Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer Part 17

Lifting his machine, he lowered it carefully into the opening left by the torn-off plank, until the pedals rested upon the planks on either side and the power wheel was partially submerged. So far, so good.

In less than a minute now he would either succeed or fail. It was necessary first to alter the position of the float slightly so that the opening left by the plank pointed across and slightly upstream. He had often noticed how the pilot of a ferryboat directs his craft above or below the point of landing to counteract the rising or ebbing tide, and this was his intention now; but to neutralize the force of the water with another force not subject to direction or adjustment involved a rather nice calculation.

Very cautiously he waded out upon the precipitous, submerged bank and brought the float into position. This done, he acted with lightning rapidity. Leaping upon the freed float before it had time to swing around, he raised his machine, started it, and lowering the power wheel into the opening, steadied the machine as best he could. It was not possible to let it hang upon its pedals for he must hold it at a steep angle, and it required all his strength to manage its clumsy, furiously vibrating bulk.

But the effects of his makes.h.i.+ft paddle-wheel were p.r.o.nounced and instantaneous. His own weight and that of the machine sufficiently submerged the racing power wheel so that the rough paddles plowed the water, sending the float diagonally across the flooded stream with tremendous force. He was even able, by inclining the upper end of the machine to right or left, to guide his clumsy craft, which responded to this live rudder with surprising promptness.

In the rapid crossing this rough ferryboat lost rather more than Tom had thought it would lose from the rush of water and it brought him close to the opposite sh.o.r.e at a point some fifty feet beyond the road, but he had been able to maintain its direction at least to the extent of heading sh.o.r.eward and preventing the buoyant float from fatal swirling, which would have meant loss of control altogether.

Perhaps it was better that his point of landing was some distance below the road, where he was able to grasp at an overhanging tree with one hand while shutting his power off and holding fast to his machine with the other. A landing would have been difficult anywhere else.

Even now he was in the precarious position of sitting upon a limb in a rather complicated network of small branches and foliage, hanging onto his motorcycle for dear life, while the buoyant float went swirling and bobbing down the flood.

It had taken him perhaps five minutes to prepare for his crossing and about thirty seconds to cross. But his strategic position was far from satisfactory. And already the more substantial light of the morning revealed the gray road winding ribbon-like away into the distance, the first glints of sunlight falling upon its bordering rocks and trees as if to taunt and mock him.

And meanwhile the minutes pa.s.sed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

UP A TREE

In military parlance, Tom had advanced only to be caught in a pocket.

There he sat, astride a large limb, hanging onto the heavy machine, which depended below him just free of the water. He had, with difficulty, moved his painful grip upon a part of the machine's mechanism and succeeded in clutching the edge of the forward wheel. This did not cut his hands so much, but the weight was unbearable in his embarra.s.sed att.i.tude.

Indeed, it was not so much his strength, which was remarkable, that enabled him to keep his hold upon this depending dead weight, as it was sheer desperation. It seemed to be pulling his arms out of their sockets, and his shoulders ached incessantly. At the risk of losing his balance altogether he sought relief by the continual s.h.i.+fting of his position but he knew that the strain was too great for him and that he must let go presently.

It seemed like a mockery that he should have gained the sh.o.r.e only to be caught in this predicament, and to see his trusty machine go tumbling into the water beyond all hope of present recovery, simply because he could not hang on to it.

Well, then, he _would_ hang on to it. He would hang on to it though every muscle of his body throbbed, though his arms were dragged out, and though he collapsed and fell from that limb himself in the last anguish of the aching strain. He and _Uncle Sam_, having failed, would go down together.

And meanwhile the minutes pa.s.sed and _Uncle Sam_ and Tom were reflected, inverted, in the water where the spreading light was now flickering. How strange and grotesque they looked, upside down and clinging to each other for dear life and wriggling in the ripples of rus.h.i.+ng water.

_Uncle Sam_ seemed to be holding _him_ up. It was all the same--they were partners.

He noticed in the water something which he had not noticed before--the reflection of a short, thick, broken branch projecting from the heavy limb he was straddling. He glanced about and found that it was behind him. His stooping att.i.tude, necessitated by the tremendous drag on his arms, prevented him even from looking freely behind him, and in trying to do so he nearly fell. The strain he was suffering was so great that the least move caused him pain.

But by looking into the water he was able to see that this little stub of a limb might serve as a hook on which the machine might be hung if he could clear away the leafy twigs which grew from it, and if he could succeed in raising the cycle and slipping the wheel over it. That would not end his predicament but it would save the machine, relieve him for a few moments, and give him time to think.

_For a few moments!_ They were fleeting by--the moments.

There is a strength born of desperation--a strength of will which is conjured into physical power in the last extremity. It is when the frantic, baffled spirit calls aloud to rally every failing muscle and weakening nerve. It is then that the lips tighten and the eyes become as steel, as the last reserves waiting in the entrenchments of the soul are summoned up to re-enforce the losing cause.

And there in that tree, on the brink of the heedless, rus.h.i.+ng waters which crossed the highroad to Dieppe was going to be fought out one of the most desperate battles of the whole war. There, in the mocking light of the paling dawn, Tom Slade, his big mouth set like a vice, and with every last reserve he could command, was going to make his last cast of the dice--let go, give up--or, _hold on_.

_Let go!_ Of all the inglorious forms of defeat or surrender! _To let go!_ To be struck down, to be taken prisoner, to be----

But to _let go_! The bulldog, the snapping turtle, seemed like very heroes now.

"He always said I had a good muscle--he liked to feel it," he muttered.

"And besides, _she_ said she guessed I was strong."

He was thinking of Margaret Ellison, away back in America, and of Roscoe Bent, as he had known him there. When he muttered again there was a beseeching pathos in his voice which would have pierced the heart of anyone who could have seen him struggling still against fate, in this all but hopeless predicament.

But no one saw him except the sun who was raising his head above the horizon as a soldier steals a cautious look over the trench parapet.

There would be no report of this affair.

He lowered his chest to the limb, wound his legs around it and for a second lay there while he tightened and set his legs, as one will tighten a belt against some impending strain. Not another fraction of an inch could he have tightened those encircling legs.

And now the fateful second was come. It had to come quickly for his strength was ebbing. There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about _budge_ it with one hand. Tom had tried this at Temple Camp with a visiting scout's baggage chest. With both hands he had been barely able to lift it by its strap. With one hand he had been able to _budge_ it for the fraction of a second. But there had been no overmastering incentive--and no reserves called up out of the depths of his soul.

He could feel his breast palpitating against the limb, drawn tight against it by the dead weight. Yet he could not put his desperate purpose to the test.

And so a second--two, three, seconds--were wasted.

"I won't let go," he muttered through his teeth. "I wish I could wipe the sweat off my hand." Then, as if his dogged resolution were not enough, he added, almost appealingly, "Don't _you_ drop and--and go back on me."

_Uncle Sam_ only swung a little in the breeze and wriggled like an eel in the watery mirror.

Slowly Tom loosened his perspiring left hand, not daring to withdraw it.

The act seemed to communicate an extra strain to every part of his body.

Of all the fateful moments of his life, this seemed to be the most tense. Then, in an impulse of desperation, he drew his left hand away.

"I won't--let--go," he muttered.

The muscles on his taut right arm stood out like cords. His forearm throbbed with an indescribable, pulling pain. There was a feeling of dull soreness in his shoulder blade. His perspiring hand closed tighter around the wheel's rim and he could feel his pulse pounding. His fingers tingled as if they had been asleep. Then his hand slipped a little.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH"

Whether merely from the change of an eighth of an inch or so in its hold upon the rim, or because his palm fitted better around the slight alteration of curve, Tom was conscious of the slightest measure of relief.

As quickly as he dared (for he knew that any sudden move would be fatal), he reached behind him with his left arm and, groping for the stub of limb, tore away from it the twigs which he knew would form an obstacle to placing the wheel rim with its network of spokes over this short projection.

The dead soreness of his straining shoulder blade ran down his arm, which throbbed painfully. His twitching, struggling fingers, straining against the weight which was forcing them open, clutched the rim. They were burning and yet seemed numb. Oh, if he could only wipe his palm and that rim with a dry handkerchief! He tightened his slipping fingers again and again. The muscles of his arm smarted as from a blow. He tightened his lips--and that seemed to help.

Carefully, though his aching breast pounded against the limb, he brought back his left hand, cautiously rubbed it against his khaki s.h.i.+rt, then encircled it about the rim. For a moment the weight seemed manageably light in the quick relief he felt.

Availing himself of the slight measure of refreshment he raised the machine a trifle, a trifle more, squirmed about to get in better position, bent, strained, got the bulky thing past his clutching legs, exerted every muscle of chest and abdomen, which now could a.s.sume some share of the strain, and by a superhuman effort of litheness and dexterity and all the overwhelming power of physical strength and frenzied resolution, he succeeded in slipping the wheel rim over the stubby projection behind him.