Birds of a Feather: Iii. Exit Flagada

TRANSLATED BY FLORENCE CONVERSE

I. CHIGNOLE TO THE RESCUE

GILDED insects danced in the sunbeams that filtered through the pine needles. A bee heavy with pollen plunged deep into a flowercup, setting the blossom a-nod on its delicate stem. Papa Charles and Flagada were asleep on the damp hot sand, with their caps over their faces to keep out the light. Frangipane, bare-headed, was doing his hundred paces ‘as at Deauville.’ Chignole, lying on his stomach, propped on one elbow, drew cabalistic signs with the end of his hazel switch. The high notes of a distant clarion woke the sleepers.

‘ That’s not for us. It’s the assembly for the machine-gun rookies. You can go on napping, Papa Charles.’

‘You think —’ yawned Flagada.

‘This place gets my goat! I feel as if I were at the movies! Who would have supposed that in one day we should be blown from the front to the extreme rear — from Nancy to the school of aerial gunnery, at Cazau, in the Gironde!’

‘The surprises of a military life.’

’Oh, what a place! What a change from out yonder! It turns this month’s practice into a sort of holiday, a shooting leave.’

The wind, very soft, stirred the spicy fragrance of fresh pine-gum and dried heather, mingled with the sharp, salty smell of the neighboring sea. The aviators, accustomed to the harsh climate of the Vosges, reveled in the happy languor of their deliciously sleepy senses.

‘Sunday, if we’re free, I’ll take you to Cap-Ferret,’ said Frangipane. ‘I know a place there where the oysters are a marvel. We’ll hire a little boat, and if there’s time, we’ll go down to the ocean.’

‘At last, I shall see the sea!’

Chignole heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

‘And at Cannes, at Nice, when you were in hospital, I suppose it was the Seine that you saw from the beach?’

‘You think you’re funny!’ Chignole shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, yes; I insist; that’s not really the sea, that Mediterranean! It’s blue! It might be the sky. And flat! Oh, it was so still, it got on my nerves.’

‘Here’s somebody else complaining that the sea’s too beautiful!’

In single file, along the narrow footpath, they made their way toward the School. Chignole loitered, picking green mulberries and scratching his hands on brambles to gather the honeysuckle whose vines overran the thicket. He gazed with astonished eyes at all this nature spread out before him, for it was new to him; but he did not enjoy confessing his own ignorance and discovering how like he was to everybody else.

At the wharf near which the hydroplanes were docked, they found the machines resting on the flat, shining surface of the pond, like birds which had forgotten to close their white wings. Papa Charles was assigned to one as pilot; Chignole practised bursting target-balloons with a machine-gun fitted with a new kind of collimator.

‘Hi, old son! This is n’t our old family Voisin! It’s the hencoop, the Maurice Farman, the M.F.’¹

In the cockpit the places were reversed. Chignole, in front, turned the gun on its tripod to test its field of fire. Papa Charles, behind him, was getting used to the new controls The rudder-bar was replaced by pedals, and the joy-stick by a horizontal bar with handles.

When the screw was cranked, the biplane slid, at a slow pace, on her pontoons and left the dock. Papa Charles gave her the gas and pulled the control imperceptibly toward him; the wing pontoons left the water; the tail pontoons brushed the surface a moment, then left it.

‘She’s off!’

‘Not bad sport, playing that we’re ducks!’

As they went up, they could see below them the pond, like molten metal, ringed round by the unbroken green of the heath. On the right, a narrow isthmus of gray downs and the infinite ocean; before them, another pond, the one near Biscarrosse and Parentis; on the left, the pine forest, dotted with glades in which were hidden the low hovels of the rosin-gatherers. A quiet, sleepy panorama. Chignole, contemplating it, understood perhaps for the first time that, although he was fighting for France, for a principle, he was also fighting for himself. At Nancy, he had flown over houses, factories, each one with its owner; the trenches belonged to no one; Lorraine was still in the enemy’s hands. Then he had been fighting to keep, or to get back, things which did n’t belong to him personally, and never would. But this forest, this heath, these blossomy fields, all this belonged to every Frenchman; this was his own; here he had his share in earth and water and sunshine; here he had his share in liberty and happiness; and all of a sudden, he — the Chignole without a penny to his name — seemed to himself immensely rich.

‘And all that might be taken by the Boches, or come under Boche rule! Ah, ha! William, you old bandit, you want too much! Varmint!’

And to appease his wrath he fired furiously at the balloons.

‘I say! — this side — do you see it — the sea?’

It glittered like a silver breastplate, yet its soft silky folds clung to the curves of the coast, crept into the coves, hooded the capes, twined round the islands. Papa Charles, hypnotized by the deep roar of the machine alive to his whim, and drunk with the azure and the wind, had foolish longings to head toward the dim line that marked the meeting of sky and water.

‘Are you bound for America?’ inquired Chignole, surprised at the direction of the machine.

Papa Charles, brought back to reality, pressed upon one of the pedals. The docile biplane obeyed, skirted the coast, and entered the bay of Arcachon. The sand-banks cast brown shadows into the transparent water. Along the shores, villas nestled, lost in the mimosas and the fig trees, and protected by palisades and thick walls. Papa Charles recalled the town of the winter before the war, the sad shadows of consumptives in bright-colored woolens which accented their leanness and their pallor; the look of hopeless illness lurking in every eye, exhaling at every breath. Oh, better far this death he faced, this death he chose to die, than that other waiting behind the disease which consumes the lungs, taints the blood, brands the flesh. At least, when he died, he would go out in health, whole, strong, and beautiful.

Chignole was still looking through his field-glasses.

‘What are you hunting for?’

‘They ’re always talking about the oysters of Arcachon; I’m looking to see if I can see any.’

Suddenly, the sun disappeared behind a bank of dark clouds; the wind freshened. Papa Charles gave her the gas and dived toward Cazau at full speed. Black balls were climbing the halyards of the semaphore. The pond was crinkling into a thousand wrinkles.

‘That means a squall. Sure we have time to dock before it catches us?’

The farther down they came, the rougher the waves looked. Papa Charles nosed up to steady the machine; as he lighted, the pontoon of one wing was hooked by a reed; the biplane spun on its nose and turned completely over, tipping out its passengers. Chignole found himself at the bottom of the pond.

‘Here you are! Ho, for a life-preserver! I shan’t miss a thing in this war!’

Striking out from the thigh, he rose to the surface, and seized hold of a sort of shapeless rag that swept through his fingers. He pulled it to him just as it was vanishing. It was the hair of Papa Charles, half-drowned already and about to go down.

In the motor-boat manned by Frangipane and Flagada, which was the first to arrive at the scene of the accident, Papa Charles came to his senses, thanks to the vigorous measures adopted by Chignole, who almost pulled out his tongue under the pretext of restoring his circulation.

‘It’s worth while having hair, Papa Charles — what! If you’d been bald, you’d be at the bottom now!’

II. CHIGNOLE HAS THE BLUES

Chignole and Flagada left the office of the sergeant-major, caps tilted on one ear, each waving a piece of paper.

‘Here you are! — Leave! — Twentyfour hours granted for family affairs. — The cap’n fell for it.’

‘Flagada!’

Papa Charles and Frangipane regarded the toes of their boots with gloom, and sighed dolefully.

‘No, but joking aside,’ Chignole continued, ‘ do you really think we’d leave you out? — That Flagada and I would go on a bat to Bordeaux without you? Not on your life! The question is how to work it.’

‘The secret session is open; let us deliberate,’ announced Papa Charles pompously.

Seated on the sand, they wasted no thought upon the magic of the rosy hour which was setting the pines ablaze and the pond a-sparkle, but industriously searched their wits for some scheme clever enough to bring them a free day.

‘I advise prudence,’ Frangipane warned them lightly, ‘for they have their eye on us.’

Chignole sucked long on a piece of grass plucked from the edge of a ditch, scratched the earth, sniffed, then made up his mind.

‘It’s not worth while looking for noon at two o’clock. The stunt is to hump ourselves so we shan’t miss the ten o’clock train. You must look pale; the doctor will excuse you from service, that’s the main thing. Nobody’ll come snooping round our quarters to see if we’re there, and we’ll vanish.’

Papa Charles and Frangipane turned their steps toward the infirmary. The head surgeon was a suspicious, asthmatic old man, who saw in every aviator a dangerous rival in the affections of the little chambermaids of the Hôtel de la Gare, and an incorrigible idler. Hence he fixed the two cronies with an inquisitorial eyeglass.

Papa Charles, completely master of himself, enumerated his wounds ‘which the sea air irritated,’ and described his falls with the detail of a newspaper reporter filling a column. His voice trembled; he was overcome; he was on the verge of tears. The major stopped him, convinced.

But Frangipane came up with his habitual swagger and his quizzical smile, and the countenance of his interlocutor darkened at once.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Heavens, doctor, how should I know? To be quite frank, there are no symptoms of acute illness; it’s a general discomfort, which seems to call for sick leave.’ And to carry conviction, he put out his tongue, which he had previously rubbed with chalk.

The doctor saw through the ruse, but the croix de guerre made an impression on him. He wanted to show that he was a good sort, but nobody’s fool.

‘Sick leave granted, but I prescribe a purge for you; you know as well as I do why your tongue is coated — coated white. Don’t go yet. Orderly — castor oil — Wait! — Wait! — I ’m going to give it to you myself.’

The wretch, horror-struck, swallowed a full glass, rolling the whites of his eyes, while the doctor emitted sharp little grunts — his way of laughing.

An hour, later the express bore them away. Frangipane, livid, collapsed in a corner, one hand on his stomach.

A good breakfast in Bordeaux set him on his feet, and arm in arm, like sailors ashore, the gay fellows strolled along the quays, smoking huge cigars which the proprietor of the restaurant, won by their charm, had insisted upon bestowing on them.

The Port: Shops where all sorts of things were sold, which Chignole had never seen before. Buoys, rigging, oiled hats. Dark public houses smelling of tar and alcohol. Strange, tough-skinned characters, with innocent eyes and evil mouths. A great river, a forest of masts, chimneys, and cranes. And that atmosphere peculiar to maritime cities, swept by the wind of perpetual departures into the unknown.

They stopped short before the poster of a music-hall.

SKY-LIFE!

GRAND REVIEW IN TWO ACTS AND THTRTY TABLEAUX

‘Sky-life! — It’s about aviation!’

’To-day’s Sunday; there’s a matinée; our presence here is plainly indicated.’

Their entrance into a proscenium box caused a lively sensation. They were good to look at, our aces, with their fantastic uniforms, their decorations, and their chevrons. The people at Bordeaux don’t often have aviators within their walls, so they were the object of noisy and affectionate curiosity.

‘How well set up they are!’

‘Have they palms?’

‘Poor young men! Still, we must n’t spoil them too much.’

Proud of their success, they swaggered. Chignole could not capture enough smiles and little attentions. Flagada realized that he had never awakened such enthusiasm as a comedian, Frangipane, the aristocrat, acknowledged that ‘the people’ have some good in them. Papa Charles, though really touched, feigned indifference; it was more distinguished.

At the finale, a lively old lady threw them a bouquet with a flourish. This let loose a regular ovation. The Marseillaise! Flowers! Triumphal procession! In the lobby, there was champagne, speeches, embraces. Ah, the Midi!

Later, on a bench in the park, their lightheadedness evaporated little by little. They had tasted the strong wine of popularity, and they came to their senses ashamed of their silly intoxication.

Ah! behind the lines!—the poor joys of the rear, ignoble when they are not empty. Their thoughts reverted to their comrades going up on patrol at the front, in a stormy sky, at that marvelous sport, aerial war, whose motto is, ‘Thrills — then carry on — and keep grinning.’

Meanwhile, each one was feeling anew the slow grip of the thousand and one ties of his life, which the war had strained but not broken, and which the briefest return to the rear tightened again.

Frangipane saw once more the cradle of his race in Beaugency, crowned by the old feudal tower whose scars were hidden by lichen. His ancestors, small provincial nobles, had gone out from it to secure posts at court: —

The popular refrain of romantic comedy hummed in his ears.

Flagada felt once again the obsession of the theatre, the boards, the auditorium. He seemed to breathe the stale smell of the wings, the mouldiness and paint; he grew sentimental thinking how ridiculously he used to dress to play the part of a solemn necromancer.

Papa Charles mused on his existence before the war: flirtations and the tango, winters at Davos, springs at Cairo, summers at Cabourg, and autumns at Ravenna. Bobsleighs, latticed-windows, tennis, and the mandolin. His dream called up profiles, silhouettes; hair in caressing curls, eyes that promised, hands that beckoned. Now that he looked back upon himself through the perspective of time, whose worth he should understand henceforth, he could see how he might surround himself with a voluptuous and soft life of visions and rare sensations. Ah, how he could dream, love, and be beloved, if he were sure of not dying!

And Chignole’s thoughts turned to Sophie. He tried to struggle against the spell, for well he knew that, if he once allowed the image of his wife to come between him and his duty, he could never fully accomplish it, try as he might. A true priest knows only his God; a true soldier should know only his country. But in fulfilling the priestly office, is it possible to strip off the human envelope entirely, to set aside one’s personality, one’s ego, completely, for the sake of an idea, however beautiful?

The four friends, so different in intellectual quality, in physical inheritance, in social contacts, were gripped by the same anguish, and Chignole summed up their trouble when he said, —

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me — it’s a bore, like everything else — but I want to cry.’

III. MONSIEUR BASSINET PRACTISES PENMANSHIP

In his shirt-sleeves, seated at the oilcloth-covered table in the porter’s lodge, M. Bassinet traced capital letters in a copybook, drawing his inspiration from the copy set at the left of the page. It was hard work for him; he was not very clever at it; the veins in his forehead were swollen and his fingers were stained with ink.

The tiny kitchen was entirely filled with Madame Bassinet, who was scouring the bottom of a saucepan which she held pressed against her stomach. ‘Maman Chignole’ was sitting near the open window, using the last moments of daylight to begin, or to finish — one never knew which — her customary knitting. M. Fondu slept over his newspaper. Sophie was sweeping up the crumbs from the evening meal.

‘Move a little, papa, so I can take up what’s under your feet.’

‘Don’t bother me, little daughter, I’m engaged in serious work.’

‘Serious indeed!’ snorted Madame Bassinet, edging sideways from among her pots and kettles. ‘At your age! — Nothing better to do than to make pothooks.’

‘Mâme Bassinet, to master a subject one must begin at the beginning.’

‘And what good will it do you? Will your customers tip you better because you can draw a circle?’

‘A beautiful handwriting is always worth while,’ M. Fondu felt called upon to point out, stirred by the discussion.

‘It’s better than going to the saloon,’ smiled ‘Maman Chignole.’

But Madame Bassinet would have the last word: ‘Are you putting yourself to this trouble to write to your lady friends, your chorus girls? — If ever I catch you!’ She brandished her saucepan like a club.

‘Oh, Mâme Bassinet! — To think me capable of—Oh!’ stammered the good man, overwhelmed by such a suspicion. And, in his flutter, he upset the ink-bottle.

‘There you go! Is n’t that the limit! — Get up, quick! before you spot your trousers!’

The arrival of the postman put a stop to the recriminations. Sophie examined the mail feverishly; then, disappointed, distressed, anxious, cried, ‘Nothing — still nothing!’

‘It’s a long time,’ added ‘Maman Chignole,’ — ‘a long time.’

The two women looked at each other timidly, then their eyes went to the picture of Chignole, in the place of honor, over the mantelpiece. The young woman kept back her tears so as not to make the old one cry.

‘What a dirty war it is!’ grumbled Madame Bassinet, who, this evening, had no playful thoughts.

‘Oh, do shut up!’ retorted M. Bassinet. ‘Everybody to his taste, what! Funereal airs, and a little sob partyjust because there are no letters from the boy! Do you think that he can be always hatching nonsense? You saw him five days ago, when he came back from Cazau with his boss; does n’t that satisfy you? Do let him breathe— What the devil!’

‘Yes, but he went back to Nancy to take part in a big raid.’

‘It’s not the first. Why should n’t he have his usual luck? You’ll end by handing him a lemon, with those Lenten faces of yours — Won’t they, Fondu?’

According to his custom, M. Fondu contented himself with a silent laugh, and then gazed contentedly at his littlefinger-nail which had been broken during the bombardment, but was slowly growing again.

M. Bassinet continued his writing under the lamp, now lighted. He was furious at feeling this unhappiness around him, but surprised that he could not find more emphatic words to condemn it.

‘Why do I try to argue the impossible? I should make more impression on them if I smashed a piece of china. Ah, these women!’

But why was he embarrassed in their presence? — Because he was a man, and at home, while others were at the front. Of course, they did n’t want him; he was an old man; the most exacting could have nothing against him. Still, in women’s eyes he read scorn of his weakness, his age. He could no longer speak as a man; he had no more authority. Opinions were tolerated only from men who could fight.

The summer night, thundery and hot, excited Sophie a little. She shivered over her memories. Oh, doubt! Uncertainty! To tremble every time the bell rang! To long for the postman and to dread his coming; to search the faces of those who might know something, for a betrayal of the truth; to listen to the clock, whose tic-tac fell upon the silence drop by drop, like tears or blood!

‘I love him — I love him — and we are separated! I need him, to be happy. Oh, to feel his gentle strength once more. If he should be dying!— If he were dead!’

Her dream turned to a nightmare. Her hands clutched at a fleeing shape. How alone she was — already — like a widow!

Madame Bassinet tried to drown her boredom in her dish-water. She had changed a good deal since Sophie’s marriage. Before, she had had no one in the war; now she had her son-in-law. Suppose he did n’t come back? What would become of her daughter, without her husband? It was all very well to say that it was for France; that the conflict had not been sought but had to be carried on; her little special interests, her maternal egotism were stronger at times than her patriotism.

M. Fondu detested this war which he had never understood. At his office, plunged in dusty accounts, separated from the world by the barricade of his ledgers, he forgot it. But as soon as he was in the street, he was compelled to recall it, and with what bitterness! His autobus was gone; his crossing was changed, his special tobacco, too wet, was ground less fine; his newspaper had only one sheet. Finally, the incidents of his journey to Nancy had made a lively impression on him. He went to bed in his clothes, with his savings under the bolster, and the horn of an automobile was enough to send him post-haste under the bed, for he always mistook it for the siren announcing the Zeppelins.

‘I have only him — I have only him,’ thought ‘Maman Chignole.’ ‘What would the future hold for me if he should be taken?’

She dwelt in imagination upon her solitary and wretched old age, with its two possible endings — the almshouse or the bitter bread of charity.

It was a dull and empty time. Discouragement and doubt gripped them. But suddenly, on the first floor, a nasal phonograph began: —

The stirring music awakened their benumbed senses, drove out materialism and set free the ideal.

In the echoing depths of their hearts it vibrated, swelled, and spread through all their being, till they felt suffocated.

M. Bassinet rose. From the wardrobe, from under a pile of napkins, he brought out a beautiful red account-book with gilt edges. ‘This is why I am learning to write all over again.’ And he inscribed at the top of the first page_ ' Today I begin, for my grandchildren, my mémoires of the Great War.’

It seemed to them that it was Chignole, there on the wall, sitting in his frame, who was singing the Marseillaise to them.

IV. CHIGNOLE JUSTS GETS BY

The plateau was deserted, for the sun blazed at the zenith, and the dry grass was like tinder. The closed messhalls were empty; the mechanics slept in the shade of the hangars, and the personnel of the flying corps swung in hammocks under the pines.

A lonely aeroplane was on the field. Chignole, in his cockpit, was correcting the hang of the compass, field by coil-springs stretched on hooks. Mimile, in his blue overalls, was putting grease with a spatula in the necks of the pulleys over which the controls slip. Papa Charles, sheltered under one of the wings, played solitaire.

‘Is there luck in the cards?’

‘Yes; four aces; victory. I don’t insist, Chignole, and above all I would n’t hinder you; but don’t you think we’d be better off in the wood?'

‘My! but you’re a lazy lummox! There you sit with nothing to do but shuffle your cards — and you complain! To hear you, nobody’d think that to-night we were to bomb Trèves.’

‘Are you nervous?’

‘But, my dear fellow, — it’s some joy-ride, that burg! Two hundred and sixty kilometres there and back, as the crow flies; which means four hundred with the zigzags. We must n’t let the mill get rheumatism. Hi, Mimile! What are you up to? Looking for short-circuits in the exhaust-chamber?’

‘I am regulating the breaking of the current.’

‘Happy thought!’ And he added to Papa Charles in a low voice, ‘Really, Mimile is a good fellow; only he was picked green — what?’

Absorbed in his job, he stopped talking and set to work with his tools and his clever hands to finish what he had begun. Then presently he stopped, wiped his forehead, and made a magnificent gesture. ‘No! It can’t be done. There’s no way of regulating this compass like that. The needle varies two degrees whenever I push the control over to that side. Let’s put the cuckoo on the table. Then it’ll be as easy as falling off a log.’

They rolled the machine to the table where the cardinal points were drawn with lime on the ground, and compensated the errors of the compass by adding metal weights.

‘With the load we must carry tonight, we shall weigh almost a kilo. — A regular autobus — what?’

The mess after dinner. Coffee, liqueurs, pipes and cigarettes.

‘Departure: eleven o’clock,’ said the secretary, turning from the telephone.

In the face of danger, everyone behaved in character. Some wrote last letters, others studied the maps. Frangipane, at the piano, sang a Venetian barcarolle, under his breath, —

Flagada repeated the monologue of Charles V. The vaudeville artist, even as he faced the enemy, had not given up hope of entering the tragedy class at the Conservatory.

Papa Charles made a methodical inventory of the contents of his pockets and destroyed personal papers.

Chignole filled a thermos bottle with a hot, spicy beverage. ‘The nights are sharp, even in June; and besides, I don’t want to go thirsty.’

Watches were feverishly consulted, and to cheat suspense, they fell asleep, all dressed, on the seat-straps.

The hours passed. A motor crossed the plateau, bringing the report from the meteorological station at headquarters, Officers’ automobiles went out through the byway of Pixeérécourt. Dogs barked themselves hoarse; beacons opened their fans of spreading light on the ground; engines began to revolve; there were short commands, a group around the captain, suggestions: —

‘Two squads, you understand? One to follow the Moselle, the other the Sarre; rendezvous where they join. Have the observers the call-signal for the return trip? Attention: every aeroplane which fails to give it will be fired on by our anti-aircraft batteries, to prevent the Boches from crossing our lines with us. Forward!’

Chignole and Papa Charles, with belts buckled, waited their turn patiently. Mimile would have liked to say something affectionate, but he was afraid of being snubbed by his heroes.

A biplane rose, turned, then, with lights lit, came back over them at ten metres. It was Frangipane and Flagada, who had the honor of leaving at the head of the second group, and were moving off toward Château-Salins.

‘Go to it, old chap!’

They wheeled; there was a brief moment of anxiety; the biplane was so heavy with petrol and explosives, that it seemed unable to leave the earth; and the wood was in their way like a wall. A sharp blow on the joy-stick, and they nose up, just miss the wood, pitch heavily. Is it going to be a slide? — No, Papa Charles lifts his hand at once, taking advantage of the hollow of Agincourt to dive and get his equilibrium, while increasing his speed.

‘Stay over the parade-ground till we’re up a thousand metres; if there’s a breakdown, the cherry trees of Malzéville will be unhealthy.’

‘We should worry! I don’t want to crowd the fellows just starting out.’

And they flew over Champigneulles at a low altitude.

It was a slow ascent, with sudden holes in the air robbing them in an instant of a hundred metres painfully achieved.

‘Pont-à-Mousson —’

‘Nine hundred. — Climb still a little more.’

‘I’ll be d―! Just enough petrol!’

There followed searchlights and cannonading; but they were rejoined by their comrades, and the Boches, surprised at their numbers, fumbled their aim and their shots.

‘Do we follow the Moselle?’

‘Not yet. Better avoid Metz.’

They held to the left, and tried to catch the river again, high above Thionville; but a thick mist covered the valley. They had to choose: either to be seen and see where they were going; or to hide in the fog, and be blind.

‘I don’t like muck; it gives me a cold,’ declared Chignole, wrapping his muffler over his mouth.

‘Well, open your eye, for they’re going to get after us. Don’t look at the route, but see what they’re letting off.'

On the ground, wandering gleams betrayed the shots; then ‘caterpillars’ began to rise. The caterpillar is a subtle Teutonic invention, composed of a series of little incandescent balloons whose crimes are of two kinds: if they touch a plane, they set it afire; and secondly, the iron wires stretched from one balloon to the other smash the propeller if it becomes entangled in their network. Therefore, despite the lure of their poetical appearance, rose-color and green, our friends prudently avoided them.

‘Is the oil-gauge working?’

‘Yiss, milud!’

The biplane gradually increased her altitude, until Papa Charles, judging it sufficient, pressed on the control, thus gaining ten kilometres an hour. Before them, on the right, flashes zigzagged through the clouds.

‘There’s a thunderstorm.’

‘Not a bit. That’s the guys of the second squad, getting it in the neck; another proof we’re on the right road.’

‘Keep your eyes skinned; they’re flying with lights out; look out for collisions.’

Are Flagada and Frangipane among them? Does fortune favor them?

As if in reply to their unspoken questions, a machine with lamps and beacons alight crossed their path.

‘Nobody but those two would be such fools just here —’

‘Except us.’

Chignole turned the switches.

‘They’ll spot us — it’s idiotic!’

‘ Perhaps; but that’ll give them a jolt!’

They descended. Lights pricked the darkness; long bright oblongs marked the factory buildings at work. They longed to drop bombs on them, but orders were: Reprisals. The city is to be punished.

It came into view like a black hole, in the glass at the bottom of the cockpit. The aeroplanes had already begun their work, for yellow streaks were streaming over its surface, and expanding into reddish blots. Chignole pulled the levers toward him with evident satisfaction.

‘Good night!’ he shouted at the earth.

A loop, and back they came again. Chignole opened the cock of the spirit indicator. The graduated tube was still half full of petrol.

‘She’s holding out.’

‘I don’t want to give her too much to do.’

Papa Charles reduced his speed, adjusted his direction by the compass, and got ready for a bite of lunch, at his companion’s invitation: crackers, cakes of chocolate, and several swallows of grog still hot from the thermos bottle. Their comrades passed by them and disappeared.

‘They’re in a hurry to get to bed. We’ve got all the time there is —’

Shells encircled them, but at a distance. Chignole declared that this evening the Huns had their uses.

‘The lines! — Ouf!’ They smiled at having once again escaped a mishap.

Then, suddenly, a French searchlight transfixed them, and was turned on and off at regular intervals.

‘Don’t you see they’re asking you for the signal? Why don’t you give it?’

‘The letter! — The letter!’ stammered Chignole.

The searchlight repeated its signal, but rapidly, jerkily; they guessed thal it was astonished at having no reply.

‘The letter! The letter! I can’t remember it!’

A shot — at fifty metres.

‘The “seventy-five”! There she goes!’

Papa Charles turned round, took hold of Chignole’s arms and shook them. ‘Think! — We’re done for!’

Chignole strained every nerve and concentrated his thoughts to rouse his memory.

‘Wake up, old son! — What letter?’

Papa Charles bent over as if to pluck it out of him.

The shells were now harrying the machine at close quarters. Chignole no longer struggled. With haggard face he awaited the explosion — Death.

Death — the end of everything — of his love — and more — of Sophie — Sophie — the dear name was there, before his eyes, printed in letters of fire.

Then, as a mysterious click reveals a secret hiding-place, suddenly, a compartment opened in his brain: Sophie — S! — the first letter of her name was also the letter of deliverance; and with a choking voice he hurled if at the death which he could defeat yet once again.

‘S! — S! — Papa Charles! — S! I’ve found —!’

V. FLAGADA MISSES HIS EXIT

‘ Anybody’d know you wore a freak, — to catch the grippe in June!’

‘And then, to climb to two thousand without your old horse-jacket. You really ought to be smacked.’

Flagada was stretched on a bed in the mess-room, and despite the mild weather and the furs which covered him, he could not get warm.

‘We’re going to put a mustard plaster on you, as the doctor ordered.’

‘A mustard plaster! It’s the doctor’s joke! Me, I know a trick worth two of that!’ cried Chignole, coming from the kitchen with a cup in his hand. ‘ You ’re going to taste this concoction of mine, Flagada, old son. Hot wine, according to the Bassinet-recipe: table-claret, rum, sugar, lemon, pepper, clove, stewed together and served piping hot. You swallow, you sweat, and to-morrow — you’re on your feet again!’

Bssi — Poum — in rapid succession.

‘The Boches! They can’t leave us in peace. ’

‘The escadrille is called out! — Get your machines!’

‘I’m going to get up.’

Flagada threw off his covers, but before he could put his foot to the ground, Chignole’s fist had nailed him to the mattress.

‘Do you want to catch your death? The cap’n understands. You’re excused. — All you have to do is sleep.’

‘Go ahead; I’ll watch him. I can’t go without my pilot.’

Frangipane sat down by his friend’s pillow, after having tucked him in with a tenderness surprising in one so huge.

Papa Charles and Chignole hurried away to their biplane.

‘Is it serious, this attack?’

‘No; chills and fever; a heavy cold.’

‘Did n’t you notice, — his chest wheezes —’

‘That’s normal,’

The messenger from headquarters came up with a rush: ‘Twelve airplanes by Pont-à-Mousson and toward Toul.’

Papa Charles manœuvred mechanically. He was amazed at his own calmness and indifference. Where were the shivery departures of former days? Where were the nervous hands clutching the controls? Then, he had felt the exciting obsession of danger, the need of showing off, of being in the public eye, of applause at the expense of his skin; he had felt ambition to outdo others, and thirst for reward. To-day, war-weary and surfeited, he was moved simply by the ardent desire to fulfill a supreme duty. He was no longer an aviator merely to play to the gallery, attract attention, and subjugate susceptible women, but because in the struggle in mid-heaven he had a better chance to use his initiative than in the trenches. Before, he had fought for himself, egotistically; now, he was fighting for others, and the nobility of that, disinterested duty made a bigger man of him.

Flagada was drowsy, and in his fever he dreamed. He was in a great, raid; the goal had been attained; at the frontier there was a barrage, a fight with a Fokker; Frangipane fired, the enemy plane descended in flames, after having tipped out its passengers who spun round in the void. He returned to the escadrille. He was cited. Bssi — Poum — Champagne! Leave! Paris! Café du Globe. Old theatrical friends — Bssi — Poum — Champagne! How much one could drink in a dream!

The last cork popped so loud that he woke with a start. Frangipane, at a window, seemed to be keenly interested in something going on outside.

Bssi — Poum — Was his dream beginning again? No; those were signal rockets.

The secretary came in and spoke to Frangipane.

‘What do you think! Those pigs have taken advantage of our machines being up, to come over Nancy. A Hun has been sighted in the direction of the forest of Parroy, and there’s no one to stop him.’

‘Have you warned Saint-Nicholasdu-Port and Lunéville? ’

‘Sure! But it’s no good. While one squad went over, on their way to Toul, with our men at their heels, another slipped toward the Vosges, pursued from Lunéville. St. Nicholas is regulating the artillery, so our corner is stripped, — not for long, of course, but long enough to get the drop on Nancy.’

‘What rotten luck!’ muttered Frangipane, wrathfully.

Just then he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned round.

Flagada had risen, had put on his leather suit without a sound, and now, as he wound his muffler round his neck, he said quite simply, ‘We’re going.’

Frangipane, stupefied, tried to stop him; but he had already leaped through the doorway and was making for the hangar at a jerky but rapid pace.

The group of mechanics jumped at the sound of his whistle. They would have helped him climb into the cockpit, but he pushed them off.

‘No; don’t bother; I can do it alone.’

He examined his controls, buckled himself in, emptied a flask of spirit at a gulp, and turned round upon his partner, who had followed him.

‘Ready?’

‘You’re not such an ass as to fly in this condition!’

‘I’ll go without you, if you’re afraid to come with me.’

‘That’s not the question.’

‘Then save your breath.’

So they set off. During the first few minutes, Frangipane anxiously watched his pilot’s manœuvres; but they were so normal that he soon paid no more attention to them and occupied himself exclusively with the adversary.

A thousand metres overhead, the dihedral of the Hun’s dark wings was stamped sharply upon the pale blue sky. Flagada dived toward the lines to get his bearings; then rose, veered, and returned upon his enemy to attack him from behind. The Boche, surprised at finding a French plane, abandoned his goal for the moment and stole away to the left; but a squad appeared in the distance, making for him at full speed. He turned short round and made a feint to the right; but the other squad was coming back from Toul. If he delayed, he would be caught in a pair of tongs, whose hinge was the biplane chasing him.

‘He’s ours!’ Frangipane exulted.

With his forefinger on the trigger of the Lewis, he waited for the psychological moment when the Boche would be framed in his collimator. But their machine, deprived of guidance, lurched abruptly. Flagada had let go the joystick. His body had fallen over backwards and his head bumped against the support of the machine-gun. Still, he had not fainted; with one hand clutching his throat, he tried to pluck off the invisible noose that was strangling him.

’I’m choking! — choking!’

Congestion had seized him. Frangipane, beside himself with fright, tried to loosen his collar, but Flagada would not give up.

‘No; let me save you. I must save you.’ He seized the joy-stick with a superhuman effort: ‘Now—next thing — tie my hands to it — I can’t hold on, if you don’t.’

Frangipane obeyed, with a handkerchief.

‘Cut off the gas. — Good! — I can’t see any more — What’s the altitude?’

Frangipane supported his shoulders. With eyes fixed on the altimetre, he told him the height; and the dying blind man, rattling in his throat, with hands bound to the steering-gear, used his last strength to bring his bird and his passenger home alive.

The walls of the court of honor were covered with climbing roses, which shed their petals at the lightest breeze. From the worn gullets of two stone lions, thin threads of water trickled, and sang as they fell into a shallow round basin carpeted with thick starry moss. The geraniums in the box-bordered garden plat spread like a pool of blood upon the lawn. At the open windows the wounded showed their thin faces, lost under a cap, or hidden by a bandage.

As Papa Charles, Frangipane, and Chignole entered the portal of the hospital, an unpleasant shudder ran down their spines. The military hospital, with its sickish smell, its muffled footsteps gliding about the corridors, its plaintive rustling of bruised and protesting bodies, touched their sympathetic hearts, which dreaded suffering.

A surgeon came to meet them.

’I sent for you because he has asked for you several times.’ He stopped a moment, then with a weary gesture,

‘He won’t last till to-morrow; — yes — double pneumonia, with certainly infectious grippe.’

An orderly added, ‘He is very low. He only speaks to ask what time it is. It’s a very bad sign.'

They entered the ward on tiptoe. A screen hid their friend’s agony from the other patients, several of whom were amusing themselves playing checkers. They were standing beside him; and at the noise he opened his eyes, looked at them lingeringly, as if he did not recognize them at all, then smiled at them.

‘I am very glad — I — thought — you would n’t come.’

He spoke with difficulty, panting for breath, and his hands crumpled the covers which they were clutching convulsively.

They, abashed in the presence of death, could find nothing to say.

‘And the Boche — the other — day?’

‘Brought down by a Spad.’

‘So much the— better—or — worse; — for it was — really ours — eh — Frangipane?’

Ether on a pad gave him momentary strength.

‘This — morning — the cap’n — gave me the medal — It’s a beauty!’ A tear rolled down his pinched nose. ‘Too bad — I can’t — wear it — what? — so jolly — before everybody! — And that I should — make — a mess — of it — at the end! — I’ve missed — my last — exit.’

An attendant brought in a tank of oxygen.

‘And there’s — my last — sausage.’

They left precipitately, on the pretext of duty, but really because they could not longer keep back their tears.

When Papa Charles kissed him, Flagada whispered in an ecstatic voice, ‘Take a — good — look — at — the nurse. Would n’t you — swear — she was — Doña Sol?’

They walked silently along the Leopold Mall.

‘The first to go.'

‘We don’t grow old at this trade.’

‘Just long enough to know one’s equal to great things — when one must quit for good.'

Frangipane bowed his tall figure as if he carried a load too heavy for him.

It was the end of a beautiful Sunday; idlers paced before the shop-windows; from a cinema whose performance was just over, a motley throng came pouring out upon the sidewalk. The pavements in front of the cafés were full; the tramway from Laxou carried couples loaded with bouquets.

‘Well, of us four, he at least is sure of dying in his bed; and really, it’s the happiest way.’

And Papa Charles, his fine eyes lifted to the skies, ‘Are you sure, Chignole, that it’s the happiest way?’

(To be concluded)