At one place, as I passed my hand over it, I encountered a hubble, very hard, and upon working the jacket loose I found this to be a watch in the flap pocket.
You are to suppose that this singular find greatly excited and interested me and it was in a trembling suspense that I carefully detached and dropped the thing to the ground.
How came it there? How long had it been there? I think no relic of a human presence in that cheerless, melancholy spot could have affected me more and started such a train of thoughts as did this rag which a living person had once worn. As to who had worn it, there seemed but one answer—it was the jacket of Tom Slade.
And this supposition I was presently to confirm.
But even before I had reached the ground there appeared to my mind’s eye a picture of the last scene in the venturesome life of the young airman, here in this cheerless jungle, and I shuddered as I thought of it, and of the heroic triumph which preceded his hideous end. I made no doubt that in his frightful fall the jacket had caught upon some sharp branch of the tree and held him, who shall say for how long, suffering—more likely dead. And when the inert, mangled form had become extricated and gone down, this tattered remnant had remained blowing in the wind and rain, marking the spot where he had fallen, until the beating storms had plastered it against the trunk, save for the little moving shred which I had seen. And so the khaki jacket, like everything else which came into that crazy, derelict community, had become a part of it, seeming, as I have said, like a bit of brown fungus on that lonely tree....
CHAPTER VI
Tells of the appalling secret which was revealed to me in the Scuppers and of my decision with regard to it.
I now approach a point in my story where it is difficult for me to write calmly, yet I wish to unfold this wretched business to you exactly as it unfolded itself to me. What I learned that night was all I ever knew until I knew all, and much was to happen before that time. It is not easy, sitting here now and with the whole amazing story in mind, to reproduce my mental state so that you may see and feel exactly as I saw and felt then.
Reaching the ground, I took the bundle of stiffened shreds and crawled into the little cave formed by the tree roots, for it was now nearly dark and I was cautious enough not to turn my flashlight on in the open.
I think I never experienced such a feeling of suspense as when I hurriedly rummaged the rotted pockets of this bleached rag which had once been part of the uniform of the boy from my own home town, in far-off America, Roy Blakeley’s friend, the young hero who had begun as a Boy Scout and gone to his death in a glorious dramatic triumph. And I was thrilled as I repeated his name to myself—Tom Slade.