Brother Enemies by Frank Blighton Read online

  “A leaf out of the German treatise on

  See, here’s a way out. Across that boundary

  efficiency,” said Rockwood with a genial we’re enemies. All right. Here we’re brother smile, as Imman himself shoved the propeller

  airmen, eh? Both in difficulties. Now, I’ll

  into place, adjusting the holes to the shaft,

  swap you two gallons of gas for all the

  while the young American slipped the seven

  cartridges you have left. Your cartridges won’t huge bolts into place, and secured them with a

  work in my gun. The reason is that your

  mechanical exactness which brought a gleam

  Fokker Shoots through the propeller-shaft; my

  of silent admiration into the eyes of his late

  weapon is a Lewis automatic, operated from

  opponent.

  the fuselage. You fellows drumfire us by

  “Pardon me, Lieutenant Rockwood,”

  simply spiraling down on us. We’ve got to

  said Imman, stiffening suddenly. “unless we

  admit you have a clever device, and a deadly

  both wish to be interned in Switzerland for the one. You think you’re fighting a just cause. So balance of the war, it is time we left here.

  do I, and as gentlemen, if we both get safely

  There is a patrol about five miles away out of this, we can meet—well, somewhere coming down the mountain-trail yonder.”

  else some day, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Rockwood quietly. “And

  “Sir,” replied Imman punctiliously,

  once over the frontier—”

  “you are a gentleman of discernment and a

  “We are enemies as before,” said brother airman—here. Elsewhere you are my Imman more stiffly than formerly.

  enemy. I accept, sir; but I warn you that I shall

  “Enemies to be sure,” laughed use that gas to fly to Strassburg, where I shall Rockwood; “only, mon ami, I am at rather a obtain fresh fuel and munitions. And I can be

  disadvantage, since I have run entirely out of

  in Strassburg from where we are now in half

  ammunition.”

  an hour.”

  “But I have not,” countered Imman.

  Rockwood

  grinned.

  “You are the enemy of my Fatherland; you are

  “And while you tank up in Strassburg I

  an American who has come over to fight us,

  shall be hitting the high lanes for the Allied

  and once across the frontier—”

  lines. Come on; I have a small collapsible

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  bucket. While you get your gas from my tank,

  very mouth of the antiaircraft gun.

  I’ll get my cartridges from your fuselage.”

  It was the same object at glimpse of

  which the others of the pun-crew had hurled

  Colonel Frederick Imman, standing by

  themselves into their bomb-proofs—the same

  the grave of his only son, seemed again to

  object which had fallen at Colonel Imman’s

  hear his beloved boy’s accents as he recounted

  feet.

  the story after his safe flight back to the

  It was a wreath of laurel leaves,

  Verdun base.

  spotted with immortelles.

  So vivid was the old veteran’s reverie

  Attached to it was a card reading:

  that he could scarcely believe that his son was not yet actually speaking to him. So many

  In reverent memory of my brother

  things were so unreal since this grim and

  airman. Lieutenant Imman. from

  ghastly struggle had commenced that even the

  fresh mound of earth at his feet appeared at

  KANE

  ROCKWOOD.

  times a fantasy.

  Yet his beloved son lay there, despite

  The veteran of two wars laid the

  the fact that he was the most expert airman in

  wreath on the fresh-made mound, replaced his

  the German army. Twenty-seven enemy cap, and stepped back through the lanes of aeroplanes had gone down before the hellish

  hangars which seemed to be swallowed up by

  blast of his machine-gun, blazing amazingly

  the ground a few rods farther on.

  certain destruction through the hollow

  He passed the covert where, in a

  propeller-shaft. Flight-Lieutenant Imman had

  cunningly contrived artificial copse of shrubs, only to bestride his meteorlike machine, his subordinate. Sub-Lieutenant Schneider, whose speed in still air was one hundred and

  with true Teutonic thoroughness, was

  twenty miles per hour, climb high, and spiral

  applying his eye to the lens of the powerful

  down upon his objective.

  binocular mounted on the quadrant of the

  Nevertheless, three days after his antiaircraft gun over which he was stooping.

  return from Alsace he had been shot down on

  A marvelous mechanism, that

  the north bank of the Meuse—by Rockwood.

  binocular, dragging distance into the

  Hate hung fire, however, that sun-

  foreground as relentlessly as gravitation

  drenched August morning, although rage and

  dragged a disabled aeroplane earthward.

  grief inconsolable had torn at the veteran’s

  But something more marvelous blotted

  heart when he woke at dawn. In his hand was

  out the sight of the concealed weapon and its

  the thing which the reckless Rockwood had

  methodical watcher; something that,

  launched from his fuselage when, after somehow, eased for a moment the frightful tricking Sub-Lieutenant Schneider into the sense of desolation that had engulfed the belief that he had been fatally injured, the

  colonel unchallenged since his son’s demise

  intrepid American drove headlong down at the

  until this flawless morning.