I had thought this morning that at last I was to see a pitched battle,
for the Greek army was well intrenched in the hills north of Pharsala
and made some show of a stand there. At noon I stood on the crest of
the same hills watching the usual retreat. A few miles away, its gray
houses blotched against the mountains which guard southern Thessaly,
was the town, and in the valley, drawing in toward it, the Greeks, with
the enemy on their rear and flanks enclosing them in a narrowing
semicircle of fire. Before me stretched the road, a white band across
the undulating green of the plain. In that road, a mile away, I saw
the rear-guard as it retired swiftly but steadily, facing again and
again to deliver its volleys into the lines of the advancing foe. Once
before I had seen that same small company fighting bravely as they were
now, checking the advance of a whole division. I knew them for the
Foreign Legion. Little black patches were left in the road as they
fell back, and it made me sick at heart to think of these men throwing
away their lives in so futile a cause. That little black patch had
been perhaps a student filled with fervor for Pan-Hellenism, a college
boy out for an adventurous holiday, or perhaps a soldier of fortune who
held his life cheaply and was ready to give it for the brief joy of a
battle. Now I stood by one of those little black patches, by the first
still outpost which marked the fight down the road.
Had the horse which I had bought from a dealer in Ellasona been four or
five years younger, I might never have noticed my friend as he lay
there by the ruined shrine. In the ride out from Larissa, on the day
before, I had found the animal a very unsteady framework on which to
load two hundred pounds. At the first gallop I put him to he went down
on his knees and rolled over on me, so that thereafter I had to content
myself with going more cautiously, keeping as close as I could to the
cloud of dust raised by the general staff. So it happened that I was
ambling along at a gait regulated only by my beast's vagrant will, when
Asaf's exclamation checked me.
I stood now, gazing stupidly at the figure beneath me. He lay so still
that I thought him dead. Then his fingers tightened on the water-flask
and his arm trembled as he tried to draw it to him.
This was no time to stand idly by, wondering how and why he had come to
this useless sacrifice. It was enough that he was here and living. I
knelt at his side, and though my surgery was rough, it stopped the flow
in which his life was draining away; his parched lips drank the
proffered water, and when his head was on my knees he turned his face
from the light and clasped his hands almost with contentment. He
seemed to know that a friend was with him. The friend who had bound
his wound and given him drink would find him a better bed than these
rough stones and a kinder shelter than this bit of shadow, swept by the
dust of endless pack-trains.
In such a place a friend could avail little. We carried him back from
the turmoil of the road into the trampled wheat and there made him a
rude tent of my blanket and a pillow of my saddle. Then I looked about
me for help. The pack-trains clattered along the road and through them
wounded men were threading their way, painfully hobbling to the
field-hospital, miles away. Of ambulances there were none. I knew
that when night came they would stagger back from the fighting front
with their loads of wounded, and that so few were they in numbers the
chance of finding a place in them was of the smallest. The Turk does
not trouble much with the wounded. When a man is hit and he can hobble
miles to the hospital, then Allah be praised! If not, he lies where he
falls till night comes and his comrades find him and tie him like a bag
of grain on a pony's back and send him on a journey that would be death
to any Christian. If a surgeon finds him he is lucky. Remembering
this, I looked back over the road by which I had come, measuring the
miles we must cross before we reached help, and then at the Professor
lying at my feet hardly breathing. I knew that we stayed where we
were. Then I looked to the front. There was help there. There were
surgeons working in that wide-spread wreath of smoke. I pointed over
the plain and called to Asaf to hurry and bring me a surgeon. He
demurred, for he was always chary about entering the zone of fire. I
promised him a hundred pounds, a farm, a horse, a flock of sheep, if
only he would go and bring me a surgeon. Malcolm Bey was mad, he said;
no surgeon would come at such a time, miles for a single wounded man.
I knew that he was right, but I could not sit idly watching my friend's
life ebb away. I doubled the prize, and with a shrug of the shoulders
Asaf mounted and galloped off.
I sat by the wounded man and waited. It was for hours. To me it
seemed days. Thousands passed by--the men of the trains, stragglers,
wounded, troops of the reserve. There were among them hands willing
enough to help, were there any help to be given, but between them and
me there was the inseparable gulf of language. One officer, a tall
Albanian, rode over, and in French asked if he could be of any
assistance; the man was a Greek; it made no difference, if he was a
friend of Malcolm Bey; he could spare a pony and men to take him back
to Larissa. I pleaded for a surgeon and an ambulance, pointing over
the plain as though there they could be had for the asking. He bowed
gravely--my request was a simple one; he would send them at once. And
he rode forward toward the smoke and the clamor.
I sat watching. My hand held the Professor's. My eyes were turned
down the road to catch the first sign of Asaf and help.
"Davy!"
He was looking up at me from beneath half-raised lids. How long he had
been watching me I did not know. His voice was very low, but in it
there was no note of surprise. To him it was quite right that I should
be there. That was enough. His sickened mind could not trouble itself
with wherefores.
"I am here, Professor," I said. The old nickname of the valley sounded
strangely, but I could not call him Mr. Blight when he lay this way,
looking up at me with eyes that seemed to smile with contentment
despite his pain.
"You will be all right, Professor, but you must lie here quietly till
the surgeon comes."
"I will be all right," he repeated slowly, and closed his eyes.
I looked over the plain. Would Asaf never return? The dusk was
gathering and the wide-spread wreath of smoke mingled with it and was
lost. I could see the flash of the Greek guns as they made their last
stand to hold back the enemy till night came with its chance of escape.
Even the near-by road had its moments of quiet and the moving figures
grew blurred. Every clatter of hoofs might be Asaf coming, every
rumble of wheels the ambulance. But Asaf did not come.
"Davy!"
I looked down. He was indistinct in the shadow of the rough tent. He
had brought his other hand to cover mine.
"It was a good fight, wasn't it, Davy?"
"It was a grand fight," said I.
"And you'll tell them at home, Davy?"
"Yes, you and I will tell them together," I said with forced
cheerfulness. "But you must be quiet till the surgeon comes."
It was growing dark. Over the plain the bark of heavy guns and the
crackle of rifles had stopped. Camp-fires were lighting, a circle of
them hemming in the town. Even the near-by road had grown quite quiet,
like any country road where the stillness is broken by the rare clatter
of hoofs or the curses of some stumbling pedestrian.
His hands were pulling at mine and I leaned down over him in the
darkness. He could only whisper those last few words.
One hand slipped from mine; from the other life seemed to have gone, it
was so still and listless.
I leaned so close over the dark form that my face touched his. I knew
that he was going from me, and I wanted to hold him back. It was so
terrible for him to die this way, in this lonely field with no wise
hand to help him. My useless hands would have shaken him to arouse his
life again, but I stayed them.
I knew that it was futile to speak, that my voice was falling on dulled
ears, but what else could I do to stir him to fight for life?
"I'll tell them--we will tell them together," I cried. "We will go
home to Penelope, you and I, and they shall know how you fought. And
they will be proud of you, Professor; I know they will. And how glad
they will be to see you--how glad Penelope will be! Can't you hear me?"
I looked up, straining my ears for the sound of hoofs, but the road was
as quiet as any country lane before dawn. I leaned over the dark form
and listened, and I knew that his march was ended.