“A leaf out of the German treatise on
See, here’s a way out. Across that boundary
efficiency,” said Rockwood with a genial we’re enemies. All right. Here we’re brother smile, as Imman himself shoved the propeller
airmen, eh? Both in difficulties. Now, I’ll
into place, adjusting the holes to the shaft,
swap you two gallons of gas for all the
while the young American slipped the seven
cartridges you have left. Your cartridges won’t huge bolts into place, and secured them with a
work in my gun. The reason is that your
mechanical exactness which brought a gleam
Fokker Shoots through the propeller-shaft; my
of silent admiration into the eyes of his late
weapon is a Lewis automatic, operated from
opponent.
the fuselage. You fellows drumfire us by
“Pardon me, Lieutenant Rockwood,”
simply spiraling down on us. We’ve got to
said Imman, stiffening suddenly. “unless we
admit you have a clever device, and a deadly
both wish to be interned in Switzerland for the one. You think you’re fighting a just cause. So balance of the war, it is time we left here.
do I, and as gentlemen, if we both get safely
There is a patrol about five miles away out of this, we can meet—well, somewhere coming down the mountain-trail yonder.”
else some day, eh?”
“Yes,” said Rockwood quietly. “And
“Sir,” replied Imman punctiliously,
once over the frontier—”
“you are a gentleman of discernment and a
“We are enemies as before,” said brother airman—here. Elsewhere you are my Imman more stiffly than formerly.
enemy. I accept, sir; but I warn you that I shall
“Enemies to be sure,” laughed use that gas to fly to Strassburg, where I shall Rockwood; “only, mon ami, I am at rather a obtain fresh fuel and munitions. And I can be
disadvantage, since I have run entirely out of
in Strassburg from where we are now in half
ammunition.”
an hour.”
“But I have not,” countered Imman.
Rockwood
grinned.
“You are the enemy of my Fatherland; you are
“And while you tank up in Strassburg I
an American who has come over to fight us,
shall be hitting the high lanes for the Allied
and once across the frontier—”
lines. Come on; I have a small collapsible
All-Story Weekly
10
bucket. While you get your gas from my tank,
very mouth of the antiaircraft gun.
I’ll get my cartridges from your fuselage.”
It was the same object at glimpse of
which the others of the pun-crew had hurled
Colonel Frederick Imman, standing by
themselves into their bomb-proofs—the same
the grave of his only son, seemed again to
object which had fallen at Colonel Imman’s
hear his beloved boy’s accents as he recounted
feet.
the story after his safe flight back to the
It was a wreath of laurel leaves,
Verdun base.
spotted with immortelles.
So vivid was the old veteran’s reverie
Attached to it was a card reading:
that he could scarcely believe that his son was not yet actually speaking to him. So many
In reverent memory of my brother
things were so unreal since this grim and
airman. Lieutenant Imman. from
ghastly struggle had commenced that even the
fresh mound of earth at his feet appeared at
KANE
ROCKWOOD.
times a fantasy.
Yet his beloved son lay there, despite
The veteran of two wars laid the
the fact that he was the most expert airman in
wreath on the fresh-made mound, replaced his
the German army. Twenty-seven enemy cap, and stepped back through the lanes of aeroplanes had gone down before the hellish
hangars which seemed to be swallowed up by
blast of his machine-gun, blazing amazingly
the ground a few rods farther on.
certain destruction through the hollow
He passed the covert where, in a
propeller-shaft. Flight-Lieutenant Imman had
cunningly contrived artificial copse of shrubs, only to bestride his meteorlike machine, his subordinate. Sub-Lieutenant Schneider, whose speed in still air was one hundred and
with true Teutonic thoroughness, was
twenty miles per hour, climb high, and spiral
applying his eye to the lens of the powerful
down upon his objective.
binocular mounted on the quadrant of the
Nevertheless, three days after his antiaircraft gun over which he was stooping.
return from Alsace he had been shot down on
A marvelous mechanism, that
the north bank of the Meuse—by Rockwood.
binocular, dragging distance into the
Hate hung fire, however, that sun-
foreground as relentlessly as gravitation
drenched August morning, although rage and
dragged a disabled aeroplane earthward.
grief inconsolable had torn at the veteran’s
But something more marvelous blotted
heart when he woke at dawn. In his hand was
out the sight of the concealed weapon and its
the thing which the reckless Rockwood had
methodical watcher; something that,
launched from his fuselage when, after somehow, eased for a moment the frightful tricking Sub-Lieutenant Schneider into the sense of desolation that had engulfed the belief that he had been fatally injured, the
colonel unchallenged since his son’s demise
intrepid American drove headlong down at the
until this flawless morning.
Brother Enemies by Frank Blighton Page 3
