The stranger, so he says, raised his hands very leisurely and lifted his goggles up on his forehead, for all the world like some dear old grandma, which tickled Archer’s funny bone. This finicky little act seemed odd in one of those adventurous denizens of the sky, and I have heard others besides Archer speak of it. Then the stranger, standing there amid the screaming wind and blinding storm, raised his hands as if to surrender. But Archer was not unfamiliar with the “kamarad” game, and he advanced cautiously. The screaming of the wind through the wiring of the machine was terrific but through it, as he stumbled along, he fancied (I quote his own words) that he could “hearr the worrd ‘souveneerrr’ as if it was in the airrr, sorrt of.”
Then suddenly he stopped amazed to hear these words uttered in plain English:
“I suppose you’re after a piece of this airplane for a souvenir. How is it you ain’t chewin’ an apple?”
He stood where he was, too dumbfounded to speak, and looked at the drenched figure in dismay.
“Can I take my hands down now?” the flier said in a familiar, dull voice, but smiling.
As you probably have guessed, it was none other than Archer’s former comrade, Tom Slade, who stood facing him.
“’Till I hearrd that about souveneerrrs I neverr thought anything about it,” Archer said, as a sort of climax to this extraordinary episode, and raising his knees high up in the bed as was his custom; “but as soon as he reminded me of it I made up my mind I’d get a piece of that bloomin’ machine to take home—by Christopherrr!”
That seemed to be the main consideration with him.
“Do you think you are fonder of souvenirs than of apples?” I inquired slyly, for his narrative was interrupted by the nurse’s bringing him one from a box of them which I understood had made a long and patriotic pilgrimage from the Catskills.
“Therre’s only one thing about apples I like,” he observed, as he took an enormous bite, “and that’s the taste of ’em. Slady used to always kid me about apples—but you can bet yourr life I got three tacks out of the leatherr seat of that gol-bloomin’ Hun machine!”