“And then, ’couic’....”

He was life itself.  He got out of his seat panting but radiant, quivering, as it were, like the bow-string when it has sent its shaft, and full of the sacred drunkenness of a young god.

Ten days had passed since his disappearance.  Nothing more was known than on that eleventh of September when Bozon-Verduraz came back alone.  German prisoners belonging to aviation had not heard that he was reported missing.  Yet it was inconceivable that such a piece of news should not have been circulated; and, in fact, yesterday a message dropped by a German airplane on the British lines, concerning several English aviators killed or in hospital, was completed by a note saying that Captain Guynemer had been brought down at Poelkapelle on September 10, at 8 A.M.  But could this message be credited?  Both the day and hour it stated were wrong.  On September 10 at 8 A.M.  Guynemer was alive, and even the next day he had not left the camp at the hour mentioned.  An English newspaper had announced his disappearance, and perhaps the enemy was merely using the information.  The mystery remained unsolved.

As we were discussing these particulars, the last airplanes were landing, one after another, and Guynemer’s companions offered their reasons for hoping, or rather believing; but none seemed convinced by his own arguments.  Their inner conviction must be that their young chief is dead; and besides, what is death, what is life, to devoting one’s all to France?

Captain d’Harcourt had succeeded Major Brocard pro tem as commandant of the unit.  He was a very slim, very elegant young man, with the grace and courtesy of the ancien regime which his name evoked, and the perfection of his manners and gentleness seemed to lend convincing power to all he said.  Guynemer being missing and Heurtaux wounded, the Storks were now commanded by Lieutenant Raymond.  He belonged to the cavalry, a tall, thin man, with the sharp face and heroic bearing of Don Quixote, a kindly man with a roughness of manner and a quick, picturesque way of expressing himself.  Deullin was there, too, one of Guynemer’s oldest and most devoted friends.  Last of all descended from the high regions sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz, a rather heavy man with a serious face, and more maturity than belonged to his years, an unassuming young man with a hatred for exaggeration and a deep respect for the truth.

Once more he went through every detail of the fatal day for me, each particular anticipating the dread issue.  But in spite of this narrative, full of the idea of death, I could not think of Guynemer as dead and lying somewhere under the ground held by the enemy.  It was impossible for me not to conjure up Guynemer alive and even full of life, Guynemer chasing the enemy with strained terrible eyes, Guynemer of the superhuman will, the Guynemer who never gave up,—­in short, a Guynemer whom death could not vanquish.