With Haig on the Somme Part 18

To fight with a wounded observer was out of the question, and already he had decided to steer north-west rather than due west, which would bring him, roughly, somewhere between Epinal and Nancy--always provided that he was not overtaken.

There were a thousand risks to run, not only from the enemy fleet, but from the French guns when he should come in sight of them; but as they soared into the chill blanket of vapour his spirits rose, and for a moment he shut off the engines to listen.

The whir and throb of their pursuers already seemed to come from every point of the compa.s.s--from below, from either side and, what was more alarming, from above; but banking sharply to the right he thrashed his course at topmost speed, praying that the cloud-bank might not cease.

The baragraph showed him that he was already eight thousand feet above the earth, and, straightening out the machine, he wiped the mist from his goggles with the back of his glove and kept on.

All at once the Aviatik shot out of the cloud with a clear stretch of sky in front of them, and, looking back and upwards, he saw the wicked nose of a Fokker emerge into view on their right beam a couple of hundred yards away and well above them.

Already their own machine was approaching another cloud-bank, but the Fokker had seen them, and plunged downward in their direction.

The instant the cloud swallowed them up Dennis concentrated all his efforts on the foot-bar which controlled the vertical rudder, and, grasping the wheel at the same time, swung sharply to the left, leaving their pursuer to dive down five hundred feet into s.p.a.ce before he discovered that he had missed his mark.

Neither of them knew that the nose of the Fokker had been within twelve inches of the Aviatik's tail-planes; and but for the fact that the German suspended his fire at the moment of diving, it would have been all over with the raiders.

Dennis reverted to his old tactics when he found that they had escaped, and turning to the right again, with an anxious eye on the compa.s.s, saw no more of the enemy for nearly a quarter of an hour, until, emerging into a burst of bright sunshine and looking down, he found himself immediately over a fierce engagement on the eastern crest of the Vosges mountains. Sh.e.l.ls were bursting below them, and though he did not know it, they were pa.s.sing above the Col de la Schlucht, from which the French guns were bombarding Munster. He could see the enormous puffs of smoke--white, black, and some of them tinged with yellow--but what was of greater moment to them both was the presence of the enemy machines a few miles to the southward.

They, too, were just leaving the cloud-bank, which ended there, misled by the idea that their prey would make a bee-line for safety; but they saw the Aviatik at the same moment that Dennis saw them, and circled round to cut him off from home.

Dennis realised that he was now above French soil. His engines were working magnificently, and dropping to an alt.i.tude of two thousand metres, which gave him a clear view of towns and buildings, he consulted his chart, identified Nancy far away on his right front, and trusted all to Providence.

He had judged wisely, as it proved, and knew that he was out-distancing the enemy aircraft tearing in hot pursuit--all but one persistent Fokker that evidently meant business. He even found time to glance backward at his companion, who, with the folds of the French flag wrapped round his shattered shoulder to dull the force of the keen air, sat huddled up in his c.o.c.kpit, apparently insensible.

Once a sh.e.l.l came up from the ground, and burst between pursuer and pursued, and a gleam of fierce hope shot through the lad's heart as he saw the French "75" making good practice against the vicious little gadfly.

Higher and higher mounted the Fokker to get out of range, and still Dennis kept on, remembering his appointment with the French Generalissimo, and glancing alternately from the chart to the little clock beside the aneroid barometer, whose registration was useless at that height.

"Twenty-five minutes! Great Scott! can I do it?" he muttered, clutching the control wheel with his frozen fingers.

"Well, messieurs, it is a pity, and I am afraid something must have happened to that young officer," said General Joffre, consulting his watch for the last time. "I must find another messenger to carry my reply to the Commander-in-Chief of our Allies."

And then he stopped as a murmured exclamation broke from the group of officers, and everyone looked up to the grey sky across which some rainclouds were drifting.

"It is an aerial combat, mon General," said one of them. "_Ma foi!_ I should not care to travel at that speed, let alone fight with nothing under one's feet!"

Two dots scarcely larger than flies on a window-pane had suddenly detached themselves from the rain clouds, and were manoeuvring curiously in the direction of the village. Larger and larger they grew, the smaller dot obviously trying to gain the advantage of height, and mingling with the throb of the engines they could now hear the rattle of a machine-gun.

"What is the meaning of this?" said the Generalissimo, fixing them with his gla.s.s. "These machines are German. I can see the Iron Cross painted upon them both. Send word to the battery yonder to make ready. It is a raid, and they are adopting those manoeuvres to deceive us."

By the wall of the restaurant the young French chauffeur, Martique, who had driven Dennis to that place, waited with a smile dancing in his eyes, hoping against hope that the thing of which he alone knew was the thing that was taking place up yonder!

He started when he heard the Generalissimo's order, for even yet he could not be sure, but the dots had now grown so large that it was possible to tell the make of the two machines, and somebody said: "The first one is an Aviatik; the other is a Fokker."

If the seeming chase were a piece of German stage management it was certainly being carried out with marvellous realism, for now Martique could distinctly see the puffs of the machine-gun, and that the bullets were ripping through the lifting planes of the Aviatik.

"Mon General!" he cried suddenly, "for the love of heaven order our battery not to fire! Look! The observer in that machine is waving a French flag. He has dropped it now, and he slues his gun into position--but with one arm only! He is wounded!"

"Do you know what you are talking about, young man?" said the Generalissimo sternly.

"Forgive me, mon General!" faltered Martique. "It was a little secret.

Oh, look! The Fokker has got the top place, and is about to ram poor Laval and his English companion!"

Everyone held his breath, for indeed it was as Martique had cried. The Aviatik was volplaning down in a wide spiral now, and above it the relentless pursuer poised like a hawk. He was judging the circ.u.mference of those spiral curves, and even the Generalissimo himself tightened his lips under the huge white moustache.

Over the side of the fuselage there was no mistaking the glorious red, white and blue that fluttered wildly in the descent, and then the Aviatik's swivel-gun spoke three times. A German always speaks French badly, but that German gun rang out with a true accent that time, and the Fokker gave a strange quiver, burst into a sheet of flame, and dropped like a stone to death and destruction six thousand feet below!

The engines of the Aviatik ceased; the _nacelle_, pointing earthwards, curved suddenly up again, and floating for some distance like a tired bird, the machine dropped out of sight on the other side of the tall poplars.

There was an instant stampede to the spot, the Generalissimo himself following, unable to curb his curiosity; but as he reached the bank at the edge of the cornfield a running figure in leather jacket and flying helmet checked his pace and, throwing up his goggles, saluted smartly.

"Mon General, I hope you will accept my apology," said Dennis Dashwood.

"I am five minutes behind my time, but I am here, and I have a good deal to tell you!"

CHAPTER XIV

The Sing-Song in the Dug-out

Three surgeons, hastily summoned to the spot, knelt with their instruments beside Claude Laval, not twenty yards from the bodies of the two German airmen whom he had brought down the afternoon before, and in the circle that surrounded them stood the Generalissimo, holding the old French colour which would never ornament the walls of that distant hunting-lodge again.

"He will recover," said one of the doctors, getting up from his knee.

"But he will want the most careful attention. The whole thing is marvellous. There is not one man in a thousand that could have lived through such an adventure!"

The _pilote aviateur_ opened his eyes, for he had heard the surgeon's words.

"Mon General," he said, but so faintly that the Commander of the French Armies had to stoop over him, "I should not have lived if it had not been for my companion. He is brave, that boy--oh, braver than I can make you understand. But, mon General," and a wistful look came into the deep-sunk eyes, "they have taken my Cross of the Legion and destroyed it!"

"You were a chevalier of the Order, mon lieutenant, if I remember," said the Generalissimo. "The Republic does not forget her sons when they behave as you have behaved. You shall have another Cross, and this time it will be the Cross of an Officer of the Legion of Honour. And listen!

The English lieutenant shall have one too, if the word of Cesar Joffre carries any weight in France. Messieurs, let us salute these two brave men who have both deserved so well of the Republic!" And, lifting his kepi, the gallant Frenchman kissed Dennis on both cheeks amid a burst of generous applause that came from the hearts of all of them.

"_Cher ami_," whispered Claude Laval, "if you see my brother, you will tell him of our little escapade, hein?"

Dennis pressed Laval's left hand in both his own as he left him with a happy smile on his face; and with a last look at the Aviatik, followed General Joffre to his automobile.

"Adieu, lieutenant!" said the great soldier, with a lingering grip after an interview that lasted half an hour, "I have no other message for your General. He will find it all written in that envelope, which you will give him."

"Now, Martique," said Dennis, settling himself beside him in the motor, "I am in your hands." And almost before the car had started, Second Lieutenant Dennis Dashwood, of the 2/12 Battalion, Royal Reedshire Regiment, was sound asleep!

"Oh, hang it, Martique! What did you wake me for? I haven't been asleep five minutes," grumbled Dennis. And then he sat bolt upright as he recognised the handsome face of the man who had shaken him by the shoulder, and saw the amused smile in his eyes.

"It is a good car, I admit," said Sir Douglas Haig. "But I hardly think it has done the mileage between this place and Bar-le-Duc in so short a time as that, and your chauffeur tells me that you have snored all the way."