At Aubinal they had a searchlight as well as an aircraft gun and, hearing the flier, they threw a long column about the sky and fixed him in a circle of light. Then the sharp report of the gun and the machine dipped, for all the world like a boy dodging a pursuer. Twice, thrice, the report rang out, the cyclist pausing among the little group of excited villagers. Twice, thrice, the machine dipped, while the watchers held their breath in suspense. But the plane resumed its course, still visible in bold relief in the circle of light.
Then suddenly there appeared in the sky another plane (presumably, from somewhere in the neighborhood) rising in pursuit of the enemy craft. So furious was the lashing of the storm that Archer was thrilled with admiration at the sight of one of his friends braving the perils of that tempestuous night to bring down an enemy flier, and as he rode on out of the little town, fighting his own way in the blinding storm, he wondered who the bold pursuer could be—whether French or American.
High amid the tumult he could hear shots, which were presently drowned in the turbulence of the storm, and he had no further glimpse of either craft.
“I thought our flierr had hit him and sent him down,” said Archer, “and I says to myself, ‘That fellerr is a hero, all right,’ and I hoped he was an Amerrican. I wonderred what the Hun plane was doing so far behind ourr lines on a night like that, but I didn’t have time to wonderr much. Anyways, I was glad it was overr ’cause it made me feel kind of spooky to see that black thing like a ghost or a witch or something following me. I made up my mind I’d ask about who brought it down, so’s I’d know who it was.”
His way now took him through the flat country east of Brienne where he hoped that his spooky, drenching journey might end.
The land here was turned into a quagmire, his machine splashing through mud and water so that he must pause now and again to wrench and haul it out of some mushy hollow.
The country thereabouts was quite unpopulated, consisting of vast flat meadows, entirely submerged. The blighting Hun line had once embraced the locality, and its refugees had not yet returned to a security so precarious. So there was not even the dim lamplight from a peasant’s cottage to cheer the hapless messenger.
I have not put young Archer forward as a hero, and I shall not, for I know in whom you are mainly interested, but I think the courage he showed that night was remarkable. The road, as I understood him, crossed a veritable inland sea on an embankment about a foot submerged and had he verged from the invisible causeway he and his machine would have been plunged into a considerable depth of water. He was guided by his instinct and such of the fallen poles as had not been washed away.
But it was all quite hopeless, as he realized before he was a quarter of the way across the flooded area. His wheels, sunk in mud, were all but inextricable, and he finally realized, or acknowledged, the terrible predicament he was in. There he was, the plaything of a lashing tempest, marooned upon a sunken road, wrenching and tugging at his wheel as it settled lower and lower in the mud. Above him the thunder crashed, now and again the lightning rent the sky showing the heavens thick with those little restless, feathery clouds. His face felt hot and sore from the beating of the rain against it. I suspect that his nerve was wavering and little wonder.
Then he heard amid the uproar the whirring of an airplane and he stood stark still listening. Perhaps his distracted mind made him susceptible to vague imaginings, and he experienced a feeling of horror at the thought of this uncanny creature of the night hovering in the clouds above him, until he realized that it was probably the friendly plane which, having brought down the enemy machine, was on its way with messages to Paris. The thought afforded him a measure of relief and reconciled him to his own desperate plight. What matter, so long as the urgent news were carried? And what an airman he must be who could fly through this inferno, braving thunder, lightning and storm....