On the ground, Bogard and two other officers stood. They had come up running. “Fired it west,” one said. “How in hell does he know which way is west?”
“He’s a sailor,” the other said. “You forgot that.”
“He seems to be a machine gunner too,” Bogard said.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t forget that,” the first said.
IV
Nevertheless, Bogard kept an eye on the silhouetted head rising from the round gunpit in the nose ten feet ahead of him. “He did work that gun, though,” he said to McGinnis beside him. “He even put the drum on himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” McGinnis said. “If he just doesn’t forget and think that that gun is him and his tutor looking around from a Welsh alp.”
“Maybe I should not have brought him,” Bogard said. McGinnis didn’t answer. Bogard jockeyed the wheel a little. Ahead, in the gunner’s pit, the guest’s head moved this way and that continuously, looking. “We’ll get there and unload and haul air for home,” Bogard said. “Maybe in the dark — Confound it, it would be a shame for his country to be in this mess for four years and him not even to see a gun pointed in his direction.”
“He’ll see one tonight if he don’t keep his head in,” McGinnis said.
But the boy did not do that. Not even when they had reached the objective and McGinnis had crawled down to the bomb toggles. And even when the searchlights found them and Bogard signaled to the other machines and dived, the two engines snarling full speed into and through the bursting shells, he could see the boy’s face in the searchlight’s glare, leaned far overside, coming sharply out as a spotlighted face on a stage, with an expression upon it of child-like interest and delight.
“But he’s firing that Lewis,” Bogard thought. “Straight too”; nosing the machine farther down, watching the pinpoint swing into the sights, his right hand lifted, waiting to drop into McGinnis’ sight. He dropped his hand; above the noise of the engines he seemed to hear the click and whistle of the released bombs as the machine, freed of the weight, shot zooming in a long upward bounce that carried it for an instant out of the light.
Then he was pretty busy for a time, coming into and through the shells again, shooting athwart another beam that caught and held long enough for him to see the English boy leaning far over the side, looking back and down past the right wing, the undercarriage. “Maybe he’s read about it somewhere,” Bogard thought, turning, looking back to pick up the rest of the flight.
Then it was all over, the darkness cool and empty and peaceful and almost quiet, with only the steady sound of the engines. McGinnis climbed back into the office, and standing up in his seat, he fired the colored pistol this time and stood for a moment longer, looking backward toward where the searchlights still probed and sabered. He sat down again.
“O.K.,” he said. “I counted all four of them. Let’s haul air.” Then he looked forward. “What’s become of the King’s Own? You didn’t hang him onto a bomb release, did you?” Bogard looked. The forward pit was empty. It was in dim silhouette again now, against the stars, but there was nothing there now save the gun. “No,” McGinnis said: “there he is. See? Leaning overside. Dammit, I told him not to spew it! There he comes back.” The guest’s head came into view again. But again it sank out of sight.
“He’s coming back,” Bogard said. “Stop him. Tell him we’re going to have every squadron in the Hun Channel group on top of us in thirty minutes.”
McGinnis swung himself down and stooped at the entrance to the passage. “Get back!” he shouted. The other was almost out; they squatted so, face to face like two dogs, shouting at one another above the noise of the still-unthrottled engines on either side of the fabric walls. The English boy’s voice was thin and high.
“Bomb!” he shrieked.
“Yes,” McGinnis shouted, “they were bombs! We gave them hell! Get back, I tell you! Have every Hun in France on us in ten minutes! Get back to your gun!”
Again the boy’s voice came, high, faint above the noise: “Bomb! All right?”
“Yes! Yes! All right. Back to your gun, damn you!”
McGinnis climbed back into the office. “He went back. Want me to take her awhile?”
“All right,” Bogard said. He passed McGinnis the wheel. “Ease her back some. I’d just as soon it was daylight when they come down on us.”
“Right,” McGinnis said. He moved the wheel suddenly. “What’s the matter with that right wing?” he said. “Watch it. . . . See? I’m flying on the right aileron and a little rudder. Feel it.”
Bogard took the wheel a moment. “I didn’t notice that. Wire somewhere, I guess. I didn’t think any of those shells were that close. Watch her, though.”
“Right,” McGinnis said. “And so you are going with him on his boat tomorrow — today.”
“Yes. I promised him. Confound it, you can’t hurt a kid, you know.”
“Why don’t you take Collier along, with his mandolin? Then you could sail around and sing.”
“I promised him,” Bogard said. “Get that wing up a little.”
“Right,” McGinnis said.
Thirty minutes later it was beginning to be dawn; the sky was gray. Presently McGinnis said: “Well, here they come. Look at them! They look like mosquitoes in September. I hope he don’t get worked up now and think he’s playing beaver. If he does he’ll just be one down to Ronnie, provided the devil has a beard. . . . Want the wheel?”
V
At eight o’clock the beach, the Channel, was beneath them. Throttled back, the machine drifted down as Bogard ruddered it gently into the Channel wind. His face was strained, a little tired.
McGinnis looked tired, too, and he needed a shave.
“What do you guess he is looking at now?” he said. For again the English boy was leaning over the right side of the cockpit, looking backward and downward past the right wing.
“I don’t know,” Bogard said. “Maybe bullet holes.” He blasted the port engine. “Must have the riggers—”
“He could see some closer than that,” McGinnis said. “I’ll swear I saw tracer going into his back at one time. Or maybe it’s the ocean he’s looking at. But he must have seen that when he came over from England.” Then Bogard leveled off; the nose rose sharply, the sand, the curling tide edge fled alongside.
Yet still the English boy hung far overside, looking backward and downward at something beneath the right wing, his face rapt, with utter and childlike interest.
Until the machine was completely stopped he continued to do so. Then he ducked down, and in the abrupt silence of the engines they could hear him crawling in the passage. He emerged just as the two pilots climbed stiffly down from the office, his face bright, eager; his voice high, excited.
“Oh, I say! Oh, good gad! What a chap. What a judge of distance! If Ronnie could only have seen! Oh, good gad! Or maybe they aren’t like ours — don’t load themselves as soon as the air strikes them.”
The Americans looked at him. “What don’t what?” McGinnis said. “The bomb. It was magnificent; I say, I shan’t forget it. Oh, I say, you know! It was splendid!”
After a while McGinnis said, “The bomb?” in a fainting voice. Then the two pilots glared at each other; they said in unison: “That right wing!” Then as one they clawed down through the trap and, with the guest at their heels, they ran around the machine and looked beneath the right wing.
The bomb, suspended by its tail, hung straight down like a plumb bob beside the right wheel, its tip just touching the sand. And parallel with the wheel track was the long delicate line in the sand where its ultimate tip had dragged. Behind them the English boy’s voice was high, clear, childlike:
“Frightened, myself. Tried to tell you. But realized you knew your business better than I. Skill. Marvelous. Oh, I say, I shan’t forget it.”
VI
A Marine with a bayoneted rifle passed Bogard onto the wharf and directed him to the boat. The wharf was empty, and he didn’t even see the boat until he approached the edge of the wharf and looked directly down into it and upon the backs of two stooping men in greasy dungarees, who rose and glanced briefly at him and stooped again.
It was about thirty feet long and about three feet wide. It was painted with gray-green camouflage. It was quarter-decked forward, with two blunt, raked exhaust stacks. “Good Lord,” Bogard thought, “if all that deck is engine—” Just aft the deck was the control seat; he saw a big wheel, an instrument panel.
Rising to a height of about a foot above the free-board, and running from the stern forward to where the deck began, and continuing on across the after edge of the deck and thence back down the other gunwale to the stern, was a solid screen, also camouflaged, which inclosed the boat save for the width of the stern, which was open. Facing the steersman’s seat like an eye was a hole in the screen about eight inches in diameter.
And looking down into the long, narrow, still, vicious shape, he saw a machine gun swiveled at the stern, and he looked
