Tom Slade with the Flying Corps: A Campfire Tale

FOREWORD

It is a fact that the career of Slade from the time he became an airman and even before was one of bravery and patriotism, and his disaffection, apparently, had come only at the very end of his service. Even then, as it seemed, he had not gone over to the enemy, but had accepted and carried out commissions from them while maintaining an appearance of loyalty. And I marvelled at the prowess and resource which he must have shown in this hazardous business. No one in all that sector, where he had come and gone as freely as the birds of the air, had suspected him; none spoke of him except in praise.

Perhaps the newspaper account which had thrilled us so at home was somewhat in the nature of a “write-up,” and there were, indeed, several versions current as to just how Slade had met his death. Most of these fell a little short in the ingredient of reckless valor, but there was no question that he had been counted a very daring airman, and I could multiply instances of praise and expressions of trust and confidence from his comrades and superiors.

I supposed at the time that money had tempted this brave young fellow to his moral fall. About all I had ever known of him was that he had been of a simple mind and very poor. This much I had learned from Roy.

Before I left the Scuppers that night I had a mental tussle over the question of what I should do with these incriminating papers. If Slade had been living I should have turned them over to the authorities, but as it was I could not see that anything was to be gained by their preservation. They pertained to conditions which no longer existed, they revealed no facts that were of value now, and I decided to destroy them then and there—all except the picture of the girl and the scrap of her letter containing the familiar references to Bridgeboro, for I could not bring myself to cast those into the flames. Her friendly, companionable words, though they were not addressed to me, comforted me, nevertheless, and conjured up thoughts of home. The brief memorandum on the back I obliterated with my pen. With the other papers I made a little fire in my cave, believing that I could the better fulfill my promise to Roy if I put, or tried to put, this horrible sequel of a brave career out of my mind altogether.

I shall ask you to do the same while I try to give you a sketch of Slade’s remarkable deeds up to the time he became a patient “recovering from a slight wound,” in the Epernay Hospital. This tale of his career is necessarily disjointed and fragmentary, and was intended only for the perusal of Roy. I began it in the form of letters to him while I was myself a patient in that same hospital. These letters were never sent because I feared the censor, who had been dealing rather freely with my newspaper stuff, and I soon fell into the habit of stringing out a more orderly narrative.

You will understand, of course, that my chief interest in all these matters was for Roy Blakeley. He was my hero.

As to who will prove the hero of this whole extraordinary business, that shall be for you to say.

Dear Roy:

I am writing this letter propped up in bed in the little hospital at Epernay and a young chatterbox of a fellow in the cot adjoining mine says that my breathing reminds him of a goldfish. I cannot seem to breathe with my mouth shut, but I tell him that he can’t keep his mouth shut either and that he has not my good excuse—for I was gassed.

The nurses and patients call him Archie, and he has a bullet which was lately extracted from his shoulder and which he says he intends to take home to America for a souvenir. He is wounded slightly otherwise and was operated upon (had his retreat cut off, he told me) and is in all ways a most diverting youngster, something like yourself, except that he rolls his R’s like rapid-fire artillery. He calls the nurses “cross red” nurses, and talks incessantly.

I became acquainted with him only yesterday and I fancy he will beguile my convalescence. Seeing him lying with his eyes fixed on the rafters, I ventured to say, “A penny for your thoughts.”

“What d’you think I am—a slot machine?” he retorted.

“Excuse me,” I said, somewhat taken aback.

“Perrfectly excusable,” he responded cheerily, and added, “Do you see that place where the rafterrs arre new—with the big irron nails?”

“I see the nails,” said I.

“You can’t drive a nail with a sponge,” he said, “no matter how you soak it.”

“Perfectly true,” I said, essaying a little pleasantry of my own, “but what has that got to do with the price of onions?”

He drew his knees up in the bed in a way he has of lying. “That place is wherre a Gerrman bomb came through,” he said. “I got one of those nails forr a souveneerr.”

I looked at the spot with more interest. “It killed two of the nurses, didn’t it?” I asked. “I heard about that. But surely, you couldn’t have been here then.”

“No, but my pill was—I mean my pal—fellerr by the name of Slade; he sworre——”

That was as far as he got, for one of the nurses, stepping right in range of his torrential volley of R’s, began her ministrations, incidentally telling him for the hundredth time to be quiet so that other patients might sleep.

You may suppose that I was greatly interested in what he was telling me and the good old upstate rumble of that word sworre lingered in my mind, for I had no doubt that he was referring to your friend Tom Slade, and that a lucky chance (or an unlucky one) had brought me to the very hospital mentioned in the newspaper account which you and I read together. Whether Slade was really his “pill” or pal, I cannot say, for he spoke of everyone as his pal, from General Foch down, but I hope to talk more with him tomorrow. He has just fallen asleep with the parting injunction to “wake me earrly, motherr, dearrrr.” And silence reigns supreme.

This is all I am allowed to write today, but tomorrow I’ll “recount the adventure,” as you would say, which brought me here.

Dear Roy:

My new acquaintance is out on our little veranda for a sun bath. His name, they tell me, is Archer—Archibald Archer—and that he has lately been in the Motorcycle Corps. I wonder if any motorcycle can make more noise than he!

I came here after taking the village of Pevy—though I did not take it all by myself. The village sits on high ground a couple of miles beyond one of the steepest, rockiest hillsides I ever saw—a place where you can measure real estate with a plumb line. Our boys took the road which verged around and up the west slope of the hill, as the retreating Germans had done, while I took the short-cut, or rather climb, up this precipitous place.

It was thereabouts that Tom Slade fell, a fact that seems to admit of little doubt, and you must not continue to indulge in any day-dreams as to his being still alive. I am sure we are both more interested in some of the things he did while living than in the immediate circumstances of his death, and in this connection I intend to question my new acquaintance as soon as I get the chance.

Well, I had a difficult time of it scrambling up that rocky hill and it was pitch dark when I reached the top. I have made a rough pencil sketch of the locality which you may be interested in.

I fell in with our detachment about a mile out of Pevy and had a few hours’ rest until dawn, when we made our advance against the village. All this has nothing to do with Tom Slade so I won’t burden you with an account of how the retreating Germans made a stand before the town. But when we marched in, there was nothing to be found but burned homesteads and gas-poisoned atmosphere. It was not impossible to breathe in the open, but in the wrecked and charred buildings the deadly fumes lingered and I should have had sense enough to keep out of them. One of them, a makeshift hospital, had not been destroyed and I foolishly entered it.

For a few seconds I beheld a scene which struck horror to my very heart. They say over here that every American soldier fights with a wrath and desperation born of some particular discovery or experience of Hun brutality. One goes forth with the thought of a maimed and tortured comrade to give him strength; another with the memory of some violated truce or false and murderous cry of “kamerad!” Well, here was the sight to arouse in me the hatred of those beasts which I had not sufficiently felt before.

They had left their own people, their own sick and wounded, to suffer the agonizing death of those deadly gas fumes. If there are any degrees in loathesomeness, it seemed to me that this was more unspeakable than was the bombing of an enemy hospital.

I cannot describe what I saw, nor did I see it long. I remember groping toward a bed, on which lay the body of an old man, all the while trying, like the clumsy fool I was, to adjust my gas mask. I remember how my eyes pained and the horrible taste in my mouth, and how my fingers seemed to be asleep. I thought I saw one of those ghastly yellow patients sit up and fall back again. The next I knew I was here in this hospital in this spotless cot, and one of the first things I was really conscious of was this youngster next me, talking. I am given to understand that I had a pretty narrow squeak of it, and that I will cease breathing like a goldfish in time.

I am going to stop writing now in order to talk to my young neighbor, Archer (or “Souvenir” as they call him). They are just bringing him in in a wheel chair and he’s eating an apple. Never have I known of anyone who could eat so many apples—he lives on them.

Note: As my acquaintance with young Archer was to prove both diverting and profitable, I have boiled our conversations down into a sort of narrative in which he will appear as something of a character, and the chapters which follow were intended to be the story of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps, which I should present to Roy on my return to America.

Before submitting this story to you, however, I wish to include here a letter which I received from Roy at about this time. It was sent to me at the hospital by the Associated Press after it had wandered like a lost soul up and down the shifting West Front. And it came to me like a cool breeze in summer.

I did not then attach any particular significance to its contents. Indeed, I am not sure now that it is important in this place. But it interested me greatly, and you will be glad to read it because of Roy’s epoch-making announcement (at which the public had better sit up and take notice) that he is himself soon to be launched on the literary sea!

Dear Friend:

You remember you said you’d like me to write you a letter when I got cheered up, and tell you all the news. Most of it is about our Scout troop. Last night we had a meeting and they gave me a present of a big picture of Tom that they had enlarged from the photograph. It’s great! It was in a frame and has some words underneath—“loyal, staunch and true”—quoted out of some book or other. Maybe by this time you have found out some things about him.

Pee-wee Harris said we should send you an anonymous letter—he meant unanimous letter. Honest, that kid is a scream. He’s Doc Harris’ son, you know. Jeb Rushmore, our camp manager up in Temple Camp, sent us an owl to have stuffed and Mr. Ellsworth told Pee-wee it would have to be sent to a taxidermist. Pee-wee asked me what that was and just for a kid I told him it was a man that drives a taxi. So he went down to the station with the owl and asked one of the taxi men to stuff it. I should worry!

After the meeting we had a debate and I chose the subject. It was to decide who was the greatest, St. Patrick or the Fourth of July. It was decided in the affirmative. Crinkums, that was some meeting!

Maybe you’ll be interested to hear that I’m elected Troop Historian, and I’ve got to write up all our adventures. Some job, believe me! I should worry. Mr. Ellsworth says maybe he’ll get it published. He says you get good money for writing a book—but not much of it! He says if I write just like I talk, it’ll be all right. I’ve decided to write it scout pace, kind of running, then walking—you know. It’ll be like a hike. Doc Carson, our first-aid scout, says it ought to be funny, and I promised I’d chuck some chuckles into it. Pee-wee is going to make the names for the chapters. Good-night! Maybe you’ll be willing to help me when you get back, especially with sunsets and green hills and weather and like that, because you have to have all those things in a book, especially weather. I said I wouldn’t bother with any weather, but Doc Carson said all the characters would suffocate. Pee-wee said he’s no use for weather in stories and he always skips it, anyway. Maybe I’ll have compressed air instead. Weather and prefaces—good-night!

There’s some news I guess you’ll be interested in. They caught Adolph Schmitt, who used to keep that grocery store—you remember? You know they found out he was a spy and he skipped. Now they’ve got him and he’s down in Atlanta Penitentiary. A long time ago Tom used to deliver groceries for him.

Well, I’ll say goodbye and if you can find out any things about Tom, you bet I’ll be glad.

I have included this letter from Roy partly because it contained the earliest portentous hints of those sprightly narratives which were later to create such a stir in Boy Scout circles, but more particularly because of its reference to the Schmitt affair.

I remembered the case of Schmitt very well, for it was a nine days’ wonder in Bridgeboro when this jolly, fat German grocer disappeared just in time to escape a visit from the Secret Service men. I never knew just what he was suspected of but I understood that incriminating papers, of a very treasonable purport, were found in the rooms over his store which he and his whole brood had so suddenly vacated.

The news that Tom Slade had worked for this man interested me, of course, and fitted pretty well with the secret knowledge which I had. Had Schmitt’s Grocery been the kindergarten where the poor, ignorant boy had learned the first contaminating lesson of disloyalty? Well, here I was with my green spectacles on again, and everything looked green. In any event, I was glad to know that Schmitt had been caught and lodged in Uncle Sam’s Penitentiary, where he belonged. Perhaps, I thought, the worst thing that he did was to insinuate his false reasoning into the simple mind of his employee and corrupt the clear, honest viewpoint of a young boy....

Narrative written for Roy Blakeley in the Epernay Hospital, and intended originally to form a complete story under the title of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps.

CHAPTER I—COMRADES

The following story of a remarkable career was told me mostly by my young friend, Archibald Archer, who was for a time an occupant of the adjoining cot to mine in the Epemay Hospital. I shall take the liberty of enlisting him as a sort of joint narrator with myself, in the sense of using his own language when that seems desirable. Much that he told me, I jotted down in shorthand without his knowledge. He was recovering from slight injuries received while serving with “extinction” (I suppose he meant distinction) in the Motorcycle Corps. He lived on a farm in New York State, rolled his R’s, ate apples by the peck when he could get them, and collected souvenirs by the ton. On the whole, I liked him and I am sure that when he was not in the mood of banter he was honest and sincere.

He and Tom Slade had crossed the ocean together as ship’s boys, and Archer had remained in France resolved to win glory under “Generral Perrshing.” He became an assistant cook in the Lorraine sector where his most dramatic exploit in the cause of humanity was the placing of a bowl of soup on a listening post in No Man’s Land, in such a way that in the still hours of the night it tumbled its contents upon the proud head of a sumptuously attired German lieutenant who had leaned against the post.

He did not receive the Distinguished Service Cross for this deed of heroism, but no doubt it was appreciated, for he shortly became orderly to some officers and has the lace of an officer’s puttee to prove it.

How he drifted back into sea service again, I do not recall. In any event, he did and worked again as a ship’s boy, I suppose. Perhaps he was going home on leave. In any case, he was sitting on the “forrwarrd hatch,” eating an apple, and was just about to throw the core at a purser’s assistant when a torpedo struck the ship. It is one of the vain regrets of his life that he did not throw the core a moment sooner.

A few more days found him in a German prison camp where he soon became the chief entertainer of that hapless community. Not only did he hobnob with “Old Piff,” the German commandant, but his genius as a chef won him immediate recognition and prestige. Here it was that he enlivened the tedium of the prisoners by handing a bottle of ink to a German guard, who had demanded some insect dope, to rub on his face one sultry night, and the “guarrrd’s” face, according to Archer, presented a diverting sight next morning. He still has the cork of this ink bottle as a treasured memento or “souveneerrr.”

In the camp, to his great astonishment, he fell in with Tom Slade, who had also been gathered in with the survivors of a torpedoed transport, and the two, being kindred spirits and old friends (“comrades to the death,” Archer said), had contrived to escape together and make their way through Switzerland into France.

“Slady used to be a Boy Scout,” Archer told me, “and he knew all about trackin’ and trailin’, and a plaguey lot of otherr things besides. Only he’d never let you know he knew ’em. He knew about signalling and ’lectricity, and aerroplane engines—he had that old storrage warrehouse of a head of his filled up with all kinds of junk.”

“What did he look like when you knew him then?” I asked.

“Oh, he looked like he was mad—always sorrt o’ scowling. But he was trrue as the marrinerr’s compass—I’ll say that forr him.”

“And that’s saying a great deal,” said I. And this reminded me (I can’t say just why) to ask if Slade had been interested in any girl back in America.

“Gurrrl? Him?” Archer said. “He had no use forr gurrls, and nutherr have I. I’d rutherr have an apple any day. Gurrls make me sick.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I should think the apples you eat would make you sick.”

“Slady told me when we werre comin’ through the Black Forest that he neverr got no letterrs from gurrls. He said most soldierrs do, but he didn’t.”

I was a little puzzled at this because—well, just because I was. I think you will agree, Roy, that soldiers should receive letters from girls. I was under the impression—but no matter.

When Slade and Archer reached the American front in Alsace they joined the Motorcycle Corps, becoming messengers behind the lines. In their long journey through the Black Forest and Switzerland they had resolved on entering this branch of the service, but their paths soon diverged, Archer’s sphere of duty being in the neighborhood of Paris, while Tom rushed back and forth on his machine in the Toul sector until he was sent far west into Picardy and Flanders on some specially dangerous service. As long as Tom was attached to the command in Toul sector he and Archer met occasionally at Troyes and Chaumont where their longer errands sometimes took them. Then there came a time when Archer saw his former comrade no more, and he later heard of Tom’s being sent west where the streams were running red and the paths of the cyclist messenger were being torn with jagged shell holes.

“I thought maybe Slady had run his machine pell-mell into one of those places,” said Archer, “until——”

“Well, don’t try to tell me now,” I said. “Lie down and get some sleep. We’ve all tomorrow before us.”

CHAPTER II—TOM APPEARS ON THE SCENE

Out of the clouds he came, sweeping, veering, dodging, scattering the ghoulish night birds in his flight, the whir of his propeller heard amid the havoc of wind and storm as he raced with the elements, his soaring wings outlined with a kind of ghostly clearness in the fitful gleams of lightning.

Often, as I have lain here in the long monotony of convalescence, I have thought how he first emerged out of the clouds in wind and rain, a hurrying spectre glimpsed in sudden flashes, and of how in the end he disappeared again amid the lashing tempest, up, up, up, into the shadow of the clouds whence he had come—never to be seen alive by mortal man again.

Surely, it is not hard to fancy him a kind of spirit of the sky, visiting this war-scourged land of France, and withdrawing to his kindred elements when his tragic work was done.

It seems fitting that this creature of fate should have come and gone in this way; that there should have been no prosy beginning or end to his career. And I am glad, Roy, for your sake, and for mine and for his and—yes, for the sake of his sturdy champion, Archer—that only a few of his earlier and more conspicuous exploits are known and remembered.

I have it from Archer that the night of this first strange thing which I am about to tell was of intense darkness and incessant, wind-blown rain. Occasionally, he said, quick, sharp flashes of lightning illumined the sky and at such times he could see the clouds, as he said, “churrned up like clabberred milk.”

It was the terminating storm of a long season of rain which had wrought havoc to the roads and railroad lines—already in sorry plight from overuse and German artillery fire. Great dependence, it seemed, was placed upon those sturdy youngsters of the Motorcycle Corps, particularly just then, when the wires were down, their supporting poles sprawling in mud or flood.

Archer told me that on that night they could plainly see from Nancy, where he was stationed, the little church in Chateau Seulans across the Lorraine border, and could distinguish pigmy figures of German sentries there, so vivid was the lightning at times.

He says that he had not seen Slade for nearly a year, though I hardly think it could have been as long as that. In any case, he had been stationed at Nancy for a month or two and his duties in the quiet sector (Sleepy Hollow, they called it) were hardly more exciting than those of an American letter-carrier. It rained almost unceasingly, the soldiers drilled and played cards, and baled out their trenches, which were “running rriverrs,” to quote my young friend. Sometimes Fritzie made a night raid and the boys in khaki made a party call for good manners. But there wasn’t much going on.

“What would you do if you had a real job—something urrgent?” Archer says one of the boys asked him.

“I’d take carre of it, all right,” he answered.

“You’d need a boat to get from here to Chaumont now,” the other fellow said. “Did you look into Mess Dugout 4? It’s nothing but a mudhole.”

“Wherre I’m sent, I’ll go,” said Archer. “I don’t carre if it’s to Berrlin.”

“Would you make a try for Paris if you had a message for General Pershing?” his companion teased.

“No, I’d send worrd to General Perrshing to come herre and get it,” Archer retorted; which apparently ended the talk.

At last something happened. In the latter part of the afternoon they got a signal from the squint bag^[1] and hauled the thing down, the rain pattering upon its taut bulk and streaming off like a waterfall. The occupant of its cosy little car announced that the Germans seemed to be massing all the way from Frouard to the Marne Canal, and that barges were moving westward along the Canal from La Garde. The observer thought they might be bringing troops from the railroad town of Berthelingen, or from Azoudange, where the prison camp was. It had long been necessary for the Germans to rob Peter to pay Paul and if they were depleting their guard at the great camp it probably meant that some big enterprise was in the air. A flier was promptly sent up to reconnoiter eastward, but the weather was too much for him and he came down like a drowned bat.

By dusk, the wind was blowing a gale out of the southwest, driving the rain in sheets so that the squint bag which had ascended again pulled and strained at its anchorage, dragging sideways and jerking for all the world like some monstrous fish on the line. They soon hauled it down for fear of the cable snapping. A drenched courier arrived from Colombey, below Toul, with the news that every wire in that section was down and in a hopeless tangle and the rails west of Neufchateau were sunken in swamp. When you hear mention of railroads in France you must put out of your thoughts altogether the Pennsylvania and the New York Central—even the Erie, I am tempted to say; for these roads here are mere toy lines with ridiculous puffing slow-poke engines and tracks which disappear on the smallest provocation.

A little before dark, Archer tells me, he was summoned before his superiors and asked if he believed he could get as far as Brienne, or perhaps Troyes, with a message. It was hoped that communication might be open between one or other of those places and Paris, where the commander was at the time. He answered that he believed he could reach Brienne and was despatched at once with messages for transmission, of which, of course, he did not know the contents more than that they pertained to the enemy’s movements and were urgent in the extreme.

West of Vaucouleurs he found the roads all but impassible. The wind was blowing a tempest, driving the rain into his face so that he was reduced to picking his way at a snail’s pace. The darkness was intense, save for the occasional gleams of forked lightning which illumined the sky and gilded the clouds with a frightful, portentous brightness.

“It was the kind of weatherr,” says Archer, with characteristic humor, “when folks always say, ‘Pity the poorr sailorrs on a night like this.’”

He had passed through Gondrescourt inquiring whether communication was open with points west when he heard the sharp report of an aircraft gun, apparently from somewhere in the town, and looked up just as a flash of lightning lit the sky.

His own simple description of what he saw impressed me very much indeed. “The clouds were small and all feathery like, as if they had been pulled aparrt,” he said; “the edges all ragged and very bright, like silverr. It made you feel scarey as if the darrk parrt behind ’em didn’t belong to this worrld at all.”

Well, it was just in that quick flash that he saw moving across one of those illumined patches an airplane, its outline as clear as a silhouette.

“Forr a minute,” said Archer, with a graphic power which surprised me, “it seemed as if it was one of those witches sailing through the sky, and it made me feel creepy, as you might say.”

Then, all in a moment, the darkness closed about it, but, listening, he could hear, in the brief intervals of the tumult, the noise of its propeller, and the sound struck terror to his heart, for he knew by the intermittent whir that it was a Hun machine. Archer tells me that this characteristic of the Hun planes makes them always recognizable at night. “Theirr hearrt beats different,” as he said.

They must have been a watchful gun crew in the town to spy this vulture of the night, but their shot had done no damage evidently, for the grim thing moved along, visible now and again over the cyclist’s head. When the impediments of marsh and washed-out roads caused him to slacken his speed, the flier did so also, maneuvering apparently, now visible in the quick flashes, now only heard amid the rain and wind.

At Aubinal they had a searchlight as well as an aircraft gun and, hearing the flier, they threw a long column about the sky and fixed him in a circle of light. Then the sharp report of the gun and the machine dipped, for all the world like a boy dodging a pursuer. Twice, thrice, the report rang out, the cyclist pausing among the little group of excited villagers. Twice, thrice, the machine dipped, while the watchers held their breath in suspense. But the plane resumed its course, still visible in bold relief in the circle of light.

Then suddenly there appeared in the sky another plane (presumably, from somewhere in the neighborhood) rising in pursuit of the enemy craft. So furious was the lashing of the storm that Archer was thrilled with admiration at the sight of one of his friends braving the perils of that tempestuous night to bring down an enemy flier, and as he rode on out of the little town, fighting his own way in the blinding storm, he wondered who the bold pursuer could be—whether French or American.

High amid the tumult he could hear shots, which were presently drowned in the turbulence of the storm, and he had no further glimpse of either craft.

“I thought our flierr had hit him and sent him down,” said Archer, “and I says to myself, ‘That fellerr is a hero, all right,’ and I hoped he was an Amerrican. I wonderred what the Hun plane was doing so far behind ourr lines on a night like that, but I didn’t have time to wonderr much. Anyways, I was glad it was overr ’cause it made me feel kind of spooky to see that black thing like a ghost or a witch or something following me. I made up my mind I’d ask about who brought it down, so’s I’d know who it was.”

His way now took him through the flat country east of Brienne where he hoped that his spooky, drenching journey might end.

The land here was turned into a quagmire, his machine splashing through mud and water so that he must pause now and again to wrench and haul it out of some mushy hollow.

The country thereabouts was quite unpopulated, consisting of vast flat meadows, entirely submerged. The blighting Hun line had once embraced the locality, and its refugees had not yet returned to a security so precarious. So there was not even the dim lamplight from a peasant’s cottage to cheer the hapless messenger.

I have not put young Archer forward as a hero, and I shall not, for I know in whom you are mainly interested, but I think the courage he showed that night was remarkable. The road, as I understood him, crossed a veritable inland sea on an embankment about a foot submerged and had he verged from the invisible causeway he and his machine would have been plunged into a considerable depth of water. He was guided by his instinct and such of the fallen poles as had not been washed away.

But it was all quite hopeless, as he realized before he was a quarter of the way across the flooded area. His wheels, sunk in mud, were all but inextricable, and he finally realized, or acknowledged, the terrible predicament he was in. There he was, the plaything of a lashing tempest, marooned upon a sunken road, wrenching and tugging at his wheel as it settled lower and lower in the mud. Above him the thunder crashed, now and again the lightning rent the sky showing the heavens thick with those little restless, feathery clouds. His face felt hot and sore from the beating of the rain against it. I suspect that his nerve was wavering and little wonder.

Then he heard amid the uproar the whirring of an airplane and he stood stark still listening. Perhaps his distracted mind made him susceptible to vague imaginings, and he experienced a feeling of horror at the thought of this uncanny creature of the night hovering in the clouds above him, until he realized that it was probably the friendly plane which, having brought down the enemy machine, was on its way with messages to Paris. The thought afforded him a measure of relief and reconciled him to his own desperate plight. What matter, so long as the urgent news were carried? And what an airman he must be who could fly through this inferno, braving thunder, lightning and storm....

I must tell you this in Archer’s own words.

“I was tugging at my machine, trying to haul it out of the mud, but everry jerrk I gave it I went deeperr in the mud myself. I rememberr how I wrenched on the front wheel, this way and that, so my headlight pointed every which way and I could see the waterr all around—as much as half a mile on both sides of me, I should think. Be-forre that I didn’t know how much of the country was flooded. I seemed to be in the middle of the ocean, as you might say, only in places there were little islands, like, where the water didn’t quite cover the fields. I knew I couldn’t get my machine out of the mud and I thought I’d be betterr off if I left it and waded over to one of those islands because the road I was on was underr waterr and was washing away, sorrt of.

“So I turrned my handle-barr so’s to throw the searrchlight around overr that flooded space and try to decide which way to go. I thought maybe I could get across it quickerr that way; and then run to the nearest town. All of a sudden, while I was throwing my light like that, I hearrd the buzz of an airrplane verry nearr and a very loud whistlin’ sound like this (he simulated a loud, shrill whistling) and then I hearrd a splash quite a long way off and then more splashing not so loud.

“I turrned my light in that direction and saw a big airrplane comin’ to a standstill in the waterr and the rain was pourin’ down off its planes just like a waterrfall. I thought it must be the flierr that brought down the Hun machine, and I thought he must be wrecked and was dead, maybe.

“Forr a minute I held my handle-barr so’s the light was right on the plane and then I had a good scarre, you can bet, forr I could see plain as day on the body of it and on the rudderr the black cross with a white borrderr like they have on Hun machines!”

The dramatic descent of this apparition through that tempestuous storm, and its clear outline as it stood focussed in the circle of brightness thrown by Archer’s headlight, must have been quite enough to disconcert him. For a moment, he says, he stood there trembling, the wind howling about him, the rain beating on his face, the heavy darkness shutting out everything save that meteor-like thing out of the troubled heavens.

Then a figure emerged from under its dripping plane and called to him. In the high wind he could not hear what this apparition said, the voice seeming thin and spent in contrast with the tumult, or, as Archer said, “as if it came from a ghost.” Then he caught the words “landing” and “guide.”

He was not greatly surprised at that, for it was not uncommon to find Germans speaking English. For a moment he hesitated, then, drawing his side arm, he stepped forward through the water, toward the strange visitor. Again the man spoke, but the wind was away from him and Archer could not hear what he said. He confessed that he was not accustomed to encounters with the enemy, but he knew what to do and called, “Hold up your hands if you surrenderr; if you don’t, I’ll shoot”; all the while wading through the flooded meadow.

The stranger, so he says, raised his hands very leisurely and lifted his goggles up on his forehead, for all the world like some dear old grandma, which tickled Archer’s funny bone. This finicky little act seemed odd in one of those adventurous denizens of the sky, and I have heard others besides Archer speak of it. Then the stranger, standing there amid the screaming wind and blinding storm, raised his hands as if to surrender. But Archer was not unfamiliar with the “kamarad” game, and he advanced cautiously. The screaming of the wind through the wiring of the machine was terrific but through it, as he stumbled along, he fancied (I quote his own words) that he could “hearr the worrd ‘souveneerrr’ as if it was in the airrr, sorrt of.”

Then suddenly he stopped amazed to hear these words uttered in plain English:

“I suppose you’re after a piece of this airplane for a souvenir. How is it you ain’t chewin’ an apple?”

He stood where he was, too dumbfounded to speak, and looked at the drenched figure in dismay.

“Can I take my hands down now?” the flier said in a familiar, dull voice, but smiling.

As you probably have guessed, it was none other than Archer’s former comrade, Tom Slade, who stood facing him.

“’Till I hearrd that about souveneerrrs I neverr thought anything about it,” Archer said, as a sort of climax to this extraordinary episode, and raising his knees high up in the bed as was his custom; “but as soon as he reminded me of it I made up my mind I’d get a piece of that bloomin’ machine to take home—by Christopherrr!”

That seemed to be the main consideration with him.

“Do you think you are fonder of souvenirs than of apples?” I inquired slyly, for his narrative was interrupted by the nurse’s bringing him one from a box of them which I understood had made a long and patriotic pilgrimage from the Catskills.

“Therre’s only one thing about apples I like,” he observed, as he took an enormous bite, “and that’s the taste of ’em. Slady used to always kid me about apples—but you can bet yourr life I got three tacks out of the leatherr seat of that gol-bloomin’ Hun machine!”

CHAPTER III—SLADE’S EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE

Indeed, to close this important matter now, Archer got considerably more than the three tacks from the leather seat. He got a lock-nut from that “inferrnal combustion engine,” (I suppose he meant internal), a splinter of fabulous value from the casing of a Hun altimétre, and something which looked like an American collar button, but which he assured me had had an adventurous career above the clouds. He found it in the car of the machine and if it was a collar button, why, it might possibly have been worn by the Kaiser, so it was of priceless value in any case.

“What arre you doing herre?” Archer says he finally managed to ask, “in a Hun——”

“I’m standing here,” said Slade in a dry way which Archer says was characteristic of him. “Help me lift out this bag of sand, will you? There isn’t any time to talk. I escaped in this thing from the prison camp at Azoudange. They sent away pretty near the whole guard. They’re goin’ to attack. They didn’t know I knew anything about aviation. Hurry—you’ll have to sit there.”

“What became of the fellerr that went up afterr you back therre?” Archer asked.

“He had to go down,” said Slady dryly; “on account of the weather. Hurry up. I’ve been hanging over you waiting for you to show me a place to light, but you never would and that’s just like you. It wasn’t till you got stuck, just as I knew you would, and moved your light all around that I got a good squint. Chuck it out—quick.”

Archer climbed the step and looked into the cosy little car of a German Albatross, two-seater fighting plane. Throwing his light about, he saw in a quick glance the luxurious seat of the pilot and the plainer one for the accompanying flier—a heavy bag of sand lashed upon it. He saw the compass, the altimétre, the revolution counter, and something which he said looked like a shade roller all wound round with oilskin.

“Don’t touch that,” Slade warned as Archer’s souvenir-loving fingers lingered about it; “its the rolling-map—it shows a lot of things behind the German lines.”

Archer climbed into the car, the floor of which was covered with water like a leaky boat, and threw the bag from the seat he was to occupy.

“You might have had sense enough to know you could never get anywheres in the flat country tonight,” Slade told him. “Why didn’t you follow the Marne ridge?”

“’Cause I didn’t know about it,” Archer confessed frankly.

“Where are you going—to Paris?”

“Yes, or the nearest point of communication.”

“Good I picked you up,” said Slade.

Archer said he was so “flabberrgasted” at this almost miraculous meeting with Slade that it was some minutes before he realized the significance of all that had occurred. “You couldn’t make Slady talk,” he told me. “He’d only say what was necessary and even then he was kind of clumsy telling things. That was why he never botherred much with girrls, I guess. Maybe that’s why they neverr botherred with him.”

“Maybe one did bother with him and you didn’t know anything about it,” I suggested.

“Nix,” said Archer, with great decision.

Then he went on to tell me at some length much that he himself did not learn until afterward, and even then extracted from his hero much as a dentist draws teeth. “I had to give him gas to get anything out of him,” he said.

It was a very remarkable story, and I will tell it now.

One night about a month before this Slade, on his motorcycle, had been carrying a message from headquarters at Louzanne to a point some twenty miles distant when his machine ran into a shell hole near the village of La Pavin. This village was held by the French under constant menace from the enemy.

The hole was very deep and Slade’s head striking a part of his machine as he fell, he was stunned and lay unconscious in the ragged excavation for what he afterwards judged must have been several hours.

When he regained consciousness he found himself in a predicament which must have struck horror even to such a stolid nature as his. There he lay upon the wreck of his machine in a stifling atmosphere of gasolene. Where he was he could not imagine at first but he was thoughtful enough not to strike a match to light his acetylene searchlight which, moreover, as he later found, was broken.

Presently as he was able to gather his wits, he remembered what had happened, but why the sickening fumes of gasolene should permeate the place he could not guess until, feeling about above him, he discovered the appalling cause of this condition. The shell hole was completely closed by a hard, irregular surface which felt warm to the touch.

I leave you to imagine his feelings. He told Archer that he knew his consciousness was but temporary. “I knew I’d faint any minute,” he said. Yet he displayed enough of his characteristic calmness to reflect that this complete closing of the hole could not have been of long duration or he would be dead already. Whatever happened must have happened within a very few minutes, he thought.

“That was just like Slady,” Archer said, as he told me about it. “He neverr got excited. He always just sat down and thought what was the best thing to do next.”

Yet I think he must have been somewhat unnerved then. In any case, he felt of his gasolene tank and found that the feed pipe had been wrenched away; not so much as a drop of gasolene was there left in it. The slightest spark in that horrible, dark prison would have resulted in a death more terrible than any which the ingenious Huns could have devised.

Again Slade felt of the warm, hard surface above him and ran his fingers in the interstices which seemed straight and regular. The surface was of a warmth much greater than the stifling warmth of his prison, like a warm radiator.

His head began to pound and he suffered from a straining feeling about his eyes, which was ominous, as an army surgeon has since told me. Yet with the few remaining minutes of life which apparently remained to him, Tom Slade crouched upon the wreck of his machine and thought.

I am telling you this not after his own fashion of telling it, as Archer repeated it to me, for evidently Slade had no idea at all of the story possibilities of his own experiences.

The result of his thinking was that with a piece of broken glass from his headlight he hurriedly dug a deep hole in the earth in which he deposited his papers, filling the hole again and smoothing it over. By the sheer power of his will he kept his wits while he was doing it and having finished he had barely the strength to bang with a rock against the hard surface above him.

“What did you think it was?” Archer says he asked him.

“I thought it was a tank,” Slade answered, “and I wasn’t going to take any chances with my messages till I knew for certain everything was all right.” The result proved that this precaution had been a wise one.

I suspect that those few seconds of frantic banging, while he fought a losing battle against his ebbing consciousness, were perhaps the most terrific in all his adventurous career. He told Archer that his head swam and that finally he fell exhausted, struggling like a maniac for each breath he drew, his eyes throbbing madly.

He did not know whether the hard roof actually moved, for everything seemed to be moving now, and he was wavering on the edge of unconsciousness. The last rational thought that he remembered having was that the tank must have been deserted. His leg slipped between the spokes of his wheel, he heard a strange noise, saw a little round light, and thought it was a spark which would ignite the fumes and....

What he really saw as he passed out of that borderland of consciousness was a star in the bright, clear heaven.

They lifted him, limp and all but lifeless, out of that poisoned dungeon and laid him on the cool earth and searched him for his papers. They had taken the little village of La Pavin in a night attack. The huge metal monster which had shut him in stood hard by and when he came to his senses he saw it there, brutal in its power and its ugliness—heartless, irresistible, horrible. For I will tell you on my own account that of all the engines of combat or of locomotion which man has made there is nothing so loathesome in its suggestiveness of soulless cruelty as one of these same monster tanks.

But Herr Von Something-or-other did not find the papers of the messenger, and the messenger only smiled when they asked him about them. They raised the broken motorcycle and looked about beneath it with flashlights. But there were no papers. And so they took the messenger into the village and put him in the little dressing station there and gave him oxygen and used a pulmotor and brought him round. He said afterwards (I mean long afterwards) that the Germans had treated him well, been kind to him, and that he did not believe all the tales of German atrocities which he had heard. He said these Germans seemed like friends. I mention this because he was subsequently accused of professing sympathy for them and came very near to being court-martialled for it. Archer says it was just his blunt sense of common fairness, a notable characteristic of his, and that what he said has reference only to the treatment he received on that particular occasion. In any event, nothing came of it.

Slade was taken, along with some of the defenders of La Pavin, to the big prison camp at Azoudange, on the Marne Canal a few miles east of Nancy. You will remember that as the place from which the balloon observer thought that troops were being sent forward toward the lines. It is in Lorraine, not far from Saarburg.

There Slade remained, and there he was on the stormy night of his great adventure, which was to prove his brevet flight^[2], and bring him face to face with his former comrade, Archer.

I suppose you know that Slade had always taken a great interest in aviation. He had a Boy Scout badge for proficiency in this business, so Archer says, and was pretty thoroughly posted on airplane construction and mechanics. How far into the science these Scout studies took him you may be better able to tell than I, but that they aroused a very intelligent interest in these things there is no doubt. In the early period of his service in the Motorcycle Corps he was attached to the airdrome at Calleaux where he was very popular with the “fledglings.” He tried, indeed, to get into that branch of the service, but without success. Archer says that Slade’s practical knowledge of gas engines was very thorough, he was something of an expert on cycle motors, and seemed perfectly familiar with the type used in aircraft.

I suspect he must have learned a good deal in the hours of leave which he spent among the fliers who were learning in the airdrome at Calleaux. Certain it is that he hobnobbed with them in their barracks, for Archer says that Slade told him of fixing their Victrola and varying the monotony of the single record which they had by boring a hole in it a little off centre, producing a “wierrd kind of music,” as Archer said. For this ingenious novelty Slade was taken up with one of the instructors and permitted to “handle the broomstick” all by himself. Whatever other experiences he had among that fraternal company he did not communicate to Archer, nor to any one else apparently.