The plane was running like a dream at an altitude of 1,800 feet and due west when they became aware of two tiny lights far below them. Not a glimmer was there anywhere near them and if Troyes were down there it was cautious enough to keep itself in the dark. Archer says that Slade did not speak to him nor even answer when he spoke, and he could only surmise what the pilot was about. He saw the altimétre register lower and presently he saw another light, the three forming a triangle. Slade said something about their being within gun fire range, but Archer could not hear him clearly and instinctively he kept still. “I think it’s it,” he finally heard Slade say.
Archer did not fully understand why Slade thought it was “it.” He confesses that he was “nerrvous and flusterred” and did not dare to ask questions.
“Get your stuff ready,” he heard Slade say. “Do you see another light? There must be a patrol out—that’s lucky.”
As we know, Troyes was one of the places which Slade had often visited upon his official errands, and there he had once or twice met Archer. So we may assume that he knew something of the neighboring aviation school and field with its guiding corner lights. If there had been no patrol out these lights would not have been burning. At a second’s notice any one or all of them could be turned into a giant finger to probe the heavens, and Slade knew this.
In retelling, as well as I can, from Archer’s fragmentary narrative, the tale of their heroic fight, I wish not to minimize the element of luck, nor, upon the other hand, to draw upon my imagination. If I had Slade’s story I could write from the standpoint of the pilot, but as it is I am writing from the standpoint of his anxious companion who did his little part, kept discreetly silent and waited in suspense.
That Slade should have flown due west upon the strength of an original calculation and come directly over this place was remarkable and greatly to his credit. But he was mistaken in supposing that there would be a glare from the lights of the town and it was a piece of sheer luck that the corner lights of the big field were burning, for the night was not propitious for patrols.
Archer had just spied a fourth light, completing a square, and was dipping his tightly wound shirt into the gasolene, when a long, dusky column moved across the darkness, hesitated, groped, moved toward them, then away again, and then—there they were in a field of brightness and he saw Slade as he had not seen him in nearly a year.
“He looked olderr and his big mouth was shut tight as if he was mad, but I could see how his two hands that held the controls were steady, just like that (he gripped one of the bars of the bed to show me), and I could even see the ring on his fingerr just as plain as day.”
A shot rang out and the plane shook “just like a dog shakes himself.” He saw Slade yank back the larger lever and reach below him for another. For a few seconds he was pushing and pulling—the terrible shaking ceased—darkness.
Archer was trembling like a leaf.
“A miss is as good as a mile,” he heard Slade say. “Don’t get rattled, she’s stable, drop your note, quick! I’m going to get out of this!”
It seemed to Archer but half a second and then the four lights were far away, so quickly is distance multiplied by the slightest movement in the air. It seemed now that the square was all askew and the odd fancy occurred to him that the shock of that gun away down there had knocked it out of shape.
“See it?” he heard Slade say without any trace of excitement.
Archer looked and saw far below them and some distance to the west the little flickering light of the descending torch, growing smaller— smaller—until it disappeared. He tried to determine whether it was within the radius of the square but that was quite impossible, for the square kept changing, and as a sort of vent to his suspense he watched it, expecting every second to find himself in another glare of light, and then to go tumbling down through space. Now those far-off lights formed a diamond, now they seemed to form almost a straight line, then opened into a crazy sort of square and again looked like a part of the Big Dipper; and the whimsical thought came to Archer that they were above the stars and looking down on them.
He knew, of course, that these odd effects were caused by Slade’s manouvering, but he had never seen such effects produced while riding on an express train or any other sort of conveyance, and the experience fascinated him much more than did the very simple and obvious devices for controlling their craft............