"Suddenly the nose of the machine went down and my breath left me in the crazy rush, my hands grasped at anything, and somehow, momentarily blinded with fright as I was, my right hand involuntarily clutching Jack conveyed the truth to my brain. Jack was dead. He had fallen forward on the wheel and the giant plane was rushing, roaring down to destruction. With a spasmodic effort I pulled his body from the seat onto the floor at my feet and pulled back the wheel. With a sickening change and a shrill singing of wires we were climbing. How the fuselage and tail plane stood the strain of it, God knows. I was in Jack's seat now pushing the wheel from me, pulling it toward me, turning it to the right, then to the left, pushing the rudder bar with my right foot, then with my left. Panic was in control. We must have dropped three thousand feet before a sudden calmness came over me and I found this aerial monster as gentle to manage as a perfectly bitted horse.
"But there was Jack, huddled on the floor at my feet with part of his head gone. I remember leaning down and trying to pull him out of his cramped position, and then came an eternity of stargazing. I wondered why the stars didn't run into each other and crash. I leaned across the fuselage and turned a pet-cock; a little spray of petrol came out with the escaping air; the hands of two dials on the left side of the cock-pit began turning slowly anti-clockwise; I forgot them and looked at the stars. Later I pressed a button on the dashboard and looked out at my starboard engine; a small dial was lit up. I looked at the port engine, a similar dial was lit up. I took my right hand from the wheel and pulled the throttle slightly back; again I star-gazed as if in a dream and without any volition I closed the pet-cock which I had previously opened.
"This was my first time in a Handley-Page, and I knew nothing of pressures or temperatures. How long I flew I don't know; what direction I should have flown I did not know at that time. Occasionally I glanced at the compass and as well as I can remember the needle pointed west generally, but I gave it no thought. Finally I pulled back the throttle and began to glide. I leaned over the next seat and pulled two levers. Remember that at this time I had never heard of shutters for the radiators. Down I came into heavier and heavier atmosphere. I was calm and happy. I never even gave the ground a thought, never even glanced at it. I remember taking from a rack on my left a stubby revolver with a huge bore, pointing it over the side and pulling the trigger, and I watched a green light go slowly down and searchlights that were blinking up at me went out. A few seconds later a knob on the dashboard seemed to rivet my attention; it was a small knob exactly like an electric-light switch. I began to play with this. To do this I had to lean forward and stretch out my left arm; this action brought my face around to the right, and as I played with the knob I saw a light blinking on my right wing tip. I remember laughing at this.
"The plane took a sudden dip and I sat up. Just off to my right and very little below me were lights on the ground in the shape of a 'T,' and other lights were flashing at me. I turned toward the 'T' and stuck down the nose of the machine; I pulled the throttle farther back, and just as I seemed to be running into dense blackness I leaned forward and pressed a button; a brilliant light sprang up under the machine; there was the ground not two feet away, apparently. I yanked back the wheel and a moment later there was a great bump, another and another, and we came to rest on our own aerodrome.
"The doctor told me that he had never seen such a collapse. I had been unconscious for hours after being lifted from the machine together with my dead pal. I was awarded this decoration, gentlemen, for bringing that machine home safely. Since that time I have been awarded these other decorations for feats you have all heard of. But I want to tell you," and "Mystery Dick" stood up with flushed face and blazing eyes, "that I have never flown an aeroplane in France. Jack, my old pal, dare-devil Jack, whose head was blown off beside me during my first trip across the lines, flies my machine. Jack, dear old Jack, has won these medals I wear."
And Dick, no longer "Mystery Dick," left the mess. I say no longer "Mystery Dick" because from that day on there was nothing mysterious about Dick to the "Bedouins."
Explain it as you may, call it God, the spirit of a dead friend, or a thought vibration to which their mind is attuned, explain it as you choose, or try to explain it not at all, every member of the "Bedouin" Squadron has felt the "Guiding Hand" and every "Bedouin" knew, as every man who makes constant companions of danger and death must eventually know, that the dead still "carry on."
THE END
The Riverside Press