Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer Part 18

If he had been running for ten miles he could not have been more exhausted. His breast heaved with every spasmodic breath he drew. His shoulder blades throbbed like an aching tooth. His dripping palm was utterly numb. For a few brief, precious seconds he sat upon the limb with a sense of unutterable relief, and mopped his beaded forehead. And the sun's full, round face smiled approvingly upon him.

Meanwhile the minutes flew.

Hurrying now, he scrambled down the tree trunk where he had a better and less discouraging view of the situation. He saw that _Uncle Sam_ hung about five feet from the brink and just clear of the water. If the bank on this side was less precipitous than on the other there would be some prospect of rescuing his machine without serious damage. He could afford to let it get wet provided the carburetor and magneto were not submerged and the gas tank----

_The gas tank._ That thought stabbed him. Could the gasoline have flowed out of the tank while the machine was hanging up and down? That would bring the supply hole, with its perforated screw-cover, underneath.

He waded cautiously into the water and found to his infinite relief that the submerged bank formed a gentle slope. He could not go far enough to lift his machine, but he could reach to wiggle it off its hook and then guide it, in some measure, enough to ease its fall and keep its damageable parts clear of the water. At least he believed he could. In any event, he had no alternative choice and time was flying. After what he had already done he felt he could do anything. Success, however wearying and exhausting, gives one a certain working capital of strength, and having succeeded so far he would not now fail. His success in crossing had given him that working capital of resolution and incentive whence came his superhuman strength and overmastering resolve in that lonely tree. And he would not fail now.

Yet he could not bring himself to look at his watch. He was willing to venture a guess, from the sun, as to what time it was, but he could not clinch the knowledge by a look at the cruel, uncompromising little gla.s.s-faced autocrat in his pocket. He preferred to work in the less disheartening element of uncertainty. He did not want to know the hard, cold truth--not till he was moving.

Here now was the need of nice calculating, and Tom eyed the sh.o.r.e and the tree and the machine with the appraising glance of a wrestler eyeing his opponent. He broke several branches from the tree, laying them so as to form a kind of springy, leafy mound close to the brink. Then standing knee-deep he wiggled the wheel's rim very cautiously out to the end of its hanger, so that it just balanced there.

One more grand drive, one more effort of unyielding strength and accurate dexterity and--_he would be upon the road_.

The thought acted as a stimulant. Lodging one hand under the seat of the machine and the other upon a stout bar of the mechanism which he thought would afford him just the play and swing he needed, he joggled the wheel off its hanger, and with a wide sweep, in which he skillfully minimized the heavy weight, he swung the machine onto the springy bed which he had made to receive it.

Then, as the comrade of a wounded soldier may bend over him, he knelt down beside his companion upon the makeshift, leafy couch.

"Are you all right?" he asked in the agitation of his triumphant effort.

_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.

He stood the machine upright and lowered the rest so that it could stand unaided; and he tore away the remnant of mud-guard which _Uncle Sam_ had sacrificed in his role of combination engine and paddle-wheel.

"You've got the wires all tangled up in your spokes," Tom said; "you look like a--a wreck. What do you want with those old sticks of shingles? How are you off for gas--you--you old tramp?"

_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.

"Anyway, you're all right," Tom panted; "only my arm is worse than your old mud-guard. We're a pair of---- Can't you speak?" he added breathing the deadly fatigue he felt and putting his foot upon the pedal.

"What--do--you--say? Huh?"

And then _Uncle Sam_ answered.

"Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r---- Never mind your arm. Come ahead--hurry," he seemed to say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO--"

Swiftly along the sun-flecked road sped the dispatch-rider. In the mellow freshness of the new day he rode, and the whir of his machine in its lightning flight mingled with the cheery songs of the birds, whose early morning chorus heartened and encouraged him. There was a balm in the fragrant atmosphere of the cool, gray morning which entered the soul of Tom Slade and whispered to him, _There is no such word as fail._

Out of the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against obstacles, against fate, against everything.

As he held the handle-bar of _Uncle Sam_ in that continuous handshake which they knew so well, his right arm felt numb and sore, and his whole body ached. _Uncle Sam's_ big, leering gla.s.s eye was smashed, his mud-guard wrenched off, and dried mud was upon his wheels. His rider's uniform was torn and water-soaked, his face black with grime. They made a good pair.

Never a glance to right or left did the rider give, nor so much as a perfunctory nod to the few early risers who paused to stare at him as he sped by. In the little hamlet of Persan an old Frenchman sitting on a rustic seat before the village inn, removed his pipe from his mouth long enough to call,

"_La cote?_"

But never a word did the rider answer. Children, who, following the good example of the early bird, were already abroad, scurried out of his way, making a great clatter in their wooden shoes, and gaping until he pa.s.sed beyond their sight.

Over the bridge at Soignois he rushed, making its ramshackle planks rattle and throw up a cloud of dust from between the vibrating seams.

Out of this cloud he emerged like a gray spectre, body bent, head low, gaze fixed and intense, leaving a pandemonium of dust and subsiding echoes behind him.

At Virneu an old housewife threw open her blinds and seeing the dusty khaki of the rider, summoned her brood, who waved the tricolor from the cas.e.m.e.nt, laughing and calling, "_Vive l'Amerique!_"

Their cheery voices and fraternal patriotism did cause Tom to turn his head and call,

"_Merci. Vive la France!_"

And they answered again with a torrent of French.

The morning was well established as he pa.s.sed through Chuisson, and a clock upon a romantic, medieval-looking little tower told him that it lacked but ten minutes of five o'clock.

A feeling of doubt, almost of despair, seized upon him and he called in that impatient surliness which springs from tense anxiety, asking an old man how far it was to Dieppe.

The man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in polite confession that he did not understand English.

In his anxiety it irritated Tom. "What _do_ you know?" he muttered.

Out of Chuisson he labored up a long hill, and though _Uncle Sam_ made no more concession to it than to slacken his unprecedented rate of speed the merest trifle, the difference communicated itself to Tom at once and it seemed, by contrast, as if they were creeping. On and up _Uncle Sam_ went, plying his way st.u.r.dily, making a great noise and a terrific odor--dogged, determined and irresistible.

But the rider stirred impatiently. Would they ever, _ever_, reach the top? And when they should, there would be another hamlet in a valley, another bridge, more stupid people who could not speak English, more villages, more bends in the road, still other villages, and then--another hill.

It seemed to Tom that he had been travelling for ten years and that there was to be no end of it. Ride, ride, ride--it brought him nowhere.

His right arm which had borne that tremendous strain, was throbbing so that he let go the handle-bar from time to time in the hope of relief. It was the pain of acute tiredness, for which there could be no relief but rest. Just to throw himself down and rest! Oh, if he could only lay that weary, aching arm across some soft pillow and leave it there--just leave it there. Let it hang, bend it, hold it above him, lay it on _Uncle Sam's_ staunch, unfeeling arm of steel, he could not, _could_ not, get it rested.

The palm of his hand tingled with a kind of irritating feeling like chilblains, and he must be continually removing one or other hand from the bar so that he could reach one with the other. It did not help him keep his poise. If he could only scratch his right hand once and be done with it! But it annoyed him like a fly.

Up, up, up, they went, and pa.s.sed a quaint, old, thatch-roofed house.

Crazy place to build a house! And the people in it--probably all they could do was to shrug their shoulders in that stupid way when asked a question in English.

He was losing his morale--was this dispatch-rider.

But near the top of the hill he regained it somewhat. Perhaps he could make up for this lost time in some straight, level reach of road beyond.

Up, up, up, plowed _Uncle Sam_, one lonely splinter of shingle still bound within his spokes, and his poor, dented headlight bereft of its dignity.

"I've an idea the road turns north about a mile down," Tom said to himself, "and runs around through----"

The words stopped upon his lips as _Uncle Sam_, still laboring upward, reached level ground, and as if to answer Tom out of his own uncomplaining and stouter courage, showed him a sight which sent his faltering hope skyward and started his heart bounding.

For there below them lay the vast and endless background of the sea, throwing every intervening detail of the landscape into insignificance.

There it was, steel blue in the brightening sunlight and glimmering here and there in changing white, where perhaps some treacherous rock or bar lay just submerged. And upon it, looking infinitesimal in the limitless expanse, was something solid with a column of black smoke rising and winding away from it and dissolving in the clear, morning air.