Rankin turned them dully over in his mind, looking for a possible saving clause, but not a one could he find. The eagerness then died from his face. But slowly its place began to be taken by a cold determination.
“I—I’d like to volunteer, sir, anyhow—to convey a warning to my ship.”
“Hey, what? What’s that? You’d like to volunteer?” The snappy irritation in the commandant’s voice was tempered with a sudden human understanding. He looked with fierce appraisal into the pale, hard-set face. The drama had crystallized down to just the two of them, two strong men looking into each other’s wide eyes with a single vital question-mark between them.
The rest of the scene and the men in it were forgotten as far as these two were concerned. But the others stood in strained, expectant positions as though they had been frozen. The signaler ceased from his incessant crackle to hang on the commandant’s words. Twenty seconds—thirty—a full minute; and only the broken, noisy breathing of somebody was heard. Then the commandant shook his head slowly, regretfully.
“Impossible, boy! I can’t do it! No, we must find some other way. Besides”—there was a world of kindliness in the tone—“you see—I’m sorry—but you’ve been officially declared ‘unfit for aviation.’ I couldn’t let you go, even if I could contemplate your plan for a second. No, no, my boy, I’m sorry.”
He walked slowly to the door. There he turned suddenly, and the voice was snappily terse again.
“Signaler! What have you stopped for? Keep calling, and don’t stop for anything under any circumstances. If your wrist gives out, get a relay; and let me know immediately as soon as you connect. Immediately, by cycle orderly—Mr. Tracy, will you see to that? And my compliments to the senior officers of the yard to confer with me in my office immediately, please.”
The officer of the watch saluted. The commandant strode from the room. And in the immediately following swift bustle Rankin was the only man with nothing on his hands.
But his soul was full of bitter disappointment and heart-burning. “Unfit!” The reminder was a cruel stab into his enthusiasm, however kindly it had been put. He stood inertly, wrestling with bitter indecision for whole minutes, and then a queer expression, half smile half grimness, stole slowly over his face and he crept out of the room.
His next movements certainly looked like desertion, urged by desperation and tinged with madness. For, once out of the radio-room, he raced about the yard like one demented. To the sacred precincts of the instrument-room he rushed, and, making some wild explanation to the man in charge, he removed therefrom several of the neat leather cases of queer shapes. Another swift foray procured him a chart. In like manner he borrowed a car from the long, neatly parked line of officers’ private conveyances. Whose it was he didn’t know, and he didn’t care; only he took the one which seemed to give promise of the greatest speed.