By dusk, the wind was blowing a gale out of the southwest, driving the rain in sheets so that the squint bag which had ascended again pulled and strained at its anchorage, dragging sideways and jerking for all the world like some monstrous fish on the line. They soon hauled it down for fear of the cable snapping. A drenched courier arrived from Colombey, below Toul, with the news that every wire in that section was down and in a hopeless tangle and the rails west of Neufchateau were sunken in swamp. When you hear mention of railroads in France you must put out of your thoughts altogether the Pennsylvania and the New York Central—even the Erie, I am tempted to say; for these roads here are mere toy lines with ridiculous puffing slow-poke engines and tracks which disappear on the smallest provocation.
A little before dark, Archer tells me, he was summoned before his superiors and asked if he believed he could get as far as Brienne, or perhaps Troyes, with a message. It was hoped that communication might be open between one or other of those places and Paris, where the commander was at the time. He answered that he believed he could reach Brienne and was despatched at once with messages for transmission, of which, of course, he did not know the contents more than that they pertained to the enemy’s movements and were urgent in the extreme.
West of Vaucouleurs he found the roads all but impassible. The wind was blowing a tempest, driving the rain into his face so that he was reduced to picking his way at a snail’s pace. The darkness was intense, save for the occasional gleams of forked lightning which illumined the sky and gilded the clouds with a frightful, portentous brightness.
“It was the kind of weatherr,” says Archer, with characteristic humor, “when folks always say, ‘Pity the poorr sailorrs on a night like this.’”
He had passed through Gondrescourt inquiring whether communication was open with points west when he heard the sharp report of an aircraft gun, apparently from somewhere in the town, and looked up just as a flash of lightning lit the sky.
His own simple description of what he saw impressed me very much indeed. “The clouds were small and all feathery like, as if they had been pulled aparrt,” he said; “the edges all ragged and very bright, like silverr. It made you feel scarey as if the darrk parrt behind ’em didn’t belong to this worrld at all.”
Well, it was just in that quick flash that he saw moving across one of those illumined patches an airplane, its outline as clear as a silhouette.
“Forr a minute,” said Archer, with a graphic power which surprised me, “it seemed as if it was one of those witches sailing through the sky, and it made me feel creepy, as you might say.”
Then, all in a moment, the darkness closed about it, but, listening, he could hear, in the brief intervals of the tumult, the noise of its propeller, and the sound struck terror to his heart, for he knew by the intermittent whir that it was a Hun machine. Archer tells me that this characteristic of the Hun planes makes them always recognizable at night. “Theirr hearrt beats different,” as he said.
They must have been a watchful gun crew in the town to spy this vulture of the night, but their shot had done no damage evidently, for the grim thing moved along, visible now and again over the cyclist’s head. When the impediments of marsh and washed-out roads caused him to slacken his speed, the flier did so also, maneuvering apparently, now visible in the quick flashes, now only heard amid the rain and wind.