“I never knew that grew here; it’s swamp larch.” He smelled of it and scratched it with his fingers. “Hmmm.” It was charred and left his fingers black and sticky. “Hmmm,” he said again, “it’s swamp larch all right—resin just like cedar—hmmm.” He held it close under the little light and examined it more carefully. He turned it this way and that. He scraped off some of the charred, pungent resin, and sniffed it. He bit a splinter off and chewed it a little. “Hmm.”
She was pleased at his interest and said something which I think was very pretty. “Now you will forgive me about ze picture?”
Tom Slade, of the Flying Corps, turned off the tiny light, shut off his gas, and climbed down from his seat. It was the airman who climbed into that machine. It was the scout who got out of it.
“I know where the gun is now,” he said simply. “A minute ago you said, ‘Vive l’Amerique!’ Now I say, ‘Vive la France! Vive Jeanne!’”
I am glad that at least he had the gallantry to say that.
CHAPTER XI—AIRMAN AND SCOUT
Slade made his report of this business while lying in the Epemay Hospital. This I have not seen, but Captain Whitloss has told me of it. By reason of the character of Slade’s mission, neither he nor anyone else talked of it and even the surgeons and nurses knew nothing of his late exploit, more than that he had sustained a serious injury while flying.
“As soon as I saw that piece of wood,” he told the captain, “I knew it was swamp larch. That always grows near water and usually high up. I thought it must have been right close to the gun, in front of it, because it caught some of the fire. I could even smell the powder. I thought maybe it was a part of the camouflaging in front. Anyway it was torn off a limb, anyone could see that, and was near enough to get burned. In scouting they always tell things by signs. She picked it up when it fell off the thatch roof and they had to chuck a couple of buckets of water up there because the thatch was starting. She couldn’t pick it up at first, it was so hot.
“I knew there wasn’t any larch at all where I’d been ’cause if there had been I’d have seen it—wouldn’t I?”
The captain said he supposed so.