The Yellow Dove/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
FROM THE HEIGHTS
HAMMERSLEY had him covered, and the General made no move to defend himself. He bent his head and folded his arms, peering into Hammersley’s eyes like a short-sighted man trying to adjust his vision to an unaccustomed task. But his frown relaxed almost immediately and his lips separated, showing a gleam of teeth.
“My compliments, Herr Hammersley,” he said. “You have done well. It pleases me to meet at last”
“Move your right hand again the fraction of an inch and I will shoot, Excellenz,” said Hammersley, in the sharp, quick accents of a resolute man.
Von Stromberg only smiled more broadly. But he did not move. He had seen enough of Herr Hammersley to respect his sincerity.
“I have staked my professional reputation upon your presence elsewhere, Herr Hammersley. Instinct, perhaps, led me here. I do not know what else. But I came alone. I am not armed.”
Hammersley was in no mood for trifling and time was flying. Better to shoot the man and be done with it, but he couldn’t, somehow. Instead he searched him quickly for weapons.
“You’re too late, Excellenz. I am sorry, but I have no time for conversation.”
“You will at least let me pay you the compliment of saying that the Prussian blood in you has made you the most brilliant Englishman I have ever met.”
“I have no time to match phrases with you”
“Ach, but you match what is much more important—a genius for dissimulation. Yesterday you disappointed me, Herr Hammersley, with your talk of plans—of fortifications—of Strassburg. I had been hoping that you were playing a deeper game, something that would relieve the flat monotony of my routine. You were to save me from utter boredom. It is true. I had hoped that. I was disappointed when I thought that you were like the others. Disappointed! I should have known”
“And now that I have the papers—what are you going to do about it?” asked Hammersley with a touch of bravado.
Von Stromberg shrugged.
“I confess that I am so rapt in admiration of your genius that I am at a loss—I must yield to the inevitable. But I am happy in the knowledge that only a person of the skill of Herr Hammersley could have succeeded in outwitting the head of the Secret Service Department of the Empire.”
“Enough of this!” Hammersley broke in. “I should kill you, General von Stromberg, but I won’t if you obey me promptly. Stand aside—over there—against the wall. If you move, I’ll shoot. I’m going out of here.”
Von Stromberg did as he was bidden, and his long strides and erect carriage had lost none of their dignity. When he reached the wall he turned with a smile. Then he said suavely:
“I fear, Herr Hammersley, that you will not go forth as rapidly as you like.”
Hammersley only laughed at him.
“We’ll see about that.” He took a stride to the canvas curtain and had a quick look outside. And then to the girl: “Crank her, Doris! The compressed air—the button to the left beside the wheel!”
There was a long pause when Doris reached forward in her seat. A pause filled with meanings for Hammersley, in which his fate and hers, was hanging in the balance. Von Stromberg seemed to read his thoughts, and the wolfish smile spread again over his face.
“It is just possible,” he said blandly, “that someone may have been tinkering with the machinery.”
There was another long silence—a moment of agony for Hammersley.
“Yes, I have,” roared Hammersley exultantly.
For just then there was a violent explosion, deafening in the enclosed space, like the roar of a giant cracker would have been—another—and then more rapidly another, followed by a number of concussions, like a pack of giant crackers catching intermittently and then in quick succession.
General von Stromberg’s smile faded—then vanished in a look of inefficacy and dismay. He was senile. Hammersley’s grin derided him. Speech was impossible, but the muzzle of the automatic was as eloquent as before. One more explosion or six, for that matter, would add little to the din. Von Stromberg’s life hung by a hair at that moment and he knew it. Still covering His Excellency, who was now glancing at the slit in the curtain beside him, Hammersley climbed up to the seat in front of Doris in the cockpit of the machine. And just as he was putting a leg over, His Excellency took a quick glance upward, which had in it a world of expression—and bolted.
Hammersley’s shot must have missed. He looked around at Doris and laughed, and she saw the light of triumph that rode in his eyes. The exhaust was roaring steadily now, but with one hand on the wheel and in the other his automatic, Hammersley sat motionless, watching the slits in the canvas for the men that he knew must come in a moment. At a gesture of his, Doris sank low in the cockpit, her hands on the wheel, watching, too, and ready to do her share as Cyril had directed. One—two minutes passed—she seemed to be counting the seconds. The body of the machine was trembling as though with the excitement of the moment and the explosions had blended into one continuous roar. Cyril threw the clutch in and the note lowered as the propellers began to whirr. The huge fabric jumped forward, gathering momentum as it went, until by the time it reached the canvas curtain in front of it, it was going as fast as a man would run. The weight of the heavy flap retarded it for a moment, but it went steadily on, and the canvas was pushed outward—then rose—it seemed to Doris like the curtain on a melodrama. Men were running up, shooting as they ran. They clutched at the toggles and swung off their feet, falling in a heap upon the ground. She saw a man, the only one not in uniform, take hold of the lower plane and try to stop the momentum. It was John Rizzio. She saw his face for a second, dark, handsome, smiling. Cyril rose in his seat and their weapons streamed fire. Rizzio moved backward with the machine, still clinging to the lower plane, and then disappeared, passing under it, just where the blades of the right-hand propeller were.
A slight shock and a shapeless mass went rolling over and over until it brought up motionless against the jamb of the door. Two other men, Foresters, warned by Rizzio’s fate, sprang aside with horror in their eyes. Doris sank lower in her seat, her cheeks bloodless, grasping her wheel with icy hands, filled with horror. Cyril had sunk down in his seat, clutching at the side of the cockpit, his weapon falling from his fingers. With an effort she steadied her hold on the wheel. The canvas curtain had passed over their heads. They were in the open. To the right, coming from the Windenberg road, a machine filled with men was dashing across the field before them at a diagonal which would intercept them. She heard shots near at hand. Cyril did not move. She had a glimpse of General von Stromberg, who had snatched a pistol from the hand of the nearest soldier and fired.
They were moving fast. But the automobile in the field before them seemed to be moving faster—Captain Wentz and four men! She saw Cyril’s hand rise in front of her, pointing to the left to avoid them, but Wentz came on. The Yellow Dove was still running on its wheels. She saw the danger. Wentz was aiming at a collision. She pulled her wheel toward her instinctively and the Yellow Dove rose, skimming the ground. She felt it lifting, slowly, now rapidly. The automobile seemed about to strike them. Another jerk on the wheel and the skids of the Yellow Dove just grazed the wind-shield of the machine, and a soldier leaped into the air, trying to catch a hold, missed and tumbled to the ground. In the car men were shouting like demons, and a volley of pistol bullets pierced the planes. She felt them strike the armored body, but she sank lower, clutching her wheel.
Clear? They must be. A second of agonized suspense and she saw Cyril turn his head and look down behind them. His face was white but his eye flashed triumph. His lips moved, but she heard nothing. Safe? They must be. The Yellow Dove, mounting easily, had cleared the trees at the border of the farm and before the eyes of the girl stretched only undulating surfaces of gray and green.
In front of her Cyril lay back in his seat. His hands clutched the sides of the cockpit. O God! She had not been sure before what his sudden lassitude had meant. He had been hit! John Rizzio! He turned around and smiled at her and one hand, stretched before him, pointed up and to the right. Her throat closed and her heart seemed to stop its beating and the Dove for a moment swung and tossed like a drunken thing, but with an effort she inclined her wheel and met it. Cyril again raised his fingers and pointed upwards. Higher! She tipped the wheel further toward her. His gesture was like an appeal to Heaven—a symbol of his faith in her and in the God of both. She set her lips and obeyed. Broken and helpless—perhaps dying, he was putting his faith in her. She must not fail him now.
She kept her gaze before her over Cyril’s head, trying to gain strength for what she had to do, thinking that she was in England—at Ashwater Park—and that the wheel she held was that of her own little Nieuport. There seemed to be little difference between them, except that the Yellow Dove was easier to manage. It responded to the slightest touch, and had a magnificent steadiness that reassured Doris as to her ability to do the thing that was required of her.
The mountains had fallen below them and the horizon had widened until it blurred into the haze of the distance. She looked down on what seemed to her a plain of purple velvet touched with lighter patches of orange and violet. Before her the sun was setting blood red in a sea of amber. She mounted above it into the clear empyrean of azure, higher—higher yet. She felt the exhilaration of large spaces, the joy of conquest over all material things. Death even did not dismay her—Cyril’s—her own. She seemed to have crossed at a bound, from the realm of substance into that of immateriality. Her soul already sang in accord with the angels. They were mated. She and Cyril—mated! And even Death should not separate them.
Dusk fell slowly below them, like a black giant striding across the face of the earth, but all was still bright and clear about her. The red ball of the sun would not set. She was going upward—upward into the realm of continuous and perfect day. Below her a thread of silk, thrown carelessly upon a purple carpet. The Rhine! She saw Cyril’s hand come up and move feebly to the right. She turned slowly and followed its direction. The Rhine—she remembered Cyril’s words back there in the woods. She must follow the Rhine to the sea and then turn to the westward along the coast. She would do it. She must.
Cyril was hurt—but perhaps not badly. His gestures reassured her. He moved his hand in a level line in front of him and she understood. They had mounted high enough. The barograph showed four thousand feet. She brought the wheel up to normal and held it there. The wind burned her cheeks and she knew from the changes in the river below her that the speed of the Yellow Dove was terrific—ninety miles—a hundred—a hundred and twenty—an hour—perhaps much more—she did not know. The speed got into her blood. Faster, faster, was the song her pulses sung. She was a part of the Yellow Dove now, and it was a part of herself. Its wings were her wings and its instinct was in her own fingertips.
Night fell slowly, a luminous night full of stars. She seemed to be hanging among them—to be one of them—watching the earth pass under her. Two of them gleamed like St. Elmo’s lights at the tips of the planes. The sky was clear and bright, of a deep bluish purple, like the skies she remembered high up on the plains of the great West in her own country. The air was bitter cold upon her face and she blessed Cyril’s foresight for the helmet, gloves and old leather jacket that he had put on her in the hangar. In front of her Cyril leaned slightly to one side and his right hand touched a button, throwing an electric light in a hood in front of the wheel upon the face of the compass and barograph. She glanced at them quickly—four thousand feet—the direction north-northwest. She longed to speak to him and shouted his name. But in the roar of the engines she could not hear her own voice.
He still sat up, the fingers of his right hand moving from time to time as he gave her the direction. She thanked God for that—he was alive—he would live until they reached Ypres. He must live. He must. She set her teeth upon the words and willed it, praying at last aloud with lips that screamed yet made no sound.
Below her moved the lights of a city. She did not know what it was. Cologne, perhaps. She had passed it yesterday morning in the train with John Rizzio. Yesterday! It seemed a year ago. Cologne—then Dusseldorf. The river was not difficult to follow. She lost it once and then moving at a lower altitude she found it quickly. But the old terror was gripping her now. Cyril! His fingers no longer moved directing her. He had sunk lower in his seat and his head had fallen back upon one side, his face upturned to the stars. Was he?
She put the thought from her. It was impossible. She had prayed. Not that. . . . He had only fainted from pain, from sickness. Not dead—she would not—could not believe it. She longed to reach forward—to let him feel her hand upon his neck—that he might know her pity and her pain. It almost seemed better that death should come to them both now than that he should die and not know the comforting touch of her hand. She leaned forward and one hand left the wheel, but she lost her touch of the air and the planes tipped drunkenly, threatening the destruction she courted.
The madness passed—and with its passing came a calm, ice-cold. She was no longer a sentient being. She was merely an instinct with wings, flying as the eagle flies straight for its goal. She kept her glance on the compass and followed the river. North-northwest. The silver thread had become a ribbon now, reflecting the starlight. She passed over other towns. She could see their lights, but her gaze was fixed most often on the distant horizon, where after a while she would find the sea.
A yellowish light, painting the under side of the plane above her head, bewildered her. She could not understand. It was like a reflection of a candle inside a tent. Low as it was, it blinded her eyes, accustomed to the soft light of the stars. There was a crash nearby, in the very air beside her it seemed, a blinding flash of light, and the Yellow Dove toppled sideways. Instinctively she caught it, turning as she went and rose higher—higher—as a bird flies at the sound of a shot below. She knew now what it meant—a searchlight! They were firing at her with the high-angle guns. She had come fast, but the wire from Windenberg had been faster. She put the light behind her and long arms of light still groped for her, but she rose still higher, five—six thousand feet her barograph told her. Below, to her right, a small thing, shaped like a dragon-fly, was spitting fire—to her left another, but she sank lower in her seat laughing at them. Something of Cyril’s joyous bravado possessed her. She defied them, rising far above them—higher—seven thousand feet—eight, until she could see them no more.
North-northwest! She found her course again and flew on into the night. She had lost the river, but that did not matter now. She knew that after a time—an hour or more—she must come to the sea. And when all signs of danger were gone she went down again where she could more plainly see the earth. The moon had come up and bathed the scene below with its soft light, and far ahead of her she saw irregular streaks of pale gray against long lines of purplish black. The sea? She had lost all idea of time and distance. How far the sea was from Windenberg she did not know, and if she had known it, the passage of time was a blank to her—a continuous roar, the music of the spheres which took no thought of time or space. The flight had lasted but a minute—and an eternity.
To her left the gray streaks were nearer—west by north her compass said, and she steered for them. Soon she made out distinctly contours of large masses of gray against the black—water and land. The air was milder and she sniffed the salt. She went down to three thousand feet to get her bearings, ever watchful for the dragon-flies and ready to soar again at the first flash of a searchlight. She had already learned to avoid the planes where the lights were grouped—the colonies of glow-worms that here meant danger.
Had she crossed the Belgian line? She had been to Antwerp, to Brussels, and tried to remember what they had looked like on the map. There was water near Antwerp—she remembered that, inland bodies of water which led to the sea. Now she could see beyond the bodies of inland water to a wide expanse of gray beyond the dark—uninterrupted gray—the ocean! She bore to her left until her course was due west. A searchlight flashed upon her for a second and was gone. By the way the contours were changing she knew that her speed was terrific. And slowly but more and more certainly as she neared the sea, a problem presented itself—her goal! Where was it, and how to find it in the dark? Cyril had said that they must land back of Ypres. But where was Ypres? Beyond Ostend and inland—thirty—forty miles. She knew that much from the war maps that she had pored over with her father. But how to find it?
She was over the sea now. The Yellow Dove felt a new breeze and the wheel tugged under her hand, but the machine lifted at the touch and wheeled like a gull to speed down the coast. Ostend! The Kursaal! If she could get a sight of it! It was dangerous, but she must go lower—three—two hundred feet from the sea, where she might make out familiar profiles against the sky.
The waves rose to meet her, reflecting the starlight, and just below her to the left the surf rolled in lines of white upon the beach. Dunes, dunes interminably, with here and there a collection of huts. A dark shape moved in the water ahead of her, another Warships? Destroyers. She wheeled out to sea and flew above them, but before they had time even to get their searchlights ranged upon her, the danger was past. She would win now. The Yellow Dove was invincible.
A dark irregular mass ahead of her rose above the monotony of dunes, buildings, and a bulk she seemed to recognize—a round dome iridescent like a soap bubble in the moonlight. The Kursaal! Ostend! She was nearing her destination—the end of the German lines. Friends were near—Belgians, French, and English. Twenty—thirty miles beyond Ostend and then inland somewhere back of Ypres she would find the English. The English lines were thirty or forty miles long, she remembered. It should not be difficult to find them. She must be sure to go far enough—but not too far—not to where the French army joined the British forces. Cyril’s papers must go to the English, to General French himself. He had said so.
She had no way of judging distance except by the passage of the minutes. At the speed she was flying she must turn inland in fifteen minutes. She had no watch and she tried counting the seconds. She had counted sixty—four times—when a battery hidden among the dunes along the shore opened fire on her. She was half a mile from shore, flying low, but the flash of light startled her and the shell burst beyond. She rose quickly, moving further out to sea, frightened, but still self-possessed. It would not do to fail now with the goal in sight.
The compass gave her course southwest by west. She counted again, guessing at the time she had lost, and then, making a wide spiral out to sea and rising to three thousand feet, she drove the Yellow Dove inland. Searchlights were turned on her and shots fired, but she went higher, trying to make out if she could the lines of the opposing armies. Red and yellow lights were displayed below to her left, and far to her right were tiny clusters of lights, but there seemed to be no order in their arrangement—no lines that she could distinguish even at this height. Her keen eyes, now inured to the darkness, made out a monoplane against the starlight ahead of her—but she swerved to the right, the greater power of the Yellow Dove enabling her to rise and elude it. She flew for what seemed ten or fifteen minutes, going steadily to the south and west, when she drove for a spot where there were no lights and then shut off the throttle and dove.
She knew that this was perhaps the greatest moment of her great adventure. A landing place in the dark in a country she did not know, where a church steeple, a telegraph wire, the limb of a tree, would bring her and her precious freight to disaster. With the sudden shutting off of the power, a silence that bewildered her, a silence broken only by the whirr of the wind against the planes. Her ears ached from the change of pressure in her swift descent. She eased her wheel back gently, trying to make out objects below. Dark patches—woods—to be avoided, the roof of a house—another—lights here and there, small, obscure, which she had not seen. She avoided them all, planing down in a spiral toward what seemed to be unobstructed space.
She breathed a prayer as the earth came up to meet her. Death? Whatever came—Cyril, too. . . . She stared straight before her, feeling out the wind pressure on the planes, gliding as near the horizontal as she dared. An open field! Thank God! A gentle shock and the springs responded. The Yellow Dove rebounded slightly and ran along the ground smoothly upon its wheels—then stopped. She tried to get up, but could not. Her hands seemed fastened to the wheel. She heard the sound of men’s voices shouting and saw lights, but she could not seem to make a sound. She was shivering violently, also laughing a little, but she had no sense of being cold. She seemed very weak somehow, and very helpless. And then, just as the lights grew brighter—they went out.