CHAPTER XV
GAME TO THE LAST
Having covered a considerable distance Athol sat down behind a tree and made a hearty meal of some meat pies which he had taken the precaution to buy in Weert. By this time the excitement and lack of sufficient sleep were beginning to tell very forcibly. Even as he ate he felt himself nodding drowsily.
It was growing very warm as the sun rose higher in the heavens. The air was close and oppressive. Away to the southward, dark copper-coloured clouds were working up against the light breeze. There was every indication of a thunderstorm breaking at no distant time.
Presently a dull intermittent buzzing sound fell upon the lad's ears.
"An aeroplane," he muttered drowsily, hardly able to evince any interest in the familiar noise, until by the erratic sound of the engine he knew that something was amiss.
"Another Aviatik out of its bearings, I suppose," he said to himself. Then he looked upwards, trying to detect the plane against the dazzling light overhead.
The sound of the motor increased in volume. Chagrined at his failure to locate the source of the noise, Athol's interest deepened. He scanned the sky until he perceived the hitherto elusive machine.
It was a monoplane, flying fairly low, and proceeding in a westerly direction with a decided tendency to describe a right-handed curve. Although not immediately overhead, it was sufficiently close for the lad to distinguish the marking on the wings, fuselage, and vertical rudder.
Greatly to his surprise the monoplane bore the familiar red, white and blue concentric rings that denoted it to be a British machine.
"Whatever is that fellow doing over here?" wondered the lad. "He's placed the whole of Belgium between him and our lines. By Jove, if he starts dropping bombs about here there'll be trouble!"
But the airman made no attempt to let fall his cargo of explosives. Still describing a long erratic curve and decreasing his altitude as he did so he was soon almost invisible from the place where Athol stood—merely a shimmer of silvery-grey against the dark sky.
"Wish the fellow, whoever he is, had stopped to give me a lift," said the foot-sore subaltern as he resumed his dusty journey. "It's jolly rotten having to pad the hoof after one has been used to a hundred miles an hour or more through the air."
A few minutes later he noticed that the monoplane had swung round and was almost retracing its former course, and heading toward the east—in the direction of Germany.
"Perhaps he's trying to find Essen," thought Athol. "Krupp's place can't be much more than sixty miles away. Evidently he's lost his bearings and has just picked up a landmark. Yet it's strange that he's flying alone and right over a neutral country."
It was not long before the lad was forced to admit that his theory was at fault, for the monoplane suddenly executed a sharp turn and making a nose-dive was within an ace of crashing violently to the ground. Only in the nick of time did the machine "flatten out," alighting at a distance of almost two miles from the now highly-interested lad.
To see whether the pilot had effected a safe landing, or otherwise, Athol was at that time unable to determine, owing to the slight irregularity of the ground. He took to his heels along the highway in the direction of the settled monoplane.
Hitherto the road had been little frequented that morning, beyond a few market carts and knots of country-folk making their way to town. But now people appeared as if by magic. Every field seemed to disgorge two or three, every house half a dozen or more, including a large proportion of children—all intent on hurrying to see the foreign aircraft.
In less than twelve minutes Athol arrived upon the scene. The monoplane was apparently undamaged save for a buckled landing-wheel, until closer inspection revealed the fact that the 'plane was honeycombed with bullet-holes. Jagged holes, too, were visible in the fuselage, as well as the splaying marks of bullets that had failed to penetrate the light steel armour.
The pilot, a boyish-looking lieutenant, was behaving in a most eccentric fashion. He had alighted and had discarded his yellow leather coat and helmet. Across his forehead was a dark streak of dried blood. With one hand in his trousers pocket he was walking rapidly round and round the stranded monoplane, wildly waving his disengaged hand and shouting in unmistakable and forcible English for someone to oblige him with a match.
As he walked he tottered slightly. More than once he collided with the tips of the wings and brushed awkwardly against the rudder. The crowd, keeping a discreet distance, watched with amazement; giving back whenever a collision with the eccentric Englishman appeared imminent.
"Come on, you fellows!" he appealed. "Who'll oblige with a match? Quickly, before those strafed Bosches come on the scene! A match. Does no one understand?"
To his intense satisfaction Athol saw that there were no soldiers or civil guards amongst the throng, although at any moment the Dutch military officials might appear upon the scene. The spectators were for the most part men and women of the agricultural class.
"Can I bear a hand?" asked the lad, elbowing his way through the crowd.
"Thank God, a British voice!" exclaimed the airman, coming to an abrupt halt, and holding out his hand—not towards Athol but towards a man some feet to his left.
In a flash Athol understood. The luckless pilot of the monoplane was almost blind. He grasped the airman's hand, and drew him back from the crowd.
"You are in Holland," he said. "I saw you descend, and I guessed something was wrong. You've been hit pretty badly, I fear?"
"Got it properly in the neck this time," declared the lieutenant grimly. "Across the forehead—one eye gone, worse luck, and the other almost bunged up. Much as I could do to see the land. Couldn't do it now, by Jove! I've a chunk of one of their strafed Iron Crosses in my thigh, too. It's not much, but mighty unpleasant. Wanted to burn the machine, but found my matches had gone. Pocket of my coat shot clean away. But who are you?"
The flying man spoke in quick jerky sentences. His wounds were giving him acute pain. Already he was bordering upon delirium, his injuries aggravated by his inability, as he imagined, to prevent his machine falling into the hands of he enemy.
"Yes, you are in Dutch territory," Athol reassured him. Then, seized with an inspiration he asked, "Is the plane all right?"
"Far as I know," was the reply. "Why?"
"Because I belong to the R.F.C.," announced Athol. "Came a cropper near Hasselt yesterday and managed to get clear. If you can hold out for a couple of hours we'll fetch our lines, barring accidents. I'll take her when we're properly up, but it's the take-off and the landing part that are beyond me."
"Come along, then," exclaimed the other, his injuries forgotten in the prospect of saving his machine. "She's only a single-seater, so you'll have to perch up behind me."
Athol had to assist him to his seat. Deftly the almost sightless man tested the controls, and put the self-starter into operation. Without a hitch the propeller began to revolve, the crowd giving back at the first explosions.
"Hurry, man, hurry!" exclaimed Athol. "There are Dutch troops coming along the road."
"No internment for me, if I can help it," shouted the other, in order to make himself heard above the roar of the propeller. "So here goes."
Accelerating the engine, the lieutenant set the monoplane in motion, Athol shouting directions into his ear to enable him to avoid various obstructions in the way. For nearly two hundred yards the machine rolled over the ground, wobbling under the erratic revolutions of the buckled landing-wheel, until gaining sufficient momentum it rose steadily in the air.
"Now take her," exclaimed the pilot in a strong voice that surprised his companion by the volume of sound. "Let me know when your aerodrome is in sight. You'll find it easier than you would mine, and after all it doesn't much matter so long as it is a British one."
At a mean altitude of five thousand feet Athol steered the monoplane on a compass course. The wounded pilot had changed places with the lad, and was resting one hand lightly on the latter's shoulder. Beyond the few sentences he had spoken on relinquishing the steering-wheel the lieutenant maintained silence.
The monoplane proved a veritable flier, for in a little more than half the time Athol had estimated it was over the lines of the opposing armies.
Far beneath them a squadron of British aeroplanes was actively engaged, for the British guns were strafing the Huns with terrible violence. Not a single German aircraft appeared to join in combat with the intruders over their lines, for the British machines were doing good work by registering the results of the heavy shells.
"The flying ground is in sight," reported Athol. "Will you take her now?"
"Right-o," replied the lieutenant. "Tell me when to flatten out."
He depressed the aerilons. The monoplane's tail rose as it swept landwards at terrific speed. Athol, holding the pilot's binoculars, brought the glasses to bear upon the landscape.
"Wind's dead against us," he announced.
"That's good," rejoined the wounded man. "It will save us making a turn. Say when."
The ground seemed to be rising to meet them. Objects, a few seconds before hardly discernible, resolved themselves into buildings of various sizes, most of them roofless owing to the effects of repeated bombardments. Little mud-coloured specks developed into khaki-clad figures. And—a cheering sight indeed—there was the secret battleplane just folding her wings before returning to her hangar. In his imagination Athol felt certain that he could distinguish Blake and Dick superintending the labours of half a dozen men as they guided the huge bird into its nest.
There was no time to use the binoculars. The ground seemed perilously close.
"Now," exclaimed Athol.
With a perceptible jerk the direction of downward flight was checked. Then, giving a decided bump as the buckled landing-wheel touched the ground, the monoplane "taxied" for full fifty yards, and halted within ten feet of a group of officers, who scattered right and left as the machine bounded awkwardly towards them.
Athol, kneeling on the deck of the fuselage, touched his companion in order to guide him to the ground. The pilot, still holding the steering-wheel, made no effort to move.
"Do you want me to give you a hand?" he asked, touching him again, Still no response.
"What's wrong with your pilot?" enquired one of the officers anxiously.
Athol crawled forward and looked into his companion's face. The lieutenant's blood-rimmed eyes were wide open and staring fixedly in front of him, but they were the eyes of a corpse. The gallant pilot's mind had triumphed over his physical injuries up to the very moment that he had brought the monoplane safely to earth. He had gained at least one desire: he had brought his machine back to the British lines.
* * * * *
"Never expected to see you so soon, old man," was Dick's candid greeting to his chum.
"Nor did I," admitted Athol. "For that matter I wasn't at all sure that you got away all right. I heard the bombs drop, so I knew that the battleplane had set to work. In fact the last bomb you dropped nearly settled my hash. Instead it did me a good turn."
"And I went for Sergeant O'Rafferty for being such a clumsy blighter," said Blake. "By Jove, Athol, you seem to have had a run of luck. Sorry I can't say the same for the poor fellow who brought you back."
"Most remarkable case that," remarked an Army Medical Corps officer. "Not only was his sight injured, he had received a piece of shrapnel in his groin and a bullet lodged in his body in the region of his heart. All the while he was piloting that machine back he was bleeding to death internally. No wonder, with men of that stamp, that we hold the individual mastery of the air."