CHAPTER VII
THE MAN BEHIND THE CIRCUS
There comes to every great artist a moment when a sense of the futility of his efforts weighs upon and well-nigh crushes him. Such an oppression represents the reaction which follows or precedes much excellent work. The psychologist will, perhaps, fail to explain why this sense of emptiness so often comes before a man's best accomplishments, and what association there is between that dark hour of anguish which goes before the dawn of vision, and the perfect opportunity which invariably follows.
Sergeant-Pilot Tam struck a bad patch of luck. In the first place, he had missed a splendid chance of catching von Rheinhoff, who with thirty-one "crashes" to his credit came flaunting his immoral triumph in Tam's territory. Tam had the advantage of position and had attacked—and his guns had jammed. The luck was not altogether against him, for, if every man had his due, von Rheinhoff should have added Tam's scalp to the list of his thirty-one victims.
Tam only saved himself by taking the risk of a spinning nose dive into that zone of comparative safety which is represented by the distance between the trajectories of high-angle guns and the flatter curve made by the flight of the eighteen-pounder shell.
Nor were his troubles at an end that day, for later he received instructions to watch an observation balloon, which had been the recipient of certain embarrassing attentions from enemy aircraft. And in some miraculous fashion, though he was in an advantageous position to attack any daring intruder, he had been circumvented by a low-flying Fokker.
The first hint he received that the observation balloon was in difficulties came when he saw the two observers leap into space with their parachutes, and a tiny spiral of smoke ascend from the fat and helpless "sausage."
Tam dived for the pirate machine firing both guns—then, for the second time that day, the mechanism of his gun went wrong.
"Accidents will happen," said the philosophical Blackie; "you can't have it all your own way, Tam. If I were you I'd take a couple of days off—you can have ten days' leave if you like, you're entitled to it."
But Tam shook his head. "A'll tak' a day, sir-r," he said, "for meditation an' devotional exercise wi' that wee bit gun."
So he turned into the workshop and stripped the weapon, calling each part by name until he found, in a slovenly fitted ejector, reason and excuse for exercising his limitless vocabulary upon that faithless part. He also said many things about the workman who had fitted it.
"Angus Jones! O Angus Jones!" said Tam, shaking his head.
Tam never spoke of anybody impersonally. They were christened instantly and became such individual realities that you could almost swear that you knew them, for Tam would carefully equip them with features and color, height and build, and frequently invented for the most unpopular of his imaginary people relatives of offensive reputations.
"Angus, ma wee lad," he murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ye'll lose yeer job."
A further fault was discovered in a stiff feed-block, and here Tam grew bitter and personal.
"Will ye do this, Hector Brodie McKay? Man, can ye meet the innocent gaze o' the passin' soldiery an' no' feel a mairderer? An' wi' a face like that, ravaged an' seaun fra' vicious livin'—for shame, ye scrim-shankin', lazy guid-for-nawthing!"
He worked far into the night, for he was tireless, and appeared on parade the next morning fresh and bright of eye.
"Tam, when you're feeling better I'd like you to dodge over the German lines. Behind Lille there's a new Hun Corps Headquarters, and there's something unusual on."
Tam went out that afternoon in the clear cold sky and found that there was indeed something doing.
Lille was guarded as he had never remembered its being guarded before, by three belts of fighting machines. His first attempt to break through brought a veritable swarm of hornets about his ears. The air reverberated with Archie fire of a peculiar and unusual intensity long before he came within striking distance of the first zone.
Tam saw the angry rush of the guardian machines and turned his little Nieuport homeward.
"A'richt! A'richt! What's frichtenin' ye?" he demanded indignantly, as they streaked behind his tail. "A'm no' anxious to put ma nose where it's no' wanted!"
He shook off his pursuers and turned on a wide circle, crossed the enemy's line on the Vimy Ridge and came back across the black coal-fields near Billy-Montigny. But his attempt to run the gauntlet and to cross Lille from the eastward met with no better success, and he escaped via Menin and the Ypres salient.
"Ma luck's oot," he reported glumly. "There's no road into Lille or ower Lille—ye'd better send a submarine up the Liza."
Tam had never thoroughly learned the difference between the Yser and the Lys and gave both rivers a generic title.
"Did you see any concentrations east of the town?" asked Blackie.
"Beyond an epidemic of mad Gairman airplanes an' a violent eruption of Archies, the hateful enemy shows no sign o' life or movement," said Tam. "Man, A've never wanted so badly to look into Lille till now."
Undoubtedly there was something to hide. Young Turpin, venturing where Tam had nearly trod, was shot down by gun-fire and taken prisoner. Missel, a good flyer, was outfought by three opponents and slid home with a dead observer, limp and smiling in the fuselage.
"To-morrow at daybreak, look for Tam amongst the stars," said that worthy young man as he backed out of Blackie's office, "the disgustin' incivility o' the Hoon has aroosed the fichtin' spirit o' the dead-an'-gone MacTavishes. Every fiber in ma body, includin' ma suspenders, is tense wi' rage an' horror."
"A cigar, Tam?"
"No, thank ye, sir-r," said Tam, waving aside the proffered case and extracting two cigars in one motion. "Well, perhaps A'd better. A've run oot o' seegairs, an' the thoosand A' ordered frae ma Glasgae factor hae been sunk by enemy action—this is no' a bad seegair, Captain Blackie, sir-r. It's a verra passable smoke an' no' dear at fourpence."
"That cigar costs eight pounds a hundred," said Blackie, nettled.
"Ye'll end yeer days in the puirhouse," said Tarn.
True to his promise he swept over Lille the next morning and to his amazement no particular resistance was offered. He was challenged half-heartedly by a solitary machine, he was banged at by A-A guns, but encountered nothing of that intensity of fire which met him on his earlier visit.
And Lille was the Lille he knew: the three crooked boulevards, the jumble of small streets, and open space before the railway station. There was no evidence of any unusual happening—no extraordinary collection of rolling stock in the tangled sidings, or gatherings of troops in the outskirts of the town.
Tarn was puzzled and pushed eastward. He pursued his investigations as far as Roubaix, then swept southward to Douai. Here he came against exactly the same kind of resistance which he had found on his first visit to Lille. There were the three circles of fighting machines, the strengthened Archie batteries, the same furious eagerness to attack.
Tam went home followed by three swift fighters. He led them to within gliding distance of the Allied lines; then he turned, and this time his guns served him, for he crashed one and forced one down. The third went home and told Fritz all about it.
"It's verra curious," said Tam, and Blackie agreed.
Tam went out again the following morning—but this time not alone. Six fighting machines, with Blackie leading, headed for Douai in battle formation. At Douai they met no resistance—the aerial concentration had vanished and, save for the conventional defenses, there was nothing to prevent their appearance over the town. That same afternoon Captain Sutton, R. F. C, looking for an interest in life over Menin, found it. He came back with his fuselage shot to chips and wet through from a smashed radiator.
"So far as I can discover," he said, "all the circuses are hovering about Menin. Von Bissing's is there and von Rheinhoff's, and I could almost swear I saw von Wentzl's red scouts."
"Did you get over the town?"
Sutton laughed. "I was a happy man when I reached our lines," he said.
"Maybe they're trying out some new stunt," said Blackie. "Probably it is a plan of defense—a sort of divisional training—I'll send a report to G. H. Q. I don't like this concentration of circuses in our neighborhood."
Now a "circus" is a strong squadron of German airplanes attached to no particular army, but employed on those sectors where its activities will be of most value at a critical time; and its appearance is invariably a cause for rejoicing among all red-blooded adventurers.
Two days after Blackie had made his report, von Bissing's World-Renowned Circus was giving a performance, and on this occasion was under royal and imperial patronage.
For, drawn up by the side of the snowy road, some miles in the rear of the line were six big motor-cars, and on a high bank near to the road was a small group of staff officers muffled from chin to heels in long gray overcoats, clumsily belted at the waist.
Aloof from the group was a man of medium height, stoutly built and worn of face, whose expression was one of eager impatience. The face, caricatured a hundred thousand times, was hawklike, the eyes bright and searching, the chin out-thrust. He had a nervous trick of jerking his head sideways as though he were everlastingly suffering from a crick in the neck.
Now and again he raised his glasses to watch the leader as he controlled the evolutions of the twenty-five airplanes which constituted the "circus."
It was a sight well worth watching.
First in a great V, like a flock of wild geese, the squadron swept across the sky, every machine in its station. Then, at a signal from the leader, the V broke into three diamond-shaped formations, with the leader at the apex of the triangle which the three flights formed. Another signal and the circus broke into momentary confusion, to reform with much banking and wheeling into a straight line—again with the leader ahead. Backward and forward swept the line; changed direction and wheeled until the machines formed a perfect circle in the sky.
"Splendid!" barked the man with the jerking head.
An officer, who stood a few paces to his rear, stepped up smartly, saluted, and came rigidly to attention.
"Splendid!" said the other again. "You will tell Captain Baron von Bissing that I am pleased and that I intend bestowing upon him the Order Pour la Mérite. His arrangements for my protection at Lille and Douai and Menin were perfect."
"Majesty," said the officer, "your message shall be delivered."
The sightseer swept the heavens again. "I presume that the other machine is posted as a sentinel," he said. "That is a most excellent idea—it is flying at an enormous height. Who is the pilot?"
The officer turned and beckoned one of the group behind him. "His Majesty wishes to know who is the pilot of the sentinel machine?" he asked.
The officer addressed raised his face to the heavens with a little frown.
"The other machine, general?" he repeated. "There is no other machine."
He focused his glasses on the tiniest black spot in the skies. Long and seriously he viewed the lonely watcher, then:
"General," he said hastily, "it is advisable that his Majesty should go."
"Huh?"
"I can not distinguish the machine, but it looks suspicious."
"Whoom! Whoom!"
A field away, two great brown geysers of earth leaped up into the air and two deafening explosions set the bare branches of the trees swaying.
Down the bank scrambled the distinguished party and in a few seconds the cars were streaking homeward.
The circus was now climbing desperately, but the watcher on high had a big margin of safety.
"Whoom!"
Just to the rear of the last staff car fell the bomb, blowing a great hole in the paved road and scattering stones and débris over a wide area.
The cars fled onward, skidding at every turn of the road, and the bombs followed or preceded them, or else flung up the earth to left or right.
"That's the tenth and the last, thank God!" said the sweating aide-de-camp. "Heaven and thunder! what an almost catastrophe!"
In the amazing spaces of the air, a lean face, pinched and blue with the cold, peered over the fuselage and watched the antlike procession of pin-point dots moving slowly along the snowy road.
"That's ma last!" he said, and picking up an aerial torpedo from between his feet, he dropped it over the side.
It struck the last car, which dissolved noisily into dust and splinters, while the force of the explosion overturned the car ahead.
"A bonnie shot," said Tam o' the Scoots complacently, and banked over as he turned for home. He shot a glance at the climbing circus and judged that there was no permanent advantage to be secured from an engagement. Nevertheless he loosed a drum of ammunition at the highest machine and grinned when he saw two rips appear in the wing of his machine.
By the time he passed over the German line all the Archies in the world were blazing at him, but Tam was at an almost record height—the height where men go dizzy and sick and suffer from internal bleeding. Over the German front-line trenches he dipped steeply down, but such had been his altitude that he was still ten thousand feet high when he leveled out above his aerodrome.
He descended in wide circles, his machine canted all the time at an angle of forty-five degrees and lighted gently on the even surface of the field a quarter of an hour after he had crossed the line.
He descended to the ground stiff and numb, and Bertram walked across from his own machine to make inquiries.
"Parky, Tam?"
"It's no' so parky, Mr. Bertram, sir-r," replied Tam cautiously.
"Rot, Tam!" said that youthful officer. "Why, your nose is blue!"
"Aweel," admitted Tam. "But that's no' cold, that's—will ye look at ma altitude record?"
The young man climbed into the fuselage, looked and gasped.
"Dear lad!" he said, "have you been to heaven?"
"Verra near, sir-r," said Tam gravely; "another ten gallons o' essence an' A'd 'a' made it. A've been that high that A' could see the sun risin' to-morrow!"
He started to walk off to his quarters but stopped and turned back. "Don't go near McBissing's caircus," he warned; "he's feelin' sore."
Tam made a verbal report to Blackie, and Blackie got on to Headquarters by 'phone.
"Tam seems to have had an adventure, sir," he said, when he had induced H. Q. exchange to connect him with his general and gave the lurid details.
"It might be Hindenburg," said the general thoughtfully. "He's on the Western Front somewhere—that may explain the appearance of the circuses—or it may have been a corps general showing off the circus to a few trippers from Berlin—they are always running Reichstag members and pressmen round this front. Get Tam to make a report—his own report, not one you have edited." Blackie heard him chuckle. "I showed the last one to the army commander and he was tickled to death—hurry it along, I'm dying to see it."
If there is one task which an airman dislikes more than any other, it is report-writing. Tam was no exception, and his written accounts of the day's work were models of briefness.
In the days of his extreme youth he had been engaged in labor which did not call for the clerical qualities, and roughly his written "reports" were modeled on the "time sheets" he was wont to render in that far-off period, when he dwelt in lodgings at Govan, and worked at McArdle's Shipbuilding Yard.
Thus:
Left aerodrome 6 a. m.
Enemy patrols encountered 5
Ditto ditto chased 4
Ditto ditto forced down 2
Bombs dropped on Verleur Station 5
&c, &c.
Fortunately Tam possessed a romantic and a poetical soul, and there were rare occasions when he would offer a lyrical account of his adventures containing more color and detail. As, for example, his account of his fight with Lieutenant Prince Zwartz-Hamelyn:
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gi'e us
Tae see oursel's as ithers see us."
Thus spake a high an' princely Hun
As he fired at Tam wi' his Maxim gun.
Thinkin', na doot, that bonnie lad
Was lookin', if no' feelin', bad.
But Tam he stalled his wee machine
An' straffit young Zwartz-Hamelyn.
It was Blackie who harnessed Tam's genius for description to the pencil of a stenographer, and thereafter, when a long report was needed by Headquarters, there would appear at Tam's quarters one Corporal Alexander Brown, Blackie's secretary, and an amiable cockney who wrote mystic characters in a notebook with great rapidity.
"Is it ye, Alec?" said Tam, suspending his ablutions to open the door of his "bunk." "Come away in, man. Is it a report ye want? Sit down on the bed an' help yeersel' to the seegairs. Ye'll find the whisky in the decanter."
Corporal Brown sat on the bed because he knew it was there. He dived into his pocket and produced a notebook, a pencil and a cigaret, because he knew they had existence, too. He did not attempt to search for the cigars and the whisky because he had been fooled before, and had on two separate occasions searched the bunk for these delicacies under the unsmiling eyes of Tam and aided by Tam's advice, only to find in the end that Tam was as anxious to discover such treasures as the baffled corporal himself.
"We will noo proceed with the thrillin' serial," said Tam, spreading his towel on the window-ledge and rolling down his shirt-sleeves. "Are ye ready, Alec?"
"‘Arf a mo', Sergeant—have you got a match?"
"Man, ye're a cadger of the most appallin' descreeption," said Tam severely. "A'm lookin' for'ard to the day when it'll be a coort-martial offense to ask yeer superior officer for matches—here's one. Don't strike it till ye give me one of yeer common cigarets."
The corporal produced a packet.
"A'll ask ye as a favor not to let the men know A've descended to this low an' vulgar habit," said Tam. "A'll take two or three as curiosities—A'd like to show the officers the kind o' poison the lower classes smoke—"
"Here! Leave me a couple!" said the alarmed non-commissioned officer as Tam's skilful fingers half emptied the box.
"Be silent!" said Tam, "ye're interruptin' ma train o' thochts—what did A' say last?"
"You said nothing yet," replied the corporal, rescuing his depleted store.
"Here it begins," said Tam, and started:
"At ten o'clock in the forenoon o' a clear but wintry day, a solitary airman micht hae been seen wingin' his lane way ameedst the solitude o' the achin' skies."
"‘Achin' skies'?" queried the stenographer dubiously.
"It's poetry," said Tam. "A' got it oot o' a bit by Roodyard Kiplin', the Burns o' England, an' don't interrupt.
"He seemed ower young for sich an adventure—"
"How old are you, Sergeant, if I may ask the question?" demanded the amanuensis.
"Ye may not ask, but A'll tell you—A'm seventy-four come Michaelmas, an' A've never looked into the bricht ees o' a lassie since A' lost me wee Jean, who flit wi' a colonel o' dragoons, in the year the battle of Balaklava was fought—will ye shut yeer face whilst A'm dictatin'?"
"Sorry," murmured the corporal and poised his pencil.
"Suddenly, as the wee hero was guidin' his 'bus through the maze o' cloods, a strange sicht met his ees. It was the caircus of McBissing! They were evolutin' by numbers, performin' their Great Feat of Balancin' an' Barebacked Ridin', Aerial Trapeze an' Tight-rope Walkin', Loopin' the Loop by the death-defyin' Brothers Fritz, together with many laughable an' amusin' interludes by Whimsical Walker, the Laird o' Laughter, the whole concludin' with a Graund Patriotic Procession entitled Deutschland ower All—or Nearly All."
"I ain't seen a circus for years," said the corporal with a sigh. "Lord! I used to love them girls in short skirts—"
"Restrain yeer amorous thochts, Alec," warned Tam, "an' fix yeer mind on leeterature. To proceed:
"‘Can it be,' says our hero, 'can it be that Mr. McBissing is doin' his stunts at ten-thairty o' the clock in the cauld morn, for sheer love o' his seenister profession? No,' says A'—says our young hero—'no,' says he, 'he has a distinguished audience as like as not.'
"Speerin' ower the side an' fixin' his expensive glasses on the groon, he espied sax motor-cars—"
The door was flung open and Blackie came in hurriedly. "Tam—get up," he said briefly. "All the damn circuses are out on a strafe—and we're It—von Bissing, von Rheinhoff, and von Wentzl. They're coming straight here and I think they're out for blood."
The history of that great aerial combat has been graphically told by the special correspondents. Von Bissing's formation—dead out of luck that day—was broken up by Archie fire and forced back, von Wentzl was engaged by the Fifty-ninth Squadron (providentially up in strength for a strafe of their own) and turned back, but the von Rheinhoff group reached its objective before the machines were more than five thousand feet from the ground and there was some wild bombing.
Von Rheinhoff might have unloaded his bombs and got away, but he showed deplorable judgment. To insure an absolutely successful outcome to the attack he ordered his machines to descend. Before he could recover altitude the swift little scouts were up and into the formation. The air crackled with the sound of Lewis-gun fire, machines reeled and staggered like drunken men, Tam's fighting Morane dipped and dived, climbed and swerved in a wild bacchanalian dance. Airplanes, British and German alike, fell flaming to the earth before the second in command of the enemy squadron signaled, "Retire."
A mile away a battery of A-A guns waited, its commander's eyes glued to a telescope.
"They're breaking off—stand by! Range 4300 yards—deflection—There they go! Commence firing."
A dozen batteries were waiting the signal. The air was filled with the shriek of speeding shells, the skies were mottled with patches of smoke, white and brown, where the charges burst.
Von Rheinhoff's battered squadron rode raggedly to safety.
"Got him—whoop!" yelled a thousand voices, as from one machine there came a scatter of pieces as a high-explosive shell burst under the wing, and the soaring bird collapsed and came trembling, slowly, head-over-heels to the ground.
Von Rheinhoff, that redoubtable man, was half conscious when they pulled him out of the burnt and bloody wreck.
He looked round sleepily at the group about him and asked in the voice of a very tired man:
"Which—of—you—fellows—bombed—our Kaiser?"
Tam leant forward, his face blazing with excitement.
"Say that again, sir-r," he said.
Von Rheinhoff looked at him through half-opened eyes. "Tam—eh?" he whispered. "You—nearly put an empire—in mourning."
Tarn drew a long breath, then turned away. "Nearly!" he said bitterly. "Did A' no' tell ye, Captain Blackie, sir-r, that ma luck was oot?"