The Arrow bore in toward the
Omnibus. Wharton had put his rifle aside
and was staring downward as if he would see the wreck
that he had made. Lannes called to him loudly:
“You’ve saved us all!”
Wharton looked rather white, but he shouted back:
“I had no other choice.”
The French aeroplanes were around
them now, their motors drumming steadily and the aviators
shouting congratulations to Lannes and Caumartin,
whom they knew well. It was a friendly group,
full of pride and exultation, and the Arrow
and the Omnibus had a triumphant escort.
Soon they were directly over the French, and then they
began their descent. As usual, when they reached
the army they made it amid cheers, and the first man
who greeted John was short and young but with a face
of pride.
“You have come back to us out
of the air, Monsieur Scott,” he said, “and
I salute you.”
It was Pierre Louis Bougainville,
made a colonel already for extraordinary, almost unprecedented,
valor and ability in so young a man. John recognized
his rank by his uniform, and he acknowledged it gladly.
“It’s true, I have come
back, Colonel Bougainville,” he said, “and
right glad I am to come. I see that your country
has had no cause to complain of you in the last week.”
“Nor of hundreds of thousands
of Frenchmen,” said Bougainville. “Your
company, the Strangers, is close at hand, and here
is your captain now.”
Captain Daniel Colton, thin and ascetic,
walked forward. John gave him his best salute
and said:
“Captain Colton, I beg to report to you for
duty.”
A light smile passed swiftly over Cotton’s face.
“You’re a little late, Lieutenant Scott,”
he said.
“I know it, sir, but I’ve
brought Lieutenant Carstairs and Lieutenant Wharton
with me. There have been obstacles which prevented
our speedy return. We’ve done our best.”
“I can well believe it.
You left on horseback, and you return by air.
But I’m most heartily glad to see all three of
you again. I feared that you were dead.”
“Thank you, sir,” said John. “But
we don’t mean to die.”
“Nevertheless,” said Captain
Colton, gravely, “death has been all about us
for days and nights. Many of the Strangers are
gone. You will find the living lying in the little
valley just beyond us, and you can resume your duties.”
Lannes, after a word or two, left
them, and Caumartin took the Omnibus to another
part of the field. Lannes’ importance was
continually growing in John’s eyes, nor was it
the effect of imagination. He saw that under
the new conditions of warfare the ability of the young
Frenchman to carry messages between generals separated
widely could not be overrated. He might depart
that very night on another flight.
“May I ask, sir,” he said
to Captain Colton, “to what command or division
the Strangers are now attached?”
“To that of General Vaugirard, a very able man.”
“I’m glad to hear it,
sir. I know him. I was with him before I
was taken by the Germans.”
“It seems that you’re
about to have a general reunion,” said Carstairs
to young Scott, as they walked away.
“I am, and I’m mighty
happy over it. I’ll admit that I was rather
glad to see you, you blooming Britisher.”
About one-third of the Strangers were
gone forever, and the rest, except the higher officers,
were prostrate in the glade. White, worn and
motionless they lay in the same stupor that John had
seen overtake the German troops. Some were flat
upon their backs, with arms outstretched, looking
like crosses, others lay on their faces, and others
were curled up on their sides. Few were over
twenty-five. Nearly all had mothers in America
or Great Britain.
While they slept the guns yet grumbled
at many points. The sound on the horizon had
gone on so long now that it seemed normal to John.
He knew that it would continue so throughout the night,
and maybe for many more days and nights. Unless
it came near and made him a direct personal menace
he would pay no attention to it.
It was growing late. Night was
spreading once more over the vast battle field, stretching
over thirty leagues maybe. The common soldier
knew nothing, majors and colonels knew little more,
but the silent man whose invisible hand had swept
the gigantic German army back from Paris knew much.
While the fire of the artillery continued under the
searchlights the exhausted infantry sank down.
Then the telephones began to talk over a vast stretch
of space, dazzling white lights made signals, the
sputtering wireless sent messages in the air, and the
flying machines shot through the heavens. Commanders
talked to one another in many ways now, and they would
talk all through the night.
John and his comrades ate supper,
while most of the Strangers slept around them.
Those who were awake recognized them, shook hands and
said a few words. They were a taciturn lot.
After supper Carstairs and Wharton dropped upon the
grass and were soon sound asleep. Scott was inclined
to be wakeful and he walked along the edge of the glade,
looking anxiously at the sleeping forms.
He saw the loom of a fire just beyond
the ridge and going to the crest to look at it he
beheld outlined before it a gigantic figure that he
recognized at once. It was General Vaugirard,
and John would have been glad to speak to him, but
he hesitated to approach a general. While he
stood doubting a hand fell upon his shoulder and a
glad voice said in his ear:
“And our young American has
come back! Ah, my friend, let me shake your hand!”
It was Captain de Rougemont, trim,
erect and without a wound. John gladly let him
shake. Then in reply to de Rougemont’s eager
questions he told briefly of all that had happened
since they parted.
“The general has asked twice
if we had any news of you,” said de Rougemont.
“He does not forget. A great mind in a vast
body.”
“Could I speak to him?”
“Of a certainty, my friend; come.”
They advanced toward the fire.
General Vaugirard was walking up and down, his hands
clasped behind his back, and whistling softly.
His huge figure looked yet more huge outlined against
the flames. He heard the tread of the two young
men and looking up recognized John instantly.
“Risen from the dead!”
he exclaimed with warmth, clasping the young man’s
hand in his own gigantic palm. “I had despaired
of ever seeing you again! There are so many more
gallant lads whom I will certainly never see!
Ah, well, such is life! The roll of our brave
young dead is long, very long!”
He reclasped his hands behind his
back and walking up and down began to whistle again
softly. His emotion over the holocaust had passed,
and once more he was the general planning for victory.
But he stopped presently and said to John:
“The Strangers, to whom you
belong, have come under my command. You are one
of my children now. I have my eye on all of you.
You are brave lads. Go and seek rest with them
while you can. You may not have another chance
in a month. We have driven the German, but he
will turn, and then we may fight weeks, months, no
one knows how long. Ah, well, such is life!”
John saluted respectfully, and withdrew
to the little open glade in which the Strangers were
lying, sleeping a great sleep. Captain Colton
himself, wrapped in a blanket, was now a-slumber under
a tree, and Wharton and Carstairs near by, stretched
on their sides, were deep in slumber too. Fires
were burning on the long line, but they were not numerous,
and in the distance they seemed mere pin points.
At times bars of intense white light, like flashes
of lightning, would sweep along the front, showing
that the searchlights of either army still provided
illumination for the fighting. The note of the
artillery came like a distant and smothered groan,
but it did not cease, and it would not cease, since
the searchlights would show it a way all through the
night.
John sat down, looked at the faint
flashes on the far horizon and listened to that moaning
which grew in volume as one paid close attention to
it. Europe or a great part of it had gone mad.
He was filled once more with wrath against kings and
all their doings as he looked upon the murderous aftermath
of feudalism, the most gigantic of all wars, made
in a few hours by a few men sitting around a table.
Then he laughed at himself. What was he!
A mere feather in a cyclone! Certainly he had
been blown about like one!
His nervous imagination now passed
quickly and throwing himself upon the ground he slept
like those around him. All the Strangers were
awakened at early dawn by the signal of a trumpet,
and when John opened his eyes he found the air still
quivering beneath the throb of the guns. As he
had foreseen they had never ceased in the darkness,
and he could not remember how many days and nights
now they had been raining steel upon human beings.
He was refreshed and strengthened
by a night of good sleep, but his mind was as sensitive
as ever. In the morning no less bitterly than
at night he raged against the folly and ambition of
the kings. But the others paid no attention to
the cannon. They were light of heart and easy
of tongue. They chaffed one another in the cool
dawn, and cried to the cooks for breakfast, which
was soon brought to them, hot and plentiful.
“I suppose it’s forward
again,” said Carstairs between drinks of coffee.
“I fancy you’re right,”
said Wharton. “Since we’ve been put
in the brigade of that giant of a general, Vaugirard,
we’re always going forward. He seems to
have an uncommon love of fighting for a fat man.”
“It’s an illusion,”
said John, “that a fat man is more peaceful than
a thin one.”
“How are you going to prove it?” asked
Wharton.
“Look at Napoleon. When
he was thin he was a great fighter, and when he became
stout he was just as great a fighter as ever.
Fat didn’t take away his belligerency.”
“I hear that the whole German
army has been driven across the Marne,” said
Carstairs, “and that the force we hoped to cut
off has either escaped or is about to escape.
If that’s so they won’t retreat much further.
The pride of the Germans is too great, and their army
is too powerful for them to yield much more ground
to us.”
“I think you’re right,
or about as near right as an Englishman can be, Carstairs,”
said John. “What must be the feelings of
the Emperor and the kings and the princes and the
grand dukes and the dukes and the martial professors
to know that the German army has been turned back from
Paris, just when the City of Light seemed ready to
fall into their hands?”
“Pretty bitter, I think,”
said Carstairs, “but it’s not pleasant
to have the capital of a country fall into the hands
of hostile armies. I don’t read of such
things with delight. It wouldn’t give me
any such overwhelming joy for us to march into Berlin.
To beat the Germans is enough.”
Another trumpet blew and the Strangers
rose for battle again with an invisible enemy.
All the officers, like the men, were on foot, their
horses having been killed in the earlier fighting,
and they advanced slowly across the stubble of a wheat
field. The morning was still cool, although the
sun was bright, and the air was full of vigor.
The rumbling of the artillery grew with the day, but
the Strangers said little. Battle had ceased
to be a novelty. They would fight somewhere and
with somebody, but they would wait patiently and without
curiosity until the time came.
“I suppose Lannes didn’t
come back,” said Carstairs. “I haven’t
heard anyone speak of seeing him this morning.”
“He may have returned before
we awoke,” said John. “The Arrow
flies very fast. Like as not he delivered his
message, whatever it was, and was off again with another
in a few minutes. He may be sixty or eighty miles
from here now.”
“Odd fellow that Lannes,”
said Carstairs. “Do you know anything about
his people, Scott?”
“Not much except that he has
a mother and sister. I spent a night with them
at their house in Paris. I’ve heard that
French family ties are strong, but they seemed to
look upon him as the weak would regard a great champion,
a knight, in their own phrase, without fear and without
reproach.”
“That speaks well for him.”
John’s mind traveled back to
that modest house across the Seine. It had done
so often during all the days and nights of fighting,
and he thought of Julie Lannes in her simple white
dress, Julie with the golden hair and the bluest of
blue eyes. She had not seemed at all foreign to
him. In her simplicity and openness she was like
one of the young girls of his own country. French
custom might have compelled a difference at other
times, but war was a great leveler of manners.
She and her mother must have suffered agonies of suspense,
when the guns were thundering almost within hearing
of Paris, suspense for Philip, suspense for their
country, and suspense in a less degree for themselves.
Maybe Lannes had gone back once in the Arrow
to show them that he was safe, and to tell them that,
for the time at least, the great German invasion had
been rolled back.
“A penny for your dream!” said Carstairs.
“Not for a penny, nor for a
pound, nor for anything else,” said John.
“This dream of mine had something brilliant and
beautiful and pure at the very core of it, and I’m
not selling.”
Carstairs looked curiously at him,
and a light smile played across his face. But
the smile was sympathetic.
“I’ll wager you that with
two guesses I can tell the nature of your dream,”
he said.
John shook his head, and he, too, smiled.
“As we say at home,” he
said, “you may guess right the very first time,
but I won’t tell you whether you’re right
or wrong.”
“I take only one guess.
That coruscating core of your dream was a girl.”
“I told you I wouldn’t
say whether you were right or wrong.”
“Is she blonde or dark?”
“I repeat that I’m answering no questions.”
“Does she live in one of your Northern or one
of your Southern States?”
John smiled.
“I suppose you haven’t
heard from her in a long time, as mail from across
the water isn’t coming with much regularity to
this battle field.”
John smiled again.
“And now I’ll conclude,”
said Carstairs, speaking very seriously. “If
it is a girl, and I know it is, I hope that she’ll
smile when she thinks of you, as you’ve been
smiling when you think of her. I hope, too, that
you’ll go through this war without getting killed,
although the chances are three or four to one against
it, and go back home and win her.”
John smiled once more and was silent,
but when Carstairs held out his hand he could not
keep from shaking it. Then Paris, the modest house
beyond the Seine, and the girl within it, floated away
like an illusion, driven from thought in an instant
by a giant shell that struck within a few hundred
yards of them, exploding with a terrible crash and
filling the air with deadly bits of flying shell.
There was such a whistling in his
ears that John thought at first he had been hit, but
when he shook himself a little he found he was unhurt,
and his heart resumed its normal beat. Other
shells coming out of space began to strike, but none
so near, and the Strangers went calmly on. On
their right was a Paris regiment made up mostly of
short, but thick-chested men, all very dark.
Its numbers were only one-third what they had been
a week before, and its colonel was Pierre Louis Bougainville,
late Apache, late of the Butte Montmartre. All
the colonels, majors and captains of this regiment
had been killed and he now led it, earning his promotion
by the divine right of genius. He, at least,
could look into his knapsack and see there the shadow
of a marshal’s baton, a shadow that might grow
more material.
John watched him and he wondered at
this transformation of a rat of Montmartre into a
man. And yet there had been many such transformations
in the French Revolution. What had happened once
could always happen again. Napoleon himself had
been the son of a poor little lawyer in a distant
and half-savage island, not even French in blood, but
an Italian and an alien.
Crash! Another shell burst near,
and told him to quit thinking of old times and attend
to the business before him. The past had nothing
more mighty than the present. The speed of the
Strangers was increased a little, and the French regiments
on either side kept pace with them. More shells
fell. They came, shrieking through the air like
hideous birds of remote ages. Some passed entirely
over the advancing troops, but one fell among the
French on John’s right, and the column opening
out, passed shudderingly around the spot where death
had struck.
Two or three of the Strangers were
blown away presently. It seemed to John’s
horrified eyes that one of them entirely vanished in
minute fragments. He knew now what annihilation
meant.
The heavy French field guns behind
them were firing over their heads, but there was still
nothing in front, merely the low green hills and not
even a flash of flame nor a puff of smoke. The
whistling death came out of space.
The French went on, a wide shallow
valley opened out before them, and they descended
by the easy slope into it. Here the German shells
and shrapnel ceased to fall among them, but, as the
heavy thunder continued, John knew the guns had merely
turned aside their fire for other points on the French
line. Carstairs by his side gave an immense sigh
of relief.
“I can never get used to the
horrible roaring and groaning of those shells,”
he said. “If I get killed I’d like
it to be done without the thing that does it shrieking
and gloating over me.”
They were well in the valley now,
and John noticed that along its right ran a dense
wood, fresh and green despite the lateness of the season.
But as he looked he heard the shrill snarling of many
trumpets, and, for a moment or two, his heart stood
still, as a vast body of German cavalry burst from
the screen of the wood and rushed down upon them.
It was not often in this war that
cavalry had a great chance, but here it had come.
The ambush was complete. The German signals, either
from the sky or the hills, had told when the French
were in the valley, and then the German guns had turned
aside their fire for the very good reason that they
did not wish to send shells among their own men.
John’s feeling was one of horrified
surprise. The German cavalry extending across
a mile of front seemed countless. Imagination
in that terrific moment magnified them into millions.
He saw the foaming mouths, the white teeth and the
flashing eyes of the horses, and then the tense faces
and eyes of their riders. Lances and sabers were
held aloft, and the earth thundered with the tread
of the mounted legions.
“Good God!” cried Wharton.
“Wheel, men, wheel!” shouted Captain Colton.
As they turned to face the rushing
tide of steel, the regiment of Bougainville whirled
on their flank and then Bougainville was almost at
his side. He saw fire leap from the little man’s
eye. He saw him shout commands, rapid incisive,
and correct and he saw clearly that if this were Napoleon’s
day that marshal’s baton in the knapsack would
indeed become a reality.
The Paris regiment, kneeling, was
the first to fire, and the next instant flame burst
from the rifles of the Strangers. It was not a
moment too soon. It seemed to many of the young
Americans and Englishmen that they had been ridden
down already, but sheet after sheet of bullets fired
by men, fighting for their lives, formed a wall of
death.
The Uhlans, the hussars and the cuirassiers
reeled back in the very moment of triumph. Horses
with their riders crashed to the ground, and others,
mad with terror, rushed wildly through the French ranks.
John, Carstairs and Wharton snatched
up rifles, all three, and began to fire with the men
as fast as they could. A vast turmoil, frightful
in its fury, followed. The German cavalry reeled
back, but it did not retreat. The shrill clamor
of many trumpets came again, and once more the horsemen
charged. The sheet of death blazed in their faces
again, and then the French met them with bayonet.
The Strangers had closed in to meet
the shock. John felt rather than saw Carstairs
and Wharton on either side of him, and the three of
them were firing cartridge after cartridge into the
light whitish smoke that hung between them and the
charging horsemen. He was devoutly thankful that
the Paris regiment was immediately on their right,
and that it was led by such a man as Bougainville.
General Vaugirard, he knew, was farther to their left,
and now he began to hear the rapid firers, pouring
a rain of death upon the cavalry.
“We win! we win!” cried
Carstairs. “If they couldn’t beat
us down in the first rush they can’t beat us
down at all!”
Carstairs was right. The French
had broken into no panic, and, when, infantry standing
firm, pour forth the incessant and deadly stream of
death, that modern arms make possible, no cavalry can
live before them. Yet the Germans charged again
and again into the hurricane of fire and steel.
The tumult of the battle face to face became terrific.
John could no longer hear the words
of his comrades. He saw dimly through the whitish
smoke in front, but he continued to fire. Once
he leaped aside to let a wounded and riderless horse
gallop past, and thrice he sprang over the bodies
of the dead.
The infantry were advancing now, driving
the cavalry before them, and the French were able
to bring their lighter field guns into action.
John heard the rapid crashes, and he saw the line
of cavalry drawing back. He, too, was shouting
with triumph, although nobody heard him. But all
the Strangers were filled with fiery zeal. Without
orders they rushed forward, driving the horsemen yet
further. John saw through the whitish mist a
fierce face and a powerful arm swinging aloft a saber.
He recognized von Boehlen and von
Boehlen recognized him. Shouting, the Prussian
urged his horse at him and struck him with the saber.
John, under impulse, dropped to his knees, and the
heavy blade whistled above him. But something
else struck him on the head and he fell senseless to
the earth.