A bomb hung in its wire cage-holder on the visible side of the fuselage. It struck Franky that the airman must be profoundly sure of himself, or culpably reckless to have come down before getting rid of the thing. A swivel-mounting like a barless capital A supported a machine-gun above the radius of the tractor, and well within reach of the pilot's hand.
The pilot got down. He was tall and big, with a red moustache; a man whose natural height and bulk were so augmented by the padded helmet topped with the now-raised goggles, the pneumatic jacket girt in by a broad band of webbing, supporting a brace of large revolvers, and the heavy bandolier he carried, that the figure of his companion, scrambling after him, seemed that of a mere dwarf.
The man who saw, per medium of the rakishly-angled looking-glass yet hanging on the wall of the wrecked parlour, conceived a horror of the Troll-like creature in its big helmet, and the full-sized oilskins that hung in folds about its diminutive body, the skirts reaching nearly to the ground. When the two passed beyond the mirror's area of reflection, the doubt whether they might not have discovered his whereabouts and be stealthily creeping up from the rear to attack him, made him shudder, and brought the perspiration starting in the hollows of his sunken temples and cheeks.
Minutes passed. He waited with his eyes upon the mirror. Someone was approaching from the direction of the Market Place, keeping well under the broken walls of the houses fringing the narrow trottoir. Where an avalanche of tiles and brickwork had fallen, he must perforce skirt the obstacle, and thus for an instant be reflected in the glass. Meanwhile the sound of nearing footsteps—sometimes muffled in thick dust, or clicking over cobblestones, or tripping and stumbling among bricks and rubble—grew more distinct. The red-moustached giant could not walk so lightly. It must be the Troll—could be no one but the Troll! The suspense of waiting had tensed into unbearable agony when the sound of a voice crying broke out in the deathly silence of the place.
"Oh, oh!" Like a woman or a child's uncontrolled wailing. "Oh—the poor men! Oh, the poor women and the li-ittle ch-ildren! Oh!" and da capo, working up to a crescendo of agony, and dying away in heartbreaking sobs. It was so strange—not that there should be weeping in these razed and ravaged streets, but that the voice that wept should be a voice of England—that it begot in the helpless man who heard doubts of his own sanity, and a reckless desire to dissipate such doubts. He heard himself call out: "Who is crying there?"
And a treble voice piped back, and stumbling over the moraine of débris tongueing from the avalanche of broken tiles and masonry, came—not the Troll-dwarf in his huge disguising helmet and outsized pneumatic jacket—but an urchin of twelve or thirteen—in the familiar dress of a Boy Scout—minus the smasher hat and staff.
"Me for the gay old life!" meditated Franky. "Thought I was getting groggy in the upper works—and now I know it! A British Boy Scout in his little khaki shirt, with a row of gadgets on his left sleeve, and ribbon tags to his little garters, all on his little lone in the middle of this—Gehenna!" He spoke to the fever that galloped through his veins in the tone of a patron presiding at the test-display of a Cinema Film Company: "Pretty good, but you can do better. Roll along with a troop of blue-eyed Girl Guides, old Touch-and-Go!"
The Scout's figure vanished out of the glass. There was a sound of scratching and scrambling. The broken floor jarred to the impact of a light body, and a boyish treble called:
"Is—is anybody here? Anybody—English?"
The voice quavered on the last word. Franky knew that this was delirium. He grinned under his four-days' beard, and the grime and soot and plaster that masked him, and answered in a series of Bantu clicks, so leather-dry was his tongue:
"Me as per descrip: to fol: Young British sossifer of good fam: irrepro: ref: and tophole edu: badly dam: by Hun shell! Greatly in need of the com: of a ref: Chris: ho: Mus: in the eve: and intell: conver: greatly appre:" He shut his stiff eyelids and opened them again, but the imaginary Scout had not gone.
"You're dreadfully—hurt. Couldn't I do—something?" the treble voice piped. Its owner was now squatting on his heels in the shade of Franky's penthouse of planks. The knuckles he rested on the floor were cracked and grimy, and his deeply-freckled, fair-complexioncd face was lined, and anxious and thin. His blue eyes were swollen with crying, though his sensitive lips wore a wistful, crooked smile. "You are real?" he asked wistfully, and Franky answered, huskily:
"Rather! In fact, I'm a lot more real than you. Who are you, since we're gettin' personal?" He repeated slowly after the boy:
"'Bawne Mildare Saxham, Scout No. 22. Fox Patrol, 331st London W.' Seems good enough." He shut his hot eyes wearily. "But if you're solid—you'd get me a drink!"
There was a little stir. The Scout had gone. Franky knew it without opening his eyes, yielding to the deadly sinking faintness engendered by the effort of speech. A mountainous weight crushed his chest, and his legs were cold and heavy as ingots of pig-iron. It occurred to him that at this rate the—wind-up—could not be far off. And a great horror fell upon him like a pall, and cold sweat broke forth and streamed upon his haggard face and broken body. Death for one who so loved Life and the pleasant things of a commonplace existence.... A cricket-match, a day with the hounds, a funny revue, a game of polo, a break at billiards, a clinking run with the car, a fine cigar. Mess in camp after the hard day's march, long, cool drinks with bits of ice tinkling in the tumbler. That new, fierce pleasure tasted in his first experience of real fighting.... And oh! how much sweeter than these the scent of Margot's hair, the light of Margot's eyes, the clasp of her arms about his neck, the hope of fatherhood, never now to be realised....
"My little chap!" he muttered, and his heart wept, but no tears came to his arid eyes. Then something cold touched his mouth. The rim of a cup with water in it. "Thank you!" he said, after a gulping draught, opening his eyes with the sense of reviving coolness stealing through his parched vitals. "That's—absolutely IT!"
The boyish treble said with a quaver in it:
"If I set this can beside you—I got the water from the pipe that is running—and the broken cup near it, could you manage to dip it in? Are you able to move this hand?"
"First class!" whispered Franky, lifting the member a very little way and dropping it again. "The—the other arm came in for it when the shrapper hit me in the ribs.... Halloa! Chocolate," for a bit touched his lips and was gently pushed between them. "That reminds me. I've an iron ration somewhere about me. No—they took my pack off when I got crumped up." It had seemed only—decent to Franky in those days of endless foot-slogging, to carry a pack and a Lee-Enfield and fare no better than his men. "Frightfully obliged. But I won't take this." This being another scrap of chocolate. "Is thy servant a Boche that he should stodge kid's grub?"
"You're English!" The blue eyes were full of hungry worship. "Man alive!" quavered the boyish treble, "you don't know how I've wanted to hear an English voice again. Tell me"—he panted and was pale under his multitudinous freckles, and the beating of the childish heart shook the thin young frame—"the Germans haven't beaten England—and sunk our Navy, and wiped out our Army—and killed the King, and Lord Roberts, and the Chief Scout, and Lord Kitchener, and—and my father and mother and everyone?"
"No!" said the wounded man, and his faint whisper was as convincing as though the negative had been shouted with the full strength of vigorous lungs. "Is that the kind of lie they've been pitching you? Perhaps it does 'em good to believe it! Let 'em, if they like. It'll never be true!"
"I knew it couldn't!" The clear treble had lost its quaver. "And yet there were times when I was funky. He seemed so awfully sure at—the beginning! And—the Enemy never stops—rubbing it in!"
"Who is the Enemy?"
"His name is von Herrnung. And—and I must go now, for—for your sake." The eyes flickered, and their pupils dilated to wide circles of frightened blackness. "He might wake up—and come—and find you. And if he found you——"
When the arteries have been almost depleted by hæmorrhage, and the strength of the body has ebbed to vanishing point, the brain is sometimes dazzlingly clear. Thus, though the faint whisper barely reached the ear of the other, the haggard eyes looking out of the begrimed and unshaven face of the man lying in the blood-soaked stretcher were alert and observant. He said reassuringly:
"He won't come just yet. Tell me more about him, and all about yourself."
How strangely lined and pinched and puckered was the young face with its clear red-and-white sprinkled over with brown freckles. Fine dust of dew-beads started upon forehead and temples and cheeks, the half-opened mouth twitched nervously, though he thrust out his under-jaw and knitted his reddish brows in a gallant effort of self-control.
"His name is von Herrnung. He is the German Field Flight officer who took me away from England. I wrote down the date in my Scout's pocket-book so that I mightn't forget. It was July 18th. He was trying Mr. Sherbrand's hawk-hoverer at Hendon. He asked me to go up with him——"
"Great Snipe!" panted Franky weakly. "Are YOU the boy who dropped the wallet with the Clanronald Papers and the scratched message in the North Sea?"
The blue eyes understood. "There was a wallet," said their owner. "I don't know what was inside, of course. But he——"
A spasm of trembling went through the slender body. He bent his head, and blinked his eyes, and the muscles of his throat and jaw worked as though he fought down an hysterical access of tears. And a broad shaft of golden light, falling on the young bare head, showed how the shining red-brown hair had been roughly clipped in ridges, leaving a forehead-tuft oddly streaked with white. Amongst the crowds of homeless exiles endlessly streaming along the roads of this scourged and tortured country, or crouching amongst the wreckage of its ruined villages and battered towns, heads even younger than this boy's had displayed the tragic sign.
"Poor kid!" Franky muttered, recognising it as the result of overwhelming physical shock and unnatural mental strain. "He knew what was inside? ..."
"I don't think so! If he had known when the submarine picked us up in the North Sea—I think he would have killed me! He would like to kill me now, he says"—the apple in the boy's throat jerked—"because through me he has been degradiren—reduced from Captain to Supernumerary Officer Pilot—and has had his Third Class of the Red Eagle taken away! That was done at the big Wireless Station—Nordeich, they called it——"
"Nordeich.... Of course ... in German West Friesland. Thrash along—I'm following you. Did they Court Martial the Flying Man?" Franky whispered; and Bawne whispered back:
"The Emperor punished him! ..."
"The Emperor, did you say? ..."
"Yes. He came to Nordeich—in—I've forgotten what they call it when great people want to move about without red carpets and lots of fuss."
"Incognito."
"Incognito. He'd broken off his yachting-trip in Norwegian waters—and landed at Kiel only that day. I heard men whisper it.... He was dressed in the field-grey, like his War Minister von Falkenhayn—-and his generals of the Imperial Staff—and all the other officers and men. But he 'stripped off the War-harness,'—that's what they called it!—before he got into the Potsdam train."
"Go on! ... What did he look like? ... They say he has changed a lot o' late."
"I couldn't tell. I'd only seen photos that made him look younger and hid his short arm. But even if he hadn't sat while the others stood—and worn the Iron Cross, Grand Class—and the Black Eagle with diamond swords and a Crown Imperial—I'd have known it was the Emperor, by his eyes."
"By his eyes, you say! ..."
The boy's heart throbbed visibly, the breath came in short puffs through his nostrils, and his lips were twisted awry as he smiled. The smile stiffened out as he nodded. "By his awful eyes! ... When they looked at you they made you feel tired, and empty, and—queer. But when they got angry—you were reminded of—of a tiger lurking to spring out of a cave of ice!"
"Ah! So he got angry, did he?"
Bawne nodded.
"When I wouldn't answer the questions he asked me—he talked English—about how the brown satchel had come unstrapped and tumbled into the sea. And he said to an officer: 'Show him your whip!'—and he did—and it was short-stocked and covered with leather, like a dog-whip—with three thongs strung with little balls of lead. Man alive! you ought to see my back. Though they only hit me once!" He winced, and flushed, and paled. "I was a coward to squeal—though when they asked: 'Will you tell now?' I did say: 'Not to stop you from killing me!'"
"Good egg you! Great Snipe!—if I'd been there. With a Service Revolver—! Never mind.... Go on!"
"I forget.... Oh!—they pulled on my shirt and gave me some strong stuff to drink. Corn brandy, I think it was—and then He got up and came round the table and began to talk to me. He said I must not be an obstinate boy, for in another few days there would be War. Our pitiful little Army'd be wiped out and our Fleet sent to the bottom of the sea. The British Isles would be Deutsch Brittanien—and English people who would not swear to be good Brito-German subjects of their new Emperor and Overlord would be instantly put to death. But if I told up about the brown satchel I would be permitted to live, and possibly my parents also. If I said No!—nothing would be left but to call back the officer with the whip."
"Coaxin', wasn't he? And what did you tell him?"
"I said: 'You've only said you're going to conquer England, Sir. You haven't done it yet!"
It was not merely the treble voice of a courageous child answering. It was the utterance of a race untamable and indomitable. Franky could hear the metal balls on the whip clink one against another as the loaded thongs were shaken out.... He whispered with dry lips:
"Then——?"
"Then I don't quite know. I was sick and sleepy, and the blood was running down my back under my shirt. If they had killed me I wouldn't have cared much. Perhaps he saw that, for he called up von Herrnung. He was not to be dismissed from the Field Flying Service—because of the War that was coming!—but he was to forfeit his Order of the Red Eagle and rank as a Supernumerary Officer Pilot. Man alive!—you should have seen how that big man squirmed and crawled and blubbered." The young lips curled, and the jaw thrust out contemptuously. "'Thanks! Gratitude! ... My blood to prove devotion! ... All I ask—the service of danger—the reconnaissance under enemy fire!' And the Emperor——"
"Kicked him, I hope!"
"No, he said: 'Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung you will now to your Flying Headquarters return. Let it be your task to win back at the cost of a thousand lives—if you had them—the lost esteem of your Emperor. Take this boy with you. Make of him a decent German. It is "up to you," as the English say.' And then the Wireless went 'S'ss! Crackle! Pzz!' and the telephone-bell said 'Pr'rr!' and the room was cleared—they said because of a Call from the Winter Palace at Petersburg."
"And where did they take you after you left the Wireless Station? Go on—I'd like to hear you tell!"
The boy glanced round uneasily and then mastered his apprehensions. The grimed hands went to his stocking-top and pulled out a squat little book. The coloured presentment of a Boy Scout adorned its soiled leather cover, and the thumbed leaves of the diary within were pencilled from end to end. The Odyssey of a Saxham Pup, one might have called the story whispered into the ear of the wounded man by the boy squatting at his side.
One had been taken by train to Bremen and thence to a place called Taubefeld, in West Hessen. Flight Station XXX was here on a vast stretch of heath. There were rows of great hangars, and a vast army of motor floats and lorries, upon which machines, hangars, telegraph-installations, workshops, mess-houses, and quarters for officers and mechanics, could be placed when the mobilisation-order came and transported by road or rail.
One had fallen sick at Taubefeld—the effects of that North Sea ducking. One had waked up with a skin-cropped head wondering where one was. A woman who helped in the cookhouse had given one broth and gruel and the medicine prescribed by the doctor. One had crawled off one's straw palliasse weakly and shakily, and so won forth into a new, unfriendly world.
One's parole had been taken—and one was thenceforth free to move about and see things—when one was not wanted to help oil or clean wires or sweep up the hangars. There was grub enough: bacon-soup, potato-salad, and sausage, queer but not uneatable. Nobody was really brutal as long as one didn't speak English, or even German with a British accent, too much at one time. Keine Unterhaltung da! ("No conversation there!") some officer or N.C. would yell at one, and the rebuke was generally accompanied by the swishing cut of a cane.
Consequently the Saxham Pup had bent himself to acquire German, as spoken by Germans, and schooled himself to employ his eyes and ears while maintaining economy in the use of his tongue. He had found out his whereabouts from an envelope he had picked up, and other things from listening to the officers' conversation, and the talk of the mechanics in the big hangars.
War was the thing everybody talked about. There was going to be bloody War in a twinkling. The German Navy was going to smash the British Navy into matchwood, everybody was quite sure. The German Army was going to walk over the miserable little British Army—and then would be expiated the sins of the British Government and the diabolical plottings of Sir Edward Grey. Throat-cuttings, shootings, and hangings were mentioned in connection with the above, and other personages whom British Boy Scouts hold in reverence. But one had had to bear it and hold one's tongue, and keep smiling. That was the method of the Chief who had said to one: "Quit yourself like a man."
Brave advice, possible to follow by day when alien eyes were watching. One could choke down weak tears and the ache of the lonely heart that cried for Home and the dear familiar faces, when the Birds of War were roaring and whirring up the night-field or down out of the sky. But at night, in the grim, unfriendly dark of the sleeping-cupboard, without other witness than the thin, sore-eyed white kitten that shared one's meals and slept beside one on the hard straw mattress under the foul-smelling grey blanket,—things were harder. One had got through, after a fashion, by "rotting" and making believe. One did not set down in the Scout's Note-Book or tell the wounded friend on the stretcher how one had kissed the back of one's own hand, and whispered, "Good-night, Mother!" and touched one's cheek with the tips of two fingers and whispered, "Good-night, and God keep and bless you, my darling boy!"
Amongst other things of interest picked up by day, one found out that Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung was cold-shouldered by the officers of the Flight Squadron, which he had captained before his fall. No longer top-dog, he was made to pay for his domineering and swaggering. He resented this, by swaggering more. The men talked of this in the hangars, as they tuned-up wires or cleaned the engines. Von Herrnung was Unglücklich. Nobody liked him. The Squadron would not stand him long. Hadn't he insulted the Herr Squadron-Captain Pilot who had succeeded and challenged him, and got his cartel back again?
"Colossal insolence!" he had fumed. "A challenge from a person of my rank confers an honour on him who receives it. Not a man among you stands upon my level. Deny it if you can!"
"True, very true!" the Lieutenant-Observer who had brought back the challenge was reputed to have retorted. "Not a man among us has ever been degraded, therefore, Herr Supernumerary Officer, you stand alone. And we of the Field Flight do not regard your presence among us as a distinction. You may possibly conceive that?"
He had said it just as though he had had a stink under his nose, according to the narrator. And he had dropped von Herrnung's letter on von Herrnung's table, wiped his fingers ostentatiously upon his handkerchief, given the ghost of a salute—wheeled and gone out. After that the whilom favourite of Fortune had turned sullen and solitary, and developed such desperate recklessness that men funked to fly with him. Subsequently the Bird of War hovering-gear having, after due examination by Government experts, been relinquished to its captor, he had had the mechanism adapted to a Taube monoplane, and thenceforward made Her Dearest the sharer of his flights.
You are to suppose Bawne snatching fearful joys in the realisation of cherished ambitions. Loathing and fearing, he yet admired the big red-haired man, so superbly brave in the air that seemed his natural element. Equally the man, detesting the child, grudgingly acknowledged his courage and obedience. No queerer companionship may have been than this between the Enemy, and the son of Saxham and Lynette.
When the Flight Squadron shifted to Aix-la-Chapelle, a huge seething caldron of military preparation,—"Does England declare War against us?" people asked the Flight officers. "It is probable," they answered, "Gott sei danke!" Upon the Third of August, starting at night, Bawne had made a long flight with the Enemy. At midnight the Taube had hovered over a great, beautiful city twinkling with millions of electric lights.
"That is Brussels you see down there," shouted von Herrnung through the voice-tube. "The city is en fête because of the agreement arrived at between the Emperor and the Belgian King. That means England has lost a friend, and made another enemy. Do you understand, little English swine?"
And von Herrnung, who had brought a Wireless outfit, had busied himself in picking up messages from a low-powered installation at the German Embassy and transmitting them to Somebody, high in authority, who waited at Berlin. He had grown more and more peeved as he went about his business, Bawne could not tell why but Franky understood quite well.
Belgium had not been content that the Red Cock should perch upon her British neighbour's roof, while her own house remained unscathed by fire. Franky smiled, knowing this to have been the burden of the song sung by the tuned sparks. Broad day had found the big city humming with mobilisation, enormous placards printed in the National Colours, with: "BELGIUM REFUSES!" and "ROI, LOI, LIBERTÉ," posted in all the public places—and a park of heavy Artillery concentrated round the Etterbeek Barracks, as von Herrnung had flown back to Aix-la-Chapelle on the morning of August 4th.
Bawne went on:
The Flight Squadron had been attached to a Field Artillery Division of the Second Corps, under a General named von Kluck. A huge man he, with a square head and a big mouth full of broken teeth. Bawne had previously seen him at the Wireless Station where he had been taken on landing from the submarine.
They had seen little of the aviation-base, from the beginning of hostilities. The Powers that Were had promptly taken von Herrnung at his word. For him were the long-distance flights, the delicate and risky missions, the dangerous reconnaissances over the Allied batteries. Driven by that gadfly of desire to regain the lost distinctions, he seemed to have lost all sense of fear and to bear a charmed life.
Thus, while von Kluck's Advance was opposed at Mons by the stubborn thrust of the British Forces, the Buzzard earned his nickname by his tireless quest for Death. It eased his grudge against mankind to hunt men—and he hunted; hovering and observing, wirelessing and spotting, utilising one machine for many purposes,—in those days when War Flying was as yet in its infancy—sniped at by the sharpshooters of four out of seven British Divisions—often waging, with automatic pistol and Krupp machine-gun, fierce battles with other Paladins of the Wing, on the boundless lists of air.
How many times the boy's heart had cried for pity when some brave bird crippled by a spout of lead, or fired by an explosive bullet, had gone spinning earthwards, showing the Three Crosses of the Union Jack, or the blue-white-red circles of France's tricolour—or the red-black-yellow of the Belgian Flag upon its upper and under-wings as it fell.
They had bombed Paris two days before, and bombed Ypres that morning, starting from a Flying Base near the city of Bruges. Bawne knew the place was Ypres because it was marked in red on the roller-map. The British General Headquarters were supposed to be there. All the bombs had been used except two, and the Enemy must have forgotten to get rid of these before he landed. He was generally careful, but not so when he drank much. And lately he had drunk a good deal, there was so much wine in the country. He had come down and gone into the restaurant to quest for food and champagne. If he found, he would eat hugely and drink heavily, and then sleep himself sober. He always slept after a bout before taking to the air again. But sometimes when he had mixed drinks he got savage instead of sleepy, and then——
"Do you mean that he thrashes you?" Franky interjected here.
"Rather! Just look!"
There were bright red, newly-made weals and brown and purplish old ones on the little muscular, boyish arm from which the speaker stripped the sleeve.
"My back and legs are lots worse," he volunteered with the air of a showman. "I sometimes think he'd like to kill me. But he won't"—the blue eyes were shrewd under the white-streaked forelock—"because of what the Emperor said."
"'Take the boy with you and make of him a decent German.' For fear of your being sent for, he— Yes, I understand! ... My Christmas!" Franky whispered, opening his haggard eyes, and the fire that burned in them scorched up the water, "If I only had the use of this bashed-up body I'd jolly soon put the fear of God into the howling brute!" His uncertain hand fumbled about the butt of his Webley and Scott revolver. "Shoot him—and make tracks for Headquarters with you in his Taube. Can't fly for monkey-nuts though. Can you?"
"A little." There was a lightening of pleasure in the sombre depths of the blue eyes. "He lets me do plain, straight flying when he's sending Wireless, or photographing or observing. I've never started from the ground yet, or done a landing, though I'm sure I could if I tried. He has shown me lots and lots. And I do what he tells me." The forehead knitted under the ragged piebald forelock. "He bluffs about shooting me if I don't obey. But before I drink brandy or do other things that are blackguardly—or throw bombs on the British and the Allies, he shall kill me! I've told him—and he knows I'll keep my word."
"I pipe. And can't you manage to do a flip on your own," came back in the nearly extinguished voice from the sunken chest of the helpless figure on the blood-soaked stretcher. "One o' these fine days when von Thingamy isn't wide? What's to hinder your getting away now and pushing South to meet the British Advance-guard? We blew up the bridge when we left the town, but it's up to you to swim the river. Or cross with a barrel or a plank."
"Yes. And I've often planned to bunk it! But—Man alive!—he's frightfully clever. He knows a Scout sticks to his Word of Honour—and he always asks for my Parole."
"F'f! That's a poser, old son." Franky considered. "If I were in your shoes I'd take to givin' the strictly limited parole. Two hours—or three—or four.... There's a chance if the time expires without renewal—of being able to—perpetuate a strictly honourable bunk. So, best Kid, live in hopes and watch out for chances, and one day——"
The speaker's voice trailed off into indistinctness. A deadly vertigo came upon him. He sank amidst swirling waves of grey nothingness, to emerge after æons, to consciousness of the morning sunshine, and the warm rain dropping on his clammy cheek and hand.
"Oh, oh! I thought you were dead!" It was the wailing voice he had heard long ages back. "Like all the other people.... The poor men and women and the little children——"
"Dead! Not a bit of it! Only shamming for a drink," Frankly whispered, as the cup with its blessing of cool water revisited his baked lips: "Look here. Where did you tell me your Flying Devil was?"
The boy said, with a scared glance through the breached front wall of the baker's parlour, out into the street where the golden sunshine played upon War's havoc and desolation:
"I said he went into the restaurant in the square where the—the dead people are piled up—to hunt about for wine."
"I remember. What's that?"
The gaunt eyes rolled towards the yawning gap where once had been the window. The white lips whispered, "Did you hear? I'll swear somebody laughed."
Both held their breath. Not a sound reached them except the sliding of some débris from a pile of shattered masonry, and the gurgling of the water in the broken street-main. Franky mustered breath and went on:
"And now shake hands and scoot, my son, for this spot isn't healthy. Say 'Good-bye and God bless you!' And—if you didn't mind—you might kiss me"—the uninjured hand lifted clumsily and pointed—"here on my forehead.... Steady on! Hold hard! Thumbs up, old man!"
For sobs were racking the thin young frame, and the bright tears were running. He gasped out:
"I—I—can't go away and leave you—to—to die all alone!"
Die....
The dreadful word, at last, dropping with a dull shock through the wounded man's consciousness as a heavy stone sinks through deeps of black water. Swirling rings of mist in Franky's brain, threatened to close down and blot out all things. He thrust back the grey menace of unconsciousness with a brave effort, whispering:
"Die.... Rats! What are you—talking about? It's me for the gay life every time! All I've—got to do is to lie here—and—wait until they fetch me.... They're coming—before to-morrow morning—give you my solemn word!"
"You're sure?"
"Dead sure. Look here—can you remember my name was Norwater? Captain, First Battalion Bearskins Plain?" The stumbling voice went on as the boy nodded: "Well then, I'd like you to put in a word for me when you say your prayers, sometimes. I might have a little chap of my own, by-and-by, to do that for his Pater. What's this, best child?"
A black wooden Crucifix with the Figure of Our Lord in white plaster was being held close to the dimming eyes.
"It's a Crucifix. I think it must have fallen down from the room that was above here. Won't you keep it—to help you through the night-time—just as the one on my Rosary helps me? ..."
"Good egg! Do you pray to it—and kiss it?"
"We pray—not to it, but to Our Lord who died for us and lives in Heaven. We kiss it—because even if it isn't pretty it is His Image—and has been blessed by a priest."
"Wipe my mouth first, please. You'll find—hanky in my pocket. Thanks!" He asked, after his discoloured lips had touched the Feet of the Crucified: "Isn't there something one ought to say? A prayer—or something! Not much time now—before they fetch me. Tell quick—what words say!"
"You couldn't have anything better than Our Father. Our Lord made that prayer Himself. But there are lots of others. The little ones are easiest. Say: 'Jesu, have mercy upon me!'"
The weak voice came stumbling after.
"Jesu, have mercy on me!"
"Jesu, help me!"
"Jesu, help me!"
"O Thou who didst die for sinful men upon the Cross, have mercy upon me a sinner!"
The glassy eyes stared upwards and past the boy, and a thin scarlet thread began to trickle from the corner of his mouth....
"O Thou who didst die—upon the Cross—mercy—me a sinner!"
The stumbling voice trailed away into silence. The glazing eyes, meeting Bawne's, said plainly: "Now go!" And as the boy, blind with tears, turned in obedience to their order, a dull flame leaped into them. They had seen the tall half-length of a big man, panoplied in the goggled helmet and pneumatic jacket of the aviator, bulking in the window-gap, even before Bawne knew that the Enemy was there.