Thanks to Eitel I had requested and obtained an internal bolt for my door. I pushed it, and started filling the bottle with the pages of my journal. I had no great expectations of that means, alas, but I took the chance because no one has the right to bow his head beneath adversity and, while breath of life remains, hope and struggle are imposed upon him as the primal duties.
I was still occupied in that task when someone rapped brutally on my door.
It was the commandant. He did not ask me any questions.
“Eitel is better,” he said. “He’s asking for you. Go.”
Then he headed for the prison, accompanied by well-armed guards.
I answered the invitation. The person who had been Second Lieutenant Eitel was lying down. She smiled at me and indicated with her gaze a folding chair set beside her bed. An awkward silence followed.
It was me who broke it. “Your father’s just confirmed that your wound isn’t serious. You’ll need to be careful though. If he were still alive, the doctor would certainly oblige you to be quiet and rest.”
“That’s of no importance; the doctor could prescribe whatever he liked, but I’d be much less obedient to him than my desire to see you and talk to you.”
“But your health is important to me, and I’m going to leave.”
“No, I don’t want that! Why delay what has to happen? Stay, I beg you.”
The imperious officer and the imploring woman had spoken through the same mouth.
Since the occasion could not be deferred, I resolved to regulate the equivocal situation immediately; obediently, I took the seat that was indicated to me.
“An explanation between us is necessary,” she said. “I owe you one, and I owe one to myself. I’m the only daughter of the Kommandant of this aerobagne; my mother is dead. When my father was…embarked, I obtained his agreement, after a certain lapse of time and at the price of a great many tears and prayers, that he would let me join him—but it was necessary that no one knew. He succeeded in passing me off as a young officer, a deserter condemned to detention. He obtained his papers, facilitated the officer’s fight, decked me out with his identity, and embarked me with him. It was simple, and no one perceived the deception. Since then, I’ve been Second Lieutenant Eitel, and I pass for a distant relative of my father.
“Your arrival left me indifferent at first but, alas, it didn’t take long to exercise an influence on me that I combated, and at which I blushed. In spite of my efforts, it had an effect on me that modified all my ideas and all my tastes. Your presence soon became necessary, indispensable, to me. That’s what led me, irresistibly, to tell you that for you, in order to be linked to your life, I would almost be willing to go as far as treason. Today, I can affirm to you that I would go that far. Now, it’s no longer as anything but a woman that I’m speaking to you, Paul, and that woman is forced, by the sentiment that has taken possession of her, to make you these confessions... Now that everything equivocal is dissipated... That language must surprise you, but tell yourself that exceptional circumstances give rise to exceptional events, and what I dare to say now, at an altitude of three thousand meters, I certainly wouldn’t say on the ground, dressed as a woman ought to be dressed...”
I was about to interrupt, but she silenced me with a slight gesture of the hand.
“So, now, you know the full extent, the full force of the…affection”—she was about to say love, but did not dare—“that I have for you. That affection has inspired me to form a project.”
She maintained silence momentarily, while her gaze searched mine.
“I have,” she continued, “envisaged and prepared our escape. This is how. We’ll take advantage of our passage over an inhabited center to take possession of one of the emergency aircraft—the starboard one. I’ve checked its equipment, and it’s now ready to receive us. I know how to fly it; it’s child’s play. During a dark night, we’ll slip out to it, free it from its moorings, and in less than an hour we’ll be on the ground.”
“All that,” I said, “does indeed prove to me the force of a sentiment whose full value I appreciate, but you have a right to demand its price. What is it?”
A cloud passed over her face. Wanting to temper the cruel aspect of my words, I took her hand. She fixed her large eyes on mine and said: “Everyone has the right to seek to achieve their happiness.”
“Yes, without harming that of another.”
“Too bad for the other! Who worries about me and my suffering? This is what I ask of you, then: that as soon as we land, I become your legal wife. A wife takes the nationality of her husband, and you’ve destroyed in me everything there could be of the German. You can’t hold that against yourself. As soon as we’re married, we’ll return to your homeland, or any other you choose, and I can say, before God, that you’ll be unable to wish for a more docile, humbler, more loving wife than me.”
She had spoken in a single burst, very rapidly, as if to get her explanation over as quickly as possible. As for me, I had never been so unhappy, for I was reluctant to make the poor woman suffer. I tried, however, to bring her back to reason, to make her envisage all the consequences of our action.
“What about your father?” I said
She laughed disdainfully. “He’ll still have alcohol—and believe me, that will be sufficient for him.”
“The esteem that I have for you,” I continued, “the profound amity, even”—she frowned—“makes it a duty for me to be as frank as you have been yourself. When I was abducted and sequestered by your people, for refusing to betray my country, as you know, I was getting ready to return to France to marry a young woman there who has my promise and my love. I don’t intend to betray her, even at the price of my liberty, any more than I would have betrayed you, had I made the same promise to you.”
Contrary to my expectation, she did not manifest either anger or despair. She simply smiled.
“I knew,” she said. “Except, Paul, there’s one thing you don’t know, and which, when you know it, will silence your scruples, of which I approve. Everyone in France believes that you’re dead; it has been officially announced. Your death certificate has been published, because the people holding you here have decided never to release you, even if you submit to their conditions. You know too much, Monsieur Ménestin, that it’s necessary not to know. Hence, you’re here for life.
“In those circumstances, your fiancée must believe you dead—dead for more than a year, and morally, you are. There’s no dolor so bad that time can’t reckon with it, and don’t you think that after your fiancée has mourned you, she’ll allow herself to be loved by someone else?”
I had risen to my feet. All of that, which I did not know yet, distressed me. All the hatred I had accumulated against those people burst forth. I forgot that I had before me a woman that I had already bruised.
“Whatever an action might be for which you are responsible as well as yours, Mademoiselle, I shall leave time the care of attenuating in you the memory of what it remains for me to say to you. You belong to a race that I hate and despise too much ever to see anything in you but a foreigner and an enemy.”
She looked at me, devastated; then, with an exclamation of furious rage, she hid her head in her pillow, biting it in order not to scream.
I went out, prey to a thousand various sentiments, but anger and indignation were dominant. Enough reason remained to me, however, for me to understand that I had just made an irreconcilable adversary, and that the tolerance that had been shown to me in recent months was at an end.
This very evening, I shall throw the bottle into the sea. With the door bolted, I shall slide the manuscript through the neck, and seal it hermetically...
It’s finished.
Go with God.
8 August...
XIV. In which it is proven that Escander
has no lack of initiative
Laverdy’s yacht, the Étoile polaire, was sailing rapidly toward the western coast of Africa., after calling in briefl
y at Lisbon and Tenerife, where food supplies for two months had been embarked.
The vessel was thus fully laden, but was traveling rapidly. In addition to the crew, composed of twenty men, there were twenty-five robust fellows aboard, all dressed in white and quipped in the manner of colonial soldiers. The rear section was reserved for Escander, Mathilde, Laverdy and Alexis.
One evening, Escander resolved to make his final confidences.
“My friends,” he said, “you know the goal that we’re pursuing; it can be summed up in a few words: to get Paul Ménestin out of German hands. For that, I’ve envisaged several means of which you, Laverdy, are unaware, and of which Mademoiselle Régis is similarly ignorant. Only Alexis knows them, for I had need of his devotion, his cunning and his courage from the very outset.”
“You’re overdoing the ignition, Boss—that’s sufficient, don’t go on,” said Alexis, who was lying on the deck.
Escander did not make any retort, but continued: “It is, alas, the case that we can’t count on anyone but ourselves, for the French government remains convinced, until more amply informed, that the Germans are acting in good faith.
“Few means are available to us. The first that comes to mind is that of a direct attack, with the aid of a squadron of armed aircraft, but, in addition to the fact that the success of such an attempt would be very dubious, we have no way of knowing whether the Germans, if they saw themselves on the brink of being caught, wouldn’t simply murder Paul Ménestin, in order not to leave any proof of their crime behind. They could pass him off as one of those killed in the skirmish, and that would be that.”
“That is, indeed, to be feared,” said Laverdy.
“It’s therefore necessary, without further discussion, to set that first means aside as offering too few chances of success. There’s little left to examine; only one thing seems practicable to me, and this is it:
“It’s now the twenty-eighth of September. According to the international tables that regulate the circulation of the great penitentiary aircraft, aerobagne 32 is due to pass over Cap d’Arquin and the dunes of Iguidi between the first and the eighth of October. It’s in that zone that we ought to try to reach it. But where, exactly? In what fashion can we act, forced as we are to act alone; there must be no witnesses to this affair. My choice has therefore fallen on the point when the bagne, ceasing to fly over the Atlantic, arrives over the sands before continuing over the dunes of Iguidi, where I want to make it land.”
“But that’s quite simple,” said Laverdy. “One fires a cannon shot, and breaks a wing.”
“A poor means,” Escander retorted. “The 32 can rise up to six thousand meters, and be no more than a dot in the sky. However skillful our gunners are, I doubt that any of them could hit it at that range—and then, as I said just now, the life of the man we want to save is in their hands; we need to think only about that. This, then, is what I’ve decided to do:
“We’ll disembark our contingent of fighting men in the dunes of Iguidi; they’ll set up camp. Our fellows, installed under tents, will wait as tranquilly as possible. They’ll remain under your command, Laverdy. You’re a reserve officer; that gives you a certain competence.”
“I’m at your disposal, old chap,” said the chocolatier.
“Mademoiselle Régis will disembark with you; she has a series of written instructions, of which I’ll give you a duplicate. Now, listen!”
The journalist lowered his voice, in order that neither the man at the helm nor the officer of the watch could hear, and what he said then was so extraordinary that there were exclamations of surprise and fright.
Laverdy leapt to his feet. “It’s madness!” he said. “I’ll never permit that.”
Escander felt Matilde take his hand. The journalist squeezed her small, frail hand gently and fraternally; then, laughing frankly, he went on:
“My dear Laverdy, you’ll permit anything I want, for two reasons. The first is that you’re my friend and, in consequence, you don’t want to cross me; the second, which will appear more serious to you, is that you’ve surrendered to me, in writing, all your authority aboard ship. I am, therefore, the sole master here, and can, if it suits me, send you to the bottom of the hold to keep our airplane company.”
“But you’ll kill yourself, you idiot!” howled Laverdy.
“That’s not at all certain. In fact,” the journalist affirmed, “I believe that I won’t.”
“And once you’re among the Boches, will you be any further forward? What are you going to do, alone against an entire crew?”
“Don’t worry—I won’t be alone. I’ll have two good automatic pistols with five shots each. And then again, if chance turns against me, you’ll still have the duty, my dear Laverdy, of continuing the work with which you’ve generously associated yourself. You’ll reckon with the Boches, and you’ll return Mademoiselle Régis’ fiancé to her.”
“Get away!” cried Alexis. “We’ll succeed, and what a triumph! They’ll give M’sieur Escander the Légion d’honneur…no, he has that already…anyway, they’ll give him something useful and agreeable—a tobacconist’s shop, for example; there’s nothing better. Ma’mselle Régis will marry M’sieur Ménestin; M’sieur Laverdy will occupy himself with his chocolate plantations, and I’ll hand in my resignation as a bird and set myself up as a restaurateur at the sign of the Anti-Boche. All right! All right!”
XV. A Dot in the Sky
Forty-eight hours later, in the dark of the night at the end of September, the Étoile polaire dropped anchor off the dunes of Iguidi, in very favorable weather. Escander, the yacht’s first mate and six sailors embarked in a launch and headed for the coast, whose lines were discernible in the moonlight. At the prow, a sailor took soundings and directed the route in accordance with the depth; the launch reached the shore and ran aground gently.
The following morning, the disembarkation as effected. The tents were set up and Laverdy was introduced as having supreme authority in Escander’s absence; a former sergeant-major, artful and intelligent, was appointed as his second-in-command; the doctor was also disembarked. At Escander’s request Mathilde stayed aboard. The men were then informed of what was expected of them. For some time, Alexis had given them hints regarding the objective of the expedition; not only were they not surprised but they manifested a genuine enthusiasm. Automobile machine guns were set up, the catering organized, and everything seemed to be going as well as possible.
The night passed peacefully; although a tornado burst forth at about eight o’clock in the evening, it was not very violent.
In the morning, Laverdy, on the point of quitting the Étoile polaire to go ashore, was in a very bad mood. On the deck, in a rather sullen tone, he said to Escander: “I don’t know what’s stopping me from giving the order to go back to Le Havre.”
“Impossible,” said Escander, coldly. “I need you and the boat more than ever; you can go back to Le Havre later, my lad.”
“When you extorted the on-board authority from me, I didn’t know your insane plan.”
“Now you know it, it doesn’t change anything.”
“But...” Laverty, sensing that the struggle was futile, took two steps toward the ladder, but did not step on to it. Fundamentally, he was a brave man with a heart of gold, under his appearance of indifference; a sob caught in his throat. He turned to Escander and hugged him.
Mathilde, who witnessed the departure, drew away, distressed. She was found later, weeping in her cabin.
Laverdy embarked in the launch, but could not help shouting to Escander: “You’re mad, you hear? You’re mad, mad, mad!”
The boat carrying him drew away, and the Étoile polaire, in conformity with Escander’s plan, moved slowly away out to sea.
Two days passed without anything being signaled. Escander gave orders for airplane 21—which, thanks to Alexis, had been painted blue, like all the machines in the air force of French Occidental Africa, was installed on the foredeck, solidly moored. The wings had
not been mounted, as an extra precaution, but putting them in place, with the expert personnel that he had aboard, would only require two hours of work. Everything as ready and anticipated; they were waiting.
A tornado burst forth every evening at the same time, augmenting in intensity every time. There was nothing surprising about that, because it was the beginning of October, in the middle of the rainy season, but it annoyed Alexis. By contrast, Escander was delighted; the elements would be his accomplices.
“However unfavorable the hour is to me,” he said, when he made allusion to his plan, “I’ll tell the Boches that it’s the tempest that provoked an engine failure.”
The Étoile polaire sailed thus, at reduced speed, Escander’s design not being to stray too far from the camp, with which he kept in constant touch with the aid of the wireless.
Toward mid-afternoon on the third day, a minuscule dot, which the sun caused to sparkle, was spotted. It was German aerobagne 32, flying at an altitude of three thousand meters.
Aboard the Étoile polaire, Alexis had the wings fitted to his airplane, checked the controls, the steering and the engines; after two hours, the 21 was ready to take off.
Escander went to see Mathilde; he had a carefully sealed letter in his hand.
“It’s time for action,” he said, with a good humor that he exaggerated in order to tranquilize the young woman. “I’ve never been more certain of success, but if, however—it’s necessary to anticipate the worst, without believing in it—I don’t come back, deliver this letter to its address.”
Already, for two days and nights, the young woman had been asking herself whether she had the right to accept the journalist’s sacrifice, and for a long time, her conscience and her heart had been saying no.
Her lips were trembling; her eyes were full of tears. Escander guessed what was about to happen and armed himself, not with courage but with severity.
“I can see by your emotion,” he said, “that you’re about to ask me to abandon my project, that you’d a hundred times rather sacrifice your hopes than see me run a danger, and that you’d prefer the ruination of your happiness to a remorse. Don’t worry: your happiness and your fiancé’s liberty will only be the consequences of an action I’m undertaking in order to unmask the enemies of my country. That alone is important and that alone is making me act. Forgive me for speaking to you like that, and let’s part; too much time has already been lost.”
The Mirror of Present Events Page 33