Barbarians

"Yes."

"Very well. The wind is north. When the Boches enter our trenches they'll try to gas our salient while the wind holds. But west winds are predicted after sunrise tomorrow. I'm going to get into the Nivelle belfry tonight with a sack of bombs. I'm going to try to explode their gas cylinders if I can. The tocsin is the signal for our people in the salient."

"You're crazy!" remarked one of the airmen.

"No; I'll bluff it out. I'm to have a Boche uniform in a few moments."

"You are crazy! You know what they'll do to you, don't you, Jim?"

The bandaged airman laughed, but in his eyes there was an odd flicker like a tiny flame. He whistled "La Brabançonne" and glanced coolly about the room.

One of the airmen said to another in a whisper:

"There you are. Ever since they got his brother he's been figuring on landing a whole bunch of Huns at one clip. This is going to finish him, this business."

Another said:

"Don't try anything like that, Jim–"

"Sure, I'll try it," interrupted the bandaged airman pleasantly. "When are you fellows going?"

"Now."

"All right. Take my report. Wait a moment–"

"For God's sake, Jim, act sensibly!"

The bandaged airman laughed, fished out from his clothing somewhere a note book and pencil. One of the others turned an electric torch on the table; the bandaged man made a little sketch, wrote a few lines which the others studied.

"You can get that note to headquarters in half an hour, can't you, Ed?"

"Yes."

"All right. I'll wait here for my answer."

"You know what risk you run, Jim?" pleaded the youngest of the airmen.

"Oh, certainly. All right, then. You'd better be on your way."

After they had left the room, the bandaged airman sat beside the table, thinking hard in the darkness.

Presently from somewhere across the dusky river meadow the sudden roar of an airplane engine shattered the silence; then another whirring racket broke out; then another.

He heard presently the loud rattle of his comrades' machines from high above him in the star-set sky; he heard the stertorous breathing of the old innkeeper; he heard again the crystalline bell-notes break out aloft, linger in linked harmonies, die away; he heard Bayard's mellow thunder proclaim the hour once more.

There was a watch on his wrist, but it had been put out of business when his machine fell in Nivelle woods. Glancing at it mechanically he saw the phosphorescent dial glimmer faintly under shattered hands that remained fixed.

An hour later Bayard shook the starlit silence ten times.

As the last stroke boomed majestically through the darkness an automobile came racing into the long, unlighted street of Sainte Lesse and halted, panting, at the door of the White Doe Inn.

The airman went out to the doorstep, saluted the staff captain who leaned forward from the tonneau and turned a flash on him. Then, satisfied, the officer lifted a bundle from the tonneau and handed it to the airman. A letter was pinned to the bundle.

After the airman had read the letter twice, the staff captain leaned a trifle nearer.

"Do you think it can be done?" he demanded bluntly.

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Here are your munitions, too."

He lifted from the tonneau a bomb-thrower's sack, heavy and full. The airman took it and saluted.

"It means the cross," said the staff captain dryly. And to the engineer chauffeur: "Let loose!"

CHAPTER XIX

HONOUR

For a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.

Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the café, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.

The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.

He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.

She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.

"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice.

"He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."

The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.

Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm.

"Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.

He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped.

"Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle."

"That," she said musingly, in her low, even voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen to you! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge."

"Yes," he drawled, "I said that."

"Very well, then; tell me how!"