Dazed, shaken to the very foundation of my being, I stood there between the shadowy bulk of the Ertak and the towering mass of the great silent pile that was the seat of government in this strange land of darkness, and gazed up at the dark sky above me. I am not ashamed, now, to say that hot tears trickled down my cheeks, nor that as I turned back to the Ertak, my throat was so gripped by emotion that I could not speak.
I ordered the exit closed with a wave of my hand; in the navigating room I said but four words: “We depart at once.”
At the third meal of the day I gathered my officers about me and told them, as quickly and as gently as I could, of the sacrifice one of their number had made.
It was Kincaide who, when I had finished, rose slowly and made reply.
“Sir,” he said quietly, “We had a friend. Some day, he might have died. Now he will live forever in the records of the Service, in the memory of a world, and in the hearts of those who had the honor to serve with him. Could he—or we—wish more?”
Amid a strange silence he sat down again, and there was not an eye among us that was dry.
I hope that the snappy young officer who visited me the other day reads this little account of bygone times.
Perhaps it will make clear to him how we worked, in those nearly forgotten days, with the tools we had at hand. They were not the perfect tools of to-day, but what they lacked, we somehow made up.