“Will I need all this?” the guest said. “Shall we be gone that long?”
“Probably,” Bogard said. “Better use it. Cold upstairs.”
The guest picked up the suit. “I say,” he said. “I say, Ronnie and I have a do ourselves, tomor — today. Do you think Ronnie won’t mind if I am a bit late? Might not wait for me.”
“We’ll be back before teatime,” McGinnis said. He seemed quite busy with his boot. “Promise you.” The English boy looked at him.
“What time should you be back?” Bogard said.
“Oh, well,” the English boy said, “I dare say it will be all right. They let Ronnie say when to go, anyway. He’ll wait for me if I should be a bit late.”
“He’ll wait,” Bogard said. “Get your suit on.”
“Right,” the other said. They helped him into the suit. “Never been up before,” he said, chattily, pleasantly. “Dare say you can see farther than from mountains, eh?”
“See more, anyway,” McGinnis said. “You’ll like it.”
“Oh, rather. If Ronnie only waits for me. Lark. But dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Go on,” McGinnis said. “You’re kidding me.”
“Shut your trap, Mac,” Bogard said. “Come along. Want some more coffee?” He looked at the guest, but McGinnis answered:
“No. Got something better than coffee. Coffee makes such a confounded stain on the wings.”
“On the wings?” the English boy said. “Why coffee on the wings.”
“Stow it, I said, Mac,” Bogard said. “Come along.”
They recrossed the aerodrome, approaching the muttering banks of flame. When they drew near, the guest began to discern the shape, the outlines, of the Handley-Page. It looked like a Pullman coach run upslanted aground into the skeleton of the first floor of an incomplete skyscraper. The guest looked at it quietly.
“It’s larger than a cruiser,” he said in his bright, interested voice. “I say, you know. This doesn’t fly in one lump. You can’t pull my leg. Seen them before. It comes in two parts: Captain Bogard and me in one; Mac and ‘nother chap in other. What?”
“No,” McGinnis said. Bogard had vanished. “It all goes up in one lump. Big lark, eh? Buzzard, what?”
“Buzzard?” the guest murmured. “Oh, I say. A cruiser. Flying. I say, now.”
“And listen,” McGinnis said. His hand came forth; something cold fumbled against the hand of the English boy — a bottle. “When you feel yourself getting sick, see? Take a pull at it.”
“Oh, shall I get sick?”
“Sure. We all do. Part of flying. This will stop it. But if it doesn’t. See?”
“What? Quite. What?”
“Not overside. Don’t spew it overside.”
“Not overside?”
“It’ll blow back in Bogy’s and my face. Can’t see. Bingo. Finished. See?”
“Oh, quite. What shall I do with it?” Their voices were quiet, brief, grave as conspirators.
“Just duck your head and let her go.”
“Oh, quite.”
Bogard returned. “Show him how to get into the front pit, will you?” he said. McGinnis led the way through the trap. Forward, rising to the slant of the fuselage, the passage narrowed; a man would need to crawl.
“Crawl in there and keep going,” McGinnis said.
“It looks like a dog kennel,” the guest said.
“Doesn’t it, though?” McGinnis agreed cheerfully. “Cut along with you.” Stooping, he could hear the other scuttling forward. “You’ll find a Lewis gun up there, like as not,” he said into the tunnel.
The voice of the guest came back: “Found it.”
“The gunnery sergeant will be along in a minute and show you if it is loaded.”
“It’s loaded,” the guest said; almost on the heels of his words the gun fired, a brief staccato burst. There were shouts, the loudest from the ground beneath the nose of the aeroplane. “It’s quite all right,” the English boy’s voice said. “I pointed it west before I let it off. Nothing back there but Marine office and your brigade headquarters. Ronnie and I always do this before we go anywhere. Sorry if I was too soon. Oh, by the way,” he added, “my name’s Claude. Don’t think I mentioned it.”
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
