the plane was running like a dream at an altitude of 1,800 feet and due west when they became aware of two tiny lights far below them. not a glimmer was there anywhere near them and if troyes were down there it was cautious enough to keep itself in the dark. archer says that slade did not speak to him nor even answer when he spoke, and he could only surmise what the pilot was about. he saw the altimétre register lower and presently he saw another light, the three forming a triangle. slade said something about their being within gun fire range, but archer could not hear him clearly and instinctively he kept still.
“i think it’s it,” he finally heard slade say.
archer did not fully understand why slade thought it was “it.” he confesses that he was “nerrvous and flusterred” and did not dare to ask questions.
“get your stuff ready,” he heard slade say. “do you see another light? there must be a patrol out—that’s lucky.”
as we know, troyes was one of the places which slade had often visited upon his official errands, and there he had once or twice met archer. so we may assume that he knew something of the neighboring aviation school and field with its guiding corner lights. if there had been no patrol out these lights would not have been burning. at a second’s notice any one or all of them could be turned into a giant finger to probe the heavens, and slade knew this.
in retelling, as well as i can, from archer’s fragmentary narrative, the tale of their heroic fight, i wish not to minimize the element of luck, nor, upon the other hand, to draw upon my imagination. if i had slade’s story i could write from the standpoint of the pilot, but as it is i am writing from the standpoint of his anxious companion who did his little part, kept discreetly silent and waited in suspense.
that slade should have flown due west upon the strength of an original calculation and come directly over this place was remarkable and greatly to his credit. but he was mistaken in supposing that there would be a glare from the lights of the town and it was a piece of sheer luck that the corner lights of the big field were burning, for the night was not propitious for patrols.
archer had just spied a fourth light, completing a square, and was dipping his tightly wound shirt into the gasolene, when a long, dusky column moved across the darkness, hesitated, groped, moved toward them, then away again, and then—there they were in a field of brightness and he saw slade as he had not seen him in nearly a year.
“he looked olderr and his big mouth was shut tight as if he was mad, but i could see how his two hands that held the controls were steady, just like that (he gripped one of the bars of the bed to show me), and i could even see the ring on his fingerr just as plain as day.”
a shot rang out and the plane shook “just like a dog shakes himself.” he saw slade yank back the larger lever and reach below him for another. for a few seconds he was pushing and pulling—the terrible shaking ceased—darkness.
archer was trembling like a leaf.
“a miss is as good as a mile,” he heard slade say. “don’t get rattled, she’s stable, drop your note, quick! i’m going to get out of this!”
it seemed to archer but half a second and then the four lights were far away, so quickly is distance multiplied by the slightest movement in the air. it seemed now that the square was all askew and the odd fancy occurred to him that the shock of that gun away down there had knocked it out of shape.
“see it?” he heard slade say without any trace of excitement.
archer looked and saw far below them and some distance to the west the little flickering light of the descending torch, growing smaller— smaller—until it disappeared. he tried to determine whether it was within the radius of the square but that was quite impossible, for the square kept changing, and as a sort of vent to his suspense he watched it, expecting every second to find himself in another glare of light, and then to go tumbling down through space. now those far-off lights formed a diamond, now they seemed to form almost a straight line, then opened into a crazy sort of square and again looked like a part of the big dipper; and the whimsical thought came to archer that they were above the stars and looking down on them.
he knew, of course, that these odd effects were caused by slade’s manouvering, but he had never seen such effects produced while riding on an express train or any other sort of conveyance, and the experience fascinated him much more than did the very simple and obvious devices for controlling their craft. “i felt as if i didn’t belong to the worrld at all,” he said.
he does not know how long they manouvered, nor how much area they covered in doing so, because there is hardly such a thing as distance in an airplane. an aviator may go five miles to turn around. “all i know is,” he said, “that pretty soon i saw something down therre, but not just below me, just like a picture comes on the movie screen when the audience is all in the darrk. i saw the buildings and everything and long lines, white kind of, like a baseball field, only the buildings were all built slanting-ways, like, as if the wind that was blowin’ a little while before had kind of pushed them over one way. believe me, i’ve sat up in the top galleries at a good many movie shows, but i neverr, neverr, neverr saw such a big, clearr screen.... ‘slady,’ i shouted, ‘look at those buildings, will you, how they’rre all fallen overr sideways—’ ‘i don’t know which one of us is a bigger fool,’ slady answered, pulling on the stick that moves the sideways thing in back and grabbin’ the otherr one that he called the broomstick. ‘look at ’em, will you!’ i shouted. ‘they’rre built crazy, or something!’ ‘you’re built crazy or something,’ slady said, ‘look at ’em now.’ and just then they straightened all up like regular buildings, long barrns, sorrt of, and the white lines made a big square, all nice and even like. ‘i swept ’em straight with the broomstick,’ slady says, in that soberr way of his, and just then the whole place tipped up like as if it was going to spill all the buildings off it and everything was all crooked again. ‘have a hearrt, slady!’ i shouted. ‘you’ll spill the whole concarrned village if you pull that thing again!’”
“did slade laugh?” i asked.
“no, he didn’t. he just said he was a fool to tell them to fire three shots when he might have known that if they believed the message they’d just illuminate the field. ‘maybe they’ll fire ’em anyway,’ he said. ‘i hope they don’t fire ’em up herre,’ i told him. he didn’t pay any attention to me, only kept scowlin’ like he always did when he was especially interested and kept his hands and feet both busy.
“pretty soon therre were three shots and i guess they knew down therre that everything was all right because when we asked for three shots, that showed we were greenhorns, all right. but they gave ’em anyway. ‘what’ll i do now?’ i said to slady, for i was feeling mighty glad that we’d got there and that everything was all right. ‘don’t do anything except shut up,’ he says, so i just watched him like mamma’s good little boy while he pulled and pushed and i could see from the altimetrrre that we werre going down.
“we werren’t over the bright field at all then—he’d got way overr to the west of it or the south of it—i don’t know—and the whole business was up slanting ways again—way up. then all of a sudden the long buildings began to straighten out and be theirr right shapes again almost, and then just like that (he clapped his hands with a resounding smack by way of illustration) therre they werre away overr at the otherr end of the great big field standing as straight as soldierrs and as squarre as a choppin’-block, and us coming straight towarrds them, and there was a company of frenchies all lined up waitin’, maybe on account of its seemin’ sorrt of like a kamarad game, and there was fellerrs running out of those long buildings pell-mell towarrds us and it was a regularr kind of a circus. i guess we hit terra-cotta[7] too near the buildings maybe, but anyway it was all right. a lieutenant climbed up and took a squint at us and says, ‘good shot,’ and then there was a crowd all around us—fellerrs that had been asleep, i guess, and a lot morre. the firrst thing i did when i got a chance i went overr and took a look at those long barrns—dorrmitories, they were, and i said to a sarrgeant that was therre, gaping all overr his face, i says, ‘i want to make surre these things ain’t built like accordions, ’cause, believe me, you can twist ’em every which way when you’rre up in the airrrr!’”
“see if you can’t say air,” i said, smiling as he sat back in his wheel chair, quite exhausted.
“airrrrre,” he repeated.
“good!” i laughed.
7. if he heard any such word as this used, it was probably terra firma.
