Chapter IV: Introduction: The Judges (4)

He shrugged. Anyway, he had had his four days in London and his ten days idling at Pilot’s Pool before the squadron sent for him. He braced one shoulder against the rattling seat and reached in his tunic pocket for a cigarette. Mechanically he offered one to the driver. The man took it with a grubby finger.

“Thankee, sor-r.”

He nodded and lighted both cigarettes with the smudge of his pocket lighter. Anyway, he was not flying up to 44. That was one flight saved. Funny, that fear--how it came and went like the throb of a nerve in an open tooth. Sometimes the spot was large, and filled his whole being; then again it would shrink to a dull ache, just enough to take the edge from the beauty of the sunrise and the sparkle from the wine of the moon.

There had been a time when it had jumped in every fibre of his soul. He had been a cadet officer then, with only twelve solo hours in the air, under the old rough-and-tumble system of learning to fly. Spinning at that time was an unsolved mystery to him, a ghastly mystery that had meant quick death in a welter of blood, flecked with splinters. Fred McCloud had gone that way, and Johnny Archamboult. For weeks afterward, Johnny’s screams had rung in his ears like a stab of pain, until the mere smell of petrol and fabric dope made the fear crawl into his throat and strangle him. Somehow he had kept on with the rest, under the merciless scourge that lashed one on to fly--and the worse fear of seeing cold scorn in the eyes of the men who taught the lore of thin cloud miles.

The tender twisted and dodged along the hard mud ribbon that ran like a badly healed cicatrix across the pock-scarred face of the fields. Gnarled and bleak, they were fields that had held the weight of blood-crazed men--still held them in unmarked graves, where they had fallen the year before under the steel flail. He had heard stories from his older brother about those fields--the laughing brother who had gone away one day and returned months later without his laugh, only to go away again, not to come back. He had seen pictures in the magazines----But somehow no one had caught their utter bleakness as he saw it now.

The riven boles of two obscene trees crouched and argued about it on the lead-gray horizon, tossing their splintered arms and shrieking, he fancied, like quarrelling old women in the lesser streets of a village. Close to the roadway, there were a torn shoe and a tin hat flattened like a crushed derby. Poor relics that even salvage could see no further use in. Farther off, a splintered caisson pointed three spokes of a shattered wheel to the sky, like a mutilated hand thrown out in agony. He was seeing it for himself now.

No one could smile at the cleanness of his uniform again and say, “Wait till you get out. When I was in France----” He was out himself now. In a day or so he would go over the line with loaded guns. His instructors at the training ’drome--thin-jawed men with soiled ribbons under their wings--had done no more, and some of them had done less. The thought braced him somewhat. They had seemed so different--so impossible to imitate--those men. Their war had always been a different one from his; a war peopled with vague, fearless men like Rhodes-Moorehouse and Albert Ball and Bishop, the Canadian; men who flew without a thought for themselves.

It occurred to him with a start that theirs was the same war as his now. Twenty-five miles ahead of him, buried somewhere in rat runs, between Bapaume and Cambrai, it went on and on, waiting for him to come--waiting to claw and maim and snuff him out when he did come. It had seemed so far away from him in England. When he was at ground school he had seen it as a place where one did glorious things--he was young, pitifully young--a place that one came back from with ribbons under one’s wings, with nice clean scratches decently bandaged. And he had been slightly offended at his brother’s attitude--at the things his brother had said of the staff. Then he had gone to Upavon to learn to fly. He had soloed for the first time, and the spot of fear had crawled into his own heart.

They were rattling into the broken streets of a tottering town; a town that leered at them and grimaced through blackened gaps in its once white walls. There was a patched-up _estaminet_ with a tattered yellow awning that tried bravely to smile.

“Albert,” said the driver.

The new pilot nodded. Some sapper officers were loitering in the doorways of the café. Their uniforms were faded to a rusty brown and reënforced with leather at the cuffs and elbows. Their buttons were leather, too, to save polishing, and their badges were a dull bronze. He looked down at his white Bedford-cord breeches and the spotless skirts of his fur-collared British warm--privileges of the flying corps that men envied. Baths, clean clothing, and better food. The P. B. I.’s idea of heaven. They called flyers lucky for their privileges and cursed them a little bit for their dry beds and the wines they had in their messes, miles behind the line.

The new pilot wondered if they knew what it meant to be alone in the stabbing cold with no one to talk to, no one to help you, nothing between you and the ground save a thin, trembling fabric of cloth and wire and twenty thousand feet of emptiness. That was his fear--emptiness--nothingness--solitude. Those men under the awning could die in company. Not so himself--alone, screaming into the cloud voids, with no one to hear, no one to help, staring with glazed eyes and foam-flecked lips at the emptiness into which one hurtled to death miles below. The price one paid for a bath! He remembered seeing Grahame-White fly at Southport before the war. People had called him an intrepid aviator. The new pilot laughed harshly inside his throat and stared out across the bare fields.

The car topped a slight rise and turned sharply to the left. The driver pointed his grubby finger. “They be comin’ in from affernoon patrol,” he said. “Yonder is airdrome.”

There were three flat canvas hangars painted a dull brown, and a straggling line of rusty tin huts facing them from across the narrow landing space--like a deserted mining village, shabby and unkempt. As he watched, he saw the last machine of the afternoon patrol bank at a hundred and fifty feet and side-slip down for its landing. In his heart he could hear the metal scream of wind in the flying wires. A puff of black smoke squirted out in a torn stream as the pilot blipped on his engine for one more second before he came into the wind and landed. By the time the tender rolled up to the dilapidated squadron office, the machine had taxied into the row of hangars and the pilot was out, fumbling for a cigarette with his ungloved hands. A thin acrid smell of petrol and carbonized castor oil still hung in the quiet air between the shabby huts. Snow in large wet flakes commenced to fall slowly, steadily.

The new pilot climbed down from the tender, tossed his shoulder haversack beside his kit bag, and pushed open the door of the squadron office. The adjutant was sitting on his desk top, smoking and talking to someone in a black leather flying coat and helmet--someone with an oil-streaked face and fingers still blue and clumsy from the cold.

“Paterson, sir, G. K., second lieutenant, reporting in from Pilot’s Pool for duty with the 44th.”

The adjutant raised a careless finger in acknowledgment. “Oh, yes. How do? Bring your log books?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Chuck ’em down. D’ye mind?”

Paterson laid them upon the desk top, still standing to attention. The adjutant smiled. “Break off,” he said. “We’re careless here. This isn’t cadet school.”

The new pilot smiled and relaxed. “Very good, sir.”

“That’s better,” said the adjutant; “makes me feel more comfortable. Just give me a note of yourself now.” He reached for a slip of paper. “G. K. Paterson, Two Lt. Next of kin?” Paterson gave his father’s name. “Age?”

“Eighteen and four twelfths.”

“Good!” said the adjutant. “You’ll find an empty cubicle in B Block--that’s the middle line of huts. You’re lucky. Roof only leaks in three places. I’ll have your duffel trekked over shortly.”

The man in the flying coat blew upon his numbed fingers and smiled. “I’m Hoyt,” he said. “Skipper of C Flight. I’m going to take you now, before A gets after you.” He turned to the adjutant. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Charlie? Tell ’em I intimidated you.” He grinned.

The adjutant shrugged. “Righto!”

“Come on,” said Hoyt. “I’m in your hut block. I’ll show you your hole.”

They went out into the snow flurry. Mechanics were fussing in little knots around the five tiny machines that had just landed, lining them up, refilling them, and trundling them into the brown musty hangars.

“Le Rhône Camels,” said Hoyt. “We’ve just been over around Cambrai taking a look-see.”

Inside one of the hangars, as they passed, Paterson saw something that drew a thin, wet gauze across his eyeballs. On a rough bench just beside the open flap sat a man with his eyes closed and his lips drawn tightly into a straight bluish line. His flying coat was rolled up behind his head for a pillow, and his tunic had been unbuttoned and cut away from his left shoulder. The white of his flesh showed weirdly in the gloom, like the belly of a dead fish. Just below the shoulder, the white was crumpled and reddened as if a clawed paw had been drawn across it. One man was holding his other hand, while another probed and cleaned and dabbed with little puffs of snowy cotton that turned quickly to pink and then to a deep brown.

Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man. That’s Mallory. He was Number Four this afternoon. We never saw a thing. Just happened. Funny.” And he smiled. “That’s why I was so keen to get you. Can’t tell how long it will be before Mallory gets around again, and I’ve got one vacancy in the flight already.” He shrugged. “You’ll see a lot of that here--get used to it. It doesn’t mean a thing as long as you get back alive.”

Paterson looked at him sharply. He wanted to ask him how many didn’t get back alive. He wanted to know what had caused the other vacancy in the flight. But people didn’t ask those things. People merely nodded casually and went on.

“I suppose not,” he said. They tramped on across the airdrome.

“Here we are,” said Hoyt. He kicked open the hut door and groped down the dark passageway, with Paterson after him. Presently he pushed back another door and yanked at a tattered window curtain.

The new pilot saw a tiny room, with two washstands, a cot, a folding chair, and a cracked mirror. In a corner were his kit bag and haversack. He pulled out his own cot and chair and set them up; meanwhile Hoyt threw himself down on the other cot and let his cigarette smoke dribble straight upward into the gloom of the pine-raftered roof. Presently he spoke.

“This is a queer war,” he said; “full of queer things, and the queerest of these is charity.” He laughed in the darkness, and the tip of his cigarette became suddenly pink as he drew the smoke into his lungs. “What was your school?”

“Winchester,” said Paterson.

“Right,” said Hoyt. “Remember your first day? This is it over again. They’ve fed you up on poobah at your training ’drome and down at the Pool. They always do. It’s part of the system. Just take it for what it is worth and forget the rest. If you want to know anything, come to me and I’ll tell you as well as I can. I’ve been here three months. When I came, I came just as you did to-day, pucka green and afraid to the marrow--afraid of uncertainty. You get over that shortly.

“Our job is a funny one, and we’re not here for ourselves, and we’re not here to be heroes or to get in the newspapers. The V. C.’s are few and far between.” He raised himself upon his elbow. “I’m not preaching self-abasement and a greater loyalty to a cause that is right, mind you. I don’t know anything about causes or who started the war or why, and I don’t care. I’m preaching C Flight and the lives of five men.

“You saw Mallory over at the hangar. It was teamwork that put him there in his own M. O.’s hands. Not much, perhaps”--the cigarette described a quick arc in the darkness--“just a slight closing in of the formation--a wave of somebody’s hand--somebody else dropping back and climbing above him to protect his tail from any stray Huns that might’ve waylaid him on the way home. That’s what I mean. ‘Esprit de corps’ is a cold, hard phrase. Call it what you like. It’s the greatest lesson you learn. Never give up a man.” Hoyt laughed. “They call me an old woman. Perhaps I am. Take it or leave it.

“Slick up a bit and come into my hutch while I scrape off the outer layer of silt. Dinner in half a tick and I’m as filthy as a pig.” He vaulted up from the cot and punched his cigarette out against the sole of his boot. At the door he paused for a moment.

“Ever have wind up?” he asked casually.

Paterson stiffened against the question and the small spot of fear danced within him. “No,” he said firmly. Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man.” And he went out into the passageway.

At dinner he met the rest of the squadron and the other men in C Flight. Mallory, very pale, with his arm slung in a soft pad of bandages, sat beside him. They were coming for him later to take him down to the base hospital. Phelps-Barrington sat on the other side of Mallory, mourning the fact that the wound was not his, that he might get the inevitable leave to follow. Phelps-Barrington took Paterson’s hand with a shrug and asked how Marguerite was in Amiens. “What? You didn’t meet Marguerite on your way through? ’Struth!” MacClintock sat across the table beside Hoyt--MacClintock, too young to grow a moustache, but with a deep burr that smelled of the heather in the Highlands and huge pink knees under his Seaforth kilts, muscles like the corded roots of an oak. The other man in the flight, Trent, was down with mild flu. He was due back in a week or so from hospital.

There was a wild argument on about the dawn patrol the next morning. Paterson listened to the fragments of talk that flew like sabre cuts across the glasses:

“He’s in a red tripe. I don’t give a damn for Intelligence. Saw him this morning myself. Same machine Mac and I had that brush with down at Péronne.”

“The next time they’ll get an idea for us to strafe a road clear to Cologne for them. What are we--street cleaners?”

“So I let go a covey of Coopers and turned for home. They had it spotted for a battery over at 119 Squadron. I saw the pictures. Right pictures, but wrong map squares as usual. That crowd can’t tell a battery from a Chinese labour-corps inclosure. I’d rather be a staff officer than a two-seater pilot.”

“Steward, a whisky-soda for Mr. MacClintock and myself. Have one, Hoyt? You, Paterson?”

Cruel, thin, casual talk clicking against the teeth in nervous haste; the commercial talk of men bartering their lives against each tick of the clock; men caught like rats in a trap, with no escape but death or a lucky chance like Mallory’s. Caught and yet denying the trap--laughing at it until the low roof of the mess shack rumbled with the echo; drowning it in a whisky for the night.

Afterward, Hoyt came down the passage with him to his room--Hoyt, with his face cleaned of the afternoon’s oil and his eyes slightly bright with the wine he had taken.

“We’re relieved to-morrow on account of casualties,” he said. “I’ll tick you out early and we’ll go joy riding--see what we can teach each other.” He smiled. “’Night.”

Paterson undressed slowly and threw back the flap of his sleeping bag. He ran his fingers softly down the muscles of his left arm. Automatically they stopped at the spot Mallory had been hit. He stretched his thumb from the arm to his heart--seven inches. He shrugged. Nice to go that way. Clean and quick. He sat upon the edge of his cot and pulled on his pajama trousers. Oh, well, this was the place--the last place he had to go to. This was the cot he would sleep his last sleep in. If it weren’t a lonely job! That chap in the mess who wouldn’t be a two-seater pilot for anything. If he could only feel like that. If he could only feel Hoyt’s complacency. Hoyt, with his calm smile and the two little ribbons under his wings. Military Cross and the Legion of Honour, and three months before he had been green--pucka green!

Paterson blew out the light and turned in. Hoyt was a good fellow--damned decent. Outside he could hear Phelps-Barrington’s voice muffled by the snow: “Come on, snap into it! Tender for Amiens! Who’s coming?” The yell died in the roar from the car’s engine.

Paterson lay for a moment thinking; then suddenly he reached for his pocket flash, snapped it, and stared nervously at the empty cot across the room. There was no bedding on it, nor any kit tucked under it; only the chair beside it, and the cracked mirror.

He got up and padded over in his bare feet. Stencilled on one corner of the canvas there was a name--J. G. H. Lyons. There had been no Lyons introduced to him in the mess. Perhaps he was on leave. Perhaps he had flu with Trent and was down at the base. The spot of fear in his heart trembled slightly and he knew suddenly where J. G. H. Lyons was. He was dead! Somewhere out in the snow, miles across the line, J. G. H. Lyons slept in a shattered cockpit.

The door behind him opened softly. It was Hoyt, in pajamas. “Got a cigarette?” he asked casually.

Paterson turned sharply and grinned. “Righto,” he said. “There on the table.”

Hoyt took one and lighted it. “Can’t sleep,” he said. “Come in and take Mallory’s cot if you want to. I’ve some new magazines and I can tell you something about our work here until we feel sleepy.”

Hoyt was a good fellow--damned decent.

* * * * *

The cold wet mist lay upon the fields like a soft veil drawn across the face of an old woman who had died in the night. Mechanics, with their balaklavas pulled down across their ears, were running about briskly to keep warm--kicking chocks in front of under-carriage wheels, snapping propellers down with mighty leaps and sweeps until the cold engines barked into life and settled to deep concert roaring. Dust and pebbles, scattered by the backwash, swept into the billowing hangars in a thin choking cloud that pattered against the canvas walls. Hoyt’s machine trembled and crept out of the line, with Phelps-Barrington after it. Trent, who had come back from the base the day before, taxied out next.

Paterson waved to the mechanics to pull out his own chocks. They yanked mightily on the ropes, and he blipped his motor with his thumb. Behind him and to the left came Yardley, the new man who had come up from Pool to fill Mallory’s place. Then MacClintock, sitting high in his cockpit, rushed out with a roar and a swish of gravel. MacClintock was deputy leader.

Hoyt waved his hand in a quick nervous sweep, and the flight started. Through the mist they roared with their engines howling into sharp echo against the hut walls. A moment later tails whipped up and wheels bounced lightly upon the uneven ground. Then Hoyt’s nose rose sharply and he zoomed into the air in a broad climbing turn, with the five others after him in tight formation.

Paterson glanced at his altimeter--five hundred feet. He looked ahead and to the left. There was Bapaume in its raggedness, half drowned in the mist. Suddenly Phelps-Barrington’s machine burst into rose flame and every strut and wire trembled like molten silver--the sun. He could see the red rim just peeping up ahead of him and he was warmer for the sight of it. Below, under the rim of his cockpit, the ground was still wrapped in its gray shroud.

They were climbing up in close formation. The altimeter gave them four thousand feet now. He glanced to the left. Yardley waved. Yardley was going through the agony of his first patrol over the line--the same agony he had gone through himself the week before. Only Yardley seemed different, somehow--surer of himself--less imaginative. He was older, too. Behind them, MacClintock, the watchdog, was closing in on their tails and climbing above them to be ready to help if the Hun swooped from behind unexpectedly.

There were clouds above--gray blanket clouds that came together in a solid roof, with only a torn hole here and there to show the blue. Bad clouds to be under. Hoyt knew it and kept on climbing. Almost ten thousand feet now. The ground below had cleared slowly and thrown off most of its sullen shroud. Here and there, in depressions, the mist still hung in arabesque ruffles like icing in a confectioner’s window or the white smoke of a railway engine.

The line was under them now, running south and east like a jagged dagger cut, in and out, in and out across the land, not stopping for towns, but cleaving straight through their gray smudgy ruins with a cold disregard and a ruthless purpose. The first day he had seen it, it had seemed a dam to him; a breakwater built there to hold something that must not flow past it; a tourniquet of barbed wire twisted and held by half the world that the blood of the other half might not flow. Some day something would break and the whole thing would give way for good or evil. Curiously, now, like Hoyt, he didn’t care which. And suddenly he knew how his older brother had felt, on that last leave, and he had called him unsporting in the pride of his youthful heart!

Hoyt was still climbing. Thin wraiths of cloud vapour groped awkwardly for the six tiny Camels, like ghost fingers, trying desperately to stop them and hold them from their work. Paterson glanced again at Yardley. He had been glad when Yardley came. He was still green himself, but Yardley was greener. It helped buck him up to think about it.

The line was behind them now. Hoyt turned south to pass below the anti-aircraft batteries of Cambrai, and presently they crossed the tarnished silver ribbon of the Somme-Scheldt Canal. Mechanically, Paterson reached for his Bowden trigger and pressed it for a burst of ten shots to warm the oil in his Vickers gun against the bite of the cold air. Then he clamped the joy stick between his knees and reached up for the Lewis gun on his top plane.

His throat closed abruptly, with a ghastly dryness, and his knees melted beneath him. The wing fabric beside his gun was ruffling into torn lace and he could see the wood of the camber ribs splintering as he watched! For a moment he was paralyzed, then frantically he whipped around in his seat and swept the air above him. Nothing. There was the torn fabric and the staring rib and nothing else. MacClintock was gone. Yardley was still there, lagging, with the smoke coming in puffs and streaks from his engine. Then Hoyt turned in a wild climb to the left. Phelps-Barrington dipped his nose suddenly and dived with his engine full on, and at once, where there had been only six Camels, the sky was full of gray machines with blunt noses and black crosses.

Blindly he pressed his Bowden trigger and fired into the empty air, blindly he dived after Phelps-Barrington. Somewhere to the left he saw a plume of black smoke with something yellow twisting in the sunlight on its lower end. A blunt nose crossed his propeller--into his stream of bullets. He screamed and banked wildly, still firing. He saw Hoyt above him. He forgot the machine in front and reached for his Lewis to help Hoyt. He tried to wait--something about the outer ring of the rear sight--but his fingers got the better of him and he fired point-blank.

As quickly as it had begun it ended. There was Hoyt circling back, and two other Camels to the left and below him--four of them. They closed in on Hoyt and he wondered where the two others were. He looked for them--probably chasing after the Huns. He could see dots to the southward--too far away to make out the markings. Hoyt had signalled the washout and they were headed back across the line. Funny those two others didn’t come. He wondered who they were. Probably Phelps-Barrington and MacClintock, hanging on to the fight until the last. They worked together that way. He had heard them talk in the mess about it. They’d be at it again to-night, and to-night he could join them for the first time. He’d been in a dog fight! Shot and been shot at! The spot of fear shrank to a pin point.

The brown smudge of the airdrome slid over the horizon. He blipped his motor and glided in carefully. No use straining that top wing--no telling what other parts had been hit. No use taking chances.

Hoyt was standing beside his machine with his glove off, staring at his finger nails. Phelps-Barrington was climbing out. Paterson taxied in between them. The man in the fourth machine just sat and stared over the rim of his cockpit. Phelps-Barrington walked slowly across to Hoyt and laid a hand on his shoulder. Hoyt shrugged and stuffed his bare hand into his coat pocket. Paterson sat with his goggles still on and his throat quite dry. The man in the fourth machine vaulted out suddenly, ripped off his helmet and goggles and hurled them to the ground. It was Trent.

He climbed out of his own machine and walked over toward Hoyt. Phelps-Barrington, who had a wild word for all occasions--Phelps-Barrington, who led the night trips to Amiens--was silent. When Paterson came up he shrugged and scowled ferociously.

“Is it you, Pat?” said Hoyt. “Thought it was Yardley.”

“’Struth!” said Phelps-Barrington. “Let’s go and have a drink.”

Paterson thrilled as the man slipped an arm through his. For one awful moment he had thought----

“Well,” Hoyt said, “those things will happen.” And he shrugged again.

“I saw dots to the southward,” said Paterson. “Maybe they’ll be in later.”

“No, little Rollo,” said Phelps-Barrington. “They won’t be in later or ever. I saw it with my own eyes--both in flames. I thought it was you, and until Trent landed, I thought he might be Mac. But I was wrong. Let’s shut up and have a drink!”

Then suddenly he knew, and his mind froze with the ghastliness of the thought. If he’d been quicker--if he’d turned and climbed above Yardley when he saw him lagging, with the smoke squirting from his hit motor--he could have saved him. If he had kept his eyes open behind, instead of dreaming, he might have saved MacClintock, too. In a daze, he stumbled after Phelps-Barrington. That’s why Trent had hurled his helmet to the ground and walked off. That’s why Hoyt had shrugged and said, “Those things will happen.” It was his fault--his--Paterson’s. He’d bolted and lost his head and fired blindly into the empty air. He hadn’t stuck to his man. He had let Yardley drop back alone to be murdered.

“Look here, P-B,” he muttered, “I’m not drinking.” He wanted to be alone--to think. So quick it had all been.

Phelps-Barrington grabbed his arm and pushed him stumbling into the mess shack. Trent was slumped down at the table with his glass before him, thumbing over a newspaper. He raised his head as they came in. “Two more of the same, steward--double.”

They sat down beside him and Phelps-Barrington reached for a section of the paper.

“It says here,” said Trent, “that Eva Fay didn’t commit suicide. Died of an overdose of hashish she took at a party in Maida Vale the night before.”

The steward brought the glasses. Trent raised his and looked at Paterson. “Good work, son.”

Paterson stared at him in amazement. Trent sipped his whisky and went on reading as if he had never stopped. Some time later, Paterson left them and went down to the flight office to find Hoyt. The thought of the morning still bothered him, in spite of Trent’s words, and he wanted to clear it up. Hoyt smiled as he came in. “Washed the taste out in Falernian?” he asked.

“Some. Look here, skipper--this morning--what about it?”

“What about it?”

“My part--I was fast asleep. I saw Yardley lagging, and I had a moment to cross above him, but I lost my head, I’m afraid, and went wild.”

The smile faded and Hoyt laid down his pencil. “Do you really think you could have saved him?”

“He was behind me already when I saw him lagging, just as you climbed and P-B dived.”

“Then you couldn’t have helped him, because Mac was done for when I saw him and climbed, and half a tick after I climbed, P-B saw Yardley burst into flames. There you are.”

“But if I’d kept my eyes back, instead of trusting to Mac?”

“Look here,” said Hoyt, “no man can keep his eyes on everything. Something always happens in the place he isn’t looking. Bear that in mind and forget this morning. You’ve seen a dog fight from the inside and lived. Take it easy. You’re not here to do everything. You’re here to stick to us. You might have run away. Remember that and be afraid of it. Remember if you get away by leaving a pal--he may live to come back. Then you’ll have to face him, and engine trouble is a poor excuse.

“Trouble with you youngsters is that you’ve been fed up on poobah. And the myth of the fearless air fighter. Put it out of your mind. There’s no such thing. Some are less afraid than others. Some are drunker--take your choice. Class dismissed.” Hoyt grinned. “Go get cleaned up. We’ll jog into Amiens for tiffin. Tender in half an hour. Tell Trent and P-B.”

They spent most of the afternoon at Charlie’s Bar with some of the men from the artillery observation squadron. For dinner they went to the Du Rhin and the glasses flowed red. Afterward, in another place, there was a fight, as usual, and chairs crashed like match sticks, until whistles sounded outside and the A. P. M.’s car, siren screaming, raced up the street. They poured out into the alleyway and ran, leaving the waiter praying in high, shrieking French.

Trent had a bottle with him. They rode all the way home singing and shouting to high heaven, forgetting that there were two empty chairs in the mess and that there might be more to-morrow.

“Take the cylinders out of my kidneys,
Take the scutcheon pins out of my brain,
Take the cam box from under my backbone
And assemble the engine again!”

They were good fellows--Billy Hoyt, P-B, Pat, and Ray Trent. Have ’nother li’l’ drink.

They roared along like a Juggernaut, with the exhaust splitting the night air. Sometimes they were on the road and sometimes they were off. No one cared so long as they kept hurtling into the darkness.

Phelps-Barrington was fast asleep. Pat woke him up at the airdrome and tumbled him into the hut.

They stumbled over a kit bag in the doorway. P-B straightened up suddenly. “Good-bye, Mac, old lad, sleep tight.”

Trent kicked the bag out of the way. “Damned adjutant! Take P-B in with you, Pat. I’m bunking with the skipper. Might have the decency to take Mac’s kit over to squadron office and not leave it lying around the passage. ’Night.”

Paterson was quite sober. He tumbled P-B into bed and stood for a moment at the open window, staring out across the ground mist that billowed knee high in the faint night breeze. He rested his elbows on the sill and hid his face in his trembling hands. If he could only be like the others--casual--calloused. If he had less imagination--more sand--stamina--something. MacClintock had planned this night himself, at breakfast. Yardley had left a letter addressed and stamped on his window sill.

Paterson’s mind jumped miles to the eastward. He saw the two blackened engines lying somewhere in the bleak fields beyond, ploughed into the ground, with their mats of twisted wires coiled around them in a hideous trap.

Their families would get word to-morrow. “Missing,” it would read. And then later: “Previously reported missing, now reported killed in action.” And to-morrow--perhaps his own family. Why can’t it be quick?

There was a noise behind him. Someone fumbling at the door latch--Hoyt. “Had this bit left. Bottoms up! Quick!” He took the glass and drained it. The liquor bit into his veins and burned him. Hoyt set his own glass down on the washstand with a sharp click. “Get into bed now, you idiot. Good-night.”

Spiked drink. Hoyt was a good fellow--damned decent. Do anything for Hoyt. Never let Hoyt go. Like my brother--before the war. Good old Hoyt. And he sank suddenly into a dreamless fuddle of sleep.

* * * * *

The weeks crawled on slowly. Paterson felt like a man climbing a steep ladder. Each day was a rung behind him. Each new rung showed an infinite number still ahead, waiting for him to go on, luring him with their apparent safety, waiting for him to reach the one rotten rung that would do him in. Some day he would reach it, and it would crack under him, or his fingers would slip and hurtle him into the abyss under his charred engine.

Offensive patrols and escort for the artillery observation squadron filled their time, with sometimes a road strafe to vary the monotony. These he liked best, for some quaint reason--perhaps because there was less space to fall through. Sometimes there would be a battalion on those roads--a battalion to scatter and knock down like tin soldiers on a nursery floor. Quite impersonal. They were never men to Paterson. Like dolls they ran and like dolls they sprawled awkwardly where they fell.

P-B and Trent and Hoyt carried him through somehow. Mallory was back again, but Mallory never counted much with him. P-B and Trent and Hoyt were a bulwark. They meant safety. It was good to wake up at night and hear P-B snoring on the other cot, to know that Hoyt and Trent were asleep in the next cubicle. It was good to see them stamping to keep warm before the patrol took off in the half light of early morning. So different from one another and yet so alike underneath. Hoyt was nearer his kind than the two others. Tall and spindly like his brother, with a straight, thin nose that quivered slightly at the nostril when he was annoyed. Hoyt, who smiled and sanctioned the childish depravity of little P-B, but never quite met it with his own, although always seeming to, on the night trips to Amiens. Trent, glowering and quiet, with a keen hatred for everything political that he learned in the offices of the London and South Western before the war, when the army to him had meant young wastrels swanking the Guards’ livery in the boxes of theatres--wastrels who had died on the Charleroi Road three years before.

Suddenly, from one of his mother’s letters, he found that he had been in France almost three months. He stiffened with the thought and remembered what Hoyt had told him that day he had come: “I’ve been here three months. When I came, I came just as you did to-day--pucka green.” He knew then that all his hopes were false. He was the same to-day as he had been that first day. He would always be the same. The spot of fear would always be with him. Some day it would swell and choke him and his hands would function without his frozen brain. He should never have tried to fly. He should have gone into the infantry as his brother had. Too much imagination--too little something. In three months he had learned the ropes, that was all; how to fire and when to fire, where the Archie batteries were near Cambrai, how to ride a cloud and crawl into it--nothing more.

The weeks went on, creeping closer and closer to the twenty-first of March--the twenty-first of March--and with them the feeling crept into Paterson’s heart--a feeling that something frightful was to happen. Things had been quiet so long and casualties had been few. C Flight hadn’t been touched in weeks. He brooded over the thought and slept badly. He went to Amiens with P-B more frequently. If it was to be any of the three, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it. His bulwark would crumble and break and he would break with it. On the dawn patrols, those few minutes before they climbed into the cockpits and took off were agony: “This will be the day. It must be to-day. We can’t go on this way. Our luck will break.”

One day when they were escorting 119, four dots dived on them from behind and he knew suddenly what he would do. Stark, logically, the thing stood before him and beckoned through the wires of his centre section. If a shot hit his plane, he would go down. They were far over the lines, taking 110 on a bombing show. He would wabble down slowly, pushing his joy stick from side to side in a slow ellipse as if he were out of control. Then he would land and run his nose into the ground and be taken prisoner. The others would see him and swear that he’d been hit--and he wouldn’t do it until his machine had been hit. That for his own conscience’s sake and for the years he would have to live afterwards.

But A Flight, behind and far above, saw the dots and scattered them, and the chance was gone.

Then day by day he waited for another. He knew now that he would do it at the first opportunity. He slept better with the thought, and the minutes seemed shorter now while he waited at dawn for his bus to be run out. All the details were worked out in his mind. If any one of the three were close to him, he’d throw up his hands wildly before he started down. They’d see that and report it. Then when he landed he’d pull out the flare quick and burn his machine so that they would think he had crashed and caught fire. It was so easy!

He spent less time with P-B now. Somehow the old freedom was gone. Somehow Hoyt wasn’t the same to him either. He was working with three strangers he had never really known--three casual strangers he would leave shortly and never see again.

On the morning of the fourteenth of March the caller turned C Flight out suddenly, without warning, about an hour after P-B and Trent had returned from Amiens. A special signal had come in from wing headquarters. B Flight had the regular morning patrol, but there was to be an additional offensive patrol besides. A Flight had morning escort and the dusk patrol. That meant C for the special. Paterson could hear Hoyt swearing about it next door. P-B, across the room, uttered a mighty curse and rolled over. Paterson got him a bucket of cold water and doused his feverish head in it. Trent and Hoyt were still cursing pettishly in the next cubicle.

Sleep-stupid, the four of them stumbled into the mess for hard-boiled eggs and coffee. Mallory and the new man, Crowe, were already eating, white-faced and unshaven. They slumped down beside them in silence.

In silence, they trooped across the dark airdrome, buttoning their coats and fastening helmet straps against the cold wretchedness of the March wind. The machines were waiting for them in a ghostly line like staring wasps that had eaten the food of the gods and grown to gigantic size.

They climbed in and taxied out mechanically. B Flight had already left on the regular dawn patrol. They blipped their motors and roared away, leaving their echo and the sharp smell of castor oil behind on the empty ’drome.

Hoyt led them south to the crumpled ruins of Péronne and out to the line, climbing high to get the warmth of the sunlight that began to tint the clouds above them. They were going over to Le Cateau and beyond. Intelligence wanted pictures to confirm certain reports of new Hun shell dumps and battery concentration. The photographic planes were to go out and get them under escort as soon as there was enough light. As additional precaution, offensive patrols were to be kept up far over the enemy’s lines to insure the success of the pictures. They passed the sullen black stain that was Le Câtelet and turned to the eastward. The ground was already light and the camera busses would be starting.

Hoyt took the roof at eighteen thousand feet and skirted the cloud wisps, watching below for customers. Paterson watched P-B anxiously. He had been roaring drunk an hour before. Groggy and drunk still, probably. He closed in a trifle and climbed above him, but P-B waved him down and wiggled his fingers from the end of his nose.

He looked ahead and down at Trent. Trent had been drunk, too, but he was steady now, sawing wood above and slightly behind Hoyt.

Then, suddenly, beyond Trent and far below, he saw a Hun two-seater alone. The old stunt. Hoyt shifted and pulled up his nose to climb above it and wait. Trent followed him up. Somewhere above that two-seater, and a half mile behind, there would be a flight of Hun scouts skulking under the clouds, waiting to pounce on whoever dived for the two-seater. Hoyt knew it for a decoy. Paterson knew it. They would climb above the cloud edge, circle back, and catch the Hun scouts as they passed underneath.

Paterson trembled slightly. This was his chance at last. There’d be a long dive and a sure fight from behind, and in the mix-up he’d wabble down and out of the war via Lazaret VI in Cologne. He glanced around to see if Mallory was above him, and suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw P-B shove his nose full down and throw himself into a straight dive for the decoy bus.

He gazed and shouted “No!” into the roar of his engine. P-B, in a nasty temper and half fuddled, didn’t smell the trick. There was one awful second, while Crowe closed up into P-B’s place and Hoyt banked to wait above, for the Hun scouts to pounce down on the Camel.

P-B fired, pulled up and dived again, far below them. The Hun two-seater banked sharply and came up and over in an Immelmann turn to get away. P-B caught it halfway over and a trickle of smoke swept out from its engine. Then in an instant Hoyt dived, with the rest of C Flight after him.

The next thing Paterson knew there were two Huns on his tail and a stream of tracer bullets pecking at his left wing. He pulled back on his stick and zoomed headlong up under Mallory. So close he was for a second that he could see the wheels turning slowly on Mallory’s undercarriage and almost count the spokes glinting in the sunlight where the inside canvas sheathing had been taken off.

Mallory pulled away from him in a quick climbing turn and the Huns passed underneath, banking right and left. Paterson picked the left-hand one, thundered down on him in a short dive, and let go a burst of ten shots into the pilot’s back. He saw the pilot’s head snap sideways and his gloved hands fly up from the controls. Then Mallory dived over him after the other one. He turned in a wild split-air and followed Mallory.

There were more Huns below him and to the left, with two of the C Flight Camels diving and bucking between them. He raced furiously into a long dive, picked the nearest, and opened fire again in short, hammering bursts. His Hun wabbled and started down awkwardly in long sweeps. He picked another, still farther below, and pushed his stick forward until the rush of air gagged him. Wildly he fired as he ploughed down on it, and the chatter of his guns stabbed through the roar of his engine. He yelled like a madman, shot under the Hun, pulled up sharply, and fired into its gray mud-streaked belly. There was a fan of scarlet flame and a shock that tossed him to one side. He stalled and whipped out into a spin. Far below him he could see the decoy two-seater trailing a long plume of reddish smoke and flopping, wings over, toward the floor.

Then, suddenly, he saw his chance to wabble down and get away. He ruddered out of the spin and ran his stick once through the slow ellipse he had planned. But somehow he had to force himself to do it. There wasn’t the relief he had expected. He looked back. Three C-Flight machines were still above him, fighting madly--P-B, Trent, and Hoyt. No--not this time. He pulled his stick back and climbed up. There were five Huns circling the Camels. It was a long shot, but he fired at the nearest and came up under the tail just as one of the Camels hurtled into a nose dive, twisted over, and snapped off both wings. He saw the pilot’s arms raised wildly in the cockpit and no more.

Blood streamed into his mouth. He had torn his lips with his teeth in the excitement. The warm salty tang mounted to his brain. His goggles were sweat-fogged. His fingers ached with their pressure on the joy stick, and his arm was numb to the elbow. In a spasm of blind hatred, he fired. Tracers raced across his top plane and struck with little smoke puffs that ripped the fabric into ribbons. His own bullets clawed at the Hun above him and fanged home.

He threw himself up and over in an Immelmann turn and came under the next, still firing. He let go his stick and jerked his Lewis gun down its sliding mount on his top plane. It fired twice and jammed. He yanked madly at the cocking lug, but it stuck halfway. He hurtled down again in another spin. The ground swept around in a quick arc that ended in clouds and more Hun busses. He caught at his thrashing joy stick. Again the ground flashed through his centre section struts in a brown smudge, with the blaze of the sun hanging to one end of it. Then there was a Camel above him and a Camel below him. He closed in on the one below and squinted at the markings. Hoyt. He looked up at the other Camel, but the numerals on the side of its fuselage were hidden with a torn flap of fabric. Together, the three turned westward and started back.

Presently, near the line, the bus above him wabbled and dipped its nose. He stared at it. It went into a long, even glide that grew slowly steeper as he watched. He looked down for Huns. There were none. The glide became a dive, the dive twisted into an aimless spin, like the flopping of a lazy swimmer turning over in shallow water. The spin flattened and the Camel whipped out upside down, stalled, snapped out again, and again spun downward in that ghastly slow way. Over and over, only to whip out, stall and spin again. It was miles below him now. Nothing to do. Fascinated, he watched it as he followed Hoyt’s tail. It was a mere dot now, flashing once or twice in the sun as it flopped over and over. Close to the ground now--closer. Then, suddenly, a tiny sheet of pink flame leaped up like the flash of a far beacon. That was all.

Hoyt was side-slipping below him, and he saw his own airdrome under the leading edge of his bottom wing. He followed Hoyt down. They landed together and taxied slowly in toward the hangars. They stopped side by side and climbed out stiff-legged. Paterson looked down and saw that his right flying boot was torn and flayed into shreds across the outer side. There was a jagged fringe on the skirt of his coat where the leather had been ripped into ruffles. Dumbly, he looked back into his cockpit. The floor boards were splintered and the wicker arm of his seat was eaten away. He shrugged and walked over toward Hoyt. There was blood on the rabbit fur of Hoyt’s goggles, blood that oozed slowly down and dripped from his chin piece in bright drops.

“Cigarette?”

Paterson gave him one. They walked into the flight office and slumped into chairs. Hoyt ripped off his helmet and dabbed at the scratch on his cheek. “I’m glad you got out, Pat,” he said absently.

Then the fear spot broke and spattered into the four corners of Paterson’s soul. He sprang up trembling, with his fists beating the air.

“The dirty lice!” he screamed. “They’ve killed P-B! They’ve killed Trent! D’y’ hear me, Hoyt?--they’ve killed ’em! They’re gone! They’ll never come back! They’ve----”

Hoyt’s voice came evenly, calmly, through his screaming. “Steady, boy! Steady! You can’t help it. No one can. Steady, now!”

A mat of white oil-splotched faces stared at them from the open doorway that led into the hangar. The boy turned wildly. “Clear out!” he shrieked. They vanished, open-mouthed. Hoyt drew him down into a chair. “No, Hoyt, no! Can’t you see? P-B and you and Trent have meant everything to me. I can’t go on. I’ve fought this thing till I’m crazy.” Hoyt reached quickly and slammed the door. “I’ve fought it night and day!” He threw up his arms hopelessly and covered his face with his shaking hands.

Hoyt put his hand on his trembling shoulders and patted them. “Steady, now! Steady! None of that!” he said awkwardly.

Paterson’s head whipped down across his sprawled arms on the desk top and the sobs tore at his throat in great gusts that choked him. “Oh, God!” he sobbed. “What’s it all about, Hoyt? What’s the use of it?”

“Steady, son! I don’t know. Nobody knows. It just happened, as everything happens. It’s much too late to talk causes. We’re here and we know what we have to do. That’s enough for us. It’s all we have anyway, so it must be enough.” He took his blood-soaked cigarette from his mouth and hurled it into a corner. It landed with a soft spat.

Someone knocked at the door. “Come in.” It was the runner from squadron office. He saluted. “Yes?” said Hoyt.

The man glanced at Paterson’s face and snapped his eyes quickly back to the captain’s.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “Squadron’s just been signalled through wing. One of the C Flight machines came down near B Battery, the 212th.”

“Who was it?” asked Hoyt.

“Lieutenant Mallard, they reported it, sir. That’ll be Lieutenant Mallory, sir, won’t it?”

“Yes.” Hoyt’s voice was quite flat. “Thank you.”

The man saluted again and shut the door. Hoyt dabbed at his cheek and reached into his desk drawer for another cigarette. Paterson stood up suddenly and grabbed his arm. “Listen, skipper!” Hoyt’s eyes met his calmly. “I’m going to tell you something. I’ll feel better if I do. I’ve been a weak sister in this flight. I’ve planned for days to go down and let myself be taken prisoner--to get out of it all. I’ve been sick of it--sick of it, d’y’ hear, until I couldn’t think straight. I wanted to get out alive. I wanted to get away in any way I could. This morning I broke. I let go and started down----”

Hoyt smiled. “Your trouble, Pat, is that you think you’re the only person in this jolly old war.”

Paterson stared at him. “But I did! I started down, out of it, this morning!”

“How’d you get here?” asked Hoyt.

“But if I hadn’t broken for that moment this morning----”