of hot wind struck the car, and a vast unspeakable noise, a maddened, crashing roar, like the earth protesting at being attacked—a shuddering, horrible thing that drowned the feeble crackling of the guns and seemed to blot out life itself for a moment. The dirigible shivered like a feather in a gully of wind.
"Ease up," he called to the navigator. "A and B, lanyards 2 and 5, fore and aft," he roared again. Again the jump and curvet of the car; the red cup-like explosions, the terror of sound. A gun boomed southward, and something passed them with a high shriek. The searchlight caught them again and hung on with the tenacity of a bulldog. Something like a fly appeared in the west.
"Look out," the commander warned the lieutenant at the wheel. "Get ready to rise."
Meriwell looked downward again with his glasses. The naphtha planes were approaching the junction on their drop and were lighting up the scene with a lurid Satanic glow. The glasses nearly slipped from his hands. Beneath him was chaos. The glittering rails, the compact platforms, the lank sheds, the massed cars, the violet lights were no longer there. The terminal showed like a ploughed field—a wilderness of stone and earth, of twisted metal and shattered wood. Great chasms showed where the bombs had struck; little hillocks of thrown-up earth; great iron pillars broken in two like match-wood; huddled figures that had been soldiers on the platform; while from the massed cars and the long sheds great waves of red and blackish flame showed with foam tops of rolling brown smoke, rolling, licking, crackling, roaring, like a mediæval dream of hell.
"I don't need section C," he laughed. All the havoc had been wrought by the light bombs. There were still eight mammoth pears in their cages, unused. He could save those.
"Get the bridge now, Mr. Meriwell," the commander instructed, "and swing around to the forts."
"Empty ballast," roared the navigator.
There was a gurgle as the stop-cocks on the water-tanks of the keel were opened—a hollow rushing that should have ended in a splash. In the glaring light the water poured downward in two great streams fore and aft like silver cables falling. The dirigible rose as if drawn upward. Bombs burst like firecrackers. Beneath, the fire rustled like crushed paper and exploded now and then, in queer, hollow, inadequate sounds. The navigator swung over the river. Four thousand feet below, the bridge showed over the black ribbon of the Rhine like a plank over a rivulet. Meriwell watched it with the eye of a cat ready to spring on a mouse.
"Ready on section C," he warned, "lanyards 2 and 3, fore and aft."
They floated along hazily, like a stick along a river. The anti-aircraft guns broke into a passion of whipping reports. The searchlights cut into the air like thrusting bayonets.
"Heave on!" he yelled suddenly.
The dirigible lifted violently like a canoe struck by a great wave. There was a loud whirring in the air as the bombs dropped downward. Meriwell felt his heart jump to his mouth. He peered over the edge breathlessly, his hands gripping the rail with sudden fear. Mechanically he opened his mouth to protect his ear-drums from the report, and as he did a vast wave of orange flame, like discoloured sheet lightning, seemed to flick along the river. For a moment, soundless, the river rose in its bed as if struck by a mighty hand. The great stone bridge disappeared as if kicked away.
"My God!" said Meriwell hoarsely, "my God!"
Then suddenly noise struck him between the shoulder-blades, noise such as he could hardly believe possible—an infinitude of sound that rocked him like a crashing blow, a sound as of two planets meeting in mid-course, a gigantic forbidden thing, that only gods should make.
"The bridge is gone," said Meriwell stupidly.
A great hush swung over the town. The anti-aircraft guns stuttered and died. The futile rifle fire stopped. The thunder of the forts was cut off in mid-air. Only the blaze at the junction roared a little like a forced draft. Over the river all was black. The water had shut off the flare of the explosion. The searchlight struck the ballonet of the dirigible as a spear strikes a fish. There was the throb of propellers.
"Triplane to starboard," the navigator warned.
"Send him down, Mr. Meriwell," the commander ordered calmly. "Navigator, put the men by the engines ready to start on the word."
The triplane rose jerkily in the air like a toy at the end of a string. Its three shelf-like planes showed dimly and vaguely like a great kite. Meriwell felt sorry for it—it was a game, chivalrous thing, to rise in the air to give battle to the leviathan. He felt a great throb of sympathy and sorrow for it. It looked such a puny thing—but he mustn't let it get above him, or alongside him——
"Searchlight on starboard gun," he snapped.
A sergeant and corporal sprang to the Maxim. They clamped a thing like an automobile-lamp to the barrel. They snapped a switch, and a line of light shot out like a harpoon. It whipped about like a fencer's blade, parrying, thrusting, lifting, dropping. The corporal threw his leg over the saddle and caught the trigger.
"When you see her, fire!" Meriwell ordered.
She showed up for a moment, black and fragile, and motionless it seemed. The gun broke into an infuriated chatter. The cartridge-tape leaped like a hooked eel. Suddenly they saw the great kite twist like a wounded bird. It dropped in a wavering zigzag while two black pin-points dropped in plumb-lines.
"God help them!" Meriwell breathed.
The propellers of the dirigible plunged into their loud whir like the first peal of an organ. Meriwell staggered and lurched. The dirigible shot forward like a stone from a sling. The commander fell to pacing the car nervously. His fingers cracked like castanets. His beard twitched. He turned on the gunner.
"Never mind the forts," he shouted. "We've done enough. What have you left?"
"Sixteen small and four large bombs," Meriwell answered.
"Get ready," he warned. He turned to the navigator. "Back and over the town."
"Back and over the town?" the navigator queried stupidly. "Over the town?"
"Yes," the commander barked. His face seemed queerly white and strained. "Let them have all you've got, Mr. Meriwell."
"You don't mean—?" Meriwell nearly laughed in amazement. "Bombard the town?"
"Yes. Quick. Circle around and let go."
A great, tawny lake of flame poured over the acreage of cars in the junction. It lighted the town dully and they could see it hazily, through a smoke screen, as it were. The narrow Gothic buildings showed up as in a painting; the peaceful cathedral; the great, squat municipal hall; the queer dolls' houses—it all seemed like a theatrical spectacle. Southward the gunners still threw their white stars and the artillery of the forts stabbed red and blindly into the murky fog.
"Take the wheel," the navigator told the steersman. "Planes up eighteen and swing in a circle." He looked at the commander with grave, disquieted eyes.
Meriwell caught at the commander's sleeve.
"My God, sir! You can't do that!" he shouted in horror. "You can't fire on civilians."
"I can," said the old man doggedly. "I can and I will."
"You're mad, sir! You're mad!" he babbled.
A stray shot cut screaming past them. They rocked from the current. The crew moved about the car uneasily.
"Bring her around," the commander ordered. The navigator never moved.
A vast desire to throw himself on the old commander came on Meriwell, to bind him hand and foot. He must have gone crazy, he judged. That last terrific explosion had injured his brain. Then suddenly he remembered the house on Notting Hill, the white-haired lady who had died on the night raid, the screaming, distraught daughter, the gallant captain of Sherwood Foresters killed like a rat in a trap. He understood.
"I can't do it, sir," the navigator replied. Meriwell took a step toward him. His hands went out pleadingly.
"I know, sir. I understand. But we can't do it. I won't give the order and the men wouldn't pull the lanyards," his voice stumbled. "We're soldiers," he continued, "and we're fighting soldiers—not unarmed men, not sleeping children, not women."
There was a moment's silence. The wind blew about them as from a great blast-pipe. The reports of the air-guns ceased for a moment and began intermittently. The navigator turned his head away. Meriwell looked at the commander's white face.
"Soldiers!" he repeated. "Clean fighters. Soldiers and gentlemen. Officers and gentlemen, as your son was. And your wife was a soldier's wife and your daughter was a soldier's daughter."
He waved his hand toward the town.
"We've smashed the junction and smashed the bridge. No train will pass that way again and no ship will come up the Rhine. We've done our work—and not a building outside injured and not a civilian attacked. They'd be proud of that, your people, sir. You can't do this other thing, sir. It isn't the game. It isn't cricket."
He watched the commander's face keenly. He waited until he saw the bitter twist pass from the mouth and the frown go out of his eyes.
"They wouldn't want that," he urged. "They'd be ashamed, those people of yours." He waited a moment. "The old code, sir, an officer and a gentleman."
The commander's head drooped a little. The stiff poise of his grey beard softened. His shoulders lost their tenseness suddenly.
"I—I—" he wavered. He turned to the navigator. "Right about and back," he said weakly. He slipped into the rear among the shadows.
The navigator sprang to his compass.
"Nor'west by west," he ordered.
"Nor'west by west," the steersman repeated mechanically.
And as Meriwell leaned over the car he saw the town race flatly away from them, while the guns still chattered viciously, like disturbed magpies, and their charges burst high in the air into pretty, artificial stars.
HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ
*Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company
I
On a time it happened that the lighthouse keeper in Aspinwall, not far from Panama, disappeared without a trace. Since he disappeared during a storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of the small, rocky island on which the lighthouse stood, and was swept out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was not found next day in its rocky niche. The place of lighthouse keeper had become vacant. It was necessary to fill this place at the earliest moment possible, since the lighthouse had no small significance for the local movement as well as for vessels going from New York to Panama. Mosquito Bay abounds in sandbars and banks. Among these navigation, even in the daytime, is difficult; but at night, especially with the fogs which are so frequent on those waters warmed by the sun of the tropics, it is nearly impossible. The only guide at that time for the numerous vessels is the lighthouse.
The task of finding a new keeper fell to the United States consul living in Panama, and this task was no small one: first, because it was absolutely necessary to find the man within twelve hours; second, the man must be unusually conscientious,—it was not possible, of course, to take the first comer at random; finally, there was an utter lack of candidates. Life on a tower is uncommonly difficult, and by no means enticing to people of the South, who love idleness and the freedom of a vagrant life. That lighthouse keeper is almost a prisoner. He cannot leave his rocky island except on Sundays. A boat from Aspinwall brings him provisions and water once a day, and returns immediately; on the whole island, one acre in area, there is no inhabitant. The keeper lives in the lighthouse; he keeps it in order. During the day he gives signals by displaying flags of various colours to indicate changes of the barometer; in the evening he lights the lantern. This would be no great labour were it not that to reach the lantern at the summit of the tower he must pass over more than four hundred steep and very high steps; sometimes he must make this journey repeatedly during the day. In general, it is the life of monk, and indeed more than that,—the life of a hermit. It was not wonderful, therefore, that Mr. Isaac Falconbridge was in no small anxiety as to where he should find a permanent successor to the recent keeper; and it is easy to understand his joy when a successor announced himself most unexpectedly on that very day. He was a man already old, seventy years or more, but fresh, erect, with the movements and bearing of a soldier. His hair was perfectly white, his face as dark as that of a Creole; but, judging from his blue eyes, he did not belong to a people of the South. His face was somewhat downcast and sad, but honest. At the first glance he pleased Falconbridge. It remained only to examine him. Therefore the following conversation began:
"Where are you from?"
"I am a Pole."
"Where have you worked up to this time?"
"In one place and another."
"A lighthouse keeper should like to stay in one place."
"I need rest."
"Have you served? Have you testimonials of honourable government service?"
The old man drew from his bosom a piece of faded silk resembling a strip of an old flag, unwound it, and said:
"Here are the testimonials. I received this cross in 1830. This second one is Spanish from the Carlist War; the third is the French legion; the fourth I received in Hungary. Afterward I fought in the States against the South; there they do not give crosses."
Falconbridge took the paper and began to read.
"H'm! Skavinski? Is that your name? H'm! Two flags captured in a bayonet attack. You were a gallant soldier."
"I am able to be a conscientious lighthouse keeper."
"It is necessary to ascend the tower a number of times daily. Have you sound legs?"
"I crossed the plains on foot." (The immense steppes between the East and California are called "the plains.")
"Do you know sea service?"
"I served three years on a whaler."
"You have tried various occupations."
"The only one I have not known is quiet."
"Why is that?"
The old man shrugged his shoulders. "Such is my fate."
"Still you seem to me too old for a lighthouse keeper."
"Sir," exclaimed the candidate suddenly in a voice of emotion, "I am greatly wearied, knocked about. I have passed through much as you see. This place is one of those which I have wished for most ardently. I am old, I need rest. I need to say to myself, 'Here you will remain; this is your port.' Ah, sir, this depends now on you alone. Another time perhaps such a place will not offer itself. What luck that I was in Panama! I entreat you—as God is dear to me, I am like a ship which if it misses the harbour will be lost. If you wish to make an old man happy—I swear to you that I am honest, but—I have enough of wandering."
The blue eyes of the old man expressed such earnest entreaty that Falconbridge, who had a good, simple heart, was touched.
"Well," said he, "I'll take you. You are a lighthouse keeper."
The old man's face gleamed with inexpressible joy.
"I thank you."
"Can you go to the tower to-day?"
"I can."
"Then good-bye. Another word,—for any failure in service you will be dismissed."
"All right."
That same evening, when the sun had descended on the other side of the isthmus, and a day of sunshine was followed by a night without twilight, the new keeper was in his place evidently, for the lighthouse was casting its bright rays on the water as usual. The night was perfectly calm, silent, genuinely tropical, filled with a transparent haze, forming around the moon a great coloured rainbow with soft, unbroken edges; the sea was moving only because the tide raised it. Skavinski on the balcony seemed from below like a small black point. He tried to collect his thoughts and take in his new position; but his mind was too much under pressure to move with regularity. He felt somewhat as a hunted beast feels when at last it has found refuge from pursuit on some inaccessible rock or in a cave. There had come to him, finally, an hour of quiet; the feeling of safety filled his soul with a certain unspeakable bliss. Now on that rock he can simply laugh at his previous wanderings, his misfortunes, and failures. He was in truth like a ship whose masts, ropes, and sails had been broken and rent by a tempest, and cast from the clouds to the bottom of the sea,—a ship on which the tempest had hurled waves and spat foam, but which still wound its way to the harbour. The pictures of that storm passed quickly through his mind as he compared it with the calm future now beginning. A part of his wonderful adventures he had related to Falconbridge; he had not mentioned, however, thousands of other incidents. It had been his misfortune that as often as he pitched his tent and fixed his fireplace to settle down permanently, some wind tore out the stakes of his tent, whirled away the fire, and bore him on toward destruction. Looking now from the balcony of the tower at the illuminated waves, he remembered everything through which he had passed. He had campaigned in the four parts of the world, and in wandering had tried almost every occupation. Labour-loving and honest, more than once had he earned money, and had always lost it in spite of every prevision and the utmost caution. He had been a gold-miner in Australia, a diamond-digger in Africa, a rifleman in public service in the East Indies. He established a ranch in California,—the drought ruined him; he tried trading with wild tribes in the interior of Brazil,—his raft was wrecked on the Amazon; he himself alone, weaponless, and nearly naked, wandered in the forest for many weeks living on wild fruits, exposed every moment to death from the jaws of wild beasts. He established a forge in Helena, Arkansas, and that was burned in a great fire which consumed the whole town. Next he fell into the hands of the Indians in the Rocky Mountains, and only through a miracle was he saved by Canadian trappers. Then he served as a sailor on a vessel running between Bahia and Bordeaux, and as a harpooner on a whaling-ship; both vessels were wrecked. He had a cigar factory in Havana, and was robbed by his partner while he himself was lying sick with the vomito. At last he came to Aspinwall, and there was to be the end of his failures,—for what could reach him on that rocky island? Neither water nor fire nor men. But from men Skavinski had not suffered much; he had met good men oftener than bad ones.