Only one of the remaining four of these missives was ever found—or at least, reported. That was in the village of Lareaux among the hills about thirty miles southeast of Verdun. So the flier must have succeeded in following the battle line for seventy or more miles in a northwesterly direction. This last missive resulted in heavy reenforcements being sent from the Verdun sector eastward. Archer wished that he had one of these strange meteors for a “souveneerr” and I should like to have one myself. Particularly, I should like to see Slade’s official report of his flight, but the powers that be will not vouchsafe me a glimpse of it.
Archer thinks that after this seventy miles of bucking the wind and rain, Slade must have ascended above the storm somewhere in the neighborhood of the hills which filled the old Verdun salient. He told Archer that for a while he was in quiet air about twenty-eight hundred feet up, but came down in hopes of seeing the lights of towns into which he might drop his remaining missives. He said he lost control in the storm and for a while was almost entirely at the mercy of the elements, turning turtle once, and regaining and keeping his stability by tremendous effort, while being blown in a southwesterly direction. He must have been in the greatest peril at that time.
At last he saw the lights of a large town, or rather that bright haze caused by the blending of many lights, which suggests a populous centre. Here he hoped to make a landing if the lightning showed him a suitable field, and he tried to manouver over the place, awaiting a flash. But he was borne in a southwesterly direction and had all he could do to hold his plane stable. Archer thinks the town was probably Commercy.
In any event, his drifting southward continued until he was above Gondrescourt where he descended into the straight wind current out of the west and found his progress comparatively easy. He was flying due west then, into the very teeth of the wind but it was not as “choppy” at his height as the belated cyclist found it.
It was just after Archer rode out of Gondrescourt toward the west, that he heard the shots and saw the airplane in the openings of the clouds.
Slade’s one object then was to make a landing, but he must wait for a propitious flash of lightning to show him a place. He realized now, as he had not in all the haste of his mad flight, that however friendly his errand he would be shot as soon as the fatal whir of his propeller was heard and the gun crews got a sight of him. With the big black Hun cross upon his machine he was as good as dead if he attempted landing in a town, even supposing he could discover a safe landing place.
And this, apparently, was the outcome of his heroic flight—that he should be a sort of outcast in the troubled sky. He had not anticipated the difficulties of landing in a Hun plane.
As we know, he had twice succeeded in dodging anti-aircraft fire, and he was now resolved to make a try at landing in the devasted flat country which stretched for miles east of Brienne. He knew this country well, had crossed it many times on his motorcycle, and had seen it flooded on one notable occasion when he had ridden from Alsace to Flanders.
He could not, of course, even by flying dangerously low in such weather, pick out the single road which crossed this area from Joinville to Brienne, but in his extremity he chanced to notice far below him a sort of dusky shaft moving along the deserted meadows.
It must have been a thrilling sight to the storm-tossed flier who only by this sign was able to verify his very dubious idea of where he was. He knew well enough that the shaft of brightness came from the headlight of a motorcycle and he believed that the rider, whoever he was, was hurrying to Paris, perhaps bearing the very news which he himself had dropped from his stolen plane.