And here is an instance thoroughly typical of Slade, who could reason calmly in wind and storm. “I knew if I was right,” he said, “and it was what we always called the flats down there, and he was on the causeway road, why, pretty soon he’d get stuck and then he’d throw his light around to see where he was at and maybe it would show me a place to land.”
So he flew lower than it was safe to fly when constant maneuvering was necessary, for of course the strong westerly gale which he was facing would lose all its supporting effect instantly he took it in any quarter. Yet he must manouver in all this hubbub of earth-wind, for the cyclist was proceeding slowly and, as we know, with great difficulty.
It was just at the moment when Archer’s headlight threw its dusky column across the meadows that Slade, alert and watchful, swooped down into the unincumbered area which the guiding light had shown him.
In the whole war I know of no episode concerning individuals which I think more dramatic than the meeting of these two. By all the rules of the story-telling game they should have “parted no more,” but Slade, as I told you, was a sort of stormy petrel, coming and going, and we can only hope to glimpse him on the wing. Even the immediate circumstances concerning his death art more or less of a mystery.
CHAPTER V—TOGETHER
“It was just like you; I knew you’d get stuck,” were the consoling words which Slade uttered to Archer. “You should have gone by the Ridge road and you’d have been all right.”
“Yes, and where would you have landed if it hadn’t been forr me?” Archer very properly replied. “You’d have been tearrin’ arround the sky and maybe got stranded on Marrs for all I know.”
“Don’t roll your R’s so much,” Slade replied. “Can’t you say Mars?”
“It was good to see him again,” Archer told me, “and hearr him talk in that funny, soberr way he had. He was always kidding me about R’s.” Indeed, it would be hard to say who was the rescuer and who the rescued in this extraordinary business. I suppose it may be said that they rescued each other.
“What are we going to do now?” Archer asked. “I’ve got to get to Brienne if I can, or go all the way to Paris if I have to. They won’t do a thing but wing us in Paris. I say, keep out of Paris.”