Aces Up Part 4

"Contact, sir!"

"Contact."

The motor caught, coughed, caught again and the prop whirled into an indistinct blur. The sudden blast of wind sent clouds of dust eddying toward the hangar, but ahead lay the cool, fresh, dew-washed green of the field. McGee turned to look once more at the wind sock which, for want of a breeze, hung limp along its staff. He nodded to the men at the wheel chocks, waved his hand to Larkin and gave her the gun.

No pilot in the service could lift a Camel off the ground quicker than could McGee, but this morning he taxied slowly forward and was getting dangerously near the end of the field before he began to get the tail up.

Larkin, watching him, chuckled. "Guess he wants to take a spin on the ground," he commented to himself. "Fancy that bird wanting to go to Paris by motor!" Then to show how little he thought of the ground he advanced his throttle rapidly and took off on far less s.p.a.ce than should ever be attempted by one who knows, from experience, how suddenly a crowded Clerget-motored Camel can sputter and incontinently die. And as a parting defiance to his knowledge, Larkin pulled back his stick and zoomed. Alt.i.tude was what McGee wanted, eh? Well, here was the way to get alt.i.tude in a hurry.

McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. "The poor fish!" was his mental comment. "If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they'll be needing a lot of replacements--or yelling for a new instructor."

But the appreciative ground crew, watching, expressed a different view.

"Boy!" exclaimed an envious Ack Emma. "Can that baby fly! I'll tell the world! Watch him out-climb McGee. Did you see how McGee took off? Like a cadet doin' solo--afraid to lift her. And they say he's one of the best aces in the R.F.C. Huh! I think he's got the pip! Ever since he first touched his wheels to this 'drome he's been yellin' about his motor bein' cranky. And it's all jake. She takes gas like a race horse takes rein."

"Yeah," growled a mechanic by the name of Flynn, who by nature and nationality stood ready to defend anyone bearing the name of McGee, "a lot you know about those little teapots in them Camels. You was trained on Jennies and--and Fords! What you know about a Clerget engine could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Say, do you know why he took her off so gentle? Well, I'll spread light in dark places, brother. He took off slow because he _knew_ you didn't know nothin', see?"

"Say, listen--"

The quarrel went on, despite the fact that the two pilots const.i.tuting the meatless bone of contention were rapidly becoming specks in the sky to the northwest.

At five thousand feet McGee leveled off and swung slightly west. He looked back and up. Larkin was five hundred feet above him and somewhat behind, but at McGee's signal he dived down, taking up a position on the left. In this manner they could point out objects below and engage in the sign language which they had perfected through many hours spent in the air together.

As they flew along McGee felt his spirits mounting. It was a good world to live in and life was made especially sweet and interesting by the soft unfolding greens of a land brought to bud and blossom by April's sun and showers. In the beautiful panorama below there was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint--yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee--troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward.

Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, these, to be coming from the green fields and woods of a seeming peaceful countryside. Forward, ever forward they made their way. Never, it seemed to McGee, had he seen roads choked with returning men and munitions. Was the maw of the monster there to the eastward bottomless and insatiable?

Where were the roads that led men back to the land of living, green things?

As they pa.s.sed over a town, McGee saw Larkin point down. On the outskirts of the village a great cross in a circlet of green marked the location of a military hospital. Ah!... Yes, some came back. But even then they must brand their pain-racked sanctuary with the mercy imploring emblem of the Red Cross so that enemy planes, bent on devastation, would mingle mercy with hope of victory and save their bombs for those not yet carried into the long wards where white-robed doctors and nurses battled with death and spoke words of hope to the hopeless.

It was a sorry world! McGee, who but a few short minutes ago was entranced by the beauty of the world, now felt a sudden, marked disgust.

He pulled his stick back sharply. He would climb out of it! He would get up against the ceiling, where the world became a dim, faint blur or was lost altogether in a kindly obliterating ground haze.

On McGee's part the action was nothing more than an unconscious reaction to distressing thoughts. Larkin, however, on seeing the sudden climb, grinned with delight. This climb for alt.i.tude was nothing more than the prelude to a dive that would start them into a merry game of hare and hound. So McGee had forgotten all about his doleful sermon against dog-fighting? And so soon. Ha! Trust the freckled "Little Shrimp" to feel blood racing through his veins when motors are singing sweetly.

Instead of following, Larkin decided to nose down and offer more tantalizing bait.

McGee, seeing the dive, found it more than he could resist. Besides, a merry little chase would serve to wash the brooding thoughts from his mind. This was a morning for sport, for jest, for youth--for hazard!

Forward went the stick and he plunged down the backwash of Larkin's diving plane, his motor roaring its cadenced challenge. This was something like! Sky and ground were rushing toward each other. The braces were screaming like banshees; the speed indicator hand was mounting with a steady march that made one want to dive on and on and on until--

Larkin, in the plane ahead, brought his stick backward as he made ready to go over in a tight loop. McGee smiled and followed him over. When they came out of the loop they were in the same relative position--Larkin the hare, McGee the tenacious hound.

For the next few minutes the open-mouthed countrymen in the fields below were treated to a series of aerial gymnastics which must have sent their own pulses racing and which might well serve them for fireside narration for years to come.

The two darting hawks Immelmanned, looped, barrel-rolled, side-slipped, and then plunged into a dizzy circle in which they flew round and round an imaginary axis, the radius of the circle growing ever shorter and shorter. Every action of the leading plane was immediately matched by the pursuer.

Larkin, realizing that his skill in manoeuvering was something less than McGee's, decided to bring the contest to a close with a few thrills in hedge hopping.

Of all sports that offer high hazard to thrill satiated war pilots, that of hedge hopping, or contour chasing, occupies first place. This is particularly true when the pilot is flying a Sopwith Camel powered by the temperamental Clerget motor with its malfunctioning wind driven gasoline pump. The sport had been repeatedly forbidden by all the allied air commands, but these commands had to deal with irrepressible youth, which has slight regard for doddering old mossbacks who think that a plane should be handled as a wheel chair.

Larkin dived at the ground like a hawk that has sighted some napping rodent, and so near did he come that by the time he had leveled off, his wheels were almost touching the ground--and wheels must not touch when one is screaming through s.p.a.ce at the rate of a hundred and forty miles per hour.

He glanced back. Sure enough, McGee was still on his tail. No hedge hopping, eh? Huh! Trust The Shrimp to keep young, he thought. Fat chance they had of getting old. Who ever heard of an old war pilot? Ha! That's a good one! And here's a double row of tall poplars fringing the road directly ahead. Hold her close to the ground and then zoom her at the last minute ... landing gears just clearing the topmost branches ...

make it, and that's hedge hopping. Fail to make it--and that's bad news!

Larkin made it, a beautiful zoom that carried him over the trees by a skillful margin. Then he swooped down again, skimming along the level field on the other side of the road.

McGee's zoom was just as spectacular and as nicely timed, but as his nose climbed above the first row of trees his motor died as suddenly as though throttled by the strangling hands of some unseen genii. Sudden though it was, McGee had sensed that he was crowding the motor too much and had tried to ease her off and still clear the trees. It was too late to relieve the choked motor but he did clear the first row of trees. He was about to close his eyes against the inevitable crash into the poplars on the other side of the road when he saw that two of the trees had been felled, and that so recently that the woodsmen had not yet worked them up. There was one clear chance left. If only he could slip her over just far enough to clear the outstretched limbs of the tree to the right.

At such a time seconds must be divided into hundredths, and action must be instantaneous, instinctive, and without flaw. McGee felt one of the spreading limbs brush against his right wing tip, felt the plane swerve for a moment, then respond to rudder and aileron. It was a case where one moment he was supremely thankful for flying speed, and the next, as the ground of the level field was flashing under the wheels, wishing that he had held to his resolution concerning hedge hopping.

The wheels struck hard. The plane bounded, high, and again the wheels touched. Again the plane bounded, and this time came down with a shock that left McGee amazed with the realization that the undercarriage was intact and that he still had a chance to keep her off her nose if only he could get the high-riding tail down.

Crash! Crack! The tail was down now ... and broken to splinters, like as not. Never mind.... By some great mercy he was at last on three points and rolling to a stop.

He suddenly felt very weak. A narrow squeeze, that! Stupid way for an ace--and an instructor--to get washed out. Like a Warrior falling off his horse while on the way home from a victorious field.

He saw Larkin bank his ship into a tight turn, set the plane down in a perfect landing and come careening down the open field to stop within a dozen paces of McGee's plane.

Larkin, white-faced, tight-lipped, crawled from his plane and came forward on the double-quick. Not a word did he speak until he stood by the side of Red's plane, his hands gripping the leather piping at the edge of the c.o.c.kpit until his knuckles were white.

"What happened, Red? Gee, you're white! All the freckles gone."

"Lucky I'm not gone!" McGee answered. "My knees are too shaky to crawl out yet. It looked like _finis la guerre pour moi_ for a second."

He turned and blew a kiss at the gap in the trees. "Thanks, Mr.

Woodchopper, whoever you are. Buzz, never repeat that old poem about 'Woodman, spare that tree!' If he had spared those two--well! Take a look at my tail skid, Old Timer. Is it broken off?"

"No. It's cracked and sort of c.o.c.keyed, but a piece of wire from that fence over there will fix it all O.K. What happened?"

McGee fixed him with a baleful glare. "You should ask--with as much experience as both of us have had with these tricky motors. I choked it down, that's all. That same little fault has sent many a pilot home in a wooden box. Go get me a piece of that wire. We'll fix the skid, somehow, and when I get to Le Bourget I'll set her down on two points. And listen! From here on in we do--"

"No contour chasing," Larkin completed, forcing a thin smile. "Seems I heard that somewhere before. Crawl out, Shrimp. You said you wanted to be out among the flowers and sweet things. Well, here's a sweet thing, and this field is full of flowers. I brought you down low so you could enjoy them."

"Yeah! I said I wanted to be among 'em--not pushing 'em up. Hurry over and get that wire before I do something violent."

2

Thirty minutes later two chastened pilots took off from the level field, with a half dozen curious French peasants for an audience, and laid a straight course for Le Bourget. No more acrobatics and no more hedge hopping. To an observer below they would have resembled two homing pigeons flying rather close together and maintaining their positions with a singleness of mind and purpose.

When they reached Le Bourget they circled the 'drome once, noted the wind socks on the great hangars, and dropped as lightly to the field as two tardy, truant schoolboys seeking to gain entrance without attracting notice.

A newly arrived American squadron was stationed at the field, jubilant over the fact that they were trying their skill on the fast climbing, fast flying single-seater Spads. Five of these swift little hawks were now on the line, making ready for a formation flight.

McGee and Larkin introduced themselves to the officer in command, presented their pa.s.ses and authority for refueling, and McGee requested that his tail skid be repaired and his motor checked over.

"Let's stick around and watch this formation flight," McGee then said to Larkin. "I want to see what these lads can do with a real ship."

"All right, but don't get goggle-eyed. I came up here to see Paris, and I'm thirty minutes behind time now."