The cars fled onward, skidding at every turn of the road, and the bombs followed or preceded them, or else flung up the earth to left or right.
"That"s the tenth and the last, thank G.o.d!" said the sweating aide-de-camp. "Heaven and thunder! what an almost catastrophe!"
In the amazing s.p.a.ces of the air, a lean face, pinched and blue with the cold, peered over the fuselage and watched the antlike procession of pin-point dots moving slowly along the snowy road.
"That"s ma last!" he said, and picking up an aerial torpedo from between his feet, he dropped it over the side.
It struck the last car, which dissolved noisily into dust and splinters, while the force of the explosion overturned the car ahead.
"A bonnie shot," said Tam o" the Scoots complacently, and banked over as he turned for home. He shot a glance at the climbing circus and judged that there was no permanent advantage to be secured from an engagement.
Nevertheless he loosed a drum of ammunition at the highest machine and grinned when he saw two rips appear in the wing of his machine.
By the time he pa.s.sed over the German line all the Archies in the world were blazing at him, but Tam was at an almost record height--the height where men go dizzy and sick and suffer from internal bleeding. Over the German front-line trenches he dipped steeply down, but such had been his alt.i.tude that he was still ten thousand feet high when he leveled out above his aerodrome.
He descended in wide circles, his machine canted all the time at an angle of forty-five degrees and lighted gently on the even surface of the field a quarter of an hour after he had crossed the line.
He descended to the ground stiff and numb, and Bertram walked across from his own machine to make inquiries.
"Parky, Tam?"
"It"s no" so parky, Mr. Bertram, sir-r," replied Tam cautiously.
"Rot, Tam!" said that youthful officer. "Why, your nose is blue!"
"Aweel," admitted Tam. "But that"s no" cold, that"s--will ye look at ma alt.i.tude record?"
The young man climbed into the fuselage, looked and gasped.
"Dear lad!" he said, "have you been to heaven?"
"Verra near, sir-r," said Tam gravely; "another ten gallons o" essence an" A"d "a" made it. A"ve been that high that A" could see the sun risin" to-morrow!"
He started to walk off to his quarters but stopped and turned back.
"Don"t go near MacBissing"s caircus," he warned; "he"s feelin" sore."
Tam made a verbal report to Blackie, and Blackie got on to Headquarters by "phone.
"Tam seems to have had an adventure, sir," he said, when he had induced H. Q. exchange to connect him with his general and gave the lurid details.
"It might be Hindenburg," said the general thoughtfully. "He"s on the Western Front somewhere--that may explain the appearance of the circuses--or it may have been a corps general showing off the circus to a few trippers from Berlin--they are always running Reichstag members and pressmen round this front. Get Tam to make a report--his own report, not one you have edited." Blackie heard him chuckle. "I showed the last one to the army commander and he was tickled to death--hurry it along, I"m dying to see it."
If there is one task which an airman dislikes more than any other, it is report-writing. Tam was no exception, and his written accounts of the day"s work were models of briefness.
In the days of his extreme youth he had been engaged in labor which did not call for the clerical qualities, and roughly his written "reports"
were modeled on the "time sheets" he was wont to render in that far-off period, when he dwelt in lodgings at Govan, and worked at McArdle"s Shipbuilding Yard.
Thus:
Left aerodrome 6 A. M.
Enemy patrols encountered 5 Ditto ditto chased 4 Ditto ditto forced down 2 Bombs dropped on Verleur Station 5 &c., &c.
Fortunately Tam possessed a romantic and a poetical soul, and there were rare occasions when he would offer a lyrical account of his adventures containing more color and detail. As, for example, his account of his fight with Lieutenant Prince Zwartz-Hamelyn:
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gi"e us Tae see oursel"s as ithers see us."
Thus spake a high an" princely Hun As he fired at Tam wi" his Maxim gun.
Thinkin", na doot, that bonnie lad Was lookin", if no" feelin", bad.
But Tam he stalled his wee machine An" straffit young Zwartz-Hamelyn.
It was Blackie who harnessed Tam"s genius for description to the pencil of a stenographer, and thereafter, when a long report was needed by Headquarters, there would appear at Tam"s quarters one Corporal Alexander Brown, Blackie"s secretary, and an amiable c.o.c.kney who wrote mystic characters in a notebook with great rapidity.
"Is it ye, Alec?" said Tam, suspending his ablutions to open the door of his "bunk." "Come away in, man. Is it a report ye want? Sit down on the bed an" help yeersel" to the seegairs. Ye"ll find the whisky in the decanter."
Corporal Brown sat on the bed because he knew it was there. He dived into his pocket and produced a notebook, a pencil and a cigaret, because he knew they had existence, too. He did not attempt to search for the cigars and the whisky because he had been fooled before, and had on two separate occasions searched the bunk for these delicacies under the unsmiling eyes of Tam and aided by Tam"s advice, only to find in the end that Tam was as anxious to discover such treasures as the baffled corporal himself.
"We will noo proceed with the thrillin" serial," said Tam, spreading his towel on the window-ledge and rolling down his shirt-sleeves. "Are ye ready, Alec?"
""Arf a mo", Sergeant--have you got a match?"
"Man, ye"re a cadger of the most appallin" descreeption," said Tam severely. "A"m lookin" for"ard to the day when it"ll be a coort-martial offense to ask yeer superior officer for matches--here"s one. Don"t strike it till ye give me one of yeer common cigarets."
The corporal produced a packet.
"A"ll ask ye as a favor not to let the men know A"ve descended to this low an" vulgar habit," said Tam. "A"ll take two or three as curiosities--A"d like to show the officers the kind o" poison the lower cla.s.ses smoke--"
"Here! Leave me a couple!" said the alarmed non-commissioned officer as Tam"s skilful fingers half emptied the box.
"Be silent!" said Tam, "ye"re interruptin" ma train o" thochts--what did A" say last?"
"You said nothing yet," replied the corporal, rescuing his depleted store.
"Here it begins," said Tam, and started:
"At ten o"clock in the forenoon o" a clear but wintry day, a solitary airman micht hae been seen wingin" his lane way ameedst the solitude o" the achin" skies."
""Achin" skies"?" queried the stenographer dubiously.
"It"s poetry," said Tam. "A" got it oot o" a bit by Roodyard Kiplin", the Burns o" England, an" don"t interrupt.
"He seemed ower young for sich an adventure--"
"How old are you, Sergeant, if I may ask the question?" demanded the amanuensis.
"Ye may not ask, but A"ll tell you--A"m seventy-four come Michaelmas, an" A"ve never looked into the bricht ees o" a la.s.sie since A" lost me wee Jean, who flit wi" a colonel o" dragoons, in the year the battle of Balaklava was fought--will ye shut yeer face whilst A"m dictatin"?"
"Sorry," murmured the corporal and poised his pencil.
"Suddenly, as the wee hero was guidin" his "bus through the maze o"
cloods, a strange sicht met his ees. It was the caircus of MacBissing! They were evolutin" by numbers, performin" their Great Feat of Balancin" an" Barebacked Ridin", Aerial Trapeze an"