CHAPTER XI KNIGHTS OF THE WING

“Well! we have tumbled into a camp of milk and honey.”

Lieutenant Hayward, the observer, with the binoculars, from whom the young air-scout had taken orders as he flew over the shore, was almost guilty of smacking his lips in relish of the fare set before him in the light of the rainbowing Council Fire and of two camp-lanterns which turned the antique silver of the sands to gold.
“Keep the home-fires burning!”

he chanted. “Ye zephyrs! I don’t think I ever appreciated them so much before. Certainly that’s a corking Council Fire; all those wonderful colors; fairy lilac shading into blue flame, rose, green, and yellow, which the copper-corroded wreck-wood throws off!”

“Corroded! The green is just about the hue of the soldiers’ buttons up--up at Camp Evens, after the chlorine-gas changed them, eh, Olive?” murmured Sara reminiscently under her breath--forbearing to vent upon the banquetting sky-lords the story of a gruesome episode on the day when four of the girls present visited her brother in camp. “Oh! won’t you tell us why you flew over--flew low over our fire, this evening?” she burst forth suddenly, eagerly. “Did you really take it for a spy-bonfire, on this lonely beach, signaling out to sea? Are you--are you air-scouts, patrolling, on the lookout for--for huts in the woods--secret wireless----”

But the observer held up a pleading hand.

“How can you ask me, fair Earth Daughter, to discuss anything at present but--but these wings and camouflage? Aviators’ slang!” he murmured divertingly, beaming upon his forthcoming mouthful of creamed chicken, greenly disguised with the juiciest of young peas.

“Canned as well as camouflaged--the wings!” Arline’s shoulders were hunched in a deprecatory rainbow. “The peas are home-grown, though, from our own war-garden on that prickly wretch of a hill off there.” She laughed. “There--there was a great shelling off this coast this morning,” glancing towards the night-sea whence a hostile attack might come.

“Ha! And were the shells ‘incomers’ or ‘outgoers,’ as the soldiers say? Apparently none of them lodged in the camouflage--or in these dandy hot-air rolls.” The a?rial observer laughed, falling in with the girlish jest.

“Warmed over air!” The Rainbow touched a tepid finger-roll. “We got the receipt from our Wohelo magazine.”

“‘Zooms’ for Wohelo!”
“Fish-tails for breakfast,
Cloud-puffs for tea,
But Camp Fire rolls
Are the feast for me!”

chanted “Goggle Eyes,” loftily improvising with an inspired glance at the violet night-sky.

“We can picture the air-puffs, but whence--whence the fish-tail ménu? Flying fish?” queried Olive, breaking into the airy chit-chat.

“No, fish-tail breezes--flapping gusts--that blow you about up there--a lively relish for your rations!”

Here the older aviator glanced sidewise at Sara, as one who has neatly weathered a downthrow current of curiosity.

“Humph! Silent as a fish! Questions taboo! They’ll tell you nothing, these air-scouts--nothing that you’d really like to find out about,” murmured the inquisitive one, teasing the fire-logs with a birch-stick until they matched her own tantalized flame.

“Well!... Well! I’m glad you’re not missing Ground-School dinners now,” she vouchsafed aloud. “When you’ve finished rhyming over the rolls, oh! won’t you--please--tell us something about flying, about your parade-ground, up there?”

“You--you tell ’em, Big Boy!” The observer nudged the younger aviator.

“Well! what shall it be? We sky-skimmers can do about everything with our wings that the birds do with theirs, you know, except flap them. Along some lines we could teach our feathered friends a few tricks!” The younger man laughed over his loyalty cake, less most of the usual ingredients, plus spices and skill. “How about emulating the somersault of a tumble-pigeon--looping the loop--or racing an express train across endless prairies, and, when you caught up with it, flying low, bumping your wheels on the cab of the locomotive, to let the engineer know he wasn’t ‘in it,’ eh?”

“Bravo! What fun! And the engineer, how would he take it?”

“Why, he’d come out and wave his arms, to ‘shoo’ us off, while the passengers flourished hats and handkerchiefs from the train-windows. Ye bats and flying cats! but this honey is good. Did you hive it yourselves as well as grow the peas?”

“No, one of the girls had it sent to her by an uncle who has a bee-farm in Vermont. Well!... Well! We’re waiting to hear more from the latest flying cat--flying man, rather.”

“Great cats! you are, eh?” Tailspin Ned laughed through the firelight. “Ha! What about the thrills we gave civilians--those ‘gawkers of the clouds’--on one public holiday, when our field was thrown open to the public? Thrill after thrill, joke after joke, put over on them!... But, oh, I say, this is awfully one-sided. Those quite too fetching ‘togs,’--pardon me, those very picturesque dresses, head-bands, moccasins, and so forth--they signify something--some ceremony. Now! won’t you let us come in on it?”

“What! On our monthly council meeting!” The Guardian smiled, as smiled her symbol, the yellow sunburst embroidered upon her breast. “As for this rainbowed Council Fire, whose smoke guided you to earth, we were only using it as a background this evening--an accessory. Being such a still night, the program--its opening part--centred around a candle lighting ceremony arranged by one of our number.”

Along a red lane of firelight she glanced at Olive, beautiful in the ruby glow which brought out the wings of a heron woven into her shimmering head-band and the Torch Bearer’s emblem, stenciled on cloth--as the clawing Witch was stenciled upon the fuselage of the a?roplane--crossed logs, flame-tongue, pearl-white smoke, upon the front of her khaki dress, which, with its manifold, meaningful embroideries, was fast becoming a rare, fair tapestry of achievement.

“We--we were just considering Atawessu--the Star--as a symbol, when down you dropped from airdom!” Gheezies--Guardian--smiled again.

“With fresh rumors from the sky, eh? Well! to show that you don’t resent the intrusion--now it’s our turn to plead--won’t you please go on with the ceremony, and let us light the clouds with a memory of your candles?”

“Hardly--that! We’re too interested in--in the thrills you gave the ‘gawkers.’” Even a Guardian may stumble into slang under the spell of a?rial enthusiasm. “Our awarding of honors”--she touched the triple necklace of many-colored beads falling to her knees--“and of rank,” with a glance at little star-eyed Flamina, “may well be postponed. But, perhaps, we will let you ‘come in on our ceremony’ to--to the extent of singing you a song or two in return for your soaring thrills.”

And presently, with all the soft magic of welcoming motion of which a score of Earth Daughters were capable, there floated forth upon the fire-warmed dusk, beside the prismatic Council Fire:
“Whose hand above this flame is lifted,
Shall be with magic touch engifted,
To warm the hearts of lonely mortals,
Who stand within its open portals.
Whose house is dark and bare and cold,
Whose house is cold,
This is his own!”

“Ha! Our castles in the clouds are always bare--and often cold. We’re so glad you’ve made us free of yours!”

The younger aviator--Big Boy--drew a long breath; perhaps sometimes, in the vast empty spaces of those air-castles, occasionally dreary--he might, like Lieutenant Iver over-seas--recall the warm imagery of the Council Fire, its magic of sisterhood, when he missed the things that make life hum.

“Now! it’s your turn. You sing us a song!” pleaded Lilla, a fluttering Owlet, as the brown-clad maidens, light as wafted leaves, settled again into a sitting circle upon the sands.

“Well, I like that! I’ll tell the world!” laughingly. “To ask me to croak, like a flying frog, after such a smooth performance--as--that!... However, how does this go?
“‘Oh, Major! Oh, Major! Oh, Major!’ he said,
‘What shall we do with this flying cadet?
His ambitions are many,
His achievements are small,
He came through the Game with no wings at all!’”

“Good! Good! Bravo!” An enthusiastic clapping of maidens’ hands around the Council Fire. “But how did he get through without any wings?” hazarded one small voice.

“Because he failed to win them, his breast-wings, his insignia.” The R. M. A., Lieutenant Ned, touched the winged emblem upon his own breast. “Or perhaps he was grounded--dropped--while learning to fly, for some act of stupidity or dare-deviltry, say, making a pancake landing, as I might have done on the sands here, coming down flat, kerplunk, without easing her off at all--wrecking his machine.”

“Humph! I’m glad that we didn’t make a pancake landing over on Squawk Hill this morning--fall down flat upon our war-work. Then we’d have come through the Game with no wings at all, eh?” Sara bent whimsically towards the shading flames of wreck-wood. “And now--now for the thrills!” she demanded hungrily.

“Such as we gave the long-suffering public on that memorable field-day? What do you say to an a?rial bomb going off, to fifty-four air-ships parading in the sky, doing loops, spins, spirals, Immelmann turns, when you change your direction quickly, and so forth; to two aviators--one in reality--making pretense of changing places while looping, and--and the feminine shrieks when a life-size dummy, in leather togs, fell headlong out?”

“I’ll wager that, among the spectators, the men were as nervous as the women--so there, you Cavalryman of the Clouds!” pouted Sara, almost leaning her cheek against the silver and rose of a flaming dead arm of juniper, found on the beach.

“I wonder that you weren’t afraid to burlesque tragedy?” The Guardian caught her breath.

“Well, we came near getting the real thing: one lieutenant fell in a tailspin, in mid-air. We were pretty sure he was done for,” gravely. “Eventually, he recovered. The same accident once happened to me, but so high up that I managed to right the machine--get control of it--before I reached the ground; hence my nickname.”

The younger aviator, the intrepid pilot, leaned also, half-wistfully, towards the Council Fire:
“Oh!... Oh! a won-der-ful thing is a flying cadet,
He lives on a promise and hope,”

he chanted softly once more, ere pursuing the backward thrills of field-day.

“Well! I suppose it’s high time that we were tucking our heads under our wings--or bunking out on those wings, on the beach,” he remarked half an hour later, after excited hostesses, by this eventful Council Fire, had listened, with cheeks aflame, to more a?rial jokes “put over” upon civilians; to tales of clown flying and a?rial battles; to the crowning narrative of an “enemy” air-ship--of counterfeit hostility, like the gas-attack at Camp Evens--appearing to bomb the field; of an oil-puddle afire, to represent a burning city; of sirens sounding, bombs exploding, cloud-high, and a U. S. a?roplane “jumping on his tail” to bring him down.

“Gracious! I’ll hear those whistles--that a?rial bombardment--in my sleep,” murmured Arline, the Rainbow. “If you’re very tired after flying your long course to-day, you can both turn in to sleep in one of the tents, and we’ll guard the big war-plane in a body--we girls--during part of the night, anyway,” proffered she, the most timid of the group.

The Guardian laughed; so did the a?ronauts.

“Sing us a lullaby, instead--another smooth song,” pleaded Big Boy.

And drowsily the strains of “Mammy Moon” stole from tired voices upon the dark, while the full-faced Green-Corn Moon looked down, perhaps pondering upon how many generations of moons had come and gone without seeing such a miracle as the great winged fish upon the dusky beach--the competing voyager of the clouds.

“I suppose you won’t be abroad at dawn to see us take off from the sands--see us ‘zoom’!” remarked the younger aviator as he bade his beaded hostesses good-night.

“Don’t be too sure of that!” came the answer of drowsy challenge, melting into the magic--deep soul-magic--of
“Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame,
O Master of the Hidden Fire.
Wash pure my heart and cleanse for me
My soul’s desire!”

“Aye! that’s the Fire to warm our bare castles in the air--with it the endless spaces cannot be dreary,” commented the observer to the tide as he stretched himself out to bunk in vigil, upon one of the a?roplane’s linen wings, while the tired young pilot, for the earlier part of the night, enjoyed the luxury of a tent.

Yes, the same fire it was which burned in the breast of Iver Davenport, now, perhaps, lying out in a shell-hole in No Man’s Land--he who “had come nearer to God” since he volunteered; the same which had inspired Olive, child of luxury, the modern Maid, upon a humble field, to “carry on” in the teeth of distaste and weariness; the same, in degree, which upheld her boy cousin, leading a blind horse hitched to a heavy timber through a shipyard, and not reveling in his novel “job”!
“In flame of sunrise bathe my mind,
O Master of the Hidden Fire,
That when I wake, clear-eyed may be
My soul’s desire.”

It was in the earliest flames of sunrise that a dozen, at least, of wakeful girls thronged the white beach--where cranberry vines trailed exquisitely over the sands, laying young cheeks of faintly flushed berries upon snowy pillows--to watch the great battle-plane take off--take the air, in its upward flight.

“Now, I’ll ‘give her the gun’--open the throttle! And see me ‘zoom’!” laughed the pilot--Big Boy--waving renewed farewells from his tiny cock-pit.

“Yes! Watch him ‘zoom’!... Fly upward into the clouds! Oh, see the Bird!” was the responsive challenge of one girl to another.

“We’ll tell the story of this visit by the Council Fire, as long as ever we’re a Group,” said Olive, an envious Blue Heron, her wide, dark eyes catching a pink spark from dawn, as they followed the big war-plane on its zooming--cloud-climbing--flight, straight upward.

“We’ll stencil it on a sheepskin and pass it down to--to our children’s children,” chuckled Sara, “as an incident of the ‘off ’ side of the Great War, when flying was in its youth! But”--she caught her breath, while a speculative dawn flame, a red flush, crept up her neck--“but I don’t believe there was anything ‘off’--vague, I mean--about the purpose of those two aviators; they were air-scouts on patrol-duty--spy-hunters--mark my words--flying low, most of the time, over the shore, while the observer, Goggle Eyes, with his binoculars, leaning out, I suppose--oh! I wonder how he could do it?--searched the woods and all lonely places, like ours, for suspicious huts--secret wireless-stations----”

She broke off, dreamily following the mounting cavalry of the sky.

“Well! As yet, we’ve only seen one strange man around here--that seal-hunter,” began Arline.

“Whose face I have seen somewhere before!... Goody! See them ‘zoom’! Higher--higher!”

Sara’s own face was a puckered flame, lit by a brand from day’s first burning, but by no coveted memory-flash, as she watched the a?roplane, now a rosy speck--a radiant, exploring dragon-fly--upon the far-away edge of dawn.

“Bah! The seal-hunter! Nothing wrong ’bout him!” Lilla blinked drowsily upward, the sleepiest Little Owl ever caught abroad in daylight. “He has a contract, Captain Andy says, to deliver a lot of those spotted skins of hair-seals to some firm, for making babies’ shoes--awf’ly soft an’ nice for that! I wonder if he’ll get that big ‘buster’ which played submarine with us? And whenever he comes down the river, from that little shipbuilding town which he makes his headquarters, or near there, his guide, old America Burnham, who’s as loyal as his name, comes with him--that’s what they told us at the farmhouse where we went for milk.”

“He was--alone--when he passed us on the beach, while I was painting the dory.... Ugh! I’m cold; d’you know it?” shivered Sara, her flame dying down, like an early morning fire lit too soon, before there is fuel to feed it, refusing even to kindle the spark of memory which she craved, for her comfort.

“Well, if there was a busy spy up in the neighborhood of those shipyards, he might--think of it!--might manage to give out information about the launching of some of the medium-sized vessels which the men are building just’s fast as ever they can, working overtime at it--I wonder if my cousin who leads the blind horse gets as far as that?--to fill the gaps made by horrid submarines in the spunky Gloucester fishing-fleet.”

Sybil’s eyes of monkey-flower blue were now throwing a?rial forget-me-nots--pensive glances--after the vanishing cavalry of the air, even as she thus spoke, with one-half of her thoughts on those less spectacular heroes of the deep, the toiling fishermen, whose schooners and savings were being, daily, sunk before their eyes.

“Humph! Captain Andy says he wonders why the subs have not ventured in near shore already, and made an attempt to sink some of those vessels just after they were launched--when they first smelled water, meaning when they were being towed round to the seaport--Gloucester--to have their masts and rigging set up.... O dear! may it not be long before he takes us up the river to see a launching, and visit my Cousin Atwood at his work. I just want to see for myself what sort of a bold front that boy is putting up now!”

Olive, laughing and yearning together, waved a farewell to the a?roplane, now a vanishing speck.
“‘Oh, Major! Oh, Major! Oh, Major!’ he said ...”

Sara’s shoulders were comically shrugged.
“His ambitions are many,
His achievements are small,
He came through the Game with no wings at all!”

“How do you know? He may be growing some--that spoiled cousin of mine--faster than you are. All war service wings are not of the same feather exactly!”

And now the morning-song of Olive’s laughter held a challenging note of rebuke.