I have told you of the last part of this astonishing flight in Archer’s own words, as well as I could transcribe them from my shorthand notes, because I think it gives a very good idea of his own impressions. How Tom Slade felt throughout that exciting night I can only conjecture. You knew him and I did not. Imperturbable, resourceful, strong-willed, a little dash of grim humor (at least, in his relations with the irrepressible Archer), and with the spirit of adventure born in him, I can form some sort of picture of him in my own mind—the scowl, the big mouth, the towhead—but at best he is something of a mystery to me. I can fancy him on that wild night, one hand upon his stabilizing control, the other on the handle by which he communicated his dogged will to the rudders, a keen eye always fixed upon his altimétre or his compass. Sometimes I fancy that I can hear that “soberr, kind of” voice of his. But as I say, you knew him and I did not. I must now tell you of the practical results of his deed. You know already of the movements which followed immediately upon the discovery of his warning messages, and if you have read the papers I suppose you know of the iron wall which the Germans found confronting them. Archer’s messages were opened and read and such parts of them as required transmission were wired on to General Pershing, who was then in Paris.
But these, important though they were, are not a part of my story. You will recall that when the souvenir-loving Archer first inspected the Hun plane in quest of booty, his longing fingers lingered upon something which looked like a shade roller, hung before the pilot’s seat and which Slade had wound in oilskin. It was typical of Slade that he should have thought to do this even in the excitement of his escape, and this little act of foresightedness and caution was destined to have far-reaching and memorable consequences in which he was to be involved.
They spent the balance of the night in the barracks of this aviation centre and, according to Archer, were treated royally by the student airmen, who, I suspect, found him an amusing youngster for several of them gave him a sentence to say which he repeated to their great delight. It ran something like this: Roaring, raging, rampant, rambunctious rhinoceroses ran round rugged rocks, recklessly raising ridiculous reverberating rows. If he repeated it to them as he did to me, it must have been very entertaining. He also sang them “Peterr Porkerr’s Pig,” a ballad of the Catskills, I suppose, which won him great applause. He says the airmen slept in the long dormitories, in rows on either side, and that it was just like camping to be among them. In the morning he and Slade watched some ground ............