Tom Slade with the Flying Corps: A Campfire Tale

CHAPTER VII—CHANGING SCENES

I have told you of the last part of this astonishing flight in Archer’s own words, as well as I could transcribe them from my shorthand notes, because I think it gives a very good idea of his own impressions. How Tom Slade felt throughout that exciting night I can only conjecture. You knew him and I did not. Imperturbable, resourceful, strong-willed, a little dash of grim humor (at least, in his relations with the irrepressible Archer), and with the spirit of adventure born in him, I can form some sort of picture of him in my own mind—the scowl, the big mouth, the towhead—but at best he is something of a mystery to me. I can fancy him on that wild night, one hand upon his stabilizing control, the other on the handle by which he communicated his dogged will to the rudders, a keen eye always fixed upon his altimétre or his compass. Sometimes I fancy that I can hear that “soberr, kind of” voice of his. But as I say, you knew him and I did not.

I must now tell you of the practical results of his deed. You know already of the movements which followed immediately upon the discovery of his warning messages, and if you have read the papers I suppose you know of the iron wall which the Germans found confronting them. Archer’s messages were opened and read and such parts of them as required transmission were wired on to General Pershing, who was then in Paris.

But these, important though they were, are not a part of my story. You will recall that when the souvenir-loving Archer first inspected the Hun plane in quest of booty, his longing fingers lingered upon something which looked like a shade roller, hung before the pilot’s seat and which Slade had wound in oilskin. It was typical of Slade that he should have thought to do this even in the excitement of his escape, and this little act of foresightedness and caution was destined to have far-reaching and memorable consequences in which he was to be involved.

They spent the balance of the night in the barracks of this aviation centre and, according to Archer, were treated royally by the student airmen, who, I suspect, found him an amusing youngster for several of them gave him a sentence to say which he repeated to their great delight. It ran something like this: Roaring, raging, rampant, rambunctious rhinoceroses ran round rugged rocks, recklessly raising ridiculous reverberating rows. If he repeated it to them as he did to me, it must have been very entertaining. He also sang them “Peterr Porkerr’s Pig,” a ballad of the Catskills, I suppose, which won him great applause. He says the airmen slept in the long dormitories, in rows on either side, and that it was just like camping to be among them. In the morning he and Slade watched some ground flights, made by beginners in machines with “clipped wings,” which could not leave the ground. They wriggled around this way and that, he said, and were very funny—like a “barrnyarrd full of chickens.” Several new men came in from their brevet, cross-country flights during the morning and were loudly acclaimed, he said. It was fun to see them chase each other round the field.

That afternoon Archer went into Troyes to have a new cycle issued to him, and said goodbye to the comrade whom he was destined never to see again. Slade, he said, was to remain there for another day while the instructor (Lieutenant Tanner) endeavored to have him transferred from the messenger corps into this branch of the service. He thought it would not be difficult in the circumstances, and surely it ought not to have been.

And thus Archibald Archer passes out of the story. He remained my cot neighbor here in the hospital until the day before yesterday, when he was discharged as cured. He knew nothing of Slade after their parting at the aviation school and it was not until he became a patient in the hospital and saw the mended place in the roof that he learned of his former comrade’s having been there before him and of how the stolid partner of their great exploit had later gone to his last adventure high among the clouds. But of the intimate circumstances of this he knew nothing.

You will think it rather a coincidence that all three of us should have been patients in this same hospital, but such things are not unusual here in France. I could tell you of four brothers who met in one of the big hospitals in Paris, and of a father and son who met on sentry duty when one supposed the other to be in Mexico—such a kaleidoscope is this great war.

I began by being merely amused at Archibald Archer but I came to be greatly interested in him and to like him immensely. He is the kind of young fellow who is putting pep into this war, and I never dreamed until after he went away how keenly we should miss him. Even the “cross red nurses,” as he called them, who frequently had occasion to chide him, wish that he would be brought back with a slight wound. I shall never forget his souvenirs and his apple-eating and the good old up-country roll of his R’s. If his luck doesn’t change (and I don’t think it will ever change) and he gets home safely, I mean to hunt him up on his farm in the Catskills and hear him sing “Peterrr Porrkerr’s Pig” once again. If all goes well, I promise you a meeting with him and you can put him into one of your famous stories if you wish to. It has been pretty lonesome here these last two days, and I thank goodness that I am leaving the hospital myself on Friday.

CHAPTER VIII—THE OTHER GUN

I am writing this in Paris where I came to rest after seeing the boys straighten out the last wrinkle in the old Marne salient. It’s almost like a tight-rope now—a bee line from Rheims right through the woods north of Campiegne.

The doctors sent me back because of my cough; the after effect, they say, of being gassed. I am told that if this troublesome cough does not presently subside it will be desirable for me to seek another climate—the mountains of Switzerland, for instance. I am hoping that this will not be necessary and meanwhile I shall continue my tale of Tom Slade. For I have dug up one or two more things for you out of his checkered career.

Each morning I come out and sit on the Boulevard, and do my writing in the intervals of watching the sights. The benches are filled with crippled soldiers and there is a little French girl who comes along nearly every day and gives us each a flower. Nannette, her name is, and she is the only one left of a family of nine who were kidnapped and butchered by the Germans in Senlis. She wears wooden shoes and I listen for their clatter each morning. Directly across from my favorite seat is the wreck of a house which was bombed, and the soldiers are always picking up odds and ends to take home. It brings back fond memories of Archibald Archer.

Well, when I left the hospital at Epernay I had two things, and one was this cough. The other was the name of Lieutenant Tanner, of the flying field near Troyes. It seemed that here was the likeliest means of finding out something of Slade’s subsequent career, so I visited the place on a pass and talked with the lieutenant. I found him agreeable enough but rather brief. I suspect that he does not greatly admire us “knights of the fountain pen.” He told me, among other things, that Slade’s landing had been “amateurish” but quite remarkable. He said that Slade took a “low angle grade” or something of that sort, for to tell you the truth, I don’t know what he was talking about.

They were putting the men through their training in pretty rapid order then in anticipation of the final scene, and physical fitness and natural aptitude and daring once established, the rest was easy. Slade received a rather perfunctory training at this place, made an altogether successful brevet flight (his real test was the flight I’ve told you of), and was transferred to the airdrome near Chalons on the Marne, where he was kept at the noncombatant work of aerial messenger. If he had any interesting experiences in this branch of the service I have not been able to learn them, but of the remarkable incident which resulted in his being taken to the hospital at Epernay I have authentic information, and of this I shall now tell you.

I have been at some pains to learn the full story of this singular business and my information is derived from several sources. I will mention these now so that the story, as I tell it, may not be cumbered with continual reference to my authorities.

First, there is Captain Whitloss of the airdrome near Chalons, who was Slade’s superior and whom I cannot sufficiently thank for his hospitality and courtesy to a mere fountain-pen warrior! Next, there is an old Frenchman of the name of Godefroi Grigou and his daughter, Jeanne, aged seventeen, who at the time this thing happened lived in the village of Talois, some fifteen miles beyond the German line as it ran then. In the spreading of the advance which began with General Foch’s counter offensive on the Marne, this village was brought within the allied lines and I have visited it (or what there is left of it) and talked with old Godefroi and his daughter.

The girl speaks English with a pretty, broken accent, having learned it, so she told me; from an American who was in the German service. I think he must have been a German-American, for he spoke German also. The only name they knew him by was Captain Toby. He was in the German aerial observation corps, and was for some time prior to the events which I am going to record, domiciled in the simple home of these poor people, who were forced to share their meagre fare with him and pay him homage. I have never seen this creature, but I understand that he has many black marks against his name, and that it will fare ill with him if he ever falls into allied hands.

I think there were never two happier people than old Godefroi and his young daughter since their delivery from German arrogance and oppression. Their poor little thatched cottage is now ten miles within General Foch’s iron line, and here I spent one of the pleasantest afternoons I have known since I came to France.

From these three persons, then, I learned the substance of the story which I am about to tell and which I shall call The Episode of the Other Gun. Even the conversations are substantially authentic and if I have filled up the gaps here and there with a little of the story-teller’s material, I think I can assure you that I have held a tight rein upon my imagination, and have not introduced any matter save what is obviously suggested by the facts.

One afternoon, as Slade alighted after a flight to Neufchateau he was instructed to report to the captain’s headquarters where he found two officers connected with the secret information service. Having made certain that he was the right Thomas Slade, they asked him whether he had heard of the great advantage to the allies which had accrued from a study of the roller map of the Hun plane in which he had escaped.

“I never heard anything more about it,” said Slade.

They told him that matters of the greatest importance had been revealed by this map, such as the location of airdromes and ammunition dumps, official headquarters, etc., and, most important of all, the positions, or rather the neighborhood, of two isolated pieces of mammoth artillery which had been pounding away at Chalons near by. One of these, they said, had been located near Tagnoni and put out of business. The other was still active and creating frightful havoc in Chalons and neighboring places. Its locality was marked by a cross upon the German airman’s map and a reproduction of this section of the map was shown to Slade. It showed Talois in the hilly country about twelve or fifteen miles behind the enemy lines.

“It has been decided,” said one of the officers, “to send a flier to this place in the plane which you brought from Azoudange, to reconnoiter and report, if possible, the precise location of this piece. Specific instructions are ready and if you care to volunteer for this service your offer will be considered. You speak German, I believe?”

“Kind of,” said Slade.

“You were in the German camp how long?”

“About a month.”

“You come of German people?”

“No, I don’t,” said Slade, “but if I did it wouldn’t be my fault.”

The officer looked at him with a sort of careful scrutiny from which I infer (and so does Captain Whitloss) that they thought he had somewhat the appearance of a German and were glad of it. They explained that individuals were not detailed for such hazardous expeditions except upon their volunteering; that they gave him this opportunity because he had brought the Hun plane into allied territory, because he had been among Germans during his captivity, and because he spoke German. They said nothing about his personal bravery, for they do not do this in the army.

“Do I just have to say I volunteer?” said Slade.

“If you wish to go.”

“Then I say it.”

“Very well; your instructions will be delivered to you by Captain Whitloss tomorrow and you will be held at the field until then.”

Slade saluted and left the room. Throughout the balance of that day he showed not the slightest ruffle in his stolid demeanor and in the morning he wandered about the field watching the practice of his comrades. Once only did he speak to anyone and that was to ask Captain Whitloss if this errand was in the nature of a spy’s work.

“That’s how they’ll treat you if they find you out,” said the captain.

“I don’t mean over there,” said Slade. “I’m not thinking about that; but over here.”

“Well, not exactly,” said the captain, which seemed to satisfy him.

In the early afternoon the Hun plane, which must have recalled vivid memories to Slade, circled over the field and made a landing. Its pilot, one of the aviators from the neighborhood of Troyes, brought Slade’s instructions, which I have been permitted to see. I think I may reproduce them here, particularly as the episode is now a thing of the past and moreover you will not see this until I return to America.

The messenger will commit these instructions to memory and, having repeated them accurately to his commanding officer, will sign and return them to such officer. He will then hold himself in readiness for further orders.

Upon receiving these he shall, at a time to be designated, fly to Suippes where materials and final orders will be given him.

Upon his final orders for departure he shall proceed as follows: Fly directly northward from Suippes, under safe conduct, and cross the lines at St Estey. From this point he shall follow the line of the road which runs directly northward to Vouziers. Both road and town, it is believed, are sufficiently indicated in low flight. From Vouziers he shall follow the line of road running eastward into the hills. Village of Talois is first village eastward on this road. Continuing directly eastward over wooded hill he shall locate whitewashed, thatched-roof cottage on road at edge of woods and make landing in field adjacent. Inquire at cottage for M. Grigou and present credentials. If hospitality is refused he shall return forthwith to Suippes. Otherwise, he shall remain and spend following day in exploration of east slope of wooded hill west of cottage. Spend day following in exploration of west slope. Spend second day following in such further explorations as previous explorations indicate. If gun is located, he shall note its position with regard to slope, neighboring contours and such landmarks and geographic facts as may reduce the area of its approximate position from Allied lines. On the night of third day he shall positively return to base at Chalons.

Subjoined to this order was a list of items which might be more or less helpful in locating his destination, and so forth.

Notwithstanding the very explicit character of these instructions, it is plain that they left much to the flier’s judgment and resource. I suspect that Slade’s superiors were in possession of secret information which they did not think it necessary to give the volunteer, but which might have afforded him some reassurance in so hazardous a trip. For one thing, I understand it was known at the time that the news of the ridiculous loss of the Hun machine had been suppressed within the enemy lines. Whether this was the work of the authorities of the prison camp in collusion with the German flier, I do not know, but enemy prisoners (even officers) taken by the French and Americans professed complete ignorance of this inglorious loss of one of their machines. Perhaps it was this that determined the use of the Hun plane in this delicate business.

Captain Whitloss says that Slade repeated his instructions word for word in a “kind of dull, monotonous tone” correcting himself even in the most trifling details, then signed the formidable documents in a scrawling hand. I saw this signature. It was written in a firm, but very careless, hand and read simply Tom Slade. After that he played checkers until three in the afternoon when, upon verbal orders, he left the airdrome. (Orders regarding time of departure are seldom known in advance.)

Alighting in Suippes, he was outfitted with the shabby garment of a German flier—remnant, I suppose, of some hapless enemy captive. He showed no surprise to find here that his “credentials” consisted merely of a tarnished brass button.

“Will I give him this?” was all he said.

Suippes is (or was) just a couple of miles behind the line and here Slade remained through the early part of the evening, pitching ball until it was too dark and then watching the boys playing cards in the Y. M. C. A. hut. A little after ten o’clock he was ordered out upon his perilous errand.

Of the flight itself I know nothing, for I never saw Slade, and he was never thereafter able to make a satisfactory report. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

The night was crisp and clear with a strong breeze blowing out of the north, and the sky thick with stars. It was the same night that Aiken fell to his death from a height of nearly 3,000 feet and the descent of his machine, I am told, was plainly seen. So the conditions attending Slade’s departure were propitious for his purpose. Indeed, if they had not been so his start would have been deferred, I suppose. At 10.25 he was reported passing over St. Estey, flying low, his propeller making that distinctive intermittent whir which is characteristic of German aircraft. St. Estey is right in the “front of the front,” just within the first line trenches. It is told that a group of German prisoners there at the time rejoiced that one of their fliers was getting back home safely and that one of them raised his hand toward the plane and called, “Prosit!”

So Tom Slade went forth upon his dangerous business with the best of good wishes on the part of his enemies!

CHAPTER IX—MONSIEUR LE CAPITAINE

It lacked a half-hour of midnight when old Grigou hobbled out of his doorway and looked up into the clear, star-studded night. There was no other house in sight, only the shell-torn fields to the east, and to the west the dark, wooded hill frowning upon the poor, isolated abode. Even Talois was over the hill and Mademoiselle Jeanne was afraid to go there because there were dead men to be seen along the lone path through the woods and swaggering, leering Prussians in the village. One dead man in particular she was afraid of because he sat up against a tree near the path and was always grinning at her.

But the person whom she feared the most of all was Monsieur le Capitaine. She did not know much about Monsieur le Capitaine excepting that he had come from far-off America to help the Fatherland. And the chief way in which he helped the Fatherland seemed to be by sprawling in their little house and eating their food and ordering them about. She wondered why anyone should have come all the way from America to help the Fatherland.

He was very efficient and very mysterious, was Monsieur le Capitaine. Sometimes he came in “ze flying machine,” sometimes on his feet. Once a small dirigible had landed in the shell-torn field and taken him away. He used often to go to Rheims and be gone for a week or more. Once Jeanne had flared up and denounced him and his friends for wrecking Rheims Cathedral and he had told her that this was nothing; that in America the people made a practice of destroying the cathedrals of the Indians. He told her that England was to blame for everything and that she ought to be glad that some brave men from America were helping poor, lonely, downtrodden Germany to thrash England. He told her that in America the national pastime was hanging black men and that all the lamp-posts in New York had black men hanging from them. Jeanne had shuddered at that.

Whatever in the world Monsieur le Capitaine was about, he was very much engrossed in it.

Neither Jeanne nor her poor old father had ever dared to ask him why he found their remote home so desirable. Perhaps that was the reason—its remoteness. About all that Jeanne really knew was that Monsieur le Capitaine knew all about “ze ships, when zey will go,” and that he had something to do with a balloon with two black crosses on it. She had always inferred that these two black crosses were a mark of special honor or distinction. Chiefly she wished, for her poor old father’s sake, that he would not drink their precious wine. If he would only let the wine alone, he could have ten black crosses for all she cared....

So you will readily appreciate the feelings with which Jeanne heard her father calling to her from outside the house.

“Jeanne! Jeanne! Monsieur le Capitaine est retourne!”

Jeanne emerged with a look of inquiring disappointment upon her troubled face and sure enough, there was the whir, whir, whir, whir overhead and a dark object circling against the darker background of sky.

“What matter, papa,” she said resignedly in French; “for sometime he must come. So, maybe, he will soon go. So? We shall think of his going, never of his coming. So, papa?”

Her father put his arm about her. “This is my brave little daughter,” he said. “But come, he will wish wine.”

The girl did not stir, however, but remained there with her father’s arm about her, wistfully following the dark object with her eyes. Now it went far away and disappeared, now came back again. Now it came very low, now ascended. Now it was directly overhead, then of a sudden it was coming straight toward them, silently and very low, as if it must be another machine altogether....

Out of it climbed Tom Slade of the Flying Corps, and shaking down his heavy garments as he walked he approached the two, his goggles up on his forehead like a prosy old schoolmaster.

“I zink it ees ze capitaine,” said the girl uncertainly.

“I ain’t even a lieutenant,” said Tom Slade. “Is this Mr. Grigou?”

Upon the old man’s acknowledgement he presented his trinket of a credential, that talisman which has won food and shelter for many a sore beset fugitive, in the humble, devastated homes of northern France—a button from the uniform of a French soldier in the old Franco-Prussian war. No compromising note of introduction, bringing possible peril to its holder, could have been so instrumental as this little memento, speaking the language of hallowed sentiment. Your Uncle Samuel knows the value of these little buttons.

I must not linger upon Slade’s personal intercourse with these people. I believe that the information service knew something of conditions there and knew that “Monsieur le Capitaine” was temporarily absent. It would seem to explain the very explicit instructions for Slade’s prompt return. I fancy I can detect another hand in this whole business and I think that Slade was merely the active figure in the enterprise. In any case, it was pretty close work, as they say. I am certain that M. Grigou did not expect Slade. The ways of the information service are dark and mysterious....

Slade was welcomed by this sturdy old Frenchman and his daughter and partook of a late supper with them, the while he spoke of his errand. He had made no attempt, of course, to hide his plane and Jeanne said that he appeared not the least disconcerted at the possibility of the captain’s returning unexpectedly, which, however, she thought unlikely. They knew he had gone to Berlin and he had said he would not return for a couple of weeks or more.

Yet for all that, and making full allowance for the possibility of the information service knowing of this mysterious person’s whereabouts and the duration of his absence, there is something very striking to me in Slade’s sitting there, his airplane outside, chatting with these people with apparently no more concern than if he had looked in for a social call. Perhaps he was safer than he knew.

“But he does not have ze—caire,” said Jeanne, throwing out her hands with a fine suggestion of recklessness. “You see? So. He say if one man come, why he should caire! Oi, la, la, I say to him!”

A very singular thing occurred that night.

Naturally enough, they fell to speaking of the absent captain and in the course of their conversation Jeanne asked Slade if it were true that negroes were hanging from all the lamp posts of New York and if it were true that the American people were really for Germany, but that President Wilson sided with England and so made them fight against the Fatherland.

Slade told her that these were all lies and that he would like to come face to face with the man, whether German or German-American, who uttered such nonsense.

“He say ziss is all—how you say—nonsense,” Jeanne told me. “He will not be mad, because ziss is nonsense. So. I tell him all zese sings—only he laugh. Lies—nonsense—and he laugh.”

Apparently he had rallied her for believing all this extravagant stuff from the curious German mind. “He tell me I am so much at ease—ziss is why I believe.” I suppose he told her that she was easy. He told her also that he would bring her some elephants and tigers from the neighboring woods next day and so the talk passed off in pleasant banter.

What, then, was the surprise of both Jeanne and her father when, on showing their visitor to the little room upstairs which he was to occupy, he strode over to the old chest of drawers which stood in a corner and taking up a photograph of a man in a sumptuous German uniform, demanded to know if that was the captain.

“I tell him yess,” said the girl, “and how he make me take ze picture. Ziss I do not like to have, but I am so afraid, I must take eet. So I put it here—you see? Maybe he ask.”

Slade, according to her, took the picture, looked at it with an expression of rage, tore it into pieces and threw it on the floor. “So he talk low, too, and say mooch—vere rude,” she said.

To put the whole thing in a few plain words, he was evidently siezed with ungovernable rage, declared he would kill the man upon sight for a lying, sneaking wretch and hoped that he might meet him there and have done with it. The girl was greatly surprised and very much frightened, and her father also when she translated Slade’s talk for him. Her imperfect English was not always clear to me, but I gathered that Slade’s outburst was such as to shock her and it presented him in a new light to me. No doubt, these poor people had been thoroughly cowed by the Germans and feared the consequence of any harm which might befall their arrogant tyrant of the two black crosses.

“He’ll have a black cross over his grave if I ever see him!” Slade had muttered when he heard of this evident badge of honor.

“Even when we leave him,” Jeanne told me, “he sit on ze side of ze bed and look—so hard and his mouth—big—eet ees shut like ziss.” And she compressed her pretty lips with a very feeble look of grim and murderous wrath. Thus they left him, a stranger in the enemy country, with perils all about him, for the little rest which he might get before his dangerous business of the morrow.

Now this episode struck me as being very peculiar. In the first place, I have it from Archer that Slade was of an imperturbable, stolid nature, and not given to fits of temper. Also, on hearing of the captain downstairs he had laughed at the girl for believing the stories the German had told her, and treated the mysterious tyrant’s talk like the trash it was. Why, then, should he have flown into such a fury when he saw the picture?

I thought a good deal about it after I left old Grigou’s cottage and the explanation that I hit on was this: that Slade rather liked the girl and was angry to think of her having this German’s picture. Then I thought of what Archer had said about Slade’s not having any use for “girrls.” Well, at least, I thought, Slade was rather erratic. Perhaps it was only a trifling matter, but it puzzled me and it puzzles me still.

No matter.

There is a little oasis of scouting and woodcraft in this bloody desert of war which will show you Tom Slade in a familiar light—as you used to know him at your beloved Temple Camp. And when you think of your dead comrade of the good old days I am sure you will wish to think of him as he trod the forest depths next day in quest of the iron murderer that lay concealed there.

I mean to recount this to you now.

CHAPTER X—THE SOUVENIR OF SOUVENIRS

If Slade had any suspicion that “Monsieur le Capitaine” was directly interested in the great gun which was concealed thereabout, he did not say so to old Grigou and his daughter. They, at least, knew nothing of any such gun in their neighborhood, but they told him of frightful explosions which made their cottage “shiver.” They seemed to think that such things were common along the entire front and they knew of houses which had been shaken down by distant explosions. Slade asked them if they had heard any of these explosions lately and they told him they had not—not for several days. “Only he shake his head—vere wise—so,” Jeanne volunteered.

He said afterward that he had counted on the noise of the monster to guide him to it but that he supposed his visit was in an interval of disuse caused by the ever-increasing scarcity of ammunition.

Early in the morning he set forth with a little snack which Jeanne had prepared for him and following the woods path was soon lost in the hilly forest. I have myself seen this forest at its edge and how any human being could hope to locate a particular object in it is beyond my comprehension. The woods path which ends near Grigou’s cottage follows a meandering course over the densely wooded summit and winding down the western slope develops into the single street of Talois village. I should say it might be five miles over the hill as the crow flies and more than ten by the path.

It was long after dark when Slade returned, very weary and apparently discouraged. He had seen nothing but dead men in the woods, he said. Not a sign was there of any open way along which artillery might be hauled—not so much as a wagon track. He was in a very ill mood and Jeanne tried to console him by saying that as long as he tried it was not disgrace if he failed.

“Sure it’s a disgrace if you fail,” he answered in a surly tone.

“I tell him ziss is no—what you call—deesgrace.”

Then he made one of those puzzling observations of his—the kind which Archer was always quoting.

“You can’t disgrace yourself either without disgracing a lot of other people. If you could it wouldn’t be so bad. That’s why I wouldn’t want the place where I live disgraced—or the whole air service, either.”

Jeanne apparently did not appreciate this line of reasoning and probably thought Slade rather a queer fellow.

The next morning at daylight he set forth again and returned long after dark, dog tired. He had wandered over the west slope of the hill down as far as the village where he had talked with Germans, making his inquiries as plain as he dared. The sum total of the information he had gained was just nothing at all and he returned with the gloomy realization of the needle-in-the-haystack character of his quest. I suspect that Slade was not a good loser—perhaps because he was not accustomed to losing.

“I got one more day,” he said doggedly.

The next day he carried his explorations whither his fancy took him and hoped for luck. This hill, so called, is in reality a sort of jumble of hill. Deep gullies intervened to balk the traveller and the undergrowth and secondary slopes, if I may so call them, make an orderly exploration quite impossible. I do not see how it could have been otherwise. That he should stumble upon a piece of artillery in all that litter of wilderness would have been sheer luck. What he sought was a road of communication between this unknown monster and the village. But there was no road. He returned a little after dark in great dejection.

“He will not spik to me,” said the girl. “I tell him so—they are crazee—how you say—to send him. He will not even spik to me—or drink ze wine.”

Slade was always punctilious in obeying orders; he had the dogged, mechanical submission of a German in that regard. He went out in the field, hauled the plane about, tied a strip of surgical bandage, which he always carried, to the end of a stick, and held it up to note the direction of the wind.

It was at that moment that the cheerful, sympathetic French girl, seeing his dejection, uttered the simple words which were to have such momentous consequences.

“See—wait—I will gif you ze souvenir—so you remember.”

I do not know whether Slade’s mood permitted him a smile in memory of Archibald Archer at the mention of that familiar word. But I do know that he answered (rather rudely, I am afraid) that he didn’t want any souvenir.

I like to think how great things are sometimes brought about by the turn of a hair—how Columbus, for instance, all but turned back in the fateful moment when land was sighted. And I pay my tribute here to that frail, brave, cheerful little maid in devastated France, who all unknowingly muzzled that big gun forever. And here’s to the Boy Scouts of America too and all their precious lore of woodcraft.

In another five seconds Tom Slade would have been flying southward, defeated, chagrined, ashamed. But Jeanne came running out in her pretty, cheery way and handed him a charred splinter of wood.

“You know how I tell you ze house it shake when ziss beeg noise—here—you see? Ziss come zen out of ze sky where you fly up. You take ziss to Americ’ for souvenir—you see? Vive l’Amerique!”

Tom Slade held this splintered fragment down by the tiny bulb which illumined his compass.

“It flew here, you mean?”

“Out of ze sky—so.”

There was a moment’s pause, she told me—a fateful moment.

“I never knew that grew here; it’s swamp larch.” He smelled of it and scratched it with his fingers. “Hmmm.” It was charred and left his fingers black and sticky. “Hmmm,” he said again, “it’s swamp larch all right—resin just like cedar—hmmm.” He held it close under the little light and examined it more carefully. He turned it this way and that. He scraped off some of the charred, pungent resin, and sniffed it. He bit a splinter off and chewed it a little. “Hmm.”

She was pleased at his interest and said something which I think was very pretty. “Now you will forgive me about ze picture?”

Tom Slade, of the Flying Corps, turned off the tiny light, shut off his gas, and climbed down from his seat. It was the airman who climbed into that machine. It was the scout who got out of it.

“I know where the gun is now,” he said simply. “A minute ago you said, ‘Vive l’Amerique!’ Now I say, ‘Vive la France! Vive Jeanne!’”

I am glad that at least he had the gallantry to say that.

CHAPTER XI—AIRMAN AND SCOUT

Slade made his report of this business while lying in the Epemay Hospital. This I have not seen, but Captain Whitloss has told me of it. By reason of the character of Slade’s mission, neither he nor anyone else talked of it and even the surgeons and nurses knew nothing of his late exploit, more than that he had sustained a serious injury while flying.

“As soon as I saw that piece of wood,” he told the captain, “I knew it was swamp larch. That always grows near water and usually high up. I thought it must have been right close to the gun, in front of it, because it caught some of the fire. I could even smell the powder. I thought maybe it was a part of the camouflaging in front. Anyway it was torn off a limb, anyone could see that, and was near enough to get burned. In scouting they always tell things by signs. She picked it up when it fell off the thatch roof and they had to chuck a couple of buckets of water up there because the thatch was starting. She couldn’t pick it up at first, it was so hot.

“I knew there wasn’t any larch at all where I’d been ’cause if there had been I’d have seen it—wouldn’t I?”

The captain said he supposed so.

“There was only one thing to do and that was to start with the brook and follow it up. I had to start back that night under signed orders so there wasn’t much time. I knew if there were any swamp larches I’d find them that way—see? And then I’d find out how a chunk like that could get torn off and all charred, and be blown two or three miles maybe. I knew what to do then ’cause I had something to go by. That’s a scout sign, kind of.”

He certainly made good use of his scout sign. In less than two minutes, they tell me, he had picked up his trail at the little trickle of a spring whence they got their drinking water. It came down between rocks, a mere dribble of water, as if from a leaky faucet. I saw this, what there was to it, and how he managed to trace it through all its intricate windings, I am sure I do not know.

I tried to follow it up myself and got just fifteen feet by a tape measure when it ran under a flat rock.

This trickle led him, as he thought it would, to the brook from which it branched off. He had crossed this during the day, but, of course, had not followed it, for there had been no reason to do so. It led him for about three miles through a densely wooded section where he kept a continual watch for larches and cedars. But there were none to be seen and no point of elevation commanding a prospect to the south.

He at last reached a place where the brook ran far below him between rocks and he followed its course through this ravine with great difficulty until he came to a point where it appeared to emerge out of a sort of cave or tunnel and he climbed down to examine it.

He found that the ravine which he had been following branched out of this larger ravine and that this latter had been roofed with boards and logs and brush, forming a sort of covered tunnel, which was completely concealed save at this point of juncture where the brook emerged into the narrower way. He was now hot upon the trail though he probably gave no sign of excitement.

He judged by the stars, he said, that this covered ravine ran north and south and if it did and ran fairly straight, its northern end would be somewhere in the neighborhood of the railroad village of Le Chesne, or at least near the line of trail thereabout, while its southern end would be at the steep slope of the hills southward.

He entered the passage and found that the brook trickled along here not much wider than in the narrower ravine, and that the bed of the passage was hard and fairly flat. He reached above him and pressed against the artificial covering. Cross-pieces had been wedged between the converging rock at intervals, two or three feet below the upper surface and between these he could feel the considerable thickness of brush which lay overhead. Wagons could easily pass here, as safe from aerial observation as a rabbit in his burrow. And so this sunken road and what it led to might be used almost to the last minute as the irresistible line of Marshall Foch advanced.

The rest was easy, yet it is characteristic of Slade that he called himself a fool for not having smelled out this covered ravine in his wanderings. It was dark and musty inside, the little brook meandering aimlessly from one side to the other, with pools here and there, and the foliage overhead emitting a pungent, rotten odor from its soaking in the recent heavy rains. Some of our own boys, you may be interested to know, recently passed through this very ravine in their advance toward Tourteron. But one look inside it was enough for me.

Slade hurried through it, parting the matted roofing now and then for a glimpse of the guiding stars, and was assured that the passage led almost due north. And somewhere along this dark, sickening way, he was siezed with hauting doubts, lest he be pursuing a phantom. What he sought was so great and the clue to if so trifling! “But I remembered how Indian scouts would follow a trail a hundred miles just because they found a hair sticking to a bramble,” he told his superiors. And so he hurried on, on, with hope sometimes mounting, sometimes falling.

After he had gone what he thought was nearly two miles there came a welcome freshness in the air which much relieved him, and he soon saw the clear sky overhead. Before him, to the south, the open country spread away and in the distance he could distinguish two or three tiny lights which he thought were within the allied lines.

The ravine opened into a spacious basin filled partly by a small lake and enclosed by dense woods. He followed the guiding stream out of the dank passage and found that it had its source in this lofty little sheet of water nestling almost at the very brink of a steep decline. In its black, placid bosom his guiding stars were reflected and a sombre tree of swamp larch cast its inverted shadow in the water.

Farther back there were others—larches and cedars. “Good old scouts, I told ’em,” Slade said afterwards; “they love the water, same as I do.” So there, Master Roy Blakeley, scout and would-be author—there is the sequel of your Temple Camp and your Black Lake and your silent, companionable trees.

Tom Slade saw the lay of the land clearly enough now. This covered ravine was in fact the lofty crevice between two hills, and from the distant allied lines its end must have taken the form of a great rough V high up where those twin hills parted. There was no suggestion of this upon close inspection, but it is a faculty of the scout to see in his mind’s eye a bird’s-eye view of the locality he is studying. Thus the scout has always two pairs of eyes.

What Tom Slade saw about him was just a lake amid woods rising on either side, east and west, and below him, southward, an expanse of open country. In the little jungle of crowded brush, which from a distance must have seemed to half fill that big V, stood a great, ugly thing swathed in canvas. It poked its big nose up slanting-ways at the stars as if to threaten those friendly monitors of the night for helping this weary young fellow who stood leaning against it, trying to realize his good fortune. All about it and over it the brush and foliage clustered, as if ashamed to own its presence in their still, obscure retreat; and in front of it, between it and the steep decline, a graceful larch tree stood in all its silent, supple dignity. From one of its lower spreading limbs a broken branch hung loose, the splintered remnant blowing to and fro in the night.

“It seemed as if it must hurt,” said Slade to Captain Whitloss, “and I felt kind of as if I ought to go and bandage it up—especially as it did me such a good turn, as you might say....”

CHAPTER XII—THE LAST ADVENTURE

And so, like Archibald Archer, that murderous old brute of the wooded hills passes out of the story. A gun crew in Santois turned their handle until they got the muzzle of their gun just exactly where they wanted it and that was straight for the big wooded V between the hills. And having fixed everything just right, they let fly—once, twice, three times—and once again for good measure. And the old giant of the mountains was never heard from again. But when those hills where Tom Slade hurried in the night finally came within the iron lines of Marshal Foch, they found the poor old monster knocked clear off his pedestal, where Tom Slade of the Flying Corps had leaned to rest that night when his scouting lore did not forsake him.

But gun crews and fliers notwithstanding, I like to think that the hand which put that steel brute out of business was the small white hand of an eager, generous little French girl who lived away at the foot of those hills in the enemy country. And I am sure that Archibald Archer would grin with unspeakable delight if he could but know that this good end was accomplished by a “souveneerrr.”

I am now close upon the end of my reminiscences of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps and it remains only to tell you what little is really known about his tragic end.

On his way back from the enemy country that night he was blown out of his course and drifted over La Chapelle which is about midway between Epemay and the now famous Chateau-Thierry. If he had been able to fly low enough to follow the road through Suippes to Chalons all would have been well, for the approximate time of his return was known, and no shots were to be fired. Indeed, so far west as La Chapelle they knew of his being abroad on secret business, and should not have fired. But a smart Aleck anti-aircraft crew, hearing the whir of a Hun machine, must take a pop at it and Slade fell with a fractured head among the tangled ruins of his machine. And that was the end of the Hun plane.

Our newspaper said that Slade was “suffering from a slight wound received near La Chapelle.” Nothing about this blundering business which all but lost him his life. In point of fact he suffered from very grave mental disturbances as a result of his fall and I believe that he had not regained in full measure his mental faculties at the time of his final exploit But in this I may be mistaken. In any event, he was morose and despondent while in the hospital, often mumbling threats to kill someone. You will be glad to know that Jeanne visited him there, which seemed to please him, and I think that if he had lived they might, perhaps, have seen more of each other. One of the nurses told me that he asked Jeanne if “that man came back” and when she said that he did, Slade compressed his lips and said nothing. That matter is a mystery to me. He made few friends in the hospital, because of his natural taciturnity, and also because of his mental depression.

He was well on toward recovery, however, when the bomb was dropped which killed two of the nurses. There seems to be no authority for his vowing vengeance against the hostile fliers, but he is remembered to have said that he “knew it was that man’s work.”

He was discharged from the hospital as cured, and after some difficulty succeeded in being reinstated in the Flying Corps, with a combat plane, which was now his one desire. “I got a special reason,” Captain Whitloss says he told him. Those are the last words which I have heard of as coming from Tom Slade.

Of the circumstances attending his last adventure you are already aware, and save for a bit of lurid coloring, the newspaper account seems to be about correct. He rose in pursuit of the Hun plane from Jonchery, west of Rheims, but there seems to be no reason to suppose that he knew who, in particular, he was pursuing.

Both planes passed out of sight above the clouds and shortly thereafter the enemy plane was seen to fall. It fell in La Toi, as the news article stated, just within the allied lines. Its occupant, a German named Otto Brenner, was in the wreckage, quite dead. The fuel tank of his plane had been shot through.

About ten minutes afterward Slade’s empty machine came fluttering down, turned turtle and plunged headlong to earth. It did not fall upon a “rocky hillside” as the paper stated, but in a field within the allied lines. The body of Tom Slade was seen to fall separately but there can be no truth in the declaration which one heard in Rheims (especially among children) that it descended ten minutes after the plane fell. Such a thing would be manifestly impossible.

It is true that a German airman, flying over the American lines, dropped the cap said to have been worn by Slade. In it were his identification disk, corresponding to the number against his name in the army files, and the gold cross which he won while a scout. The Germans found his body half way up a rocky slope and buried it in Pevy which now is in the hands of Americans. I visited the grave which had a little white wooden cross above it on which his name is carved in rough letters, very German. I understand his name was sent to them across No Man’s Land under a white flag after his identity has been ascertained from his disk number. So maybe Fritzie has a soft spot, after all.

For your sake I laid a little wreath upon the grave and wrote on a piece of bark (which I think you told me is the Scouts’ writing material) that it was from the troop in Bridgeboro.