Dastral of the Flying Corps

by Rowland Walker

CHAPTER VI

A ZEPPELIN NIGHT

Per ardua ad astra

IT was a bright sunny morning in September during the great war, as the mail packet slipped out of Calais breakwater, and headed for the white cliffs of Dover. For two days the service had been suspended for a special reason. Her decks were crowded with overdue mails, including those from India, Egypt and Australia, which had come overland from Brindisi.

There was also a fair sprinkling of passengers, including not a few officers, home on short leave from the Somme front, where the great push was still in progress.

Amongst the latter was a young officer, not more than twenty-two, clad in a "British Warm" and wearing the well-known service cap of the Flying Corps, with its circular badge, consisting of a wreath of laurels and the magic letters, R.F.C.; letters which have already woven themselves into the romance of English history, for the daring deeds of our airmen had already gained for this juvenile corps traditions which will never die.

"Good-bye, Dastral! Come back soon!" shouted several of his comrades, who had come to the edge of the quay to see the hero off to Blighty on his well-earned leave. For the youth in the service cap was none other than Dastral of the Flying Corps, the brilliant young pilot who had fought with the German air-fiend, Himmelman, only a few days before and had perhaps done more than any other individual towards wresting the supremacy of the air from the wily and cruel Boche.

He had already won that coveted decoration, the D.S.O., as we have previously seen, and now the King was about to confer upon him the Military Cross, for a daring bombing raid which he had organised and carried out over the enemy's lines, when as Commander of "B" Flight he had led his men beyond the Somme, and blocked the enemy's communications, bombed the Havrincourt-Bapaume Railway, and destroyed the bridge and viaduct at Velu, hurling one long troop train to destruction, and preventing the Germans reinforcing their front line trenches near Ginchy and Morval. Now, after his latest deed, the King had sent for him to congratulate him in person for his skill and daring. On the morrow he was to be received in audience at Buckingham Palace.

If he had consulted his own wishes he would much have preferred to remain with his comrades on the Somme, but a royal wish is an order, and, after all, perhaps the ten days' leave which had been granted to him would enable him to run north to visit his mother and friends in the little village in Yorkshire, and to gaze once again upon those blue, heather-tipped and bracing moorlands where he had spent his boyhood.

"Good-bye, Dastral. Don't stay too long in Old Blighty!" again shouted his friends, as the vessel sheered off and gained headway, and he had shouted back in reply:

"Cheer-o, boys! I shall soon be back again," waving his hand towards his comrades, as he bent over the rail.

As soon as they left the shelter of the breakwater a destroyer, waiting outside, sent up a couple of flags to her masthead.

"Send up the answering pennant, bosun!" cried the skipper of the mail-boat, when he saw the destroyer's signal, and immediately after he rang down to the engine room staff:

"Full steam ahead!" for the warship was there to act as escort, as there were very valuable mails aboard, and only two nights ago, the enemy's destroyers, breaking out of their base at Zeebrugge, had crept through the gap in the British mine-beds in the dark, and had sent two patrols and an empty transport to the bottom.

So, while the mail packet went full speed ahead, at twenty-four knots, the destroyer, with her superior speed, waltzed round her, like a dancing marionette, leaving a trail of white foam in her wake. This she continued to do all the way across the Channel, for it was known that several enemy submarines were lurking about the neighbourhood, watching through their periscopes for just such a target as the mail boat with her valuable cargo offered.

Very soon, however, the white cliffs of Dover appeared in sight, and when they entered the new naval harbour, the destroyer sheered off and went back to her station.

Dastral, having been recognised on the boat, had received several invitations to dine in London that evening, but all these he had courteously refused, although one of them had come from a Cabinet minister and his wife who were travelling on the same boat.

"No," he had said to himself, "there is poor old Tim Burkitt, my colleague, who is studying law at Gray's Inn. I will go and hunt him up. He will be glad to see me, and we will spend the night together at Hallet's."

Now Tim Burkitt, who suffered from a physical deformity, had been breaking his young heart ever since war broke out, for he had been rejected from every sphere of service in the great war, owing to his deformity. He had seen his chums depart from Gray's into the Army, the Navy and the Flying Corps, and he had been left behind almost alone.

He had been chummy with Dastral, for they came from the same village, had come up to London together, and had shared the same drab dull lodgings in the great city. Later he was destined to become a great lawyer, for nature had compensated him by granting him the gift of oratory, but he would have willingly given up all that if he could but have shared with Dastral his adventures and his triumphs.

This afternoon he had thrown aside his law books to read in the papers a vivid description of Dastral's fight with Himmelman, the German air-fiend, and the poor cripple, with tears of grief and envy at his own hard lot, but with his heart full of joy at his comrade's success had just thrown aside the paper, adding dejectedly:

"Oh, Dastral, how I would like to see you again! You were always a true friend to me"; when suddenly he heard a scamper of footsteps up the bare stone steps that led up to his chamber in Gray's, and the next instant the door flew open, and Tim found himself embracing his old colleague, with a warmth he had never exhibited before.

"Bravo, Dastral!" he cried again and again. "I knew you'd do it if you had half a chance. And to think you should remember me, a poor cripple, when all England is talking about you, and the King himself has sent for you."

"Here, stow it, Tim! Who do you think I should seek out first if not you? I've come to spend the afternoon and evening with you. To-morrow, after I have seen the King, I'm going home to Burnside, where you and I spent so many happy days, and I want you to come with me."

"Good! Splendid! How kind of you, old fellow! Then to-night we'll have a dinner all to ourselves at Hallet's. What say you?"

"Right you are, Tim," said Dastral, clapping his old colleague on the back, and making him the happiest fellow in all London for the nonce.

That afternoon the two chums had a quiet stroll around Gray's, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, then called on one or two acquaintances who had also been left behind in the Temple. A visit to the Old Mitre of sacred memory, and a quiet smoke in Johnson's Corner at the "Cheese" in Fleet Street, passed away the hours of the golden afternoon, and the evening found them snugly ensconced at Hallet's, where, in the days gone by, they used to celebrate any little event in their lives by a special dinner.

Never for a moment did the conversation flag. The two chums unbosomed themselves to one another, except that Dastral would not talk about his adventures since he became a pilot in the Flying Corps, for the members of this Corps never seek advertisement, preferring that the record of their Homeric deeds should all go down to the credit of the Corps, rather than to any particular individual.

"But, Dastral," Tim would urge, as the plates and dishes disappeared and another course was laid, "you must have had a hundred amazing adventures since I saw you last. Just tell me about one of them, say your fight with Himmelman!"

"Bah! It was nothing, Tim--nothing, I mean to make a song about. If I could write and speak like you, now, I might be able to make a tale about it. But nature hasn't gifted me that way," replied the pilot.

"But don't you feel the romance and glory of it all, fighting a battle in the air at ten thousand feet?"

"Romance, glory?" laughed Dastral. "There is no romance or glory about war, when you are in it. It is horrid and brutal then. You must be miles away to see the romance of it. It is all an ugly business."

Tim couldn't understand him. He just couldn't, but he had one more shot. "Don't you feel like singing sometimes, when you are up in the azure, mounting in circles like a lark to meet the sun, and the heavens are calling you?" he asked.

"Ah, when I am ten thousand feet up, and the engines are running smoothly, it is heavenly. I feel like music and romance then. The song of the propellors is beautiful, and the beating of the engine makes me imagine all sorts of weird things, but when I come down to the earth again I forget all the things I would say. It is wonderful though, that call of the heavens; the call of the wild, as the gipsies say, isn't in it. But I cannot describe it."

And so they talked on for an hour--two hours, long after the table had been cleared, making rings of smoke into which Tim Burkitt at least, with his rich imagination, saw wonderful things, when suddenly something happened which made them both spring to their feet--the electric lights went out, leaving them in utter darkness for a couple of minutes.

"What is the matter?" cried half a dozen voices, as soon as the waiter appeared with a lamp in his hand, which he immediately placed upon the centre table.

"There is a rumour, sir, that the Zeppelins are to make an attack upon London to-night, and the electric current has been turned off at the main," replied the jovial, beefy-faced waiter, adding with a smile, as he returned for another lamp, "What are we a-coming to?"

At this announcement several people at once took their departure, evidently thinking that Hallet's would be the first place to invite the attention of the raiders, and one or two ladies fainted and had to be helped out by their friends.

A strange and eager look came into the eyes of Dastral at the word Zeppelin. Tim noted it at once, and wondered what his colleague was thinking about, for, though his gaze was eager and keen, there was a far away look in his eyes. At the end of a minute he half uttered the word:

"Zeppelin!"

Then he rose to his feet, but recalling himself almost with a jerk to the fact of Tim's presence, he said apologetically,

"I say, old fellow, we've had a jolly time, but I think I must leave you, though it almost breaks my heart to do so."

"Go? Where to, Dastral? I thought you were going to spend the night at my rooms, and it's barely nine o'clock yet. Sit down, old man. You haven't got the Zeppelin fright as well, have you? If you have, here are my smelling salts--here, take a sniff now."

For answer Dastral burst into a roar of laughter. Then subsiding quickly, he said, in a more serious tone, bending low to whisper his words in Burkitt's ears:

"I have never yet fought a Zeppelin, except the lame duck we brought down near Brussels. I would give all I possess to go up and fight one. And during the last minute I have been wondering how it can be done."

"Well, how can you do it?"

"That's the trouble. I'm not attached to any Wing or Squadron in England. But a friend of mine has just recently returned from France, and has been appointed Commanding Officer of the --th Squadron, with its aerodrome about fifteen miles away from here. I must get into touch with him, if possible."

The next moment Dastral was engaged on the 'phone, trying in the dark to find his friend somewhere at the other end of the wires. After some ten minutes he managed it.

"Hullo! Hullo! Are you there?" he asked.

"Yes, who are you?" came the reply.

"I want the O.C. of your Squadron at once, please."

"He is busily engaged, and I cannot disturb him now, unless it is something of the highest importance. Hurry up, please, and tell me who you are, and give me your message. The wires are urgently wanted to-night."

"I am Dastral, Flight-Commander Dastral of the --th Squadron, --th Wing, and I have just come from France."

"What! Beg pardon, sir. Dastral. Not the pilot who fought with Himmelman?"

"Yes."

"Hold the line a minute, sir."

Twenty seconds later the O.C. of the Squadron himself was at the end of that line.

"Hullo! Is that you, Dastral?"

"Yes. How are you, Garner, old man?"

"But hang it, how came you to ring me up? I should dearly love to see you, but I've my hands full to-night. We received 'Air Raid Action' half an hour ago. Several hostile airships have crossed the east coast, and are making for the metropolis, so I cannot stay now. Come and see me in the morning, do, old man. Eh, what's that you say?"

"Haven't you a spare machine you could let me try if I came over there by fast motor at once?"

"Hullo! hullo! All the machines are out with the men standing by, ready to go up at the first tip, except--let me see now--we've got a new fast 'Buckstead Bullet' here, which none of the men are very familiar with yet. There's that. Come if you like, old fellow. It's a bit irregular, but if there should happen to be a big attack on London, and the case warrants it, I see no reason why you shouldn't try the blamed thing. It's a single-seater, only just in from the makers, and a devil of a whizzer as well as a first class climber!"

"Right-o! I'm coming straight away!" cried Dastral, waiting to hear no more, and banging down the receiver.

The next minute he was outside on the pavement, forgetting all about Tim, the settlement of the bill, and everything else. Tim, however, who had heard part of the message, had already paid the bill and got outside, where he had hailed a taxi, determined not to be left behind, for his quick intuitive mind had told him which way the wind was blowing. He had had a hard job to secure the vehicle, for there had been a great demand for the same, but he had whispered Dastral's name to the chauffeur and had agreed to foot the bill however big it might be, although he had only three half-crowns left in his pocket after squaring the bill indoors. That did not bother him at all, however. Here was a chance of rendering some service, however small, to the nation at large, for he felt convinced that if only Dastral could have a chance he would bring down half a dozen raiders.

Immediately, therefore, Dastral appeared at the doorway he shouted:

"This way, Dastral, this way. Quick!"

"What the deuce----"

"Inside, old man; this is my show!" and before the bewildered pilot could finish his exclamation, he was inside and Tim was with him and the door closed.

"Where to?" asked the cripple.

Dastral gave the directions, and told the driver to do his utmost to get them there within an hour, or it would be too late.

Within ten seconds they were whizzing away through the darkness in the direction of the Great North Road, and as there was very little traffic about, they reached their destination within three quarters of an hour. It was not a minute too soon. They had seen the searchlights at work on their way north, and towards the end of their journey they had several times heard the anti-aircraft guns blazing away at something up in the clouds.

"Halt! Who goes there?" came the challenge as they reached the turning which left the main road, and finished at the aerodrome.

The vehicle halted abruptly, for the driver had seen the flash of the barrel of a Smith & Weston revolver, which the air-mechanic on sentry-go held out to bar their progress.

"Flight-Commander of the Royal Flying Corps," shouted the pilot, hoping that would allow him to pass, and to get on to the aerodrome immediately, but the sentry was obdurate.

"Let me see your permit, sir," he asked.

"Haven't got one."

"Turn out guard!" shouted the sentry, and turning to the newcomers, he added:

"Advance, Flight-Commander, and report to the guard-room."

The guard-room was but a few yards further on, and the corporal of the guard, approaching the carriage, saluted, and led Dastral and Tim away to the Flight-Sergeant at the Orderly Room. He was expected, and a minute afterwards he was shaking hands with Garner, who had been waiting for him.

And now there was not a moment to spare, for the presence of the raiders had been reported from the O.C. Searchlights, as hiding somewhere in the clouds between Hatfield and Barnet, trying to break through to London. Only a ring of curtain fire from the A.A. Batteries, and a cordon of long flashing lights which swept the sky from the horizon was keeping them back.

Several machines had already gone up in search of the enemy and the other pilots were standing by their machines ready to "take off" immediately the order was given.

Immediately, therefore, Dastral had settled with the driver of the taxi, and introduced Tim to his friend, Squadron-Commander Garner, they were led through the darkness to the shed where the "Buckstead Bullet," as she was nicknamed, lay all ready to be wheeled out.

"Good! Excellent!" exclaimed Dastral, immediately he saw the little single-seater monoplane, for he had flown a similar machine several times in France.

With the aid of a dark lanthorn he carefully went over her, and lovingly fingered every part of her, from the bullet-nosed fuselage which gave her her nickname, to her neat, trim little tail and rudder.

The noise of the A.A. guns became louder and louder outside, as though they had discovered one of the raiders. And Dastral was just itching to go up!

"Let me go up in her, Garner!" he said. "She's a beauty!"

The O.C. scratched his head. He had wanted to fly her himself, for she was the only spare machine left over, and, moreover, as Dastral was not attached to the squadron, it was somewhat irregular for him to use the machine, without the express permission of the Wing Headquarters. He hesitated for a moment therefore, but, just at that instant, one of the raiders suddenly emerged from the edge of a cloud where it had been in hiding, and a fresh burst of anti-aircraft gunfire caused some excitement.

"There she is!" cried some one, as one of the searchlights caught her.

"As you like, Dastral. There's your target. Get into your togs quickly and I'll take the risk of it. I must leave you for a moment now. Those fellows in 'C' Flight are waiting to go up," and with that the O.C. turned round and dashed off, while Dastral, without waiting for anything further, got into a huge leathern coat, pilot's boots, and donned the flying helmet with long ear flaps and queer-looking goggles, which an air-mechanic had brought him.

Two minutes later the young pilot climbed into the 'plane, gave a final look round, waved a good-bye to Tim, whose pale face, now working with intense excitement, he discerned in the darkness.

"All ready, sir?" asked the Flight-Sergeant.

Dastral gave him a nod, and prepared to switch on the the current.

"Swing the propellor!" came next, and as the cool, calculating pilot pulled a switch, the mighty engine broke into its terrible song.

"Rep-p-p, rep-p-p! Whir-r-r!"

"Stand clear!" and away went the monoplane like a bullet out of a gun. As she started, a searchlight was deflected in a long beam along the ground, to give the daring young aviator the direction for his take-off, for the dangers of night-flying are many, as more than one brave pilot has found to his cost before now.

At a hundred yards the "Bullet" sprang into the air, and soared upward at a tremendous speed, being quickly lost to sight, as the searchlights tried once more to find the raider, which had found things too warm, and had sought again the shelter of the clouds.

By short and rapid spirals, Dastral soon reached a thousand feet. Every now and then he turned his little shaded electric lamp on to the indicator, which seemed to vibrate merrily, and almost to smile, as its little rounded dial told the altitude. Up and up they went, and the indicator almost laughed with joy as it clicked out the figures:

"Two thousand, two thousand five hundred, three thousand feet!"

Still they seemed to be climbing all too slowly for the pilot. He had caught sight of the Zeppelin when she showed herself for a moment, and he had said to himself:

"Twelve thousand feet, and then there'll be a chance! But nothing less than that will do."

He was impatient therefore to get higher and higher, for he feared the raiders would discharge or jettison their cargo of bombs before he could get at them. They certainly would have done, had they known that at that very moment Himmelman's rival was climbing to meet them, on a Buckstead Bullet, which could do one hundred and thirty miles an hour when pushed.

Already a number of bombs had been dropped, and away to the northward several fires could be seen where the night-raiders had left their victims behind, in the shape of burning homesteads, where the victims were women and children, old men and invalids; but the avenger was at hand, and the hour of reckoning had come.

"Eight thousand, nine thousand feet!" clicked the indicator, though its voice was lost in the roar of the engine and propellor.

At eight thousand feet Dastral passed several of the 'planes which had preceded him, and at nine thousand he left the last of them behind him and entered into a bank of clouds. Never once had he ceased his rapid, climbing spirals, and now, through the misty, clinging vapour of the clouds he still soared heavenwards. Once or twice he stopped his engines just to listen for a few seconds, but he heard nothing except the whir-r-r-r of the 'planes beneath him.

He was ahead of them all now, for his engines were running beautifully, and the "Bullet" raced through the next layer of clouds as a fish darts through the waters. It was becoming lighter also, for he could catch glimpses of the stars, and the remaining clouds were thinner than those below. Soon, he would be above them all, and perhaps above the raider. It was cold too, bitterly cold, but his young blood coursed madly through his veins, and his heart beat quicker and quicker.

"Ten thousand. Eleven thousand," laughed the indicator, joining merrily in the hunt, for it seemed to Dastral now that he could hear those weird voices of the night, speaking to him and calling him up and up, ever higher and higher. Yes, the clouds and the stars were calling him, and the music and rhythm of that pulsating engine a few feet away, and the whir-r-r of those propellors just ahead, seemed to make him almost light-headed, so that he began to laugh and sing.

He thought of crooked Tim far down below, and what he had said about the romance and the music, and from the pilot's lips there fell involuntarily the words:

"Poor Tim! How he would like to be up here alone, and to listen to all these voices of the night!"

As Dastral thought thus, he looked down, far down into the blackness, and he saw the flashes of the searchlights. Sometimes they reached up to him long extended arms that seemed to unite him to the earth, but he could scarcely believe that he had ever dwelt down there in that abyss of murky darkness. Yet always he swerved aside, and evaded those long stretching pillars of light, for he knew that if he crossed their beams but once, other eyes would see him, and the raider above would be warned of his near approach.

Suddenly at twelve thousand feet the monoplane shook itself as though dashing the clinging moisture from its yellow wings, and leapt, like a fish out of the water, above the topmost layer of clouds.

And now with keen searching eyes Dastral looked above and around for the presence of the raider, but she was nowhere to be seen. Below him rolled the clouds, like dark, monstrous billows. Here and there through an opening he still saw the flashes of the searchlights feeling for their prey. But above his head the sky was aflame with millions of stars. Right across from east to west, like a silvery pathway to heaven, shone the Milky Way, luminous with light, and along that trail of diamonds shone the bigger stars, in the constellations of Perseus, Cassiopeia and Aquila. And far down in the east, Orion the Hunter chased the dancing Pleiades, as he did thousands of years before aeroplanes were ever dreamt of.

"But where is the Boche?" Dastral asked himself again and again.

He was beginning to fear that he had lost him. Perhaps the Hun had caught sight of him as he came through the clouds, and had now departed unseen, as he came.

"Great Scott, have I missed him after all?" he cried. "For months and months I have been longing to fight with a Zeppelin, and now he's slipped me."

And for ten minutes he circled about, stopping his engines once or twice to listen for the roar of the invader's engines and propellors. Suddenly something whizzed past him and burst into a jet of flame. It was a shrapnel with a time fuse. Then another and another. They were firing again, then, down below, and they must have picked up the airship once more.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "She must be somewhere near me too, for I am almost in the line of fire."

Looking down he saw what had happened. The clouds in which the Zeppelin had been hiding were breaking up and drifting away, for a fresh, cold wind had sprung up from the east.

"Ah! Ah! I shall see her soon. She cannot escape me now. I shall find her in a few minutes."

"Whiz! Puff!" came another time fuse, and burst not fifty feet away, several pieces of which pierced the left wing of the monoplane.

"By Jove, but that was close!" he cried, throwing out three balls, which burst into red flame as they fell towards the earth, and was the signal for the Archies to stop firing.

"Ah, there she is!" exclaimed the daring pilot, as, out of the clouds, a thousand feet below him, he saw a black mass emerge against the lighter background of the thinning clouds. At the same instant the searchlights found her, and a dozen long arms of streaming light focussed their united rays upon her.

"Gemini! What a target!" cried Dastral, as he pulled the joy-stick over and dived to the attack, without a second's hesitation.

His gun, already cocked and ready to fire through the whirling propellor, and loaded with the new flaming bullet, was brought to bear.

Down, down he went, firing rapidly all the while. Then underneath and alongside her he raced, pumping his second and third drum into the huge looming mass.

Far below his friends saw the whirling monoplane, in the glare of the searchlight, for now it was as bright as day. The A.A. guns had ceased their fire in response to his signals, but the men on the doomed Zeppelin brought three or four of their eleven machine guns to bear upon him, but it was too late. They knew the deadly peril they were in, and it was impossible for them with their unsteady nerves to hit any vital part of that waspish little fiend, which circled round, above and below them at a truly terrific rate.

Dastral, in his rapid nose-dive, had dipped five hundred feet below the monster and flattened out to return to the attack, but, as he commenced his climb again he saw that the silvery glare of the Zeppelin, as it had appeared to him but twenty seconds before in the lure of the searchlights, had taken on a ruby glow, which, as he mounted up, became a ruddy glare.

"Heavens! She is on fire already!" he gasped.

It was only too true. The engines had been set going, for the Zeppelin commander had tried to make his escape, just as he was discovered, but it was too late. He had never suspected that Himmelman's terrible opponent was overhead, having climbed up twelve thousand feet while he had been hiding in the cloud.

"Ach! Gott in Himmel! Wir sind verloren! Donner and Blitz!"

Never will Dastral forget the sight which he beheld that night, close at hand, for the Huns now realised that all was lost, and that a terrible and speedy vengeance awaited them all from which there was no escape. As the huge envelope kindled into fierce leaping flames, two hundred feet high, the pilot could plainly see the panic-stricken crew of the doomed airship, wringing their hands in terror and fright, as they dashed madly along the narrow footways that led from one gondola to another, trying to escape, till the last second, from the fierce flames that spurted out above and below, and licked up and consumed everything with their intense heat.

It was truly a terrible sight, and the burning mass lit up the countryside far below as well as the great metropolis away to the south. Never since the day when every hill-top in England was aflame with the fires that announced the coming of the Spanish Armada, in the days of the great sea-dogs, had such a beacon been lighted in this land of ours.

Down, down fell the flaming mass, lower and lower, while the daring pilot, bewildered at what he had done, followed her, circling round and round, till, when some eight thousand feet from the ground, one of her four hundred-weight bombs, with which her crew had hoped to wipe out some peaceful village, exploded with the intense heat.

"Boom-m-m! Crash!" came the terrible sound, and the flaming mass, shivered into a thousand fragments by the explosion, fell down to the peaceful earth below with the charred and mutilated bodies of its crew of baby-killers.

A few minutes later Dastral, guided by a score of still flaming fragments about the adjacent fields, landed safely on the level stretch of grass from which he had ascended to fight the midnight raider.

Next morning the daring pilot was decorated by His Majesty King George, and ten days later, having bade farewell to his friend, Tim Burkitt, he was back with his Squadron in France, and leading "B" Flight over the German lines once again.