War in the Air — 21 -- Ch 9, Parts 4-7
4 Suddenly, on the very verge of this heroic resolution, Bert became rigid with terror.
Something was creeping towards him through the grass.
Something was creeping and halting and creeping again towards him through the dim dark grass.
The night was electrical with horror.
For a time everything was still.
Bert ceased to breathe.
It could not be.
No, it was too small!
It advanced suddenly upon him with a rush, with a little meawling cry and tail erect.
It rubbed its head against him and purred.
It was a tiny, skinny little kitten.
“Gaw, Pussy!
'ow you frightened me!
” said Bert, with drops of perspiration on his brow.
5 He sat with his back to a tree stump all that night, holding the kitten in his arms.
His mind was tired, and he talked or thought coherently no longer.
Towards dawn he dozed.
When he awoke, he was stiff but in better heart, and the kitten slept warmly and reassuringly inside his jacket.
And fear, he found, had gone from amidst the trees.
He stroked the kitten, and the little creature woke up to excessive fondness and purring.
“You want some milk,” said Bert.
“That's what you want.
And I could do with a bit of brekker too.
” He yawned and stood up, with the kitten on his shoulder, and stared about him, recalling the circumstances of the previous day, the grey, immense happenings.
“Mus' do something,” he said.
He turned towards the trees, and was presently contemplating the dead aeronaut again.
The kitten he held companionably against his neck.
The body was horrible, but not nearly so horrible as it had been at twilight, and now the limbs were limper and the gun had slipped to the ground and lay half hidden in the grass.
“I suppose we ought to bury 'im, Kitty,” said Bert, and looked helplessly at the rocky soil about him.
“We got to stay on the island with 'im.
” It was some time before he could turn away and go on towards that provision shed.
“Brekker first,” he said, “anyhow,” stroking the kitten on his shoulder.
She rubbed his cheek affectionately with her furry little face and presently nibbled at his ear.
“Wan' some milk, eh?
” he said, and turned his back on the dead man as though he mattered nothing.
He was puzzled to find the door of the shed open, though he had closed and latched it very carefully overnight, and he found also some dirty plates he had not noticed before on the bench.
He discovered that the hinges of the tin locker were unscrewed and that it could be opened.
He had not observed this overnight.
“Silly of me!
” said Bert.
“'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at the padlock, never noticing.
” It had been used apparently as an ice-chest, but it contained nothing now but the remains of half-dozen boiled chickens, some ambiguous substance that might once have been butter, and a singularly unappetising smell.
He closed the lid again carefully.
He gave the kitten some milk in a dirty plate and sat watching its busy little tongue for a time.
Then he was moved to make an inventory of the provisions.
There were six bottles of milk unopened and one opened, sixty bottles of mineral water and a large stock of syrups, about two thousand cigarettes and upwards of a hundred cigars, nine oranges, two unopened tins of corned beef and one opened, and five large tins California peaches.
He jotted it down on a piece of paper.
“'Ain't much solid food,” he said.
“Still--A fortnight, say!
“Anything might happen in a fortnight.
” He gave the kitten a small second helping and a scrap of beef and then went down with the little creature running after him, tail erect and in high spirits, to look at the remains of the Hohenzollern.
It had shifted in the night and seemed on the whole more firmly grounded on Green Island than before.
From it his eye went to the shattered bridge and then across to the still desolation of Niagara city.
Nothing moved over there but a number of crows.
They were busy with the engineer he had seen cut down on the previous day.
He saw no dogs, but he heard one howling.
“We got to get out of this some'ow, Kitty,” he said.
“That milk won't last forever--not at the rate you lap it.
” He regarded the sluice-like flood before him.
“Plenty of water,” he said.
“Won't be drink we shall want.
” He decided to make a careful exploration of the island.
Presently he came to a locked gate labelled “Biddle Stairs,” and clambered over to discover a steep old wooden staircase leading down the face of the cliff amidst a vast and increasing uproar of waters.
He left the kitten above and descended these, and discovered with a thrill of hope a path leading among the rocks at the foot of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall.
Perhaps this was a sort of way!
It led him only to the choking and deafening experience of the Cave of the Winds, and after he had spent a quarter of an hour in a partially stupefied condition flattened between solid rock and nearly as solid waterfall, he decided that this was after all no practicable route to Canada and retraced his steps.
As he reascended the Biddle Stairs, he heard what he decided at last must be a sort of echo, a sound of some one walking about on the gravel paths above.
When he got to the top, the place was as solitary as before.
Thence he made his way, with the kitten skirmishing along beside him in the grass, to a staircase that led to a lump of projecting rock that enfiladed the huge green majesty of the Horseshoe Fall.
He stood there for some time in silence.
“You wouldn't think,” he said at last, “there was so much water....
This roarin' and splashin', it gets on one's nerves at last....
Sounds like people talking....
Sounds like people going about....
Sounds like anything you fancy.
” He retired up the staircase again.
“I s'pose I shall keep on goin' round this blessed island,” he said drearily.
“Round and round and round.
” He found himself presently beside the less damaged Asiatic aeroplane again.
He stared at it and the kitten smelt it.
“Broke!
” he said.
He looked up with a convulsive start.
Advancing slowly towards him out from among the trees were two tall gaunt figures.
They were blackened and tattered and bandaged; the hind-most one limped and had his head swathed in white, but the foremost one still carried himself as a Prince should do, for all that his left arm was in a sling and one side of his face scalded a livid crimson.
He was the Prince Karl Albert, the War Lord, the “German Alexander,” and the man behind him was the bird-faced man whose cabin had once been taken from him and given to Bert.
6 With that apparition began a new phase of Goat Island in Bert's experience.
He ceased to be a solitary representative of humanity in a vast and violent and incomprehensible universe, and became once more a social creature, a man in a world of other men.
For an instant these two were terrible, then they seemed sweet and desirable as brothers.
They too were in this scrape with him, marooned and puzzled.
He wanted extremely to hear exactly what had happened to them.
What mattered it if one was a Prince and both were foreign soldiers, if neither perhaps had adequate English?
His native Cockney freedom flowed too generously for him to think of that, and surely the Asiatic fleets had purged all such trivial differences.
“Ul-LO!
” he said; “'ow did you get 'ere?
” “It is the Englishman who brought us the Butteridge machine,” said the bird-faced officer in German, and then in a tone of horror, as Bert advanced, “Salute!
” and again louder, “SALUTE!
” “Gaw!
” said Bert, and stopped with a second comment under his breath.
He stared and saluted awkwardly and became at once a masked defensive thing with whom co-operation was impossible.
For a time these two perfected modern aristocrats stood regarding the difficult problem of the Anglo-Saxon citizen, that ambiguous citizen who, obeying some mysterious law in his blood, would neither drill nor be a democrat.
Bert was by no means a beautiful object, but in some inexplicable way he looked resistant.
He wore his cheap suit of serge, now showing many signs of wear, and its loose fit made him seem sturdier than he was; above his disengaging face was a white German cap that was altogether too big for him, and his trousers were crumpled up his legs and their ends tucked into the rubber highlows of a deceased German aeronaut.
He looked an inferior, though by no means an easy inferior, and instinctively they hated him.
The Prince pointed to the flying-machine and said something in broken English that Bert took for German and failed to understand.
He intimated as much.
“Dummer Kerl!
” said the bird-faced officer from among his bandages.
The Prince pointed again with his undamaged hand.
“You verstehen dis drachenflieger?
” Bert began to comprehend the situation.
He regarded the Asiatic machine.
The habits of Bun Hill returned to him.
“It's a foreign make,” he said ambiguously.
The two Germans consulted.
“You are an expert?
” said the Prince.
“We reckon to repair,” said Bert, in the exact manner of Grubb.
The Prince sought in his vocabulary.
“Is dat,” he said, “goot to fly?
” Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly.
“I got to look at it,” he replied....
“It's 'ad rough usage!
” He made a sound with his teeth he had also acquired from Grubb, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and strolled back to the machine.
Typically Grubb chewed something, but Bert could chew only imaginatively.
“Three days' work in this,” he said, teething.
For the first time it dawned on him that there were possibilities in this machine.
It was evident that the wing that lay on the ground was badly damaged.
The three stays that held it rigid had snapped across a ridge of rock and there was also a strong possibility of the engine being badly damaged.
The wing hook on that side was also askew, but probably that would not affect the flight.
Beyond that there probably wasn't much the matter.
Bert scratched his cheek again and contemplated the broad sunlit waste of the Upper Rapids.
“We might make a job of this....
You leave it to me.
” He surveyed it intently again, and the Prince and his officer watched him.
In Bun Hill Bert and Grubb had developed to a very high pitch among the hiring stock a method of repair by substituting; they substituted bits of other machines.
A machine that was too utterly and obviously done for even to proffer for hire, had nevertheless still capital value.
It became a sort of quarry for nuts and screws and wheels, bars and spokes, chain-links and the like; a mine of ill-fitting “parts” to replace the defects of machines still current.
And back among the trees was a second Asiatic aeroplane....
The kitten caressed Bert's airship boots unheeded.
“Mend dat drachenflieger,” said the Prince.
“If I do mend it,” said Bert, struck by a new thought, “none of us ain't to be trusted to fly it.
” “_I_ vill fly it,” said the Prince.
“Very likely break your neck,” said Bert, after a pause.
The Prince did not understand him and disregarded what he said.
He pointed his gloved finger to the machine and turned to the bird-faced officer with some remark in German.
The officer answered and the Prince responded with a sweeping gesture towards the sky.
Then he spoke--it seemed eloquently.
Bert watched him and guessed his meaning.
“Much more likely to break your neck,” he said.
“'Owever.
'Ere goes.
” He began to pry about the saddle and engine of the drachenflieger in search for tools.
Also he wanted some black oily stuff for his hands and face.
For the first rule in the art of repairing, as it was known to the firm of Grubb and Smallways, was to get your hands and face thoroughly and conclusively blackened.
Also he took off his jacket and waistcoat and put his cap carefully to the back of his head in order to facilitate scratching.
The Prince and the officer seemed disposed to watch him, but he succeeded in making it clear to them that this would inconvenience him and that he had to “puzzle out a bit” before he could get to work.
They thought him over, but his shop experience had given him something of the authoritative way of the expert with common men.
And at last they went away.
Thereupon he went straight to the second aeroplane, got the aeronaut's gun and ammunition and hid them in a clump of nettles close at hand.
“That's all right,” said Bert, and then proceeded to a careful inspection of the debris of the wings in the trees.
Then he went back to the first aeroplane to compare the two.
The Bun Hill method was quite possibly practicable if there was nothing hopeless or incomprehensible in the engine.
The Germans returned presently to find him already generously smutty and touching and testing knobs and screws and levers with an expression of profound sagacity.
When the bird-faced officer addressed a remark to him, he waved him aside with, “Nong comprong.
Shut it!
It's no good.
” Then he had an idea.
“Dead chap back there wants burying,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
7 With the appearance of these two men Bert's whole universe had changed again.
A curtain fell before the immense and terrible desolation that had overwhelmed him.
He was in a world of three people, a minute human world that nevertheless filled his brain with eager speculations and schemes and cunning ideas.
What were they thinking of?
What did they think of him?
What did they mean to do?
A hundred busy threads interlaced in his mind as he pottered studiously over the Asiatic aeroplane.
New ideas came up like bubbles in soda water.
“Gaw!
” he said suddenly.
He had just appreciated as a special aspect of this irrational injustice of fate that these two men were alive and that Kurt was dead.
All the crew of the Hohenzollern were shot or burnt or smashed or drowned, and these two lurking in the padded forward cabin had escaped.
“I suppose 'e thinks it's 'is bloomin' Star,” he muttered, and found himself uncontrollably exasperated.
He stood up, facing round to the two men.
They were standing side by side regarding him.
“'It's no good,” he said, “starin' at me.
You only put me out.
” And then seeing they did not understand, he advanced towards them, wrench in hand.
It occurred to him as he did so that the Prince was really a very big and powerful and serene-looking person.
But he said, nevertheless, pointing through the trees, “dead man!
” The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in German.
“Dead man!
” said Bert to him.
“There.
” He had great difficulty in inducing them to inspect the dead Chinaman, and at last led them to him.
Then they made it evident that they proposed that he, as a common person below the rank of officer should have the sole and undivided privilege of disposing of the body by dragging it to the water's edge.
There was some heated gesticulation, and at last the bird-faced officer abased himself to help.
Together they dragged the limp and now swollen Asiatic through the trees, and after a rest or so--for he trailed very heavily--dumped him into the westward rapid.
Bert returned to his expert investigation of the flying-machine at last with aching arms and in a state of gloomy rebellion.
“Brasted cheek!
” he said.
“One'd think I was one of 'is beastly German slaves!
“Prancing beggar!
” And then he fell speculating what would happen when the flying-machine, was repaired--if it could be repaired.
The two Germans went away again, and after some reflection Bert removed several nuts, resumed his jacket and vest, pocketed those nuts and his tools and hid the set of tools from the second aeroplane in the fork of a tree.
“Right O,” he said, as he jumped down after the last of these precautions.
The Prince and his companion reappeared as he returned to the machine by the water's edge.
The Prince surveyed his progress for a time, and then went towards the Parting of the Waters and stood with folded arms gazing upstream in profound thought.
The bird-faced officer came up to Bert, heavy with a sentence in English.
“Go,” he said with a helping gesture, “und eat.
” When Bert got to the refreshment shed, he found all the food had vanished except one measured ration of corned beef and three biscuits.
He regarded this with open eyes and mouth.
The kitten appeared from under the vendor's seat with an ingratiating purr.
“Of course!
” said Bert.
“Why!
where's your milk?
” He accumulated wrath for a moment or so, then seized the plate in one hand, and the biscuits in another, and went in search of the Prince, breathing vile words anent “grub” and his intimate interior.
He approached without saluting.
“'Ere!
” he said fiercely.
“Whad the devil's this?
” An entirely unsatisfactory altercation followed.
Bert expounded the Bun Hill theory of the relations of grub to efficiency in English, the bird-faced man replied with points about nations and discipline in German.
The Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's quality and physique, suddenly hectored.
He gripped Bert by the shoulder and shook him, making his pockets rattle, shouted something to him, and flung him struggling back.
He hit him as though he was a German private.
Bert went back, white and scared, but resolved by all his Cockney standards upon one thing.
He was bound in honour to “go for” the Prince.
“Gaw!
” he gasped, buttoning his jacket.
“Now,” cried the Prince, “Vil you go?
” and then catching the heroic gleam in Bert's eye, drew his sword.
The bird-faced officer intervened, saying something in German and pointing skyward.
Far away in the south-west appeared a Japanese airship coming fast toward them.
Their conflict ended at that.
The Prince was first to grasp the situation and lead the retreat.
All three scuttled like rabbits for the trees, and ran to and for cover until they found a hollow in which the grass grew rank.
There they all squatted within six yards of one another.
They sat in this place for a long time, up to their necks in the grass and watching through the branches for the airship.
Bert had dropped some of his corned beef, but he found the biscuits in his hand and ate them quietly.
The monster came nearly overhead and then went away to Niagara and dropped beyond the power-works.
When it was near, they all kept silence, and then presently they fell into an argument that was robbed perhaps of immediate explosive effect only by their failure to understand one another.
It was Bert began the talking and he talked on regardless of what they understood or failed to understand.
But his voice must have conveyed his cantankerous intentions.
“You want that machine done,” he said first, “you better keep your 'ands off me!
” They disregarded that and he repeated it.
Then he expanded his idea and the spirit of speech took hold of him.
“You think you got 'old of a chap you can kick and 'it like you do your private soldiers--you're jolly well mistaken.
See?
I've 'ad about enough of you and your antics.
I been thinking you over, you and your war and your Empire and all the rot of it.
Rot it is!
It's you Germans made all the trouble in Europe first and last.
And all for nothin'.
Jest silly prancing!
Jest because you've got the uniforms and flags!
'Ere I was--I didn't want to 'ave anything to do with you.
I jest didn't care a 'eng at all about you.
Then you get 'old of me--steal me practically--and 'ere I am, thousands of miles away from 'ome and everything, and all your silly fleet smashed up to rags.
And you want to go on prancin' NOW!
Not if 'I know it!
“Look at the mischief you done!
Look at the way you smashed up New York--the people you killed, the stuff you wasted.
Can't you learn?
” “Dummer Kerl!
” said the bird-faced man suddenly in a tone of concentrated malignancy, glaring under his bandages.
“Esel!
” “That's German for silly ass!
--I know.
But who's the silly ass--'im or me?
When I was a kid, I used to read penny dreadfuls about 'avin adventures and bein' a great c'mander and all that rot.
I stowed it.
But what's 'e got in 'is head?
Rot about Napoleon, rot about Alexander, rot about 'is blessed family and 'im and Gord and David and all that.
Any one who wasn't a dressed-up silly fool of a Prince could 'ave told all this was goin' to 'appen.
There was us in Europe all at sixes and sevens with our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' us up against each other and keepin' us apart, and there was China, solid as a cheese, with millions and millions of men only wantin' a bit of science and a bit of enterprise to be as good as all of us.
You thought they couldn't get at you.
And then they got flying-machines.
And bif!
--'ere we are.
Why, when they didn't go on making guns and armies in China, we went and poked 'em up until they did.
They '_ad_ to give us this lickin' they've give us.
We wouldn't be happy until they did, and as I say, 'ere we are!
” The bird-faced officer shouted to him to be quiet, and then began a conversation with the Prince.
“British citizen,” said Bert.
“You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain't obliged to shut up.
” And for some time he continued his dissertation upon Imperialism, militarism, and international politics.
But their talking put him out, and for a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive terms, “prancin' nincompoops” and the like, old terms and new.
Then suddenly he remembered his essential grievance.
“'Owever, look 'ere--'ere!
--the thing I started this talk about is where's that food there was in that shed?
That's what I want to know.
Where you put it?
” He paused.
They went on talking in German.
He repeated his question.
They disregarded him.
He asked a third time in a manner insupportably aggressive.
There fell a tense silence.
For some seconds the three regarded one another.
