Tam o' the Scoots Part 10

He lay fully dressed upon the bed. A thick curtain retained the light which came from an electric bulb above his head and his mind was absorbed with the breathless adventures of his cowboy hero.

Now and again he would drop the book to his chest and gaze reflectively at the ceiling, for, all the time he had been reading, one-half of his brain had been steadily pursuing a separate course of inquiry of its own; and while the other half had wandered pleasantly through deep and sunless gulches or had clambered on the back of a surefooted bronco up precipitous mountain-slopes, the mental picture he conjured was in the nature of a double exposure, for ever there loomed a dim figure of a mysterious anti-aircraft gun. He took up the book for about the tenth time and read two lines, when a bell in the corner of the room rang three times. Three short thrills of sound and then silence.

Tam slipped from the bed, lifted down his leather jacket from the wall and struggled into it. He took up his padded helmet, switched off the light and, opening the door, stepped out into the darkness. b.u.t.toning his jacket as he went, he made his way across by a short cut to the hangars and found Blackie surrounded by half a dozen officers already on the spot.

"Is that you, Tam? I want you to go up--there she goes!"

They listened.

_"Whoom!"_

"Fritz has sneaked across in the dark and is industriously bombing billets," he said; "he dodged the Creeper's Patrol. Go and see if you can find him."

_"Whoom!"_

The sound of the bursting bomb was nearer.

"'Tis safer in the air," said Tam as he swung into his fuselage.

"Contact!"

A few seconds later, with a roar, the machine disappeared into the black wall of darkness.

It came back in less than a minute well overhead and Blackie, straining his eyes upward, followed its progress against the stars until it melted into the sky.

_"Whoom!"_

"He is looking for us," said Blackie; "stand by your hangars."

To the northwest two swift beams of light were sweeping the sky urgently. From a point farther south sprang another beam.

"If Fritz doesn't locate us now he ought to be shot," growled Blackie.

But apparently Fritz had overshot the aerodrome, for the next explosion came a mile to the west.

"Tam will see the burst," said young Austin and Blackie nodded.

There were no other explosions and they waited for ten minutes, then--

"_Ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka!_"

The sound came from right overhead.

"Tam's got him," whooped Blackie; "the devil must have been flying low."

"_Tocka-tocka-tocka-tocka!_"

"That's Fritz," said Blackie, "and that's Tam again."

Then one of the waving searchlights strayed in their direction, and down its white beam for the s.p.a.ce of a hundred yards slid a ghostly white moth. It dipped suddenly and fell out of the light and in its wake, but above, burst three little green b.a.l.l.s of fire--Tam's totem and sign-manual.

"Landing lights!" roared Blackie, and they had hardly been switched on when Tam swooped to the ground.

In the meantime a motor-car had gone swiftly in the direction of the fallen Hun machine.

"He crashed," said Tam breathlessly, as he jumped to the ground; "A'm afeered the puir body is hurt."

But the poor body was neither hurt nor frightened, nor indeed had he crashed.

In point of fact he had made a very good landing, considering the disadvantages under which he labored. They brought him into the mess-room, a tall stripling with shaven head and blue laughing eyes, and he took the coffee they offered him with a courteous little bow and a click of his heels.

"Baron von Treutzer," the prisoner introduced himself.

"I was afraid that a thousand meters was too low to fly, even at night,"

he said; "I suppose I didn't by any lucky chance get you. By the way, who brought me down? Tam?"

"Tam it was," said Blackie cheerfully, "and you didn't get us."

"I am sorry," said the baron. "May I ask you whether it was Tam who was doing stunts over our new gun?"

Blackie nodded.

"I thought it was. They have been cursing him all the evening--I mean, of course, the technical people," he added hastily, as though to emphasize the fact that the Imperial Air Service was above resentment.

"Naturally they swore you had some kind of armor on your machine, and though we told them it was most unlikely, they insisted--you know what obstinate people these manufacturers are; in fact, they say that they saw it glitter," he laughed softly. "You see," he went on, "they don't understand this game. They can not understand why their wonderful"--he corrected himself swiftly--"why their gun did not get you. It would have been a terrible disappointment if they had brought you down and discovered that you were not sheeted in some new patent sh.e.l.l-proof steel."

"Oh, aye," said Tam, and he smiled, which was an unusual thing for Tam to do, and then he laughed, a deep, bubbling chuckle of laughter, which was even more unusual. "Oh, aye," he said again and was still laughing when he went out of the little anteroom.

He did not go back to his bunk, but made his way to the workshop, and when he went up the next morning he carried with him, carefully strapped to the fuselage, a sheet of tin which he had industriously cut and punched full of rivet-holes in the course of the night.

"And what are you going to do with that, Tam?" asked Blackie.

"That is ma new armor," said Tam solemnly. "'Tis a grand invention I made out of my own head."

"But what is the idea?" asked Blackie.

"Captain Blackie, sir-r," said Tam, "I have a theery, and if you have no objection I'd like to try it oot."

"Go ahead," said Blackie with a perplexed frown.

At half-past eleven, Tam, having roved along the German front-line trenches and having amused himself by chasing a German spotter to earth, made what appeared to be a leisurely way back to that point of the Lille road where he had met with his adventures of the previous day. He was hoping to find the battery which he had worried at that time, and he was not disappointed. In the same area where he had met the guns before, they opened upon him. He circled round and located six pieces. Which of these was "Annie"?

One he could silence at terrible risk to himself, but no more. To drop down, on the off-chance of finding his quarry, was taking a gambler's chance, and Tam prided himself that he was no gambler. That the gun was there, he knew. Its sh.e.l.ls were bursting ever upon his level and he was b.u.mped and kicked by the violence of the concussions. As for the other guns, he ignored them; but from whence came the danger? He had unstrapped the tin-plate and held it ready in his gloved hand--then there came a burst dangerously near. He banked over, side-slipped in the most natural manner and with all his strength flung the tin-plate clear of the machine. Immediately after, he began to climb upward. He looked down, catching the glitter of the tin as it planed and swooped to the earth.

He knew that those on the ground below thought he was. .h.i.t. For a brief s.p.a.ce of time the guns ceased firing and by the time they recommenced they fired short. Tam was now swooping round eastward farther and farther from range, and all the time he was climbing, till, at the end of half an hour, those who watched him saw only a little black speck in the sky.

When he reached his elevation he began to circle back till he came above the guns and a little to the eastward. He was watching now intently. He had located the six by certain landmarks, and his eyes flickered from one point to the other. A drifting wisp of cloud helped him a little in the period of waiting. It served the purpose of concealment and he pa.s.sed another quarter of an hour dodging eastward and westward from cover to cover until, heading back again to the west, he saw what he had been waiting for.

Down charged the nose of the machine. Like a hawk dropping upon its prey he swooped down at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, his eyes fixed upon one point. The guns did not see him until too late. Away to his right, two Archies crashed and missed him by the length of a street. He slowly flattened before he came over a gun which stood upon a big motor-trolley screened by canvas and reeds, and he was not fifty yards from the ground when he released, with almost one motion, every bomb he carried.