The weather conditions were so unfavorable for flight and the landing was made with such conspicuous6 skill that even the prisoners who hurried to the spot, hungry for any diversion, cheered moderately as the airman, swathed in furs and oilskins, climbed out, threw his helmet into the car and, pushing rudely among them, hurried to the commandant’s quarters. The little group of forlorn prisoners soon dispersed7, leaving one apparently8 half-interested onlooker9 peering idly into the car.
That onlooker was Thomas Slade.
Archer10 tells me from his own observation that this plane was of the bad weather type, oilskin coverings, and every part enclosed where enclosure was feasible. Like most of the German planes (and everything else German for that matter) grace and speed were sacrificed to strength and if any aircraft can be said to be built to withstand the buffettings of the weather, the German bad-weather Albatross is the one to do it.
I do not know how Slade felt in face of his great adventure nor whether he considered the punishment which might befall for failure or even for meddling11. What he did, he did quickly, for dallying12 was dangerous business. For a few tense moments he waited, patiently but anxiously. If he had any nerves at all I think they must have been on edge then.
Presently, Lauzerne appeared out of the darkness.
“Have you got the can?” Slade asked him.
“Hand it here and go back a ways and watch if there’s anybody coming.”
Like lightning he removed his almost threadbare jacket, tore off his shirt, slipped his jacket on again, and tore the shirt into several strips.
“Anybody coming?” he whispered, as he broke the string about his neck. He next pulled the pieces of rag about half way through the ring ends of the six rusted14 bars and to the other end of each bar he fastened a stone with a note wrapped about it.
“Anybody coming?” I can almost hear his impatient whispering.
No one.
He climbed into the car with his strange burden, and drew a canful of gasolene out of the tank. Even in his hurry and peril15 he was thoughtful enough to ascertain16 whether there was plenty of gas. Then he was ready—if one can be said to be ready for a flight in a storm who is without any garment save a threadbare suit of khaki.
But he was not destined17 thus to depart. He had just laid his message-bearing missiles in the car and hung the can upon the bar of his steering18 gear so that it would not spill its contents with the tipping of the machine, when his companion communicated to him the appalling19 news that someone was coming. Slade descended20 from the car, but had not time enough to remove his telltale equipment. Lowering himself upon his hands and knees he did the only thing that he could do in his predicament, which was to creep under the axle bar of the wheels and lie parallel with it in the hope that he might appear as part of its shadow. In this precarious22 situation he pulled his coat over his head and kept his hands well under his body so that he presented no human sign or feature to the casual glance. You may be interested to know that he told Archer this trick, as he called it, was customary in the art of stalking and that he had learned it when a Boy Scout23. So his scouting24 did him a good turn—to use the phrase you are so fond of.
Presently he could hear ponderous25 footsteps and was aware of someone approaching rapidly. He felt that his great enterprise was soon to have an ignominous if not a fatal end. What his feelings must have been you may imagine, but he lay motionless and scarcely breathed.
The man approached the car so that Slade could have touched his feet. There he remained for a minute, then turned and went away. Without so much as stirring Slade waited until the footfalls had receded26 beyond earshot. Then he crawled out. An oilskin tarpaulin27 had been laid over the opening of the car, raised upon a hoop28 and buttoned to the sides to shed the rain.
“Quick!” he whispered. “Are you there?”
As his companion approached he removed this tarpaulin (which could not be used thus in flight) and wound it around his body and legs, having first taken his seat in the car.
“Do you want to go?” he asked, ready to cast out the sandbag on his friend’s word.
“Oi, la, la! I am not so crazee!” his companion repeated.
“Well, then, stand ready.”
Slade buckled29 himself in, fastened on the helmet, and turned on the little electric light and carefully examined and tested the controls. The rudders responded as he expected, the elevating planes moved to his touch. He located the contact button and made sure of that. He felt of the gas manet and made sure that there was nothing to differentiate30 it essentially31 from the same thing on French machines. Such differences as he found were merely of style and location. “It is a matter of daring, not of learning;” he remembered those words of Wilbur Wright’s.
I think there is no moment in Slade’s career when he appears so admirable as when he sat there in that Hun machine, self-assured and confident, yet forgetting nothing that he might need to know after starting. “He always used his brains,” Archer said.
“Give her a few spins,” he finally said. He wished the engine to suck in the mixture.
“All right—again.”
“The motor took, first crack out of the box,” he told Archer; “and as soon as I felt the vibration32 I knew everything was all right—it made me feel as if I could do anything. I pulled back my manet, full gas, grabbed my elevating plane control, and sailed over the barbed wires hitting right into the wind.”
The story of that extraordinary flight, at least the first stage of it, remains34 a mystery. It is not until Archer enters upon the scene that we get anything approaching a satisfactory view of that wild night in the skies. There is no doubt that he passed over Arracourt, for one of his missiles landed there, giving timely warning. The rag which was run through the eye end of the metal bar had been dipped in gasolene and ignited but was sufficiently35 far from the message at the other end of the bar to save it from the flames, particularly as the stone had a tendency to cause the whole contrivance to descend21 vertically36. The flaming rag, as was intended, attracted instant attention and brought a curious horde37 of people to the field where it fell. Another of these fell in Pont a Mousson where, it is thought, the flier may have seen the light of a burning house and considered the place to be important. It was picked up by a little girl and was the cause of messengers being immediately despatched to Nomeny and Thiaucourt and to Toul, where heavy reserves were in billets.
Only one of the remaining four of these missives was ever found—or at least, reported. That was in the village of Lareaux among the hills about thirty miles southeast of Verdun. So the flier must have succeeded in following the battle line for seventy or more miles in a northwesterly direction. This last missive resulted in heavy reenforcements being sent from the Verdun sector39 eastward40. Archer wished that he had one of these strange meteors for a “souveneerr” and I should like to have one myself. Particularly, I should like to see Slade’s official report of his flight, but the powers that be will not vouchsafe41 me a glimpse of it.
Archer thinks that after this seventy miles of bucking42 the wind and rain, Slade must have ascended43 above the storm somewhere in the neighborhood of the hills which filled the old Verdun salient. He told Archer that for a while he was in quiet air about twenty-eight hundred feet up, but came down in hopes of seeing the lights of towns into which he might drop his remaining missives. He said he lost control in the storm and for a while was almost entirely44 at the mercy of the elements, turning turtle once, and regaining45 and keeping his stability by tremendous effort, while being blown in a southwesterly direction. He must have been in the greatest peril at that time.
At last he saw the lights of a large town, or rather that bright haze46 caused by the blending of many lights, which suggests a populous47 centre. Here he hoped to make a landing if the lightning showed him a suitable field, and he tried to manouver over the place, awaiting a flash. But he was borne in a southwesterly direction and had all he could do to hold his plane stable. Archer thinks the town was probably Commercy.
In any event, his drifting southward continued until he was above Gondrescourt where he descended into the straight wind current out of the west and found his progress comparatively easy. He was flying due west then, into the very teeth of the wind but it was not as “choppy” at his height as the belated cyclist found it.
It was just after Archer rode out of Gondrescourt toward the west, that he heard the shots and saw the airplane in the openings of the clouds.
Slade’s one object then was to make a landing, but he must wait for a propitious48 flash of lightning to show him a place. He realized now, as he had not in all the haste of his mad flight, that however friendly his errand he would be shot as soon as the fatal whir of his propeller49 was heard and the gun crews got a sight of him. With the big black Hun cross upon his machine he was as good as dead if he attempted landing in a town, even supposing he could discover a safe landing place.
And this, apparently, was the outcome of his heroic flight—that he should be a sort of outcast in the troubled sky. He had not anticipated the difficulties of landing in a Hun plane.
As we know, he had twice succeeded in dodging50 anti-aircraft fire, and he was now resolved to make a try at landing in the devasted flat country which stretched for miles east of Brienne. He knew this country well, had crossed it many times on his motorcycle, and had seen it flooded on one notable occasion when he had ridden from Alsace to Flanders.
He could not, of course, even by flying dangerously low in such weather, pick out the single road which crossed this area from Joinville to Brienne, but in his extremity51 he chanced to notice far below him a sort of dusky shaft52 moving along the deserted53 meadows.
It must have been a thrilling sight to the storm-tossed flier who only by this sign was able to verify his very dubious54 idea of where he was. He knew well enough that the shaft of brightness came from the headlight of a motorcycle and he believed that the rider, whoever he was, was hurrying to Paris, perhaps bearing the very news which he himself had dropped from his stolen plane.
And here is an instance thoroughly55 typical of Slade, who could reason calmly in wind and storm. “I knew if I was right,” he said, “and it was what we always called the flats down there, and he was on the causeway road, why, pretty soon he’d get stuck and then he’d throw his light around to see where he was at and maybe it would show me a place to land.”
So he flew lower than it was safe to fly when constant maneuvering was necessary, for of course the strong westerly gale56 which he was facing would lose all its supporting effect instantly he took it in any quarter. Yet he must manouver in all this hubbub57 of earth-wind, for the cyclist was proceeding58 slowly and, as we know, with great difficulty.
It was just at the moment when Archer’s headlight threw its dusky column across the meadows that Slade, alert and watchful59, swooped60 down into the unincumbered area which the guiding light had shown him.
In the whole war I know of no episode concerning individuals which I think more dramatic than the meeting of these two. By all the rules of the story-telling game they should have “parted no more,” but Slade, as I told you, was a sort of stormy petrel, coming and going, and we can only hope to glimpse him on the wing. Even the immediate38 circumstances concerning his death art more or less of a mystery.
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1
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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2
maneuvering
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| v.移动，用策略( maneuver的现在分词 )；操纵 | |
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swooping
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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7
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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onlooker
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| n.旁观者，观众 | |
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archer
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| n.射手，弓箭手 | |
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meddling
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 ) | |
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12
dallying
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| v.随随便便地对待( dally的现在分词 )；不很认真地考虑；浪费时间；调情 | |
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13
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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14
rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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15
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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16
ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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18
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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23
scout
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| n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索 | |
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scouting
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| 守候活动，童子军的活动 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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27
tarpaulin
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| n.涂油防水布，防水衣，防水帽 | |
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28
hoop
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| n.（篮球）篮圈，篮 | |
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29
buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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differentiate
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| vi.(between)区分；vt.区别；使不同 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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32
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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33
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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34
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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sector
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| n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形 | |
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40
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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vouchsafe
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| v.惠予，准许 | |
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42
bucking
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| v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的现在分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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43
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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45
regaining
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| 复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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46
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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47
populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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48
propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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49
propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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50
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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51
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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52
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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53
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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54
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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55
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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56
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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57
hubbub
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| n.嘈杂；骚乱 | |
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58
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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59
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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60
swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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