CHAPTER VII—THE VRILLE
Uttering a half-inarticulate cry, the pilot of number thirty-five made a supreme effort to avert a catastrophe.
But, even as he did so, he realized, with a sickening sensation of terror, that it would be futile—that nothing he could do would be of the slightest avail. With eyes staring wildly, he had a quick vision of number twelve, as though its sole purpose on earth was to run him down, fairly hurling itself upon him.
Don Hale gave a loud yell, though the roar of the motor drowned the sound. In a wild panic, he attempted to rise. But the restraining strap jerked him back to his seat. Then he saw the frightened face of Dublin Dan right before his eyes.
And that was the last thing they took in for a moment. He found himself jerked high in the air, then hurled violently forward.
The next instant his head struck the ground with heavy force. A light seemed to flash before his eyes, and, with the dull consciousness that was still left to him, he heard supports, struts and planes of both machines smashing under the heavy blow. Blackness followed.
And then came a moment when he was neither quite conscious of where he was or what had happened. And when he presently opened his eyes it was with the feelings of one who has just awakened from a troubled, uneasy slumber. The sound of excited voices was ringing in his ears; he heard George Glenn loudly calling his name, but he neither answered nor stirred.
The latter was, of course, impossible. He was pinned to the earth on every side by the debris of the “penguin.”
As the boy’s faculties began to reassert themselves a shudder ran through his frame, and, for the first time, he became conscious of the fact that every joint, every portion of his body was racked with shooting pains. Had he been seriously injured? In his apprehension, he began to aid the rescuers in their efforts to release both him and Dublin Dan.
The vigorous workers soon completed their task, and Don felt strong arms on either side dragging him to his feet. Some one was feeling his pulse; some one was feeling his joints; and some one laid a hand across his brow.
“Badly shaken up; suffering from shock; not much injured, though,” he heard a voice exclaim.
An instant before Don Hale’s vision had seemed blurred—his consciousness strangely dulled, but, somehow or other, the words “suffering from shock” seemed to revive him in an astonishing degree.
“‘Suffering from shock!’ Well, who wouldn’t be?” he blurted out, almost angrily. He gently pushed aside the supporting hands. “I reckon, fellows, I don’t need any props to support me. But say, how is Dublin Dan?”
The young Irishman, surrounded by a crowd, was lying in a half-reclining position upon the turf, his usually florid face pale and drawn. But as Don’s query reached his ears he began to struggle up. It was a mighty hard effort, however, bringing many an exclamation of pain from his lips.
“Dublin Dan’s all right!” he exclaimed, in a voice quite unlike his own. “But don’t let me hear any one say I’m suffering from shock, or I’ll paste ’em. Hey, boy, why didn’t you get out of my way?”
“A comet couldn’t have gotten out of your way,” retorted Don, smiling faintly. “But why did you try to butt me off the earth?”
“I didn’t do it. It was the ‘penguin,’” said Dan. “I think I must have hurt the old bird’s feelings by running over a bad place in the ground; or else it got tired of life and decided to quit. And that’s where it isn’t like the Hagens. What train are you going home on to-night?”
“I’ll have to get a few more caressing touches from the earth before I do that,” said Don.
The boy was feeling very shaky; his strength seemed to have so far deserted him that it was with difficulty that he managed to stand erect. The pains and aches he was experiencing were so great as to still make him wonder if, after all, he had not sustained some injury which might keep him out of the game for days—that was the only thought bothering him now. Yet he was deeply thankful that the terrific smash-up had had no worse consequences.
Although it was a very important matter to the two principals, the incident was so trivial in the eyes of the older students of the flying field that as soon as it was discovered that neither of the boys was seriously injured they began to retrace their steps.
The moniteur rather sternly demanded from Dan Hagen an explanation of the cause of the mishap.
“Tell him there isn’t any explanation,” said Dan, when Don had translated the instructor’s remarks. “It just happened—that’s all. I reckon one of the great joys in this game is that it keeps a chap so perpetually thankful that he’s still alive that it makes up for everything else. Say, Don, where do you feel the worst?”
“All over,” replied Don.
“Hadn’t both of you better get back to the barracks?” asked George Glenn, solicitously.
Don almost indignantly declined the suggestion.
“No, indeed!” he declared. “I’m going to hang around here and watch the other smash-ups.”
“And I’m not suffering from shock so much that I can’t do the same,” said Dan, with a grin.
Both Don and Dan soon found, however, that they had been too much shaken up to enter very thoroughly into the spirit of the occasion. Nevertheless, they were of that age when the very idea of retiring from the field would have seemed like a deplorable surrender; so they remained until the majority of the pilots began their homeward march.
The boys were glad indeed to reach the Hotel d’Amerique. They removed the dirt and dust from their clothing and enjoyed a refreshing wash; and their feelings were then so far improved that each readily agreed to accompany the crowd, after supper, to Étainville and the club.
Thus the end of Don’s second day was passed very much as the first. They found Père Goubain, as usual, bubbling over with good-nature, and listened to the bits of philosophy which he expounded and to his tales of spies with the same interest as on the night before.
But there was something else which made their visit to the Café Rochambeau far more memorable than they had expected. While the rattle of tongues was in progress every one became aware of the fact that something was going on in the village street. The air was filled with the sounds of wheels jarring and rumbling over the cobbled highway, the steady tramping of horses’ hoofs and the voices of men.
Don and George were the first to rush outside. And what they saw gave them a thrill of pleasure and of exultation.
Yes, yes! The Yanks were not only coming but they had come. Actually!—an American battery was making its way over the lone street toward the front.
It was certainly a warlike scene over which the magic rays of the brilliant moon were playing. At the head of the procession rode the captain, mounted on a big bay horse. Close behind him followed the battery standard bearer carrying the red guidon, which lazily swayed to and fro. Silent and grim, the two horsemen suggested knights of old going forth to battle. Gun carriages and caissons drawn by long teams of mettlesome horses rattled and banged steadily past.
Now and again glinting lights flashed from horses’ trappings, or from the sinister, wicked-looking guns.
Often, from the wooden-shoed inhabitants of the village—men, women and children, who had flocked out into the street to view the interesting spectacle, there came the cries of, “Vive l’Amerique!” And to these salutations officers, cannoneers and postilion drivers sometimes responded with a “Vive la France!”
“What a glorious sight!” exclaimed Père Goubain, who, having managed to lift his ponderous frame from the rocking-chair, had joined the Americans outside.
“I reckon the Germans might as well fire all their spies and give them respectable jobs—eh, Père Goubain?” laughed Peur Jamais.
The old innkeeper shook his head.
“As long as there are Germans there will be spies,” he said, solemnly.
The crowd waited outside until the last gun carriage had become lost to view and only the faint sound of horses’ hoofs and grinding wheels came over the silent air.
Then, as the hour was getting late, the boys bade good-bye to Père Goubain and began their tramp toward the barracks.
Arriving at the aviation field, the students witnessed a spectacle which, to Don and Dublin Dan at least, possessed a singular interest and novelty. It was a dance executed by Annamites and dark-skinned Arabian Zouaves before several huge bonfires built in front of their quarters. With the firelight playing over the forms of the fantastically-moving dancers and the weird, monotonous notes of the native music, the scene was suggestive of some far-off, uncivilized quarter of the globe.
“Those chaps are certainly working hard for their fun,” remarked Dan Hagen.
“Wait till you see them get to fighting, which they sometimes do,” laughed Cal Cummings.
“Excuse me the night the scrap comes off,” chirped Don. “A little of that sort of thing is much too much.”
“Like our smash-up to-day!” chuckled Dublin Dan.
All the boys were pretty tired when they reached the barracks; for training in the flying school often produces a strain on the nerves more fatiguing than hard work. No time, therefore, was lost in turning in.
But Don Hale passed a most uncomfortable and restless night. The pains and aches, partially forgotten while in the midst of lively scenes, now became violent enough to prevent the boy from falling into the slumber which nature craved—in fact he had not slept at all when, after what seemed to be an interminable length of time, the clear, musical notes of the bugle, sounding the reveille, broke in upon his ears.
It was a relief. But, at the same time, Don, blinking-eyed and yawning, scarcely felt in the mood to enjoy the work as he had done on the day before. Out in the open air, however, he soon felt more like himself, and his natural enthusiasm soon overcame all bodily fatigue.
The new élève imagined that he had conquered the “penguin,” but the result of the day’s performance, to his great surprise, and equally great disgust, showed him that this was merely an illusion. Both he and Dublin Dan figured in several mishaps, the most serious of which caused Dan’s “penguin” to be towed to the repair shop. Both boys, too, received a varied assortment of bruises. And at night, when summing up the result of the work, Don grimly declared that it certainly was the end of an imperfect day.
A week passed, and then another, with Don and Dan still struggling to obtain a complete mastery over the unruly “birds.” There were several interruptions in the work due to thunder-storms. And after the artillery of the clouds had ceased the rain continued for hours. On such occasions the students amused themselves by getting up impromptu concerts; and sometimes, while the wind and rain beat relentlessly against the Hotel d’Amerique, the notes of such pleasing compositions as Schumann’s “Traumerei,” Schubert’s “Am Meer” and Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” played on the piano by a former motion picture artist, mingled with the ominous blasts outside.
On certain days lectures were given; the students were taught the theories of aeronautics and the design and construction of various types of flying machines. They were obliged, too, to take motors apart and put them together again. Then, there were courses in map reading—a very important subject indeed for the aviators must learn to keep track of their aerial travels by such means.
About the middle of the third week Don and Dan were delighted to be informed by the instructor that their progress had been sufficient to entitle them to enter the second class. This did not mean that they were to be allowed to fly. It did mean, however, that they became pilots of real airplanes, though it was not possible to turn on sufficient power for the motors to take the machine off the ground.
The boys found the sensation very different from that experienced while trying to tame the “penguins.” There was a delightful lightness and buoyancy about these monoplanes, as they skimmed over the ground, exhilarating in the highest degree. They continually seemed about to defy the limitations set upon them and leave the terrestrial globe for the firmament above.
And during all the time that Don and Dan were wrestling with the new problems, T. Singleton Albert, the former drugstore clerk of Syracuse, was making the most astonishing progress. Many in the beginning had been accustomed to laugh at the thought of the pale, anemic-looking chap ever attaining his ambition of becoming an airman, but, as Peur Jamais put it, he was “leaving every one of them far behind.”
One evening, when the sun had long disappeared beneath the horizon and the advance-guards of approaching dusk were drawing a veil over the distance and little by little driving the color from objects near at hand, a crowd of boys of the first and second classes journeyed to the third flying field to watch the machines circling around in the sky.
“Won’t I be glad when I get to the real work!” sighed Don.
Dave Cornwells, who was standing by, remarked:
“Boys, do you see that highest machine? Well, the pilot is a certain daring young aviator named T. Singleton Albert.”
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Dan Hagen. “Why, that chap is certainly a bird!”
“You’ve said something,” drawled Roy Mittengale. “And he’ll never be satisfied until he gets so high that the earth looks like a rubber ball to him.”
As the shadows slowly deepened over the earth the flyers, one by one, returned to the grande piste.
There still remained one airplane high aloft—so insignificant in the vast field of graying sky that it seemed to lose all resemblance to a flying machine and become but a tiny, shapeless speck, so faint at times that the naked eye could no longer follow its varied evolutions. And every one on the grande piste seemed to know to whom that machine belonged—it was Albert’s.
“My, shan’t I be glad when I get into his class!” commented Don Hale, whose face was turned toward the sky.
And then, all of a sudden, he gave voice to a loud exclamation. Others did the same; for the faint speck in the sky had suddenly begun to behave in the most extraordinary fashion. First it dove, then soared upward again, not in the orderly fashion which one might expect of a machine piloted by a skilled aviator, but in a way which suggested that something was amiss.
And this impression was strengthened a few moments later when the machine began to volplane at terrific speed, at the same time swinging around and around as though on a pivot.
“The vrille![[4]] The vrille!” came from dozens of excited students.
“The vrille!” echoed Don Hale, huskily.
| [4] | “Vrille”—French for “falling leaf.” |