Chapter III: Part 3

They were all proud of her, navigator, gunnery lieutenant, engineers, and crew. Full-fledged, like Minerva from the head of Jove, she had appeared from the tousled brain of the queer, misshapen Scotch engineer of the Clyde, who had come knocking at the door of the war-office when the slug-shaped Zeppelins were pouring fire on the heart of London and the British airmen were relying on frail, insufficient biplanes--sparrow-hawks competing with eagles. They had, thank God! trusted that little man with the Scots accent and the brier pipe, and here they had her now in the air, three hundred feet of her, a miracle of aluminum and gas and oiled silk, rigid, dependable, fleet as a bullet from a sharpshooter's piece. Meriwell studied her lines through the darkness with a throb of pride: her graceful length, like some wonderful night insect; the wide sweep of her planes, like a jinn's wings, the shelf-like horizontal ones to send her nosing upward like a hawk or to let her down in a gliding sea-gull's swoop, the vertical one like the rudder of a gigantic vessel; the three great baskets, attached to the keel with the trellised runway between them; the four propellers, humming like a nest of bees, two to the forward car, two to the aft; the platform above the many-jointed aluminum-covered balloons, with its emergency bridge and rapid-fire gun.

"We're up seven thousand feet," the navigating lieutenant grinned. "How do you like it?"

"Don't like it at all," Meriwell answered. His teeth were chattering.

"You'll like it less in a minute. I'm going up to ten."

The din of fighting below had vanished into a faint murmur and the flashing guns and flaming artillery had become small, flickering lights, like fireflies on an August night. Occasionally a cloud flicked past below them and shut off even the pinpoints of light. Here and there a group of stars showed, coldly lustrous, while southward toward Reims one fell sheer, like a bomb.

"I'd rather be shot than as cold as this," Meriwell grumbled. Beneath his leather suit and woolen mask his skin had become rough as sandpaper.

He looked about the car. The navigator stamped his feet and swung his arms with the cold. The steersman crouched low behind the wheel. Four of the crew huddled in blankets against the walls of the basket. Only the commander stood imperturbable and grim, looking into the night. The shaded electric bulbs threw a sickly yellow light over the mechanism of the dirigible; over the black signal-board, on which green, red, and white circles and triangles showed, messages to and from the engineers fore and aft; over the row of switches, like those in a railroad tower, that opened the cages beneath the cars to release the pear-shaped bombs; over the navigator's map and compass. They outlined dimly the machine gun that peered over each side swathed in their oilskin coverings. They drew strange, green glints from barometer and spirit-level, and made silver sparkles on the frost crystals that were forming, parallelogram on parallelogram and triangle on triangle, among the twisted riggings of the car.

"What time is it?" Meriwell asked.

"It's ten-thirty," the navigator jerked. "We'll make Mainz by two and be back about dawn."

The cold became more dry and piercing. It seemed to ooze in at the pores and mingle with the blood and compose itself into a mixture that chilled flesh and bone. Meriwell felt his limbs going numb. The countryside beneath was becoming darker. There were no longer great chandeliers of light to show towns and small clusters that were villages. To the left a faint geometrical array of arc lamps rose dimly. The navigator crossed to the side of the car and looked at it for a moment. He shook his head grimly. Meriwell knew it was Brussels. A cloud enveloped them and dashed them with particles of dew that were like a shower of frost. Through the thick spray the figures of the steersman and commander loomed up gigantically, like visitors from another world showing vaguely through a misty dawn.

There was something eerie, Meriwell thought, in the immobility of the commander. He should have shown more eagerness, more of a sense of satisfied ambition. For years the old engineer officer had lived in the hope of seeing England recapture her lead in the aviation of the world. He had worked night and day in his laboratory, testing gases, testing metals, working out models for a battleship of the air that would thrust aside the Zeppelin and the Schutte-Laenze as the steamer put aside the barkentine. And now to-night he was commanding his dream for the first time in action. He was to raid the great railway network of Mainz, over which German corps were entraining night and day for the last supreme effort to gain the coast towns. In two hours he would be tearing the mighty terminal to shreds of twisted rails and charred wood, and distorted lumps of iron that had once been panting locomotives. Meriwell was proud to be with him, and the commander should be proudest of all. The gunner remembered how the old man had pleaded for the detail. The chief of staff had argued he was too old; he was too valuable. The chief had had in mind a thing Meriwell had forgotten and which suddenly came back to him with stunning force. But the old aviator had won.

"The old sportsman!" Meriwell said to himself, and his throat choked with pride; "the great old sportsman!"

He remembered how, on the first raid of the leprous-white Zeppelins from over the channel, the first house to be struck was the house of the old commander, a square, uncompromising, soldier-like house on Notting Hill, where his wife--the gray-haired, motherly lady with the dignified eyes--dwelt, and his widow daughter, mourning her husband dead somewhere in France. His soldier son, of the Sherwood Foresters, home on leave, was sleeping at the time. There were heard the high whir of propellers and the desultory crashing of anti-aircraft guns. Then, accurate as a thunderbolt, the great pear-shaped bomb had dropped, with the crash of lightning striking a tree. A colleague of the Royal Artillery, a blunt old fighter, with a cropped gray moustache, had told him about it, tactfully, laconically, with a fighter's sympathy. He told him how the gray-haired lady had died--very dignified, as she had been in life; very peaceful, as befitted an upright gentlewoman, her calm features mercifully unmarked. He stumbled as he spoke of the young captain, for a soldier should die on the battlefield, with guns roaring and his men about him, instead of being potted like a rat in a corn-stack. When he came to the daughter his face diffused to purple and his gray eyes flashed.

"Curse them!" he swore viciously, "curse them night, noon, and morning! living and dead! the rotten gallows-birds!"

"That's all right, Carter," the aviator had said. "Thank you for telling me." And he had walked off, fumbling pitifully at his sword-belt. What black hairs he had left had turned white since then, and his gray eyes were more sunken, but his beard jutted savagely since, and his voice snapped commands to his airmen with a ring like that of steel.

"I wish we were over that railway station," said Meriwell to himself, grimly. He squinted across at the switches of the bomb-cages and at the silent machine guns in their oilskin swathings. "He's going to get some good work in to-night, if I can help."

The officer at the compass straightened suddenly. He punched at the indicator buttons in a quick burst of energy.

"Up planes," he shouted. "Nine degrees down."

"Nine down!" the steersman repeated. He heaved on his switch with a long, graceful pull. The notches clicked successively like a clock in winding. The car tilted forward gradually. Meriwell grasped at a support to keep himself from sliding. Wind flew against them in a strong upward sweep. The steersman braced to his wheel like a wrestler. The propellers purred less loudly. Meriwell had the sensation of being gently pulled downward. He looked over the side of the car fearfully. A few desultory lights showed dimly, like the lamps of a train in the distance. An engineer officer dropped into the car from the passage, electric torch in one hand and oil-can in the other. He reeked pungently of gasolene.

"Time you were going down," he remarked peevishly to the navigating lieutenant in strong Scots. "Do you want all my engines to freeze?"

"It'll be hot enough pretty soon," the navigator jeered at him.

"Where are we?" Meriwell asked.

"South of Maastricht," the lieutenant answered. He was as excited as a schoolboy. "We'll be over the border in a minute." He leaned toward the wind-gauge. "Doing seventy-two miles an hour," he shouted after the engineer.

It was warmer now. Meriwell glanced at the scale beside the barometer and saw it registered two thousand five hundred feet. Vague, clean scents stole through the wind--the white odour of hawthorn and the freshness of spring grass and early flowers, and the transparent odour of the wind, like the transparent taste of water. Sounds rose vaguely into the air--the shadows of sounds, it seemed--the baying of an uneasy dog and the twitter of startled birds. An automobile-horn screamed raucously and somewhere there was the cutting whistle of a train. As he leaned over the side of the car, the gunnery lieutenant saw the sparsely lighted land slip away beneath them as a pier slips away from a liner. Occasionally there was a brightly lighted municipal building; occasionally a microscopic point that Meriwell felt was a man with a lantern. Here and there a forge licked like flames on a volcano--a mute suggestion of war in which labour ceased neither night nor day. Afar off a flashing line of lights, like the lighted fuse of a crude mine, showed a train speeding. Meriwell felt himself looking at these things as a disembodied spirit might--the last odour and sound and sight of an earth that years of dwelling in had invested with a great affection. He felt himself shiver.

He moved slightly against the edge of the car, and as he did he discovered, with a sense of shock, that his hand had grasped the rail so tightly that he could hardly move it. The horrible intent nervousness that airmen know was lapping itself about him. He felt a wild desire to find himself on earth again, so wild that he had to clinch his teeth to prevent himself from jumping over the side of the car. He was suddenly conscious of his nerves--they seemed to spread all over his body like the veins of an ivy leaf, to be writhing, to be crying at his finger-tips. A great fear came on him, as it might come on a man swimming in the ocean far from sight of land or sail. They had no right to be there, he said to himself fiercely, no right to be high among the winds. They were intruders, impertinently encroaching on the domain of some Power whose inalienable domain the air was. They might irritate It, who had placed them on the earth to walk with feet on it and not above it to fly with wings. At any moment It might arise and smite their meagre human device of gas and steel as a man might smash a fly on the wall. He cowered suddenly, as if expecting a blow.

A faint exhalation of pale light showed to the northeast like a phosphorescent cloud--Aix-la-Chapelle! So they were over the border at last! Meriwell's teeth set and his eyes glinted. A sense of danger seized him, and suddenly there began running in his head the full sonorous rhythm of the "Watch upon the Rhine." They were over the iron wall at last, over the impregnable ring of steel. In spite of singing, in spite of all boasting--and as he felt his blood pulse proudly another chilling terror came over him. He felt as if the souls of all the dead fighters of the empire were rising up against them in a vast current of wings, Saxon men and Prussian and Hessian, soldiers of Bavaria and of Würtemberg, levies of the Hansa towns--striking at the steel bird with ineffectual, spiritual fingers, clinging pathetically to rigging and nacelle and plane, gazing hatefully at the invaders with horrible bloodshot, unbodily eyes....

The navigator turned suddenly to the man at the wheel.

"What the deuce is wrong with you?" he raged. "Starboard, I said. Starboard!"

The steersman bent to the wheel. He tugged and pushed until the veins stood out on his forehead like ropes.

"Can't do anything, sir," he stammered, "I'm jammed."

The navigator jumped to the signal-board. He snapped switches like fingers cracking. He leaned into the shelter-box of the speaking-tube.

"Cut off," he shouted, "the rudder's jammed. Engineer-lieutenant amidships!"

The hum of the propellers died away musically. The dirigible glided easily like a bird volplaning. There was the shuffle of feet along the metal-latticed passage. The dour Scots lieutenant dropped into the car, cotton waste in one hand and oil-can in the other. His second, a bright-cheeked Suffolk lad, leaped agilely after him.

"Oil on the hinges all evaporated--with your seventy-two miles an hour," the lieutenant snapped at the navigator. "I'll go aft and oil up."

"I'll do that," the second urged. He caught at the oil-can and plucked his torch from its scabbard. They heard him patter aft in the rear car. They saw his light flicker for an instant as he swung into the rigging. The Scotsman looked after him with an affectionate eye.

"A fine lad!" he murmured, "and a fine nerve he has!"

As he looked over the rail of the nacelle Meriwell saw the earth swing beneath him gently like a cradle rocking. The swaying lights gave him a sense of dizziness. He felt suddenly that the earth was a small thing, bowling through space like a tossed ball.

"Right!" he heard the engineer's second hail faintly.

"Right-o!" came the cheery call of the navigator. He watched the light of the boy's torch as he crept along the rigging to the main car. He heard him bandy a hearty word with somebody. He heard a gruff word of caution, a laugh, and a choked scream. Meriwell sprang to his full height and grasped the rail with both hands. He saw the flicker of the shadow as it plunged downward.

"My God!" he blurted. "He's gone!"

The navigator rushed to the side of the car like a maniac. The steersman half-turned from the wheel. The engineer officer stiffened like a pointing dog.

"He's gone!" the navigator said stupidly. "Poor Conroy's gone!"

They stood a moment silent, looking at each other in white horror. The commander came out of the shadows. He took his peaked cap off.

"God be good to a gallant officer!" he said.

"Amen!" Meriwell answered.

The engineer strode forward silently through the passage. The commander touched the navigating officer on the arm.

"Ahead, Mr. Brennan," he said simply.

The navigator caught up his tube.

"Full ahead," he ordered. He turned to the steersman. "Southeast by east," he directed.

"Southeast by east," the steersman repeated mechanically. The propellers throbbed, whirred, hummed. The night air cut against them like a whip. A lone star showed up for a moment in a break of cloud, and then disappeared again, as a stage disappears between closing curtains.

Meriwell felt dazed. War--this wasn't war! This was a puny fooling with the engines of destiny, children pulling the triggers of firearms. He remembered how a great-uncle of his had died at Balaklava: a bright morning with the battle-drums beating; guns pealing, soldiers cheering; Cardigan riding gallantly at the head of the Light Brigade. _Pro patria mori_! Yes--but to fall two thousand feet in the night-time and to strike an alien ground with a sickening thud--that was not war. That was horror. He remembered inconsequently how he had heard that a man would be dead before he struck the ground and the thought consoled him somewhat.

Stollberg slipped past dreamily in a murk, Lamersdorf, Blankenheim, Adenau and Honnigen. Carts rattled as they flashed over Dumpelfeld. At Naub an alert sentry fired his Mauser, a whip's crack and a bullet's futile ping. Coblenz flitted past and they were over the Rhine, black, undulating, reflecting mistily the lamps of unsleeping barges. They swung over Wiesbaden, and Mainz came toward them, ambling like a man into ambush. The dirigible tilted upward at an angle of thirty. Meriwell sprang to the centre of the car. The commander climbed forward.

"Remember," he warned. "Not a second to waste!"

Doubt and nervousness dropped from Meriwell like a cloak. His brain sprang into action like a boxer's muscles at the call of the gong. He clambered forward along the passage toward the first arc. Already the gun crew had stripped the covers from the machine guns. Men stood alongside the rails with queer umbrella-like things in their hands--the asbestos parachutes, with their naphtha-soaked torch in the handle, flares that would light up every cranny in the ground beneath and protect the dirigible from the light of the flares themselves.

"Ready, gunner?" asked the navigating lieutenant.

"Ready," Meriwell sang back.

They swung toward the town easily as a ship comes to its pier. Beneath them they could see the lights of the railroad station, big violet globes that radiated like stars. Men hurried to and fro along the concrete platforms--queer, squat, huddled figures. Two engines fussed in and out like busy housewives. In one corner was a massed city of railroad-cars. Rails shone in a bewildering intricacy like a metal puzzle. Long, lank sheds showed like barns.

"Ease up," the commander ordered. He stood square in the centre of the car, his beard jutting, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. It was as if some main nerve had suddenly come into play, electrifying the great steel vessel. The navigator sprang to the speaking-tube.

"Cut off," he shouted. He thrust the steersman away from the wheel and caught at the spokes. "Figure of eight," he muttered. The dirigible swung gracefully in a curve leftward. Meriwell looked over the side again and raised his night-glasses. On the platforms beneath men were running to and fro excitedly. As they looked upward they had the appearance of a child's tin soldiers gazing fearsomely at a human being. A whistle cut metallically into the air. A carbine cracked. A searchlight shot skyward in a broad ribbon of white and began casting about like a fisherman's line. Somewhere there was a thudding boom, a whining scream, and a white star opened like a flower three hundred yards away with a crash like wood breaking.

"Go ahead, Mr. Meriwell," the commander directed.

Meriwell raised his megaphone to his lips.

"Overboard, the parachutes," he thundered.

There was a burst of murky, yellow flame fore and aft. Six flaming torches floated downward like snowflakes falling. The town cowered darkly to the rear of them. Beneath, to the right, the station showed as if lit up by some great conflagration. Above, everything seemed to have gone grotesquely black. Meriwell could hardly see across the car. Another searchlight leaped in to the air and crossed the first one. They stabbed about like the tentacles of an octopus. The anti-aircraft guns shot six white stars to port in rapid succession like revolver shots. Along the concrete platforms a brace of sharpshooters dropped to their knees and cuddled their pieces to their cheeks. The dirigible moved with easy dignity toward the station. Meriwell calculated a moment. The bombs in the fall would carry forward in the direction the dirigible was headed for. He would have to wait a moment. Weights, distance, heights, flashed through his head like the dots and dashes of a Morse code.

"Sections A and B, lanyards 3 and 4, fore and aft," he bellowed. "Heave on!"

The dirigible shivered and jumped like a restive horse as the gunners heaved on their switches and the weighted bombs dropped from their cages. A searchlight caught the great hawk for a moment and showed it gray and lustrous like a battleship at sea. The navigator swung his wheel about with a jerk. The dirigible turned like a hare. The propellers burst into a wild, spasmodic hum. They oscillated dangerously. Meriwell clung onto the side and looked over.

Eight great splotches of red flame burst suddenly on the ground, sideways, like water splashing. They showed red and angry like a man's wound. There were dark streaks among them--earth thrown up, men, metal, concrete. A puff of hot wind struck the car, and a vast unspeakable noise, a maddened, crashing roar, like the earth protesting at being attacked--a shuddering, horrible thing that drowned the feeble crackling of the guns and seemed to blot out life itself for a moment. The dirigible shivered like a feather in a gully of wind.

"Ease up," he called to the navigator. "A and B, lanyards 2 and 5, fore and aft," he roared again. Again the jump and curvet of the car; the red cup-like explosions, the terror of sound. A gun boomed southward, and something passed them with a high shriek. The searchlight caught them again and hung on with the tenacity of a bulldog. Something like a fly appeared in the west.

"Look out," the commander warned the lieutenant at the wheel. "Get ready to rise."

Meriwell looked downward again with his glasses. The naphtha planes were approaching the junction on their drop and were lighting up the scene with a lurid Satanic glow. The glasses nearly slipped from his hands. Beneath him was chaos. The glittering rails, the compact platforms, the lank sheds, the massed cars, the violet lights were no longer there. The terminal showed like a ploughed field--a wilderness of stone and earth, of twisted metal and shattered wood. Great chasms showed where the bombs had struck; little hillocks of thrown-up earth; great iron pillars broken in two like match-wood; huddled figures that had been soldiers on the platform; while from the massed cars and the long sheds great waves of red and blackish flame showed with foam tops of rolling brown smoke, rolling, licking, crackling, roaring, like a mediæval dream of hell.

"I don't need section C," he laughed. All the havoc had been wrought by the light bombs. There were still eight mammoth pears in their cages, unused. He could save those.

"Get the bridge now, Mr. Meriwell," the commander instructed, "and swing around to the forts."

"Empty ballast," roared the navigator.

There was a gurgle as the stop-cocks on the water-tanks of the keel were opened--a hollow rushing that should have ended in a splash. In the glaring light the water poured downward in two great streams fore and aft like silver cables falling. The dirigible rose as if drawn upward. Bombs burst like firecrackers. Beneath, the fire rustled like crushed paper and exploded now and then, in queer, hollow, inadequate sounds. The navigator swung over the river. Four thousand feet below, the bridge showed over the black ribbon of the Rhine like a plank over a rivulet. Meriwell watched it with the eye of a cat ready to spring on a mouse.

"Ready on section C," he warned, "lanyards 2 and 3, fore and aft."

They floated along hazily, like a stick along a river. The anti-aircraft guns broke into a passion of whipping reports. The searchlights cut into the air like thrusting bayonets.

"Heave on!" he yelled suddenly.

The dirigible lifted violently like a canoe struck by a great wave. There was a loud whirring in the air as the bombs dropped downward. Meriwell felt his heart jump to his mouth. He peered over the edge breathlessly, his hands gripping the rail with sudden fear. Mechanically he opened his mouth to protect his ear-drums from the report, and as he did a vast wave of orange flame, like discoloured sheet lightning, seemed to flick along the river. For a moment, soundless, the river rose in its bed as if struck by a mighty hand. The great stone bridge disappeared as if kicked away.

"My God!" said Meriwell hoarsely, "my God!"

Then suddenly noise struck him between the shoulder-blades, noise such as he could hardly believe possible--an infinitude of sound that rocked him like a crashing blow, a sound as of two planets meeting in mid-course, a gigantic forbidden thing, that only gods should make.

"The bridge is gone," said Meriwell stupidly.

A great hush swung over the town. The anti-aircraft guns stuttered and died. The futile rifle fire stopped. The thunder of the forts was cut off in mid-air. Only the blaze at the junction roared a little like a forced draft. Over the river all was black. The water had shut off the flare of the explosion. The searchlight struck the ballonet of the dirigible as a spear strikes a fish. There was the throb of propellers.

"Triplane to starboard," the navigator warned.

"Send him down, Mr. Meriwell," the commander ordered calmly. "Navigator, put the men by the engines ready to start on the word."

The triplane rose jerkily in the air like a toy at the end of a string. Its three shelf-like planes showed dimly and vaguely like a great kite. Meriwell felt sorry for it--it was a game, chivalrous thing, to rise in the air to give battle to the leviathan. He felt a great throb of sympathy and sorrow for it. It looked such a puny thing--but he mustn't let it get above him, or alongside him----

"Searchlight on starboard gun," he snapped.

A sergeant and corporal sprang to the Maxim. They clamped a thing like an automobile-lamp to the barrel. They snapped a switch, and a line of light shot out like a harpoon. It whipped about like a fencer's blade, parrying, thrusting, lifting, dropping. The corporal threw his leg over the saddle and caught the trigger.

"When you see her, fire!" Meriwell ordered.

She showed up for a moment, black and fragile, and motionless it seemed. The gun broke into an infuriated chatter. The cartridge-tape leaped like a hooked eel. Suddenly they saw the great kite twist like a wounded bird. It dropped in a wavering zigzag while two black pin-points dropped in plumb-lines.

"God help them!" Meriwell breathed.

The propellers of the dirigible plunged into their loud whir like the first peal of an organ. Meriwell staggered and lurched. The dirigible shot forward like a stone from a sling. The commander fell to pacing the car nervously. His fingers cracked like castanets. His beard twitched. He turned on the gunner.

"Never mind the forts," he shouted. "We've done enough. What have you left?"

"Sixteen small and four large bombs," Meriwell answered.

"Get ready," he warned. He turned to the navigator. "Back and over the town."

"Back and over the town?" the navigator queried stupidly. "Over the town?"

"Yes," the commander barked. His face seemed queerly white and strained. "Let them have all you've got, Mr. Meriwell."

"You don't mean--?" Meriwell nearly laughed in amazement. "Bombard the town?"

"Yes. Quick. Circle around and let go."

A great, tawny lake of flame poured over the acreage of cars in the junction. It lighted the town dully and they could see it hazily, through a smoke screen, as it were. The narrow Gothic buildings showed up as in a painting; the peaceful cathedral; the great, squat municipal hall; the queer dolls' houses--it all seemed like a theatrical spectacle. Southward the gunners still threw their white stars and the artillery of the forts stabbed red and blindly into the murky fog.

"Take the wheel," the navigator told the steersman. "Planes up eighteen and swing in a circle." He looked at the commander with grave, disquieted eyes.

Meriwell caught at the commander's sleeve.

"My God, sir! You can't do that!" he shouted in horror. "You can't fire on civilians."

"I can," said the old man doggedly. "I can and I will."

"You're mad, sir! You're mad!" he babbled.

A stray shot cut screaming past them. They rocked from the current. The crew moved about the car uneasily.

"Bring her around," the commander ordered. The navigator never moved.

A vast desire to throw himself on the old commander came on Meriwell, to bind him hand and foot. He must have gone crazy, he judged. That last terrific explosion had injured his brain. Then suddenly he remembered the house on Notting Hill, the white-haired lady who had died on the night raid, the screaming, distraught daughter, the gallant captain of Sherwood Foresters killed like a rat in a trap. He understood.

"I can't do it, sir," the navigator replied. Meriwell took a step toward him. His hands went out pleadingly.

"I know, sir. I understand. But we can't do it. I won't give the order and the men wouldn't pull the lanyards," his voice stumbled. "We're soldiers," he continued, "and we're fighting soldiers--not unarmed men, not sleeping children, not women."

There was a moment's silence. The wind blew about them as from a great blast-pipe. The reports of the air-guns ceased for a moment and began intermittently. The navigator turned his head away. Meriwell looked at the commander's white face.

"Soldiers!" he repeated. "Clean fighters. Soldiers and gentlemen. Officers and gentlemen, as your son was. And your wife was a soldier's wife and your daughter was a soldier's daughter."

He waved his hand toward the town.

"We've smashed the junction and smashed the bridge. No train will pass that way again and no ship will come up the Rhine. We've done our work--and not a building outside injured and not a civilian attacked. They'd be proud of that, your people, sir. You can't do this other thing, sir. It isn't the game. It isn't cricket."

He watched the commander's face keenly. He waited until he saw the bitter twist pass from the mouth and the frown go out of his eyes.

"They wouldn't want that," he urged. "They'd be ashamed, those people of yours." He waited a moment. "The old code, sir, an officer and a gentleman."

The commander's head drooped a little. The stiff poise of his grey beard softened. His shoulders lost their tenseness suddenly.

"I--I--" he wavered. He turned to the navigator. "Right about and back," he said weakly. He slipped into the rear among the shadows.

The navigator sprang to his compass.

"Nor'west by west," he ordered.

"Nor'west by west," the steersman repeated mechanically.

And as Meriwell leaned over the car he saw the town race flatly away from them, while the guns still chattered viciously, like disturbed magpies, and their charges burst high in the air into pretty, artificial stars.

V

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER OF ASPINWALL*

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

*Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company

I

On a time it happened that the lighthouse keeper in Aspinwall, not far from Panama, disappeared without a trace. Since he disappeared during a storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of the small, rocky island on which the lighthouse stood, and was swept out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was not found next day in its rocky niche. The place of lighthouse keeper had become vacant. It was necessary to fill this place at the earliest moment possible, since the lighthouse had no small significance for the local movement as well as for vessels going from New York to Panama. Mosquito Bay abounds in sandbars and banks. Among these navigation, even in the daytime, is difficult; but at night, especially with the fogs which are so frequent on those waters warmed by the sun of the tropics, it is nearly impossible. The only guide at that time for the numerous vessels is the lighthouse.

The task of finding a new keeper fell to the United States consul living in Panama, and this task was no small one: first, because it was absolutely necessary to find the man within twelve hours; second, the man must be unusually conscientious,--it was not possible, of course, to take the first comer at random; finally, there was an utter lack of candidates. Life on a tower is uncommonly difficult, and by no means enticing to people of the South, who love idleness and the freedom of a vagrant life. That lighthouse keeper is almost a prisoner. He cannot leave his rocky island except on Sundays. A boat from Aspinwall brings him provisions and water once a day, and returns immediately; on the whole island, one acre in area, there is no inhabitant. The keeper lives in the lighthouse; he keeps it in order. During the day he gives signals by displaying flags of various colours to indicate changes of the barometer; in the evening he lights the lantern. This would be no great labour were it not that to reach the lantern at the summit of the tower he must pass over more than four hundred steep and very high steps; sometimes he must make this journey repeatedly during the day. In general, it is the life of monk, and indeed more than that,--the life of a hermit. It was not wonderful, therefore, that Mr. Isaac Falconbridge was in no small anxiety as to where he should find a permanent successor to the recent keeper; and it is easy to understand his joy when a successor announced himself most unexpectedly on that very day. He was a man already old, seventy years or more, but fresh, erect, with the movements and bearing of a soldier. His hair was perfectly white, his face as dark as that of a Creole; but, judging from his blue eyes, he did not belong to a people of the South. His face was somewhat downcast and sad, but honest. At the first glance he pleased Falconbridge. It remained only to examine him. Therefore the following conversation began:

"Where are you from?"

"I am a Pole."

"Where have you worked up to this time?"

"In one place and another."

"A lighthouse keeper should like to stay in one place."

"I need rest."

"Have you served? Have you testimonials of honourable government service?"

The old man drew from his bosom a piece of faded silk resembling a strip of an old flag, unwound it, and said:

"Here are the testimonials. I received this cross in 1830. This second one is Spanish from the Carlist War; the third is the French legion; the fourth I received in Hungary. Afterward I fought in the States against the South; there they do not give crosses."

Falconbridge took the paper and began to read.

"H'm! Skavinski? Is that your name? H'm! Two flags captured in a bayonet attack. You were a gallant soldier."

"I am able to be a conscientious lighthouse keeper."

"It is necessary to ascend the tower a number of times daily. Have you sound legs?"

"I crossed the plains on foot." (The immense steppes between the East and California are called "the plains.")

"Do you know sea service?"

"I served three years on a whaler."

"You have tried various occupations."

"The only one I have not known is quiet."

"Why is that?"

The old man shrugged his shoulders. "Such is my fate."

"Still you seem to me too old for a lighthouse keeper."

"Sir," exclaimed the candidate suddenly in a voice of emotion, "I am greatly wearied, knocked about. I have passed through much as you see. This place is one of those which I have wished for most ardently. I am old, I need rest. I need to say to myself, 'Here you will remain; this is your port.' Ah, sir, this depends now on you alone. Another time perhaps such a place will not offer itself. What luck that I was in Panama! I entreat you--as God is dear to me, I am like a ship which if it misses the harbour will be lost. If you wish to make an old man happy--I swear to you that I am honest, but--I have enough of wandering."

The blue eyes of the old man expressed such earnest entreaty that Falconbridge, who had a good, simple heart, was touched.

"Well," said he, "I'll take you. You are a lighthouse keeper."

The old man's face gleamed with inexpressible joy.

"I thank you."

"Can you go to the tower to-day?"

"I can."

"Then good-bye. Another word,--for any failure in service you will be dismissed."

"All right."

That same evening, when the sun had descended on the other side of the isthmus, and a day of sunshine was followed by a night without twilight, the new keeper was in his place evidently, for the lighthouse was casting its bright rays on the water as usual. The night was perfectly calm, silent, genuinely tropical, filled with a transparent haze, forming around the moon a great coloured rainbow with soft, unbroken edges; the sea was moving only because the tide raised it. Skavinski on the balcony seemed from below like a small black point. He tried to collect his thoughts and take in his new position; but his mind was too much under pressure to move with regularity. He felt somewhat as a hunted beast feels when at last it has found refuge from pursuit on some inaccessible rock or in a cave. There had come to him, finally, an hour of quiet; the feeling of safety filled his soul with a certain unspeakable bliss. Now on that rock he can simply laugh at his previous wanderings, his misfortunes, and failures. He was in truth like a ship whose masts, ropes, and sails had been broken and rent by a tempest, and cast from the clouds to the bottom of the sea,--a ship on which the tempest had hurled waves and spat foam, but which still wound its way to the harbour. The pictures of that storm passed quickly through his mind as he compared it with the calm future now beginning. A part of his wonderful adventures he had related to Falconbridge; he had not mentioned, however, thousands of other incidents. It had been his misfortune that as often as he pitched his tent and fixed his fireplace to settle down permanently, some wind tore out the stakes of his tent, whirled away the fire, and bore him on toward destruction. Looking now from the balcony of the tower at the illuminated waves, he remembered everything through which he had passed. He had campaigned in the four parts of the world, and in wandering had tried almost every occupation. Labour-loving and honest, more than once had he earned money, and had always lost it in spite of every prevision and the utmost caution. He had been a gold-miner in Australia, a diamond-digger in Africa, a rifleman in public service in the East Indies. He established a ranch in California,--the drought ruined him; he tried trading with wild tribes in the interior of Brazil,--his raft was wrecked on the Amazon; he himself alone, weaponless, and nearly naked, wandered in the forest for many weeks living on wild fruits, exposed every moment to death from the jaws of wild beasts. He established a forge in Helena, Arkansas, and that was burned in a great fire which consumed the whole town. Next he fell into the hands of the Indians in the Rocky Mountains, and only through a miracle was he saved by Canadian trappers. Then he served as a sailor on a vessel running between Bahia and Bordeaux, and as a harpooner on a whaling-ship; both vessels were wrecked. He had a cigar factory in Havana, and was robbed by his partner while he himself was lying sick with the vomito. At last he came to Aspinwall, and there was to be the end of his failures,--for what could reach him on that rocky island? Neither water nor fire nor men. But from men Skavinski had not suffered much; he had met good men oftener than bad ones.

But it seemed to him that all the four elements were persecuting him. Those who knew him said that he had no luck, and with that they explained everything. He himself became somewhat of a monomaniac. He believed that some mighty and vengeful hand was pursuing him everywhere, on all lands and waters. He did not like, however, to speak of this; only at times, when someone asked him whose hand that could be, he pointed mysteriously to the Polar Star, and said, "It comes from that place." In reality his failures were so continuous that they were wonderful, and might easily drive a nail into the head, especially of the man who had experienced them. But Skavinski had the patience of an Indian, and that great calm power of resistance which comes from the truth of heart. In his time he had received in Hungary a number of bayonet-thrusts because he would not grasp at a stirrup which was shown as means of salvation to him, and cry for quarter. In like manner he did not bend to misfortune. He crept up against the mountain as industriously as an ant. Pushed down a hundred times, he began his journey calmly for the hundred and first time. He was in his way a most peculiar original. This old soldier, tempered, God knows in how many fires, hardened in suffering, hammered and forged, had the heart of a child. In the time of the epidemic in Cuba, the vomito attacked him because he had given to the sick all his quinine, of which he had a considerable supply, and left not a grain to himself.

There had been in him also this wonderful quality,--that after so many disappointments he was ever full of confidence, and did not lose hope that all would be well yet. In winter he grew lively, and predicted great events. He waited for these events with impatience, and lived with the thought of them whole summers. But the winters passed one after another, and Skavinski lived only to this,--that they whitened his head. At last he grew old, began to lose energy; his endurance was becoming more and more like resignation, his former calmness was tending toward supersensitiveness, and that tempered soldier was degenerating into a man ready to shed tears for any cause. Besides this, from time to time he was weighed down by a terrible homesickness which was roused by any circumstance,--the sight of swallows, gray birds like sparrows, snow on the mountains or melancholy music like that heard on a time. Finally there was one idea which mastered him,--the idea of rest. It mastered the old man thoroughly and swallowed all other desires and hopes. This ceaseless wanderer could not imagine anything more to be longed for, anything more precious than a quiet corner in which to rest and wait in silence for the end. Perhaps specially because some whim of fate had so hurried him over all seas and lands that he could hardly catch his breath did he imagine that the highest human happiness was simply not to wander. It is true that such modest happiness was his due; but he was so accustomed to disappointments that he thought of rest as people in general think of something which is beyond reach. He did not dare to hope for it. Meanwhile unexpectedly in the course of twelve hours he had gained a position which was as if chosen for him out of all the world. We are not to wonder, then, that when he lighted his lantern in the evening he became as it were dazed,--that he asked himself if that was reality, and he did not dare to answer that it was. But at the same time reality convinced him with incontrovertible proofs; hence, hours one after another passed while he was on the balcony. He gazed, and convinced himself. It might seem that he was looking at the sea for the first time in his life. The lens of the lantern cast into the darkness an enormous triangle of light, beyond which the eye of the old man was lost in the black distance completely, in the distance mysterious and awful. But that distance seemed to run toward the light. The long waves following one another rolled out from the darkness, and went bellowing toward the base of the island; and then their foaming backs were visible, shining rose-coloured in the light of the lantern. The incoming tide swelled more and more and covered the sandy bars. The mysterious speech of the ocean came with a fulness more powerful and louder, at one time like the thunder of cannon, at another like the roar of great forests, at another like the distant dull sound of the voices of people. At the moments it was quiet; then to the ears of the old man came some great sigh, then a kind of sobbing and again threatening outbursts. At last the wind bore away the haze, but brought black broken clouds, which hid the moon. From the west it began to blow more and more; the waves sprang with rage against the rock of the lighthouse licking with foam the foundation walls. In the distance a storm was beginning to bellow. On the dark, disturbed expanse certain green lanterns gleamed from the masts of ships. These green points rose high and then sank; now they swayed to the right, and now to the left. Skavinski descended to his room. The storm began to howl. Outside, people on those ships were struggling with night, with darkness, with waves; but inside the tower it was calm and still. Even the sounds of the storm hardly came through the thick walls, and only the measured tick-tack of the clock lulled the wearied old man to his slumber.

II

Hours, days, and weeks began to pass. Sailors assert that sometimes when the sea is greatly roused, something from out the midst of night and darkness calls them by name. If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinitely still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him. But to hear them quiet is needed. Besides old age loves to put itself aside as if with a foreboding of the grave. The lighthouse had become for Skavinski such a half grave. Nothing is more monotonous than life on a beacon-tower. If young people consent to take up this service they leave it after a time. Lighthouse keepers are generally men not young, gloomy, and confined to themselves. If by chance one of them leaves his lighthouse and goes among men, he walks in the midst of them like a person roused from deep slumber. On the tower there is a lack of minute impressions which in ordinary life teach men to adapt themselves to everything. All that a lighthouse keeper comes in contact with is gigantic, and devoid of definitely outlined forms. The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness. That is a life in which thought is continual meditation, and out of that meditation nothing rouses the keeper, not even his work. Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form the only variety. But Skavinski felt more happiness than ever in life before. He rose with the dawn, took his breakfast, polished the lens, and then sitting on the balcony gazed into the distance of the water; and his eyes were never sated with the pictures which he saw before him. On the enormous turquoise ground of the ocean were to be seen generally flocks of swollen sails gleaming in the rays of the sun so brightly that the eyes were blinking before the excess of light. Sometimes the ships, favoured by the so-called trade winds, went in an extended line one after another, like a chain of sea-mews or albatrosses. The red casks indicating the channel swayed on the light wave with gentle movement. Among the sails appeared every afternoon gigantic grayish feather-like plumes of smoke. That was a steamer from New York which brought passengers and goods to Aspinwall, drawing behind it a frothy path of foam. On the other side of the balcony Skavinski saw, as if on his palm, Aspinwall and its busy harbour, and in it a forest of masts, boats and craft; a little farther, white houses and the towers of the town. From the height of his tower the small houses were like the nests of sea-mews, the boats were like beetles and the people moved around like small points on the white boulevard. From early morning a light eastern breeze brought a confused hum of human life, above which predominated the whistle of steamers. In the afternoon six o'clock came; the movement in the harbour began to cease; the mews hid themselves in the rent of the cliffs; the waves grew feeble and became in some sort lazy; and then on the land, on the sea, and on the tower came a time of stillness unbroken by anything. The yellow sands from which the waves had fallen back glittered like golden stripes on the width of the waters; the body of the tower was outlined definitely in blue. Floods of sunbeams were poured from the sky on the water and the sands and the cliff. At that time a certain lassitude full of sweetness seized the old man. He felt that the rest which he was enjoying was excellent; and when he thought that it would be continuous nothing was lacking to him.

Skavinski was intoxicated with his own happiness and since a man adapts himself easily to improved condition, he gained faith and confidence by degrees; for he thought that if men built houses for invalids, why should not God gather up at last His own invalids? Time passed, and confirmed him in this conviction. The old man grew accustomed to his tower, to the lantern, to the rock, to the sand-bars, to solitude. He grew accustomed also to the sea-mews which hatched in the crevices of the rock, and in the evening held meetings on the roof of the lighthouse. Skavinski threw to them generally the remnants of his food; and soon they grew tame, and afterward, when he fed them, a real storm of white wings encircled him, and the old man went among the birds like a shepherd among sheep. When the tide ebbed he went to the low sand-banks, on which he collected savory periwinkles and beautiful pearl shells of the nautilus, which receding waves had left on the sand. In the night by the moonlight and the tower he went to catch fish, which frequented the windings of the cliff in myriads. At last he was in love with his rocks and his treeless little island, grown over only with small thick plants exuding sticky resin. The distant views repaid him for the poverty of the island, however. During afternoon hours, when the air became very clear he could see the whole isthmus covered with the richest vegetation. It seemed to Skavinski at such times that he saw one gigantic garden,--bunches of cocoa, and enormous musa, combined, as it were, in luxurious tufted bouquets, right there behind the houses of Aspinwall. Farther on, between Aspinwall and Panama, was a great forest over which every morning and evening hung a reddish haze of exhalations,--a real tropical forest with its feet in stagnant water, interlaced with lianas and filled with the sound of one sea of gigantic orchids, palms, milk-trees, iron-trees, gum-trees.