Tam o' the Scoots Part 14

"She's British," said Tam cautiously.

He reached out his hands for the gla.s.ses that Blackie was offering, and focused them on the disappearing machine. Long and silently he watched her. The sun had been behind a cloud, but now one ray caught the aeroplane for a moment and turned her into a sparkling star of light.

Tam put down his gla.s.ses.

"Yon's Mr. Craig's," he said impressively.

"Craig's machine? What makes you think so?"

"Sir-r," said Tam, "I wad know her anywheer. Yon's Mr. Craig's 'bus, right enough."

Blackie turned quickly and ran to his office. He spun the handle of the telephone and gave a number.

"That you, Calais? There's a Boche flying one of our machines gone in your direction--yes, one that came down in his lines last week. A Fairlight battle-plane. She's flying at sixteen thousand feet. Warn Dover."

He hung up the telephone and turned back.

Holiday-makers at a certain British coast town were treated to the spectacle of an alarm.

They gathered on the sands and on the front and watched a dozen English machines trekking upward in wide circles until they also were hovering specks in the sky. They saw them wheel suddenly and pa.s.s out to sea and then those who possessed strong gla.s.ses noted a new speck coming from the east and presently thirteen machines were mixed up and confused, like the spots that come before the eyes of some one afflicted with a liver.

From this pickle of dots one slowly descended and the trained observers standing at a point of vantage whooped for joy, for that which seemed a slow descent was, in reality, moving twice as fast as the swiftest express train and, moreover, they knew by certain signs that it was falling in flames.

A gray destroyer, its three stacks belching black smoke, cut through the sea and circled about the debris of the burning machine. A little boat danced through the waves and a young man was hauled from the wreckage uttering strange and bitter words of hate.

They took him down to the ward-room of the destroyer and propped him in the commander's armchair. A businesslike doctor dabbed two ugly cuts in his head with iodine and deftly encircled his brow with a bandage. A navigating lieutenant pa.s.sed him a whisky-and-soda.

"If you speak English, my gentle lad," said the commander, "honor us with your rank, t.i.tle, and official number."

"Von Mahl," snapped the young man, "Royal Prussian Lieutenant of the Guard."

"You take our breath away," said the commander. "Will you explain why you were flying a British machine carrying the Allied marks?"

"I shall explain nothing," boomed the youth.

He was not pleasant to look upon, for his head was closely shaven and his forehead receded. Not to be outdone in modesty, his chin was also of a retiring character.

"Before I hand you over to the wild men of the Royal Naval Air Service, who, I understand, eat little things like you on toast, would you like to make any statement which will save you from the ignominious end which awaits all enterprising young heroes who come camouflaging as enterprising young Britons?"

Von Mahl hesitated.

"I came--because I saw the machine--it had fallen in our lines--it was an impulse."

He slipped his hand into his closely b.u.t.toned tunic and withdrew a thick wad of canvas-backed paper which, unfolded, revealed itself as a staff map of England.

This he spread on the ward-room table and the commander observed that at certain places little red circles had been drawn.

"Uppingleigh, Colnburn, Exchester," said the destroyer captain; "but these aren't places of military importance--they are German internment camps."

"Exactly!" said von Mahl; "that is where I go."

In this he spoke the truth, for to one of these he went.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAN BEHIND THE CIRCUS

There comes to every great artist a moment when a sense of the futility of his efforts weighs upon and well-nigh crushes him. Such an oppression represents the reaction which follows or precedes much excellent work.

The psychologist will, perhaps, fail to explain why this sense of emptiness so often comes before a man's best accomplishments, and what a.s.sociation there is between that dark hour of anguish which goes before the dawn of vision, and the perfect opportunity which invariably follows.

Sergeant-Pilot Tam struck a bad patch of luck. In the first place, he had missed a splendid chance of catching von Rheinhoff, who with thirty-one "crashes" to his credit came flaunting his immoral triumph in Tam's territory. Tam had the advantage of position and had attacked--and his guns had jammed. The luck was not altogether against him, for, if every man had his due, von Rheinhoff should have added Tam's scalp to the list of his thirty-one victims.

Tam only saved himself by taking the risk of a spinning nose dive into that zone of comparative safety which is represented by the distance between the trajectories of high-angle guns and the flatter curve made by the flight of the eighteen-pounder sh.e.l.l.

Nor were his troubles at an end that day, for later he received instructions to watch an observation balloon, which had been the recipient of certain embarra.s.sing attentions from enemy aircraft. And in some miraculous fas.h.i.+on, though he was in an advantageous position to attack any daring intruder, he had been circ.u.mvented by a low-flying Fokker.

The first hint he received that the observation balloon was in difficulties came when he saw the two observers leap into s.p.a.ce with their parachutes, and a tiny spiral of smoke ascend from the fat and helpless "sausage."

Tam dived for the pirate machine firing both guns--then, for the second time that day, the mechanism of his gun went wrong.

"Accidents will happen," said the philosophical Blackie; "you can't have it all your own way, Tam. If I were you I'd take a couple of days off--you can have ten days' leave if you like, you're ent.i.tled to it."

But Tam shook his head. "A'll tak' a day, sir-r," he said, "for meditation an' devotional exercise wi' that wee bit gun."

So he turned into the workshop and stripped the weapon, calling each part by name until he found, in a slovenly fitted ejector, reason and excuse for exercising his limitless vocabulary upon that faithless part.

He also said many things about the workman who had fitted it.

"Angus Jones! O Angus Jones!" said Tam, shaking his head.

Tam never spoke of anybody impersonally. They were christened instantly and became such individual realities that you could almost swear that you knew them, for Tam would carefully equip them with features and color, height and build, and frequently invented for the most unpopular of his imaginary people relatives of offensive reputations.

"Angus, ma wee lad," he murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ye'll lose yeer job."

A further fault was discovered in a stiff feed-block, and here Tam grew bitter and personal.

"Will ye do this, Hector Brodie McKay? Man, can ye meet the innocent gaze o' the pa.s.sin' soldiery an' no' feel a mairderer? An' wi' a face like that, ravaged an' seaun fra' vicious livin'--for shame, ye scrimshankin', lazy guid-for-nawthing!"

He worked far into the night, for he was tireless, and appeared on parade the next morning fresh and bright of eye.

"Tam, when you're feeling better I'd like you to dodge over the German lines. Behind Lille there's a new Hun Corps Headquarters, and there's something unusual on."

Tam went out that afternoon in the clear cold sky and found that there was indeed something doing.

Lille was guarded as he had never remembered its being guarded before, by three belts of fighting machines. His first attempt to break through brought a veritable swarm of hornets about his ears. The air reverberated with Archie fire of a peculiar and unusual intensity long before he came within striking distance of the first zone.

Tam saw the angry rush of the guardian machines and turned his little Nieuport homeward.