III—TALE OF MODERN ARABIAN NIGHTS
A sail in unfrequented latitudes never seemed more truly a godsend to castaways at sea than this marvellous horse to the exhausted airman. It was but a stray animal belonging to some mounted unit which had drawn the peg of its head-rope and escaped from the horse-lines into the open desert, but to the incredulous eyes which suddenly perceived its presence it might well have been the famous magic steed of the Arabian Nights.
To catch the animal was the immediate thing to be done, and anyone who has tried to catch a shy horse in a paddock can imagine the hideous anxiety on the part of an exhausted man in approaching an animal which has the illimitable desert to manœuvre in, and has but to kick up its heels to vanish in a trice over the horizon. Fortunately, the creature evinced but little shyness, and suffered itself to be taken without difficulty. It is probable, indeed, that this desert encounter was not less welcome on the one side than on the other.
One wonders how the would-be rider ever managed to get astride his lucky steed. His legs had little enough capacity for a spring left in them. But necessity and hope in combination provide a wonderful incentive and spur, and somehow or other he scrambled up. He himself has hazy recollections only of this stage of his adventures, and beyond the fact that he did mount that horse, and manage to set it going in a westerly direction, his recollections are vague.
The next phase of the story is contained in the narrative of the officer commanding a patrol vessel on the Suez Canal, who relates that while on duty his attention was directed to a strange figure riding on horseback along the eastern bank of the Canal. At first sight he supposed it to be some mounted Arab or other nomad of the desert, but on closer inspection the horse did not seem to be of native type, and the rider's garb appeared unusual. On nearer approach the strange apparition resolved itself into a white man, of wild and haggard demeanor, dressed in a torn shirt and very little else, who bestrode barebacked a troop-horse in distressed condition. Hailed by the patrol boat, the white horseman replied in English, and explained intelligibly, if a trifle incoherently, that he had come out of the desert, that his chum was lying some miles back in dire distress, if not already dead, and would somebody please hurry up and do something.
The conclusion of the story can be told in a sentence. A relief party was sent at once into the desert, the second airman was picked up exhausted but still alive, and at the date when the present writer last heard of them both parties of this strange adventure of the desert were little, if any, the worse for their experiences. As to the gallant troop-horse which played the part of a kind of equus ex machina, no peg in all the lines is now more firmly and securely driven in than his!
The story just related ends happily for all concerned; let me deal now with the reverse side of the shield!
IV—SHOT HIMSELF IN SELF-SACRIFICE
About the middle of June last year Second-Lieutenant Stewart Gordon Ridley, of the R.F.C., went out alone in his machine as escort to another pilot, who had with him a pilot named J. A. Garside. "Engine trouble" developed when Lieutenant Ridley had been flying for an hour and a half, and, as they could not put the matter right immediately on alighting, they decided to camp where they were for the night. Next morning, as Ridley's engine still proved obdurate, the second pilot decided to fly back alone to the base, and return on the following day to the assistance of the two men. This programme was duly carried out, but when he got back the pilot found that Ridley and Garside, with the machine, had disappeared.
A search party was immediately organized to scour the desert, and on the Sunday tracks were discovered. It was not until the Tuesday, however, that the missing 'plane was discovered. Beside it lay the dead bodies of Lieutenant Ridley and Garside. A diary was found on the mechanic, and the brief entries therein tell the tragic story of those last hours better than pages of description. The diary reads as follows:—