Read Ebook: Tales of the Air Mail Pilots by McConnell Burt M Burt Morton

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FOREWORD vii

INTRODUCTION ix

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

As usual, it had begun quite harmlessly and inconspicuously. It is not my business to tell how it all came to pass, how the way was prepared. That may be left to the spinners of yarns and to those on the trail of the sources of history. I shall leave it to them to ascertain when the idea that there must be a conflict, and that the fruit must be plucked before it had time to ripen, first took root in the minds of the Japanese people.

We Americans realize now that we had been living for years like one who has a presentiment that something dreadful is hanging over him which will suddenly descend upon his head, and who carries this feeling of dread about with him with an uneasy conscience, trying to drown it in the tumult and restlessness of daily life. We realize the situation now, because we know where we should have fixed our gaze and understand the task to the accomplishment of which we should have bent our energies, but we went about like sleep-walkers and refused to see what thousands of others knew, what thousands saw in astonishment and concern at our heedlessness.

We might easily have peeped through the curtain that hid the future from us, for it had plenty of holes, but we passed them by unnoticed. And, nevertheless, there were many who did peep through. Some, while reading their paper, let it fall into their lap and stared into space, letting their thoughts wander far away to a spot whence the subdued clash of arms and tumult of war reached their soul like the mysterious roll and roar of the breakers. Others were struck by a chance word overheard in the rush of the street, which they would remember until it was driven out by the strenuous struggle that each day brought with it. But the word itself had not died; it continued to live in the foundation of the consciousness where our burning thoughts cannot enter, and sometimes in the night it would be born afresh in the shape of wild squadrons of cavalry galloping across the short grass of the prairie with noiseless hoofs. The thunder of cannon could be heard in the air long before the guns were loaded.

I saw no more than others, and when the grim horrors of the future first breathed coldly upon me I, too, soon forgot it. It happened at San Francisco in the spring of 1907. We were standing before a bar, and from outside came the sounds of an uproar in the street. Two men were being thrown out of a Japanese restaurant across the way, and the Japanese proprietor, who was standing in the doorway, kicked the hat of one of them across the pavement so that it rolled over the street like a football.

"Well, what do you think of that," cried my friend, Arthur Wilcox, "the Jap is attacking the white men."

I held him back by the arm, for a tall Irish policeman had already seized the Jap, who protested loudly and would not submit to arrest. The policeman took good hold of him, but before he knew it he lay like a log on the pavement, the Japanese dwarf apparently having thrown him without the least trouble. A wild brawl followed. Half an hour later only a few policemen, taking notes, were walking about in the Japanese restaurant, which had been completely demolished by a frenzied mob. We remained at the bar for some time afterwards engaged in earnest conversation.

"Our grandchildren," said Arthur, "will have to answer for that little affair and fight it out some day or other."

"Not our grandchildren, but we ourselves," I answered, not knowing in the least why I said it.

"We ourselves?" said Wilcox, laughing at me, "not much; look at me, look at yourself, look at our people, and then look at those dwarfs."

"The Russians said the same thing: Look at the dwarfs."

They all laughed at me and presently I joined in the laugh, but I could not forget the Irishman as he lay in the grip of the Jap. And quite suddenly I remembered something which I had almost forgotten. It happened at Heidelberg, during my student days in Germany; a professor was telling us how, after the inglorious retreat of the Prussian army from Valmy, the officers, with young Goethe in their midst, were sitting round the camp fires discussing the reasons for the defeat. When they asked Goethe what he thought about it, he answered, as though gifted with second sight: "At this spot and at this moment a new epoch in the world's history will begin, and you will all be able to say that you were present." And in imagination I could see the red glow of the bivouac fires and the officers of Frederick the Great's famous army, who could not understand how anyone could have fled before the ragged recruits of the Revolution. And near them I saw a man of higher caliber standing on tiptoe to look through the dark curtain into the future.

At the time I soon forgot all these things; I forgot the apparently insignificant street affray and the icy breath of premonition which swept over me then, and not until the disaster had occurred did it again enter my mind. But then when the swords were clashing I realized, for the first time, that all the incidents we had observed on the dusty highway of History, and passed by with indifference, had been sure signs of the coming catastrophe.

PARABELLUM

BANZAI!

IN MANILA

"For God's sake, do leave me in peace with your damned yellow monkeys!" cried Colonel Webster, banging his fist on the table so hard that the whisky and soda glasses jumped up in a fright, then came down again irritably and wagged their heads disapprovingly, so that the amber-colored fluid spilled over the edge and lay on the table in little pearly puddles.

"As you like, colonel. I shall give up arguing with you," returned Lieutenant Commander Harryman curtly. "You won't allow yourself to be warned."

"Warned--that's not the question. But this desire of yours to scent Japanese intrigues everywhere, to figure out all politics by the Japanese common denominator, and to see a Japanese spy in every coolie is becoming a positive mania. No, I can't agree with you there," added Webster, who seemed to regret the passionate outburst into which his temperament had betrayed him.

"Really not?" asked Harryman, turning in his comfortable wicker chair toward Webster and looking at him half encouragingly with twinkling eyes.

Such discussions were not at all unusual in the Club at Manila, for they presented the only antidote to the leaden, soul-killing tedium of the dull monotony of garrison duty. Since the new insurrection on Mindanao and in the whole southern portion of the archipelago, the question as to the actual causes of the uprising, or rather the secret authors thereof, continually gave rise to heated discussions. And when both parties, of which one ascribed everything to Japanese intrigue and the other found an explanation in elementary causes, began to liven up, the debate was apt to wax pretty warm. If these discussions did nothing else, they at least produced a sort of mental excitement after the heat of the day which wore out body and mind alike, not even cooling down toward evening.

The Chinese boy, passing quickly and quietly between the chairs, removed the traces of the Webster thunderbolt and placed fresh bottles of soda water on the table, whereupon the officers carefully prepared new drinks.

"He's a spy, too, I suppose?" asked Webster of Harryman, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the disappearing boy.

"Of course. Did you ever imagine him to be anything else?"

Webster shrugged his shoulders. A dull silence ensued, during which they tried to recover the lost threads of their thoughts in the drowsy twilight. Harryman irritably chewed the ends of his mustache. The smoke from two dozen shag pipes settled like streaks of mist in the sultry air of the tropical night, which came in at the open windows. Lazily and with long pauses, conversation was kept up at the separate tables. The silence was only broken by the creaking of the wicker chairs and the gurgling and splashing of the soda water, when one of the officers, after having put it off as long as possible, at last found sufficient energy to refill his glass. Motionless as seals on the sandhills in the heat of midday, the officers lolled in their chairs, waiting for the moment when they could turn in with some show of decency.

"It's awful!" groaned Colonel McCabe. "This damned hole is enough to make one childish. I shall go crazy soon." And then he cracked his standing joke of the evening: "My daily morning prayer is: 'Let it soon be evening, O God; the morrow will come of itself.'" The jest was greeted with a dutiful grunt of approval from the occupants of the various chairs.

"Any cable news, Parrington?" asked Colonel McCabe from the other table.

"Not a word," yawned Parrington; "everything is still smashed. We might just as well be sitting under the receiver of an air pump."

Harryman noticed that the boy stared at Parrington for a moment as if startled; but he instantly resumed his Mongolian expression of absolute innocence, and with his customary grin slipped sinuously through the door.

Harryman experienced an unpleasant feeling of momentary discomfort, but, not being able to locate his ideas clearly, he irritably gave up the attempt to arrive at a solution of this instinctive sensation, mumbling to himself: "This tropical hell is enough to set one crazy."

"No news of the fleet, either?" began Colonel McCabe again.

"Positively nothing, either by wire or wireless. It seems as though the rest of the world had sunk into a bottomless pit. Not a single word has reached us from the outer world for six days."

"Do you believe in the seaquake?" struck in Harryman mockingly.

"Why not?" returned the colonel.

Harryman jumped up, walked over to the window with long strides, threw out the end of his cigarette and lighted a new one. In the bright light of the flaming match one could see the commander's features twitching ironically; he was on the warpath again.

"All the same, it's a queer state of affairs. Our home cable snaps between Guam and here, the Hong-Kong cable won't work, and even our island wire has been put out of commission; it must have been a pretty violent catastrophe--" came from another table.

"--All the more violent considering the fact that we noticed nothing of it on land," said Harryman, thoughtfully blowing out a cloud of smoke and swinging himself up backward on the window-sill.

"Exactly," rang out a voice; "but how do you account for that?"

"Account for it!" cried Colonel Webster, in a thundering voice. "Our comrade of the illustrious navy of the United States of America has only one explanation for everything: his Japanese logarithms, by means of which he figures out everything. Now we shall hear that this seaquake can be traced to Japanese villainy, probably brought about by Japanese divers, or even submarine boats." And the colonel began to laugh heartily.

Harryman ignored this attempt to resume their recent dispute, and with head thrown back continued to blow clouds of smoke nervously into the air.

"But seriously, Harryman," began the colonel again, "can you give any explanation?"

"When he was going to send a cablegram to Hong-Kong," added Harryman sharply.

"To announce his arrival at Manila," remarked Colonel Webster dryly.

"And the Hong-Kong papers had already published descriptions of the destruction caused by the seaquake, of the tidal waves, and the accidents to ships," came from another quarter.

"The news being of especial interest to this archipelago, where we have the misfortune to be and where we noticed nothing of the whole affair," returned Harryman.

"You don't mean to imply," broke in the colonel, "that the news of this catastrophe is a pure invention--an invention of the English papers in Hong-Kong?"

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