Dastral of the Flying Corps

Within ten seconds they were whizzing away through the darkness in the direction of the Great North Road, and as there was very little traffic about, they reached their destination within three quarters of an hour. It was not a minute too soon. They had seen the searchlights at work on their way north, and towards the end of their journey they had several times heard the anti-aircraft guns blazing away at something up in the clouds.

"Halt! Who goes there?" came the challenge as they reached the turning which left the main road, and finished at the aerodrome.

The vehicle halted abruptly, for the driver had seen the flash of the barrel of a Smith & Weston revolver, which the air-mechanic on sentry-go held out to bar their progress.

"Flight-Commander of the Royal Flying Corps," shouted the pilot, hoping that would allow him to pass, and to get on to the aerodrome immediately, but the sentry was obdurate.

"Let me see your permit, sir," he asked.

"Haven't got one."

"Turn out guard!" shouted the sentry, and turning to the newcomers, he added:

"Advance, Flight-Commander, and report to the guard-room."

The guard-room was but a few yards further on, and the corporal of the guard, approaching the carriage, saluted, and led Dastral and Tim away to the Flight-Sergeant at the Orderly Room. He was expected, and a minute afterwards he was shaking hands with Garner, who had been waiting for him.

And now there was not a moment to spare, for the presence of the raiders had been reported from the O.C. Searchlights, as hiding somewhere in the clouds between Hatfield and Barnet, trying to break through to London. Only a ring of curtain fire from the A.A. Batteries, and a cordon of long flashing lights which swept the sky from the horizon was keeping them back.

Several machines had already gone up in search of the enemy and the other pilots were standing by their machines ready to "take off" immediately the order was given.

Immediately, therefore, Dastral had settled with the driver of the taxi, and introduced Tim to his friend, Squadron-Commander Garner, they were led through the darkness to the shed where the "Buckstead Bullet," as she was nicknamed, lay all ready to be wheeled out.

"Good! Excellent!" exclaimed Dastral, immediately he saw the little single-seater monoplane, for he had flown a similar machine several times in France.

With the aid of a dark lanthorn he carefully went over her, and lovingly fingered every part of her, from the bullet-nosed fuselage which gave her her nickname, to her neat, trim little tail and rudder.

The noise of the A.A. guns became louder and louder outside, as though they had discovered one of the raiders. And Dastral was just itching to go up!

"Let me go up in her, Garner!" he said. "She's a beauty!"

The O.C. scratched his head. He had wanted to fly her himself, for she was the only spare machine left over, and, moreover, as Dastral was not attached to the squadron, it was somewhat irregular for him to use the machine, without the express permission of the Wing Headquarters. He hesitated for a moment therefore, but, just at that instant, one of the raiders suddenly emerged from the edge of a cloud where it had been in hiding, and a fresh burst of anti-aircraft gunfire caused some excitement.

"There she is!" cried some one, as one of the searchlights caught her.

"As you like, Dastral. There's your target. Get into your togs quickly and I'll take the risk of it. I must leave you for a moment now. Those fellows in 'C' Flight are waiting to go up," and with that the O.C. turned round and dashed off, while Dastral, without waiting for anything further, got into a huge leathern coat, pilot's boots, and donned the flying helmet with long ear flaps and queer-looking goggles, which an air-mechanic had brought him.

Two minutes later the young pilot climbed into the 'plane, gave a final look round, waved a good-bye to Tim, whose pale face, now working with intense excitement, he discerned in the darkness.

"All ready, sir?" asked the Flight-Sergeant.

Dastral gave him a nod, and prepared to switch on the the current.

"Swing the propellor!" came next, and as the cool, calculating pilot pulled a switch, the mighty engine broke into its terrible song.

"Rep-p-p, rep-p-p! Whir-r-r!"

"Stand clear!" and away went the monoplane like a bullet out of a gun. As she started, a searchlight was deflected in a long beam along the ground, to give the daring young aviator the direction for his take-off, for the dangers of night-flying are many, as more than one brave pilot has found to his cost before now.

At a hundred yards the "Bullet" sprang into the air, and soared upward at a tremendous speed, being quickly lost to sight, as the searchlights tried once more to find the raider, which had found things too warm, and had sought again the shelter of the clouds.

By short and rapid spirals, Dastral soon reached a thousand feet. Every now and then he turned his little shaded electric lamp on to the indicator, which seemed to vibrate merrily, and almost to smile, as its little rounded dial told the altitude. Up and up they went, and the indicator almost laughed with joy as it clicked out the figures:

"Two thousand, two thousand five hundred, three thousand feet!"

Still they seemed to be climbing all too slowly for the pilot. He had caught sight of the Zeppelin when she showed herself for a moment, and he had said to himself:

"Twelve thousand feet, and then there'll be a chance! But nothing less than that will do."

He was impatient therefore to get higher and higher, for he feared the raiders would discharge or jettison their cargo of bombs before he could get at them. They certainly would have done, had they known that at that very moment Himmelman's rival was climbing to meet them, on a Buckstead Bullet, which could do one hundred and thirty miles an hour when pushed.

Already a number of bombs had been dropped, and away to the northward several fires could be seen where the night-raiders had left their victims behind, in the shape of burning homesteads, where the victims were women and children, old men and invalids; but the avenger was at hand, and the hour of reckoning had come.

"Eight thousand, nine thousand feet!" clicked the indicator, though its voice was lost in the roar of the engine and propellor.

At eight thousand feet Dastral passed several of the 'planes which had preceded him, and at nine thousand he left the last of them behind him and entered into a bank of clouds. Never once had he ceased his rapid, climbing spirals, and now, through the misty, clinging vapour of the clouds he still soared heavenwards. Once or twice he stopped his engines just to listen for a few seconds, but he heard nothing except the whir-r-r-r of the 'planes beneath him.

He was ahead of them all now, for his engines were running beautifully, and the "Bullet" raced through the next layer of clouds as a fish darts through the waters. It was becoming lighter also, for he could catch glimpses of the stars, and the remaining clouds were thinner than those below. Soon, he would be above them all, and perhaps above the raider. It was cold too, bitterly cold, but his young blood coursed madly through his veins, and his heart beat quicker and quicker.

"Ten thousand. Eleven thousand," laughed the indicator, joining merrily in the hunt, for it seemed to Dastral now that he could hear those weird voices of the night, speaking to him and calling him up and up, ever higher and higher. Yes, the clouds and the stars were calling him, and the music and rhythm of that pulsating engine a few feet away, and the whir-r-r of those propellors just ahead, seemed to make him almost light-headed, so that he began to laugh and sing.

He thought of crooked Tim far down below, and what he had said about the romance and the music, and from the pilot's lips there fell involuntarily the words:

"Poor Tim! How he would like to be up here alone, and to listen to all these voices of the night!"

As Dastral thought thus, he looked down, far down into the blackness, and he saw the flashes of the searchlights. Sometimes they reached up to him long extended arms that seemed to unite him to the earth, but he could scarcely believe that he had ever dwelt down there in that abyss of murky darkness. Yet always he swerved aside, and evaded those long stretching pillars of light, for he knew that if he crossed their beams but once, other eyes would see him, and the raider above would be warned of his near approach.

Suddenly at twelve thousand feet the monoplane shook itself as though dashing the clinging moisture from its yellow wings, and leapt, like a fish out of the water, above the topmost layer of clouds.

And now with keen searching eyes Dastral looked above and around for the presence of the raider, but she was nowhere to be seen. Below him rolled the clouds, like dark, monstrous billows. Here and there through an opening he still saw the flashes of the searchlights feeling for their prey. But above his head the sky was aflame with millions of stars. Right across from east to west, like a silvery pathway to heaven, shone the Milky Way, luminous with light, and along that trail of diamonds shone the bigger stars, in the constellations of Perseus, Cassiopeia and Aquila. And far down in the east, Orion the Hunter chased the dancing Pleiades, as he did thousands of years before aeroplanes were ever dreamt of.

"But where is the Boche?" Dastral asked himself again and again.

He was beginning to fear that he had lost him. Perhaps the Hun had caught sight of him as he came through the clouds, and had now departed unseen, as he came.

"Great Scott, have I missed him after all?" he cried. "For months and months I have been longing to fight with a Zeppelin, and now he's slipped me."

And for ten minutes he circled about, stopping his engines once or twice to listen for the roar of the invader's engines and propellors. Suddenly something whizzed past him and burst into a jet of flame. It was a shrapnel with a time fuse. Then another and another. They were firing again, then, down below, and they must have picked up the airship once more.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "She must be somewhere near me too, for I am almost in the line of fire."

Looking down he saw what had happened. The clouds in which the Zeppelin had been hiding were breaking up and drifting away, for a fresh, cold wind had sprung up from the east.

"Ah! Ah! I shall see her soon. She cannot escape me now. I shall find her in a few minutes."

"Whiz! Puff!" came another time fuse, and burst not fifty feet away, several pieces of which pierced the left wing of the monoplane.

"By Jove, but that was close!" he cried, throwing out three balls, which burst into red flame as they fell towards the earth, and was the signal for the Archies to stop firing.

"Ah, there she is!" exclaimed the daring pilot, as, out of the clouds, a thousand feet below him, he saw a black mass emerge against the lighter background of the thinning clouds. At the same instant the searchlights found her, and a dozen long arms of streaming light focussed their united rays upon her.

"Gemini! What a target!" cried Dastral, as he pulled the joy-stick over and dived to the attack, without a second's hesitation.

His gun, already cocked and ready to fire through the whirling propellor, and loaded with the new flaming bullet, was brought to bear.

Down, down he went, firing rapidly all the while. Then underneath and alongside her he raced, pumping his second and third drum into the huge looming mass.

Far below his friends saw the whirling monoplane, in the glare of the searchlight, for now it was as bright as day. The A.A. guns had ceased their fire in response to his signals, but the men on the doomed Zeppelin brought three or four of their eleven machine guns to bear upon him, but it was too late. They knew the deadly peril they were in, and it was impossible for them with their unsteady nerves to hit any vital part of that waspish little fiend, which circled round, above and below them at a truly terrific rate.

Dastral, in his rapid nose-dive, had dipped five hundred feet below the monster and flattened out to return to the attack, but, as he commenced his climb again he saw that the silvery glare of the Zeppelin, as it had appeared to him but twenty seconds before in the lure of the searchlights, had taken on a ruby glow, which, as he mounted up, became a ruddy glare.

"Heavens! She is on fire already!" he gasped.

It was only too true. The engines had been set going, for the Zeppelin commander had tried to make his escape, just as he was discovered, but it was too late. He had never suspected that Himmelman's terrible opponent was overhead, having climbed up twelve thousand feet while he had been hiding in the cloud.

"Ach! Gott in Himmel! Wir sind verloren! Donner and Blitz!"

Never will Dastral forget the sight which he beheld that night, close at hand, for the Huns now realised that all was lost, and that a terrible and speedy vengeance awaited them all from which there was no escape. As the huge envelope kindled into fierce leaping flames, two hundred feet high, the pilot could plainly see the panic-stricken crew of the doomed airship, wringing their hands in terror and fright, as they dashed madly along the narrow footways that led from one gondola to another, trying to escape, till the last second, from the fierce flames that spurted out above and below, and licked up and consumed everything with their intense heat.

It was truly a terrible sight, and the burning mass lit up the countryside far below as well as the great metropolis away to the south. Never since the day when every hill-top in England was aflame with the fires that announced the coming of the Spanish Armada, in the days of the great sea-dogs, had such a beacon been lighted in this land of ours.

Down, down fell the flaming mass, lower and lower, while the daring pilot, bewildered at what he had done, followed her, circling round and round, till, when some eight thousand feet from the ground, one of her four hundred-weight bombs, with which her crew had hoped to wipe out some peaceful village, exploded with the intense heat.

"Boom-m-m! Crash!" came the terrible sound, and the flaming mass, shivered into a thousand fragments by the explosion, fell down to the peaceful earth below with the charred and mutilated bodies of its crew of baby-killers.

A few minutes later Dastral, guided by a score of still flaming fragments about the adjacent fields, landed safely on the level stretch of grass from which he had ascended to fight the midnight raider.

Next morning the daring pilot was decorated by His Majesty King George, and ten days later, having bade farewell to his friend, Tim Burkitt, he was back with his Squadron in France, and leading "B" Flight over the German lines once again.

CHAPTER VII

COWDIE, THE "SPARE PART"

"REVEILLE! Show a leg there!" shouted Corporal Yap, one morning, as he went round the tents and hangars about the aerodrome near Contalmaison.

The sleepy air-mechanics of the Royal Flying Corps in the field opened their eyes and yawned, showing no immediate disposition to rise, for the fatigue of the previous day's work had scarcely passed away.

"Did you hear me, Cowdie, you, 'spare part.' Get up there smartly. I shan't call you again. If you're not on parade in fifteen minutes you'll be for the high jump."

"'S all right, Corporal," shouted the "spare part," trying to wriggle out of his roll of blankets and commencing to sing in a doleful monotone:

"Oh, it' snice to get up in the mornin'But it' snicer to stop in bed…"

Corporal Yap turned and went off on his errand, shaking up a few more "spare parts," and threatening everybody more or less with "the high jump"; which, of course, meant an appearance before the Commanding Officer of the Squadron.

As soon as his woolly head had disappeared behind the flap of the tent door, Cowdie rolled back into his blankets for another minute-and-a-half's nap. As he lay there he looked for all the world like an Egyptian mummy, for he had a peculiar way of rolling himself up in his blankets at night which gave him that appearance. But although his eyes were closed his ears were wide awake for the soft, stealthy tread of the orderly N.C.O., who he knew would be sure to return in about the space of ninety seconds to try to find who had left his warning unheeded.

Cowdie, though a spare part about the aerodrome, was quite a genius in his way. His senses were so acute that the others said he could hear the "footsteps" of a snake in the grass, so they dubbed him the "listening post" and made him sleep next the door of the tent, so that he could always give the alarm in case of need.

At the present moment he was counting under his breath. He knew the orderly's round, and knew to a nicety how long it would take him to get back to tent No. 7. He allowed ninety seconds, and he had just got as far as "eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine," when he suddenly stood bolt upright in his roll of blankets, thereby performing a wonderful gymnastic feat, and looking, with his sleeping cap over his head and ears, not unlike a Turk preparing for his morning ablutions.

Evidently he had heard some soft stealthy tread on the grass outside, for exactly at "ninety" the woolly head of Corporal Yap appeared at the door once more, and his yapping voice called:

"Caught you this time, you trilobite. Out you come! Can't say I didn't give you warning, Cowdie!"

Then catching sight of his man in the grey morning light, the Corporal gasped, and fell back a pace or two.

"The deuce! Do you sleep standing up, man?"

"Sometimes," replied the Spare Part. "M.O.'s orders. Number Nine told me to do so the last time I reported sick."

"Where are you going to? About to have a Turkish bath, I s'pose; all right, my man, I'll catch you yet. If you're not on parade in twelve minutes, bath or no bath, you're for it. D'y'understand?"

"Yes, Corporal, but I'm not going to have a bath. They're dangerous. Number Nine ordered me not to. Said I'd got a murmuring heart, he did," replied the Spare Part meekly.

"Murmuring heart, have you? Then where are you goin' to in that rig?"

"Ain't goin' anywhere; Corporal. I'm standin' still."

"What are you standin' still for?"

"Waitin' for my turn with the shavin' brush," came the quiet answer.

At this the Corporal departed, swearing wrathfully, for he was no match for Cowdie. At his departure the rest of the company in No. 7 tent burst into loud laughter, for they enjoyed immensely this daily tug-of-war between the bullying orderly N.C.O. and the apparently meek but cunning Cowdie, who was a great favourite, despite the nickname of "Spare Part," and "Regimental Cuckoo," which had been bestowed upon him.

Though he had lost two minutes in the start yet Cowdie was dressed, washed and shaved first as usual, for somehow he had the knack of literally jumping into his clothes, even when the men received an alarm and were turned out in the dark of the night.

These little morning episodes did much to enliven the men and to help them to endure the dull fatigue and monotony which was part of the lot of every man ho went overseas with the British Expeditionary Force. All the time they were preparing for the roll call, dressing, shaving, rolling up their beds, tidying their kits, a running fire of sparkling wit and frolic was kept up.

Even when the aerodrome was bombed by the German aeroplanes, which happened two or three times each week, almost always just as dawn was breaking, these brave men joked just the same, amid the bursting bombs, and the blinding flashes of the explosions, the ensuing crashes, and the rattle of the anti-aircraft guns with which the aerodrome was defended.

While the shaving was in progress this morning and three of the men were trying to shave by the aid of one little cracked mirror about three inches by two in size, Brat, the despatch-rider attached to the squadron, said to the inimitable Cowdie,

"I hope you finished that letter last night, old man. You finished up all that two inches of candle I lent you. It must have been a long letter you wrote."

"No, I didn't quite finish it," replied Cowdie quietly.

"Was it another letter to your little girl in Old Blighty?"

"No, it was a short letter to mother," replied the Spare Part in a choking voice.

"Dear me! And you didn't finish it?"

"No," came the quiet answer, as Cowdie began to attack his upper lip, which was all quivering with apparent emotion.

"What did you say, then?"

"I said, 'Dear Mother,–I am sending you five shillings, but not this week.'"

At this a burst of laughter from the whole party called forth the ire of Old Snorty, who was passing by, for he had been up early, with several squads of air-mechanics, seeing off "B" Flight, who were paying another early morning visit to the enemy.

"A little less noise there, Number Seven, or some of you'll be in the guard room. How the deuce can we hear when 'B' Flight's coming in, if you kick up a row like that?"

"Old Snorty seems to have something on his mind this morning, doesn't he?" said some one. "'B' Flight won't be back for a couple of hours yet."

So the men were quiet for a whole minute after that until the sergeant-major, having passed out of earshot, and there still being three minutes left for parade, the men returned to their chaff and titter, Brat leading off again by saying:

"That letter of yours, Cowdie, reminds me of another chap who worked alongside of me near St. Pierre with the –th Squadron. He once wrote a letter to his mother as follows:

"'Dear Mother,–Enclosed please find fifteen shillings. I cannot.

"'Your affectionate son, John.'"

And the joke was reckoned so good in our squadron that we raised the money for the poor chap, and he sent it after all."

"Fall in!" came a stentorian shout, as Brat finished telling this yarn. And the men of Number Seven doubled up to fall in on the left, and answer their names to the early morning roll, for another day had begun, and more than one man of that small crowd was to prove himself a hero before another sun should come up out of the German lines beyond Ginchy, and set in blood-red clouds behind the British lines.

Some two hours after that, as the men busy about the labours of the day, which in an aerodrome, under active service conditions, range from the rigging of a defective aeroplane, mending struts, replacing controls, preparing ammunition dumps, to the taking down of a R.A.F. engine, and while "A" Flight was returning from a reconnaissance, and "C" Flight was preparing to go up and over the lines on a bombing raid, Grenfell, the orderly officer at the aerodrome 'phone, received a broken message from somewhere near Ginchy.

The message had to do with the crash of a British 'plane somewhere in front or just behind the first line trenches, but a terrific bombardment being concentrated on the place at the time the message suddenly ceased, as though the wires had been broken, or the speaker at the other end put out of action.

A minute later Snorty came dashing down towards the spot where Number Seven squad were working.

"Where is Brat?" he shouted.

"Over there, sir, in the transport shed," replied Cowdie.

"Fetch him at once!"

And Cowdie dashed off to find his chum, bringing him back a moment later.

"Bratby!" shouted Snorty, giving the despatch-rider his full name for once, as he saw the two doubling up.

"Yes, sir," came the answer smartly.

"You know the observing officer's dug-out near Ginchy?"

"The place where I carried the despatches the other day, sir?"

"Exactly."

"Yes, sir, I know it."

"Good! Go there at once. The wires are snapped again, and we have received a broken message through which stopped in the middle. One of our 'planes has come down. It must be part of 'B' Flight, for they're not in yet. Go there at once, take this message to the officer or senior N.C.O. in charge, and get the full message from him. Learn what you can while you are there, and come back at once, so that we may send out a breakdown gang for the machine, if not too late."

"Right, sir."

"Mind, we want the exact location of the machine, and you must try to find out if it is a bad crash, and what has become of the pilot and observer."