Part 8

The riven boles of two obscene trees crouched and argued about it on the lead-gray horizon, tossing their splintered arms and shrieking, he fancied, like quarrelling old women in the lesser streets of a village. Close to the roadway, there were a torn shoe and a tin hat flattened like a crushed derby. Poor relics that even salvage could see no further use in. Farther off, a splintered caisson pointed three spokes of a shattered wheel to the sky, like a mutilated hand thrown out in agony. He was seeing it for himself now.

No one could smile at the cleanness of his uniform again and say, “Wait till you get out. When I was in France----” He was out himself now. In a day or so he would go over the line with loaded guns. His instructors at the training ’drome--thin-jawed men with soiled ribbons under their wings--had done no more, and some of them had done less. The thought braced him somewhat. They had seemed so different--so impossible to imitate--those men. Their war had always been a different one from his; a war peopled with vague, fearless men like Rhodes-Moorehouse and Albert Ball and Bishop, the Canadian; men who flew without a thought for themselves.

It occurred to him with a start that theirs was the same war as his now. Twenty-five miles ahead of him, buried somewhere in rat runs, between Bapaume and Cambrai, it went on and on, waiting for him to come--waiting to claw and maim and snuff him out when he did come. It had seemed so far away from him in England. When he was at ground school he had seen it as a place where one did glorious things--he was young, pitifully young--a place that one came back from with ribbons under one’s wings, with nice clean scratches decently bandaged. And he had been slightly offended at his brother’s attitude--at the things his brother had said of the staff. Then he had gone to Upavon to learn to fly. He had soloed for the first time, and the spot of fear had crawled into his own heart.

They were rattling into the broken streets of a tottering town; a town that leered at them and grimaced through blackened gaps in its once white walls. There was a patched-up _estaminet_ with a tattered yellow awning that tried bravely to smile.

“Albert,” said the driver.

The new pilot nodded. Some sapper officers were loitering in the doorways of the café. Their uniforms were faded to a rusty brown and reënforced with leather at the cuffs and elbows. Their buttons were leather, too, to save polishing, and their badges were a dull bronze. He looked down at his white Bedford-cord breeches and the spotless skirts of his fur-collared British warm--privileges of the flying corps that men envied. Baths, clean clothing, and better food. The P. B. I.’s idea of heaven. They called flyers lucky for their privileges and cursed them a little bit for their dry beds and the wines they had in their messes, miles behind the line.

The new pilot wondered if they knew what it meant to be alone in the stabbing cold with no one to talk to, no one to help you, nothing between you and the ground save a thin, trembling fabric of cloth and wire and twenty thousand feet of emptiness. That was his fear--emptiness--nothingness--solitude. Those men under the awning could die in company. Not so himself--alone, screaming into the cloud voids, with no one to hear, no one to help, staring with glazed eyes and foam-flecked lips at the emptiness into which one hurtled to death miles below. The price one paid for a bath! He remembered seeing Grahame-White fly at Southport before the war. People had called him an intrepid aviator. The new pilot laughed harshly inside his throat and stared out across the bare fields.

The car topped a slight rise and turned sharply to the left. The driver pointed his grubby finger. “They be comin’ in from affernoon patrol,” he said. “Yonder is airdrome.”

There were three flat canvas hangars painted a dull brown, and a straggling line of rusty tin huts facing them from across the narrow landing space--like a deserted mining village, shabby and unkempt. As he watched, he saw the last machine of the afternoon patrol bank at a hundred and fifty feet and side-slip down for its landing. In his heart he could hear the metal scream of wind in the flying wires. A puff of black smoke squirted out in a torn stream as the pilot blipped on his engine for one more second before he came into the wind and landed. By the time the tender rolled up to the dilapidated squadron office, the machine had taxied into the row of hangars and the pilot was out, fumbling for a cigarette with his ungloved hands. A thin acrid smell of petrol and carbonized castor oil still hung in the quiet air between the shabby huts. Snow in large wet flakes commenced to fall slowly, steadily.

The new pilot climbed down from the tender, tossed his shoulder haversack beside his kit bag, and pushed open the door of the squadron office. The adjutant was sitting on his desk top, smoking and talking to someone in a black leather flying coat and helmet--someone with an oil-streaked face and fingers still blue and clumsy from the cold.

“Paterson, sir, G. K., second lieutenant, reporting in from Pilot’s Pool for duty with the 44th.”

The adjutant raised a careless finger in acknowledgment. “Oh, yes. How do? Bring your log books?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Chuck ’em down. D’ye mind?”

Paterson laid them upon the desk top, still standing to attention. The adjutant smiled. “Break off,” he said. “We’re careless here. This isn’t cadet school.”

The new pilot smiled and relaxed. “Very good, sir.”

“That’s better,” said the adjutant; “makes me feel more comfortable. Just give me a note of yourself now.” He reached for a slip of paper. “G. K. Paterson, Two Lt. Next of kin?” Paterson gave his father’s name. “Age?”

“Eighteen and four twelfths.”

“Good!” said the adjutant. “You’ll find an empty cubicle in B Block--that’s the middle line of huts. You’re lucky. Roof only leaks in three places. I’ll have your duffel trekked over shortly.”

The man in the flying coat blew upon his numbed fingers and smiled. “I’m Hoyt,” he said. “Skipper of C Flight. I’m going to take you now, before A gets after you.” He turned to the adjutant. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Charlie? Tell ’em I intimidated you.” He grinned.

The adjutant shrugged. “Righto!”

“Come on,” said Hoyt. “I’m in your hut block. I’ll show you your hole.”

They went out into the snow flurry. Mechanics were fussing in little knots around the five tiny machines that had just landed, lining them up, refilling them, and trundling them into the brown musty hangars.

“Le Rhône Camels,” said Hoyt. “We’ve just been over around Cambrai taking a look-see.”

Inside one of the hangars, as they passed, Paterson saw something that drew a thin, wet gauze across his eyeballs. On a rough bench just beside the open flap sat a man with his eyes closed and his lips drawn tightly into a straight bluish line. His flying coat was rolled up behind his head for a pillow, and his tunic had been unbuttoned and cut away from his left shoulder. The white of his flesh showed weirdly in the gloom, like the belly of a dead fish. Just below the shoulder, the white was crumpled and reddened as if a clawed paw had been drawn across it. One man was holding his other hand, while another probed and cleaned and dabbed with little puffs of snowy cotton that turned quickly to pink and then to a deep brown.

Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man. That’s Mallory. He was Number Four this afternoon. We never saw a thing. Just happened. Funny.” And he smiled. “That’s why I was so keen to get you. Can’t tell how long it will be before Mallory gets around again, and I’ve got one vacancy in the flight already.” He shrugged. “You’ll see a lot of that here--get used to it. It doesn’t mean a thing as long as you get back alive.”

Paterson looked at him sharply. He wanted to ask him how many didn’t get back alive. He wanted to know what had caused the other vacancy in the flight. But people didn’t ask those things. People merely nodded casually and went on.

“I suppose not,” he said. They tramped on across the airdrome.

“Here we are,” said Hoyt. He kicked open the hut door and groped down the dark passageway, with Paterson after him. Presently he pushed back another door and yanked at a tattered window curtain.

The new pilot saw a tiny room, with two washstands, a cot, a folding chair, and a cracked mirror. In a corner were his kit bag and haversack. He pulled out his own cot and chair and set them up; meanwhile Hoyt threw himself down on the other cot and let his cigarette smoke dribble straight upward into the gloom of the pine-raftered roof. Presently he spoke.

“This is a queer war,” he said; “full of queer things, and the queerest of these is charity.” He laughed in the darkness, and the tip of his cigarette became suddenly pink as he drew the smoke into his lungs. “What was your school?”

“Winchester,” said Paterson.

“Right,” said Hoyt. “Remember your first day? This is it over again. They’ve fed you up on poobah at your training ’drome and down at the Pool. They always do. It’s part of the system. Just take it for what it is worth and forget the rest. If you want to know anything, come to me and I’ll tell you as well as I can. I’ve been here three months. When I came, I came just as you did to-day, pucka green and afraid to the marrow--afraid of uncertainty. You get over that shortly.

“Our job is a funny one, and we’re not here for ourselves, and we’re not here to be heroes or to get in the newspapers. The V. C.’s are few and far between.” He raised himself upon his elbow. “I’m not preaching self-abasement and a greater loyalty to a cause that is right, mind you. I don’t know anything about causes or who started the war or why, and I don’t care. I’m preaching C Flight and the lives of five men.

“You saw Mallory over at the hangar. It was teamwork that put him there in his own M. O.’s hands. Not much, perhaps”--the cigarette described a quick arc in the darkness--“just a slight closing in of the formation--a wave of somebody’s hand--somebody else dropping back and climbing above him to protect his tail from any stray Huns that might’ve waylaid him on the way home. That’s what I mean. ‘Esprit de corps’ is a cold, hard phrase. Call it what you like. It’s the greatest lesson you learn. Never give up a man.” Hoyt laughed. “They call me an old woman. Perhaps I am. Take it or leave it.

“Slick up a bit and come into my hutch while I scrape off the outer layer of silt. Dinner in half a tick and I’m as filthy as a pig.” He vaulted up from the cot and punched his cigarette out against the sole of his boot. At the door he paused for a moment.

“Ever have wind up?” he asked casually.

Paterson stiffened against the question and the small spot of fear danced within him. “No,” he said firmly. Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man.” And he went out into the passageway.

At dinner he met the rest of the squadron and the other men in C Flight. Mallory, very pale, with his arm slung in a soft pad of bandages, sat beside him. They were coming for him later to take him down to the base hospital. Phelps-Barrington sat on the other side of Mallory, mourning the fact that the wound was not his, that he might get the inevitable leave to follow. Phelps-Barrington took Paterson’s hand with a shrug and asked how Marguerite was in Amiens. “What? You didn’t meet Marguerite on your way through? ’Struth!” MacClintock sat across the table beside Hoyt--MacClintock, too young to grow a moustache, but with a deep burr that smelled of the heather in the Highlands and huge pink knees under his Seaforth kilts, muscles like the corded roots of an oak. The other man in the flight, Trent, was down with mild flu. He was due back in a week or so from hospital.

There was a wild argument on about the dawn patrol the next morning. Paterson listened to the fragments of talk that flew like sabre cuts across the glasses:

“He’s in a red tripe. I don’t give a damn for Intelligence. Saw him this morning myself. Same machine Mac and I had that brush with down at Péronne.”

“The next time they’ll get an idea for us to strafe a road clear to Cologne for them. What are we--street cleaners?”

“So I let go a covey of Coopers and turned for home. They had it spotted for a battery over at 119 Squadron. I saw the pictures. Right pictures, but wrong map squares as usual. That crowd can’t tell a battery from a Chinese labour-corps inclosure. I’d rather be a staff officer than a two-seater pilot.”

“Steward, a whisky-soda for Mr. MacClintock and myself. Have one, Hoyt? You, Paterson?”

Cruel, thin, casual talk clicking against the teeth in nervous haste; the commercial talk of men bartering their lives against each tick of the clock; men caught like rats in a trap, with no escape but death or a lucky chance like Mallory’s. Caught and yet denying the trap--laughing at it until the low roof of the mess shack rumbled with the echo; drowning it in a whisky for the night.

Afterward, Hoyt came down the passage with him to his room--Hoyt, with his face cleaned of the afternoon’s oil and his eyes slightly bright with the wine he had taken.

“We’re relieved to-morrow on account of casualties,” he said. “I’ll tick you out early and we’ll go joy riding--see what we can teach each other.” He smiled. “’Night.”

Paterson undressed slowly and threw back the flap of his sleeping bag. He ran his fingers softly down the muscles of his left arm. Automatically they stopped at the spot Mallory had been hit. He stretched his thumb from the arm to his heart--seven inches. He shrugged. Nice to go that way. Clean and quick. He sat upon the edge of his cot and pulled on his pajama trousers. Oh, well, this was the place--the last place he had to go to. This was the cot he would sleep his last sleep in. If it weren’t a lonely job! That chap in the mess who wouldn’t be a two-seater pilot for anything. If he could only feel like that. If he could only feel Hoyt’s complacency. Hoyt, with his calm smile and the two little ribbons under his wings. Military Cross and the Legion of Honour, and three months before he had been green--pucka green!

Paterson blew out the light and turned in. Hoyt was a good fellow--damned decent. Outside he could hear Phelps-Barrington’s voice muffled by the snow: “Come on, snap into it! Tender for Amiens! Who’s coming?” The yell died in the roar from the car’s engine.

Paterson lay for a moment thinking; then suddenly he reached for his pocket flash, snapped it, and stared nervously at the empty cot across the room. There was no bedding on it, nor any kit tucked under it; only the chair beside it, and the cracked mirror.

He got up and padded over in his bare feet. Stencilled on one corner of the canvas there was a name--J. G. H. Lyons. There had been no Lyons introduced to him in the mess. Perhaps he was on leave. Perhaps he had flu with Trent and was down at the base. The spot of fear in his heart trembled slightly and he knew suddenly where J. G. H. Lyons was. He was dead! Somewhere out in the snow, miles across the line, J. G. H. Lyons slept in a shattered cockpit.

The door behind him opened softly. It was Hoyt, in pajamas. “Got a cigarette?” he asked casually.

Paterson turned sharply and grinned. “Righto,” he said. “There on the table.”

Hoyt took one and lighted it. “Can’t sleep,” he said. “Come in and take Mallory’s cot if you want to. I’ve some new magazines and I can tell you something about our work here until we feel sleepy.”

Hoyt was a good fellow--damned decent.

* * * * *

The cold wet mist lay upon the fields like a soft veil drawn across the face of an old woman who had died in the night. Mechanics, with their balaklavas pulled down across their ears, were running about briskly to keep warm--kicking chocks in front of under-carriage wheels, snapping propellers down with mighty leaps and sweeps until the cold engines barked into life and settled to deep concert roaring. Dust and pebbles, scattered by the backwash, swept into the billowing hangars in a thin choking cloud that pattered against the canvas walls. Hoyt’s machine trembled and crept out of the line, with Phelps-Barrington after it. Trent, who had come back from the base the day before, taxied out next.

Paterson waved to the mechanics to pull out his own chocks. They yanked mightily on the ropes, and he blipped his motor with his thumb. Behind him and to the left came Yardley, the new man who had come up from Pool to fill Mallory’s place. Then MacClintock, sitting high in his cockpit, rushed out with a roar and a swish of gravel. MacClintock was deputy leader.

Hoyt waved his hand in a quick nervous sweep, and the flight started. Through the mist they roared with their engines howling into sharp echo against the hut walls. A moment later tails whipped up and wheels bounced lightly upon the uneven ground. Then Hoyt’s nose rose sharply and he zoomed into the air in a broad climbing turn, with the five others after him in tight formation.

Paterson glanced at his altimeter--five hundred feet. He looked ahead and to the left. There was Bapaume in its raggedness, half drowned in the mist. Suddenly Phelps-Barrington’s machine burst into rose flame and every strut and wire trembled like molten silver--the sun. He could see the red rim just peeping up ahead of him and he was warmer for the sight of it. Below, under the rim of his cockpit, the ground was still wrapped in its gray shroud.

They were climbing up in close formation. The altimeter gave them four thousand feet now. He glanced to the left. Yardley waved. Yardley was going through the agony of his first patrol over the line--the same agony he had gone through himself the week before. Only Yardley seemed different, somehow--surer of himself--less imaginative. He was older, too. Behind them, MacClintock, the watchdog, was closing in on their tails and climbing above them to be ready to help if the Hun swooped from behind unexpectedly.

There were clouds above--gray blanket clouds that came together in a solid roof, with only a torn hole here and there to show the blue. Bad clouds to be under. Hoyt knew it and kept on climbing. Almost ten thousand feet now. The ground below had cleared slowly and thrown off most of its sullen shroud. Here and there, in depressions, the mist still hung in arabesque ruffles like icing in a confectioner’s window or the white smoke of a railway engine.

The line was under them now, running south and east like a jagged dagger cut, in and out, in and out across the land, not stopping for towns, but cleaving straight through their gray smudgy ruins with a cold disregard and a ruthless purpose. The first day he had seen it, it had seemed a dam to him; a breakwater built there to hold something that must not flow past it; a tourniquet of barbed wire twisted and held by half the world that the blood of the other half might not flow. Some day something would break and the whole thing would give way for good or evil. Curiously, now, like Hoyt, he didn’t care which. And suddenly he knew how his older brother had felt, on that last leave, and he had called him unsporting in the pride of his youthful heart!

Hoyt was still climbing. Thin wraiths of cloud vapour groped awkwardly for the six tiny Camels, like ghost fingers, trying desperately to stop them and hold them from their work. Paterson glanced again at Yardley. He had been glad when Yardley came. He was still green himself, but Yardley was greener. It helped buck him up to think about it.

The line was behind them now. Hoyt turned south to pass below the anti-aircraft batteries of Cambrai, and presently they crossed the tarnished silver ribbon of the Somme-Scheldt Canal. Mechanically, Paterson reached for his Bowden trigger and pressed it for a burst of ten shots to warm the oil in his Vickers gun against the bite of the cold air. Then he clamped the joy stick between his knees and reached up for the Lewis gun on his top plane.

His throat closed abruptly, with a ghastly dryness, and his knees melted beneath him. The wing fabric beside his gun was ruffling into torn lace and he could see the wood of the camber ribs splintering as he watched! For a moment he was paralyzed, then frantically he whipped around in his seat and swept the air above him. Nothing. There was the torn fabric and the staring rib and nothing else. MacClintock was gone. Yardley was still there, lagging, with the smoke coming in puffs and streaks from his engine. Then Hoyt turned in a wild climb to the left. Phelps-Barrington dipped his nose suddenly and dived with his engine full on, and at once, where there had been only six Camels, the sky was full of gray machines with blunt noses and black crosses.

Blindly he pressed his Bowden trigger and fired into the empty air, blindly he dived after Phelps-Barrington. Somewhere to the left he saw a plume of black smoke with something yellow twisting in the sunlight on its lower end. A blunt nose crossed his propeller--into his stream of bullets. He screamed and banked wildly, still firing. He saw Hoyt above him. He forgot the machine in front and reached for his Lewis to help Hoyt. He tried to wait--something about the outer ring of the rear sight--but his fingers got the better of him and he fired point-blank.

As quickly as it had begun it ended. There was Hoyt circling back, and two other Camels to the left and below him--four of them. They closed in on Hoyt and he wondered where the two others were. He looked for them--probably chasing after the Huns. He could see dots to the southward--too far away to make out the markings. Hoyt had signalled the washout and they were headed back across the line. Funny those two others didn’t come. He wondered who they were. Probably Phelps-Barrington and MacClintock, hanging on to the fight until the last. They worked together that way. He had heard them talk in the mess about it. They’d be at it again to-night, and to-night he could join them for the first time. He’d been in a dog fight! Shot and been shot at! The spot of fear shrank to a pin point.