Ten thousand feet above, round balls of black smoke appear in the blue sky, coming, as it were, out of the nowhere into here. After long listening you hear the echo of the distant explosion, like the clapping together of the hands of a man in the aisle of an empty church, and if you search very diligently, you will at last see the aeroplane, a little dot in the ether, moving almost slowly—so it appears—on its appointed course. Now the sun strikes the white-winged, bird-like thing as it turns, and it glitters in the beams of light like a diamond in the sky. Now it banks a little higher, now planes down at a dizzy angle. Suddenly, short, sharp, distinct, you catch the sound of machine-gun fire. Quick stuttering bursts, as the visible machine and the invisible enemy circle about each other, seeking to wound, wing, and destroy. Ah! There it is! The Fokker dives, steep and straight, at our machine, and one can clearly see the little darts of flame as the machine-guns rattle. Our man quite calmly loops the loop, and then seems almost to skid after the Fokker which has carried on downwards, evidently hit. He swoops down on the stricken plane, pumping in lead as he goes. The twain seem to meet in collision, then—yes, the Fokker is plunging, nose-diving, down, down, at a terrific rate of speed. Our aviator swings free in a great circle, banks, and at top speed makes back to his air-line patrol, while the German Archies open up on him with redoubled violence, as, serenely confident, he hums along his way.
It is truly wonderful what a fire an aeroplane can pass through quite unscathed as far as actual hinderance to flight is concerned. Many a time you can count nearly two hundred wreathing balls of smoke in the track of the machine, and yet it sails placidly onward as though the air were the native element of its pilot and the attentions of Archie nonexistent.
It is Tommy who first gave the anti-aircraft gun that euphonious name. Why, no one knows. It must be intensely trying to be an Archie gunner. Rather like shooting at driven partridges with an air-gun, though far more exciting. The shells may burst right on the nose of the aeroplane, to all intents and purposes, and yet the machine goes on, veering this way or that, dropping or rising, apparently quite indifferent to the bitter feelings it is causing down below. It is the most haughty and inscrutable of all the weapons of war, to all outward appearances, and yet when misfortune overtakes it, it is a very lame duck indeed.
Archie is very much like a dog, his bark is worse than his bite—until he has bitten! His motto is “persevere,” and in the long run he meets with some success. Halcyon days, when he wags his metaphorical tail and the official communiqués pat him on the head. He does not like other dogs, bigger dogs, to bark at him. They quite drown his own bark, so that it is useless to bark back, and their highly explosive nature forces him to put his tail between his legs and run for it, like a chow pursued by a mastiff. No common-sense Archie stops in any place long after the five-nines and the H.E. shrapnel begin to burst around it. In that case discretion is indubitably the better part of valour.
Aeroplanes have a nasty habit of “spotting” Archies, whereby they even up old scores and prove their superiority. For even the lordly aeroplane does not charge an Archie barrage by preference.
It is when the planes come out in force, a score at a time, that poor Archibald has a rough time, and, so to speak, scratches his ear desperately with his hind leg. The planes do not come in serried mass, but, wheeling this way and that, diving off here and down yonder, so confuse poor Archie that he even stops barking at all, wondering which one he ought to bark at first! By this time most of the planes have sidled gracefully out of range, rounded up and driven down the iron-cross birds, and, having dropped their “cartes de visite” at the rail-head, are returning by ways that are swift and various to the place whence they came. All of which is most unsettling to the soul of Archibald.
In the evening, when the west is pink and gold, Archie’s eyes grow wearied. He sees dimly many aeroplanes, here and there, going and coming, and he has been known to bark at the wrong one! Wherefore the homing aeroplane drops a star-signal very often to let him know that all is well, and that no German hawks menace the safety of the land over which he is the “ethereal” guardian, in theory, if not always in practice.
At night Archie slumbers profoundly. But the birds of the air do not always sleep. Many a night one hears the throb and hum of a machine crossing the line, and because Archie is asleep we pay him unconscious tribute: “Is it ours, or theirs?”
Once, not a mile from the front line, Archie dreamed he saw a Zeppelin. He awoke, stood to, and pointed his nose straight up in the air. Far above him, many thousands of feet aloft, a silvery, menacing sphere hung in the rays of the searchlights. And he barked his loudest and longest, but without avail, for the distance was too great. And the imaginative French folk heaped unintentional infamy upon him when they spoke quite placidly of “Archie baying at the moon!”