Snake and Sword Part 35

"Tell you what," said Colonel Decies, "when I get up there again, have a good squint and see if you think you can locate the spot for yourself from below. If you can, I'll come down again and we'll both go up on the oont. Bring the poor beggar down much better if one of us can hold him while the other drives the camel. It's no Grand Trunk Road, by Jove."

"Right-O," acquiesced Captain Digby-Soames. "If I can get a clear bearing to a point immediately below where you hover, I'll lie flat on the ground as an affirmative signal. If there's no good landmark I'll stay perpendicular, what?"

"That's it," said Colonel Decies, and, with a swift run and throbbing whirr, the aeroplane soared from the ground and rose to where, a thousand feet from the plain, lay the mangled "problem". As it came to a halt and hovered[29] (like a gigantic dragon-fly poised on its invisibly-rapid wings above a pool), the junior officer's practised eye noted a practicable gully that debouched on a level with, and not far from, the ledge over which the aeroplane hung, and that a stunted thorn-tree stood below the shelf and two large cactus bushes on its immediate left. Having taken careful note of other landmarks and glanced at the sun, he lay on the ground at full length for a minute and then arose and approached the camel, who greeted him with a bubbling snarl. On its great double saddle were a gun-cover and a long cane, while from it dangled a haversack, camera, cartridge-case, satchel, canvas water-bag, and a cord-net holdall of odds and ends.

Obviously the "problem's" s.h.i.+kar-camel. Apparently he was out without any s.h.i.+karri, orderly, or servant--a foolish thing to do when stalking in country in which a sprained ankle is more than a possibility, and a long-range bullet in the back a probability anywhere on that side of the border.

The aeroplane returned to earth and grounded near by. Stopping the engine Colonel Decies climbed out and swung himself into the rear seat of the camel saddle. Captain Digby-Soames sprang into the front one and the camel lurched to its feet, and was driven to the mouth of the gully which the Captain had noted as running up to the scene of the tragedy.

To and fro, in and out of the gully, winding, zig-zagging, often travelling a hundred yards to make a dozen, the sure-footed and well-trained beast made its way upward.

"Coming down will be joy," observed the Colonel. "I'd sooner be on a broken aeroplane in a cyclone."

"Better hop off here, I should think," said Captain Digby-Soames anon.

"We can lead him a good way yet, though. Case of divided we stand, united we fall. Let him fall by himself if he wants to," and at the next reasonably level spot the camel was made to kneel, that his riders might descend. Slithering down from a standing camel is not a sport to practise on a steep hillside, if indulged in at all.

Another winding, scrambling climb and the head of the nullah was reached.

"Have to get the beast kneeling when we climb down to him with the casualty," opined the Colonel. "Better get him down here, I think.

Doesn't seem any decent place farther on," and the camel was brought to an anchor and left to his own devices.

"By Jove, the poor beggar _has_ come a purler," said Captain Digby-Soames, as the two bent over the apparently unconscious man.

"Ever seen him at Kot Ghazi or Bimariabad?" inquired Colonel Decies.

"No," said the Captain, "never seen him anywhere. Why--have you?"

"Certainly seen him somewhere--trying to remember where. I thought perhaps it might have been at the flying-school or at one of the messes. Can't place him at all, but I'll swear I've met him."

"Manoeuvres, perhaps," suggested the other, "or 'board s.h.i.+p."

"Extraordinary thing is that I feel I _ought_ to know him well.

Something most familiar about the face. I'm afraid it's a bit too late to--Broken ribs--fractured thigh--broken ankles--broken arm--perforated lungs--not much good trying to get him down, I'm afraid. He might linger for days, though, if we decided to stand by, up here. A really first-cla.s.s problem for solution--we're in luck,"

mused Colonel Decies, making his rapid and skilful examination. "Yes, we must get him down, of course--after a bit of splinting."

"And then the real 'problem' will commence, I suppose," observed Captain Digby-Soames. "You couldn't put him into my seat and fly him to Kot Ghazi while I dossed down with the camel and waited for you to come for me. And it wouldn't do to camel him to that building which looks like a dak-bungalow."

"No. I think you'll have to stand by while I fly to Kot Ghazi and bring the necessary things for a temporary job, and then return and try to guide an ambulance waggon here. Oh, for an aeroplane-ambulance!

This job brings it home to you pretty clearly, doesn't it? Or I might first go and have a look at the alleged dak-bungalow and see if we could possibly run him over there on a charpoy[30] or an improvised camel-stretcher. It'll be a ghastly job getting down. I don't know that you hadn't better stick to him up here while I go straight back for proper splints and bandages and so forth, and bring another chap too ... Where the devil have I seen him before? I shall forget my own name next."

The Colonel pondered a moment.

"Look here," he decided. "This case is urgent enough to justify a risky experiment. He's been here a devil of a time and if he's not in a _pukka_ hospital within the next few hours it's all up with him.

He's going to have the distinction of being the first casualty removed to hospital by flying-machine. I'll tie him on somewhere. We'll splint him up as well as possible, and then make him into a blooming coc.o.o.n with the cord, and whisk him away."

"Pity we haven't a few planks," observed Captain Digby-Soames. "We could make one big splint of his whole body and sling him, planks and all, underneath the aeroplane."

"Well, you start splinting that right leg on to the left and stiffen the knees with something (you'll probably be able to get a decent stick or two off that small tree), and shove the arm inside his leather legging. We've two pairs of putties you can bandage with, and there are _puggries_ on all three _topis_. Probably his gun's somewhere about, for another leg-splint, too. I'll get down to the machine for the cord and then I'll skirmish around for anything in the nature of poles or planks. I can get over to that hut and back before you've done. It'll be the camelling that'll kill him."

At the distant building the Colonel found an abandoned broken-wheeled bullock-cart, from which he looted the bottom-boards, which were planks six feet long, laid upon, but not fastened to, the framework of the body of the cart. From the compound of the place (an ancient and rarely-visited dak-bungalow, probably the most outlying and deserted in India) he procured a bamboo pole that had once supported a lamp, the long leg-rests of an old chair, and two or three sticks, more or less serviceable for his purpose.

Returning to the camel, he ascended to where his pa.s.senger and pupil awaited him. Over his shoulder he bore the planks, pole and sticks that the contemptuous but invaluable camel had borne to a point a few yards below the scene of the tragedy.

"Good egg," observed the younger man. "We'll do him up in those like a mummy."

"Yes," returned the Colonel, "then carry him to the oont and bind him along one side of the saddle, and then lead the beast down. Easily sling him on to the machine, and there we are. Lucky we've got the coil of cord. Fine demonstration for the Kot Ghazi fellers! Show that the thing can be done, even without the proper kind of 'plane and surgical outfit. What luck we spotted him--or that he fell just in our return track!"

"Doubtless he was born to that end," observed the Captain, who was apt to get a little peevish when hungry and tired.

And when the Army Aeroplane _Hawk_ returned from its "ground-scouring for casualties" trip, lo, it bore, beneath and beside the pilot and pa.s.senger, a real casualty slung in a kind of crude coffin-cradle of planks and poles, a casualty in whose recovery the Colonel took the very deepest interest, for was he not a heaven-sent case, born to the end that he might be smashed to demonstrate the Colonel's theories?

But no credit was given to the vultures, without whom the "casualty"

would never have been found.

CHAPTER XIII.

FOUND.

Colonel John Decies, I.M.S. (retired), visiting the Kot Ghazi Station Hospital, whereof his friend and pupil, Captain Digby-Soames, was Commandant, scanned the temperature chart of the unknown, the desperately injured "case," retrieved by his beloved flying-machine, who, judging by his utterances in delirium, appeared to be even worse damaged in spirit than he was in body.

"Very high again last night," he observed to Miss Norah O'Neill of the Queen Alexandra Military Nursing Sisterhood.

"Yes, and very violent," replied Miss O'Neill. "I had to call two orderlies and they could hardly hold him. He appeared to think he was fighting a huge snake or fleeing from one. He also repeatedly screamed: 'It is under my foot! It is moving, moving, moving _out_.'"

"_Got it_, by G.o.d!" cried the Colonel, suddenly smiting his forehead with violence. "_Of course!_ Fool! Fool that I am! Merciful G.o.d in Heaven--_it's her boy_--and _I_ have saved him! _Her boy!_ And I've been cudgelling my failing addled brains for months, wondering where I had seen his face before. He's my G.o.dson, Sister, and I haven't set eyes on him for the last--nearly twenty years!"

Miss Norah O'Neill had never before seen an excited doctor in a hospital ward, but she now beheld one nearly beside himself with excitement, joy, surprise, and incredulity. (It is sad to have to relate that she also heard one murmuring over and over again to himself, "Well, I am d.a.m.ned".)

At last Colonel John Decies announced that the world was a tiny, small place and a very rum one, that it was just like _The Hawk_ to be the means of saving _her_ boy of all people, and then took the patient's hand in his, and sat studying his face, in wondering, pondering silence.

To Miss Norah O'Neill this seemed extraordinarily powerful affection for a mere _G.o.dson_, and one lost to sight for twenty years at that.

Yet Colonel Decies was a bachelor and, no, the patient certainly resembled him in no way whatsoever. The tiny new-born germ of a romance died at once in Miss O'Neill's romantic heart--and yet, had she but known, here was a romance such as her soul loved above all things--the son of the adored dead mistress discovered _in extremis_, and saved, by the devout platonic lover, the life-long lover, and revealed to him by the utterance of the pre-natally learnt words of the dead woman herself!

Yes--how many times through those awful days had Decies heard that heart-rending cry! How cruelly the words had tortured him! And here, they were repeated twenty years on--for the identification of the son by the friend!

That afternoon Colonel Decies dispatched a cablegram addressed to a Miss Gavestone, Monksmead, Souths.h.i.+re, England, and containing the words, "Have found him, Kot Ghazi, bad accident, doing well, Decies,"

and by the next mail Lucille, with Aunt Yvette and a maid, left Port Said, having travelled overland to Brindisi and taken pa.s.sage to Egypt by the _Osiris_ to overtake the liner that had left Tilbury several days before the cable reached Monksmead. And in Lucille's largest trunk was an article the like of which is rarely to be found in the baggage of a young lady--nothing more nor less than an ancient rapier of Italian pattern!...

To Lucille, who knew her lover so well, it seemed that the sight and feel of the wors.h.i.+pped Sword of his Ancestors must bring him comfort, self-respect, memories, thoughts of the joint youth and happiness of himself and her.

She knew what the Sword had been to him, how he had felt a different person when he held its inspiring hilt, how it had moved him to the telling of his wondrous dream and stories of its stirring past, how he had revered and loved it ...surely it must do him good to have it? If he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he could see it, it _must_ help him. It would bring diversion of thought, cheer him, suggest bright memories--perhaps give him brave dreams that would usurp the place of bad ones.

If he were well or convalescent it might be even more needful as a tonic to self-respect, a reminder of high tradition, a message from dead sires. Yes, surely it must do him good where she could not. If there were any really insurmountable obstacle to their--their --union--the Sword could still be with him always, and say unceasingly: "Do not be world-beaten, son of the de Warrennes and Stukeleys. Do not despair. Do not be fate-conquered. Fight! Fight!

Look upon me not as merely the symbol of struggle but as the actual Sword of your actual Fathers. Fight Fate! Die fighting--but do not live defeated"--but of course her hero Dam needed no such exhortations. Still--the Sword must be a comfort, a pleasure, a hope, an inspiration, a symbol. When she brought it him he would understand.

Swords were to sever, but _the_ Sword should be a link--a visible bond between them, and between them again and their common past.