na

 
 THE SWALLOW
 
 THE SWALLOW 
 
 A NOVEL BASED UPON THE 
 ACTUAL EXPERIENCES OF ONE 
 OF THE SURVIVORS OF THE 
 FAMOUS LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 
 
 BY 
 
 RUTH DUNBAR 
 
 BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
 
 NEWYORK 1919
 
 Copyright, 1919, 
 
 BY BONI & LlVKRIGHT, INC, 
 
 Firrt printing, April, 1919' 
 Second printing, May, 1919 
 
 Printed in the U.S.A.
 
 TO MY MOTHER 
 
 "THE BRAVEST SOLDIER i HAVE EVER KNOWN" 
 
 2135357 '
 
 THE SWALLOW
 
 THE SWALLOW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MY mother's father was a captain in the 
 Civil War. Had my mother been a man 
 she, too, would have been a captain perhaps in 
 a less bloody business. As one of that gentler, 
 fiercer sex, however, she was the wife of a clergy- 
 man in a Texas town. But her soul came march- 
 ing on. Her overcoming spirit that was my in- 
 heritance. 
 
 That her spirit in me should seek satisfaction 
 thousands of yards above the German trenches 
 was an accident of time and invention. The 
 Great War and the airplane only gave it direc- 
 tion. The spirit was always there. 
 
 My one boyish ambition was to fight. My one 
 boyish regret was that I never could see General 
 Grant. And when airplanes came into use, all 
 my desire crystallised into the one desire to fly. 
 As this presented difficulties to a small boy in a
 
 2 THE SWALLOW 
 
 town where flying machines had never been seen, 
 I had to content my martial impulse by attend- 
 ing a military school at home. While I was wait- 
 ing to become old enough to enter West Point 
 my father died. So I had to withdraw my ap- 
 plication and think of some way to help my 
 mother. It was due to her foresight that my de- 
 cision fell where it did. 
 
 "Hard times will affect the sale of breastpins 
 but not of beans," she said. "Think of some- 
 thing people can't do without." 
 
 "Bread," I suggested. 
 
 "Then start a bakery," she said. 
 
 So I went up to the fort where I had always 
 gone to dance with the officers' daughters and 
 had the baker teach me to make bread. During 
 the last few summers I had clerked, driven de- 
 livery cars and learned various lower ropes of 
 commerce. As a result I could now handle the 
 business end of my own venture while my mother 
 planned the policy. 
 
 "You may as well point your nose at money," 
 was another of her theories. "It costs less to sell 
 ten loaves at ten cents apiece than twenty loaves 
 at five cents apiece." 
 
 With this advantage in view we made fash- 
 ionable bread. We even made bread fashionable.
 
 THE SWALLOW 3 
 
 We sold every loaf for ten cents straight and 
 sold it sealed in the first waxed paper wrappers 
 that had ever come into El Paso. We kept the 
 bakery white as a lily. We had started to supply 
 only a limited demand. But as" our custom grew 
 and our machinery kept pace with it we startled 
 our public with noodle-soup and pot-pies and 
 other dishes through which my mother had a en- 
 joyed local fame. And every Saturday evening 
 at six we sold pans of her hot, golden-brown bis- 
 cuits that became a sacred institution in the homes 
 of El Paso. Soon I had to add my younger 
 brother arid my cousin to the staff. We were mak- 
 ing a good living for the four of us and turning 
 every surplus cent back into the business. 
 
 Then something happened in Europe. A gal- 
 lant rabbit stood between the hole where its babies 
 trembled, and a band of coyotes. France and 
 England placed themselves beside the rabbit. I 
 waited for America to go in with France and 
 England. America did not do it. But I for one 
 could not go on selling ten-cent loaves in waxed 
 paper. It was my chance, the chance of every 
 young man in America, to adventure generously. 
 
 That was August, August of 1914. By Christ- 
 mas I was still scheming how to get to France. 
 For as I did not want to take money from the
 
 4 THE SWALLOW 
 
 business, I should have to work my passage. It 
 was Lee Malone who solved the problem. 
 
 My friendship for Lee was founded on one 
 plank: we were after the same girl. Lee had read 
 an advertisement in a New Orleans paper calling 
 for men to work their passage across the sea. 
 
 "So if we can get work," said he, coming up 
 to the bakery to show me the paper, "I'll go with 
 you." 
 
 I wrung his hand joyfully. To have compan- 
 ionship would double the fun. Besides this 
 was an afterthought I should be glad to have 
 him away from El Paso. 
 
 I wrote at once to the New Orleans man, whom 
 I shall call Marks. Marks replied that as ships 
 were going out every few days he could use us 
 any time. So it was settled that we were to 
 leave on New Year's night. After a last evening 
 with mother I was to pick Lee up at Jasmine 
 Gray's. 
 
 My mother had never tried to keep me. "If 
 I were a young man I'd go, too," she said with 
 that rare heroism that can face hardship for loved 
 ones. Her courage only made the parting more 
 bitter. And when I put my arms about her for a 
 last kiss, it was I, not she, who could not keep 
 back the tears.
 
 THE SWALLOW 5 
 
 "God bless you, wherever you go," she said, 
 pulling my head to her shoulder with a quick 
 pressure before she unclasped my arms to let me 
 
 go. 
 
 I wiped my eyes and, trying to whistle the 
 lump out of my throat, bounded up the steps of 
 the Gray's old Moorish home. 
 
 Pausing before the bell I took off my hat and 
 passed a hand over my hair which, always pulling 
 against the wind with the ruffled determination 
 of a hungry carrion, had earned me the title of 
 Buzzard. This, added to the fact that my short- 
 sighted parents, though bearing the name of 
 Byrd, had not scrupled to christen me Richard, 
 produced the tragedy of my childhood. It was 
 bad enough not to have been called General 
 Grant; but the Dicky-bird was not to be borne. 
 In my extreme youth, between the ages of four 
 and eight, I could employ the same method on 
 both sexes for the protection of my honour. In 
 later years public sentiment forced me to cease 
 battering the noses of little girls. But through 
 the blood of my own kind I wiped out my dis- 
 grace. I did not object to the Buzzard that re- 
 placed the Dicky-bird. Though an offensive ob- 
 ject to some, the Buzzard was to me an acceptable 
 namesake.
 
 6 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Aw, just one!" 
 
 It was Lee's cajoling voice. Beyond the foun- 
 tain in the moonlit court which led to Jasmine's 
 house, I could dimly see a white figure. Turning 
 my head away sharply, I gave a smart ring at the 
 doorbell. But I could not resist listening for her 
 answer. My heart pounded disconcertingly. I 
 had never dared so far. 
 
 Through the door that opened to my ring 
 gushed a jet of light and laughter. While I an- 
 swered greetings my eyes ran over the crowd that 
 had come to the Gray's home to tell us good-bye. 
 Yes, there they were at the back of the room . . . 
 Lee and Jasmine. They had come in the portico 
 
 entrance. As her eyes met mine I wondered 
 
 how had she answered Lee? 
 
 "Right oh, every time," yelled Toby Christian 
 jolting me out of a troubled trance. "You're 
 stuck!" 
 
 "Stuck?" I repeated stupidly. 
 
 "We're guessing everybody that rings the bell," 
 explained Betty Frost, wheeling about me as if 
 she were a young gull and I a particularly choice 
 crust thrown on the water. "Step ring that's 
 a girl. Step stop ring that's a boy. Boys have 
 to take time to comb their tresses, you know. And 
 every one we guess right has to do a stunt."
 
 THE SWALLOW 7 
 
 "Step full stop that's the Buzzard. It takes 
 him longer than any one else to dress his feathers," 
 Tony elaborated. "Come through with a stunt, 
 my boy." 
 
 "Haven't much time for stunting." 
 
 I looked from the clock to Jasmine. Lee was 
 on her heels. Through some unwritten code of 
 my own I had expected him to give me the last 
 few minutes of a whole evening with her. But 
 Lee had an air of settled proprietorship. I cher- 
 ished the suspicion of her secret preference for me, 
 however doubtless Lee entertained a similar one 
 and I meant to reap its benefits. What man has 
 done man can do. I had as much nerve as Lee. 
 
 In the meantime the crowd was howling. 
 
 "Train or no train, you have to do your bit," 
 announced Betty, once more putting on the gull 
 and bread attraction. 
 
 "All right," said I, thinking fast. "Two fel- 
 lows sit down here in the middle of the room 
 Toby, you'll do and Lee that's the dope and 
 we blindfold you. Then you wait till we get 
 the show ready and you have to guess from the 
 speeches what we're staging." 
 
 "What's the name of this stunt 1 ?" asked Lee 
 uneasily from behind his bandage. 
 
 "It's called Blind Man's Movies," I an-
 
 8 THE SWALLOW 
 
 swered. "Come on, the rest of you hurry up." 
 
 "The stunt is," I whispered outside, "to see 
 how long those two goats will sit there." 
 
 I caught Jasmine by the hand and leaving the 
 rest in suppressed laughter at sight of the solemn, 
 trustful figures, I ran with her out into a corner 
 of the court screened off by magnolias. 
 
 "We sure gave them the merry ha-ha," I 
 chuckled. 
 
 She laughed, little rustles of leafy laughter. In 
 the wavy moonlight I could just see her with the 
 bloom on her skin, the round, soft firmness of a 
 peach. Her eyes, too, held the tropical warmth 
 of the ripening sun on an orchard and her hair 
 was full of fruity tints. Even her hands were 
 frail and twining like the young shoots on a tree. 
 As I looked down at her I grew suddenly afraid. 
 
 "Well, goodbye, Jack," I said in a rigid voice. 
 
 "Good-bye, Dick," she answered. 
 
 Was this all? My heart beat quickly. No, I 
 could never do it ... I would wait till I came 
 back . . . But that was a long time ... I 
 must do it now. I couldn't . . . Then unexpect- 
 edly a magnolia dipping in the breeze shuttered 
 her face from the moonlight. In that kind dark- 
 ness I groped for her soft lips with my own, groped 
 and found them.
 
 THE SWALLOW 9 
 
 She was mine! The earth was mine! I was 
 sure now what her answer had been to Lee. Poor 
 old Lee! My heart sang in triumph at her first 
 kiss. 
 
 "When I come back," I whispered uncertainly. 
 
 "Why do you go'?" she asked slowly. 
 
 "Oh, I have to go!" 
 
 "But what do you have to go for?" 
 
 I looked down at her helplessly. She was a 
 girl. She would never understand. 
 
 "Why, to see life and get a pop at the Ger- 
 mans and not be a quitter." 
 
 And that in chronological order was my creed. 
 I did not know then how the values would shift. 
 
 She laughed softly, those little rustles of laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 "But when I come back " I could not seem 
 
 to finish. 
 
 She looked up at me in silence. Again I sought 
 and found assurance on her lips. 
 
 Somewhere a clock stroked the midnight air 
 with a touch of silver. 
 
 "I'll have to go now," I said and stood still. 
 "But I'll write. And you write, won't you*?" 
 
 She promised. 
 
 "I must go now," I repeated and still stood,
 
 10 THE SWALLOW 
 
 unable to leave her. At last I gave myself a jerk. 
 With a last long kiss, I turned away. 
 
 "Say!" I shouted on the steps to the scattered 
 couples. "We're not going to have time for that 
 show, after all. Toddle along, Lee, and get your 
 suitcase. Meet you at the station. No time to 
 lose. Good-bye, everybody, good-bye good- 
 bye!" 
 
 There was a rush to the courtyard, a flutter of 
 handkerchiefs, there were cries of farewell. With 
 his bandage shoved back on his head, Lee shot a 
 glance from me to Jasmine. I waved my hat 
 and turned down the street. 
 
 In a moment I heard Lee's step behind me. I 
 looked around. His serious face was flushed 
 but he showed no sign of resentment. As he 
 swung along beside me with the grace of a per- 
 fect animal I thought him unusually handsome. 
 This added to my sense of triumph. 
 
 "Leave your bag at the station?" I asked me- 
 chanically. I was back under the magnolias. 
 
 "Just what I was going to tell you 'bout soon 
 as I got my breath," he answered, speaking very 
 fast. "Kid, I've been thinking it over and I be- 
 lieve we're fools to go to Orleans without any 
 jack or any sure job. I believe we'd better stick
 
 THE SWALLOW 11 
 
 around till we find out if there's a real thing 
 waiting for us down there." 
 
 "After we've told every one good-bye*?" I 
 gasped. "Sneak back now like licked curs'? 
 Not on your life. Come on, old man, be a sport." 
 
 "Well," said Lee resolutely, "I've decided to 
 wait till I have something to go on. But I tell 
 you what. If you find there's jobs for both of 
 us in New Orleans, wire me and I'll join you." 
 
 We were at the depot now. I stopped full 
 under the light and looked at him, at the loose 
 ends of his red mouth, at the hot dark eyes that 
 always met mine with too steady a frankness. 
 
 "If you're yellow enough to back down now," 
 I said, "you'll never hear from me again." 
 
 "Well, I can't see it your way," he answered 
 stubbornly. "But good luck anyhow, old scout.'* 
 
 We shook hands and without waiting for me to 
 jump on the train that had panted into the sta- 
 tion, he left. 
 
 From the back platform I looked my last at 
 home the old Spanish town in the desert sleep- 
 ing through the balmy winter night. After my 
 hour of heady satisfaction came a moment of dis- 
 may. I was a little upset by Lee's shabbiness, a 
 little hungry for another moonlit moment under 
 the magnolias, a little desolated at thought of
 
 12 THE SWALLOW 
 
 my mother listening in the quiet house to the 
 roar of the train taking me away. 
 
 Scant time I had, however, for these emotions. 
 I had expressed my bag straight through to New 
 Orleans and bought my ticket only to the next 
 station a few miles off. For with a fortune of 
 just ten dollars I should have to steal the rest 
 of the ride. So I hid in the blind till the train 
 reached Houston. There I bought another ticket 
 to the next station where I fell in with hobos who 
 taught me to ride the rods. 
 
 At every stop we took on men who, like us, 
 were beating their way East. They were the car- 
 rion of the labouring world. They were the men 
 who picked up the refuse of industry, gathering 
 canteloupes in Arizona, reaching Nebraska just 
 in time to harvest grain, going on to Oregon in the 
 autumn for the logging work. Now they were 
 drifting down to New Orleans for the banana 
 season. 
 
 I have wallowed in mud with human swine. I 
 have tended cattle better kept than we who 
 tended them. But I have never seen anything 
 to compare with the filth of Marks' Yard in New 
 Orleans. 
 
 Marks was contracting men to take over mules 
 for the British Government. Bums all over the
 
 THE SWALLOW 13 
 
 country had read the advertisement that attracted 
 Lee. As a consequence there were hundreds of 
 us waiting for the promised jobs. Every man 
 that arrived was told that he would get work on 
 the next ship; pay was to be fifty dollars and a 
 return trip if he wanted it. 
 
 While we waited assignment we lived in the 
 Yard. Here Marks provided service in the form 
 of a huge kettle, an open fire and tin dippers. 
 Board consisted of a soup-bone flung each morn- 
 ing into the kettle. If we wanted to elaborate 
 this stock, that was our own affair. As we in- 
 variably did, we detailed certain men every day 
 to get ingredients for the Mulligan. Some pulled 
 carrots from vegetable carts, some stole rice from 
 the rice mills. With a deference for nuances I, 
 who had beaten my way by train, refused to steal 
 food. I was therefore detailed to beg bread from 
 a bakery. This duty I performed with more in- 
 dustry because of a pretty Creole who tended 
 counter and gave me all the stale loaves I could 
 carry away. 
 
 Once a week the men emptied out the soup- 
 bone, stripped, put their shirts in the kettle and 
 had their boiling-up. After serving as tub the 
 versatile kettle was once more united with its 
 soup-bone. Fresh from my mother's ordered
 
 14 THE SWALLOW 
 
 household I was not yet acclimated to the dual 
 personality of that kettle ; and after the first boil- 
 ing-up, avoiding the Mulligan, I spent the last 
 of my ten dollars on beans and sinkers. For two 
 days I could live on twenty-five cents. When my 
 last quarter went I began unloading bananas on 
 the docks. I could make a few cents a day over 
 meals. Every time I found a banana too ripe 
 to ship I slipped it into my pocket; or if I saw 
 a whole ripe hand I threw it under a pile of straw 
 to be divided in the Yard. 
 
 As every day I was expecting to sail I had no 
 letters sent here; and since that triumphant mo- 
 ment under the magnolias I had not heard from 
 Jasmine. But I wrote often to her, telling as 
 much of my life as was expedient and planning 
 for that indefinite time when I should come back, 
 rich and distinguished, to reward her fidelity. 
 Now I could write the words that I had dumbly 
 tried to speak. But in spite of youthful arro- 
 gance I saw the humour of the situation. Still 
 squeamish about the kettle, either for laundry or 
 table use, I had not bathed since I left home. My 
 clothes were greasy, my hair was unkempt. I 
 was writing in a yard which would make an In- 
 dian camp look like a model of sanitation, among 
 men who would make a siwash himself look as
 
 THE SWALLOW 15 
 
 if he had just stepped from his valet's hands. 
 And I smiled as I thought where my letters were 
 going to that dainty little beauty in the old 
 Moorish house. 
 
 In the meantime two weeks had passed. Nu- 
 merous ships had gone out. Every half a hun- 
 dred men that went by boat left a hundred more 
 coming in by train. And still Marks advertised. 
 Why he wanted to supply soup to more men than 
 he had to, I could not understand. When I got 
 to England I learned how he paid himself a high 
 rate of interest. For the present I was tired of 
 waiting. So, armed with his letter and my pass- 
 port, I went to register a kick at the British con- 
 sulate. There I ran into Marks himself. 
 
 "Look here," I said, loud enough for the con- 
 sul to hear, "I've got a letter from you promising 
 me a job the day I get here. I've watched one 
 boat after another off. What's the meaning of 
 this?' 
 
 "Letter from me? Vy didn't you tell me, vy 
 didn't you tell me 1 ? Take it to my foreman. He'll 
 ship you at vonce," he answered, sliding me out 
 of the consul's hearing. 
 
 Education, presence, impudence whatever it 
 was that enabled me in my greasy attire to attack 
 Marks at the consul's office, I was grateful for it.
 
 16 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Out of several hundred men just as entitled as I 
 to go, I was scheduled to sail next day. 
 
 Before it was light next morning the chosen 
 forty were lined up on the dock. Our ship was 
 the Dunedin from Leith. Our business was to 
 take care of six hundred and thirty mules. These 
 long-eared passengers were shown more considera- 
 tion than we; for while we were kept waiting all 
 day on the dock, they were shown at once to their 
 staterooms by the coloured attendants. 
 
 After the last darky had run his mule down the 
 chute there was nothing to amuse us. It was 
 growing dusk. We had eaten nothing since morn- 
 ing. Just as we were getting so tired and hungry 
 that brawls were breaking out all along the line, 
 Marks bustled up. 
 
 Marks took his stand near the forward hatch 
 and, too rapidly for any one to hear, read our ar- 
 ticles. We were then shoved forward, a pen was 
 thrust at us, and with Marks screaming at us to 
 step lively and give the next fellow a chance, we 
 wrote our signatures. We were in the dark, we 
 were pushed forward, we were all terrified for 
 fear we should miss our chance to go. Under 
 these conditions no one tried to read his articles. 
 For all I knew, I might have agreed to murder 
 my mother and hand her jewels over to Marks.
 
 THE SWALLOW 17 
 
 It was six o'clock before we swung off. Our 
 quarters were in the poop where pine bunks in 
 tiers of two lined the walls. In the centre stood 
 the eating tables. In one corner were the four 
 faucets and basins that made up our toilet facili- 
 ties. 
 
 Out of the forty men thirty of us were selected 
 as muleteers. The other ten were more highly 
 specialised the veterinary and his assistant, the 
 watchman, carpenter, first and second cook and 
 four foremen. The personnel of the foremen was 
 an Englishman, two ham actors with red socks 
 and pink neckties, and the head foreman who had 
 never missed a scrap of any size from the Boer 
 War down. After one of these recreational bouts, 
 when his nose had been bitten smoothly off his 
 face, he was known as Puggy. 
 
 The foremen, I discovered as soon as I was on 
 board, had armed themselves with clubs. As I 
 began to recall stories of shanghai, my stomach 
 gave way. Just then a fish-faced giant called 
 Sockeye, ambling up to Puggy, stood looking 
 down at him with his lips drawn back from his 
 teeth in an attempt at an amiable smile. 
 
 "In the best naughtycal circles," he said softly, 
 knocking the club out of Puggy's armpit, "gem- 
 man don't carry canes on shipboard. Awften and
 
 18 THE SWALLOW 
 
 awften have I saw my friend Rockyfeller check 
 his cane before starting a croose on his yawt, The 
 Kerosene Kan." 
 
 Sauntering over to the other foremen he col- 
 lected their sticks and threw them overboard. 
 Then he flashed upon his superiors a smile of 
 benevolent ferocity that nailed them where they 
 stood. 
 
 But now less lurid troubles concerned me. The 
 Forty had all been behind bars. Arson, forgery, 
 murder, vagrancy and vice at best such were 
 their achievements. They were as proud of Sock- 
 eye's distinguished career in crime as a mother 
 whose son lands in the Supreme Court. I was 
 the only one in disgrace. I had never done time, I 
 had never even been drunk, I had worked hard, 
 and until now I had indulged a degenerate taste 
 for bathing. Worst of all I was a minister's son. 
 
 I did my best to improve. I discarded the fork 
 as effete and relied solely upon the virile knife as 
 an aid to nourishment. Even had I not been 
 forced to, I should have left off brushing my 
 teeth. I dug up a crime or two for which I had 
 escaped hanging only by desperate cunning. I 
 would have jumped overboard sooner than have 
 it known that any ancestor of mine had fallen so 
 low as to affect a butler. I was just twenty, the
 
 THE SWALLOW 19 
 
 youngest in the crowd, and I hoped for leniency 
 because of youth. There was still time to turn 
 over a new leaf. But in spite of my earnest de- 
 sire to reform, the scent of the finger-bowl clung 
 round me still. To my shame Sockeye branded 
 me Percy. 
 
 As Percy then that first night I turned in to my 
 bunk. I was fully dressed in overalls, boots, 
 sweater and coat; for it had turned off bitter on 
 the water, particularly after the warmth of New 
 Orleans, and the sweating of the steel decks in- 
 side the poop intensified the cold. 
 
 When Puggy cursed us awake in the morning 
 my face was raw. I had got a rash from the sack 
 of hay that served as mattress and pillow. So 
 after that, in spite of the increasing cold and the 
 thin cotton blanket, I always took off my coat at 
 night and spread it under my head. My best suit 
 I kept in my bag in the locker under my bunk. 
 
 I was gingerly feeling the beefsteak I wore for 
 a countenance that first morning when I saw 
 Sockeye shaking the shoulder of Stiffy, the lum- 
 berjack snoring beside me. 
 
 "Algrenon," minced Sockeye, "draw Mastah 
 Puhcy's bawth and lay out his little velvick soot." 
 
 "I hern Stiffy 's sawmill runnin' the night
 
 20 THE SWALLOW 
 
 shift," put in one of the men as Stiffy's breath- 
 ing sharpened from a rumble to a buzz. 
 
 "Yes, and cuttin' a mighty poor grade of tim- 
 ber, too," commented Sockeye, sinking a long, 
 spare elbow in Stiffy's side. 
 
 I rolled to my feet. In a choppy sea the little 
 tramp was bucking like a broncho, now pitching 
 forward on her nose, now rearing back on her 
 hind legs, then coming down stiff on all fours. It 
 was the first time I had ever been on the ocean. 
 I staggered to the table. 
 
 The "slum" of beef broth and hardtack left 
 over from last night's supper was fried for break- 
 fast. There was no coffee. But if I had sat down 
 to chilled strawberries or hot waffles I couldn't 
 have touched them. After one night the stench 
 alone was enough to put a man off his food. I 
 didn't need that rolling sea to make me fast. 
 
 The six hundred odd mules were quartered in 
 the hold, crosswise, faces towards the inside of the 
 ship, tails to the water. The stalls were so small 
 that the keeper could not get in beside the mule; 
 in fact they were too small for the mules to move. 
 Each mule was tied to a headboard coming to his 
 shoulders. To this was strapped a tin pan for his 
 grain. Two quarts of oats, one of bran and all 
 the hay he could eat was the daily ration. When
 
 THE SWALLOW 21 
 
 we weren't carrying hay we were fetching water 
 from the tanks at the end of the deck. 
 
 Three of us were assigned aft to thirty mules 
 Snake, the half-breed, Chuck and myself. 
 
 "Get out, you lily-livered sons of corpses, and 
 feed them mules," Fuggy rallied us that first 
 morning as we rose distastefully from the fried 
 slum. 
 
 "Mastah Puhcy's appetite has been delicate of 
 late," simpered Sockeye, twisting an imaginary 
 bracelet on his hairy wrist. "His papa and me 
 took him to see Dr. Bigbugs, the most ixpensive 
 pheezishun in Noo York, and the doctor said a sea 
 voyage would do him a world of good. Run out 
 now, Puhcy, and breathe the oozone." 
 
 Had I not been otherwise engaged I should have 
 suffered under Sockeye' s affronts. But imagine a 
 first attack of sea-sickness. Imagine it magnified 
 by filthy food, filthy men, filthy quarters. Imag- 
 ine climbing over steam-pipes and bales of hay or 
 scrambling up and down ladders, a pail of water 
 or a measure of grain in each hand. Imagine that 
 the mules were as sick as you and no respecters of 
 persons. Twelve hours of it with no surcease. 
 Twelve hours of tossing, deathly sick and sleep- 
 less, on my bunk. Then another day when I was 
 too sick to bear the sight of food, when I stag-
 
 22 THE SWALLOW 
 
 gered up and down the deck, across the steam- 
 pipes, over bales of hay, a bucket in each hand 
 up and down, up and down. No wonder Sock- 
 eye's taunts failed to draw blood. I was no longer 
 a being with sensibilities. I was a contrivance for 
 feeding mules. I ticked off only two emotions. 
 One was the determination to stay on the job. 
 The other was a hunger for cleanliness and women 
 and affection. I was sick for my mother and for 
 Jasmine, a sickness that absorbed and dilated with 
 bodily pain. 
 
 But while rough seas rolled through the scrip- 
 tural span, at the end of the third day a dove of 
 peace descended upon me. And I say with pride 
 that although I had neither eaten nor slept during 
 that time, not one of my charges missed a grain 
 of his oats or ever suffered for water. 
 
 The poor mules! We had now struck the 
 northern cold and some of them died of conges- 
 tion of the lungs. The rest were shivering and 
 seasick and angry. To keep them from breaking 
 their halters we had to tie their heads fast with 
 ropes, soaked in oakum so they would not eat 
 them. We had also to fasten them so tight that 
 they could not chew each other's necks. 
 
 The seas were running clear over the boat at 
 times. The winds were so bitter that the upper
 
 THE SWALLOW 23 
 
 deck where I worked was slippery with sleet. It 
 was no easy thing to keep my footing on those 
 glassy slopes over which I slid with the water 
 buckets, back and forth, a hundred times a day. 
 I was glad therefore when I was transferred to the 
 lower hold where I had at least the protection of 
 the deck. Here I took care of fifty mules with 
 Shorty, a pigmy of six feet six. The two of us 
 cleaned up our work as well as we could but we 
 were short-handed. This I remedied unexpectedly 
 along with another disturbance. 
 
 "We're off the Banks," announced Fuggy one 
 morning at slum. Some one began to whistle 
 "Banks and Braes." 
 
 "Yep," repeated Puggy, with a wave of his 
 hand to the north, "the Banks is over there." 
 
 I whved my hand towards the mules. 
 
 "The Brays," I ventured, "are down there." 
 
 "Haw, haw!" guffawed the foreman. 
 
 Encouraged by his good humour I seized the mo- 
 ment to ask a favour. 
 
 "Puggy, Shorty and I have too much work." 
 
 "All right," said Peggy, "you can have Monny. 
 He's no good anyhow." 
 
 When we arose from slum I attempted to claim 
 my treasure. 
 
 "I need Monny myself, Miss Percy," an-
 
 24 THE SWALLOW 
 
 nounced Red, one of the ham actors with the scar- 
 let hose. As if that settled it, he turned away. 
 
 "Puggy said we could have Monny," I pro- 
 tested. 
 
 "Close your baby face, Perce, or I'll slap it up 
 to a peak and knock the peak off." 
 
 "It would take a man to do that," I retorted 
 loftily. 
 
 I had tried to prove by the way I handled my 
 work that Percy was a misnomer. I had not suc- 
 ceeded. Now though my knees wobbled I was 
 thirsting for a fight. 
 
 With a grunt Red jumped me. I was five feet 
 eleven to his six feet, and was some twenty pounds 
 lighter. I was wiry but my muscles had not yet 
 cemented. 
 
 His left went up for a guard, his right shot for 
 my jaw. 
 
 "Red's beatin' up Percy!" shouted Shorty to 
 the crowd of muleteers scattering to their various 
 posts. "Red's beatin' up Percy!" 
 
 Even as I jerked my head, even as Red's fist 
 glanced my jaw, I could hear the cries swell into a 
 roar: "Red's beatin' up Percy!" 
 
 As far as brute strength goes he could have 
 mangled me. My chief asset was a clear head. As 
 I feinted with my left I landed with the right. I
 
 THE SWALLOW 25 
 
 had caught him behind the ear. He went down 
 flat. Then I heard the roar changing to : "Percy's 
 beat up Red ! Percy's beat up Red !" 
 
 Red got to his feet just in time to meet Sock- 
 eye's terrifying smile as he said in the caressing 
 tone reserved for putting foremen in their place : 
 
 "You old stewbum, you dish of slumgullion, if 
 you ever touch that kid again I'll I'll hisf 
 voice grew softer and more terrible "I'll eat you 
 up! The way he stuck to them mules, tendin' 
 them like a mother and him sick as one of them 
 hisself with you rottin' in your bunk! I'll eat 
 you up!" 
 
 He wheeled about, shoved aside the men who 
 were shaking my hand and gave me a whack on 
 the back that sent me spinning. 
 
 I have been decorated since then by the French 
 government. But never have I felt such pride as 
 thrilled through me with the realisation that at 
 last I was a member in good standing with the 
 Forty. Percy I remained but Percy was no longer 
 a badge of shame. It was a term of endearment. 
 And Sockeye, who had first fastened it to me, now 
 invited me to go buddy with him ! 
 
 This fellowship shortened the rest of the trip. 
 We used to sit about the stove in the poop at night 
 playing blackjack, listening to Sockeye's intimate
 
 26 THE SWALLOW 
 
 babble of J. Pierp, John D. and Andy C., or sing- 
 ing "barber harmony." 
 
 There were not only many good natural voices 
 among the men but a few finely trained ones 
 voices that had been heard in light opera or church 
 choirs before their owners had become outcast. 
 "Going Down the River," "Tipperary," which had 
 just hit America hard, and "Oh, Eveline" were 
 among the favourites. Then there were ribald 
 songs I do not dare name, songs known to every 
 hobo from Mobile to Missoula. But the selection 
 that impressed me most was still another. 
 
 Whenever I hear "Abide With Me" I see two 
 pictures. The first is in the little church at home. 
 I see a weeping congregation the widow of the 
 sexton, the greaser vendor of tamales, the com- 
 mander of the fort, the tall, spare banker, Jase- 
 mine Gray, my eyes seeking hers for comfort 
 all who had come within touch of my father's lov- 
 ing spirit. I see my mother, tragic in her tearless- 
 ness. I see the bishop as he repeats the solemn 
 conviction that the flesh is futile and only the soul 
 triumphant. I see my father's figure in the flower- 
 heaped casket and the gentle face dimmed of all 
 expression now save for a thirsty look as if he were 
 drinking rest. Then from the choir loft I hear
 
 THE SWALLOW 27 
 
 four voices breaking as they sing "Abide With 
 Me." 
 
 The second picture is in the poop on the mule 
 ship. Around the red quivering stove men lie on 
 bunks, on tables, on the floor. Such men ! Whisk- 
 ered and ragged, the foul odours of their bodies 
 mingled with the foul odours of the ship, the stale 
 fumes of food, the reek of bad tobacco. Even 
 through their obscene ditties the emotional appeal 
 of music reaches them. The same appeal in popu- 
 lar hits or church hymns, it lifts them to some- 
 thing higher. From coarse ballads to ragtime, 
 from ragtime to sacred music they pass. Evil of 
 mind, vile of tongue, selfish and slothful and ruth- 
 less as wolves, for the moment and for the moment 
 only a softer feeling possesses them a feeling for 
 home, for women, for some strange God of their 
 own. Sockeye's melting tenor soars above the rest. 
 And forty voices chant in four-part harmony 
 "Abide With Me." 
 
 Another and more sordid pastime for those eve- 
 nings about the stove was known as reading the 
 news. Then would the men peel off their shirts 
 and diligently search for "crumbs" as the grey- 
 backs were called. Reading the news was prac- 
 tically the only attempt at cleanliness. The 
 water was so bad that it was less filthy to go dirty
 
 28 THE SWALLOW 
 
 than try to be clean. During the three weeks on 
 board I washed my face just six times. 
 
 Drinking water was almost as offensive as wash- 
 ing water. We drank from the mule-tanks which 
 were filled with the mud of the Mississippi River. 
 Food was even worse. We lived on rotten tinned 
 beef that was boiled at noon, fried at night for 
 hash and fried over with hardtack for breakfast. 
 There was neither coffee nor bread. There was 
 however a ton or more of carrots for the mules. 
 The carrots rotted and during our leisure moments 
 Shorty, Monny and I had to cut away the de- 
 cayed spots so that the remainder could be served 
 to us. 
 
 "Anything our long- faced friends don't want 
 we'se welcome to," Monny expressed it. 
 
 The routine of the carrot was the same as that 
 of canned beef boiled at noon, fried at night, 
 fried again for breakfast. After a few months of 
 service at the front a man is not fussy about his 
 food. But it's all I can do now to sit at the same 
 table with a carrot. 
 
 "You're not much of a student," my mother 
 used to say grudgingly. "But you seem to have 
 a gift for the way out." 
 
 I found the way out now. 
 . The officers on deck of course had much better
 
 THE SWALLOW 29 
 
 meals than ours. Among other luxuries they ate 
 bread every day. I enjoyed a calling acquaintance 
 with Slim, the cook. And one evening I sauntered 
 up to watch him at his baking which had to be 
 done at night. The smell of fresh bread tanta- 
 lised me unbearably. 
 
 "It must be hard to work all night," I com- 
 mented. 
 
 "Damned hard." 
 
 "Don't you almost go to sleep?" 
 
 "Droppin 5 in my tracks this minnit." 
 
 "I'll bake your bread if you want to put over 
 a nap," I suggested. "Used to be a baker my- 
 self." 
 
 Slim looked at me suspiciously but I told him 
 enough to convince him that I knew how to bake. 
 Off he went and slept for three hours. 
 
 "Can I have a piece of bread*?" I asked when 
 he returned. 
 
 "Sure," said he hospitably. 
 
 He broke off a thick chunk which I ate as only 
 an American can who has not touched bread for 
 two weeks. 
 
 The next night I offered myself again. 
 
 "Ye don't need to wait till I git back for that 
 there hunk of bread," he said expansively as he 
 went off to his nap.
 
 30 THE SWALLOW 
 
 I didn't stop at bread. Among the officers' ra- 
 tions I found some sacks of potatoes and onions. 
 Slipping out a few of each I fried them over Slim's 
 stove. By the time he caught me we were such 
 good friends that he never saw me when I pre- 
 pared my nightly supper of hot lyonnaise potatoes. 
 
 By stealing next from the mules and the coolie 
 crew I supplemented the fare for the whole Forty. 
 I discovered that the crew of Chinks had refused 
 to work without a special bread of Chinese fish. 
 There were sacks of these dried fish in the galley 
 and every night I pulled a few out by their tails 
 to drag back to our cabin. Then filling one of the 
 mule buckets half way up with water and a hand- 
 ful of the rock salt that belonged to the animals, I 
 set it on the stove. When it came to a boil I 
 poured in some meal also filched from the don- 
 keys. This would cook up to a brimming bucket 
 of. hot oatmeal which we ate with chunks of dried 
 fish. 
 
 "The more mule fodder we eat the less our long- 
 faced friends will founder," said Monny philan- 
 thropically, slipping hot porridge down his throat. 
 
 Thanks to this intervention none of the mules 
 did founder. But Sally did worse. 
 
 Sally had red hair and the disposition that goes
 
 THE SWALLOW 31 
 
 with it. Any devilment she could execute was 
 never too much trouble for Sally. 
 
 "Sally got a cold in her head last night," I said 
 one morning to the vet. 
 
 "Sally would," was all the sympathy extended 
 either to Sally or her keeper. 
 
 "Why don't you sponge out her nostrils with 
 warm water and creosote*?" asked Shorty. 
 
 "Why don't I brush a hyena's teeth *?" retort- 
 ed I. 
 
 Nevertheless I undertook the delicate operation 
 of spraying Sally's aquiline nose. Shorty stood by 
 with words of comfort and advice. 
 
 Sally made a few preliminary expostulations. 
 She made them resonantly but ineffectually. She 
 then opened the real debate with the good old fem- 
 inine argument of biting. I rebutted by slam- 
 ming her over the head with a bucket. 
 
 'Be gentle with your little boy 
 Beat him when he sneezes; 
 He only does it to annoy 
 Because he knows it teases." 
 
 Shorty was singing. Even at this intense mo- 
 ment I wondered how Shorty happened to be fa- 
 miliar with this nonsense classic perhaps it had 
 been quoted in some musical comedy. But I could
 
 32 THE SWALLOW 
 
 waste only a second on Shorty's pursuits. For 
 Sally advanced a powerful a priori argument, fol- 
 lowed it by a smashing a fortiori, dealt a few 
 scattering but well-chosen kicks and closed the de- 
 bate by an irrefutable argument with her head 
 that left her opponent no ground to stand upon. 
 The debate was unanimously adjudged in favour 
 of the negative. 
 
 "Rope her head," shouted Shorty as I picked 
 myself up and out of the way of the dancing 
 Sally. "You gotta handle her as if she was a 
 woman. Rope her head!" 
 
 "Stroke her ears if you're that intimate with 
 her," I snarled, caressing my arm from which 
 Sally had neatly clipped a piece. 
 
 "Give me the rope, you poor fish," said Shorty. 
 "Now, you little she-devil, you little hellion" 
 he looked masterfully in her eye "I'll learn you 
 
 Six feet six of Shorty lay on the deck. Sally 
 stood on top of him. She had turned a somersault 
 over the headboard to which she was still tied! 
 Her neck was twisted like a rope, her head was 
 held in a vice against the outside of the board, but 
 her figure was erect. Her tail waved breezily 
 over Shorty's prostrate form. The feat would 
 have broken any one's neck but Sally's.
 
 THE SWALLOW 33 
 
 It took half a dozen of us to lift her off, stand 
 her on her head till we could untwist her neck and 
 hold her while the vet, who felt at last that here 
 was a patient worthy his professional interest, 
 washed out her nostrils. 
 
 Sally had one unswerving admirer on board and 
 only one. This was Pete, the big grey mule who 
 stood beside her. Like many giants, Pete, who 
 knew no fear before any one his own size and sex, 
 was completely subjugated by the little minx. So 
 enchanted was he with her dash and spirit that 
 he even gave her his hay. With doglike devotion 
 in his eyes he would push it over to her. Would 
 Sally then bray: "You keep it, Pete," or "Thank 
 you, I will have a little more if you can spare it" *? 
 No, without a word of thanks Sally would dis- 
 pose of the hay, snapping between bites at Peter 
 who seemed grateful even for this attention. If 
 Sally had been a biped she would have belonged to 
 that class of women who say: "You can't treat a 
 husband like a human being." And she'd have 
 married some big brute who would have stood for 
 her, just as Pete did. I often wondered, had Pete 
 asserted himself, if Sally wouldn't have given him 
 a better deal. The only time he ever did I thought 
 I saw a glint of admiration in her eye. 
 
 This was the morning we ran up the harbour of
 
 34 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Dublin. We had been ordered to discharge the 
 mules. To a man we refused. Running mules 
 into a chute was a darky's job. Besides we were 
 within reach of land and brimming with spirits. 
 Here too was a chance to get even with the ship- 
 master for the dirty deal he had handed us, here 
 when it was too late for him to retaliate. And 
 when the captain realised that we were not going 
 to unload those mules he sent for a company of 
 raw Irish recruits fresh from the bogs on their 
 way to the front. 
 
 The mules, as I have said, were boxed so closely 
 that they could scarcely move. As our contract 
 called for cleaning them we led them one at a time 
 out on deck and scraped them off as well as we 
 could. This was not very well and when they 
 were run on shore at Dublin they were still thickly 
 caked with manure and New Orleans mud. 
 Lounging about the dock, we enjoyed the struggles 
 of the Irish with the shaggy beasts. 
 
 A darky fulfils all the yearnings of the mulish 
 heart. The Irish on the contrary lacked not only 
 a native affinity but experience as well. They 
 had never even seen a mule. Any darky knows 
 that a mule can not be led. But here was a small 
 bog-trotter trying to lead three at once across the 
 drawbridge.
 
 THE SWALLOW 35 
 
 One of the three was Pete. While his two com- 
 panions pulled for opposing shores Pete stood 
 firm. His four feet, spread apart, seemed driven 
 into the dock. His peaceful eye was half closed. 
 
 Pat dropped the other two ropes and applied 
 himself to Pete. Tall and grey and rock-ribbed 
 as a mountain Pete paid no more attention to him 
 than if he were a mosquito. 
 
 "They're desert canaries put salt on their 
 tails and hear 'em sing," called out one of our 
 wits. 
 
 "Get behind and push," suggested another. 
 
 This advice appealed to Pat as more practical. 
 He trustingly obeyed. 
 
 Without opening his sunny eye Pete doubled 
 his right hind leg. Pat hurtled through the air 
 like a baseball. Then not deigning to glance be- 
 hind him the desert canary threw back his head, 
 lifted his voice such a voice as had never before 
 been heard in Dublin and singing passionately 
 raced back and forth across the drawbridge. It 
 was as if Gibraltar, tired of its reputation for 
 steadiness, had gone vigorously to sowing its wild 
 oats. 
 
 Men and mules cleared the path. All but Sally 
 who did not move. It was evident that she expect- 
 ed Pete to get out of her way. But Pete neither
 
 36 THE SWALLOW 
 
 swerved nor slackened. When he was within a 
 foot of her Sally gave one bound with as much dig- 
 nity as her health would allow. Whether her 
 music loving soul vibrated to that ringing voice; 
 whether, herself an artist at the hoof, she admired 
 his technique ; whether she suspected that Pete was 
 more of a rake than she had given him credit for 
 I don't know. But as she moved out of reach 
 of those compelling legs she flung him a glance 
 over her shoulder. There was a softened look in 
 her eye and her ears twitched meltingly. 
 
 By this time I was feeling sorry for Pat. So 
 when Pete drew up with the air of a Caruso taking 
 his curtain call, I jumped on his back and rode him 
 over the drawbridge. The other mules of course 
 followed. Pat and his compatriots were stunned 
 by this simple method. 
 
 "The next bit on our programme, gentlemen," 
 barked Monny, seeing their open-mouthed ad- 
 miration, "will be by Percy, the Donk's Delight!" 
 
 When I again saw the American ponies, as the 
 Irish called them, they were doing heroic service 
 at the front. Upon renewing my acquaintance 
 with them I learned that they had risen from the 
 "Maude" of American song to the more patrician 
 title of Percy. I often wondered if the honour 
 were mine!
 
 THE SWALLOW 37 
 
 "Kept this open to give you my impressions of 
 Dublin," I wrote that afternoon on the letter I had 
 been composing to Jasmine all the way across. 
 "So far they consist of heads and feet. The 
 cops, whales to begin with, have spikes on their 
 helmets that make them look about seven feet six. 
 'Pipe the size of the bull,' was all the men could 
 say as we landed. Fortunately every cop we've 
 seen so far has a brother on the New York police 
 force which makes him adopt all Americans into 
 the bosom of his family. And as for feet well, 
 I haven't seen a pair of shoes in Dublin that 
 weren't shined. No matter how poorly dressed, 
 how ragged or dirty a man is his boots are polished 
 as an egg. 
 
 "I set sail with the fortune of one dollar that I 
 had amassed loading bananas. It was still intact 
 this morning; so in order to absorb local colour I 
 set up a couple of the boys to Guiness' Stout and 
 a box of Pell Mells. (N. B. Observe pronuncia- 
 tion.) After this debauch I had just a sixpence 
 left and Puggy borrowed that. I was so flattered 
 at having a sixpence to lend a foreman that I didn't 
 mind the financial reverse. Not till afterwards did 
 I remember that I had to get postage for this let- 
 ter from that sixpence. Well, I'm a bold financier 
 and I'll raise that two cents if I have to sell my
 
 38 THE SWALLOW 
 
 boots. When Puggy saw my pride in giving him 
 a sixpence he said graciously, 'That's a good pair 
 of kicks you got there, Perce I might wear them 
 up town.' This suggestion has been made by every 
 man on board. But I cling to those boots as a 
 monk to his immortal soul pun not intended. 
 They're my one valuable possession and I'm sav- 
 ing them against the time when I'm strapped I 
 mean when I'm on my uppers. (This letter looks 
 all broken out with puns but they are not inten- 
 tional.) Anyway nothing short of a stamp for 
 this letter shall wring those boots from me." 
 
 The boots were preserved to meet the need I 
 had expected. The postage came through another 
 channel. 
 
 Following a crowd of our men up a street I saw 
 Black and Chuck disappear. From their hang-dog 
 look I suspected a crooked deal and sauntered after 
 them. I watched them go down under a little 
 bridge where they met another man apparently 
 by appointment. I edged along till I was close 
 enough to see Chuck handling a curry-comb. 
 Ready to put up any kind of a bluff to make two 
 cents I yelled, "Hey, Chuck, what you doing with 
 my curry-comb*?" 
 
 "Who said this was your comb*?" asked Chuck, 
 jumping around like a startled rabbit.
 
 THE SWALLOW 39 
 
 "I said so," I answered noisily. 
 
 "Howdju know it's your comb 1 ?" 
 
 "How'd I know?" 
 
 At this delicate question I caught sight of the 
 letter P cut into the back. I recognised it at once 
 as Puggy's. 
 
 "Don't you know the alphabet yet 1 ?" I de- 
 manded angrily. "There's P for Percy." 
 
 "Well, I guess you caught me with the goods, 
 Perce," Chuck conceded. "We was just disposin' 
 of a few things to this here gentleman. He runs 
 a liver stable." 
 
 "Of course if the liver stable gentleman wants 
 this comb," I said, "I'll let it go for sixpence." 
 
 The gentleman took it at my price. He took 
 also about a dozen other combs and brushes the 
 two men had tucked in their pockets. I bought 
 some stamps. As I mailed mother's letter and put 
 Jasmine's in my pocket for a last postscript, I 
 wondered what those two women would think if 
 they knew my arrival on foreign soil was an- 
 nounced by means of a stolen curry-comb. Again 
 my sense of honour had made concession ; I would 
 not steal carrots from a vegetable cart but I would 
 sell a curry-comb from the Dunedin! Seeing this 
 act through my mother's eyes, I found it taking 
 on an ugly aspect; and I resolved to drift into no
 
 40 THE SWALLOW 
 
 more easy little thefts. My remorse was not 
 shared by the others who were so sore at the treat- 
 ment we had received on a British transport that 
 they declared anything they could filch from any 
 one in the British Isles would be just retribution. 
 And it was in pursuit of this policy that, when I 
 .went into a shop to buy postals with my remain- 
 ing two cents, half a dozen mule-skinners attended 
 me. It was not till later that I knew why. They 
 came out richer by several dollars worth of pens, 
 paper and pencils. The same principle of sabo- 
 tage was applied to a restaurant where the boys 
 set up ham and eggs with the proceeds of the curry- 
 combs; and where, in spite of my protests, salts, 
 peppers, spoons, even vinegar-cruets were rapidly 
 disappearing. 
 
 "If you wanna kiss the hand that feeds you 
 slum, all right, Miss Percy," said Black, when a 
 tobacco-shop was next threatened by our patron- 
 age. "Here's a sixpence. Go as far as you like." 
 
 The gleam of unnatural goodness in his eye was 
 not belied. While I bought cigarettes with the 
 sixpence, a quiet but effectual activity prevailed 
 among my friends. Snake, who had stowed away 
 a big tin of cigarettes, was following it with a 
 mate when Whitey, who had no pockets, attempt- 
 ed to help him to a third. The two tins banged
 
 THE SWALLOW 41 
 
 together. The girl behind the counter looked up 
 sharply. 
 
 "Give me back those cigarettes," she cried. 
 
 There were loud protestations. Outraged hon- 
 esty was in every voice. 
 
 "I'll call an officer," she threatened, planting 
 herself in the doorway. 
 
 It was a disconcerting moment. Snake dared 
 not pull out one tin for fear it would disgorge 
 others. Disclosures by an officer would be equal- 
 ly embarrassing. 
 
 The girl put her hand on a bell. Just then Wil- 
 liams stepped forward. 
 
 "One moment, madam," said he, flashing his 
 gold teeth upon her. "What are you talking 
 about V 
 
 "Those two men stole a tin of cigarettes," she 
 answered, "and I'm going to have an officer in." 
 
 "Well, if those two poor fellows who have 
 been doing military service for your country, ma- 
 dam " 
 
 "He means mulitary service," whispered Sock- 
 eye to me. 
 
 " If they want a little thing like a box of 
 
 cigarettes, they shall have it. I'll pay for it my- 
 self." 
 
 He threw down the price of one tin.
 
 42 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Now, gentlemen, is there anything else I can 
 get to show my respect for you*?" 
 
 The gentlemen modestly disclaimed further tes- 
 timonial. This restraint met its own reward. 
 Taking stock a safe distance away, we estimated 
 that we had repaid ourselves for service to the 
 British government by at least fifteen dollars' 
 worth of pipes and tobacco. 
 
 Thus buttressed with smokes, we set out in a 
 body that night to see Dublin. "Where's the 
 main stem 1 ?" was the chorus that greeted every 
 policeman. I dropped behind to mail my letter to 
 Jasmine. Then guided by the noise in a nearby 
 saloon, I pushed open the door. The reflection in 
 the mirror on the opposite wall gave me the first 
 sight of myself. My sweater and overalls had 
 some time ago become fodder for Sally. I was 
 now protruding from a Salvation Army costume 
 that Puggy had traded for my fountain pen. 
 Through the hat that Puggy had lavishly thrown 
 in, my hair pushed up in ambitious bunches. 
 
 My companions were equally arresting. Monny 
 shrank far into the recesses of a suit he had pur- 
 chased from Sockeye. Shorty, like Marco Bozza- 
 ris, was bursting at every vein of the frock coat he 
 had picked up at a rummage sale. Stiffy, the most 
 sustained in attire, wore a lumberman's shirt and
 
 THE SWALLOW 43 
 
 corduroys. Hoggy, the second cook, had once 
 been a bandsman ; now in his faded livery of ma- 
 roon and black he sat playing the piano while 
 Chuck, in a blanket coat and chaps, passed the hat. 
 The proceeds were to go for drinks. 
 
 Inspired to provide a tobacco fund, I composed 
 an Indian dance. It consisted of running back and 
 forth on my haunches, singing, "Icta, mika, tiki, 
 close ole cloochman." This I punctuated with a 
 sturdy yelp by way of war-whoop, which con- 
 firmed my audience in its hope that America is 
 peopled largely by savages. My gate receipts, as 
 a consequence, were heavy. 
 
 Through its mysterious channels the whole 
 night-world of Dublin had heard of our arrival. 
 We left not a saloon unturned; and all the gam- 
 blers and thugs in the city, I think, were on our 
 trail. So, too, were those other denizens of the 
 underworld. Moths of the street, painted and 
 haggard and gay, drawn by the new arrivals, I 
 watched them swirling and eddying to the gas- 
 light. 
 
 We were passing a station on our way to the 
 ship when I saw something I never forgot. The 
 memory of it came back when I needed it most, 
 came again and again until it became a part of 
 me. It was a carload of wounded men on their
 
 44 THE SWALLOW 
 
 way home from some place in England where they 
 had been fitted with artificial arms and legs. I 
 have never felt more joy in my vitality than those 
 crippled men felt in their pitiful substitutes. 
 
 As I saw the glow in those spent faces, rever- 
 ence for what they had endured deepened into 
 awe for what they now felt. Maimed, disabled, 
 robbed in youth of youth's fleetness how could 
 they still be so happy? Not for long months 
 was I to know the secret of that look. Now as I 
 took off my hat it was in tribute to the merriment 
 I could not understand. 
 
 Still bare-headed, I was looking after those joy- 
 ous survivors joking, chattering when some dis- 
 tance behind the others came a man in a wheel- 
 chair. I stared at him first. He was young and 
 romantically good-looking. Long suffering had 
 not dimmed those sea-blue eyes nor that vigorous 
 curve of profile. Like Phaethon he seemed to have 
 plunged straight into this street straight to an 
 earth he would never tread again. The handsome, 
 untouched face, the broken body just then it was 
 I lifted my eyes to the woman wheeling his chair. 
 At this moment Sockeye, who had been standing 
 beside me, lurched forward and accidentally jos- 
 tled the chair. 
 
 "Beast!" I heard the girl whisper it with such
 
 THE SWALLOW 45 
 
 a passion of scorn that even Sockeye jerked off 
 his hat. Unplacated she looked after him. Then 
 her eyes, moving back, chanced to meet my own. 
 In an instant the fierce resentment for her charge 
 changed to a swift curiosity, so fresh, so frank, so 
 impersonal that for the first time I remembered 
 how I looked. I gave a pull to .my mere dialect of 
 a suit. She caught me doing it and a sudden 
 merry smile that had in it no whit of unkindness 
 brought an answer to my own eyes. 
 
 Long after she was gone I felt the something 
 invigorating in that quick, interested scrutiny. 
 With an imbecile smile at the recollection I started 
 off in my sieve of a cap and my Salvation Army 
 suit. That brief look of ours it had been youth 
 asking of youth. Then as I walked on through the 
 Dublin streets I recalled what that glance of hers 
 had interrupted the fierce protection in her Irish 
 eyes for the soldier in her charge. I stopped short. 
 For the first time I did not take for granted my 
 youth and my vigour and the world's answer to 
 these. 
 
 "God!" I said. "I'm glad I don't have to be 
 just pitied by a girl like that !"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AS I stepped from Paddington Station into 
 London I came to a full stop in the middle 
 of the street. A curse from a cabby made me look 
 up. At the cabby's bitter scowl I smiled unresent- 
 fully. It was the first hansom I had ever seen 
 that had almost run over me. But that was not 
 what had pulled me up so short. It was the im- 
 port of the words I had caught myself humming : 
 
 "When I am dying 
 Lean over me 
 
 Softly, tenderly as the yellow roses droop in 
 in the wind from the south . . ." 
 
 The girl back in Dublin bending over the soldier 
 with that passion of maternity she had recalled 
 it. It was one of Jasmine's songs. Sentimental 
 even for my condition, it used to make me writhe 
 to hear it in public. I used to squirm particularly 
 over the last line "the touch of your lips on my 
 mouth." Now with a shame-faced laugh at my- 
 
 46
 
 THE SWALLOW 47 
 
 self for humming it, I began my search for lodg- 
 ings. 
 
 It had taken me a week to get from Dublin to 
 London. Marks had promised to pay us off at 
 Dublin. But at Dublin we learned that we must 
 first clean the ship and take it to Berry Docks. 
 We toiled like Turks to clean that filthy ship; 
 and when we reached Berry Docks the shipmaster 
 said that as he was discharging the coolie crew we 
 must take the ship home. Then we would be paid 
 off in New Orleans. 
 
 Take the ship home 1 ? Never, we roared. Then 
 Williams because of his gold teeth and I because 
 of a clean collar were selected to protest to the cap- 
 tain. Neither of these arguments dazzled that 
 phlegmatic gentleman. 
 
 "You signed articles to bring the ship back 
 what's the matter with you fellows'?" he growled. 
 
 To our astonishment he produced the articles. 
 It was true. Marks had skipped one clause when 
 he read the document aloud; we had not been 
 given time to read it for ourselves. 
 
 "All right, sir," said I to the captain, who had 
 turned an insolent back, "I'll not sit down under 
 this dirty deal. I'll expose your little game." 
 
 "Well, I guess you know our names," he an-
 
 48 THE SWALLOW 
 
 swered easily. A penniless scarecrow in a strange 
 land held no terrors for him. 
 
 Tying about my neck my logging boots and my 
 bag of good clothes which I had managed to keep 
 intact under my berth, I jumped overboard and 
 swam ashore. The time had come to part from 
 my boots. Changing into my best suit, I hunted 
 a cobbler. The cobbler was less susceptible to the 
 charms of those boots than the mule-skinners had 
 been; so although I had paid twenty dollars for 
 them I was glad to sell them for sixty cents. This 
 was the price of a round-trip to Cardiff, where the 
 American consul lived. 
 
 The consul, too, was indifferent ; but after I had 
 threatened to report him at home for refusal to 
 help an American in distress, he gave me a letter 
 to the skipper demanding my discharge. So the 
 skipper had to pay me off thirteen dollars and 
 sixty-five cents. This was the remnant of my 
 wage. Marks had deducted Ritz-Carlton prices 
 for board that couldn't be eaten, mouldy tobacco, 
 and soap we never had a chance to use. I knew 
 now why he had kept us on the dock: the board 
 bill we were rolling up for that dirty soup-bone 
 was to be deducted from our pay. Then he sold 
 rotten overalls and paper-soled shoes to all the 
 men who would buy; the ninety per cent profit for
 
 THE SWALLOW 49 
 
 this haberdashery was also deducted from our 
 pay. And next, hired by the British government 
 to deliver mules in Dublin, he saved the expense of 
 a crew on the return voyage by misreading the 
 articles and refusing pay till we had brought the 
 ship home. A financial genius was Marks ! 
 
 Most of the gang had no ambition beyond a 
 few dollars for drinks ; and on condition that they 
 receive half -pay now they agreed to take the ship 
 home. I, as is usual in such cases, was too eager 
 to get away to bother with reporting the crooked 
 game to the British government as I should have 
 done. So I left the men crazy with whiskey, beat- 
 ing up the town left my particular pals with a 
 regret that surprised me. After all they were my 
 only friends within a thousand miles. And I had 
 heard nothing from home. I had first ordered my 
 mail sent to Paris. Then deciding to enlist in the 
 British army I had written to Paris asking the 
 American Express there to send my mail to the 
 London office. My one comfort during this month 
 of sordid hardship had been hope of the letters 
 piling up for me in England letters from mother 
 and the boys and one letter the very thought of 
 which made my heart beat faster. 
 
 Had it not been Sunday then when I reached 
 London I should have gone straight to the Ameri-
 
 50 THE SWALLOW 
 
 can Express. But one more night must pass. And 
 highhearted with the hopes of to-morrow and the 
 stir of the first great city I had ever seen I entered 
 a tobacco shop. 
 
 I had now just ten dollars. I could not con- 
 sider a hotel, so as I bought a postal for Jasmine 
 I asked the shopgirl to direct me to lodgings. With 
 a quick flirt of her lashes she looked me over. I 
 had not bathed since I left home and until I 
 reached Paris I bore a faint mulish scent. But my 
 best suit evidently gave me a veneer of respecta- 
 bility, for one night in the part of town to which 
 she sent me would be my financial ruin. 
 
 "Hol-ee cats, this is no place for Percy," 
 thought I, dismayed by the grandeur of the hotels. 
 
 I started off in an opposite direction and walked 
 until it was too dark to see the houses. Then, 
 finding a bobby with a goodnatured face, I asked 
 him to direct me to a cheap hotel. 
 
 "My woman can put you up for the night," he 
 answered tentatively. 
 
 I jumped at the suggestion. He gave me his ad- 
 dress. But as I lifted the knocker on his door I 
 remembered that I did not know his name. 
 
 "Is this the lady of the house?" I asked the 
 woman who answered the knock. 
 
 She stared at me silently. She was a big-jowled
 
 THE SWALLOW 51 
 
 woman with a figure that doubled in at the waist. 
 
 "Is this the lady of the house*?" I repeated. 
 
 Her mouth dropped open but she only con- 
 tinued to stare with bovine eyes from under heavy, 
 hornlike brows. 
 
 "I met an officer who directed me here to find 
 a room," I explained, disconcerted by her silence. 
 "He didn't tell me his name." 
 
 "Oh! Eh! That's it, is it? You can have 
 the room then." 
 
 She took me up to a tiny stall of a room. As 
 she lit the gas she added impressively: 
 
 "But I ign't no lydy. I'm Mrs. White." 
 
 When the bobby returned that night I heard her 
 telling him about my strange question. In fact 
 during my whole stay she never recovered from my 
 unconscious flattery. The joke became a family 
 institution. 
 
 "And I says to him," I would hear Mrs. White 
 repeating, "I says, 'But I ign't Lydy White. Me 
 husband's not come into the title yet' ' 
 
 Next morning after swallowing a bun and glass 
 of milk in a neighbouring tea-room I walked to 
 the American Express. As I demanded my mail 
 my breath quickened. I was wondering how Jas- 
 mine would begin her letter. 
 
 "If you don't hurry," I said behind my teeth
 
 52 THE SWALLOW 
 
 to the clerk who sifted the letters with monstrous 
 calm, "I'll choke to death before your eyes." 
 
 "No, sir, nothing here," he said, wheeling about 
 as if in answer to my threat. 
 
 "You haven't the name right then Byrd," I 
 said sharply. "Look again, please." 
 
 Turning wearily on his heel he went again 
 through the pigeon-hole. 
 
 "No, sir, no mail for Byrd." 
 
 I stared at the sleek-haired, sleek-eyed young 
 man whose level gaze met mine uncaringly. Then 
 I walked out. There was an ache in my throat. 
 
 After one stunned moment I felt I must do 
 something violent. I started to run. I stopped 
 in the arms of an officer. 
 
 "After all," I said to him, "this is wartime. 
 Mails are slow. The letter will be here soon." 
 
 The bobby gave me one disgusted look. I 
 backed off from that impregnable blue front. 
 
 "You must be in a bad way, young sir. Be off 
 about your business," said he. 
 
 "You'd be in a bad way too," thought I, "if the 
 dearest little girl in the world hadn't written you 
 for a month." 
 
 But taking his advice I walked briskly off to the 
 American consulate. 
 
 "What do you want*?" inquired a young squirt
 
 THE SWALLOW 53 
 
 behind the desk to one of my countrymen ahead 
 of me. 
 
 "I'm broke. I want to get home." 
 
 "Better stay here and help out if you're broke. 
 Plenty of work here. What do you want*?" 
 
 Having thus helpfully disposed of the man in 
 front he was addressing himself to me. 
 
 "I want to get into the war. What steps shall 
 I take?" 
 
 "Take the next ship home. What are you do- 
 ing here?" 
 
 He leaned over to the man behind me but I 
 planted myself squarely under his nose. 
 
 "You have a discontented disposition," I said. 
 "Apparently no one can suit you. Now I'll not 
 take any ship home until I have got into this war." 
 
 I flung myself out and down to the town hall in 
 Chelsea. 
 
 "I want to enlist," I announced there. 
 
 As when leaving America, I gave my age as 
 twenty-one. That was satisfactory. I gave my 
 qualifications. They were satisfactory. Then I 
 gave my birthplace. 
 
 "Oh! American! We can't use you!" 
 
 How many times I heard those words, always 
 with the same scornful emphasis! From one re- 
 cruiting office to another I went. Every few
 
 54 THE SWALLOW 
 
 squares I was stopped by recruiting officers. Ev- 
 erywhere I saw signs, "Enlist Now! Help the 
 Boys Over There !" Yet the feeling against Amer- 
 ica was so bitter that, needing men as she did, 
 England would not use me. 
 
 "What have you got against America anyway?" 
 I asked one recruiter who like the rest had lost in- 
 terest at the mention of my nationality. 
 
 "When Belgium was violated we came to the 
 rescue for honour's sake," he said melodramatical- 
 ly. "Why didn't you?" 
 
 "I came in, I came in, I came in, 
 1 came in to save my skin" 
 
 I sang It into his face. "When our skins are 
 in danger," I added, "we'll come in, too." 
 
 "Well," he called after me, "if you want to 
 fight so much why don't you forget that you're an 
 American 1 ? Then the King will too." 
 
 "To hell with the King and England," I re- 
 torted, "I'll never forget that I'm an American." 
 
 It was now evident that I should never get into 
 the British army. By this time my money was 
 almost gone. My only chance was to earn the 
 price of a ticket to Paris and there pick up some 
 kind of work till I could speak enough French to 
 enlist in the French army.
 
 THE SWALLOW 55 
 
 I had supposed that with the labour shortage in 
 England it would be easy to find work. Yet I 
 tried every conceivable line. I applied for jobs 
 as mechanic, chauffeur, baker. With a working 
 knowledge of Spanish I tried to find a place as in- 
 terpreter. I would have swept crossings or sold 
 ribbons. But in commerce as in the army my na- 
 tionality closed all doors to me. 
 
 Nevertheless I never appreciated America as I 
 did then. For at home any man, any where, can 
 get some kind of work. But in England, young, 
 strong, energetic as I was, I was actually facing 
 starvation. It was unbelievable. It was gro- 
 tesque. It was ghastly. 
 
 I reduced my eating expense to two cents a day. 
 This sum would buy a cup of strong tea and a bun 
 which I took at ten in the morning. Sometimes 
 the waitress would slip me a second cup of tea. 
 
 As for my clothes, the feet of my socks were 
 completely gone and I tied what was left around 
 my ankles so carefully that I seemed to be hosed. 
 The soles of my shoes, too, were gone and to keep 
 my bare feet off the ground I fitted cardboard in- 
 side the uppers. In a large stock of clean col- 
 lars lay my salvation. A fresh collar each morn- 
 ing with a fairly well-tailored suit gave me that 
 valuable aid to success, a look of prosperity.
 
 56 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Every day and all day I tramped that grey, 
 gaunt city. But no matter how far I walked, how 
 aching my feet, I went each afternoon to the Amer- 
 ican Express for the mail that did not come. I 
 was uneasy, harassed, stung. Even in wartime 
 I should have heard from home by now. 
 
 On the fifth day of my tea and cake regime I 
 discarded my birthplace and adopted the English 
 tongue. With what was meant to be a broad 
 Yorkshire accent I applied at Harrid ? s, Ltd., 
 which, patterned after the American department 
 store, was one of the largest stores in England. I 
 had just come up from the country, I said, where 
 I had managed my father's shop. Mr. White I 
 gave for reference. That thrifty soul, his kind- 
 ness, no doubt, given more elasticity by the fact 
 "that my rent was due, agreed to lie for me. On 
 the strength of this fiction, the very Saturday I 
 had reached my last cent, I landed a job as time- 
 keeper. And on the strength of this job Mrs. 
 White, trusting me till payday for my room, in- 
 vited me to celebrate at Sunday breakfast in a 
 pork pie. 
 
 I longed to say, "Make it to-night." Instead, to 
 keep down the pangs of hunger, I went to bed. As 
 I lay there from Saturday noon till Sunday morn- 
 ing I dreamed of one thing. Like a small-town
 
 THE SWALLOW 57 
 
 youth who lets his imagination play about some 
 girl coming for a summer visit, and who falls in 
 love with the image he has created, my imagina- 
 tion played about that pork pie. I dwelt upon its 
 size, its complexion, its inner nature. I hoped it 
 would be large enough. I wondered how many 
 helpings I might decently have. 
 
 It was large. It was thick. It was rich and 
 indigestible, but Mrs. White apologised for its 
 simplicity. 
 
 "Plain Yorkshire fare, sir," she said, while my 
 famished eye followed her knife skirting the crust 
 for an opportune opening. At last the knife 
 plunged. A spoon followed to catch the juice. In 
 a second my plate was heaped with meat and thick 
 brown pastry. Beside it stood a huge cup of 
 steaming coffee. 
 
 Three times I cleaned my plate and drained my 
 cup. Three times they were filled again; the sup- 
 ply seemed inexhaustible. Each time I feared to 
 risk a protest. Even Mrs. White's pleasure in 
 my appreciation of her cookery might fail before 
 my appetite did. But if the supply proved end- 
 less the demand did not. The time came when I 
 could eat no more. Then the bobby, his weathered 
 neck rolling over his Sunday collar, proffered me a 
 long black cigar. With our feet on the fender of
 
 58 THE SWALLOW 
 
 the open fire we sat silently smoking and recalling 
 the charms of pork pie. 
 
 "That's the first real meal I've had since I left 
 home," I said to Mrs. White when I finally rose 
 to go. "I'm sure I never enjoyed one so much." 
 
 Tears sprang to her eyes. 
 
 "I only wish," she said, "that some French lady 
 would feed pork pie to my own poor lad in the 
 trenches. He relished it from his cradle, sir, 
 and it reminded me of him to see you eat." 
 
 Next morning I went to work. My pay from 
 Harrid's was twenty-five shillings a week "all 
 found." This meant with free meals. Fortu- 
 nately for me the company considered it good 
 business to keep a restaurant for their employes. 
 Otherwise I should have had to starve till my first 
 pay day. 
 
 These meals at the store were solid and whole- 
 some. Breakfast consisted of two soft boiled 
 eggs, kippered herring or codfish, plenty of coffee 
 with bread and butter and marmalade. At noon 
 we dined off joints and potatoes with spotted dog 
 pudding or custard. At four we had tea big 
 dishes of it with enormous slices of bread and but- 
 ter and, twice a week, jam. Tea at this hour made 
 it possible for me to go without supper. 
 
 My duties as time-keeper were easily managed.
 
 THE SWALLOW 59 
 
 Most of the men who did clerical work were elder- 
 ly and settled, with little initiative, so that I found 
 plenty of chance to help them. To do this I 
 worked overtime,. on Sundays and bank holidays, 
 for which I received double pay. 
 
 Each pay day I turned over my whole wage to 
 Mrs. White. Taking five shillings a week for 
 room and laundry and giving me four shillings for 
 spending money, she banked the rest for me. 
 
 As soon as my work had settled into routine I 
 took part of my noon hour for making the rounds 
 of the war offices. It was at the Red Cross that I 
 learned there was such a thing in Paris as the 
 Appleton Ambulance. An American Ambulance ! 
 With my experience as a driver of course they 
 could use me ! My hope soared. 
 
 From the Red Cross then I sought the London 
 manager of the Ford company to learn the address 
 of the Paris branch. After several attempts I was 
 at last admitted to his office. A big fellow with 
 legs like the pillars of the First Presbyterian 
 Church back home, he sat dictating to his stenog- 
 rapher. 
 
 "What's your trouble*?" he asked as uninvited 
 I took a seat. He did not look at me. His effi- 
 cient grey eye, hungry for more work, roamed the 
 desk.
 
 6o THE SWALLOW 
 
 "I'm going to war," I said. "They won't have 
 me here so I want to get a job in Paris till I can 
 learn enough French to get into their army. I 
 know Fords and I thought you might be so kind 
 as to put me in touch through your Paris branch 
 with the Appleton Ambulance." 
 
 "Sorry, young man, but I'm sure our Paris peo- 
 ple can dispense with your services. Take my ad- 
 vice and go home. Now, Miss Witwer " 
 
 "I beg your pardon." I rose. "Do you happen 
 to know what mules are famous for 1 ?" 
 
 From the letter in his hand he looked up. 
 
 "I do," he said with emphasis. 
 
 "Exactly," I answered with equal emphasis. 
 "And I didn't valet six hundred and thirty mules 
 without catching it. I went through hell to get 
 into this war and I'll get into it if I have to fight 
 hell fires all the way to Paris. Good-day." 
 
 My hand was on the knob before he spoke. 
 Then it was in a leisurely voice. 
 
 "Wait a moment." 
 
 I turned. His eye was still roaming the desk. 
 
 "WTiat do you mean valet six hundred and 
 thirty mules?" 
 
 I told him. 
 
 "Sit down," he said crisply. He glanced over 
 a letter. "The usual answer to this, Miss Witwer,
 
 THE SWALLOW 61 
 
 and you may go. Now let's hear about the 
 mules." 
 
 Swinging his huge legs around from the desk 
 he gave a whole-minded attention to my story. 
 How surely he followed it I knew from the keen 
 questions that were the only break to my narra- 
 tive. To my amazement I sat in this busy man's 
 office in London telling him about Sockeye and 
 Puggy, Pete and Sally, Marks' Yard and the bak- 
 ery at home. 
 
 "You'll do, sonny," he said at last. "I'll give 
 you a letter to a good friend of mine in Paris. 
 He'll put you where you want to go. And if I 
 can do anything more for you let me know." 
 
 In highest spirits I almost ran back to work. I 
 now had enough money to take me to Paris. In a 
 few more days I should be in France ! 
 
 My only problem was how to quit my job with- 
 out playing a nasty trick on a company that ex- 
 pected its employes to grow grey in service. Puz- 
 zling about it as I came down from tea that after- 
 noon I heard a superintendent call to me, "Get 
 your hands out of your pockets, you, and move 
 along!" 
 
 I realised then that I had been indulging in 
 that ill-bred habit which, like spitting, is indige-
 
 62 THE SWALLOW 
 
 neous to America. But I realised, too, that here 
 was my chance. I stuck my hands in deeper. 
 
 The superintendents, who swaggered about in 
 frock coats, striped trousers and top hats, were 
 treated by the men under them like Prussian roy- 
 alty. This particular one was a ratty little man 
 with a squeaky voice. Rushing at me now he 
 caught me by the arm. 
 
 "Do you hear me*?" he shrilled. 
 
 "Oh, speak up if you want to be heard," I an- 
 swered, shaking him off. "Don't make a noise 
 like a flea-bite." 
 
 He turned red, then purple. Never, it is safe 
 to say, in his experience with those browbeaten 
 British underlings, had he ever been insulted by 
 an inferior. He tried several times to speak but 
 spluttered and choked like a drowning man. 
 
 "Don't you fret," I went on insolently, "I'm 
 going to clear out before you can sack me." 
 
 As soon as I could close up my work I hurried to 
 the office of the staff superintendent. My sacking 
 papers were before me. 
 
 "We're very sorry to lose you," said he, "but 
 you must learn to be respectful." 
 
 "I didn't ask to stay," I answered. "I only 
 want what's coming to me." 
 
 I was paid off immediately but hung around the
 
 THE SWALLOW 63 
 
 door till my little superintendent emerged onto the 
 street. His face was still streaked with red, as if 
 I had struck him. He was telling some one about 
 my astounding impudence. I stepped in front of 
 him. 
 
 "Next time you have anything to say to art 
 American," I suggested, "talk to him as if he were 
 
 * fCJ * 
 
 a man or he may break your head." 
 
 A look of terror came into his face. I believe 
 he thought I had lost my mind; not otherwise 
 could he account for insubordination. I left him 
 chattering as if he had a chill. 
 
 I was now free to go to France. At last, at 
 last I was on the eve of Adventure ! 
 
 With a sense of triumph I went next day to the 
 American consulate. 
 
 "You still here 4 ?" demanded the important clerk 
 who had advised me to go home. His tone showed 
 surprise that I should have stayed in England 
 against his will. 
 
 "Yes, I'm taking the next ship, as you sug- 
 gested," I answered. 
 
 He looked gratified. 
 
 "Only it's bound for France," I added. 
 
 His face fell. Reluctantly he stamped my pa- 
 pers. 
 
 Now came two wearisome days at the French
 
 64 THE SWALLOW 
 
 consulate. From six in the morning till five at 
 night I stood in line. But in the end I got my 
 passport. By the time I had paid for it and for 
 a third-class ticket to Paris I had only a few dol- 
 lars left. But what did I care? Before the week 
 was out I should be driving an ambulance to the 
 front. Before the month was out I should be 
 soaring above the clouds in my aeroplane. Yet, 
 despite these high prospects, I said good-bye re- 
 gretfully to the London bobby and his wife ; they 
 had proved to be the realest friends. I promised 
 if I chanced to meet their son at the front to repay 
 them. Then, bag in hand, I started by way of the 
 American Express to the station. 
 ; The metropolitan calm of the mail clerk at the 
 American Express had finally broken under my 
 anxiety. Each day as soon as he caught sight of 
 me he would shake his smooth head with a smile 
 almost friendly. He had even a few days before 
 written a personal letter for me to the Paris 
 branch. 
 
 "I'm sure your mail's been held up there in some 
 way," he said when I told him I had set the day 
 for my departure, "and 'twill get here about two 
 days before you leave." 
 
 Fretted by the probability that the letters had 
 already come, those two days at the consulate had
 
 THE SWALLOW 65 
 
 seemed endless. Now as I raced to the Express 
 office all kinds of questions scampered through my 
 mind. How was the business getting on without 
 me 1 ? Would Jack write on coloured paper"? How 
 would she begin and end ? Should I take time for 
 a glimpse or should I wait to read luxuriously on 
 the train*? 
 
 "Produce 'em at once," I addressed the clerk 
 whose back was towards me. "All prosecution 
 will be dropped and no questions asked." 
 
 "Well, old man, they didn't come." 
 
 "Don't kid me, now " I made a sick at- 
 tempt to disbelieve him. "I'm in a rush. Cough 
 up." 
 
 His look of sympathy quenched the flicker of 
 hope. 
 
 "You're sure to find a batch in Paris," he said. 
 "But if it crosses you on the way over, I'll send it 
 right back. Good luck." 
 
 I wrung his hand and stumbled out. With one 
 last look at the great awkward city sprawling over 
 rain-soaked squares, I boarded the train for Dover. 
 
 I had waited too long, I had believed too often. 
 I knew now that there would be no letters for me 
 in Paris. Every one had deserted me even my 
 mother. As for Jasmine, she would not even 
 trouble to tell me how completely I had dropped
 
 66 THE SWALLOW 
 
 out of her life. I tried to fix my mind on the green 
 folds of Sussex countryside silvered by the light 
 English rain, the little spired villages that even in 
 early spring possessed an air of leafy comfort; 
 but my mind returned incessantly to its own bitter 
 reflection. 
 
 Yet even through my disappointment Dover 
 gave me a sudden glow. How often I had pic- 
 tured it when as a boy I read Dickens's History of 
 England! The adventurous, thick-nosed little 
 ships with their sails puffing out in the wind that 
 was to drive the warriors of Edward III to Calais 
 Calais that to the Englishmen of other times 
 had always meant dazzling uncertainty; the tu- 
 niced archers who with bows cut from stout Eng- 
 glish forest had pierced the armour of French 
 knighthood at Poitiers these merged in my mind 
 with the modern little channel boat on which I 
 now stepped. 
 
 There were English officers, English nurses 
 hardly any one else, in fact. And as I stood on 
 deck looking back at the white cliffs which had 
 once been a background for the adventurous, 
 thick-nosed little boats loaded with archers and 
 plumed knights, I heard an English voice drawling 
 beside me, "There's nothing to it I just jolly 
 well climbed down into a funk-hole that's all I
 
 THE SWALLOW 67 
 
 was decorated for." It was a young English cap- 
 tain talking to a fellow officer. And as I heard the 
 joking sureness of that voice, I realised that in a 
 different slang but with the same spirit which must 
 always make light of the duty it feels so keenly, 
 the old archers had gone about their business. 
 
 Calais! What if I didn't know anything I had 
 left behind*? I was going to Calais! The French 
 sea-town graven so deeply on the hearts of genera- 
 tions of Englishmen was once more insecure, this 
 time from a different source. And I, the descend- 
 ant of those old islanders who had crossed the 
 channel, was crossing now to take my part, for 
 England and for France. 
 
 \Yhen I stepped that night into the Gare du 
 Nord exultation forsook me. The crowded sta- 
 tion seemed like a prairie alive with grasshoppers. 
 And as, with a forlorn hope of friendliness, I 
 looked into each animated face, I could see noth- 
 ing but the anxious vivacity of an insect bent upon 
 filling its larder. So these were the French to 
 whom I was offering my life! And this was 
 France ! For three months I had endured and de- 
 nied that I might be here. And now that my feet 
 were on French soil my heart despised but still 
 adoring was under the magnolias. 
 
 In bitter mood next morning I went down to
 
 68 THE SWALLOW 
 
 breakfast at the cheap hotel near the station where 
 I had spent the night. A bare-legged bandit 
 mopping the floor paused long enough to bring me 
 a tray, then returned to his bucket of dirty water. 
 At the first taste of cold rolls and cafe au lait my 
 American blood revolted. 
 
 "Slop under foot and slop under my belt," I 
 commented aloud. 
 
 "Out, monsieur" said the waiter. 
 
 He was a reckless-looking bandit and had he 
 understood would doubtless have substituted me 
 for the mop-rag. As he did not, it gave me a petty 
 pleasure to murmur insults in the tone of polite 
 nothings. 
 
 "Another bandit," I cooed to the maitre d'hotel 
 when I went to pay my bill at the office. "Filth 
 and son of filth, why aren't you in the trenches 
 instead of robbing innocent travellers of their last 
 buck?" 
 
 "Om monsieur" he replied with a flash of teeth 
 through his long black moustaches. 
 
 By the aid of a phrase-book I made him under- 
 stand' that I wanted to check my bag with him. 
 Then, having found me fluently inclined, he asked 
 when I had arrived in Paris. Feeling by now 
 quite independent of the phrase-book I answered 
 in my best French that I had come demain. He
 
 THE SWALLOW 69 
 
 assured me, restrainedly at first, then wildly, that 
 I was mistaken. I was firm. He gave me the lie. 
 When the argument was growing heated I pulled 
 out the phrase-book. 
 
 "Don't get excited, my friend," I reasoned with 
 him as I went through the index, "or those little 
 black beads you see through will fall off. They're 
 loose now." 
 
 Then I looked up, crestfallen. Hier was the 
 word for yesterday. I had been insisting that I 
 came to-morrow. Upon my apologies he over- 
 looked this extravagant claim and I set out into 
 Paris. 
 
 It was an unkempt Paris that I saw, with nar- 
 row, reeking streets and ill-favoured houses and 
 disordered traffic. Each driver pursued any course 
 he chose ; straight as a homing bird his instinct led 
 him to some spot populous with drivers of iden- 
 tical taste. This harmony of purpose resulted in- 
 variably in a row. 
 
 "Pretty bum burg. El Paso, Texas, could 
 knock the spots off its socks," I said. Then re- 
 membering my treatment at the hand of my native 
 town, "But El Paso will never see me again. Not 
 after the way my own mother has thrown me 
 down." 
 
 With one more chance, however, I softened the
 
 70 THE SWALLOW 
 
 sentence for El Paso. I had two cards, one with 
 the address of the American Express, the other 
 with the address of the Ford Motor Company. In 
 a cafe with the sign "English Spoken" I held up 
 the first card. The girl at the cash desk pointed 
 to a surface car. On the surface car, with a hand- 
 ful of change, I again held up the card. Taking 
 out the proper fare the conductor let me off at the 
 American Express. 
 
 "Byrd <?" 
 
 I had sworn not to hope again. Yet my heart 
 was following that bony hand. 
 
 "No mail for Byrd." 
 
 "You didn't forward it to London, did you*?" 
 My voice as I asked sounded hollow. 
 
 "No mail for Byrd," repeated the clerk impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 "Thanks." My throat had gone dry. "If it 
 comes, hold it." 
 
 "Wait!" At the mention of London a second 
 clerk came up with a package. "Here's a special 
 post from England for Byrd." 
 
 Whether the mistake was due to my sloppy 
 handwriting or to the insecurity of wartime mails, 
 I never knew. But the Paris office had never re- 
 ceived my forwarding address. The letter from 
 the London clerk was their first intimation of it.
 
 THE SWALLOW 71 
 
 And he had not failed me! The package must 
 have reached London a few hours after my leav- 
 ing. 
 
 Tearing open the bundle, I made sure of my 
 mother's angular writing and another wayward 
 hand. Then trying not to shout, I thrust the whole 
 packet of letters and papers into my pockets and 
 burst out the door. 
 
 What a different Paris from the one of five 
 minutes ago a Paris quivering with enchant- 
 ment. I laughed with delight at the goats, which, 
 herded along the pavement for their morning milk- 
 ing, looked about with wise, wicked faces. Every 
 time a horny-cheeked driver bumped another hor- 
 ny-cheeked driver, I was charmed ; when they stood 
 up and shook their fists, each supported loyally by 
 his inflammable freight, I felt that they were stag- 
 ing a French comedy for my special enjoyment. 
 
 I walked till I came to a little park. I opened 
 a small white envelope, one of many like it. 
 "Dearest Dicky," began the letter. I could read 
 between lines all the sweetness she had shyly left 
 unspoken. My heart was full. . . . 
 
 I heard the wavy song of a bird; the notes 
 dipped and soared with winged flutterings. Trees 
 were weaving over their bare arms a pale green 
 lace. A robust young pine bowed to a maple
 
 72 THE SWALLOW 
 
 which shook its golden curls in the breeze. . . . 
 
 Spring had come crashing down to earth. So 
 it had come to me. 
 
 At the Ford Motor Company I found English- 
 speaking people who took me at once to the Apple- 
 ton Ambulance. There I put in my request to be 
 sent to the front as a driver. During the three 
 days required by the committee for passing upon 
 my application I was to stay there at the hospital. 
 
 On the third day I was prepared to start. I 
 was not prepared for the verdict. 
 
 "If you had come to us from New York that 
 would have been different," said the committee- 
 man. "But coming from England how do we 
 know that you are an American 4 ?" 
 
 "You're right," I said after a stunned moment 
 in which I could feel my face tighten with chagrin 
 and disappointment, "with such limited intelli- 
 gence as you people seem to possess I might be a 
 Fiji queen for all you could tell. The Appleton 
 Ambulance can go chase itself." 
 
 Fool, fool! I had written home that I was 
 soon to be at the front. Now my one avenue was 
 closed. Lee Malone would laugh at me, Jasmine 
 would despise me. ... I clenched my teeth. . . . 
 I was not done for yet. For three months I had
 
 THE SWALLOW 73 
 
 drudged, half-starving, to find some way of fight- 
 ing for countries that were spending thousands of 
 dollars recruiting men ! Once more then I would 
 take up this ironical task. 
 
 First I tried another ambulance corps; my re- 
 jection by the Appleton unit was against me. 
 Next I filed an application with the French Avia- 
 tion Corps and another for trench duty with the 
 Foreign Legion. I followed every cue, possible 
 or impossible. 
 
 While I waited for results I found a little cafe 
 where cabmen ate. Here I took one meal a day. 
 For twenty cents I could get bread with spinach 
 or string beans or soup. I used to look longingly 
 at the red wine; I was not a wealthy cabman. 
 Once or twice as a great luxury I treated myself to 
 roast beef. Another time I attempted to order 
 the good old American "ham an'." On the back 
 of the menu I drew an egg, then a strip of bacon. 
 The waitress was impressed by this display of 
 draughtsmanship, but seemed to think I was ex- 
 erting myself to amuse her. I drew another egg 
 and cackled. Then I drew another strip of bacon 
 and grunted. After a couple of cackles and grunts 
 I was rewarded by the coveted dish. 
 
 As my money dwindled I reduced my daily 
 meal to a big bowl of cafe au lait which I could
 
 74 THE SWALLOW 
 
 get with bread and butter for ten cents. Follow- 
 ing my London plan I ate in the middle of the 
 morning and went early to bed. 
 
 During this time I never lost a chance to pick 
 up a word. My phrase-book, which contained 
 such timely information as "Engines are made of 
 iron," and "Do you like to be seasick 1 ?" was not 
 of great service to a hungry man. I had to rely for 
 sustenance upon such words as I could impale 
 from the lips of waitresses and taxi-drivers. Once 
 when I had pointed to a man's dish of soup the 
 waitress called out, "Chaud pour un!" Pleased 
 that I was mastering even French slang I went 
 next day to another restaurant. "Chaud pour 
 un!" I ordered. When the "warm for one" came 
 it was not soup but coffee. This was sobering. If 
 every cafe in Paris cited the language for its own 
 purpose it would be long before I could use the 
 vernacular. 
 
 However implacably I pursued that nimble 
 tongue, I could not speak well enough to find 
 work. Neither did I hear from any of my appli- 
 cations. I was growing so hungry that I spent 
 hours in front of a certain bakery window feasting 
 my imagination on the graceful outlines of bread 
 and pastry. 
 
 So sure I had been of a driver's seat that I had
 
 THE SWALLOW 75 
 
 directed my mail to the Appleton Ambulance. 
 And when time enough had passed for me to hear 
 from home I went out to claim my letters. 
 
 Here was consolation! Starving I might be 
 but the top letter of the pile handed out in re- 
 sponse to my name was inscribed by the wayward 
 hand I loved. Already light-headed with hunger 
 the sight of it made me lunge a trifle unsteadily 
 towards the desk. 
 
 "Know anything about an animal called the 
 Ford?" 
 
 A twinkling voice addressed me. I looked up 
 into a pair of green eyes that twinkled too. 
 
 "From snout to tail," I answered. 
 
 "Know anything about a man named Brown 
 who herds the Fords in London?" 
 
 "Yes," I said in growing surprise. 
 
 "Did he ever mention a man named Foster*?" 
 
 "Gave me a letter to him." 
 
 "You delivered it of course*?" 
 
 "No " My hand went involuntarily to my 
 
 breast pocket. 
 
 "Why not?' 
 
 "Peeved at the Appleton Ambulance," I said 
 somewhat sulkily. 
 
 "Well ! I hope you're not too peeved to help 
 me out. I'm looking for a chap that answers this
 
 76 THE SWALLOW 
 
 description" he pulled out a letter and began to 
 mouse through it " 'mules' um, um 'tea and 
 cake' that's not it 'looks like a girl but has the 
 guts of a gorilla' here we are 'Face of a David 
 on shoulders of Goliath. I'd have used him over 
 here but he was headed for the front. He'll lick 
 the gizzard out of some Boche.' How about it, 
 Mr. Byrd?' 
 
 "I'm on, Mr. Foster," I said joyfully, forgiving 
 even that disparaging comparison to a girl. 
 
 "Good !" He shook hands with me. His eyes 
 which had twinkled respectively over my leaking 
 boots and glossy trousers came back to mine. "If 
 you had presented that letter," he said severely, 
 "you'd have saved me the trouble of watching your 
 mail and you wouldn't be looking like a Belgian 
 orphan. Now I've got everything fixed and we're 
 all to the mustard. So if you're not blase after 
 your debauched life of the past few months we'll 
 see what you can do to a filet mignon." 
 
 No one save a man who had lived for three 
 weeks on bread and coffee could appreciate to the 
 full that jolly little celebration. With absolute 
 impartiality I cleaned up everything from soup to 
 cheese. Good food and good wine under my skin, 
 the most delightful man I had ever met as host,
 
 THE SWALLOW 77 
 
 a job for tomorrow, Jasmine's letter in my pocket 
 it was a night of heady satisfaction. 
 
 It was midnight when Mr. Foster left me at 
 my own door. At last I was alone with Jasmine. 
 Before tearing open the little white envelope I 
 touched it to my lips. . . . 
 
 Every drop of blood in my body rushed to my 
 heart. Was I going to faint? No, I must be a 
 man. With that resolution I put my head on the 
 pillow and cried like a woman. 
 
 After that it was a long time before I picked up 
 the letter to re-read it. Even then I made myself 
 do it. It was a kind of savage sentence of pain 
 upon myself. For now at last I knew that my 
 love for Jasmine was a weakness. Her spirit had 
 not touched mine, there under the magnolia. And 
 as with a knife-like pain I read each word over 
 again I saw Jasmine as she really was cold and 
 soft and with oh, what a thrifty sense of keeping 
 what she seemed to refuse ! 
 
 "We are far too young to think of such things 
 now, Dicky-bird." This was the paragraph that 
 stabbed me the most. "Perhaps after awhile when 
 you come back but just now well, how do you 
 know, perhaps you will meet somebody over 
 there." 
 
 She turned me down on the plea of my own in-
 
 78 THE SWALLOW 
 
 terest but I read beneath her generosity the calcu- 
 lation of it all. 'Twas she who did not want to 
 be fettered, she who was looking shrewdly into 
 the "perhaps" of these months while I was away. 
 In all this letter there was not one bit of tender- 
 ness. There was none of the mother heart in 
 Jasmine Gray. 
 
 There was no tenderness, no ! What there was 
 in that heart was only a reckoning with the spec- 
 tacular. Her vanity was asking to see herself in 
 the romantic role. When she had yielded to me 
 in the moonlit court she had yielded chiefly per- 
 haps to the glamour of a departing soldier lover. 
 When she refused my offer now she refused a 
 poor vagrant, knocking shabbily on every back 
 door of the great war. If there were any tiny bit 
 of courage in my performance since I had left 
 her, she did not see it. She would see only the 
 trappings of courage. And when far down in her 
 letter I read the promise to come nurse me if I were 
 ever wounded, I saw in it only this grasping after 
 the spectacular situation. 
 
 Yet though I saw so plainly what I loved it did 
 not keep me from loving. I wanted her, I wanted* 
 her ! Let her come to me on any condition, only 
 let her come ! 
 
 In my cheap little room under the kerosene lamp
 
 THE SWALLOW 79 
 
 on the oil-cloth covered table I began to try to 
 justify her. Perhaps after all she had been think- 
 ing of me. Perhaps there was some little jealousy 
 of the unknown in her letter. She may have been 
 comparing me, who answered a call other than 
 hers, with Lee Malone's faithless fidelity. Ab- 
 jectly, hungrily, I searched her letter now with 
 the determination to deceive myself.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE Appleton Ambulance was just beginning 
 to send out squads. Number One had gone 
 to Dunkirk, Number Two to Pont-a-Mousson, 
 Number Three to the Vosges. I had expected to 
 be sent out with the fourth. I was detailed in- 
 stead to look after the upkeep of cars for the field. 
 This was a deep disappointment. An American 
 office was a sterile spot for acquiring the native 
 language. Yet French I must know before I 
 could fight. 
 
 However I picked up what I could from the 
 natives employed about the place. I was living 
 in the hospital, an enormous building planned for 
 a boys' high school but commandeered as it neared 
 completion, for the Appleton Ambulance. In the 
 unfinished attic we motor men had our dormitory. 
 Our meals we took with the doctors and nurses. 
 
 With neither taste nor money for dissipation I 
 could give every ounce of strength to my work. 
 In a short time I was raised to the rank of assist- 
 ant director with the relative rank of second lieu- 
 
 80
 
 THE SWALLOW 81 
 
 tenant in the Ambulance Corps. Because of my 
 first rebuff by the committee this slight honour 
 gave me a gloomy satisfaction. It spurred me on, 
 too, to greater effort. All day I worked tigerishly 
 for the time when I could get into the fight. 
 
 During these weeks I never once heard from 
 Jasmine. But the thought of her seldom left me. 
 Always I hovered wretchedly between belief in 
 her and the wish to keep her, whatever she was. 
 The one thing I could not bear, the one possibility 
 I would not even admit was of losing Jasmine. 
 Better this torture than that the old feeling should 
 
 go- 
 It was one morning in July and I was busy 
 
 overhauling a car when Mr. Foster came up to 
 me. 
 
 "Sonny," said he, "how'd you like to start to- 
 morrow with a convoy of cars'?" 
 
 "Start where*?" I stared at him. 
 
 "To the front." 
 
 "I'd like it fine," I said huskily. 
 
 I saw it, the mighty blue river of men flowing 
 to the front. I was part of the sluggish stream 
 that flowed after it. I heard the guns breaking 
 upon the earth in wave on wave of thunder. I
 
 82 THE SWALLOW 
 
 was spattered with blood from the men I lifted 
 to my stretcher. Every torn body that rested in 
 my arms, every tortured eye that looked into 
 mine, bore a reproach. They seared me with 
 shame for my own empty purpose. However dear 
 Jasmine was to me she would never take care of 
 me now. I would fight, and die fighting, beside 
 those men. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I went back to Paris quivering and violent. 
 
 "A man's part is to fight not to bring a fighter 
 home." 
 
 With rage in my voice I flung the words at 
 Foster. 
 
 "It's just a year," I went on, "since I began try- 
 ing to get into this war. And here I am, big and 
 young and husky, toting men who do the work. 
 Now I'm going to apply again to the Aviation 
 Corps and with a whole bunch to vouch for me 
 I ought to land this time." 
 
 I did land. The day was set for my examina- 
 tion. 
 
 I had counted on my knowledge of mechanics 
 to put me in the flying corps. But that was quite 
 superfluous. Indeed my whole examination was 
 a joke. While an American to-day, for instance, 
 is put through a dozen severe proofs of his sta-
 
 THE SWALLOW 83 
 
 bility as an aviator, mine was assured by the fact 
 that I had once ridden a bicycle. The eye-test 
 was equally facile. Even so, it almost ship- 
 wrecked me. I could read neither the letters nor 
 the words on the chart and was forced to produce 
 the spectacles I had carefully left outside. Even 
 then I could not pass the test. 
 
 "No wonder, no wonder," said the specialist, 
 taking the spectacles off my nose and squinting at 
 them. "They are just plain glass. You need 
 real spectacles, my boy." 
 
 He jotted down his report. So it was all up. 
 It was bad enough to wear glasses at all. It 
 was hopeless that I could not even see correctly 
 through them. Despairingly I followed the re- 
 ports to the office of the chief. 
 
 The chief read my name and age. When he 
 came to my birthplace he paused. Was my na- 
 tionality again to keep me out of the army as 
 it had in England? My heart went down and 
 down. 
 
 "Texas, U. S. A.," he read. "Is it then that 
 you are a coo-boy*?" 
 
 "I sure am," I said desperately. "Coyote 
 County, Texas, and Sagebrush Sam is my middle 
 name."
 
 84 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Did you ever meet a gentleman" he paused 
 impressively "called Buffalo William*?" 
 
 "Knew him well when I was a child. He was 
 a family friend. Used to ride me on his bucking 
 broncho." 
 
 "And are you then familiar with the Texas 
 steer T 
 
 "She's just like a sister to me." 
 
 He gave a series of pleased little grunts. 
 
 I have since met many Frenchmen fascinated 
 by the American frontier. Whether they have 
 been influenced by Leatherstocking, or whether 
 Cooper occupies the place he does on the French 
 bookshelf because he strikes a responsive chord 
 I do not know. At any rate the chief, after a 
 hurried shuffling of the reports on his desk, stood 
 up and grasped my hand. 
 
 "You pass," he beamed. 
 
 With this useful past for an inducement, 
 France had accepted me! 
 
 Next day I signed an engagement for the du- 
 ration of the war with the Foreign Legion. 
 
 There were several hundred Americans already 
 in various branches of the Legion. For this le- 
 gion, awarded to France at the Hague Confer- 
 ence, gives any man the right to enter the French 
 army and still retain his citizenship. He may
 
 THE SWALLOW 85 
 
 have committed any crime, he may have received 
 any sentence. But through the Foreign Legion he 
 is born again. It is the international revival meet- 
 ing, the great chance to start life clean. That 
 it has lifted grizzliest sinners to heights seldom 
 reached by the good man of lukewarm impulse 
 this is its appeal to the world's imagination. 
 
 As for me, I did not know how far I might go 
 in it. I might never rise beyond mechanic. But 
 I was part of the Foreign Legion. And my one 
 regret now is that I never saw service with it. 
 
 For the present, however, I was thrillingly con- 
 tent. I had caught up with Adventure! 
 
 More exuberant than I had been for many 
 weeks, I said good-bye to my friends at the Ambu- 
 lance and started for Dijon. There I spent the 
 night. Early next morning I walked four miles 
 to the aviation department. 
 
 My arrival caused no ripple in that self-centred 
 whirlpool. I tried to interest a harassed officer 
 who only looked at me out of a haggard eye and 
 went on. At first I was contented enough to watch 
 the melodramatic characters that composed the 
 Foreign Legion. A few approached the norm but 
 most of them would have made Fuggy and Sock- 
 eye look like preachers. In my worst nightmare 
 I had never dreamed of such ruffians. For a few
 
 86 THE SWALLOW 
 
 hours I followed these pirates about. But gradu- 
 ally their fascination paled. Noon passed. I was 
 hungry and warm and tired. But not till eve- 
 ning did the harassed officer finally ask what I 
 wanted. 
 
 "I want to know what to do," said I. "I'm an 
 American." 
 
 He began then to hustle me around. Into one 
 office after another he hustled me. After I had 
 signed hundreds of papers, the import of which I 
 was entirely innocent, he hustled me into the Bu- 
 reau Habiliment and ordered for me the outfit of 
 the French soldier. A weary clerk began tossing 
 out clothes to me. The fit was a matter of luck. 
 Seeing men grab shoes, I too began to accumulate 
 footgear. My harvest consisted of one Number 
 Seven shoe, one Number Nine, and two boots of 
 incompatible temperament. 
 
 Then gathering up all my possessions I carried 
 them outside for inspection. I found a coat and 
 overcoat of horizon blue buttoning back from in 
 front of the capot; trousers cut long to tie about 
 the leg; puttees; two shirts of canvas ticking; one 
 suit of underwear; two long strips of blue cloth, 
 two rags and a long piece of red flannel. What 
 the mission of these last three items I did not 
 know. But they finally resolved themselves into
 
 THE SWALLOW 87 
 
 cravats, handkerchiefs and a belly band. Fortu- 
 nately I had socks and undershirts which here 
 were considered needless luxuries. The rest of the 
 outfit consisted of a knapsack, eating pan, cover, 
 tin cup, knife and spoon. 
 
 I got into my uniform; the other things I at- 
 tempted to pack. The knapsack however was so* 
 tiny that I could scarcely squeeze in the extra shirt. 
 I sweat and swore till the combined perspiration 
 and profanity moved an old soldier to show me 
 how to fold everything in neatly. 
 
 I was then paid off at the rate of one cent a day 
 for the three days I had belonged to the French 
 army. Besides this sum total of three cents I was 
 given a loaf of bread, a can of meat and a rail- 
 road ticket to the aviation school at Pau. Thus 
 equipped I started the four mile walk back to 
 town. 
 
 They were longer miles than I had walked in 
 the cool of the morning. Six hours of standing 
 about in the broiling sun had taken my zest. The 
 .knapsack fretted my unaccustomed shoulders. My 
 boots did not fit. It was a subdued knight that 
 presented himself at the hotel door. 
 
 I was pulling myself wearily up the steps to 
 my room when I was astonished to see the land- 
 lady bar the way. Talking excitedly she would
 
 88 THE SWALLOW 
 
 not hear my explanation. Then suddenly peering 
 into my face she threw up her hands and laughecf 
 till she cried. 
 
 "Mon pauvre, mon pauvre" she murmured, 
 dragging me to my room. 
 
 I had left Dijon that morning in the trim khaki 
 of the Appleton Ambulance. I had returned to 
 Dijon in a costume that would have intimidated 
 the bravest crow in the corn belt. My coat sleeves 
 stopped just below the elbow. My trousers would 
 have accommodated two of me. Used only to 
 spirals, I had strapped these straight puttees on 
 hind side before. No wonder the landlady did 
 not recognise me. Yet I confess that her pitying 
 enjoyment of my plight was my first experience 
 in the horrors of war. 
 
 Next morning I left Dijon for Pau. As my 
 route ran through Paris, I spent the night there. I 
 wanted to call at the Ambulance but, trussed up 
 as I was, would not expose myself to the rough 
 blasts of friendship. So digging deep into my 
 shallow savings I put up at a cheap hotel and by 
 way of celebration that night invited myself to a 
 liqueur at Maxim's. 
 
 So cloistered had been my life at the Ambulance 
 that I was bewildered by the gaudy red place. 
 Men and women pursuing pleasure with the anx-
 
 THE SWALLOW 89 
 
 ious vivacity of the Parisian, permissionnaires 
 packing their short leave full of gaiety it was 
 all as new as when I first came to Paris last 
 spring. 
 
 A number of people, after the grateful fashion 
 of the French with the soldiers, tried to be friend- 
 ly. But as I was unable to answer and it never 
 occurred to them that a man in horizon-blue could 
 not speak French, they gave me up as a sour, surly 
 fellow. 
 
 So in spite of its novelty Maxim's held little 
 seduction for a penniless, badly-dressed, speech- 
 less stranger. Too lonely to enjoy it further I was 
 about to pay for my liqueur and go to bed when a 
 little girl, drifting by my table, threw me a smile. 
 I smiled back, thankfully I suppose, for she sat 
 down. I ordered coffee for the two of us. We 
 were not able to say much to each other but mak- 
 ing up in smiles we sat rather shyly sipping our 
 coffee from the tall glasses. She was one of the 
 blonde French with nose, eyebrows and mouth 
 that tilted up. Long blue eyes, red lips, all her 
 compact little figure surged with the sap of youth. 
 My own youth responded. Less shyly now I 
 leaned over to plant a long look in her eyes. I had 
 forgotten that I was never again to be stirred by 
 any woman. Her glance fluttered under mine and
 
 go THE SWALLOW 
 
 dropped to the gloves she was drawing through her 
 hands. Then I noticed for the first time that the 
 gloves were mine. How had she got them so 
 quietly ? 
 
 I had heard dark tales of cocottes. "She is go- 
 ing to implicate me in some way through those 
 gloves," flashed through my mind. 
 
 Reaching over, I tried gently to take them from 
 her but her fingers closed over them. I tried again 
 less gently, but chattering like a magpie, she drew 
 them back. 
 
 "Give me those gloves," I commanded. 
 
 "Non, non, non" and she jerked them out of 
 my hand. 
 
 As we had bridged our lingual difficulties before 
 in smiles we now resorted to scowls and noise. 
 Her face was red with anger and she kept up a 
 constant stamping of her foot. 
 
 "You little devil " 
 
 I didn't finish the sentence. She had slapped 
 my face with the gloves. I got up so suddenly 
 that I upset the table. 
 
 That was enough for the French public. With 
 the same inflammable partisanship they brought to 
 the support of their cabbies, they surrounded us. 
 Some glared at me, some hissed at her, all buzzed 
 like insects. In a second I was ushered out by a
 
 THE SWALLOW 91 
 
 policeman. At the door a gendarme awaited me. 
 I looked around desperately. 
 
 "Does any one here speak English*?" I asked, 
 raising my voice above the angry clacking. 
 
 Some one volunteered. I stated my case. He 
 interpreted. 
 
 "Then we all go to court," decided the gen- 
 darme. 
 
 My suspicions of French courts were as dark as 
 my forebodings about cocottes. I had heard 
 enough rumour to know that my case was hopeless. 
 They would never take my word against the girl's. 
 I could not talk and she would be able to put up 
 a fluent defence; this she was demonstrating now 
 as she trotted beside the gendarme. I had dis- 
 graced my uniform. I would be thrown into pris- 
 on. I could not report for duty at Pau. Prob- 
 ably I would be expelled from the army. And no 
 one would believe that I had not stolen gloves 
 from a poor cocotte ! Sweat broke out on my face. 
 Why, why had I gone to Maxim's *? 
 
 Arriving at court I announced through the in- 
 terpreter that the girl had stolen my gloves. My 
 small opponent put up a vigorous counter accusa- 
 tion. I motioned to the sergeant to look at the 
 stamp inside the gloves. It was that of an Eng- 
 lish firm. The little girl, not at all daunted by
 
 92 THE SWALLOW 
 
 this evidence, said that this very afternoon an 
 Englishman had given them to her. 
 
 To my absolute amazement the sergeant took 
 my word, unhesitatingly, against hers. He or- 
 dered her to return the gloves. She refused. She 
 stamped her foot and cried and stuck the gloves in- 
 side her blouse ! 
 
 This would have routed American justice. Not 
 so French. Two burly gendarmes seized her and 
 after a scuffle in which one of them had his face 
 scratched, they handed me the gloves. They were 
 pretty rough with her so that I was sorry I had 
 not let the gloves go and risked intrigue. But re- 
 lieved inexpressibly at my own release I went back 
 to Maxim's. And I could not resist, as I entered, 
 giving the gloves an ostentatious flirt. Every one 
 smiled. 
 
 In a moment my small enemy returned, red and 
 ruffled, and still scolding. 
 
 "You little devil," I said, "you have your nerve 
 to come back here." 
 
 With a toss of her head she stuck out her little 
 red tongue. At this the smiles of the crowd broke 
 into laughter in which I joined. Then, having 
 established my honesty, I went back to my room. 
 As I took off my overcoat my own gloves, made by 
 the same well-known firm, fell out !
 
 THE SWALLOW 93 
 
 "Oh, damn !" I said aloud. 
 
 I knew that I had been a cad. I knew that I 
 should go back to find my little victim. But as 
 I could not make myself understood I should prob- 
 ably be arrested. And I had worked too hard and 
 too long for my uniform to have it taken from me 
 now. 
 
 "Damn, damn, damn," I kept repeating in bed 
 as I thought of the way the gendarmes had han- 
 dled her. I often wondered afterwards what that 
 poor little poule thought of the American that 
 stole her gloves; and the wonder always brought 
 a blush. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I spent the next night at a hotel in Pau which, 
 by the way, ate up my next year's pay. Next morn- 
 ing I walked from the town to the aviation camp. 
 As I drew close I began to run. When I could see 
 the big muddy field with its long rows of portable 
 buildings, its immense canvas hangars and sky- 
 lights, its great winged planes rising and falling, 
 when I recognised the place where Wilbur Wright 
 had given exhibitions then I broke into wild 
 whoops. I was here, I was here ! 
 
 In the Barrack des Strangers where I was sent I 
 found natives of every nation in the world un- 
 less it was Germany. I found Mexicans, Cubans,
 
 94 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Russians, Peruvians, and men from countries that 
 I did not know existed. 
 
 The matted sound of all these strange tongues 
 wrapped me in isolation. If there were just one 
 choice spirit to savour with me this hour ! Defeat 
 I could bear unsupported but triumph what was 
 triumph without some one to share it 1 ? Even at 
 this supreme moment when I stood at the gate of 
 Adventure I was conscious that I stood alone. 
 
 But the great fact was that I was here. I hur- 
 ried out. I could not keep my eyes off the air 
 through which big and little craft moved with 
 wings steady or uncertain. 
 
 "Take her easy now, youngster. You'll feel 
 better soon. To-morrow yuh can sit up awhile 
 and the next day yuh can have a little gruel." 
 
 The nasal intonation, the sloppy speech, the 
 jeering of my native land! Leaving the sky my 
 hypnotised gaze lighted on two lanky forms both 
 in horizon-blue and both unmistakably American. 
 Hull I had met at the Ambulance. Payne I knew 
 by reputation for his service in the trenches. As 
 I gripped their hands I felt my mouth widen in a 
 grin of joy. I still stood at the gate of Adventure. 
 I no longer stood alone.
 
 THE SWALLOW 95 
 
 I was ready to leave El Paso. The whole town 
 was out to see me off. "What a pity the census- 
 taker isn't here," thought I, "it would save him 
 weeks of work." The mayor was making a speech. 
 My mother was smiling. The fellows were clam- 
 ouring for a last shake of my hand all except Lee 
 Malone who skulked by himself. The girls were 
 cheering. Jasmine Jasmine was begging me to 
 kiss her before all those people ! I was torn be- 
 tween embarrassment and pride on the one side, 
 on the other my deep desire. Night fell magically 
 and curtained us with dark solitude. I sought for 
 her soft lips, sought and found them. My pulses 
 beat tumultuously. I had meant to be only kind. 
 I had not meant to be drawn down, down, down, 
 deeper and deeper into the deadly sweetness of 
 those lips. I fought against them. "Take me 
 with you." She drew her slender hands down my 
 face. "Take me with you." She held up her 
 arms and leaned against me. My senses swam. 
 We two alone in the clouds. Her lips would be 
 mine in a world-long kiss but how could I fly? 
 She must not come during, she must come after. 
 Attainment first, then the sweet reward. "When I 
 come back," I whispered, "then I will take you." 
 I. jumped into the car and shouted "Contact!" 
 The ropes were cut. Up I soared and off, over
 
 96 THE SWALLOW 
 
 prairies and mountains and cheering cities and 
 oceans. Far below, far behind trailed Jasmine 
 and my world of home. They would reach Ger- 
 many just in time to see me face a winged army, 
 face it, conquer it 
 
 "We can't get 'em up, we can't get 'em up, 
 We can't get 'em up in the morning!" 
 
 How strange to hear the old American reveillez 
 here in Germany! 
 
 "Hell!" I shouted angrily. "Who's making 
 this row*? I was right on the Crown Prince's tail, 
 too!" 
 
 "Five-thirty," said Payne from the bunk next 
 mine. "Jump up and jump in, you poor simp." 
 
 Hustling out of bed he dipped his tin cup in a 
 bucket of black coffee that a man was carrying 
 through the barrack. 
 
 With an unnatural politeness due to a brain still 
 too dazed by dreams of love and world-power to 
 fight off the hungry mob, I didn't get my share. 
 But it was the last time that courtesy interfered 
 with my brimming mug of hot coffee; for it was 
 our only nourishment until noon. 
 
 Following the example of Hull and Payne I 
 jumped into my clothes and hurried out to the 
 field where we were due at a quarter to six. After
 
 THE SWALLOW 97 
 
 reporting there we came back to barracks to roll 
 our mattresses and sleeping sacks. Next came 
 Appeal when the daily report of punishments and 
 duties was read. A bunch of men was fined 
 some for going to Pau without permission, some 
 for not wearing their coats to town, some for being 
 late at Call. 
 
 Practice lasted from ten-thirty till noon. Then 
 after a meal of beef with beans, macaroni or pota- 
 toes we could rest till two. Second practice began 
 then and lasted till it was dark. 
 
 Although I was not yet posted for duty I could 
 not stay off the field. Around and around I 
 walked, just inside the fence out of the way of ma- 
 chines. 
 
 It was not yet seven o'clock of my first day. I 
 was watching a flier some thousand feet up. Sud- 
 denly he dove. He pulled up his machine but it 
 hit the ground. The tail, breaking in two, dug a 
 hole a foot deep. I was the first to reach the poor 
 chap. I helped carry out the body. For an hour I 
 trembled like a girl. 
 
 And yet the field drew me. My eyes scarcely 
 left the sky. That very day I was watching two 
 machines. They drew close to each other dan- 
 gerously close, it seemed to me ... I cried out. 
 They bumped in midair. They dropped, they
 
 98 THE SWALLOW 
 
 struck. Once more I was the first to reach the ma- 
 chines. Once more I helped carry out the dead. 
 In less than twelve hours I had seen three men 
 killed. I leaned up against the wall and was sick. 
 And still the field drew me. I stayed away from it 
 only to snatch food and sleep. 
 
 In spite of my gruesome initiation my own de- 
 sire was mounting. When could I begin 1 ? On 
 the third day came my answer. I was given my 
 number. Fifty-six! This meant that fifty-five 
 others would be called before I could even start 
 training. 
 
 With other pilot students then I was put on 
 field duty as mechanic. All day we turned the 
 tails of other men's machines. 
 
 A month passed. I was still turning tails. 
 Should I never fly? Should I spend the rest of 
 my life in one treadmill after another? Was I 
 who burned to roam the skies to be a "penguin" 
 rolling on the ground"? 
 
 But the penguin does give place to fleeter craft 
 and turning tails did come to an end. 
 
 On a white, misty morning in October I began 
 practice. 
 
 Trundling back and forth over the muddy field 
 in my short-winged Bleriot was absorbing enough 
 for a day or two. Then I wanted something crag-
 
 THE SWALLOW 99 
 
 gier for my energies. But I had to content my- 
 self with perfecting my technique. 
 
 There was no dual control in this school. The 
 pilot was required to learn every step by himself. 
 So I had to learn the movements in three different 
 penguins before I was promoted to a machine with 
 full-sized wings. In this I could leave the ground 
 by one or two feet, making the thousand yards to 
 the end of the field in a series of jumps. Then 
 with the motor sped up I rose a yard or two and 
 made a little landing. 
 
 In my next machine, of the same type but higher 
 power, I dove a bit and corrected my motions so 
 as to make a smoother landing. It was like taking 
 a dancing lesson in the air circle to the left, turn 
 to the right, back to the centre, turn to the left. I 
 learned to keep the machine in perfect poise. By 
 tipping the wings I learned to make a precarious 
 bow. I did figure eights. I glided, turning at the 
 same time I glided. 
 
 One hundred yards, two hundred yards, five 
 hundred yards ! Hour by hour, day by day, foot 
 by foot, yard by yard, I was gaining on Adven- 
 ture. If I could have stepped into the car and 
 flown off, that would have been conquest. But so 
 gradual was the ascent that I could hardly feel 
 myself mounting. Even the official spiral was
 
 ioo THE SWALLOW 
 
 just another scramble up the slopes. Not till I 
 could take my cross-country flight would the peaks 
 be mine ! 
 
 The weather all that autumn was windy or 
 rainy or foggy or lowering. Any of these condi- 
 tions was bad for cross-country flying. I had al- 
 ways thought that my will could dominate any 
 situation but I had always thought of the will to 
 act. Now I had to acquire the will to wait. 
 
 In such torpor Jasmine's image, submerged in 
 more tumultuous hours, would rise up to torment 
 me. Sometimes at night in spite of my longing, 
 perhaps because of it, I would decide with finality 
 not to forgive her. At last I knew that I had 
 finished with her, irrevocably. In this bitter peace 
 the sleep that crept over my exhausted body would 
 flow up into my brain until it caught and drowned 
 each fleeting thought . . . sleep deep and dream- 
 less as the sea . . . then disturbed memories that 
 hovered over the depth . . . memories that plunged 
 and brought me up out of the brief, kind stupor 
 into living pain. My eyes would be wet; I had 
 cried in my sleep. Evoked by dreams, the image 
 would linger among my waking senses . . . the 
 dark Spanish eyes with their tropical warmth that 
 was not warmth, the fruity hair and cheeks, the 
 little fragile fingers. I could hear the rustling
 
 THE SWALLOW 101 
 
 voice. I could see her as she looked up at me the 
 first time we had danced together. I could feel 
 the freshness of her lips in the perfumed darkness 
 under the magnolias. And in that hour of lonely 
 yearning before dawn I would murmur the words 
 I had written her: "I never cared for any one but 
 you. I never can. I'm not going to give up yet. 
 But don't forget one thing that when I'm wound- 
 ed you're to come over and take care of me." 
 
 After such a night as this my only relief was 
 to walk. Feverishly I took long, exhausting hikes 
 until my throbbing muscles promised oblivion at 
 night. During these days I had one companion. 
 Hull and Payne had already completed their 
 courses and gone on. And, as my accomplishments 
 did not include a familiarity with Russian, Peru- 
 vian or Chinese, I had to confine social intercourse 
 to an English-speaking Jap. 
 
 The Jap was a gallant fellow. He could fly 
 fairly well but he could not land. "What do you 
 do when you want to land?" I asked once, curious 
 about the mental make-up that, with his will and 
 intelligence, inhibited this one feat. "I cut my 
 motor, I dive, I close my eyes, I wait." This was 
 what he literally did. And every time he tried to 
 land he smashed a machine. With Oriental tough- 
 ness he persisted. But he cost the government so
 
 102 THE SWALLOW 
 
 much in machinery that the captain decided to dis- 
 charge him. It is of course such a disgrace for a 
 Jap to start anything he can't finish that Moiche 
 threatened hari-kari. And to prevent the spectacle 
 of a disembowelled student, the horrified captain 
 let him stay. After I left I received one letter 
 from him. It began : "Dear My Friend Mr. Rich- 
 ard Byrd." I learned soon afterwards that, still 
 attempting the landing he was never able to make, 
 he had been smashed to the ground near his han- 
 gar. 
 
 While I was still at Pau we spent many hours 
 together walking through the fiery autumn woods. 
 Next to landing his ambition was to master Amer- 
 ican slang. In return for what I taught him he 
 gave me a few lessons in Japanese. And it was 
 in the midst of one of these strange studies that 
 an officer summoned me. To-morrow had been 
 set for my cross-country flight ! 
 
 The sheltered quiet sunshine that had made Pau 
 famous as a winter resort had come at last. Fog 
 and wind had gone. It was a still December morn- 
 ing when Moiche helped me into my fur combina- 
 tion. I was to fly fifty miles south over a small 
 town, return without landing and fly fifty miles 
 west. Then would follow the official triangle and 
 my training was complete.
 
 THE SWALLOW 103 
 
 My flesh, which had tingled deliciously with the 
 cold when I first stepped out on the field, was now 
 creeping with another sensation. As, calmly pull- 
 ing down my helmet and up my gauntlets, I 
 walked to the machine, I trusted that no one would 
 notice how the calves of my legs wobbled. Fasten- 
 ing my safety belt, I settled myself fussily. 
 
 "Contact!" called the mechanician. 
 
 "Cuh-cuh-contact !" I chattered. 
 
 "Cuh-cuh-cold feet!" jeered Moiche, tempted 
 from his usual eastern courtesy by this chance to 
 display his learning. 
 
 Some one laughed. There seemed an extraor- 
 dinarily large number of visitors. 
 
 Taxi-ing across the field I came back, mounting 
 in circles. I had expected a kind of trance in 
 which mundane things would disappear. But 
 there were the narrow eyes and fat little mouth of 
 Moiche, the stiff black head of the mechanician, 
 the square upturned face of some visitor, his arms 
 thrust into his overcoat pockets. How disappoint- 
 ing 
 
 Just then my motor took the bit in its teeth and 
 galloped off. "Whoa, whoa!" I shrieked, then 
 was glad no one could hear me. My hands felt 
 suddenly small and weak. How could I quiet this 
 roaring, snorting monster of energy tearing over
 
 104 THE SWALLOW 
 
 space 4 ? I clutched the controls. The movement 
 grew smoother and stiller. From the tail of my 
 eye I cast down a furtive glance. The earth was 
 backing away. The old castle, the moat and draw- 
 bridge, the canal, the twisted rope of water all 
 were backing off from me as fast as they could go. 
 Even the pine forest was floating away like a green 
 veil blown from a woman's shoulder. I threw an 
 elated thought to Jasmine and to mother. I had 
 caught up with Adventure ! 
 
 I was one with the eagle. I sat between its po- 
 tent wings. I was fleeter than the wind. I was 
 lighter than those luminous clouds below me. I 
 awakened the dawn. I opened the gates of the 
 morning. I tread the rays of the sun to the sun's 
 rim, and it quailed before me. 
 
 In a fairly decent landing I slid down to earth. 
 
 "Oh boy, oh boy," was all I could say as picking 
 Moiche up by the shoulder-blades I fox-trotted 
 
 him across the barracks. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Then came the official triangle. On it I flew 
 south to a small town, made a landing, flew west 
 for another landing and then flew back to the field. 
 This was not accomplished so quickly as it might 
 have been. For of course like every other aviator 
 I was lost on my triangle and landed near a quaint,
 
 THE SWALLOW 105 
 
 red-roofed village, where the mayor and the 
 schoolmaster grew heated over the honour of en- 
 tertaining me. 
 
 I explained to the city fathers that since the 
 schoolmaster spoke English I would spend the 
 night with him. Probably no one suspected that 
 this decision was influenced by the dominie's pretty 
 daughter. It was a happy choice. The supper of 
 onion soup, omelette souffle and wine served me by 
 Madame before the ruddy hearth, the eager ques- 
 tions of Monsieur about the craft and art of flying, 
 the ripe black eyes and ripe red lips of Mademoi- 
 selle these made me glad I had forsworn the 
 mayor's more imposing entertainment for the hos- 
 pitality of this little stone cottage. 
 
 This official triangle gave more leisure than the 
 cross-country flight for the enjoyment of my own 
 sensations. They had lost no exultancy. I had 
 discovered a new world. Its foundation was a sea 
 of clouds. It was established on sunlit floods. 
 
 The last test was one of height. After staying 
 up an hour at an altitude of two thousand yards I 
 received my brevet. I was now a pilot and ordered 
 to a second school at Laon. 
 
 Christmas I was invited to spend at the Apple- 
 ton Ambulance. So with my wings and star and 
 corporal's stripe to take the curse off my shoddy
 
 106 THE SWALLOW 
 
 uniform I reached the Gare du Nord in holiday 
 fettle. 
 
 Paris too was in festal mood. The air was cold 
 and brilliant and tonic. The city was distilling its 
 perfume the tantalising smell of baking bread, 
 frying onions, roasting chestnuts ; sweat of horses ; 
 motors exuding gasoline; scented garments of 
 women; spicy breath of carnations in the florist's 
 window; pungent whiffs of bay-rum through the 
 barber's door. The city was making its music too 
 the clash of wheels against the cobble-stones, 
 the tangled skein of voices and the faint, far sound 
 of the guns. The black stream that flowed down 
 the boulevards was touched with currents of hori- 
 zon-blue and ruffled with gleams of feminine 
 brightness. As I made my way to the Ambulance, 
 every sense carolled its enjoyment of the sights and 
 sounds and smells of Paris. 
 
 Thanks to the wings on my collar I found my- 
 self a bit of a hero. There was at the Ambulance a 
 tendency to fete me, one which, because of my 
 shaggy appearance, I started to protest. 
 
 But the "Foster-Father" of the Ambulance as 
 my first and best friend there was called, had an- 
 ticipated my vanity. Foster himself, beyond the 
 age for more active service, did his part in a dozen 
 other ways. One of them was the treats he was
 
 THE SWALLOW 107 
 
 always giving the boys. Dinners, gifts, money 
 smuggled into one's possession by such means 
 did Foster make life more livable for young Amer- 
 icans in the war not yet their own. Perhaps be- 
 cause my determined efforts to get into service had 
 amused him, he was even more of a foster-father 
 to me. So now, aided by the measurement of my 
 khaki, he had ready for me a finely tailored uni- 
 form, worthy the wings that were at once trans- 
 ferred to it. In the pocket he had left a thick roll 
 of greenbacks. "Christmas Evergreens," they 
 were labelled. 
 
 "That's enough," he said when I tried to thank 
 him. "King and Stoner left word there was to be 
 a meeting of all American aviators at Louey's 
 Cafe at five to-day. I'm giving you a chow-party 
 to-night. And I want you to be a credit to the 
 A. A." 
 
 There were other gifts, too candy and cakes 
 from Mother, cigarettes from the boys, and from 
 Jasmine yes, from Jasmine a small, flat parcel. 
 With quickened breath I wrenched off the wrap- 
 per. Herself! The great eyes looked softly into 
 mine, the full curved lips repeated their old magic. 
 My heart gave a throb of pain. It was her first 
 message since that fateful letter. As always, she 
 had known the best way to keep my heart aching.
 
 io8 THE SWALLOW 
 
 I tucked the little photograph into the pocket 
 of my new uniform. It lay there beside the stiff, 
 green bills. For a moment I stood helpless under 
 the rush of that old feeling. Then with a bitter 
 recovery I started for the door. Jasmine was not 
 all. I was twenty-one. I was wearing the avia- 
 tor's uniform. It was Christmas Eve. As I strode 
 through the long halls of the hospital I was re- 
 peating these things to myself. For the first time 
 I faced what is so difficult for youth to face 
 the fleetness of grief, the powers of the future. 
 
 It was just as I reached the doorway of the last 
 ward that I saw a nurse reaching up to straighten 
 a festoon. Squarely under the mistletoe ! I was 
 reckless with my new, hard optimism. Clasping 
 an arm about the whiteclad figure I was about to 
 go further. Her back stiffened as she whirled 
 about and Irish eyes faced me stormily. I fell 
 back. I recognised those eyes at once. It was the 
 girl I had seen wheeling the crippled soldier in the 
 Dublin station, the girl who had picked me out 
 ;for her merry, tonic smile of inquiry. 
 
 "Beg pardon Cussmas American kisstom," I 
 stammered into the outraged face. "I'm awfully 
 sorry truly." 
 
 "Oh it's you, is it ? You'd better be sorry !" 
 
 She remembered me! I tingled with triumph.
 
 THE SWALLOW 109 
 
 Even in the change from my mongrel livery of 
 that Dublin night to this natty horizon-blue, she 
 remembered ! 
 
 "What are you doing in that uniform^" I asked 
 at last. Then realising my inanity I blushed. 
 
 "Oh," said she casually, answering the blush, 
 "shoeing horses, digging potatoes, cutting lumber 
 all the little things expected of a nurse in the 
 hospital. What are you doing in that uniform 4 ?" 
 
 "Oh," answered I, "mending the baby's clothes, 
 putting up preserves, arranging the flowers all 
 the little things expected of a flier on the field." 
 
 We both laughed. Then with a little nod she 
 started off. 
 
 "Don't go," I begged in dismay. "I haven't seen 
 a woman for months." I would have caught at 
 her hand but was too thoroughly intimidated. 
 
 "None of them have, poor dears," she answered 
 pityingly. 
 
 She put her head on one side and looked at me 
 as if she were denying a child. 
 
 "And I'm running away from my boys to-night 
 so I mustn't neglect them now." 
 
 I looked after her. Why, I wondered ungrate- 
 fully, didn't that donkey of a Foster ask her to- 
 night 1 ? By jove, I would make him do it yet. As 
 I turned back to find him I remembered that I
 
 no THE SWALLOW 
 
 didn't know her name. But I would describe her. 
 Little oh, very little, blue eyes, dash of brogue, 
 black curly hair, crisp walk. I stopped short. She 
 had said she was going out to-night. 
 
 "Oh, damn," I muttered. "Well, I'll look her 
 up to-morrow." 
 
 I was the last to arrive at Louey's Cafe, where 
 there was a jovial reunion between Hull, Payne 
 and myself. There were three older men, too, 
 already distinguished fliers, whom I had never met. 
 As I looked over the crowd I remembered some 
 one's definition of an aviator a womanly war- 
 rior. The two airmen most renowned were espec- 
 ially true to type. King's square chin and endur- 
 ing eyes were those of a soldier but his dimples and 
 delicate brows would have lent charm to a girl. 
 Stoner, long-limbed, high-bred, was sensitive as a 
 poet, unswerving as an explorer. 
 
 Warm-blooded and hardy from camp life, we 
 chose a pavement table in the cold, medicinal sun- 
 shine. All of us, I think, were in a pleasant com- 
 motion. We sniffed something epic in the air. 
 But not till our glasses were filled, not till his 
 cigar glowed steadily, did King relieve our impa- 
 tience. A man of wordless force he made what 
 was for him a long and eloquent speech : 
 
 "Fellows, there are now half a dozen of us
 
 THE SWALLOW in 
 
 breveted pilots from the U. S. A. Why don't we 
 get together and form an American Squad *?" 
 
 Puffing his cigar excitedly, he looked into one 
 face after another. We were quiet at first under 
 what seemed to us an epoch-making suggestion. 
 Then the spark slowly caught. We took fire. We 
 pounded the table, we clashed our glasses. 
 
 It was some time before King could bring us 
 Bown to earth. There were many details that must 
 be taken up with many officials. These we had to 
 work out now; in a few days we should all be 
 scattered. So abandoning future romance we 
 buckled down to business. 
 
 When he had made our arrangements we shook 
 hands. 
 
 "The next time we six meet together, it will be 
 as the American Squad," said Stoner, and at this 
 we shook hands again. Then as we scattered I felt 
 a sudden hollow in my stomach. Eight-thirty 
 Foster's dinner was at eight! I had forgotten it 
 completely. Half an hour late, I jumped into a 
 taxi. 
 
 I was bumped out at Margery's by a head-on 
 collision with another taxi. As I scrambled out 
 the two chauffeurs opened fire. 
 
 "Treat 'em rough," I shouted, tossing a coin
 
 112 THE SWALLOW 
 
 to my driver and wishing I could stay to get my 
 money's worth. 
 
 As the door of the enemy car gave way out burst 
 a small woman in a gold-embroidered evening 
 wrap. Expecting her to cudgel me over the head 
 I was about to flee when a hand clutched my arm. 
 I looked down in trepidation. 
 
 "Oh," said the voice with the dash of brogue. 
 "I'm glad you're late too. Mr. Foster will be so 
 cross. I just couldn't leave my boys earlier on 
 Christmas Eve !" 
 
 Her red upper lip caught at a smile that was 
 trying to run off and hide. I thought her inconse- 
 quential acceptance of me delightfully feminine. 
 
 "We'll rig up a reason," said I as with my hand 
 under her elbow we hurried in. "You receive ur- 
 gent letter from unknown woman imploring you 
 to save her at eight o'clock sharp to-night. You 
 doll up for dinner and drop around on the way. 
 Entering dark hovel, find Slippery Sal the Sand- 
 bag Siren. Aided by Roughneck Nolly she is 
 about to relieve you of life and jewels when I, 
 Peter Punchbag, disguised as chauffeur, rush in, 
 fire one thrifty shot for the two of 'em and here 
 we are alive but hungry !" 
 
 "It's easy to guess what high-grade literature 
 you hid under your geography oh, here comes
 
 THE SWALLOW 113 
 
 Mr. Foster. How distinguished he looks in eve- 
 ning dress !" 
 
 He was a striking figure with his tawny, leonine 
 head towering over the crowd and his tawny, 
 twinkling eyes, that just now looked somewhat se- 
 vere. 
 
 "So you two have met already," said he, pilot- 
 ing us -to a table in the corner where sat a hilarious 
 group of girls in dainty frocks and ambulance men 
 in khaki. "We just this minute sat down 
 thought we wouldn't wait more than half an hour 
 for the guest of honour." 
 
 That started me on an apology. 
 
 "Hist!" interrupted my companion. "Don't 
 forget Peter the Punchbag and Soapsuds Sal !" 
 
 At that Foster relaxed and with a laugh placed 
 her at his right. 
 
 "Foot of the class for you, young man," he said 
 to me. 
 
 I wished I could have sat beside her. I had so 
 much to say to her. So, evidently, had Foster. 
 Her head was half the time turned to him. Then 
 I could see only her white neck from which the hair 
 waved upwards black as midnight. Sometimes 
 when Foster, turning to the little blonde on his 
 left, relinquished her for a minute, she would look 
 around at me. Then I discovered that everything
 
 114 THE SWALLOW 
 
 about her was full of nooks and crannies. A smile 
 would break up her face into new little niches. 
 Her voice, a sparkling, sunny voice, kept drop- 
 ping into strange depths and coming up in some 
 unexpected bright spot. The laughter in her eyes 
 was always going down behind shadows, then ris- 
 ing to brush them aside. Once when Foster 
 pledged "The Buzzard" the old nickname of 
 which I had told him always amused him "and 
 his new pair of wings," her eyes were on me in 
 some unsmiling thought that chilled me. What was 
 she thinking about? Then as the laughter broke 
 from behind the shadows I was suddenly warmed 
 again. 
 
 It was a night of triumphant happiness. After 
 months in a muddy barrack how contenting was 
 all this elegance gleam of silver and linen and 
 white shoulders, brightness of holly, delicious food 
 and champagne. Nor was I insensible to my own 
 small notoriety, especially in the light of those 
 eyes with the nooks and crannies. 
 
 Next morning I was the first one down. I was 
 determined not to miss her. It was not long before I 
 saw the crisp little figure in its crisp white uniform. 
 
 "Good morning Merry Christmas will you dine 
 with me to-night*?" I asked in one unpunctuated 
 breath.
 
 THE SWALLOW 115 
 
 "Good morning Merry Christmas no I won't," 
 she said. Then seeing my face she added, "You 
 see my boys have been talking for days about the 
 Christmas tree I'm going to give them to-night. I 
 really couldn't leave, could I 1 ?" 
 
 "But that will be over early," I insisted. "We'll 
 make it nine o'clock." 
 
 "Two nights running^ That's dissipation." 
 She shook her head. "I really mustn't." Her face 
 brightened. "But I guess I will." 
 
 "Hurrah!" I said. "I'll call for you." 
 
 I spent the rest of the day picking out a se- 
 cluded table in an unsecluded cafe, composing a 
 menu, studying wines, procuring poinsettias. If 
 it took my last penny I was determined to have a 
 perfect setting. 
 
 "Foster's Christmas greenery was a life-saver 
 this time," I thought ferevently. 
 
 Her pleasure when she saw the poinsettias was 
 more than reward for the miles I had trudged to 
 find them. 
 
 "For a young man whose earning capacity is 
 just a cent a day, aren't you a bit extravagant*?" 
 she asked, surveying the table with delighted dis- 
 approval. 
 
 "A few months on the field makes a fellow feel
 
 n6 THE SWALLOW 
 
 as if he'd earned a Christmas tree," I answered 
 with a joyous grin. 
 
 "You have, indeed, poor darlings," she said 
 with one of those sudden cloudings in her eyes. 
 "Do you know, here I sit eating dinner with you 
 and such a dinner without knowing your 
 name?'' 
 
 "I don't know yours either," I beamed. The 
 situation, as well as those echoing eyes, conjured 
 romance. "Let's see how long we can keep 'em 
 dark and have private names for each other." 
 
 "That's easy. I tagged you the first time I 
 saw you." 
 
 As I looked up inquiringly a verdant note 
 struck my sight. It was a green frock in the door- 
 way. Above it shone the long blue eyes and yel- 
 low hair of my little poule. 
 
 "Oh, pardon wait a minute!" I interrupted. 
 "I must speak to that girl. 
 
 Getting up so suddenly that I spilled the wine, 
 I made my way to the door. In my new uniform 
 she did not recognise me but, as I bade, followed 
 me to the dressing-room. There I produced the 
 gloves her Englishman had given her. I knew 
 enough French now to present a humble apology 
 and with it one of Foster's greenbacks. 
 
 At sight of the gloves she remembered. At
 
 THE SWALLOW 117 
 
 sight of the money she forgave. Gibbering like 
 a monkey she caught my hand and, to my utter 
 horror, kissed it. She even pressed upon me her 
 name and address. 
 
 "If you ever need a friend," she said. Indeed 
 I had some trouble in getting rid of her. 
 
 When I sat down again, the soup was steaming, 
 the glasses were filled. Still brilliant were the 
 flowers, the silver, the napery. Only my compan- 
 ion had changed. Gone was the merry, tonic 
 smile. She was looking after the girl I had just 
 left with a speculation almost wistful. Yet there 
 was nothing of petty, personal vigilance in the 
 glance she gave to this poor moth of the street, 
 none of the feminine anger which Jasmine would 
 have felt. It was a look so big with thought of 
 others, so filled with a sense of danger which she 
 could not avert she was thinking so pitifully of 
 the girl, so sadly of me . . . Before this widened 
 spirit of hers my eyes fell. And afterwards as 
 I told her the little story I kept thinking to my- 
 self, "And she's pretty, too!"
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AFTER that moment even my lightest banter 
 was tinged with this sudden sharp rever- 
 ence. 
 
 "Just how young are you*?" she asked as I fin- 
 ished my story and the smile which, always trying 
 to escape to some nook, was caught and brought 
 back severely by her mouth. 
 
 "My public age is twenty- two. I lied to get 
 my passport. Just how young are you?" 
 
 "Twenty-three is my public age. I lied to get 
 my passport." 
 
 "You look about eighteen and act about thirty," 
 I volunteered. 
 
 "It's not a pretty thing to say to a woman," I 
 heard her say. 
 
 "I mean," I floundered, glancing up to see if 
 she were serious, "that you seem like a born 
 mother." 
 
 A mysterious little smile, not at all motherly, 
 came into her eyes. I grew embarrassed. 
 
 118
 
 THE SWALLOW 119 
 
 "You didn't tell me your name for me," I said 
 rapidly. 
 
 "The Swallow," she answered. Seeing my look 
 of uneasy inquiry she added, "Oh, it's all right. 
 You looked so downy and unfledged and eager, 
 with your soaring eyes. Just poised for high 
 flights somewhere." 
 
 "Downy*?" I gave a scowl reminiscent of the 
 dicky bird. 
 
 "Ruffled, now, if you prefer that," she appeased 
 me. "And what are you going to call me?" 
 
 "Let me think you reminded me of the sea." 
 
 "The sea! Gullish fishy full of craft or 
 what?" 
 
 "No," I said emphatically, eyeing my plate, 
 "Salty, bracing and deep. You made me feel as 
 if you'd been to unknown places, like the sea, and 
 no man could know where you'd go next. Smooth 
 and sunny, but full of storm. I like the sea. I 
 like anything invigorating." I said this breath- 
 lessly, not daring to look up. Then as it drew no 
 response I drove it home. I raised my eyes with 
 a boldness I did not feel. "I like you, too," I 
 added. 
 
 She, too, was gazing steadily at her plate. 
 
 "Why?" she asked. 
 
 "Because you know men and say the right
 
 120 THE SWALLOW 
 
 thing and are always just around the corner. In 
 other words, because you're a real woman." Then 
 I became heady with happiness. "Why do you 
 like me?' 
 
 "Because," she answered gravely, "you don't 
 know anything about women and say the wrong 
 thing and are always this side the corner. In 
 other words, because you're a real man. Well, 
 Swallow, what are you going to call me?" 
 
 "The Stormy Petrel is the best I can think of." 
 
 "Your description sounded more like an old 
 salt. But now tell me about her" 
 
 "Her!" 
 
 "I must have this to play with. It's so satiny." 
 She put out a ruthless white hand and tore off 
 a poinsettia petal. Then her calm gaze returned 
 to me. "Yes, the girl at home the one you 
 brought me here to talk about. You may have 
 thought you brought me for other reasons but you 
 didn't." 
 
 Knowing this to be the truth I ate my chicken 
 in stubborn silence. 
 
 "Begin farther back," she commanded in tact- 
 ful impatience, tapping the stem of her glass with 
 a gleaming pink nail. "I must know from the 
 beginning. What is your mother like 1 ?" 
 
 My mother! I walked straight into the trap.
 
 THE SWALLOW 121 
 
 "My mother is the bravest soldier I ever knew." 
 
 Those words broke down my feeble reserve. 
 As she had ordered I began at the beginning. Like 
 a dumb man suddenly restored to speech I talked 
 on and on. When I had brought my biography 
 up to date, when I had told her of the letter that 
 had blighted and broken me then I pulled out 
 the little photograph. 
 
 "How awfully pretty !" she exclaimed, bending 
 over it. "How awfully pretty !" 
 
 "She sure is," I agreed, proud of her praise. 
 "It was tough to be turned down by a girl like 
 that, but I haven't given up." 
 
 "Turned down!" She erected two small 
 thumbs. "You are no more turned down than 
 these are. Take my word for it." 
 
 "Do you mean she'll marry me*?" 
 
 My companion found a sudden interest in her 
 pastry. Then she asked quietly, "When did you 
 expect to marry 1 ?" 
 
 "Why, when I get through seeing life." 
 
 "Ah, now you have answered your own ques- 
 tion," was her cryptic answer. "But will you 
 please look at the time*? Take me home as fast 
 as you can. I think you're more of a bat than a 
 swallow." 
 
 "I can't seem to get out of the feathered king-
 
 122 THE SWALLOW 
 
 dom," said I, helping her into her cloak. "Started 
 life as a dicky bird, was promoted to a buzzard, 
 metamorphosed into a swallow " 
 
 "And now go owling about Paris corrupting the 
 habits of a respectable petrel." 
 
 At her door I leaned my shoulders against the 
 wall, prepared for an hour of pleasant farewell. 
 This plan was rudely upset by a small hand thrust 
 out at me. There was finality in its grasp. 
 
 "Thank you so much, Swallow. You're going 
 to write to me," she announced calmly. 
 
 "I sure am," I agreed. 
 
 "And I shan't answer." 
 
 "Oh, you must !" I begged. "I'll be so lonely." 
 
 "All of them are, poor dears." She put her 
 head on one side and looked at me again as if 
 she were denying a child. "And I can't write to 
 all of them." 
 
 "I'm not one of them" I protested. But she 
 was gone. 
 
 When I got to my own room in Foster's quar- 
 ters I jerked out my fountain pen and began to 
 write. 
 
 "My dearest one " I was beginning a let- 
 ter to Jasmine. Usually when I wrote to her I 
 had to fight my pen to hold it back. Now to my 
 amazement I could not think of a word to say.
 
 THE SWALLOW 123 
 
 "Your picture came on Christmas Eve " 
 
 Finally I accomplished this much. Well, well, 
 what then"? I commenced making little geo- 
 metrical figures around the edges of my paper. At 
 last I took her picture from my pocket and set it 
 up on the table in front of me. I looked at it 
 studiously, conscientiously . . . "You looked so 
 downy and unfledged and eager" . . . Merry 
 blue eyes came between me and the picture and 
 I was smiling imbecilely in reply. The smile 
 died down as another look interposed between me 
 and the picture a look so filled with sadness over 
 dangers not her own, a look so wistfully protect- 
 ing that I thrilled again with the memory. 
 
 Suddenly then I jumped to my feet. In be- 
 wilderment that was almost grotesque I stared at 
 myself in the mirror. 
 
 "Well, of all-^ " I said, dumfounded. 
 * * * 
 
 Laon was near enough the Alps for us to taste 
 the mountain cold. The camp was new. We 
 walked to our knees in mud. Water stood deep 
 under the barracks. As we had no stoves and 
 only one blanket, we slept in our overcoats. 
 
 Since there were not enough chasse machines 
 to go around I was assigned to a voisin. After 
 flying a monoplane, the big, unwieldy biplane
 
 124 THE SWALLOW 
 
 seemed an indignity. I had, too, to fly the Cap- 
 roni, an immense Italian machine with three mo- 
 tors of one hundred and fifty horse-power, capable 
 of carrying five men. 
 
 The type of machine we used at this time had 
 the habit of catching fire. Quite a number of 
 the fellows were burned. Every time one of our 
 men met this most horrible of all deaths, the 
 whole school attended the funeral. It became a 
 weekly experience that horrified, blackened 
 thing leaping from the falling monster of fire; 
 the procession of bluecoated comrades; the bare- 
 headed villagers, crossing themselves; the service 
 in the old cathedral, heavy with incense, misty 
 with the light of tapers. 
 
 Although I did not have to follow the line of 
 training prescribed at Pau I put in many hours of 
 drudgery before my apprenticeship was consid- 
 ered sufficient; for it was drudgery to fly those 
 heavy bombarding machines. But when I could 
 reach a height of fourteen hundred yards and up, 
 there I found reward. They would fall farther 
 and farther away the buttressed hill above the 
 little plain, steep vineyards, turreted palace and 
 Gothic cloister and tfye old cathedral towered like 
 a fortress until they were nothing but a doll's 
 establishment. Then like one blunt spear-end
 
 THE SWALLOW 125 
 
 in a row of dagger points, Mont Blanc would 
 rise among her clustering peaks. I could see a 
 blue patch that was Lake Geneva. I could see 
 the whole valley of the Rhone a gossamer veil 
 threaded by one silver cord that frayed out into 
 tiny strands of silver. Again I had reached the 
 sun-sluiced peaks of Romance ! 
 
 During these busy days I had thought inces- 
 santly of my next visit to Paris. I wanted to tell 
 that girl at the Ambulance everything that had 
 happened since I saw her. I liked to remember 
 the clever things I had said and to construct more 
 scintillating dialogue. With that trip in view I 
 was cultivating a moustache. This ornament was 
 so white at first that the boys named it Mont 
 Blanc. "Maybe it will turn red or some other 
 pretty colour," they encouraged me. Darkening 
 with age and weather it finally became a rusty 
 black like old mourning. I was more than pleased 
 with it. And just in time it turned. For I was 
 transferred to the military field that protects Paris 
 from night raids. Now I should see her often ! 
 
 I reached Paris early in the morning. Bathed, 
 polished, with Mont Blanc neatly trimmed, I 
 presented myself at the Ambulance. 
 
 The first person I saw was herself. She was 
 bending over some charts on her office desk.
 
 126 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Good morning," I said optimistically; "you're 
 dining with me to-night." 
 
 The springy little white figure straightened. 
 
 "Oh ! How do you do? I wish I could." 
 
 She gave me her left hand and a hurried smile 
 while with her right hand she jotted down some- 
 thing on a slip of paper. She did not even no- 
 tice Mont Blanc. I was alarmed. Then I re- 
 membered her weakness. 
 
 "This is my only night in town," I said artfully. 
 "There's no telling when I'll see a woman again." 
 
 "But I'm not the only woman in Paris, you 
 know," said she, still writing. "You'll have to 
 take some of the other girls to-night." 
 
 Had she dropped a bomb on me I could not 
 have been more unpleasantly surprised. 
 
 "But," I insisted, "there was something I 
 wanted to ask you something very private." 
 
 "Ask it now," she said briskly, bending over 
 another chart." 
 
 She could make me so happy and she wouldn't! 
 Even her motherliness was gone. I suddenly be- 
 gan to hate her. I hated her crisp morning mood, 
 her crisp, clear eyes, her crisp white skirt. I 
 could have bitten my tongue out for dragging in 
 an unwelcome personal note. But if I died for 
 it I would finish.
 
 THE SWALLOW 127 
 
 "I wanted to know how you happened to be in 
 Dublin," I said, very fast, "and why you looked 
 at me as you did." 
 
 "Oh, that's it*?" She wrote a few words. 
 "Why, you see" she paused abstractedly to 
 fill in another line "I was on leave before com- 
 ing over here. So I went home to Ireland to see 
 my brother who had been wounded. That's how 
 it was." 
 
 Once more she was lost in a chart. 
 
 If I had asked a Wall Street broker on Mon- 
 day morning to discuss Mrs. Browning's love son- 
 nets, I could not have felt more calfish. But I 
 meant to see it through. 
 
 "And the rest*?" I set my teeth. 
 
 "Why petrels have some points in common 
 with swallows. Perhaps I clapped my beak in 
 the masonic high-sign of birds. There was an- 
 other reason I stared but I shan't tell that. You 
 wouldn't like it. Nou?' gathering up her 
 papers she shook them into shape "I must run. 
 Come in and say good-bye before you go, won't 
 you?' 
 
 "Yes," I murmured, moistening my lips. 
 
 "Be sure," she called, with a fleet smile over 
 her shoulder.
 
 128 THE SWALLOW 
 
 I stumbled blindly into Foster's empty office 
 and began to kick the furniture. 
 
 "Fool! Dolt! Ass!" I groaned, punctuating 
 each word with a kick. "Poor prune! Poor 
 prune !" 
 
 I had been on a -two month's jag of egotism. 
 The hang-over was a bad one. My brilliancy 
 that I had recalled with complacency came back 
 now in a duller light. 
 i "I like you why do you like me? You act 
 
 about thirty " Had I really said those things 
 
 or was it a bad dream? And this morning, in 
 the face of that cool, business-like greeting, I 
 had snivelled sentimentally! I was burning up 
 with shame for myself and rage at her crisp self- 
 sufficiency. She had put me in my place. Well, 
 I would stay put. I would not go to say good- 
 bye. 
 
 "What's the matter with me, anyway, that I 
 get stung every time*?" I wondered. 
 
 Jumping up, I looked in a mirror. I tried to 
 look impersonally. 
 
 Five feet eleven not a giant, but not a dwarf; 
 and I had always been proud of my shoulders. 
 Muscles like steel springs, veins bubbling with 
 vigorous blood, teeth sound and white, skin 
 ruddy, eyes clear, hair on the jump but plenty of
 
 THE SWALLOW 129 
 
 it not bald, at any rate and Mont Blanc sprout- 
 ing lustily. 
 
 I turned from this inventory to meet Foster's 
 laughing eye. But I was beyond caring. 
 
 "Foster," I began wildly, "do you consider me 
 peculiarly repulsive to women*?" 
 
 "You're crazy with the heat," said Foster calm- 
 ly. "When did you come to town*?" 
 
 "No, I'm not. I get on great with men but 
 women !" 
 
 "Look here," said Foster earnestly, sitting 
 down, "if you're still worrying about Myrtie or 
 Migonette or Heliotrope or whatever her name 
 was forget it. There's plenty more fish in the 
 sea I've seen them flap their fins at you. There's 
 just one thing about women you have to knock 
 'em on the head. A touch of cave-man stuff does 
 the work, my boy. They eat it up. And never 
 let a woman know she's hooked you. Keep it 
 dark, keep it dark." 
 
 My mind flew back to Shorty's prescription for 
 spraying the little red mule's nose: "Rope her 
 head you gotta treat her as if she was a woman 
 rope her head !" 
 
 Without a word of excuse to Foster I tore out. 
 All day I walked madly. "Keep it dark knock 
 'em on the head." I repeated his words as if they
 
 130 THE SWALLOW 
 
 were a ritual. "Cave-man stuff is what I hand 
 out from now on. And I'll not go back to say 
 good-bye." 
 
 At nine o'clock that night I found myself, for 
 some reason unknown to myself, pacing up and 
 down in front of her office. "And I'll not go 
 in to say good-bye," I was murmuring. Mouth 
 dry, eyballs burning, pulse hopping I was in 
 best cave-man condition. 
 
 A door opened. A hand clutched my arm. 
 
 "You're an answer to prayer, Swallow! I 
 haven't had a bite since breakfast wait, wait!" 
 
 I was dashing out for a taxi. 
 
 "You must get me back by midnight. Promise 
 not to fascinate me with tales of your misspent 
 life till I forget to come home?" 
 
 "Keep it dark knock 'em on the head," whis- 
 pered the cave-man. 
 
 "I promise anything," I said. 
 
 Leaning back in the car she closed her eyes. 
 She was white and below her lashes were heavy 
 shadows. 
 
 "You can't imagine," she said, lifting those 
 lashes just enough to intoxicate me, "what heaven 
 it is to have a man take care of you after taking 
 care of men all day."
 
 THE SWALLOW 131 
 
 "Keep it dark knock 'em on the head," 
 prompted the cave-man. 
 
 "It's heaven for me," I said. 
 
 Then speechless with gratitude for her pres- 
 ence I sat until we reached the cafe where we had 
 been before. If I could only get our old table 
 that was the one important thing in life. Fever- 
 ishly I besought the head waiter for it, and got it. 
 
 "Oh, how nice to be here again !" she exclaimed. 
 
 She had remembered! 
 
 "Yes, please, something hot. Spinach soup will 
 be lovely. How that wine does revive one!" 
 
 There was a wine in my veins more potent than 
 the life-blood of grapes. Wordless with content- 
 ment I watched the -glow come back to her eyes. 
 
 "Isn't it lucky you hadn't dined*?" she ob- 
 served, dipping a spoon into the steaming soup. 
 "Why hadn't you, by the way?" 
 
 "Keep it dark knock 'em on the head," urged 
 the cave-man. 
 
 "I couldn't eat," I said. 
 
 "Why not"?" Her spoon was poised half-way 
 to her mouth. Professional anxiety was in her 
 tone. 
 
 "Keep it dark knock 'em on the head," plead- 
 ed the cave-man. 
 
 "Because I thought you didn't like me this
 
 132 THE SWALLOW 
 
 morning," was what I said. I was horrified to 
 hear a quaver in my voice. 
 
 "My dear Swallow" she dropped her 
 spoon "you're not why, I had enough work 
 to-day to turn seven saints into seven wild-cats 
 -^-you're not " 
 
 She looked at me helplessly. 
 
 "Yes, I am." Giving the cave-man a vigorous 
 kick in the face I went desperately on. "I love 
 you everything about you : 
 
 My voice broke. 
 
 "And you sat here not two months ago telling 
 me at this very table" she tapped it with 
 her little white hand "that you would always 
 love another girl ! Blessed boy, where's your sense 
 of humour*?" 
 
 "But that wasn't " 
 
 "Don't!" She laid her hand on mine. It 
 was strong and mothering, not frail like Jas- 
 mine's. "Don't say that wasn't real love." 
 
 "Do they all say that 1 ?" 
 
 "Invariably." 
 
 "And does every man you meet tell you that 
 he loves you?" 
 
 This seemed to me the obvious course for any 
 man.
 
 THE SWALLOW 133 
 
 "Oh, dear, no," she said, horrified. "But you 
 see, they aren't responsible, poor dears." 
 
 "And don't you want me to love you?" I asked, 
 jealous of that plural. 
 
 "It wouldn't be fair if I did. You come in 
 from the camp crazy to tell the first woman you 
 meet about your girl. It's a glamorous subject 
 and for the moment you think you're in love with 
 the woman who listens to you. As soon as you're 
 gone you know you weren't. You simply loved 
 to talk to some one about love. That's what I 
 mean when I say you're not responsible." 
 
 I thought hard. Then I said ponderously: 
 
 "If this is the regular procedure, why did you 
 make me talk about my girl?" 
 
 For one startled second her eyes met mine. 
 Then she laughed, that tonic laugh that I had not 
 heard since Christmas night. 
 
 "Take me home," was her answer, "before 
 you learn so fast that I can't like you any more 
 for not understanding women." 
 
 This speech contained dizzy possibilities. I 
 fed on it in the days to come. It was the most 
 
 precious thing that I carried to camp. 
 
 * # * 
 
 In the new field I was given a big voisin with 
 an inch cannon that fired a shell three thousand
 
 134 THE SWALLOW 
 
 yards. We kept four machines over Paris. Each 
 of us had to stay up two hours and a half every 
 day at a height of six or ten thousand feet. It 
 was disappointing but I never saw a Zeppelin. I 
 never saw an airplane other than our own. I saw 
 nothing but the domes and streets and trees of 
 Paris all flattened down to the size of the Noah's 
 Ark I had played with as a baby. Beyond the 
 city I could see the fortifications; beyond those, 
 the dim line of trenches. And never once did I 
 fly over Paris but I tried to pick out the roof that 
 covered her who was always in my thoughts. She 
 was wrong, she was wrong! I had never really 
 loved any but her. Some day I was going to make 
 her believe it. And as I flew there so near her I 
 was always rehearsing just how I would make 
 her believe. 
 
 Soon I was put on the night patrol. The first 
 night I was as high-strung as a race-horse. My 
 nerves were snapping. It was the most intense 
 moment of my life. With red and green lights 
 tipping my wings I began to climb. I had no 
 idea if I should ever come back. I could see the 
 lights of Paris and sometimes a village road. I 
 could tell the different aviation fields by the num- 
 ber of flashes they sent up. But suppose there 
 should be a raid and all lights should be extin-
 
 THE SWALLOW 135 
 
 guished? Then I could only feel about through 
 the darkness and pray that my motor would not 
 fail me. 
 
 There was no raid. There was nothing worse 
 than a cooling spark-plug that sent me limping 
 home. Five times did the machine break on 
 those night patrols. Five times I hobbled back, 
 grazing the tree-tops as I came down. I could 
 have landed in Paris ; but I always took pride in 
 getting back to the field. 
 
 My nerves grew tougher under the tension. 
 But I never grew used to the loneliness a lone- 
 liness that clamoured, a stillness that throbbed. 
 Was she ever lonely, down there in the hospital? 
 
 Was she asleep, or out with some one luckier 
 than I s ? Did she think of me ever? I was tied 
 to field duty, but in fancy I was by her side. 
 
 All this time plans were going ahead for the 
 American Squad. Our captain, like so many 
 Frenchmen, was infatuated with America. When 
 he learned of our intent he was determined to 
 lead us. Because of my nationality then he took 
 a special interest in me and went to great trouble 
 to be pleasant to me. We exchanged French and 
 English lessons. I grew to enjoy his grace of 
 nature as much as I admired his rockribbed no- 
 bility. Indeed we became the warmest friends.
 
 136 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Once when his fiancee came out to visit him he 
 asked me to dine with them. They frankly adored 
 each other. 
 
 The captain had been flying a heavy machine. 
 But to fit himself for leading the Americans he 
 began to practice on the chasse. One day I 
 watched him fly off in a little scout. He had not 
 gone five hundred yards before he lost control, 
 dropped into a spinning nose and crashed to earth. 
 
 Aroused by my cries nearly the whole camp ran 
 to him. When I reached him some soldiers at work 
 on a hill had pulled him out of the machine. He 
 was lying with his head on a little mound of hay. 
 With one hand at his wrist I tore open his shirt. 
 I put my other hand at his heart. There was no 
 life there. He gasped. The pulse in his neck 
 gave one beat. He moved in my arms and died. 
 I could not keep back the tears. 
 
 Then something happened which ever since has 
 depressed me. The soldiers were kneeling with 
 us at his side. One of them asked a comrade who 
 had been a priest before the war to offer a prayer. 
 "Is he a Christian'?" the priest asked me. "Oui," 
 I said. "Bien," he returned, and prayed. 
 
 Had my captain been a thief Christ would have 
 blessed him. But he was a clean, upright man, 
 who had given his life of love and splendid ac-
 
 THE SWALLOW 137 
 
 tivity for a just cause. And this pitiful, small- 
 souled priest must inquire his creed before giving 
 his benediction. 
 
 A month after the captain's death the squad 
 that he had hoped to lead was born. I received 
 orders to report at the large depot of aviation in 
 Belleville. 
 
 My precious last night in Paris could be spent 
 in just one place, illumined by one presence. At 
 our secluded table in the unsecluded cafe I sat 
 flooded with the sure happiness that her nearness 
 gave. 
 
 "I'm in earnest," I began. 
 
 "I'm not," she answered, a smile breaking her 
 face up into little nooks. 
 
 "Won't you stop laughing long enough to tell 
 me you know I love you*?" I begged. I wanted 
 from her own lips the assurance that my own 
 were always hungering to give. 
 
 "For one minute I will be serious if you will 
 frivol the rest of the evening. Agreed*?" She 
 help up a firm finger. "Well, then, there 
 is only one way to know when love is real. That 
 is when it can stand realities." 
 
 "What are realities'?" I asked, ready to drag 
 them in by the hair of their heads. 
 
 "One is time. One is sacrifice. There are mo-
 
 138 THE SWALLOW 
 
 ments, too, of suffering and danger that illuminate 
 the heart, that make you know if you can bear 
 delay and denial. And sometimes I think the 
 greatest tests of all are success and happiness. 
 Perhaps it's a greater tribute to need love when 
 you're up than it is when you're down. Now, 
 Swallow, time's up. Flap your wings and be 
 merry!" 
 
 It was when I was leaving that I said quite 
 suddenly : 
 
 "If I'm wounded will you save me a bed in 
 your ward?" 
 
 Just as her smile had done when Foster had 
 pledged my new pair of wings, her bright voice 
 took one of those sudden drops into a strange, 
 dark place. The eyes she lifted to mine held 
 something I had never seen there before. Was 
 it terror 1 ? 
 
 "Swallow," she said, "dear, unfledged Swal- 
 low, God grant I may never have the chance." 
 
 For a moment her look lingered in mine. I 
 put out my hands to touch her. But she was 
 gone. 
 
 After learning the little Nieuport at the depot 
 I was sent to join the American Squad at Bar- 
 le-Duc. At the town I was met by some of the 
 older men. In our own motor they drove me to
 
 THE SWALLOW 139 
 
 the field. There I found my own little Nieuport, 
 our own mechanicians, rest tents, messengers, 
 chauffeurs and a small army of other employees 
 for our special edification. Halfway between 
 the field and town was our villa with baths, con- 
 servatories, a grand piano, comfortable beds, and 
 several cars. Nothing was too good for the Amer- 
 icans who had enlisted for France. Except when 
 on guard, our time was our own. I thought ex- 
 ultantly now of that walk to Pau with a knap- 
 sack that rubbed my back and boots that blis- 
 tered my feet. I contrasted that muddy, barren 
 barrack with this princely comfort, those rigid 
 rules with this elastic life. I was no longer a 
 school-boy. I was a warrior! 
 
 The men I found here were as satisfying as the 
 quarters the finest brand of young Americans, 
 I think, with the aviator blend of delicacy and 
 daring. 
 
 Each of the squad had some special insignia for 
 his machine. A member of the Hotfoot Club of 
 Virginia had a printed foot, another an Indian 
 head. Some used their own initials. With a 
 remorseful thought for Jasmine back in Texas 
 I painted on one side of my machine a huge star. 
 On the other side less conspicuously I painted a 
 tiny swallow.
 
 140 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Falling back to admire my creations I plumped 
 smartly against another chap who, brush in hand, 
 had stepped back for the same purpose. Looking 
 around at the clap of meeting spines he saw my 
 insignia. 
 
 "What'd you plagarise my planet for?" he de- 
 manded. 
 
 "I didn't plagarise your planet," I protested. 
 
 "You did," and he pointed to his own. 
 
 "Hey," called a third voice, "You two have a 
 crust coming out as the star of the squad ! You'd 
 better prove it first." 
 
 "Mine's the Lone Star of Texas," we chorused 
 in unison. And finding we were fellow statemen 
 we shook hands amicably. 
 
 My first flight over the lines was made under 
 the wing of Dover Manley. Patrolling Dead 
 Man's Hill, we kept a sharp lookout for machines 
 bearing the black cross of Germany. As we found 
 none we flew about awhile to watch the battle. 
 It was the siege of Verdun and I had expected to 
 see fierce fighting and hear the tremendous noise 
 of war. I could hear nothing but the roar of my 
 own motor. I could see nothing but a dishevelled 
 strip of earth ploughed with mine craters. Back 
 of the lines I did see something: on one side a 
 little streak as if some one had scratched a match
 
 THE SWALLOW 141 
 
 on the ground ; on the other, little puffs of smoke 
 like the dust from puff-balls. And that was all 
 there was to the great battle of Verdun. 
 
 For some time my only taste of war was when 
 I would drop into an immense hole in the air left 
 by one of the big shells. And I was pining for 
 a sight of the enemy. It came suddenly. A bomb 
 burst just behind our hangar. The noise sickened 
 me. I did not know what it was. 
 
 "A Boche, a Boche !" cried the boys. 
 
 Looking up * saw a bony white thing in the 
 air, like the skeleton of a fish. It was a German 
 machine ! 
 
 My own machine was broken, but before I 
 even thought of that, three of the chaps were up. 
 A bomb dropped near me. My stomach caved 
 in. Another bomb burst and another. Then a 
 whistle blew. I began to run. Seeing a lot of 
 workmen running, I joined them. I didn't know 
 where they were going. I only knew I must get 
 away from that noise. 
 
 Leaping over the ground, head down, I dove 
 straight into the stomach of an officer. 
 
 "Where are you going 1 ?" he asked calmly. 
 
 I stopped and looked at him. War was here ! 
 The dream of my life was realised ! And I, poor
 
 142 THE SWALLOW 
 
 poltroon, was running away! Turning, I went 
 with the officer to the town. 
 
 We counted over our heads fifteen machines. 
 
 Bar-le-Duc was in a valley. The railroad sta- 
 tion was along the canal. Our field was on a 
 plateau. Both field and station were easily seen 
 from the air. Passing the station by entirely, 
 dropping a few shells over the field by way of 
 pastime, the Germans deliberately bombed the 
 town bombed peaceful old men and women and 
 children. 
 
 The invasion of Belgium was evidence enough 
 that Germany had no more sense of civilisation 
 than a savage. I had heard first-hand a hundred 
 instances of barbarous treachery. I knew the 
 English doctor who had responded to the call of 
 a wounded German on the field and who after 
 caring for the man as if he were one of his own 
 countrymen, was shot in the back by his patient. 
 I knew a dozen more men who themselves had ex- 
 perienced the brutal breaking of every war con- 
 dition to which Germany had pledged itself. But 
 not till my own eyes saw these crumpled homes 
 of innocent civilians, women without faces, old 
 men without arms and legs, babies without 
 mothers not till now did I know why I was fight '
 
 THE SWALLOW 143 
 
 ing. My adventure was now an adventure of 
 purpose. 
 
 Next day my machine was in order so that I was 
 able to fly with the others. It was much less ter- 
 rifying to be in the air firing a machine gun than 
 to stand on the earth below, where all effort was 
 absolutely useless. It made me realise more poig- 
 nantly the outrage against those old men and 
 women. 
 
 Our boys did what they could but the Germans 
 had the advantage. In the air one must work 
 on three dimensions instead of two : width, breadth 
 and height. Distances, of course, are enormous. 
 If a German is five or six hundred yards away and 
 happens to have a speedy machine, a gun is use- 
 less. The point of vantage is from above with 
 the sun at your back so if the enemy looks in your 
 direction he can not see you. The Germans now, 
 of course, could climb high and we were at a dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 Day after day they bombed us. Just as we would 
 settle down to a noon beefsteak, would come the 
 cry: "Les Boches!" Out we would run. "My 
 trousseau, Antoinette!" I would call to Anton, 
 my mechanician. Then not waiting for it I would 
 cram down my cap, jump in the car, shout "Con- 
 tact!" and fly off. Four times a day I would go
 
 144 THE SWALLOW 
 
 to a height of five thousand yards. It was a ter- 
 rific strain and useless. Not till they had bom- 
 barded us a week did I get from my machine a 
 glimpse of the enemy. 
 
 That day, just as I left the ground, I saw 
 twelve German machines, all from two to three 
 thousand metres up. Setting my machine at a 
 tangent, I started climbing. Around and around 
 under the Germans I circled. Looking down at 
 the town, I saw little brown puffs of smoke from 
 the German bombs. Looking up at the Germans 
 I saw little puffs of white smoke from the French 
 shells. 
 
 I was halfway between the two. It seemed 
 safer to get close up under the Germans; so I 
 started climbing. By the time I reached their 
 height they had all disappeared except one little 
 scout. I was right in under him. I went on 
 climbing. So did the scout. The faster I climbed 
 the faster he climbed. Try as I would I could not 
 get ahead of him. 
 
 "Pt !" He was firing at me. 
 
 Dropping my machine down into a reloading 
 position, I fired back. 
 
 "Pt!" answered he. 
 
 "Pt!" rejoined I. 
 
 "Pt, pt, pt !" he sputtered.
 
 THE SWALLOW 145 
 
 "Pt, pt, pt yourself," I retorted. 
 
 This last word came high. I had spent my last 
 cartridge! If he fired again and I did not an- 
 swer he would know he had me. But happily 
 he disappeared behind the German lines and I 
 scudded back to the field. That was the last day 
 of the bombardment. 
 
 I liked best my flights with Dover Manley. I 
 had for him the admiration of a cub for a master 
 flier and the admiration of every one who knew 
 him for a high-hearted soldier. In an older 
 brother way Dover took great pains with me 
 trimmed me off, watered me down, patted me into 
 shape. 
 
 His only fault as an aviator was an excess of 
 bravery. He never left a German until he was 
 sure he had driven him out of control. He used 
 to come back with bullet holes in his sleeve or 
 his shoe. His machine, with the fifty odd patches 
 where it had been struck, looked like a crazy- 
 quilt. Once, absorbed in a fight with a German, 
 he failed to observe a Fokker over him till the 
 pilot dove on him, caught him in his line of fire, 
 riddled his machine, broke the main control, cut 
 through his head-guard and opened up his scalp. 
 Catching hold of the two broken ends of the con- 
 trol, Dover flew home. His wounds were dressed
 
 146 THE SWALLOW 
 
 without his going to a hospital. His machine 
 was repaired immediately. And the next day 
 Dover was back on the German lines. 
 
 One day we had started out together when in- 
 distinctly through the mist I saw a German. Mak- 
 ing a short turn I dove on him, but before I could 
 reach him Dover was on his tail. Hoping to 
 help Dover I tried to follow them. I lost sight 
 of them both, but every time I heard Dover's mil- 
 trailleuse, I went after it. Soon the popping 
 ceased. Through the silence and the mist I flew 
 about trying to locate Dover. Suddenly I saw 
 him peering at me from a cloud. We flew home 
 together. When we landed Dover told me that 
 he had gone down on his nose out of control and 
 had lost his man. 
 
 "And I want to tell you, kid, you're the real 
 stuff," he said, stripping off his Teddy-bear gar- 
 ments. "When a fellow hears something that he 
 thinks is a Boche and finds a friend instead, it's 
 a happy surprise party." 
 
 Another morning about four o'clock on patrol, 
 my machine balked. As the fellows were several 
 hundred yards above me, I could not reach theii 
 altitude. Suddenly my tail went up. I sat down 
 hard in a hollow of air. Then beside me I heard 
 a big "Chou !" I could see nothing. It was like
 
 THE SWALLOW 147 
 
 a giant spitting out of invisibility. In a second 
 I heard another "Chou!" This time I saw be- 
 side me a puff of grey smoke. The German anti- 
 aircraft guns were after me ! Now the shells were 
 all around me. One nipped off a wing. Another 
 smashed the mirror in front of me. 
 
 "It's up and out of this for you, quick, my boy," 
 I thought. As fast as I could I veered off to the 
 left. Coming out of its early morning grouch just 
 in time, my machine began to climb again. In 
 two minutes I was safe at several hundred yards 
 above our boys. But I came back from that ex- 
 pedition with the sense of occupying a prominent 
 place in the thoughts of the German army. In a 
 trench you have no identity. A shell is fired not 
 at you but at a hundred. In aerial combat there is 
 more personal feeling. You and your German, 
 alone in the world, are fighting. But when you 
 are the sole target of the anti-aircraft guns, when 
 five or six complete batteries are aiming intimate 
 messages of spite from Germany to you then do 
 you feel that you occupy a large area on the map 
 of war. And with deep thankfulness I saw the 
 home field that day. 
 
 The return was always warmly satisfying, any- 
 way. The exultancy of flying takes a heavy toll 
 in nervous tension. The isolation is a strain.
 
 148 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Death is imminent. And to come back to the 
 substantial earth, to secure human contacts, 
 brought the glow that follows hazardous enter- 
 prise. If one came home with a Boche to his 
 credit the satisfaction was doubled. That was a 
 triumph I never had a chance to taste. 
 
 We were required to make two patrols a day 
 over the Verdun lines. Each patrol lasted from 
 two to three hours. What other flying we did 
 was voluntary. 
 
 These were stirring days, with the hardest 
 strain, the keenest reward that I had ever known. 
 We were called early in the dark of the morning. 
 After an unceremonious cup of coffee we would 
 motor to the field. While we donned our "trous- 
 seaus" the mechanicians rolled the machine from 
 the hangars. Then the shriek of "Contact!" from 
 the man below and before the answering shriek 
 was fairly from our mouths, it seemed, we were 
 four thousand feet up. 
 
 As dawn began to smudge the east with pink we 
 could see a cluster of red roofs, a strip of broken 
 earth, pillars of dark smoke, showers of shells. 
 That was the Battle of Verdun. 
 
 Back for a brief rest in the tent before lunch, 
 then another sortie. After the second breathing-
 
 THE SWALLOW 149 
 
 spell some of us would voluntarily make a third 
 trip. By that time we had keen appetites for 
 dinner in the villa where we messed with our of- 
 ficers. 
 
 I shall never forget my last night at the villa. 
 After a devastating game of poker, I wandered 
 into the music-room. The captain at the grand 
 piano was softly playing Debussey. From be- 
 hind a closed door the phonograph was shrieking 
 "The Saucy Little Bird on Nelly's Hat." It was 
 a chilly June night and a bunch of the boys, 
 lounging about the open fire, were talking in low 
 tones on subjects seldom discussed in that healthy, 
 objective spot the intimate subjects of love and 
 marriage, religion and death. 
 
 Throwing myself down into a deep chair be- 
 yond the firelight, I thought of the girl in Paris 
 in Paris no longer. No, she was not there to- 
 night. She had written me that she was going to 
 the front on a special mission for a few days. I 
 knew what "special mission" meant and all day 
 at the thought of her my heart had pounded in 
 terror. Now, however, a strange hush had come 
 over my whole spirit. I was no longer afraid for 
 her. I was glad that she, as well as I, was a part 
 of it all. I was glad for the things she could
 
 150 THE SWALLOW 
 
 bring to a world of suffering the merry smile, 
 the wide heart, the tender Irish eyes. 
 
 "My girl," I said to myself, "my girl, my girl ! 
 If you knew how I felt about you, you'd believe !"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT was dawn, June 18, 1916. Four of us left 
 the field to make our regular patrol. Each 
 was in his own machine the captain, Payne, 
 King and I. Flying together in a flock we pa- 
 trolled the whole Verdun front, across Hill No. 
 304, then turned and started home. 
 
 We were still well back within German terri- 
 tory when underneath me I saw a German. Far- 
 ther down over Hill No. 304 I saw more Germans 
 and dimly through the mist still more Germans. 
 
 Payne and King were flying together at my 
 right. Pulling up closer to the captain I wig- 
 wagged my machine. From that he would know 
 I had discovered an enemy. Then I began to 
 watch my man. Soon I saw him separate from 
 the others. It looked like a good chance to get 
 on him unawares. 
 
 "If I miss him," I thought, "I'll fly right on 
 home, then come back again." 
 
 I kept One eye on the captain. He had in- 
 clined his plane. Evidently he was going after
 
 152 THE SWALLOW 
 
 one of the other Germans whose presence I had 
 signalled him. 
 
 Making a sharp turn so as to get my man in 
 the path of fire, I dove as steeply as possible. As 
 I came down I saw that his machine was small 
 possibly a two-seater. That meant that he was 
 as fast as I. One second I poised for decision. In 
 that second lay my future. I decided to attack. 
 
 I ran up to him. I passed. He crossed my line 
 of fire. I opened up my gun. He dropped into 
 my sights. I fired once, twice. Those were my 
 first and last shots. My machine gun had jammed \ 
 
 Now the other Germans began to appear 
 through the mist. One was at my left, two were 
 on my right, one was underneath, the man I had 
 first attacked was behind me. From the silence 
 of my gun they would know there was nothing to 
 fear. They would get on top of me. My fight 
 was over. I was too far behind the German lines 
 to dive to earth. I could only manoeuvre back to 
 the field. 
 
 I began to loop; I swung in every direction; I 
 went into a cloud. Bullets followed. 
 
 "Pt!" One had scratched my machine. 
 
 I slipped away from the man who fired it and 
 threw the belly of my plane upwards. 
 
 "Pt, pt, pt !" This time one went through.
 
 THE SWALLOW 153 
 
 "Ft, pt, pt! Ft, pt, pt! Ft, pt, pt!" The 
 machine was full of them. 
 
 I was now about twelve thousand feet up. It 
 was while I was standing completely on my head, 
 the belly of my plane skyward, that something 
 struck me. It felt like the kick of a mule. I had 
 the sensation of losing a leg and put my hand 
 down to learn if I were all there. I was strapped 
 in too tightly to be knocked overboard and I had 
 the presence of mind to cut the motor. But as 
 my right foot went back with the shock of the 
 bullet, my left foot sprang forward. So with 
 my commands reversed, my leg out of business, 
 still standing on my head, I fell into a spinning 
 nose dive. 
 
 Around and down, around and down. It was 
 all over. Soon I should hit the ground as I had 
 seen so many friends hit it. That would be all. 
 How strange that I, the I that had seemed undy- 
 ing, should hit the ground like all the rest. I 
 remembered the first man I had picked up. I 
 should look like that. I remembered when I had 
 picked up my captain. I had cried. Would any 
 one cry for me 1 ? Would the girl in Paris care? 
 
 Around and down why, could this be death, 
 this ease almost this ecstasy of giving up*? 
 There was no terror, no numbness; nothing but
 
 154 THE SWALLOW 
 
 my clear mind following my body following, 
 not fighting. Why, death could not be like this ! 
 I must see her again, the Stormy Petrel. That 
 thought came thundering through space. Came 
 a second crash France, my usefulness, my job. 
 I was giving these without a struggle. 
 
 "Stop yourself, coward!" I was shouting it 
 out loud, trying to shout it above this rush of air 
 that had been drugging me into abandonment. 
 "You're not dead. Don't be a quitter. Mother 
 don't let me give up! Mother!" 
 
 Before that moment I had been a boy, adven- 
 turous, enthusiastic, perhaps as courageous as the 
 most. To me at twenty, flying for France had 
 been sport, well-meant, timely, even gallant, but 
 still sport. It was not until I flung my mother's 
 name into the drowning air that I crossed the line 
 between sport and conflict. In that second I 
 grew up. 
 
 Making a supreme effort, I tried to push my 
 bad leg with my hand; but the machine planes 
 were so wedged in the fall that I could not get 
 the commands. If I hit here I should be a Ger- 
 man prisoner. Working my right leg with my 
 hands, working it desperately, at last I felt the 
 kinks come out of the commands. Once more the 
 machine was on the level. Now if I could make
 
 THE SWALLOW 155 
 
 my dazed brain remember the rules for flying with 
 one foot. Pull the left instead of pushing with 
 the right if I could remember to do that! 
 
 "Ft, pt, pt!" 
 
 My gun was still useless. My entire right side 
 was paralysed. I was bleeding like a pig. But 
 at that sound I dove again. This time I kept con- 
 trol. I was low enough now so that through the 
 mist I could see the trenches like worm-eaten 
 wood, and the snaky curve of the river. I put 
 my plane in more than a vertical dive, shooting 
 back under the Germans so far that the roll of 
 cartridges fell out and falling, hit my arm. I 
 thought I had been struck again. Everything was 
 falling out now. 
 
 "Pt, pt, pt!" 
 
 I looked at my metre. Eight hundred feet 
 above ground. I was going to hit in Germany ! 
 
 I could see the trenches. I must get home! 
 Pulling back the release I opend up the motor. 
 It was now making fifteen hundred revolutions a 
 minute ; it could go no faster. I poised a second, 
 then took a long running dive over the lines. I 
 went so fast that I could scarcely recognise the 
 trenches. I went so far that I left my enemies 
 out of sight. 
 
 I was now growing too faint to go on. I saw
 
 156 THE SWALLOW 
 
 a green field and, making a turn to the left, came 
 up to the wind and dove for the field. Too late 
 I saw that it was filled with barbed wire; I was 
 landing between the front line trenches and the 
 reserve lines. The barbed wire caught my wheels 
 and very gently my machine turned completely 
 upside down. I knew that it was going over me. 
 I should bleed to death after all. But as it turned 
 my straps tore loose. The belt that held me 
 dropped me, alive, in France, with my machine 
 safe beside me. 
 
 Pain left me, fear left me. Was this helpless 
 safety the thing for which I had fought my spir- 
 itual battle up there in the air? 
 
 Safety 1 ? In the field next to me I saw a burst 
 of smoke, then a white spot; then another and 
 another before I realised what it meant. The 
 Germans were shelling me from the air. They 
 had seen me fall; they were trying to kill me 
 where I lay; worse yet, they were trying to de- 
 stroy my machine. 
 
 "Cowards!" I cried, "to hit a machine when 
 it's down !" 
 
 I was sure I said the words aloud, yet I could 
 not hear them. Now I knew why I did not hear 
 the bombs they were firing at me; my ears had 
 been deadened by the terrific fall. It was like
 
 THE SWALLOW 157 
 
 the movies, to watch the thunderous shells burst 
 silently near me. 
 
 When the bombing stopped, some one would 
 come for me. I suffered so little pain that I knew 
 I was not badly wounded. I should be sent to 
 Paris. The Stormy Petrel would take care of 
 me ; she had promised. Then when I was getting 
 well we would have more gay little dinners; her 
 eyes would laugh at me across the table, laugh 
 away something deeper than laughter. Then I 
 would come back to the squad and fight, and the 
 next time I would get my German. But, strange 
 climax of the human heart, now, after that vic- 
 tory over myself, it was more of those good times 
 in Paris that I thought than of my job. 
 
 The bursts of smoke had ceased. Tired of wait- 
 ing, I tried to crawl. I could not move. I got 
 up on my hands and knees to try again but could 
 no more move than if I had been staked to the 
 ground. Finally, catching the grass, I dragged 
 myself like a dog with a broken back. Inch by 
 inch I made about ten yards; then I could go no 
 farther. 
 
 It was now about six o'clock in the morning. 
 The sun which had driven away the mist, flamed 
 down upon me in the unshadowed field. I un- 
 buttoned my heavy flying clothes. I took the
 
 158 THE SWALLOW 
 
 shoe off my right foot; it dripped red. Utterly 
 exhausted by these efforts, I could feel only a 
 dumb wonder at the sight. Somehow I could not 
 connect that bleeding foot with myself. I was 
 all right. I must let my mother know this at 
 once. Then I would go to Paris for those good 
 times. 
 
 After I had waited a few minutes longer, fouf 
 French soldiers came, stooping low ; they, too, had 
 kept quiet till the shelling had ceased. Crawling 
 under the barbed wire, they caught hold of me and 
 asked what was the matter. 
 
 "Bullet in my hip," I muttered, choking 
 back with each word a groan at the touch of their 
 hands. The pain of their rough grasp was so 
 severe that now for the first time I wondered. 
 Could my wound be worse than I had thought 1 ? 
 
 "Can you walk*?" they asked in French. 
 , "Mais non" said I, indignantly. 
 
 Two took me by the shoulders, two by the feet. 
 Then like a beast unleashed my pain broke from 
 its long stupor. Almost crawling to escape the 
 enemy's eye, the four men dragged me like a sack 
 of grain. Through the long grass, over and across 
 and under the web of barbed wire, my bleeding 
 body sagged and sometimes bumped the ground. 
 The pain had now become such torture that I al-
 
 THE SWALLOW 159 
 
 most fainted. Oh, if only some enemy would 
 see us, would shoot an end to my hell ! 
 
 I do not know how long that journey lasted. 
 All I do know is that at last we came to the dress- 
 ing-station behind the trenches. Here, lying face 
 downwards on a bed, I thought of only one thing. 
 As a child longs for home at night, I longed for 
 mine. The rattle of the poker-chips, a big Amer- 
 ican voice singing "You Made Me Love 
 You" American ragtime, jokes, faces if I 
 could only get back to these to-day, it didn't mat- 
 ter where that German bullet hit. Then to-mor- 
 row I should see the girl. The boys would send 
 me to Paris. 
 
 Meanwhile some one was pulling off my fur 
 combination. As they cut away my shirt and 
 dressed the wound, the antitoxin numbed the 
 pain. Now I suffered no more than I had there 
 on the field. It was in this deadened state that, 
 looking around, I saw for the first time the hole 
 in my hip. With a curiosity that was almost 
 grotesque, I stared at that wound. All the time 
 it seemed to me that this gaping, black hole be- 
 longed to some other man; just as when I had 
 looked at my bleeding foot I could not believe 
 it was mine.
 
 160 THE SWALLOW 
 
 The stretcher-bearers were making ready to 
 pick me up. I looked at them beseechingly. 
 
 "To my squad at Bar-le-Duc right away 
 please," I begged. 
 
 They made no reply, and carrying me face 
 downward, my fur coat thrown over me, through 
 an underground trench, they placed me at last 
 on the floor of the poste de secours. As I lay 
 there waiting my turn for the ambulance, I 
 watched three other men go out before me. Again 
 came the intense incredulity. Was it really I wait- 
 ing so helplessly, or was it one of those men I 
 carried when I drove an ambulance? 
 
 "To my squad at Bar-le-Duc right away 
 please," I repeated to the broad-shouldered young 
 man preparing to lift me to his ambulance. He, 
 like the stretcher-bearer, did not answer. I looked 
 into the dark, triangular face bending over me 
 and clenched my teeth in a fury of futile home- 
 lessness. 
 
 "One moment here!" 
 
 A man who had just jumped from a car hur- 
 ried into the little station and held up his gloved 
 hand for attention. 
 
 "Is there an aviator here who fell a few hours 
 ago?" 
 
 "I right here," I answered eagerly.
 
 THE SWALLOW 161 
 
 "Oui, oui, I saw your fall. I am a member of 
 the reconaissance squad. My car is at your dis- 
 posal." 
 
 I could have cried out with joy. The fat 
 little Frenchman, with his red point of beard and 
 reddish brown eyes, took on the glorified aspect 
 of a deliverer. I could not thank him enough. 
 
 "Merci, merci, merci!" I exclaimed. "Je suis 
 un Americain, Lafayette Escadrille, Bar-le-Duc. 
 Toute de smfe, s'il vous plait." 
 
 "Bien, bien," said he, calling his driver to help 
 lift me from the floor. 
 
 With the fur coat still thrown over me, my 
 stretcher was placed across the front and back of 
 the opening in the touring car. As the driver 
 settled himself at the wheel, my new friend 
 seated himself to hold the stretcher in place. 
 Just as we were ready the chief of the station 
 came out to the car. 
 
 "To V ," he ordered in a loud tone. 
 
 "V is only twenty miles. Bar-le-Duc is 
 
 thirty. This man is not able to travel so far. To 
 y i" 
 
 There was complete finality in his tone. Yet 
 despite this and my present sickening disappoint- 
 ment, I still held fast to my purpose. If they 
 would not take me to my friends, I would have
 
 162 THE SWALLOW 
 
 my friends send for me. For I must see the 
 nurse to-morrow. All through that long, tortur- 
 ing drive over one of the roughest roads in 
 France my thoughts crowded about those moments 
 of homecoming. This drive, scarcely bearable in 
 an^ ambulance, was almost unsupportable in a 
 light car that permitted my stretcher to jerk back 
 and forth. Every time we went down into a shell- 
 hole I could hardly keep from screaming. My 
 captain, the boys to-night; my nurse to-mor- 
 row. That intense thought became a prayer. 
 
 At last we reached V . Here I was carried 
 
 into a long, narrow shed packed tightly with other 
 men on stretchers like myself. By this time I was 
 half fainting. Perhaps because of this the first 
 sight of the shed had the stagnant horror of a 
 dream. As an ambulance driver I was used to 
 such scenes, but then I had been well. Now each 
 mutilated form caught up my own suffering, re- 
 peated it, dinned it into my brain, until I thought 
 I had never known health or peace or beauty. 
 
 I looked around me in terror. Mud was thick 
 on the floor. Flies came down like droves of lo- 
 custs. The stench was that of a stock-yard. 
 Poilus, some with arms torn off, some with heads 
 half shot away, shouted like madmen.
 
 THE SWALLOW 163 
 
 My driver was leaving me now. As he put me 
 down I made a groping movement for his arm. 
 
 "Thank you, and for God's sake," I said "for 
 God's sake telephone my captain at Bar-le-Duc to 
 come for me to-day." 
 
 He promised, but as he turned away a man 
 started to undress me. 
 
 "Don't take off my clothes," I commanded. "I 
 am leaving here in a few moments." 
 
 He paid no attention. 
 
 "I forbid you to take off my clothes," I 
 screamed. "I am an American ; I am going to my 
 squad." 
 
 He made no answer. Instead, from the Poilu 
 next to me came a cry that tore the air. I closed 
 my eyes to shut out the scene. When I opened 
 them again a surgeon was standing over me. 
 
 "I'll just look at the wound," said he. "in 
 can get the bullet out you can go on to your 
 friends this afternoon." 
 
 Reassured, I let them take off my clothes. 
 Then, naked and partly paralysed, I lay on the 
 dirty canvas stretcher with a blanket thrown over 
 me until I was carried to a table in the little white- 
 washed shed that served as an examination room. 
 With a radioscope under my body the doctor 
 marked me six or seven times.
 
 164 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Only one bullet?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 "I don't believe it hit the bone, but I'll have to 
 take it out. Then you can go to your friends to- 
 morrow." 
 
 To-morrow! I must be in Paris to-morrow! 
 Oh, I never could wait till to-morrow to go to 
 Bar-le-Duc! 
 
 I waited a year. 
 
 They carried me to a table in the operating 
 shed. The last thing I saw was the doctor's 
 apron, a solid crimson patch. Then struggling 
 little, breathing easily, I swam out across the 
 breakers into a shining calm that spread and 
 spread and carried me on a joyous rosy tide to 
 Paris. 
 
 I awoke at noon, not in Paris, but on a stretcher. 
 Through my^twilit senses I could dimly see my 
 captain. 
 
 "Mon capitaine" I cried. "It wasn't my fault. 
 My machine-gun jammed. I fired at him once but 
 my gun broke." 
 
 "It's all right, my little one, it's all right." 
 
 The light stinging French accents of my officer 
 seemed to prick the darkness about me. I won- 
 dered if they were fireflies. I dropped asleep. At 
 evening I awoke, begging for water. Some one
 
 THE SWALLOW 165 
 
 shot some dope into me and I went back into a hot 
 darkness that lasted until morning. Again I 
 awoke, begging for water. More hot darkness. I 
 struggled through black suffocation. I pulled one 
 leg after the other toward an icy mountain brook 
 that laughed hilariously as it hurried to the sea. 
 How easy for it to run, how hard for me! I 
 strained each leg up from the steaming swamp but 
 could never get ahead. Summoning all my will, 
 I awoke with the cry of "Water!" 
 
 Some one brought me a bit of wet bandage to 
 suck. There was a violent numbness in my hip; 
 weakness and thirst were all I suffered now. With 
 my wounded leg drawn up and my knee doubled 
 tight, I could turn on one side. For the first time 
 I had a chance to survey my surroundings. 
 
 Ten miles back from the Verdun front, the 
 great French evacuation hospital where I lay was 
 near enough for German aeroplanes to bomb us 
 frequently. Indeed, the hospital was intended 
 merely for operation; as soon as a man was able 
 to be moved he was sent to Paris or elsewhere for 
 treatment. The average patient stayed three 
 days ; a few bad cases stayed five. 
 
 As an aviator I had been given the best the hos- 
 pital afforded. I was in the officers' ward, a long 
 shed packed tightly with thirty cots. Made of
 
 i66 THE SWALLOW 
 
 three pine boards covered with a straw mattress, 
 two coarse sheets, a small pillow and blankets, 
 these beds were very different from those we now 
 give our wounded. Then, at the height of the 
 Verdun siege, every bed was filled. In fact dur- 
 ing my whole stay I never saw an empty one. 
 
 As I looked down over the rows of beds I again 
 had the feeling that life was echoing unbearably 
 my own state. There in the receiving room it had 
 been the torment of pain that had been caught up 
 and dinned into my brain by those poor Poilus. 
 Now in these dumb eyes about me I saw my own 
 drugged and stricken will. 
 
 It was toward one person they were all looking. 
 Irresistibly I followed their gaze. Madame, chief 
 of the five women nurses, was just coming in 
 from the dressing-room. Her skirt was like a 
 snowy sail, and on her sleeve I caught the gleam- 
 ing cross of the Secours des Blesses. There was 
 dauntless energy in that profile, which in its bold 
 curve reminded me of the prow of a boat. 
 
 Yet it was more than courage that took her to 
 duty under fire. Tenderness was back of the 
 dauntless profile tenderness that made her eyes 
 give a separate look to each of those thirty men. 
 It was a gift, that swift enfolding glance, and as I 
 received my own I knew why they all turned to
 
 THE SWALLOW 167 
 
 her so hungrily. She was more than a nurse, 
 more than a woman; she was a presence. Every 
 time she glided into the room she seemed to each 
 man there like a long-awaited ship from home. 
 
 In the days that followed I don't know what I 
 should have done without Madame. When she 
 was away I used to long for her to come back into 
 the room. Even her French had a homey sound, 
 and the crooning little way she had of saying 
 "Mon fits" made me feel as if I were back with 
 my own mother in Texas. 
 
 Of course we saw very little of her. For all 
 those fifty portable houses that constituted the 
 hospital, there were only five women. The rest 
 of our nurses were young medical students who 
 would have been graduated in 1917. They had 
 intended to go on with their medical training in 
 the auxiliary army, but having for various reasons 
 been found unfit for service, had been transferred 
 to the medical ward. Despite their medical train- 
 ing, the most of these students had none of the 
 sick-room efficiency instinctive in the average un- 
 trained woman. True, they would doubtless have 
 done better had they not been overworked. But 
 there were not enough nurses, either men or wom- 
 en, to give us more than the most meagre care. 
 
 A few moments after Madame entered the room
 
 168 THE SWALLOW 
 
 that first morning the surgeon who had operated 
 on me came striding down to my bed. 
 
 "Ah, ha, boy," said he, holding up to me a little 
 bag, "I'll show you what I got out of you six 
 pieces of bullet. Want them for a souvenir 1 ?" 
 
 Strange how lively is the grim humour of the 
 hospital! To the outside world it might seem 
 strange, these jokes made by dying men. To us 
 it seemed to me we were always waiting for a 
 chance to laugh. For instance, a short time after 
 my arrival I heard a young officer saying peevishly 
 to his surgeon : "Why didn't you bring me all the 
 bone you got out of my hip*? You might have 
 known this wouldn't be enough to make dice." 
 
 Now as I looked up at the bullets that had 
 brought me here I felt myself grinning. My 
 own enjoyment was echoed by a grizzled old 
 major, who, brought in yesterday at the same 
 time I was, lay in the bed next to mine. Painfully 
 wounded as he was he gave a little crow when I 
 put the bullets down on the stand at the head of 
 my bed. 
 
 "Well, Doc," said I, staring up into the sur- 
 geon's sun-filled brown eyes and brown, sun- 
 streaked face, "what time am I leaving to-day 4 ?" 
 
 He was an attractive chap in a lean, feline way
 
 THE SWALLOW 169 
 
 and there was real kindliness in the look he turned 
 down to me. 
 
 "Not to-day, my little one ; to-morrow, perhaps. 
 There are many more pieces of this bullet to fol- 
 low. It was explosive, you know." 
 
 Blankly, unbelievingly, I stared up into his 
 face. 
 
 "Never mind," said he, answering the disap- 
 pointment of my glance, "I'll give you something 
 you'll like as well as a trip to Bar-le-Duc," and he 
 pulled out his hypodermic. 
 
 For a while a wide, floating joy, then another 
 fall into the hot swamp. I was hip-deep in black 
 ooze. Mosquitoes as large as my own aeroplane 
 buzzed about my head. I clutched at the under- 
 brush that smothered me, trying to pull myself up 
 by it. It was devil's-club. My hand was full of 
 thorns. Before me the mountain-stream hurried 
 to the sea. It tossed white arms in the air. It 
 looked back at me over its shoulder with a mock- 
 ing smile in its cool, blue eyes. 
 
 "Now, altogether, boys! Pull pull out of 
 this!" I commanded. 
 
 My eyes jerked open. I knew now what it was 
 I had been trying to pull out of. It was thirst, 
 more intolerable than anything I had ever felt. 
 Compared with this agony my previous state had
 
 170 THE SWALLOW 
 
 been only a wish. Now the cry for water was so 
 intense that it absorbed every other sense. I 
 wanted to hear water, to see water, to feel it trick- 
 ling through my fingers. So violent was this one 
 longing that I was actually blinded. I did not at 
 first see a man standing beside my bed. 
 
 They came to me one by one the heavy black 
 hair, the great arms, and the sincerest eyes in the 
 world. When I put them all together I gave a 
 groan of joy. It was Dover Manley, flown over 
 from Bar-le-Duc. 
 
 "Hello, old boy," he was saying, "here's your 
 tooth-brush." 
 
 He was holding it out in his great paw, and I 
 think I realised even then how hard he was try- 
 ing to be matter of fact. The tooth-brush, the 
 English words, the dear American voice, the avia- 
 tor whom every one in our squad loved deeply 
 I knew nothing now except that I had them again. 
 Then in a moment it came back to me, the ter- 
 rible thirst. "Oh," I thought with a touch of the 
 craftiness that is part of sickness, "if I can only 
 look how thirsty I am, Dove will do something 
 about it. He'll see that I get something better 
 than an old wet bandage to suck." 
 
 "Anything I can get for you, old man?" said 
 he, meeting my thirsty eyes.
 
 THE SWALLOW 171 
 
 "You bet," said I. "They won't let me have 
 any water." 
 
 The way I kept moistening my lips finished the 
 appeal. 
 
 "How about oranges'?" said he, and turned to 
 my doctor, just that moment come in. 
 
 "Bten," answered the surgeon with a shrug, 
 "but there are not any to be had in the village." 
 
 "Guess we'll fix that," said Dover. "I'll get 
 you those oranges if I have to fly to Paris." 
 
 I looked from one to the other. Oranges ! Why 
 hadn't I thought of those before? There is a cer- 
 tain sublime ignominy in the way a sick man 
 permits himself to gloat over something he can- 
 not have. I gave myself up to this ignominy com- 
 pletely. 
 
 "Dontchu worry," said Dover, lingering by my 
 side and giving my arm a bear-like pat. "Be out 
 of this in no time." 
 
 He was part of my beloved Bar-le-Duc. He 
 was my friend in a world of strangers, yet I looked 
 at him almost impatiently. When would he leave 
 to get the oranges'? 
 
 The next morning I woke from my hot, drugged 
 sleep to find my captain bending over me. 
 
 "Well, my little one," said he, "I have a pres- 
 ent for you."
 
 172 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Could it be the oranges at last*? I looked up 
 expectantly. 
 
 Something in the expression of my officer's face 
 drew my attention to the whole room. There was 
 a deep hush and through it I felt the eye of every 
 man upon me. Then I saw for the first time that 
 my captain was not alone. The major and colo- 
 nel were with him. 
 
 Suddenly the colonel stepped forward. 
 
 "In the name of the republic," began he he 
 took from his pocket a large box "I confer upon 
 you le Medaille Militaire and la Croix de Guerre" 
 
 'Tor me?" I asked in surprise. "What for?" 
 
 The figure in its horizon-blue gathered as if 
 about to spring. 
 
 "Pourquoi?" His light, racing syllables 
 slowed solemnly. "You are the first American 
 aviator to be severely wounded for France. 
 With marvellous calmness of mind, suffering 
 greatly as you must have suffered, you flew far, 
 far, far over German ground to bring your ma- 
 chine back safe to France. There is sometimes 
 a braver thing than overcoming an enemy. It is 
 overcoming yourself. You, my son, have done 
 this for a country not your own." 
 
 He bent down and kissed me on botk cheeks.
 
 THE SWALLOW 173 
 
 Then, as I wore no shirt, he laid the medals on 
 the pillow beside me. 
 
 My physical combat had been useless. My 
 spiritual combat had resulted in my one real serv- 
 ice. My only value to France had been exactly 
 the value of the machine I had brought home. 
 From my decision to stay on the job had sprung 
 my one bit of usefulness; for that decision had 
 come now these small honours. Had I but known 
 it, this was a symbol of my future. It justified 
 the instinct that later kept me on the job when I 
 could see no chance for serving, no chance for be- 
 ing anything but a burden. How strange that this 
 cool, efficient colonel should have commended my 
 struggle rather than my performance! No, not 
 strange. That was the spirit of his country. 
 
 In the solemn hush a cork popped. Madame 
 had produced some champagne and was pouring 
 a little in the glass of every man in the ward. 
 
 "Vive le petit americain!" she proposed, her 
 soft eyes, as mellow and lively as the wine, smil- 
 ing at me over the bottle. 
 
 "Vive le petit americain!" came back the 
 cheers, some almost a bark of pain, some already 
 feeble with death, as those grizzly spectres raised 
 themselves on their pillows. 
 
 Ah, now I knew what it all meant those peo-
 
 174 THE SWALLOW 
 
 pie grouped about me like the picture of some 
 famous death-bed. Yesterday I had seen two men 
 decorated. Both had died within the hour. So 
 my time had come ! 
 
 "Merci" I responded in a scared voice. Then 
 to my own surprise I heard myself adding firmly, 
 "But I'm not going to die." 
 
 Why did I say this 1 ? Only a moment before, 
 all morning, all through the fitful torments of the 
 night, the courage to live had been slowly leaving 
 me. This weakness, which made my body stretch 
 into miles of weariness, each mile dwindling into 
 a thinner thread ; this thirst, which filled my mind 
 to madness now indeed life was a harder thing 
 than it had seemed up there in the air. That fight 
 had meant only a tremendous quickening. This, 
 I was beginning to see, was a slow resolution 
 which must pit itself minute by minute and hour 
 by hour against a torture of weakness and thirst. 
 The colonel's words of a moment before came 
 back to me. I would get well ! 
 
 The ceremony was over. The officers had con- 
 gratulated me and left. Lying back, I looked at 
 my insignia on the pillow beside me. My mother 
 I wanted her to see those bits of ribbon and 
 metal. My eyes dimmed. The nurse in Paris 
 I wanted her to know. For one moment I thrilled.
 
 THE SWALLOW 175 
 
 As I looked, however, I had a sudden wayward 
 thought. If only those medals were oranges! I 
 thought of oranges I had seen in California groves, 
 compact balls of sunshine among their dark 
 leaves ; of whole boxes of oranges tilted up tempt- 
 ingly in fruit-stands; of sliced oranges dripping 
 with nectar as I had eaten them in Paris cafes. 
 If I could only melt those medals and drink them 
 from a glass melt them into cold, fragrant, gol- 
 den juice 
 
 "Boy." I heard the old major who lay next to 
 me addressing me sharply. 
 
 I looked up and saw that he had raised himself 
 on his pillow. There was a fierce interrogation in 
 his eyes that made me quail. Had he read my sac- 
 rilegious thought^ 
 
 "Do you understand what it means that which 
 has just happened to you 1 ?" he was saying now. 
 
 "Qui" I murmured. 
 
 "To fight for France, to die for France it is a 
 privilege given only to a few. You, boy, are one 
 of those few. Do you comprehend, then, the 
 honour of your lot*?" 
 
 Utterly exhausted, he fell back to his pillow, 
 but his eyes, still fixed upon me, had in them so 
 holy and deathless a joy that my soul was awed 
 before it.
 
 176 THE SWALLOW 
 
 I stammered that I did appreciate it. I made 
 a giant effort to put away all thought of my 
 thirst, and on some bits of paper I had found be- 
 gan writing to my mother. "Don't worry. I am 
 going to get well." No one will ever know what 
 it cost me to write those few words. Yet, spurred 
 on by the old major, I made myself write still an- 
 other line. Then, completely prostrated, I laid 
 the scraps down, and to keep them from blowing 
 away, held them on the table by my bag of bul- 
 lets. It took many days of real toil to finish that 
 letter. 
 
 Next day the oranges did come. But it was 
 not Dover Manley who brought them. It was 
 Payne who thrust the bag into my hand. 
 
 I did not at first ask why this was. With my 
 eyes fixed on that golden hoard of fruit, I almost 
 trembled to begin. But my old major. He 
 must see no such greed. I waited until every man 
 in the ward was supplied before I myself claimed 
 my guerdon. It was only after a few rapt swal- 
 lows of the cooling juice that I remembered to ask 
 about Dover. 
 
 "Couldn't come to-day; machine's busted," re- 
 plied Payne, leaving me somewhat abruptly. 
 "One of the boys will get you some more to- 
 morrow."
 
 THE SWALLOW 177 
 
 The next day a young French officer looked up 
 at me suddenly from his Paris paper. "Connais- 
 sez-vois un americain, Dover Manley*?" asked he. 
 
 "Om, oui, ouiT 
 
 "II est mort" 
 
 "Mais non!" 
 
 "Mais ouil Voila!" 
 
 He then showed me the clipping. Killed in an 
 air-fight with a Boche while on his way with or- 
 anges for a sick friend at the hospital in V ! 
 
 I could not keep back a cry. The next orange 
 that I tried choked me. Yet a few hours after- 
 wards I was goaded by my thirst into taking an- 
 other swallow. After that, morning, noon and 
 night, I held an orange to my lips. It was to me 
 at first a kind of ferocious contradiction. It 
 pressed in more bitterly the real grief for my 
 friend at the same time that it released all the 
 physical longing of my body. Gradually, how- 
 ever, I forgot everything else in the heaven of its 
 fruity sweetness. 
 
 By this time I no longer thought of going to 
 Bar-le-Duc. My desire was concerned only with 
 the girl in the hospital at Paris. To-morrow I 
 should go, the doctor kept promising; yes, abso- 
 lutely, I should be moved to-morrow. And when 
 Foster came down to see me once I said, "There
 
 178 THE SWALLOW 
 
 was a little joke with Miss Gale she was to keep 
 a bed for me in her ward. Tell her now it's not 
 a joke any longer I'll be there to-morrow." 
 
 But on the fourth day the shifting to-morrow 
 vanished. Then it was that an orderly carried 
 me the length of the ward to the dressing-table. 
 For the first time since my arrival the wound was 
 to be dressed. 
 
 As the doctor ripped the packing from the 
 wound, I heard a splash on the floor. I looked 
 around to see what had fallen. Dirty corrugated 
 blood rolled out by the cupful. I looked around 
 again and saw a hole in my body like a large open 
 box. 
 
 "What'd you cut me up so for, Doc 1 ?" I asked 
 in a frightened voice. 
 
 "I had to, my little one." 
 
 "But how am I going to get to Paris to-day 
 with that hole in me?" I asked faintly. 
 
 "Oh, in ten days you get there." 
 
 Ten days ! And every day he had been saying 
 to-morrow! Was my wound so much worse? I 
 looked up at him with scared questioning. 
 
 "Voila!" he was saying merrily. "I pack that 
 hole in you like a pony-pack and strap you up 
 tight like a bellyband. Then you gallop back to 
 bed."
 
 THE SWALLOW 179 
 
 All the time that he was fixing me up I kept my 
 eyes on his face. There was still frightened ques- 
 tioning in the look. I had never realised before 
 that my wound was a serious one. At last I opened 
 my lips. I wanted to ask him something. At this 
 moment, however, an orderly seized me, spilled 
 me into bed and hurried on to another patient. No 
 one person could get much time in the hospital 
 at V . 
 
 It was the day after this, the fifth day of my 
 
 residence at V , that they first gave me water 
 
 water with vichy. In the meanwhile I had 
 begun to suffer for the food which, because my in- 
 testines were pierced in a dozen or more places, 
 they had not yet permitted me. Now indeed, the 
 longest, bitterest hour of the day was at noon. 
 Then the other men were eating. I could smell 
 those savoury French soups. I could see those airy 
 French omelettes, but I could never have a taste. 
 
 "Garcon, what shall I have for luncheon?" I 
 would say to the orderly; "Sole Marguery, per- 
 haps, and sauterne*?" 
 
 He was a supple, slim-waisted young French- 
 man, with tiny black eyes, like a mouse's, which 
 almost met over his long, mouse-like nose; the 
 whitest, the most perfect teeth I have ever seen; 
 and the smile of a hyena. His smile held a shud-
 
 180 THE SWALLOW 
 
 dering fascination for me. I would try to call it 
 out; then, panic-stricken at the sight, try to push 
 it back. 
 
 "I'll bring you a dish, Monsieur, that is to-day's 
 specialty," he would reply before he hurried off, 
 to return with a long rubber tube twisted over his 
 arm like a rhythmic napkin. He would then jab 
 in his hypodermic needle, pour in a quart of saline 
 solution, and announce with savage obsequious- 
 ness, "Luncheon is served." 
 
 At the point of the needle my skin would puff 
 out as big as two fists, and my heart would pump 
 the life-giving fluid through my veins. 
 
 "You have excellent assimilation, Monsieur," 
 the orderly would comment with that dreaded 
 flash of white teeth. "Voila, how quickly you di- 
 gest your luncheon !" 
 
 Then came the day when I banqueted on milk 
 and vichy, and finally the day the doctor had set 
 for my release, the day when I first had coffee. 
 
 Coffee was salvation. There was the long, hot 
 purgatory of night, when the lights were dimmed, 
 when windows and doors were shut tightly against 
 bombing Germans, when the stench of thirty 
 wounded men, unwashed for weeks, was that 
 of a dog-kennel, when every second was a century. 
 Then morning, the wonder how you were to live
 
 THE SWALLOW 181 
 
 through the sleepless day, the end of your endur- 
 ance and coffee ! For days I had watched other 
 men find revival in that steaming cup. Now my 
 turn had come. 
 
 The first gulp brought a hopeful sense of vigour 
 I had not known since I was hurt. Excited by the 
 stimulant, exultant over my coming freedom, I 
 lay upon the surgeon's table waiting to have my 
 wound dressed. 
 
 "Well, Doc," was the way I reminded him of 
 his promise, "what would you say if I'd run up 
 to town to-day and have a little spree*?" 
 
 He looked down at me with his warm, childlike 
 eyes. 
 
 "Would you rather be patient here a little 
 longer and get well, or die to-night on the way to 
 Paris'?" 
 
 Under the feeding of the last few days I had 
 grown less afraid of the ugly hole in my hip. I 
 had indeed almost forgotten that question which 
 had hovered on my lips the first day the doctor 
 had dressed my wound. This morning as I 
 drained the hot, steaming coffee, why, I had actu- 
 ally felt happy. The good times in Paris had al- 
 ready begun to simmer pleasantly in my brain. 
 The Stormy Petrel, her blue eyes laughing at me 
 across our little table in the cafe !
 
 182 THE SWALLOW 
 
 He must have seen how my face changed for 
 he added quickly: "You see, it is this way. If you 
 went now you might not even die." 
 
 There was a long silence, and then I made my- 
 self say it made myself say it, though I knew 
 too well the answer. 
 
 "And if I didn't die?" 
 
 "You might have to have your leg amputated. 
 That you would not like, n'esf ce-pas, my little 
 American*?" 
 
 Amputated ! I said it over and over to myself 
 with the cowardly courage of one who is bound to 
 be trapped by no future dismay. 
 
 When I reached the bed my face must have 
 been very white, whiter than ever; for my old 
 major, being prepared for his departure, shot a 
 sharp glance at me from under the deep cliff of 
 eyebrow before he lifted his head and glared about 
 the ward. 
 
 "II est un brave petit gars, I'aviateur ameri- 
 cam," he announced loudly, with a warlike lift of 
 his grey moustaches. And motioning the stretcher- 
 bearer to bring him closer he placed a scratchy 
 kiss on each of my cheeks. I forgot the terrible 
 word I had been trying to learn. I was prouder 
 of that salute than I had been of my decoration. 
 It was harder to earn. I have never heard again
 
 THE SWALLOW 183 
 
 of my old major but I cannot forget one who 
 made the bitterest of all fights with such sublime 
 purpose that he did not even know it was a fight. 
 
 The events of that day were too much. That 
 night I began to bleed violently. I had one hem- 
 orrhage after another. 
 
 "Orderly," I called, "I'm bleeding to death." 
 
 The orderly's face said, "That's good." The 
 orderly said nothing. He was hurried and tired. 
 Instead of taking time to get a doctor he wrapped 
 me up so tight that I was in agony and left me. 
 I knew that he was worn and sleepless. A few 
 hours more or less of pain didn't matter much. So 
 I decided not to disturb him again that night. 
 
 But about midnight I heard a gasp. To my old 
 major's bed they had just brought a captain with 
 a bullet through his lungs. He was sitting up 
 now, gurgling and spitting blood over himself and 
 over me, who could not move out of his way. Fi- 
 nally his head jerked down. I cried out for the 
 orderly. He pulled a sheet over the body and left 
 it to be taken out in the morning. 
 
 On the other side of me that night was a lieu- 
 tenant who had been shot in the leg. When they 
 brought him in that morning his skin was green, 
 his face and hands were full of blood. "Don't 
 let them touch me, don't let them touch me," he
 
 184 THE SWALLOW 
 
 had screamed when first he saw me. All that 
 night, every time he heard a step, he begged me 
 piteously not to let them hurt him. When I 
 could stir through my own misery I gave him my 
 handkerchief so that he could wipe the blood from 
 his lips. I gave him too my piece of muslin to 
 keep the flies off his face. Before dawn he was 
 breathing heavily. For the third time that night 
 I called the orderly. 
 
 "I can't do anything for him," said he irritably. 
 
 "He's dying," said I. 
 
 "What more could he want then 1 ?" growled the 
 orderly. 
 
 After the last long gasp I reached over and at 
 the cost of terrific pain held down his eyelids so 
 they would stay closed. His face grew cold under 
 my hand. The orderly, coming back on his rounds, 
 pulled the sheet up over the body. 
 
 A sheeted form on my right, a sheeted form on 
 my left. The stillness of death, after violent life, 
 rang in my ears. It made more intense and sol- 
 emn the stillness of my own brain. All through 
 the long dawn I lay awake with the thought of 
 my future. How still the future looked, how 
 quenched ! 
 
 To lose my usefulness, to come back to crip- 
 pled life, this was the thing that had been haunt-
 
 THE SWALLOW 185 
 
 Ing me since I had first caught sight of that black 
 box in my hip. The doctor's word of the after- 
 noon had made it all too definite. It held me in a 
 vice, that one word. Yet my mind refused the 
 pictures it created. I would not look, I would not 
 look. And all the time those silent forms on each 
 side of me made more rigid the terror of my 
 doomed living. At last how I envied them. If 
 only I could lie, long and lumpy, under one of 
 those white sheets! 
 
 But I went on living through ten more days of 
 haunted imprisonment ten more days tortured 
 for sleep that would not come, days when I was 
 too heavy with weariness to brush the flies off my 
 face, too hot to cover it with the muslin cloth; 
 ten more nights more tortured than the day, nights 
 dingy and endless and noisy with dying. Every 
 night eight or twelve men found the easier way. 
 Every morning stretcher-boxes came to carry out 
 the dead. Every morning stretcher-bearers came 
 to fill their places with the living. Not for five 
 minutes did I ever see a bed vacant. Was it any 
 
 wonder that in the hospital at V I lost all 
 
 sense of the dignity of death? It had become a 
 commonplace mechanism. 
 
 In a place where men died like flies, where there 
 weren't half enough doctors or orderlies, the filth
 
 i86 THE SWALLOW 
 
 of course was indescribable. Although the floors 
 were scrubbed every day, this cleansing could not 
 prevail against the constant stream of wounded. 
 As for the patients, they never had a drop of wa- 
 ter on their bodies except when they were allowed 
 to wash hands and face every other morning. If 
 it had not been for the huge bottle of eau de Co- 
 logne with which the boys from the squad satu- 
 rated me, I think I should have died of nausea. 
 
 As I have said, such conditions will never ex- 
 ist again. The Verdun attack had overtaken 
 France without proper hospital equipment. I 
 never blamed those who worked here. On the con- 
 trary I have the highest respect for efforts which 
 were simply titanic. Every man wounded at Ver- 
 dun passed through that hospital. Doctors, work- 
 ing day and night, often twelve hours at a stretch, 
 operated on one man after another as fast as they 
 could. Give a man the best you can, as fast as 
 you can; if he dies, let him die; if he lives, ship 
 him away where he can get better care; this was 
 the purpose of the place. And doctors and order- 
 lies carried it out with superhuman heroism. If 
 at times their treatment of patients seemed appal- 
 ling, the strain on them was more appalling. 
 
 The Verdun siege was taxing the Paris hospi- 
 tals too. I heard rumours of how my blue-eyed
 
 THE SWALLOW 187 
 
 nurse was working. I had just one message from 
 her. And I knew that no matter how crowded the 
 hospital was, there would be a bed for me. Fos- 
 ter, who brought me her message, would not be 
 down to see me again ; he was off on an important 
 mission. So during this time my chief comforts 
 were Madame and the boys from the squad. 
 Every afternoon some of the fellows came to see 
 me, a sacrifice which I can never have a chance to 
 repay. All of the boys but one who flew with 
 me are dead now. I am sure that in their life of 
 hard service there was no conflict more exacting 
 than the day-by-day visit to this loathsome hospi- 
 tal. 
 
 As for Madame, I came to long more and more 
 for the sight of that stiff white skirt, that separate 
 look and crooning "Mon fits." I stayed so long 
 that the separate look became just a little more 
 of a gift to me than to others. I was the oldest 
 patient in point of time, the youngest in point of 
 years. She treated me like a son. Every now and 
 then she would snatch a moment to chat with me. 
 It was in one of these moments that I opened up 
 my heart to her on the subject of that dark fear 
 which lately had begun to stalk me. I repeated 
 to her my conversation with the doctor.
 
 188 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Do you think," I asked, "that I shall lose this 
 leg?" 
 
 How it comforted me to see her laugh away the 
 suggestion ! That was exactly what I wanted. 
 
 "You're sure there's no danger?" said I. 
 
 "Absolutely no," said she. "He's a clever fel- 
 low, that doctor. If you stay with him, he'll 
 bring you through." 
 
 After that I was radiantly happy. If I could 
 just see the nurse in Paris and then go back to 
 my job! If only my fight up there in the air 
 and my other one against weakness and thirst were 
 not in vain, I could stand the filth and heat and 
 pain. 
 
 And then came the change which made all my 
 previous sufferings seem as naught. The skin on 
 my hips had broken and festered. July heat and 
 the solutions that were used kept my bed per- 
 petually wet. For days I would lie without mov- 
 ing an inch in a reeking mass of blood, pus and 
 perspiration. Only when my temperature went so 
 many degrees above normal would my dressings 
 be changed. This was usually about every fourth 
 day. Then as I was lifted up for the trip to the 
 dressing-table the hole in the bed made by my 
 body would be black with blood and matter. In 
 the hospitals of to-day, with their marvellous dis-
 
 THE SWALLOW 189 
 
 tribution of nurses and supplies, such a condition 
 would be a disgrace. Then it could not be helped. 
 
 I was also getting such cramps that I asked the 
 doctor if he couldn't straighten my leg. 
 
 "I've been going to tell you, my child," he said 
 hesitatingly, "that I was afraid you'd have to 
 have another operation." 
 
 "Hurrah!" I shouted. "Bully for you, Doc! 
 That's the best news I've heard since we licked the 
 crown prince !" 
 
 "My dear boy, are you" he felt for the 
 American slang he loved "becoming nut-like?" 
 
 "No," I answered with a grin, "but I should go 
 nutty soon if something didn't happen. I need a 
 change, Doc. Anything would be better than this. 
 Let's have that little c op' right away before you 
 forget it !" 
 
 "You're a good subject," laughed the doctor, 
 getting me on the table without more ceremony. 
 "This time I shall not even have to strap your 
 hands. Now just wait a second till I open up 
 this fellow over here." 
 
 He had exactly the air of a grocer saying to a 
 friend, "One moment, till I cut off some cheese 
 for this customer." 
 
 From my own table I watched the other opera- 
 tion. When the doctor finally turned back to
 
 190 THE SWALLOW 
 
 me, his apron red and dripping as always, the man 
 was gasping. 
 
 "He's gone," said the surgeon cheerfully, with 
 no thought that his casual air might not prove 
 bracing to me. Indeed it did not trouble me. I 
 was, however, somewhat disturbed by the sunny 
 opulence with which the orderly, listening to talk 
 near him, was pouring chloroform on my mask. 
 
 "Make him give it to me easier, Doc," I begged. 
 
 Brushing him away, the doctor finished giving 
 me the drug. I thrilled off into a flight more 
 intoxicating than anything I had ever known. 
 
 The ecstasy was short. My sciatic nerve had 
 been partly severed by one portion of the bullet. 
 Now when my leg was stretched out for the first 
 time, all the strands of the main nerve, which is as 
 big as a finger, snapped off. 
 
 An explosive bullet in my hip, that bleeding 
 journey through the barbed wire, probings, dress- 
 ings, thirst, bedsores, cramp these were mere 
 discomforts compared to the agony that dragged 
 me now from under the sheltering oblivion of 
 ether after this operation. 
 
 "Qu'esf ce que c'esf muth-muth?" asked an 
 aviator in the bed next mine. In a strangled way 
 I had been crying for my mother. 
 
 Once that night I started up from a deep-
 
 THE SWALLOW 191 
 
 drugged sleep with the sense of some one looking 
 at me. It was my doctor. He was breathing fast 
 and his hair was tousled. He had evidently hur- 
 ried from somewhere to my bedside. The anxiety 
 in his face arrested me. 
 
 "Shall I be all right, Doc? Shall I be as good 
 as new?" 
 
 "I hope so, my little one; I hope so." 
 
 His look, his tone, his eyes which slid away 
 from mine these told me mercilessly what he 
 would not say. The dimly lighted ward turned 
 black, so black that I did not see him leave. My 
 heart went down, down through endless sick dis- 
 tances. I knew now what I was coming back to. 
 
 Before this, except for those few horrible days 
 when I had feared amputation, my long fight had 
 meant to me only these tortured weeks in bed. 
 After that I was to go back, young and vigorous, 
 to my old job. When, up there in the air, I had 
 chosen the middle road between a glorious living 
 or more glorious dying, I had not thought of its 
 leading elsewhere. Youth was the talisman I had 
 taken with me on that journey. Twenty! What 
 could happen to twenty except a stern, brief bout 
 with pain from which youth would emerge victor- 
 ious, but youthful still twenty crowned by con- 
 flict!
 
 192 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Ah, and what really lay before me on the mid- 
 dle road? Age in youth. I might spend the rest 
 of my life in a wheeled chair. Perhaps I might 
 watch the boys flying, I who had meant to fly so 
 far, I who should never fly again. 
 
 Why had I fought death there in the air, why 
 had I gone through these hideous days, pitting my 
 will against weakness and thirst? Was it for this, 
 to be lame, crippled, a burden for the rest of my 
 existence? 
 
 My mental pain, as violent as that of my tor- 
 tured body, lasted all through the day and night. 
 Then in the agonised days that followed nothing 
 was left of me but tormented flesh. My mind was 
 in a stupor. My will was dead. I was not even 
 groping. No longer an active force, my brain be- 
 came only a listless page upon which were written 
 haphazard bits of memory and thought. 
 
 A sick man's thoughts are often like that. And 
 I was sick now, sick in body and spirit as I had 
 never been before. In those moments, half con- 
 scious, half drugged, it isn't the big things of life 
 that come back. It's the song, the almost forgot- 
 ten verse that haunts. So now in me, among the 
 mouse-like, scampering thoughts, gnawed always 
 one fragment of poetry :
 
 THE SWALLOW 193 
 
 "My life has crept so long on a broken wing." 
 
 This line, read I know not where or when, 
 buried under years of forgetfulness, came and 
 went and came again until I thought I should go 
 mad. 
 
 Yes, day after day my life had crept, day upon 
 day it was creeping. My fingers were spread on 
 the coverlet, as bleached and bony as a spray of 
 coral. Laying my right hand over my left, I slid 
 the under one out and put it on top. I piled one 
 hand on the other till I could reach no higher. 
 That had become my life. Each day it slid from 
 under at night. Morning lifted it to the top of 
 another. It was like the wool my mother used to 
 card, one carding stacked upon another until the 
 pile, soft and thick, grew too tall for childish eyes 
 to follow. My days had thickened ; their pile was 
 growing tall. 
 
 My mother, ah, my mother! She who had al- 
 ways been to me a battle-cry, she whose name I 
 had flung to the drowning air when I had made 
 my fight for life there above the clouds! Why 
 was it now that the memory of her could no longer 
 bring back my courage 4 ? When I crept home on 
 crutches she would be waiting for me on the porch 
 as she used to wait when I came home from school, 
 her apron snowy as her hair, the smell of hot bis-
 
 194 THE SWALLOW 
 
 cuits following through the open door, on her dear, 
 dark face love, love ineffable. My broken wing 
 would make no difference to her; I should be dear- 
 er to her now than ever before. Yet as I saw my- 
 self in her eyes, saw her pity coming forever be- 
 tween me and a changed world, I realised more 
 heartbreakingly just what that changed world 
 would be. That now she must always be making 
 it up to me scalding tears for her and for myself 
 broke through my prisoned mind. 
 
 "My life has crept so long on a broken wing." 
 
 Again the scampering thoughts after that 
 gnawing refrain. 
 
 Once I shot an old stray torn in our back yard. 
 He kicked, then tumbled over and over before he 
 began creeping. It was my first shot and I fired 
 again to put him out of his misery. I never could 
 forget his face as he looked at me. He didn't 
 think I'd do it. That's the way men kick and curl 
 up into shavings, then creep off on a broken wing. 
 
 What was that 4 ? Through the open windows 
 of the ward, across the surf of surging guns, fell 
 splashes of music. A band was playing "Sympa- 
 thy." Just two years ago at the Texas fort I had 
 danced with Jasmine on those waves of melody. 
 She had, I remembered, a soft allure in her eyes.
 
 THE SWALLOW 195 
 
 So had the girl that used to give me bread from 
 the New Orleans bakery. So had the girl that 
 used to take my order in the Paris cabby's cafe. 
 
 Always, everywhere, I had met eyes that soft- 
 ened alluringly. Should I ever meet them again ? 
 Should I ever dance again? Never dance again! 
 I had not thought of that. I looked down the row 
 of beds and my eyes widened with the full terror 
 of what I had lost. 
 
 "My life has crept so long on a broken wing." 
 
 Yes, I should go creeping to Paris but not to 
 those gay little dinners where the nurse with the 
 blue eyes would laugh at me across our comer 
 table. Through these pestilent weeks there had 
 been one invigorating thought. When my long- 
 ing for her would become as intolerable as my 
 thirst had been, I would close my eyes and sum- 
 mon her. In a moment I could forget the rows 
 of cots with their human fragments, the gasps of 
 dying men, the curses of those who must live, even 
 my own increasing pain. For the miracle of her 
 presence was upon me. The tonic laugh, the ten- 
 der, enfolding glance, the moment when I would 
 first make her believe my love, the moment when 
 she would let me know hers in the very hope 
 of these lay healing.
 
 196 THE SWALLOW 
 
 But now ! There would be no more promise in 
 her eyes, only pity. She would be taking me out, 
 not I her; she would be taking me to the Bois in 
 a wheeled chair. She would protect me as she 
 had the crippled soldier in the Dublin station. 
 Stuffing my pillow in my mouth so that no one 
 would hear me, I cried as I had never cried in my 
 whole life. 
 
 Pity! That was all there was left for me in 
 this world. Her pity! That I could not bear. 
 My brain, which had so long seemed a mere list- 
 less page, was at last beginning to write write its 
 defiance to a world of pitying eyes. 
 
 In one blinding second I knew what I wanted. 
 It was death. Twice before it had seemed the 
 easiest way. Now it was the only way. Now 
 everything in me cried out for death death the 
 prize to be wrested from mocking Life. With 
 rage in my heart at life, I made up my mind to 
 die. 
 
 Each anguished day I was growing weaker. 
 Each anguished day I was drawing nearer that 
 radiant goal where the I should cease to be. At 
 last it came, the sure moment. Peace, deep and 
 immense, descended upon me. I was falling soft- 
 ly, smoothly into death.
 
 THE SWALLOW 197 
 
 "He's dying," said a French soldier who had 
 been calling with a friend upon my neighbour. 
 
 "Yes," responded the other as they started for 
 the door. Then pausing by my bed he added, "He 
 has fought long, the little American, but now 
 helas! he has lost the will to fight." 
 
 Lost the will to fight! The low, quick voice, 
 the pitying disposal of me how was it that these 
 pierced my twilit soul; that they reached some 
 strata of obstinacy which nothing else, not even 
 my mother, had been able to touch? In a second 
 I saw myself for what I was, a pitiable coward, 
 giving up life because it was no longer easy. Now, 
 if ever, the world needed men, needed every atom 
 of usefulness, however curtailed, to carry on the 
 battle against slavery. Yet because I could not 
 be useful in the way I wanted 
 
 Another undertow of drugged pain, of drugging 
 weakness. The light behind me was growing dim- 
 mer. Life now seemed like the lamp in the win- 
 dow of the cottage we are leaving. I had a mo- 
 ment's heartbreaking desolation at the thought of 
 that leaving. The lamp in the window, the cosy 
 warmth that I had known so well home, life ! Yet 
 over there on the far bank the other lights called 
 me. Only one moment's terror of leaving, only 
 one moment's yielding to that swift undertow, and
 
 198 THE SWALLOW 
 
 the unknown lights would be mine. I was go- 
 ing; yes, I was going. The near shore, the light 
 in the window, slipping. Unless my God! 
 There was only a second's time! And then 
 
 Even now I wonder how I did it, how against 
 the vision of those far lights before me I pulled 
 my will from every remote, imprisoned part of 
 me. 
 
 "Jacques," I whispered to the aviator next me. 
 
 He turned his head. 
 
 "Jacques quick! I'm dying." By a giant ef- 
 fort I moved my eyes toward his. "When I go 
 to sleep, wake me ! Don't let me " 
 
 Utterly exhausted I closed my eyes again. 
 
 ' 'Reveillez-vous ! Reveillez-vous /" 
 
 Jacques's voice called me back from the far 
 lights. 
 
 "Oh yes!" I made myself answer. 
 
 Only for one second. Then once more I felt 
 myself going. 
 
 "Reveillez-vous ! Reveillez-vous !" 
 
 "Oh yes!" 
 
 So over and over again we fought together, the 
 wounded aviator and I. For four hours he kept 
 me alive. Then at six o'clock I said weakly: "It's 
 all right, Jacques. I'm not going to die."
 
 THE SWALLOW 199 
 
 I had made my third fight. I had come back 
 to stay. 
 
 In the days and weeks that followed I had 
 many black moods. There were longs hours when 
 that haunting line of verse "My life has crept 
 so long on a broken wing" sounded like doom 
 itself. Then it was I wondered why I had come 
 back to my hampered life, why I had not listened 
 to those lights that called me from afar*? What 
 did the future hold for me, I wondered bitterly, 
 what use could I ever be again, I and my broken 
 wing? 
 
 Gradually, however, something was growing up 
 in me. Very faint and dim at first, it reached 
 feebly through the dark mists. Then, no longer 
 groping, it thrust out strong and free, and at last 
 I knew why I had stayed. 
 
 Life is like that always, I think. First comes 
 the obstinate impulse. One does a thing instinc- 
 tively, without any thought. It is not until long 
 afterward that one sees clearly the purpose of that 
 impulse. That is why my whole philosophy tar- 
 ried so late after my supreme instinct not to be a 
 quitter. 
 
 What helped me most to this vision was the re- 
 membrance of those crippled men I had seen in 
 Ireland as I passed through on my way to France.
 
 200 THE SWALLOW 
 
 They had been fitted with artificial arms and legs 
 and the one expression on each face had touched 
 me then in the midst of my confident youth. Now 
 it came back to me again, that one repeated look, 
 and as I lay here I knew that my own face was 
 coming to wear the same expression. It was that 
 of radiant gratitude for to-day. 
 
 Gratitude for to-day ! How few before this 
 war knew anything about that peace, how little I 
 myself had comprehended it until these last few 
 days ! Up to this time I had been one of a world 
 of little men, all wondering what they should be 
 doing at thirty, fearing that they would not have 
 enough by forty, dogged forever and forever by 
 an implacable to-morrow. That is what I should 
 always have been had not the explosive bullet 
 begun my real fight. Now I was healed forever 
 of fear. Life could no longer terrify me with to- 
 morrow me who had been through the worst. 
 From this time forth I should live each day as it 
 came. 
 
 But there was more than this. So long as a 
 man is haunted by what to-morrow can do to him, 
 so long as his life is made up of fearful limita- 
 tions, he is always on the outside of the world. 
 I myself, flying for France, aware of the noble 
 righteousness of her cause, was nevertheless mere-
 
 THE SWALLOW 201 
 
 ly conferring. Not until I lay here stricken for 
 France was I really absorbed by that cause. 
 France, the Allies, Freedom now at last I was 
 part of the world. Freed of all shrewd little per- 
 sonal calculations, freed forever from fear of what 
 would happen to me, I saw that nothing mattered 
 but the common cause. Lying here in this terrible 
 hospital, I on my broken wing was permitted a 
 vision of the world as a whole which the un- 
 touched can never know. Nothing can ever 
 take it away from me. It is life's high gift to the 
 severely wounded. 
 
 And after accepting the worst, the worst passed 
 me by. 
 
 Still under the delusion that his peculiar skill 
 alone could save me, the doctor, who was finally 
 ordered to Paris, said he would ship me on to the 
 Appleton Hospital, where he would join me in a 
 few days. 
 
 "And remember," said he, "tell the physician 
 there that I understand your case and that no one 
 is to touch you till I have you transferred to my 
 own hospital." 
 
 So unexpectedly, so accidentally came the re- 
 lease I had waited for. No more filth, no more 
 loneliness, no more horror. I burst into tears. 
 
 The morning procession had begun. Stretcher-
 
 202 THE SWALLOW 
 
 boxes were carrying out the night's harvest of the 
 dead. In a moment all beds would be filled again, 
 mine and those in which these sheeted forms had 
 lain. At the doorway the line was halted by 
 Madame who embraced me in farewell. 
 
 "Adieu, petit americain!" came a chorus of 
 cries from the ward. 
 
 I looked back at the whitewashed walls within 
 which I had found a talisman stronger, surer, more 
 enduring than the talisman of youth. 
 
 "Adieu, adieu, adieu I" I cried brokenly to my 
 gallant comrades of the middle road. 
 
 The doctor followed my stretcher to the am- 
 bulance. 
 
 "It will be a hard ride," he said in a low voice. 
 "Other doctors, not knowing your condition, may 
 not give it to you. I trust you." He pressed into 
 my hand a pellet of morphine. 
 
 It was a hard ride. The swinging of the hos- 
 pital train hurt unbearably. By this time I was 
 practically a drug fiend; like gold I hoarded my 
 little fund of forgetfulness. But in the night I 
 could endure no more. 
 
 "I'll never need it worse than now," I decided. 
 
 Hardly had I swallowed the pellet when the 
 train doctor for the first time that night bent over 
 my berth.
 
 THE SWALLOW 203 
 
 "Suffering much?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 I was surprised when he took out his needle. 
 Should I tell him? No. I could not get too 
 much. 
 
 "Go ahead, Doc," I said. 
 
 He j abbed in the needle. In ten minutes I was 
 asleep. 
 
 I awoke in Paris. 
 
 I awoke suffering and desolate. For weeks of 
 agony I had thought of Paris as a refuge. I had 
 vaguely expected the Gare la Chapelle to wipe 
 away all pain. I had vaguely expected it to be 
 filled with friends. As I lay now on my stretcher, 
 waiting with a hundred others to be taken to the 
 hospitals, I ached with the emptiness that follows 
 expectation. I was one of many wounded. That 
 was all. The stretcher-bearers were new. Every 
 face that I saw was strange and uncaring. Foster, 
 I knew, was out of town. But she my lip quiv- 
 ered she had not come to meet me. Was she 
 away when my last message came 1 ? Did she re- 
 ceive it and not care*? The blood beat up into 
 my face; my ear-drums throbbed sickeningly. 
 
 A French woman in the station poured some 
 coffee down my throat. Three drivers, all stran-
 
 204 THE SWALLOW 
 
 gers to me, carried me to a car. How queer to go 
 through Paris as a wounded man. Was it I, was 
 it I *? I kept looking out of the back window, try- 
 ing to see where we were driving. We were going 
 through the Bois to find the best roads that much 
 I could see. 
 
 Then we reached the receiving hospital. The 
 old familiar spots, the old familiar faces, only 
 increased my desolation. For no one knew me. 
 Old friends doctors, nurses, drivers passed me 
 by. They glanced at my stretcher, at my bleached, 
 bony face, at my arms like matches and went 
 on. I tried to call out but was too weak. 
 
 "Bob!" By a terrific effort I made a driver 
 hear me. "Bob, don't you know me? Byrd 1 ?" 
 
 "Oh, Byrd, by gee!" He hardly stopped to 
 greet me. "Boys, take this stretcher to Miss 
 Gale's office. She's been looking for you every 
 day all summer. I'll let her know." 
 
 Ah, her face! I saw it through a glory that 
 smote me, a peace that bore me up. Pain and 
 heartache I had never known them. There was 
 only one fact now in all the world. That was 
 her dear, blinding presence. Shutting my eyes to 
 hide the tears, I tried to hold up my arms. I could 
 not speak.
 
 THE SWALLOW 205 
 
 Kneeling there beside me in her little office, 
 she held me close. Her tears were on my cheeks. 
 My head slipped to her shoulder. For the first 
 time in my life I had fainted with joy.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 COMING out of that swoon, I knew with a 
 sick man's sensibility one thing : the Stormy 
 Petrel and the Swallow had flown. In their places 
 were Miss Gale, a highly specialised surgical nurse, 
 and her patient, Richard Byrd, a man sick unto 
 death, living only through a strength of spirit that 
 had grown from bodily anguish. 
 
 It was Miss Gale who spoke to me that first 
 day as soon as I came out of the trance of joy. 
 "And now," said she, "you must have a bath." 
 
 "Oh, let me go to bed," I begged from the 
 stretcher where I still lay strapped to the board 
 
 upon which the doctor at V had tied me for 
 
 the journey. "A day or so more doesn't matter to 
 a man who hasn't bathed for six weeks. I'm so 
 tired!" 
 
 "Very well, you shall go to bed, then,*' she said. 
 
 A moment more and I was carried to a ward 
 where nine other officers lay. I was given the bed 
 by the window. I did not know until long after- 
 wards how difficult it had been for my nurse 
 
 206
 
 THE SWALLOW 207 
 
 through all the Verdun siege, to keep that bed for 
 me. 
 
 Worn out with excitement, lulled by the white 
 peace of the room and the secure sense of home, I 
 dropped asleep. When I awoke Miss Gale and a 
 man were bending over me. He was a powerful 
 young fellow with shming black eyes and thick 
 black hair that fell in rope-like ridges. I felt an 
 instant dislike for him. Miss Gale introduced him 
 as Olson, the ward physician. 
 
 "Sorry, doctor," I said, "but I promised my 
 
 physician at V that no one should touch me 
 
 till he came. He'll be here this afternoon." 
 
 My doctor had so impressed this upon me that 
 I grew excited at the thought of disobeying him. 
 Seeing my intensity, Miss Gale yielded. 
 
 "We might wait till his doctor comes, then," 
 she suggested, and with a shrug Olson left. 
 
 But by late afternoon my pain had increased 
 and the doctor had not come. I was still protest- 
 ing, however, that I could have no other surgeon. 
 
 "I can't humour you any longer," said Miss 
 Gale, with professional severity. "No one doctor 
 is indispensable to any case and there is no reason 
 for you to suffer any more than you can help." 
 
 She summoned Olson and when he came I made 
 one last protest.
 
 208 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "If you take off the board, don't cut the dress- 
 ings," I implored. "I promised my doctor." 
 
 "All right, I won't," said Olson. 
 
 At an exclamation I looked around. He had 
 taken off the bandage! 
 
 "You promised you wouldn't cut the dressings," 
 I said. 
 
 "Absolutely necessary, my dear fellow. Miss 
 Gale, come here!" 
 
 She gave a little cry when she saw me. 
 
 As I have said, nothing but my face and hands 
 
 had been washed while I was at V . Now 
 
 my skin had entirely changed. I was black. Next 
 day they began the task of bathing me. For this 
 purpose they used soft soap and gasoline. It was 
 more than a month before I was entirely clean. 
 
 Because of the wearisome trip I had undergone, 
 I was given that first night my usual amount of 
 morphine. Still soothed by the sense of home- 
 coming, still cherished by merry blue eyes that 
 could soften to tears, I slept. 
 
 The next day my pain was intense. The bed- 
 sores, too, which I had developed at V were 
 
 frightful. For these the nurse tried an air mat- 
 tress; but the heat of the rubber made the sores 
 worse. Finally she got a special bed constructed 
 for just such a case as mine.
 
 THE SWALLOW 209 
 
 The head surgeon was out of town and my 
 
 doctor from V had not yet come, so I was 
 
 still entirely under the care of Olson. He was a 
 splendid specimen of American vigour. He had 
 come to France only for adventure. He had not 
 a care in the world, either for himself or any one 
 else. He had never known what pain meant and 
 he had not the imagination to conceive it. So 
 when, that second night, I asked for my morphine, 
 he refused it. I was by now practically a drug 
 fiend. And to be cut off suddenly was appalling. 
 So, swallowing my pride and my distaste for the 
 man, I begged him to cut me off gradually. 
 
 "My dear fellow " and seating himself be- 
 side my bed, the ward doctor gave me a long talk 
 on the evils of morphine. 
 
 "Look here, Doc," I broke in at last, "you can't 
 tell me anything about the horrors of dope. I'm a 
 dope fiend. That's just the point. Now treat me 
 like an intelligent man, not like a baby. I'm in 
 ghastly pain. You know and I know that the 
 human structure can't stand everything. A man 
 can die from brutal pain alone. Now I've lived 
 on morphine straight for three weeks. If I asked 
 you to keep up my allowance, that would be dif- 
 ferent. But I ask you just to cut me off gradually." 
 
 I sank back exhausted.
 
 210 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "It won't do," he said, with a patronising shake 
 of his head. "Some day you'll thank me. I'll tell 
 the night nurse to give you some aspirin." 
 
 Aspirin! How I hated him as he walked off! 
 How I hated that glossy, ridge-like hair, the clear 
 black and white of his eyes ! I clenched my hands 
 in weak, helpless fury. If I were cut off at once 
 from any alleviating drug, I should die of pain. 
 That I knew. 
 
 Then as I lay there I thought of those first days 
 
 at V when every nerve in my body had been 
 
 gnawed by the longing for water. But that hun- 
 ger was as nothing compared to this. In the agony 
 of my craving I forgot the agony of my body. My 
 mother, my nurse everything that was I was 
 lost in my abject longing for the thing to make me 
 forget them all. 
 
 I closed my eyes. I tried to shut out the raven- 
 ous vision. But the closed lids only bound it more 
 tightly. I and the longing, the longing and I 
 together we rode. And my heart grew so feeble 
 that I thought I was dying. 
 
 Then suddenly like a flake a hand fell on my 
 forehead. It didn't go away like a flake, however. 
 It just stayed and cooled me and kept drawing out 
 of me my fevered longing. Ah, my nurse ! That 
 .was what her hand always did to me. It was not
 
 THE SWALLOW 211 
 
 like the touch of Jasmine, pressing in her ruthless 
 glamour, making you conscious every minute that 
 she was she. Instead, it kept drawing out from 
 you all unloveliness. 
 
 I was thinking that when I opened my eyes. 
 And then as I looked at her it all came back. I 
 was beaten by wave after wave of savage hunger. 
 At that moment there was nothing I would not 
 have done to get morphine. 
 
 As I lay there looking at her it came back to 
 me the sick man's craft which had once made 
 me think that if I could only look as thirsty as I 
 was, Dover Manley would get me something to 
 drink. 
 
 What if she were a nurse? What if it were 
 against the regulations'? 
 
 "I ahan't see you again until to-morrow. Is 
 there anything you want before I go*?" 
 
 The cool silver kindness of her voice fell across 
 my abject craving. At that moment I hated her 
 goodness, hated that tone in her voice that always 
 expected the best of you. If she had ever seemed 
 once on her guard against the worst in you I 
 clenched my hands in helpless fury. No, I could 
 not ask my nurse to get me morphine. 
 
 But as I saw her white figure drift through the 
 evening dimness of the ward my resolve to get
 
 212 THE SWALLOW 
 
 what I wanted was -just as violent as ever. Ig- 
 nobly I began to run over all the people I had 
 known in Paris. Foster"? Out of town. Besides 
 he wasn't that kind. Neither were any of my 
 other old friends that kind. But who, who*? 
 Surely there must be somebody, some mere ac- 
 quaintance, perhaps, some kindly, unscrupulous 
 soul that would help a poor slave to more of his 
 slavery. 
 
 And then all of a sudden it came to me the 
 memory of the little cocotte whose gloves I had ap- 
 propriated. I had smiled, half in amusement, 
 half in embarrassment, when she had said, "If 
 you ever need a friend." But on that memor- 
 able night of my first dinner with my nurse when 
 I had returned the gloves to the little girl, she had 
 prevailed upon me to take her address. Ah, yes, 
 thank fortune, I had it. The mere fact of writing 
 it the glamour of the evening something had 
 impressed it upon my mind. She was Mademoi- 
 selle Marpas. She lived on the Rue Valette, near 
 the Pantheon. Hardly able to conceal my eager- 
 ness, I called the night nurse. I directed her to 
 send to the Rue Valette and beg Mademoiselle 
 Marpas to visit me next day. The nurse raised 
 her eyebrows a little. What did I care what she 
 was thinking 1 ? To-morrow, yes, to-morrow, I
 
 THE SWALLOW 213 
 
 should have my drug. And through the long tor- 
 ture of the night I lay, hoping she would come to 
 me, fearing lest she might have moved away. 
 
 Early the next morning in she walked, my little 
 cocotte. With her short skirt and her gay little 
 hat tilted over her long, narrow blue eyes, she was 
 like a saucy paroket. A little ripple went over 
 the ward. It was not unusual for parokets to 
 visit the ward, but this was an extremely saucy 
 one. And as she was conducted to my bed, her 
 voice carried to every corner of the room. 
 
 "Mais, non. There is. some mistake. I never 
 saw you before, monsieur" 
 
 It was even more embarrassing than that night 
 at the cafe when I had returned her gloves. But 
 with my eye on the door where I dreaded every 
 moment to see the figure of my nurse, I managed 
 to recall to her our former meetings. She remem- 
 bered then and once again she was covering my 
 hand with kisses. "Oh, mon pauvre, mon pauvre" 
 she kept saying over and over again, in that crink- 
 ly, croony way that Madame at V had, that 
 
 every French woman's voice falls into so magi- 
 cally. 
 
 I interrupted her. "Morphine," I whispered, 
 "I must have it. Do you' know any place where 
 you could get it for me 1 ?"
 
 214 THE SWALLOW 
 
 She nodded her head. She kissed my hands. 
 And as she left me another ripple went over the 
 ward. It was just ending when my nurse entered 
 the room. 
 
 She had not recognised the saucy little girl. 
 She had not even known that she was visiting me. 
 I actually gloated over the realisation of it as I 
 watched her approach my bed. 
 
 No, she did not know that morning. But in 
 the afternoon, as luck would have it, Mile. Mar- 
 pas came in with my pellets just as the nurse was 
 leaving. The two women stared at each other and 
 I stared at them both. 
 
 "This is old friend of mine, Miss Gale," I 
 muttered in confusion. "Gloves I took hers, re- 
 member I told you?" 
 
 Quite evidently Miss Gale did remember. The 
 memory of that night at the restaurant was gath- 
 ering in the blue eyes even before I spoke. Yet 
 the incident of the gloves did not explain just ex- 
 actly why Mile. Marpas happened to be here this 
 instant nor why through all this interlude of pain 
 I had managed to keep in touch with her. I saw 
 bewilderment perhaps even a moment's hurt 
 cross her face. 
 
 I saw them ah, yes, but all in a furious sudden 
 I did not care. All I cared for was those three
 
 THE SWALLOW 215 
 
 milky pellets in the little cocotte's hand. And 
 as I stared into the long narrow blue eyes of Mile. 
 Marpas I was blind and stiff and sick with the 
 thought of the releasing joy now so tantalisingly 
 near, so tantalisingly delayed. Oh, when would 
 my nurse go? When would she leave me alone 
 with the drug for which I had waited all that long 
 night? Careless now of what Miss Gale would 
 think, I fixed upon her one look of dumb, ruth- 
 less misery. 
 
 She met the look and the little hurt in her eyes 
 deepened. Bah! What did I care? And when 
 at last she turned her back upon us I grabbed the 
 cocotte's hand. 
 
 "Quick, for God's sake," I whispered, "I'm go- 
 ing crazy." 
 
 It was about two hours after that when Miss 
 Gale again returned to my bedside. By this time 
 every nerve of my body had been smoothed down. 
 I looked at my nurse in a kind of rosy compunc- 
 tion. Oh, how good she was, how much better 
 than any one else in this world! As I chatted 
 with her I became wildly joyous. 
 
 When she first came up to me there may have 
 been still on her face a little of the proud hurt 
 with which she had left me. But as I grew more 
 and more talkative, as she heard my gay jokes,
 
 216 THE SWALLOW 
 
 her look slowly changed. Quite suddenly she 
 picked up my hand and took my pulse. 
 
 She suspected me. No, she knew. Even now 
 on the full tide of my drug, I was aghast. For I 
 realised that it would be her duty as a nurse to 
 report me to Dr. Olson. And as I looked at the 
 silent white figure, as I felt my blood flow up to 
 those cool white fingers flow and ebb away 
 every atom of my self-respect disappeared. More 
 than that. I lost the man's wish to look well in his 
 beloved's eyes. But in that one long, beseeching 
 look which I did give to her I laid bare all of my 
 weakness. 
 
 Without a word she turned away from me. 
 And when several minutes later Dr. Olson came 
 over to my bed my heart went down at what I 
 knew he was about to say. 
 
 "Well, Byrd," he commenced and his hard red 
 cheeks wagged in triumph. 
 
 I was too miserable to speak and I could hardly 
 believe it when, taking my pulse, he announced 
 complacently, "Doing fine, old man. Eyes much 
 brighter. Pulse better. See what I told you, 
 huh? Why, you'd have been a regular drug- 
 fiend if you hadn't met up with me." 
 
 Oh, how good she was, how much better than 
 any one else in the world ! As Olson left me for
 
 THE SWALLOW 217 
 
 the night, as I took one of the magic pellets which 
 Mile. Marpas had left me, I blessed the pity that 
 could transcend all sense of duty. My nurse had 
 known, yet she had not told. 
 
 The little cocotte came the next day with more 
 morphine. This time I diminished the doses. The 
 next time she brought me some pellets I reduced 
 them still more. And by the end of two weeks I 
 was able to get along with only the bromides 
 which the night nurse gave me. 
 
 In the meantime the doctor from V had fin- 
 ally come. He was many days later than his 
 schedule and Miss Gale had refused to allow me 
 to keep that old promise to him. It was indeed 
 fortunate. Had I waited for his attention I 
 should soon have been beyond the need of it. I 
 had been long enough the victim of his kindly ego- 
 tism, of a judgment that had placed his knowl- 
 edge of my case against care, sanitation and sci- 
 ence. Had he only shipped me to Paris when I 
 was first wounded I should have been spared 
 much. As it was, I reached there just in time. 
 Just in time I came to my nurse. 
 
 It was one morning just after I had broken off 
 the morphine habit that Miss Gale first brought 
 to me the surgeon who was to bring me finally 
 from my twilight world. He was a big man, grey
 
 218 THE SWALLOW 
 
 and grave and steady; and no familiarity with 
 suffering could ever make him careless of it. Now 
 as he looked down at me there was such a quick, 
 sweet touching of his spirit that I loved him from 
 that moment. And I can never say enough of 
 this man whose kindliness came from real seeing 
 and who was as shocked by a sight of my suffering 
 as he must have been at that of the first wounded 
 man he ever saw. 
 
 As he examined my wound, there was none of 
 
 the shallow cheeriness of the doctor at V . 
 
 Tenderly as he could he told me the truth. 
 
 "You're in a pretty bad way, my boy," said he, 
 "but I think I know what you need and I'm go- 
 ing to try to make you glad to be alive once 
 more." 
 
 I looked from his face to that of my nurse. 
 
 "Do you think in time not right now, of 
 course but later on oh, doctor, do you think 
 I can walk on crutches'?" 
 
 Sharply my nurse turned aside her head; and 
 when she turned it back to me I could see that her 
 lashes were wet. Ah, her pity, her wonderful 
 pity! How it followed me through everything, 
 how it seemed to make more radiant now the an- 
 swer of my doctor ! 
 
 "My dear boy," said he, "I can't promise any-
 
 THE SWALLOW 219 
 
 thing. But I'm going to try to get you out of this 
 bed." 
 
 God! What a journey was before me! It 
 was well I did not know. First of all, the head 
 surgeon put me in an extension. As the ball and 
 socket in my hip had been shot away this process 
 was necessary to prevent my leg from becoming 
 any shorter than it already was. 
 
 The extension was extremely painful. That 
 you may understand why this was so, let me ex- 
 plain. Over a pulley was a cord with leaden 
 weights which were attached to my leg by strips 
 of canvas glued to the skin. These weights, which 
 made continual tension on my leg, were increased 
 by half a pound a day until twenty pounds were 
 reached. Thus the muscles, instead of contract- 
 ing as they had at V , were held taut and the 
 
 bone was allowed to grow. 
 
 The stretching of the muscles meant an inces- 
 sant ache; the glue kept my flesh itching; the 
 nerves, shut off from any air, burned until my leg 
 seemed a red-hot iron. As I've said before, my 
 sciatic nerve had snapped; and it was because of 
 this fact that I now developed foot-drop and had 
 to have a five-pound weight attached to my foot. 
 Meanwhile the bedsores I had developed at V
 
 220 THE SWALLOW 
 
 became so painful that I had to lie on a rubber 
 ring. At the height of my misery I had an abscess 
 in my ear. And at the height of the abcess I got 
 the mumps ! 
 
 The grotesque malady of childhood seemed to 
 rob my suffering of all dignity. To see in a mir- 
 ror my skeleton-like face swollen into bags, to 
 have what little food I could take poured down 
 my throat these ludicrous details overcame me 
 more thoroughly than all the severe suffering that 
 had gone before them. During the ten days that 
 I was mump-bound, I lost for the moment all the 
 
 uplift of those last days at V . I was in fact 
 
 as peevish as a six-year-old. The only thing I 
 wanted was my nurse. And when she could not 
 be with me I sulked all the time. She oughtn't 
 to neglect me like this, I thought. It was unjust, 
 it was cruel. 
 
 One morning as I lay there with hot applica- 
 tions on those foolish pouches I watched her com- 
 ing through the ward. She never glanced in my 
 direction. She was busy looking at each man's 
 dressings. I saw the look that a young French- 
 man was giving her. There was the same impa- 
 tient wanting of her on his face that there must 
 have been on my own. And for the first time I 
 realised that Miss Gale was not my nurse. She
 
 THE SWALLOW 221 
 
 was the young Frenchman's there she was every- 
 body's. And with a sudden aching emptiness I 
 realised I had been measuring Miss Gale's inter- 
 est in me by my own interest in her. I recalled 
 now the tears with which she had met me how, 
 unconsciously, against my clearer vision, I had 
 been treasuring them. 
 
 She was now at the bed next to mine. A mid- 
 dle-aged chasseur who had lost both his arms was 
 lying here. As she turned back the covers to look 
 at his dressings, something in the whole gesture 
 of her body stabbed me with a sense of her remote- 
 ness. Heavens, how free her mind was of me, of 
 me whose only thought was of her ! There is noth- 
 ing comparable to the loneliness of one who has 
 been imagining closeness; and what I felt now 
 was even more desperate than the hurt which, 
 when I was the Swallow and she was the Stormy 
 Petrel, she had given me that morning as, tingling 
 with memories of her at our first little dinner, I 
 had come in from camp to find her absorbed in 
 charts and business. 
 
 She felt the chasseur's bandages. The whiff of 
 his antiseptics will always be joined sickeningly 
 with my memory of that moment. Then I heard 
 her speak to the ward physician.
 
 222 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Don't you think, doctor, that these bandages 
 are just a little too tight?" 
 
 Ah, yes, I thought bitterly, she would miss no 
 detail. She was a nurse, not a woman. And the 
 life of a nurse a good nurse, that is is one of 
 passionate routine. She must care for the suffer- 
 ing, not for the sufferer. 
 
 At last she came over to my bed. With what 
 was left of my face from the mumps I looked up 
 at her indignantly, reproachfully. 
 
 Her own face broke up into little nooks and 
 crannies. For the first time I resented them. 
 
 "Thpoth I'm funny 'nough," I managed to ar- 
 ticulate. Mumps and dignity were, I found, dif- 
 ficult to maintain at the same time. 
 
 In an instant the nooks and crannies disap- 
 peared. "Oh, my poor boy," she whispered. "It 
 just seems the last straw, doesn't it*?" Then again 
 her face and tone changed. "Do you know when 
 I had the mumps 1 ?" she said. "Why, it was on 
 Christmas Day and I was just six years old. 
 Fancy what that means ! Nothing good to eat 
 swallowing a few spoonfuls of broth when the rest 
 are eating turkey and mince-pie. I always look 
 back on that as one of the tragedies of my life." 
 
 "I dare say it was the only tragedy." That was 
 what I might have said had not the beastly mumps
 
 THE SWALLOW 223 
 
 interfered with the conversational service. As it 
 was, I looked at her more resentfully than ever. I 
 had the feeling that she was talking to me, was 
 humouring me with conversation, just as if she 
 were a grown-up person trying to make some sick 
 child forget his illness. 
 
 She did not seem to notice how I was looking at 
 her. "Never mind," said she as she began to ex- 
 amine my dressings, "the mumps will soon be 
 over, you know. And when you're well of them 
 just guess what we're going to have." 
 
 "What 1 ?" I murmured with fretful bitterness. 
 
 "Why, sweetbreads and mushrooms all sorts 
 of good things. A lot of your old friends among 
 the ambulance corps have been wanting to know 
 what they could do for you and I told them they 
 were to buy you something good to eat. Then 
 we'll see. 'I am the cook and the captain bold and 
 the nurse of the Nancy Brig,' " she quoted merrily 
 as she touched my bandages. 
 
 "Oh, don't take any bother for me," I retorted 
 with rancorous emphasis on the last word. 
 
 At my words her face broke up again into the 
 objectionable nooks and crannies. And when she 
 left me that morning I felt that she had seen 
 through all my ungraciousness and was a little bit 
 amused by it.
 
 224 THE SWALLOW 
 
 That little scene was only the prelude of many 
 more phases of suffering. First of all an abscess 
 caused by the explosive bullet formed in my ab- 
 domen. The pain from this was intense; and it 
 was only an operation which relieved the terrible 
 pressure. 
 
 Meanwhile my wound was as torturing as ever. 
 Twice a day Olson dressed it and at each dressing, 
 involving as it did contact with the sciatic nerve, 
 I stuffed my handkerchief into my mouth and cov- 
 ered my head with the pillow so that I might 
 scream unheard. During this time, of course, I 
 took no morphine. And, too nervous to sleep at 
 night, I got only a few snatches by day. For one 
 month I never missed the quarter hour struck all 
 night on a nearby clock. 
 
 It was due to the Carrel system of irrigation, 
 which has saved so many lives during the war, that 
 my^ wound did gradually begin to heal. Although 
 they have heard of it vaguely, many people do not 
 know just what this great healing irrigation means. 
 It is for their benefit that I explain. The Carrel 
 system consists of a bulb to which is attached a 
 main tube and various smaller tubes. The bulb 
 is filled with a solution which every two hours is 
 flushed through the tubes. In this way the whole 
 body is sprayed as by a garden hose.
 
 THE SWALLOW 225 
 
 But although this treatment helped my wound, 
 the acid in its solution irritated the bedsores. In 
 spite of all the care I was receiving, they grew 
 worse and worse. There were nights when I could 
 not let my back touch the bed, when I lay on my 
 hands until they cramped. Also other abscesses 
 developed. Each of these had to be operated 
 upon. And four times I was carried to the "bil- 
 liard table," as was popularly known the operating 
 table. I never minded these incisions. The fact 
 of the matter was that, cut off from morphine as 
 I now was, the ansesthetic was the one refuge 
 from pain, the one escape to rosy peace. 
 
 Along with the Carrel system were kept up the 
 suspension weights on my leg. .At last these were 
 removed to give way to a plaster cast in which I 
 lived for many months. Now from chest to knee 
 I was rolled in plaster which, though not much 
 thicker than an eggshell, was as hard as iron. 
 Windows were made in the cast for my bed-sores, 
 which at last began to improve. Windows were 
 made, too, so that my wound might be dressed. 
 Save for these my shell was implacable. 
 
 Yet in spite of all I endured, the year and a 
 half in this hospital passed more quickly than six 
 
 weeks at V . Radiant cleanliness, the luxury 
 
 of baths and of snowy linen, smokes to soothe my
 
 226 THE SWALLOW 
 
 hours of pain, above all the trained and sym- 
 pathetic care of women after the hurried attention 
 
 of those poor driven orderlies at V , the deft 
 
 science which has helped so many to come back 
 from the middle road these were the miracles 
 of the Appleton Hospital. 
 
 Meanwhile what of the vision which I have 
 called life's high gift to the severely wounded? 
 It did not always burn steadily ahead of me. That 
 was too much to expect. There were days when, 
 pulled down by bitter undertows of pain, I longed 
 again for death. There were days when the vision 
 flickered dimly. Yet it was there. I could always 
 come back to it. Each time that I came back I 
 felt more sure of it. 
 
 Strangely enough, the one person who had 
 hindered the steadiness of this vision was the one 
 person I might have expected to keep it before me. 
 That was my nurse. When I first came to this 
 hospital, I had thought I was healed of the future, 
 of all little plans for to-morrow. But from the 
 moment her tears fell on my face there in her of- 
 fice, I had been unconsciously counting on those 
 tears. Forgetting that I had learned to live in to- 
 day, I began wanting Eileen Gale for my to-mor- 
 row. I wanted her to want me. I wanted her 
 sealed sure my own forever.
 
 THE SWALLOW 227 
 
 Of course I never put that feeling into even my 
 mind's words. I think I should have been horri- 
 fied if any one had suggested that I, Richard 
 Byrd, a man cut off from youth and normal youth- 
 ful avenues, could be mean enough to ask such 
 love. And it was only that day when I was so 
 ignobly stung by her attention to the chasseur in 
 the bed next to mine, when I saw how independent 
 was her mind of any longing for me, how cruelly 
 wide was her pity only that day did I realise 
 what I had been wanting. 
 
 I have told you how that day I felt a kind of 
 morose loneliness. In my sickness, I had even 
 shown her my bitterness that she could think of 
 others when I thought only of her. For weeks I 
 
 forgot that freeing vision of my days at V . 
 
 I was bound once again by the longing to make 
 sure of my to-morrow. 
 
 It was, after all, the first real test of my philos- 
 ophy. Bodily adventure, haphazard romance of 
 eyes that looked into mine with soft allure, danc- 
 ing these had all called to me and I had been 
 able to silence their voices. Yet I was far from 
 them when I gave them up. Now Eileen Gale 
 she was not far. She was near me every day 
 near, yet not close. I could never make her close. 
 I had not the right.
 
 228 THE SWALLOW 
 
 For days, through all my physical suffering, 
 there was this terrible protest of spirit. Here was 
 I twenty-two and powerless. By every right of 
 youth she should be mine. Yet here I lay I and 
 my broken wing my youth denied, myself the 
 poor maimed thing which took its place in her 
 eyes only because it was one of the hundreds of 
 others that needed her care. 
 
 It must have been weeks that I suffered this 
 torment. Longing to see her, miserable when she 
 was away from me, I was even more tortured 
 when she was actually with me. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, my protest broke into desperate hope. I 
 treasured every little sign. I tried to read into 
 some word or gesture a tenderness that was for 
 me, Richard Byrd, and not for the mere broken 
 wing. I even went back to that time when the 
 little cocotte brought me my morphine. Miss 
 Gale had not understood. Plainly for one minute 
 she had been hurt. That had been nothing to me 
 at the moment. Then I had wanted only one 
 thing my drug. Now, however hurt, hurt, 
 hurt ! I almost shouted the word to myself. Buf- 
 feted by physical pain in almost every part of me, 
 I could yet cling to this memory. That look was 
 not like the tears with which she had met me 
 tears which she might have given to any poor boy
 
 THE SWALLOW 229 
 
 she had once known full of health and merriment. 
 It was a tribute to me, the man. It showed me 
 what I might have become to her if Life had not 
 chosen to rob me. 
 
 Yet, always catching myself in time, I sternly 
 put away the thought of Eileen Gale in any rela- 
 tion save that of the friendly nurse who liked me 
 better than her other patients only because she 
 happened to know me a little, because she had 
 once sat opposite to me at a snowy table from 
 which Christmas poinsettias broke into bloom. So 
 the days went by until that one morning when 
 Eileen Gale did not come to me at seven with the 
 breakfast which she herself often prepared. 
 
 "Where's where's Miss Gale 4 ?" I stammered 
 to Miss Sally May, the little Baltimore nurse. 
 
 "Grippe," answered Miss Sally. "They're 
 afraid she's getting pneumonia." 
 
 I stared at her incredulously. She sick? I 
 somehow could not believe it. Why why she 
 was a nurse. It was her business to be well, to 
 be here taking care of me. And then after the 
 little Baltimore nurse had gone I realised as I 
 took a mechanical sip of coffee how much I had 
 always taken Eileen Gale for granted taken her 
 for granted and wanted her. 
 
 There were ten terrible days ahead. During
 
 230 THE SWALLOW 
 
 this time Dr. Olson operated on the first of my ab- 
 scesses. This relieved the pressure on my body 
 which had dragged me to and fro as if I were 
 bound to the back of some frantic wild beast. The 
 comparative freedom from pain left me more free 
 to miss Eileen Gale, to ache for the sight of her 
 coming through the door of the ward, for the 
 touch of her cool, firm fingers, for the merry laugh 
 that always seemed to be folding in and out. 
 
 She had not got pneumonia. After one day of 
 dread I found out that I had really nothing to 
 fear for her. All I went through now was the 
 aching emptiness of these hours away from her. I 
 was homesick as I had never been in my life. 
 
 One morning I was watching Miss Sally May 
 looking at the bandages of the wounded chasseur 
 on my right. At the first whiff of the antiseptics, 
 it all came back to me just how Eileen had 
 looked that morning when I had resented her un- 
 distracted care of him. And like a wave it broke 
 over me my new seeing. 
 
 "Oh," I found myself thinking passionately, "if 
 I could only see you here at his side right 
 now! Taking care of him, taking care of me 
 what does it matter which just so long as I can 
 see you." 
 
 That was the way I learned my new lesson
 
 THE SWALLOW 231 
 
 the lesson that was really part of my old one. I 
 knew now that I had been wanting Eileen Gale 
 to give, not to be. I saw that it was just because 
 she always would be strong enough and separate 
 enough to follow her duty in the face of any op- 
 posing personal inclination, that I loved her so 
 much. I had wanted her for mine. Yet always 
 mine she would be. For it is only the soul which 
 really understands and loves another soul, that 
 truly possesses. I needed no other seal, no sign 
 for the morrow. And to-day that gave me a sight 
 of her, that gave me even a thought of her who, 
 even the meanest, could ask for more than that 1 ? 
 
 So the vision that had come to me at V was 
 
 at last made perfect by my love for Eileen Gale. 
 There were times when I slipped again into dark- 
 ness, when I longed for death to put an end to 
 the mocking wish that she might be mine in the 
 old human way. But these times were few and 
 more and more I was content with the day's bless- 
 ing of her presence. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The long night had trudged heavily away. 
 The last hour, with a furtive glance over its 
 shoulder at the coming dawn, hurried its steps. In 
 that kind darkness before morning, my tightened 
 nerves relaxed. My lids, heavy with sleeplessness,
 
 232 THE SWALLOW 
 
 dropped, lifted again to the cosy dusk of the ward, 
 dropped once more and shut me in to bliss. . . . 
 
 I was back in El Paso. I was starting down to 
 the bakery. Some one followed me out to the 
 front lawn was it mother, was it a girl *? I could 
 never tell; but always it was a woman's presence. 
 She bent over the crocus bed under the magnolias, 
 "They're pushing on their little toes, trying to 
 get their heads up through the ground," she said. 
 I kissed the back of the bent neck and swung off 
 down the street in glorious strides. Beside this 
 intoxication motion, flying was dull. To walk, to 
 work here was adventure ! . . . 
 
 My eyes, opened slowly by the daylight, fell 
 on the tree-tops outside my window. It was the 
 same dream, the dream of walking, drunk with my 
 own vigour, that I had had for months every morn- 
 ing at this hour. And always my disillusioned 
 eyes had opened not on the magnolias of El Paso 
 but on the poplars outside the Appleton Ambu- 
 lance in Paris. 
 
 When I was first brought to this bed the tree- 
 tops were flowing with summer green. I had 
 watched those heart-shaped leaves fulfil their gold- 
 en destiny. I had watched them shiver away, 
 one by one, until there were only three leaves left. 
 Three leaves, two leaves, and by Christmas one
 
 THE SWALLOW 233 
 
 leaf beat against the bough. It made me think of 
 a despairing, imprisoned bird. That was a year 
 ago. In the spring all the young leaves had come 
 trooping back and burst into life. Once more I 
 saw them flame and die until there were but four 
 leaves left. Four leaves, three leaves, and now 
 on Christmas morning two leaves scraped to- 
 gether on their lonely bough. I had counted time 
 not by days but by seasons, and the poplars had 
 been my dial. 
 
 But there were other leaves to tell the time this 
 morning. All over the ward twined glossy holly. 
 Its red berries fairly tinkled from the door through 
 which might come at any moment she for whom 
 I waited. 
 
 A swish of white but it was only Miss Sally 
 May, the brown-eyed nurse from Baltimore, with 
 a pitcher of water. Lifting the bowl from my 
 stand to a little chair which she pushed beside the 
 bed, she filled it with water. 
 
 "Suh proud and hotty since he washes his own 
 face that he hardly notices his old friends," Miss 
 Sally confided to the pitcher as she handed me my 
 wash-cloth and towel. 
 
 "I know a certain young southern belle that had 
 better keep from under the mistletoe to-day," I in
 
 234 THE SWALLOW 
 
 my turn confided to the bowl while my face 
 glowed with cold water. 
 
 My eyes, answering the challenge in hers, 
 caught another gleam of white at the door. It 
 was hard to bring the proper earnestness to a flir- 
 tation, even with a Baltimore girl, when my heart 
 waited for the opening of the swinging door. But 
 it was only a nurse from another ward ; and after 
 brushing my teeth and letting Miss Sally May 
 take my pulse, I settled back on the pillow that 
 she had freshened for me. Rene, the most lively 
 of the convalescents, pushed a basket of cigarettes 
 under my nose. Lighting one, I lay back and 
 amused myself by sending out smoke-rings from 
 both corners of my mouth. And between the two 
 curling streamers of smoke that floated away like 
 incense from a Buddha's lips, my half-closed eyes 
 watched for a white skirt, whiter than any other 
 skirt. 
 
 On this Christmas morning as I waited for 
 her to enter the swinging-door, there was none 
 of the old anguish in my desire. And as she came 
 at last down the ward, stopping here and there on 
 the way to me, only a spirit of content was in my 
 watching. It was too utterly sweet that she 
 should be here in this room, that I could look at
 
 THE SWALLOW 235 
 
 her as she bent over that one grizzled French cap- 
 tain, that I could catch the eager, grateful smile 
 with which another officer looked up at her. 
 
 When she did at last reach my side, she looked 
 down at me with a swift little smile. 
 
 "Good morning, Merry Christmas, will you 
 dine with me to-night*?" 
 
 My own words to her of that other Christmas 
 two years before! Two things beat against my 
 heart at the words. One, a wayward triumph that 
 she should have remembered so exactly; the other, 
 a pain that she should thus remind me of the 
 change. 
 
 She seemed to see only the latter and a hot lit- 
 tle flush mounted her cheek to the first wave of 
 crisp black hair showing under the nurse's cap. 
 "Oh, no, no, no," she whispered, "how could you 
 think that*? I'm not making fun. I'm really 
 asking you. Listen, my dear, the doctor has said 
 so you are to try walking this day. That is your 
 Christmas present." 
 
 I stared at her incredulously. It had been al- 
 most sixteen months since the great surgeon, grey 
 and grave and steady, had promised to try get- 
 ting me out of this bed. Now for the first time I 
 had been delivered from the long course of scien- 
 tific treatments he had prescribed. Only yester-
 
 236 THE SWALLOW 
 
 day the tight plaster cast had been removed and 
 I had not yet dared, to hope for that day when I 
 should at last get up from this prison bed. God, 
 could it be true ! I lay there tossed between fear 
 and hope. What if I couldn't after all, what 
 if I couldn't? I began to almost dread the test 
 ahead of me. During all these months I had 
 tried to school myself to the worst, to a future 
 where I should be walked and never walk. Now, 
 however I felt that defeated hope would kill me. 
 
 "Oh, yes, and here's another Christmas gift," I 
 heard my nurse's voice saying and she put into my 
 hand a heavy square white envelope. 
 
 The moment I saw the type of stationery and 
 the big wayward hand in which my name was 
 written, I knew what it was and from whom it 
 came. Jasmine! Her wedding announcement! 
 And I did not need to open the envelope to find 
 out that Lee Malone's name was inside. 
 
 It was the first time I had heard from her since 
 that Christmas two years ago when she had sent 
 me her photograph. I had never acknowledged 
 the gift simply because every time I tried to do so 
 Eileen Gale's face came between me and the page 
 and made every word sound as if a stranger were 
 writing down words to another stranger. Nor 
 had my mother ever mentioned Jasmine. Per-
 
 THE SWALLOW 237 
 
 haps she had fancied that the only news she could 
 give of her would wound me. So, like a genii 
 from the sea, leaped out this ghost of an old in- 
 tense life. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. Sefton Grey announce the mar- 
 riage of their daughter Jasmine " In a stupor I 
 
 read the engraved announcement. Then in one 
 gusty minute the stupor was pricked. A magnolia 
 dipping in the breeze shuttered her face from the 
 moonlight. In that kind darkness I groped for 
 her soft lips with my own groped and found 
 them. My heart sang in triumph at that first kiss. 
 She was mire. The earth was mine. The old 
 passion whirled upon me whirled and bore me 
 down. It came from my memory of Jasmine 
 Grey, but it took me to Eileen Gale. 
 
 "Why, what is it 4 ? What has happened?" I 
 heard her whisper in alarm. 
 
 I forced a smile. "Oh," I answered at last, "I 
 suppose it's never pleasant to hear that your old 
 love has married the other fellow." 
 
 I saw something cross her face. The something 
 went through me fierily. "Eileen," I whispered 
 savagely, "God, don't you see*?" And I closed 
 my eyes against the racking vision of what could 
 never be of meeting Eileen Gale's lips with my 
 own. I forgot all the contentment in her mere
 
 238 THE SWALLOW 
 
 presence which I had learned. I wanted her, 
 wanted her, wanted her. And so long had I 
 thought of myself as incurably helpless that it was 
 a moment before her first words came back to me. 
 If I should really be able to walk again ah, then, 
 the vision might not be so impossible I opened 
 upon her eyes haggard with hope. 
 
 She had made no reply to my words. She was 
 just standing there with her hands folded and her 
 eyes fixed quietly almost gravely on my face. 
 Had she understood what I was trying to tell her 1 ? 
 Before I could decide she was gone. 
 
 Half an hour later she was bringing Christmas 
 to our ward. There was a tree webbed in tinsel, 
 glittering with American ornaments, and she 
 wheeled it to the bedside of each patient. It was 
 strange, but at the sight of that tree I forgot all 
 deeper things. Christmas is always a separate 
 place. It is the great meeting-ground of childhood 
 and maturity. To the sick man its magic is even 
 brighter. As the eye of all of us wounded men 
 followed the tree we left behind us every other 
 thought. And afterwards when Miss Gale took 
 from the fir-boughs presents for each patient, the 
 eyes of these soldiers grew big with suspense as 
 those of children. 
 
 "But how did you know I wanted this 1 ? And
 
 THE SWALLOW 239 
 
 this"? And this?" There were excited cries all 
 over the room. I myself could just hardly wait 
 until that tree came up to my bed. 
 . But when it did come, she took down for me 
 only one small package. With fingers that were 
 trembling with excitement, I took off the red rib- 
 bons, I unwrapped fold after fold of white tissue 
 paper. I came at last to my gift. It was merely 
 a card on which were written the words, "Please 
 call for package at the office of Miss Gale." 
 
 I frowned a little. It was so bright and cosy 
 here in this house of Christmas that I hated to be 
 reminded of graver issues. "Do I have to try to 
 walk to-day?" I pleaded. 
 
 "Hmph!" she addressed the Christmas tree, 
 "he doesn't want to walk. He wants his Christ- 
 mas to walk." 
 
 In a few moments she came back with a pair of 
 crutches. The head surgeon was with her. So 
 were Miss Sally May and another nurse. I began 
 to tremble from head to foot. 
 
 ?They lifted me up in the bed. They put my 
 feet on the floor. They raised me up. The room 
 raced madly around my head the cots with their 
 outspread Christmas treasure of books and fruit 
 and neckties were mere dizzy spots. Then as my 
 head began to clear the furniture and the figures
 
 240 THE SWALLOW 
 
 about me which had loomed so large above my bed 
 for many months were all dwarfed to their actual 
 size. 
 
 "Now, take a step," urged the head surgeon. 
 
 I was terrified. Sweat broke out on my fore- 
 head. Even to stand with the support of four 
 people was unbelievable effort. 
 
 "I can't," I cried. 
 
 Meanwhile all my fellow-patients had been 
 staring at me with the gibing curiosity which we 
 all exercised upon convalescents. 
 
 "Sacre! Bounds like an antelope," cried out a 
 one-armed young lieutenant who had bound his 
 new red silk necktie about the bandage on his 
 forehead. 
 
 "Look out there, he'll run away from you," 
 added another. 
 
 While the rest of them were contributing that 
 joking comment of which I have already spoken 
 as being so dear to the heart of the wounded sol- 
 dier, I tried to take that step. I plunged for- 
 ward. They all pulled me back. I tried again. 
 It was no use. Muscles unused for eighteen 
 months had forgotten how to obey my will. 
 
 "Give it up," I panted. " 'S no use." 
 
 They lifted me into a wheel-chair and as Miss 
 Gale pushed me out to her office I had to set my
 
 THE SWALLOW 241 
 
 teeth to keep from crying. When I finally ar- 
 rived there, I leaned back in my chair and closed 
 my eyes. I had been prostrated by those poor 
 efforts at walking, I could not speak. 
 
 Through the terrible black weakness I heard her 
 voice more tender than it had ever been. "Why, 
 they all have to learn over again," it was saying. 
 
 I roused myself. "Don't," I cried fiercely, "I 
 can't stand your pity." 
 
 For a moment she said nothing. "Pity!" she 
 repeated at last and I heard her give a soft little 
 laugh. "Pity, why, how funny!" 
 
 Another instant and the crisp little figure moved 
 across the room with the springy step that I knew 
 so well. She pulled aside a screen and in stupe- 
 fied silence I watched her roll out a table which, 
 blazing with poinsettias and candles, looked exact- 
 ly the same as that secluded corner table in the un- 
 secluded cafe where I had taken her two years 
 before. Without a word she pulled the table in 
 front of me. Then, darkening the room so that 
 the candles were now our only light, she sat down 
 opposite to me and as we waited Antoinette 
 brought in our soup. 
 
 Feeling as if I were in a dream I took a first 
 taste of that soup. 
 
 "Why, it's potage Margerole," I cried, "the
 
 242 THE SWALLOW 
 
 very same we had that night! How did you re- 
 member that?" 
 
 Her face broke into the familiar nooks and 
 crannies. In each one of them you found some 
 different thing wistfulness, gaiety, a mocking 
 tenderness in a haze I saw them all. And as I 
 did so headlong triumph a triumph I had 
 thought would never be mine made me forget 
 all that I should have remembered. 
 
 "Oh, you must have just a little or else you 
 wouldn't have remembered everything just as it 
 was the poinsettias the candles even the 
 soup." I heard the words being said by some one. 
 
 For reply, she put her elbows on the snowy 
 table-cloth and leaned across to me. "Dear, fool- 
 ish Swallow," she whispered. 
 
 "Honestly*?" I said breathlessly. 
 
 "Honestly," said she, "from the very first mo- 
 ment I saw you." 
 
 I looked into the bending Heaven of her face. 
 "But why?" I asked. "Oh, it can't be true. .Your 
 swallow can't fly any more, you know." 
 
 "Ah, but that is what you can always," said 
 she, her face alight with something I had never 
 seen. "There's something in you that will keep 
 going on. First you took to wings of steel. That 
 was a boy's adventure the adventure of the
 
 THE SWALLOW 243 
 
 body. Then began the real adventure of the 
 spirit. Oh, Swallow, don't you think I haven't 
 seen all your flying all these months in bed." 
 
 Her words exalted me. Then came the old 
 weighting sense of what I really was, of the mean- 
 ness of accepting such happiness. 
 
 "Eileen, Eileen," I groaned, "I can't take it 
 not when I'm like this just something to be sorry 
 for." 
 
 "Sorry!" she flung back my word stormily. "Of 
 course I'm sorry for all you've suffered. But do 
 you think I could pity you for the way you've 
 suffered? Why, do you imagine I would have let 
 you have that morphine if I had thought you were 
 weak?' 
 
 I looked at her in amazement. "What do you 
 mean?" I groped. 
 
 "I mean that I did not tell Dr. Olson that time 
 when I found you had had it smuggled to you just 
 because I trusted you to break off. You did break 
 it off, too. I saw you struggling it just broke my 
 heart. Pity? Could any one pity a man like 
 you?" 
 
 I had thought that I had learned to understand 
 her. Now I saw that all my life I was going to 
 be following her, humbly, along new, hidden 
 paths.
 
 244 THE SWALLOW 
 
 "Oh, Stormy Petrel," I cried, and in the cry 
 was gathered up all the reverence I had ever felt, 
 "I can't be sorry for myself when being sick has 
 shown me you. Two years ago to-day I fell in 
 love with you. In a queer callow way I sort of 
 divined everything that made you different. Of 
 course, you were pretty and charming, but that 
 wasn't it. There were things you stood for just 
 the way you always understood somehow you 
 were never forcing your charm and good looks- 
 like like " I stopped myself just in time to 
 
 avoid Jasmine's name. Then reaching for her 
 hand under the fire of poinsettias, I finished sol- 
 emnly. "I guess maybe that's what the war has 
 done for a lot of us. It's made us care for a dif- 
 ferent thing in women." 
 
 She gave my fingers a little tender pressure, but 
 to her eyes came back the old mocking laugh. 
 "Dear, dear," said she, "and to think that I first 
 liked him because he didn't know anything about 
 women." 
 
 It was after I had been taken back into the 
 ward that the head surgeon gave me my great 
 Christmas present. This was the assurance that, 
 in spite of my dismal failure that morning, I 
 would walk again, with only a heavy limp and a 
 cane between me and normal activity.
 
 THE SWALLOW 245 
 
 As if this was not enough, this tremulous, 
 blinding hope of a happiness I had forsworn, 
 Eileen came to take me for an outing. Bundling 
 me up in my old military coat from which the 
 blood had been cleaned, she pinned my medals 
 on my breast, stuck my "berry" on my head, rolled 
 me out of the ward with its festive burden of 
 holly and mistletoe, rolled me down into the court. 
 For the first time in eighteen months I was in the 
 open air ! My excitement was so painful that to 
 calm me she let the hospital boy wheel me while 
 she walked by my side. 
 
 "Look! Look!" I cried, as we made our way 
 to the street. "A dog!" 
 
 She laughed. I had forgotten there were dogs. 
 I had forgotten there were children or street-cars 
 or automobiles or anything but beds and, operat- 
 ing-tables, doctors and dressings. How wonder- 
 ful to begin life again in the winy December 
 sunshine! Not the storm-spent joy of a sail in 
 wind and rain, not a billowy gallop across the 
 prairies, not even that first triumphant flight above 
 the clouds nothing had ever been so intoxicating 
 as this ride through the Bois in an old wheel-chair. 
 
 Evening mist began to rise. The sun was set- 
 ting red and moist through the fog like a large, 
 ripe fruit. Velvet evergreens dripped with moss.
 
 246 THE SWALLOW 
 
 Oaks spread out their bare, dark boughs. They 
 looked as if their roots were in the air. 
 
 "I wonder if they're standing on their heads, 
 those oaks," I mused. 
 
 She laughed again. I looked up at her as she 
 stepped along beside me, at her cheeks as red as 
 the sun going down through the mist, at eyes al- 
 ways laughing away something deeper than laugh- 
 ter, at the dancing waves of hair, young despite 
 those little spots of grey that had come with her 
 decoration for brave service. 
 
 I knew that I should sleep that night deliciously. 
 I knew that I should be walking soon. I hoped 
 and it has happened since that my mother would 
 see me not creeping on crutches but in the service 
 of my country. Youth and strength came sing- 
 ing back to me. "Home, now, Pierre," she said. 
 
 "Home, now, Pierre," I repeated, still looking 
 at her.
 
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