The actual rescue came presently in the shape of an attack over the ground they had covered the day before. Before it came they had to beat off one or two more enemy rushes, but this time the help of those barraging shells stood them in good stead, the sweeping shrapnel prevented the enemy creeping in to occupy in comparative safety the shell-holes round the position, the steady fall of high explosives broke down the enemy trenches and checked free movement in them. The Germans were badly pounded on that portion of front, so that when the rescuing attack was made, it fought its way rapidly forward, and the isolated party were able to do something to help it merely by hanging to their position, by rear and flanking fire on the Germans who held the ground between them and the attacking line. The attack resulted in the whole line being pushed forward to the ridge behind the separated party, holding it, and thrusting forward a little salient which took in the ground the party had hung to so stoutly, consolidated, and held it firm.
The rescued men were passed back to their lines, and – most of them – to the casualty clearing stations. And when the lieutenant brought the remnant of his company back to the battalion, he told the Battalion Commander his end of the story, and heard in return how the message of their whereabouts had been brought back and how it had directed the movement that had got them out. The lieutenant wanted to send a word of thanks to "Silver Wings" and her pilot, but this the C.O. told him he could not do. "The pilot was lifted out of his machine and taken straight to the C.C.S.,1" he said. "He was wounded by rifle-fire from the ground when he first dived to help you beat off that attack. No, not seriously, I'm glad to say, but he'd lost a lot of blood, and he got rather knocked about landing and broke his machine a bit I believe."
"Wounded," said the lieutenant slowly, "and at that time. So he kept on diving his machine about and fighting after he was wounded; and went through that air fight with his wound, and shot the Hun down, and then came on back and gave his message – " "Dropped a note straight into the signallers at Brigade Headquarters," said the C.O.
The lieutenant drew a deep breath. "We knew we were owing him a lot," he said. "But it seems we were owing even more than we thought."
"And I'm beginning to think," said the C.O., "that all of us here on the ground are owing more than we've known to those fellows in the air."
II
BRING HOME THE 'BUS
For ten minutes past the observer had been alternately studying his map and the ground 20,000 feet below, and now he leaned forward out of his cockpit, touched the pilot on the shoulder, and made a slight signal with his hand. Immediately the machine began to swing in a wide curve, while the observer busied himself with his camera and exposed plate after plate.
He looked up and out a moment as there came to his ear, dully but unmistakably above the roar of the engine, the hoarse "woof" of a bursting anti-aircraft shell. The black smoke of the burst showed a good hundred yards out to their left and some hundreds of feet above them, and the observer returned to his photographing.
"Woof" came another shell, and then in quick succession another and another, the last one dead ahead and with such correct elevation that, a second later, the machine flashed through the streaming black smoke of the burst. The pilot looked back inquiringly, and the observer made a sign which meant "Do what you please," and sat back to wait until the pilot took such steps as he thought fit to disarrange the aim of the gunners below.
The harsh rending cough of another shell came so close beneath the machine that both men felt her distinctly jolt upward, twisting from the wind shock. The pilot waited no more. He jammed the controls hard over and flung the machine out in a vicious side-slip, caught her at the end of it, tipped her nose over and plunged straight down with the engine full on for a thousand feet, banked sharply, pivoting fairly on his wing-tip, and shot off at right angles to his former course for a quarter of a mile; then, climbing slightly as he went, swung hard round again, dipped a little to gather speed, hoicked hard up, and in a few seconds was back somewhere about the position at which he had first departed from the course.
Back about the point where they had last turned a string of black smoke-puffs flashed out rapidly. The pilot shut his engine off for an instant. "Fooled 'em that time," he yelled back, and grinned gleefully at his observer. The observer peered out carefully and exposed another plate, turned and passed another signal to the pilot. Instantly the engine roared out, and the machine tipped her bows down and went plunging earthward. The observer watched the needle of his height indicator drop back and back through 20,000, 19, 18, 17, 16, hang there an instant, leap up again to 16 and 17. There it stayed quivering for ten seconds, while the machine hurtled forward at a hundred miles an hour on a level keel. There the pilot dropped her nose a little again and went slanting down with the engine full on, and the needle of the speed indicator climbing up and up until the speed touched 140 miles an hour and the height indicator dropped to a 14,000-foot level.
The Archie shells were spouting and splashing round them in all directions, but their erratic course had sufficiently upset the gunners to bring the bursts well out and clear, and the pilot made the last steep dizzying plunge that brought him to the 10,000-foot height his observer had asked for. But at this height they were well within the range of smaller Archie batteries, and the observer jerked the handle of his camera to and fro at intervals, with the racking cough of the shells sounding perilously close, and the reek of their burst at times swirling past as the machine tore through their smoke. Three times heavy splinters whurred viciously past them, and once a sharp crack and rip left a gaping black rent in the cloth of the body close astern of the observer.
For a good ten minutes the machine circled and swung and darted to and fro, while the observer hung on and snapped his plates at such objects as he wanted on the ground below; and for all that ten minutes the Archies continued to pitch a stream of shells up round and over and under them.
Then the observer signalled "finished," and the machine jerked round and streaked off at top speed in a series of curves and zigzags that carried her westward and homeward as straight as the pilot dared drive in avoiding the shells that continued to follow them. The pilot kept her nose down a little as he went, so as to obtain the maximum speed, but when he began to run out of range of the Archies and leave their smoke bursts well astern, he tilted up and pushed straight west at top speed, but on a long climb that brought him up a thousand feet a mile. Presently he felt the signal cord looped about his arm jerk and jerk again, and, tilting the machine's nose slightly downward, he shut off his engine and let her glide and twisted round to the observer.
"Huns," yelled the observer. "Six of 'em, and coming like stink," and he pointed up and astern to half a dozen dots in the sky.
"Would you like a scrap, Spotty?" shouted the pilot. "Shall we take 'em on?"
"Don't ask me," shouted Spotty. "Ask the Hun. He'll scrap if he wants to, and you and your old 'bus can't help it, Barry."
"Thought you knew the old 'Marah' better," retorted Barry. "You watch"; and he twisted in his seat and opened his engine out.
Now the "Marah" was the pride of her Squadron, and, most inordinately, of her pilot. Built line by line to the blue-print of her class, fraction by fraction of an inch in curve, straight, and stream-line, to the design of her sisters in the Squadron, differing no hair's-breadth from them in shape, size, engine, or propeller, she yet by some inscrutable decree was the best of them all in every quality that counts for best in a machine. There are theories to account for these not uncommon differences, the most popular and plausible being that the better machine is so merely because of some extra skill and minute care in her and her engine's building, last touches of exactness and perfection in the finish of their parts and their assembling.
The "Marah" could outclimb anything in the Squadron with the most ridiculous ease, outclimb them in feet per minute, and in final height; she could outfly them on any level from 100 to 20,000 feet, could "out-stunt" them – although here perhaps the pilot had as much to say as the machine – in any and every stunt they cared to challenge her on. Barry, her young pilot, literally loved her. He lost no chance of trying her out against other types of machines, and there were few of the fastest and best types even amongst the single-seater