Dastral of the Flying Corps

The Flight-Commander looked down, and sweeping round till he had gained his old position, he was about to drop a second bomb to finish the warplane, but he withdrew his hand from the bomb release, saying:

"Poor bounder! He's bound to go down. He cannot get her over the lines. I'll let him alone."

Then, looking around for the third machine, he was just in time to see her disappear eastward towards her own lines, and saw two English 'planes, which seemed to have come from nowhere, following her.

"Ah, well, I'll go down and receive that chap's surrender–that is, if he can manage to get down without a crash."

There is, apparently, more honour in aerial fighting in these days than in any other field of warfare, and, when a pilot has brought his man down, should he fall, say, into the conqueror's lines, very often the victor will descend and receive the surrender of the vanquished.

Dastral's professional curiosity also urged him to do this. The huge machine was of a new type, for in all his experience he had seen nothing like it, and he was eager to examine it.

Keeping his eye, therefore, on the descending German, who was trying with the utmost care to navigate the aerial monster to the ground, Dastral banked, then spiralled, and after one or two rapid nose-dives, planed swiftly down to within a few score of yards of the place where the monster must ultimately descend; and three minutes later, having landed, he waited calmly on the ground for mein herr to complete his landing.

Down, down she came, lobbing first one way and then another, finishing up with a bump which completed the wreckage of one of her huge outstretched planes, and hurling the lifeless form of an observer-gunner to the earth.

"My word, what a size she is!" cried some one from the group of officers and men standing by.

She was a mass of wreckage, and how the wounded pilot had managed to bring her down so calmly was a miracle.

"Where are you hurt, Captain?" asked Dastral, helping the wounded man from the wrecked car.

"Here and here, Flight-Commander!" replied the German in good English, leaning heavily on the pilot, who a few minutes before had been his deadly enemy.

"Fetch Captain Young, the M.O., at once!" ordered Dastral, and immediately one of the air-mechanics ran off to find Number Nine.

"You were a marvel to bring her down without a crash!" said Dastral. "I'm sure I could never have done it."

The German smiled. He was a fair-haired Prussian, not at all of the Hun type, and there was moisture in his blue eyes as he replied,

"I thank you for the compliment, Flight-Commander. You also are some pilot, as you English say."

"And she is some machine, too!" urged Dastral, trying to keep up the man's spirit until the medical officer arrived.

"Ah, my poor machine, and my poor gunners! They were brave fellows and they died for the Fatherland. And the machine?–yes, she was a beauty, and it was her first trip. Now she is a ruin, and I must surrender her to you, but you will never be able to use her. See!"

Dastral turned round to look, and noticed that the German warplane was in flames, for the pilot, mortally wounded as he was, knew his duty, which was, if he could not bring his machine back, to destroy it. And his last act, which had been unnoticed, ere he left the machine, was to set her quietly on fire, only waiting to make sure that the second gunner was really dead.

"Ah! My poor machine, but you English–will–never–use–her!"

As he uttered these words slowly, gasping and clutching at his heart, the German turned ghastly pale, and, staggering, fell into the arms of Dastral just as the medical officer came running up.

For a moment Dastral held him, but the blood began to gush from his mouth and nostrils, and then his head fell back, for he was dead.

"You are too late, doctor," said the Flight-Commander sadly, as he laid the dead captain down on the grass, and looked at his pale face and wide open eyes, still staring up at the azure blue of the opening day, as though even in death the skies were calling him up there, as they did in life; for he had been one of the most brilliant of the German aviators, second only to Himmelman, who indeed had been his teacher.

"Too late, doctor! There was no chance for him from the beginning. He was mortally wounded."

"Yes, poor fellow, he has fought his last battle!" replied the M.O.

"Poor fellow! I wish he could have lived," muttered Dastral, and a feeling of unutterable sadness came over him, and he cursed the war which had made him this man's enemy.

Again he looked at the Prussian's face, and, stooping down, closed the man's eyes in their last long sleep. Then, turning to an air-mechanic, he said:

"Bring a German flag, and wrap it round him," and so he strode away towards his bunk, depressed by a feeling of profound melancholy.

CHAPTER X

HIMMELMAN S LAST FIGHT

IN the officers' mess at the aerodrome near Contalmaison, a blue-eyed, dark-haired youth of about twenty-two stood with his back to the fire. He was alone, for the others had not yet come in from the marquees and sheds where the aeroplanes were being stored. On his left breast he wore the double brevet of a fully-fledged pilot.

This was Flight-Commander Dastral of "B" Flight, of the –th Squadron, –th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, known to the whole of the British Expeditionary Force, and to the British public also, as "Dastral of the Flying Corps."

Just under his pilot's brevet was a couple of inches of blue and white ribbon, the insignia of the D.S.O. For, though but a lad, he had fought with more Aviatiks, Taubes and Rolands, and had more thrilling exploits over the German lines, than any other youth of his age.

To-night, however, the pilot seemed sad; there was a shadow of disappointment over his fair, young face. There was also a dreamy, far-away look in those usually piercing blue eyes. What was the matter with the lad? He was generally gay and even frolicsome. More than once the O.C. had found it necessary to take him to task for some of his jovial pranks.

At his feet lay the previous day's issue of the Times, which he had just been reading, and that which had made him sad was a paragraph telegraphed to London by the Amsterdam correspondent of that paper, which ran as follows:–

"Yesterday, at the German Headquarters behind the western front, the Kaiser in person conferred upon Himmelman, the famous German air scout, the insignia of the Iron Cross. It is claimed by the enemy that this air-fiend has brought down more than forty British and French machines, and that his equal in skill and daring does not exist upon the battle-fields of Europe. Quite recently he fought with and vanquished three British pilots single-handed in one day. This famous pilot flies a new type of machine called the Fokker, and the Germans claim for this machine that for climbing and rapid manoeuvre there is no other aeroplane which can be compared to it."

Dastral picked up the paper and read the paragraph again. Then, speaking half aloud, he said:

"So that's what happened to Benson's Flight the other day. I felt sure he had encountered Himmelman. Ah, well! A pilot's life is only a short one at the best, but there's one thing I beg of Dame Fortune, and that is, that I may meet Himmelman before I go down."

Again he cast the paper from him, and as he did so, the door flew open, and Fisker, his observer, accompanied by Graham of "A" Flight and Wilson of "C" Flight entered the room.

"Hullo! What's the matter that you look so glum, Dastral?" exclaimed Graham, as he caught sight of his friend. "Has the O.C. been giving you another reprimand over that last rag, old fellow?"

"What rags?" laughed Dastral, regaining his usual cheerfulness with an effort.

"Ho! ho!" laughed the others. "Of course you know nothing about it, Dastral, gut all the fellows are laughing over it, and the whole squadron puts it down to you, naturally," replied Wilson.

"Naturally?" echoed Dastral with raised eyebrows, and a query note in his voice.

At this there was another burst of laughter. For this pretended ignorance of Dastral, and above all, the intoned, sepulchral voice he adopted for the occasion, reminded them of the "sky-pilot" as the chaplain was called, who, on this occasion, had been the victim of the rag.

"Tell you what," exclaimed Wilson. "If the O.C. hasn't yet heard of it, you'd better go out and have another of your scraps with a whole German flight, before he does. That would soften him a bit when you're called for the 'high jump.'"

"Yes, better go out and have a look for Himmelman!" suggested Graham, tossing, the stump of his cigar into the fire.

"Himmelman?" replied Dastral, becoming suddenly serious.

"Yes, Himmelman. Why not? I believe you'll be a match for him, if you can only meet him at the same level, and with your drums full," replied the young commander of "C" Flight.

For answer Dastral picked up the paper again, and pointing to the column about the air-fiend, said brusquely,

"Read that."