Life — July 15, 1915 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LIFE-> 103 The Aviator ‘By Hornell Hart ““THE French Government declines to accept your serv- ices.” The words said themselves over and over in his ears in the drone of the motor, as the monoplane climbed into the velvet night sky. Was that diplomatic blunder of two years ago so utterly unforgivable? Was exile not enough? Would the Republic deny him even the right to fight under her colors? “The French Govern- ment declines to accept your services.” The recruiting officer had said it, and General Joffre had reiterated the unrelenting statement in reply to his direct appeal for enlistment, And now the drone of the propeller, the hum of the motor and the rush of the air through the races whispered the words ceaselessly into his ears as the great wings carried him up into the darkness. Below, the ghostly searchlight fingers of the fortress reached up, groping toward him, The central searchlight of the fortress was playing on a French cruiser which had crept up recklessly close to the fort and was pouring shells in rapid salvos up into the battlements on the hill. The sparks of fire from the ship's side seemed but tiny points of light far down below. Momentarily balls of flame appeared above and around the dim outlines of the fortifications, and the smoke of bursting shells drifted wanly across the white, searching pencils of light. Down there France, undaunted, grappled the Turk in the dark- ness. From the farther shore distant lights of Asia twinkled in the night. Behind that central searchlight, Henri had said, lay the entrance to the powder magazine. That passageway was the vital spot of the fortress. An explosion there would ignite the ammunition and shatter the entire center of the fortifications, A searchlight came wheeling across the sky and shot past just behind the monoplane. The flash of the guns on the hill were now just beneath him, and their roar formed a surging background of sound to the whirr of the ma- chine, He swept in a huge curve toward a position back of the fortress, The searchlight was circling the sky agi For a fraction of a second the aeroplane was silhouetted in its full glare. The beam wavered and returned zigzagging to pick him up again, This time it caught and followed him, A shell burst below him. If one fragment of shrapnel should strike the nitroglycerine which he carried France would profit little from this last ride of his. The fortress was not far behind him. He swept about and pointed the nose of the monoplane downward straight toward the base of the central searchlight. Its beam had ceased to play on the battleship and was lifting swiftly toward him, Suddenly its glare caught him straight in the eyes. He gripped the controls and steered tensely for that dazzling target. “The French Government declines to accept your serv- ices.” He smiled grimly. They could not well decline them now. The air rushed past him so swiftly that it seemed stiff like a stream of water under high pressure. Below him at that point of light death stood smiling. The crash of a shell bursting behind him was lost in the gale of wind in his ears, The light grew swiftly larger and the out- lines of the battlements became distinct, “The French Government—” the world ended in a crash of blistering whiteness, “He was pointed directly at the magazine,” said Abdul, the gunner. “If the shell from the French cruiser had not struck him we should all by now have been with Allah.” geon. “I told you she would come back. Her constitution——" “Constitution!” scoffed the nurse. “Tt was you,” “Or,” smiled the surgeon, magnani- mously, “your prayers, sir.” But the sick woman made a gesture of dissent. “No,” she said, “it was none of those things, I came back when I re- the village of membered ——” wives, “ Paul,” she whispered, “lean down.” hundred men, From the war there returned fifty-one—only fifty- many to pick from? Thus stood mat- in Eisen were two ters that Sunday morning. He obeyed. Her palms fluttered had against his cheeks, and, as lightly as one—and there a butterfly on a flower, her lips brushed hundred and eighty-one girls wanting his one closed eye and then the other, husbands. The Gretchen Plan By William Johnston “ A ND Solomon had seven hundred hospital. Hilda Sachs, the rich widow, read Pastor Brandt, Gretchen Edeler sat up to listen. twenty-eight men available for hus- A new idea had come to her. A bands—twenty-eight to two hundre distressing state of affairs existed in and cighty-one girls, en, There had gone to the war from the village over three wished to marry as much as the had captured one. That left just Yet no marriages occurred. The men but how could a man decide with so After the service Gretchen waited to speak to Pastor Brandt. And then the girl who had been Ellen McCartney laughed a low, thrilling laugh, which spoke of youth in love in the springtime. Of the fifty-one returned soldiers twenty had wives and families already, Two had married during the war, mar- ried the nurses they had had in the “Everything in the Bible,” she asked anxiously, “is it always right?” a,” the herr pastor affirmed, “the Bible always gives right.” comicbooks.com