The slight figure lying so still upon the stretcher had never been remarkable for beauty of proportion. The sharpened face with its hue of old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards, with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still form.
He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square, with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.
But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to his hand.
The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating? Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree. The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.
Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....
Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies, through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a single oar.
"Is this stuff water?"
The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question. Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it shining, but not dripping, thinking:
"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth Æneid, when I swotted Virgil at School."
"Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had answered instantly: