The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land

by Ralph Connor

By the bitterness of his disappointment, Barry realised how greatly he had counted on this meeting with his friends. Were it not for the hope of being able to discover them in England, he would have turned back up the line, there and then, and found among the only friends he had on this side of the ocean relief from the intolerable weight of loneliness that was bearing him down.

He walked out to the cemetery, and stood beside his father's grave. There for the first time it came over him that henceforth he must go all the way of his life without the sight of that face, without the touch of that hand on his shoulder, without the cheer of that voice. In floods his sense of loss swept his soul. It took all his manhood to refrain from throwing himself prone upon the little mound and yielding to the agony that flooded his soul, and that wrought in his heart physical pain. By a resolute act of will, he held himself erect. While he blamed and despised himself for his weakness, he was unable to shake it off. He did not know that his mental and emotional state was in large measure a physical reaction from the prolonged period of exhausting strain, his treble tour in the trenches, with its unrelieved sense of impending destruction, that its endless procession of broken, torn bodies, with its nights of sleepless activity, with its eternal struggle against depression, consequent upon the loss of his comrades, its eternal striving after cheeriness and more than all the shock of the train wreck, with its scenes of horror; all this had combined to reduce his physical powers of resistance to the point of utter exhaustion.

As he stood there in that cemetery with its rows of crosses, silently eloquent of heroism and of sacrifice, the spirit of the place seemed to breathe into him new life. As his eyes fell upon the cross bearing his father's name, he seemed to see again that erect and gallant figure, instinct with life and courage. There came to him the memory of a scene he had never forgotten. Again he was with his father in the little home cottage. How dear it had been to him then! How dear to him, today! Once more he felt the strong grip of his father's hand and heard his father's voice:

“Good night, boy. We don't know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering, that part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never need and never shall be ours.”

Unconsciously as if he were in the presence of a superior officer, he lifted his hand in salute, and with a sense of renewal of his vital energies he returned to the boat.

During the crossing his mind was chiefly occupied with the problem of discovering the whereabouts of the V. A. D. or his American friends. He had never learned her London address, if indeed she had one. He remembered that she had told him that her home had been turned into a hospital. He had some slight hope that he might be able to trace her by the aid of her uncle.

Arrived in London, his first duty was to see Sergeant Matthews, whose injuries in the wreck were apparently more serious than at first supposed, safely disposed in a hospital ambulance. Thereupon he proceeded to the Hotel Cecil, and set himself seriously to the solution of his problem. He was too weary for clear thinking and as the result of long, confused and very vexing cogitation, he resolved upon a letter to Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R. This, after much labour, he succeeded in accomplishing. Thereafter, much too weary for food, he proceeded to his room, where he gave himself up to the unimaginable luxury of a bath in a clean tub, and with an unstinted supply of clean towels, after which riotous indulgence, he betook himself to bed. As he lay stretched between the smooth clean sheets, he found it impossible to recall a state of existence when clean sheets had been a nightly experience. The chief regret of these semi-unconscious moments preceding slumber was that sleep would rob him of this delicious sense of physical cleanness and well-being.

He was wakened by a knock at his door, followed by a hesitating apology for intrusion. Rejoicing in the luxury of his surroundings, and in the altogether satisfying discovery that he might sleep again, he turned over and once more was lost in profound slumber. A second time he was aroused by a mild but somewhat anxious inquiry as to his welfare.

“I want nothing, only a little more sleep,” and again luxuriating for a few moments in his clean sheets and his peaceful environment, he resigned himself to sleep, to waken with a comfortable sense of pleasant weariness, which gradually passed into a somewhat acute sense of hunger.

He decided, after due consideration, that he would plumb the depths of bliss, unmeasured and unknown, and have breakfast in bed. He went to the window and looked out upon the murky light of a London day. He decided that it was still early morning, and rang for the waiter. He was informed by that functionary that breakfast was impossible, but that if he desired he could be supplied with an early dinner.