He had turned his head for home and begun his glide to earth.
He landed near a road by the side of which a Highland battalion was resting and came to ground without mishap. He unstrapped himself and descended from the fuselage slowly, stripped off his gloves and walked to where the interested infantry were watching him.
"Where are ye gaun?" he asked, for Tam's besetting vice was an unquenchable curiosity.
"To the trenches afore Masille, sir-r," said the man he addressed.
"Ye'll no' be callin' me 'sir-r,'" reproved Tam. "A'm a s-arrgent. Hoo lang will ye stay in the trenches up yon?"
"Foor days, Sergeant," said the man.
"Foor days—guid Lord!" answered Tam. "A' wouldn't do that wairk for a thoosand poonds a week."
"It's no' so bad," said half-a-dozen voices.
"Ut's verra, verra dangerous," said Tam, shaking his head. "A'm thankitfu' A'm no' a soldier—they tried haird to make me ain, but A' said, 'Noo, laddie—gie me a job—'"
"Whoo!"
A roar like the rush of an express train through a junction, and Tam looked around in alarm. The enemy's heavy shell struck the ground midway between him and his machine and threw up a great column of mud.
"Mon!" said Tam in alarm. "A' thocht it were goin' straicht for ma wee machine."
"What happened to you, Tam?" asked the wing commander.
Tam cleared his throat.
"Patrollin' by order the morn," he said, "ma suspeecions were aroused by the erratic movements of a graund clood. To think, wi' Tam the Scoot, was to act. Wi'oot a thocht for his ain parrsonal safety, the gallant laddie brocht his machine to the clood i' question, caircling through its oombrageous depths. It was a fine gay sicht—aloon i' th' sky, he ventured into the air-r-lions' den. What did he see? The clood was a nest o' wee horrnets! Slippin' a bomb he dashed madly back to the ooter air-r sendin' his S. O. S. wi' baith hands—thanks to his—"
He stopped and bit his lip thoughtfully.
"Come, Tam!" smiled the officer, "that's a lame story for you."
"Oh, ay," said Tam. "A'm no' in the recht speerit—Hoo mony did we lose?"
"Mr. Lasky and Mr. Brand," said the wing commander quietly.
"Puir laddies," said Tam. He sniffed. "Mr. Lasky was a bonnie lad—A'll ask ye to excuse me, Captain Thompson, sir-r. A'm no feelin' verra weel the day—ye've no a seegair aboot ye that ye wilna be wantin'?"
CHAPTER II
PUPPIES OF THE PACK
Tam was not infallible, and the working out of his great "thochts" did not always justify the confidence which he reposed in them. His idea of an "invisible aeroplane," for example, which was to be one painted sky blue that would "hairmonise wi' the blaw skies," was not a success, nor was his scheme for the creation of artificial clouds attended by any encouraging results. But Tam's "Attack Formation for Bombing Enemy Depots" attained to the dignity of print, and was confidentially circulated in French, English, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Japanese and Rumanian.
The pity is that a Scottish edition was not prepared in Tam's own language; and Captain Blackie, who elaborated Tam's rough notes and condensed into a few lines Tam's most romantic descriptions, had suggested such an edition for very private circulation.
It would have begun somewhat like this:
"The Hoon or Gairman is a verra bonnie fichter, but he has nae ineetiative. He squints oop in the morn an' he speers a fine machine ower by his lines.
"'Hoot!' says he, 'yon wee feller is Scottish, A'm thinkin'—go you, Fritz an' Hans an' Carl an' Heinrich, an' strafe the puir body.'
"'Nay,' says his oonder lootenant. 'Nein,' he says, 'ye daunt knaw what ye're askin', Herr Lootenant.'
"'What's wrong wi' ye?' says the oberlootenant. 'Are ye Gairman heroes or just low-doon Austreens that ye fear ain wee bairdie?'
"'Lootenant,' say they, 'yon feller is Tam o' the Scoots, the Brigand o' the Stars!'
"'Ech!' he says. 'Gang oop, ain o' ye, an' ask the lad to coom doon an' tak' a soop wi' us—we maun keep on the recht side o' Tam!'"
All this and more would have gone to form the preliminary chapter of the true version of Tam's code of attack.
"He's a rum bird, is Tam," said Captain Blackie at breakfast; "he brought down von Zeidlitz yesterday."
"Is von Zeidlitz down?" demanded half a dozen voices, and Blackie nodded.
"He was a good, clean fighter," said young Carter regretfully. "When did you hear this, sir?"
"This morning, through H. Q. Intelligence."
"Tam will be awfully bucked," said somebody. "He was complaining yesterday that life was getting too monotonous. By the way, we ought to drop a wreath for poor old von Zeidlitz."
"Tam will do it with pleasure," said Blackie; "he always liked von Zeidlitz—he called him 'Fritz Fokker' ever since the day von Zeidlitz nearly got Tam's tail down."
An officer standing by the window with his hands thrust into his pockets called over his shoulder:
"Here comes Tam."
The thunder and splutter of the scout's engine came to them faintly as Tam's swift little machine came skimming across the broad ground of the aerodrome and in a few minutes Tam was walking slowly toward the office, stripping his gloves as he went.
Blackie went out to him.
"Hello, Tam—anything exciting?"
Tam waved his hand—he never saluted.
"Will ye gang an' tak' a look at me eenstruments?" he asked mysteriously.
"Why, Tam?"
"Will ye, sir-r?"
Captain Blackie walked over to the machine and climbed up into the fuselage. What he saw made him gasp, and he came back to where Tam was standing, smug and self-conscious.
"You've been up to twenty-eight thousand feet, Tam?" asked the astonished Blackie. "Why, that is nearly a record!"
"A' doot ma baromeeter," said Tam; "if A' were no' at fochty thousand, A'm a Boche."
Blackie laughed.
"You're not a Boche, Tam," he said, "and you haven't been to forty thousand feet—no human being can rise eight miles. To get up five and a half miles is a wonderful achievement. Why did you do it?"
Tam grinned and slapped his long gloves together.
"For peace an' quiet," he said. "A've been chased by thairty air Hoons that got 'twixt me an' ma breakfast, so A' went oop a bit an' a bit more an' two fellers came behint me. There's an ould joke that A've never understood before—'the higher the fewer'—it's no' deefficult to understand it noo."
"You got back all right, anyhow," said Blackie.
"Aloon i' the vast an' silent spaces of the vaulted heavens," said Tam in his sing-song tones which invariably accompanied his narratives, "the Young Avenger of the Cloods, Tam the Scoot, focht his ficht. Attacked by owerwhelmin' foorces, shot at afore an' behint, the noble laddie didna lose his nairve. Mutterin' a brief—a verra brief—prayer that the Hoons would be strafed, he climbt an' climbt till he could 'a' strook a match on the moon. After him wi' set lips an' flashin' een came the bluidy-minded ravagers of Belgium, Serbia an'—A'm afreed—Roomania. Theer bullets whistled aboot his lugs but,
"His eyes were bricht,
His hairt were licht,
For Tam the Scoot was fu' o' ficht—
"That's a wee poem A' made oop oot o' ma ain heid, Captain, at a height of twenty-three thoosand feet. A'm thinkin' it's the highest poem in the wairld."
"And