“twenty below zero,” said bob, as he brushed the icicles from the thermometer outside the door of his shack, “and it’s the twenty-third of december. how low does it fall, i wonder, denby?”
“don’t know, sir,” answered the corporal gloomily. “i never look at the temperature—i can feel it all right. but pavlo, here, told me this wasn’t very cold for them.”
bob closed the door and turned to look at the russian peasant who was on his knees beside the stove, stoking it with small pieces of wood.
“he seems to keep warm enough, yet he hasn’t as thick clothes on as we,” he remarked, studying pavlo’s hunched-up figure, in sheepskin jacket and round fur cap.
“no, sir, but he stays on level ground,” said denby. “i don’t believe there’s anything would keep out the wind up there.” he jerked his head toward the sky, picked up fur helmet, gloves and goggles and handed them to his captain.
“i shan’t want you to go up with me to-day, denby,” bob told him. “i’ll take a single-seater and scout along the river.”
bob wore a heavy fur flying-suit, leather lined. his helmet covered all of head and face not protected by his goggles. over his boots would be drawn a second pair, made of skins sewn together with the fur left on. yet he faced the arctic winter day reluctantly. bob had always hated extreme cold, even in his boyhood days at home, and two years of the mild french climate had completely spoiled him for ice and blizzards. and the archangel winter came near to being what up to now he had only known of in books of polar exploration, read before a blazing fire:—a wilderness of snow and ice, and a thermometer that dropped steadily lower every day, until the freezing misty air penetrated through any number of layers of clothing to the very bone.
it was not only this, however, which made bob linger at the doorway of his shack instead of starting off to his afternoon’s work with his usual alacrity. he felt no enthusiasm for the present campaign. it seemed to him a miserable mistake, a gloomy anticlimax to the war’s glorious ending. russia ought not to be an enemy, but an ally. the spectre of bolshevism, stalking so boldly abroad upon these frozen plains, rose up to cloud the joy he had known for a few weeks after the great victory.
more than this, he knew at heart with the soldier’s clear-seeing mind, that the american and british lives to be pitifully lost on the snow-fields of archangel could not stem the tide of bolshevism, which, if it were to be fought at all, needed a mighty effort to crush its maddened onslaught. bob’s thoughts of all this were vague and undefined as he pulled on his gloves and left the shack with denby beside him. but they were persistent enough to take the edge off his energy, and to change the ardent eagerness of past months to a dogged, but low-spirited, determination to do his duty.
from a big flying-shed a hundred yards away an aviator was coming toward him, running stiffly over the snow to start the blood in his cramped limbs. a second flying-shed stood near the first, with a small barrack and half a dozen shacks beside it. a snowy road wound past them across the plain to the town of archangel two miles away. the noon sky was cloudy and threatening, hiding the winter sun from the cold earth. a single plane droned overhead, flying northeast.
“beastly weather, gordon, i’ll say. got a good fire in the shack?” called out the aviator who now approached him, clapping his numbed hands together.
“yes—i wish i could take it with me,” responded bob. “what news, turner? anything i should know?”
“i got one sketch of their new trench line, but it’s not very satisfactory. continue scouting along the river, will you? that’s morton you see up there. he’s going north. by the way, the bolshies are getting some planes rigged up—pretty good ones. look out for them. i almost ran into one in these everlasting clouds. so long.”
he ran on toward the shack, while bob and denby continued to the flying-shed, where the mechanics, at sight of denby in overcoat instead of flying clothes, began to roll out a little nieuport monoplane on to the smooth-packed snow.
“going up alone, sir?” concluded one of the soldiers, saluting bob as he put the question.
“yes,” he nodded, beginning to look over the airplane before him with the intentness of the man who knows that he must trust his life to those frail wings. denby followed bob’s eyes, and neither officer nor corporal seemed overpleased with their inspection, though bob said only:
“no news of the nieuports we expected this week, rogers? did you make inquiries at the port yesterday?”
“yes, sir—they’ve received nothing there. but i’ve gone well over this one. it flew well, you said, sir, the last time you were up.”
“oh, yes. nothing to complain of. let’s have the boots, denby.”
the corporal slipped the fur leg-coverings over bob’s feet, and, when the aviator was seated in the little plane, fastened the straps across his body. then, unwilling that the others should take his place, he ran to twirl the propeller. the nieuport ran along the snow and rose into the dull, cold air.
bob pointed upward, making for a level above the first low-lying belt of clouds. the motor was running smoothly. bob told himself that he was growing cranky, and that he must cease regretting the spy-hawk and make the best of things. but telling himself so did not do much good. he wanted the airplane of his choice to fly in, as a good horseman wants his own racer, tried and proved on many a turf. on the western front bob had had his pick of french and american planes—the famous ace was welcome to all or any. but here at this outpost of the russian wilderness the supply of airplanes so far was meagre. he had to fly in whatever he could get hold of; and often, against his grain, was obliged to scout in battle-planes, or risk flights under heavy fire in light scouting craft.
now he was above some of the shifting clouds, and, flying slowly, he looked down upon the river dwina, its broad stream choked with blocks of ice, between which the deep blue water gleamed. in spite of the clouds and mist a glorious panorama lay spread below him as, hovering for a moment before commencing his eastward flight, he made a careful survey with his glasses in every direction.
he was almost over the river, facing northeast. on his left lay the town of archangel, its roofs snow-buried. west of it was the ice-bound gulf of archangel, and, beyond that, the wide frozen expanse of the white sea. in front of him stretched the endless plains that fronted the arctic ocean. on his right, far up the river, he caught a glimpse of the town of kholmogory.
there was something inexpressibly dreary and abandoned about the scene. the very names were barbaric and meaningless on his lips. “petrograd seems almost near home,” he thought, “now that i’m six hundred miles north of it.”
he turned east and began following the course of the dwina to where, around a little village nestling by its banks, he could see american troops in squads and companies moving here and there, and motor-trucks painfully nosing their way along a snow-blocked road. a trench-line was faintly visible, east and west of the river. not a shot disturbed the silence, in which the roar of his airplane’s motor was the only sound.
bob flew on eastward, approaching the bolshevik lines. the enemy was strongly entrenched, with artillery behind him, but at the first snow-falls the fighting had grown intermittent. bursts of firing and short, hard-fought engagements alternated with days of inactivity on both sides. as he flew over the trenches now anti-aircraft guns were trained on him and shots came near enough to make him rise another hundred feet.
for the second time in two days bob remarked with surprise the presence of a growing purpose and organization among his adversaries. the bolsheviki seemed to be abandoning their somewhat hit-or-miss methods for a better ordered scheme. ordered by whom? bob had heard rumors of russian officers of the old army forced into bolshevism to train trotsky’s red troops.
he flew on behind the trenches, risking a lower level in his desire to see the new lines of communication, unsurveyed up to now by the tiny handful of american and british aviators around archangel. for a few moments he dodged back and forth in quick tacks to throw the gunners off their aim. then, leaning out over the cockpit, with his glasses he studied the narrow lines showing dark against the snow-fields. in five minutes the deadly fire of the anti-aircraft guns forced him to rise again above the clouds. he rapidly sketched in on his field map what he had seen, ready to try another descent.
the icy air penetrating his lungs made him gasp a little. the air seemed to have substance, body, as though he were in the grip of a block of ice. it got past the ear-tabs of his helmet and made his ears tingle. his feet were numb through leather and fur. in the dull cheerlessness of his mood a profound depression began to steal over him, but at the same time half-unconsciously he fought against it, and some forgotten lines came into his mind with all the vividness of words learned in childhood. he found himself silently repeating them:
“say not the struggle naught availeth,
the labor and the wounds are vain——”
he went on saying over the fine solemn words as he swung the nieuport down again through the fog:
“—it may be, in yon smoke concealed,
your comrades chase e’en now the flyers
and, but for you, possess the field.”
he was hardly at the last line when a fokker biplane broke through the clouds in front of him.
the enemy plane had not risen in pursuit of the american. its guns were not trained on the nieuport. in that fleeting glimpse bob saw that the fokker’s gunner, glasses raised, was observing his own lines below, while the pilot man?uvred the plane over rifts in the cloudy floor. but at sight of the nieuport the gunner flashed his weapons into range, though no shots followed, for at once the drifting clouds hid the two antagonists from each other.
all his slumbering energies aroused, bob leaned forward with keenest intentness, trying to see through the treacherous misty curtain. he glanced at his machine-guns, made sure that his motor was running smooth, and rose a little higher, hoping to get above the fokker and avoid surprise.
he thought swiftly as he prepared for attack, still puzzled by the enemy plane’s appearance. it was a german machine—no doubt about that. he supposed the bolsheviki had bought or stolen it. vague suspicions, already aroused during the past few days, stirred him once more, but again he rejected them.
“i think he’s a german because inwardly i’m longing to bring down another german plane,” he told himself.
he tried to picture the faces and figures of the men in the fokker, as they had flashed close beside him, but they were like himself unrecognizable in fur and helmet. five minutes passed before the fokker again appeared, this time greeting the nieuport with a broadside that sent bullets whizzing past bob’s ears to cut into the fog behind him.
bob rose again, filled with ardor, and determined, more than ever in the presence of this menacing intruder, to accomplish what he had come out for and get the rest of his sketch of the new bolshevik lines. he climbed at high speed, darted about until he saw the fokker cruising through the clouds below, then plunged down above it and delivered a hail of bullets on its broad spreading wings.
as he dodged and rose again he watched the enemy sway and nose-dive into a cloud-bank. he noticed that the wings were bare of emblems. the german crosses—if they had been there—were gone. the fokker recovered and rose again, the fabric of its upper planes slashed by the nieuport’s bullets.
bob was uncertain what tactics to follow. so far he could not be sure whether his adversary was sly or stupid. the fokker’s pilot seemed to have little initiative, yet he man?uvred the heavy plane skillfully. it dipped and climbed almost at the little nieuport’s speed. unless the pilot were a clumsy bolshevik amateur bob could never hope to disable the fokker from his own light craft. the best he could hope was to scare him off or lose him in the clouds.
suddenly all doubt of the enemy’s skill vanished, for the fokker headed straight for the nieuport and, firing repeatedly with well-aimed volleys, circled about the little monoplane, which turned tail and retreated up into the sky, where the heavy fokker could but slowly follow.
at 9,000 feet bob paused, for the enemy had stopped rising 1,000 feet below him and seemed to be awaiting developments. bob was too high for convenient observation and the drifting clouds annoyingly obscured his vision. he peered down at the bolshevik lines, nevertheless, keeping one eye on his enemy, who was all but in range and waiting inexorably. after ten minutes’ more sketching, by frequent change of position and some clever guesswork, he had got most of the information he wanted. now he began to cast uneasy glances toward the fokker which flew back and forth on the watch, just above the clouds.
bob had never been good at a waiting game, and this cat-like proceeding got on his nerves. he began to feel trapped, and in consequence defiant. he reloaded both guns, speeded up his motor, and without warning dropped like a plummet over the cruising fokker and emptied both guns over cockpit and rudder.
this done, however, he was obliged to fly still lower before he could attempt a climbing turn. the fokker, though bullet-riddled and one plane sagging, followed him down, spraying the little nieuport with a deadly fire. bob realized now his own rashness in not fleeing at once before an enemy who so outmatched him. the truth was he had not been able to convince himself that any bolshevik flyer could outmatch him, even in a battle plane twice the nieuport’s size.
he hid in the clouds, looking with anxious misgiving at his torn wings and suddenly aware that his rudder did not obey him with exactness. once more the fokker passed him, slowly this time, for to bob’s tremendous relief, he saw that the enemy plane was badly crippled and had lost some of its speed. in the same breadth of time he saw at last the pilot’s face. hidden by helmet and goggles, he recognized the shape of that big chin, the turn of the head, the stoop of the broad shoulders. he had seen that man a thousand times over the battle-fields of france,—rittermann, one of the last of germany’s veteran flyers.
bob turned the nieuport westward, put on what speed he could and ran away at eighty miles an hour. he steered for his own station, east of archangel, following the river which wound below him, the water gleaming darkly through the ice in the approaching twilight. but the nieuport’s rudder did not obey his touch. the monoplane veered northward, slackened speed. bob looked back, his mind whirling a little, then drew a long hard breath. the fokker had lost him. he was within the american lines again, but north of the dwina, above a rough, ice-covered plain cut into hummocks and ridges, broken just beneath him by the bare branches of a wood.
he wanted badly to land but saw no possible landing-place in sight, and the familiar home field was far away. he turned with difficulty and began flying back toward the american trenches, seeking the village by the river where the companies of infantry were billeted. but in the past half hour the early arctic night had begun to fall. by his wrist-watch it was quarter to three, and he knew that by three o’clock it would be almost dark. the cold was so intense it numbed his power to think, and his rudder, struck by the fokker’s bullets, responded more feebly every moment.
he flew on eastward, crossed the river below the clouds, and began searching the banks for the village, looking for its lights, for now a glimmering dusk spread over the desolate landscape. in another five minutes the lights shone out,—a dozen tiny twinkling points about two miles ahead of him. he pushed on, hoping against hope to cover that short space, but a few moments more convinced him of the worst. his heart sank like lead as his desperate eyes watched the gleaming white snow-fields below him.
“the first time in all these years,” he thought miserably. “my spy-hawk would have held on——”
the nieuport’s wings sagged lower. its rudder no longer obeyed bob’s frenzied pressure. for the first time since that day in 1917 when he and benton had come down in german territory to be taken prisoners, bob—an ace and the hero of many victories—was forced to land at night on unknown ground in an airplane that shook and quivered under him as it flew crookedly downward, the fokker’s bullets too much for its imperfect frame.
a forced landing in the dark—a moment before bob had thought that bad enough. but now, as the nieuport quickened the plunge which he was helpless to arrest, he realized that truth with a thrill of terror. the motor missed, choked, stopped running. in the silence that succeeded the propeller’s roar the wind whistled past the wings as the plane fell. bob looked down at the white-shining earth below, his heart leaping in his throat, his head whirling as the blood rushed to his temples. the snow rose with a dizzy swiftness to meet him. the plane struck, nose down, with a shock that hurled him through the air. he fell onto the hard surface, one leg doubled under him, from which such darts of agony shot through him that with a groan he lost consciousness.
when he came slowly to himself, forced back to life by the stabbing pain in his right leg, bob opened his eyes on darkness, felt the icy night wind sweep past him and sharp, cold particles pressing against his outspread hands. he rolled over on his back, not without a groan at the renewed torment of his leg, and stared up at the sky, where, between the flying clouds, scattered stars shone with cold brilliance. he felt hard lumps like stones sticking into his back, but he could think clearly enough now to know that the lumps were hardened snow, and that the deadly chill penetrating him through fur and leather garments would but too soon be followed by numbness and yielding to a sleep from which he would never wake.
painfully raising his head he could see the faint lights of the village, not a mile away. could he freeze to death within sight of help,—within a few miles of his own flying-field? a desperate determination roused him to fight against the agony of his broken leg and do what lay in his power to save his life. life was, all at once, inexpressibly dear to him. spent with pain and cold as he was, the blood flowed warm in his veins and resolution conquered his weakness. but already cold had so far overpowered his brain that his mind was at moments clouded, and it was then that the coward part of him bade him lie down and forget the horrible pain that every movement cost him, and sink into oblivion.
the airplane was not a dozen feet away. he could see its dark blot against the snow, and the outline of its broken wings. if he could climb upon its frame, he thought, away from the snow that was freezing him, he might summon force enough to keep alive till daylight. daylight on the white sea! it was not more than six o’clock in the evening now, and dawn would not break before eight o’clock of the following day. he knew that turner and denby would soon be out searching for him, but by what lucky chance would they stumble upon him? they had more than fifty miles to cover—a wide expanse, even with airplane search-lights.
he took his lip between his teeth as he turned over again on his face and began crawling toward the nieuport. he panted as he dragged himself along, for he could do no more than bend his left leg and catch at the snow with his gloved hands. the uneven snow-crust striking his right leg and jarring the broken bones hurt so atrociously that after two yards he stopped dead and, laying his face on the snow, in pain and despair almost lost consciousness once more. but something in him still resisted—something dogged and heroic that had made him the flyer he was—that had led him to sergeant cameron’s prison. he raised his head and crawled on again, reached the nieuport and, finding one of its wings lying almost flat along the ground, managed to drag himself upon it and lay there gasping and dizzy.
the wing was almost on the snow and its torn fabric not much protection from the icy surface. still there was a difference, and the fact of having accomplished his purpose made bob more able to keep up the struggle. after a moment he tried to shout, but one hoarse, shaky cry told him the uselessness of wasting his little force. the whistling night wind snatched his feeble voice away before it had travelled over the smallest part of the great spaces around him. he looked up at the airplane’s wings and thought with sudden inspiration that he might set them afire as a signal. he was actually feeling inside his furs for his matches before it occurred to his dazed mind that the gasoline would ignite with the plane and that, helpless as he was, he would never get away in time.
at this quenched hope he was horribly cast down. despair threatened again to overwhelm him. nevertheless he went on dully scheming. after a few minutes of aimlessly wandering thoughts another idea came to him, and this time his heart gave a faint leap, almost of hope. he braced himself to endure the agony of movement, squirmed around until he could reach into the airplane’s cockpit and, after a painful search, closed his fingers on a pair of pliers.
he slipped off the sagging wing on to the snow again, lay there a moment breathing hard, for every effort made his strained heart race and hammer, then began cutting the wire of the wing and ripping away the fabric. presently he held some wide strips of silk and a long piece of wire. he fastened the silk in streamers at the end of the wire and, taking the wire between his teeth, crawled away from the plane. a dozen yards distant human nature could endure no more and he lay back on the snow, feeling nothing but the throbs of agony that darted from his broken leg into every part of his body.
yet in a minute he sat up, planted the wire in the snow and, drawing out his matches, managed, after several trials in the gusty wind, to set the silk on fire. he caught hold of the wire now, and, heedless of pain, lifted himself as much as he could and waved the flaming streamers about his head until the blaze shrank down to sparks and went out, leaving him with false flashes of light before his eyes in the darkness.
he waved the flaming streamers about his head
he waved the flaming streamers about his head
bob did not know just what happened after that. he lay down again and tried to steel himself once more to endure the pain, to stay awake, and to go on hoping. but the effort to keep repeating these resolves was too terrific. he felt that he was attempting problems utterly beyond his power, and every now and then he would rouse himself with a start and realize that he had been very near dreaming.
the stars shone more thickly now overhead. he tried to count them, lost track, began again. he could hardly remember where he was. he was not nearly so cold as before—he was almost comfortable. he seemed to have no feeling at all in his body, except for his leg which still throbbed dully. all at once, through the numbing of his senses, he was dimly aware of a sound in the snow near him, a kind of crackling, steadily repeated. some lingering sense of reality made him suddenly realize that the sound was of footsteps approaching him, or at least passing near. as he roused all his remaining energy in a desperate attempt to cry out the footsteps ceased, and from beside the demolished plane a voice shouted:
“ah, there! speak if you can! where are you?”
bob made some sort of sound—he did not quite know what. but it was enough to bring the footsteps close beside him. a figure loomed above him in the darkness, an electric torch flashed over his prostrate form, and, as the man knelt by bob’s side, the light showed the uniform of a british tommy, a muffler-wrapped throat and a lean red face, with breath puffing white into the freezing air.
“came down, eh? it was you what waved the signal?” he inquired, his keen eyes wandering over bob. “'ow much are you hurt? can you walk, me 'elpin’ you?”
“no, i can’t walk. you’ll have to fetch help,” said bob, still struggling to cling to reality. one-half of him was gloriously happy at this deliverance, but the other half wanted to forget and go to sleep and could hardly tell the soldier what to do. “go to nikolsk, that village where you see the lights,” he continued. “americans are billeted there. ask them to send a detail of hospital corps men with an ambulance. make sure of where i am. have you a compass?”
“but can you stick it? i’ll be gone an hour,” said the tommy doubtfully. bob’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper, and there was a pause between his words when his thoughts failed him.
“i’ll stick it. make it as quick as you can,” he answered.
the britisher still lingered. bob heard him murmur something which sounded like, “well, looks like it’s got to be done.” the next moment bob heard a garment of some sort flung down and spread out on the snow beside him, and felt himself lifted cautiously by the shoulders and dragged, before he could protest at the handling, on to something like a blanket. “carry on now. i’ll keep my feet movin’,” said the tommy, and with the words he ran off into the darkness.
bob felt with his hands of the fabric spread under him, touched a cloth sleeve and knew that he was lying on the soldier’s overcoat. a faint thrill at this generous act touched his dulled senses. but he no longer felt the cold and did not care whether he lay on snow or blankets. he had a feeling now that all was settled. at moments he even thought that he had got back to his station and was in bed. at any rate he knew that he had not to think or plan any more. he fell asleep.
