In the Clutch of the War-God Part 6

As she stood waiting she saw the yellow signal light rise in spirals higher and higher and then circle slowly in one location. A few minutes later the dim tail lights of the planes came up out of the horizon and flew towards the signal light.

After a half-hour of waiting, she boldly resolved to enter the hiding place of the man she had followed.

Cautiously feeling her way, she clambered down over the end of the culvert and peered into its black archway.

At first, dimly and then with brighter flash, she saw a light within. Creeping slowly forward, wading in the stream and stumbling over rough blocks of stone, she made toward the light. Midway the pa.s.sage, the side wall of the culvert had fallen or been torn down and there in a little damp clay nook, sitting hunched upon a rock was the silhouette of the unshaven man.

Beyond him glowed the dim light and by its faint rays he was hurriedly writing in a note book.

With a start he became aware of her presence, and turned the flash-light upon her.

"I followed you," she stammered. "I want to explain. I'm an American girl captive among the j.a.panese."

He stared at her quizzically in the dim light.

"I ran from you," he said, "because I was afraid to trust you--there are a number of Europeans among the j.a.panese forces. I couldn't know that you wouldn't have given the alarm, and for one man to run from fifty thousand isn't cowardice; it's common sense--even bravery, perhaps, when there's a cause at stake."

"I understand," replied the girl.

"Won't you be seated?" he said, arising and offering her his place on the rock. She accepted, and he asked her for more of her story.

In reply she told him whom she was and related as briefly as she could the incidents of her life that accounted for her peculiar predicament.

"I suppose I owe you something of an explanation, too;" he said, when she had finished. "My name is Winslow--Stanley Winslow; I am --or at least was---the editor of the _Regenerationist_. Do you know what that is?"

Ethel confessed, that she did not.

"Perhaps I flatter myself, but then I suppose you have had no chance to keep up on American affairs."

Just then a crash, followed by a whirring, clattering noise broke in above the sound of the man's voice and the gurgle of the brook running through their hiding-place.

"What's that?" Winslow exclaimed, starting towards the end of the culvert.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was washing her woven gra.s.s sandals by rubbing the soles together in the stream.]

Ethel followed him. Before they reached the open the trees in front of them were lit up by the lurid light of a fire. Beside the road a hundred yards away was the crumpled ma.s.s of a metallic aeroplane.

The gasolene tank had burst open and was blazing furiously.

"Americans," said Winslow; "let's see if the crew are dead."

The gasolene had largely spent itself by the time they reached the plane.

Poking about in the crumbled debris, they found the driver impaled upon a lever that protruded from his back.

"I wonder what grounded her," mused Winslow, as he inspected the dead man with his flash-lamp. "Oh! here we are! Good shooting that,"

he added, pointing with his lamp to a soggy hole in the side of the man's head.

"I guess they're at it," he said, pressing out his light and turning his eyes skyward.

The woman, speechless, followed his gaze. Across the sky flashed here and there brilliant beams of search-lights, but far more numerous were the swiftly moving star-like tail-lights of the j.a.panese planes.

Now and again they heard the crackling of machine guns, occasionally the burr of a disordered propeller and once the faint call of a human voice.

"Look," said Ethel, pointing to the southward. "See that brilliant yellow light. It's the j.a.panese signal plane; they are all to fly in towards it, and then, soaring high will escape over the American lines."

"The lines are a joke," returned Winslow. "It's plane against plane.

And the j.a.ps will get the best of it; or at least they'll get away, which is all they want. They are going to Dakota, where five train loads of gasolene will be setting on a siding waiting to be captured. We printed the story ten days ago, though the administration papers hooted at the idea."

As they walked back toward the culvert, Ethel stumbled over something in the roadway. She asked for the light, and discovered to her horror that she was standing in the midst of the remnants of a man who had been spattered over the hard macadam of the turnpike.

"Ugh! take me away," she shuddered, averting her eyes and running toward the stream,

"The gunner fell out of the plane when she lurched, I guess,"

commented Winslow to himself, examining the shreds of clothing attached to the mangled remains beneath him.

For some reason Winslow did not immediately follow the girl but went back and looked over the wrecked plane again.

He removed the magazine pistol from the impaled man's pocket and searched about in the locker until he found a supply of cartridges.

The sky was beginning to brighten from approaching dawn now, and the searchlight flashes were less brilliant. Winslow stood gazing upward until the forms of the lower flying planes became visible. Suddenly he saw a disabled plane come somersaulting out of the air and fall into a field quarter of a mile away. Evidently there were explosives aboard, for a shower of flame, smoke and splinters arose where she fell.

The onlooking man hopped over the fence and ran toward the spot.

There was little to be seen--a mere ragged hole in the sod. As he unconcernedly walked back he pa.s.sed at intervals a propeller blade sticking upright in the soil, a broken can of rice cakes and a woman's hand.

The dawn had now so far progressed that the observer could see some order in the movement of the air craft. He studied with fascination the last of the j.a.panese planes as they circled up toward their aerial guide-post and moved thence in a steady stream to the northward.

The American planes which had been hara.s.sing and firing on the j.a.panese as they circled for alt.i.tude, now turned and closed in on the rear of the enemy and the fighting was fast and furious. Plane after plane tumbled sickeningly out of the sky. But for Winslow the sight lasted only a few minutes, for the combatants were flying at full speed and soon became mere flitting insects against the gray light of the morning sky.

Striding down the roadway past the mangled body of the American gunner, Winslow reached the culvert.

Ethel Calvert was sitting on a flat stone at the edge of the water.

She held her woven gra.s.s sandals in her hands and was washing them by rubbing the soles together in the stream.

As Winslow looked down at her in silence, the girl looked up and eyed him curiously. Neither spoke. The man stooped and washed his hands in the brook and then stepping up-stream a few paces he drank from the rivulet.

Returning he regarded the girl. She had placed her sandals beyond her on the gra.s.sy bank and sat with her bare feet in the shallow stream. Her head, buried in her arms, rested upon her knees. The slender shoulders now shook convulsively and the sound of a sob escaped her. In the calmness of his cynicism, the man sat down on the rock and placed a strong arm around the trembling woman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In another moment, he turned in a gap through the fence and rode down upon the fleeing woman.]

"I know," he said, "it's a dirty d.a.m.ned mess, but we didn't start it."

After a time the girl raised her head. "I know we didn't start it,"

she said; "but isn't there something we can do to stop it?"

"Well," he replied slowly, "I rather hope to have a hand in stopping it, and perhaps you can help."

"How?"

"Surely you can do as much in stopping it as one of those poor devils that get smashed does in keeping it going," he went on.