A Terrible Adventure at Dawn
The Divisional Headquarters had been fixed at a spot where several roads
branched off like the sticks of a fan, and the one Dennis followed was a
typical French chaussee, paved down the centre and bordered on either
side by tall trees.
It had been a good deal cut up by the passage of distribution columns,
but its surface was fairly free from shell holes, and he covered the
distance without much difficulty, a slight drizzle blowing in his face
as he hung low over the handle-bars with his eyes fixed on the acetylene
beam in front of him.
A man riding in the opposite direction whizzed past with a shout of,
"Cheer-oh!" and he was not challenged until he drew near the brigade.
"Thought there was something wrong with the wire," said the C.O. "I've
been trying to get through for the last half-hour."
"A wiring party went out just before I left, sir, to look for the
damage," said Dennis.
"Very well, take this back to the general--that will tell him all he
wants to know," and Dennis retraced his way, rather enjoying the ride,
although it had not proved particularly exciting so far.
But the excitement was to come. Overhead the scream and whistle of our
shells never ceased, but he was growing used to the thunder of the
bombardment, until there was an explosion not far ahead in the centre of
the road, and he slowed down with a glance over his shoulder.
"That's the enemy replying," he murmured, as another shell fell in the
dark fields on the left, and another and another, so quickly that he
lost count of them.
"Bit of a danger zone, this," he thought. "The sooner I'm through it the
better," but as his thumb sought a lever there was a blinding flash very
close to him, and following on the heels of the explosion he felt his
machine quiver and the front tyre burst with a report like a rifle shot.
"By Jingo! I'm done," he cried, jumping off as his head-lamp went out.
"That's shrapnel. Now what's to be done? The tyre's in ribbons!"
As he looked ahead his heart gave a bound as he saw a motor-car pull up
some forty yards away and the driver spring out on to the road. Dennis
left the damaged cycle where it was and ran forward.
"I say, I'm in no end of a hat, chauffeur. Can you give me a hand?" he
cried.
The man stared at him with a white face, apparently dazed, and replied
in a shaky voice: "Can you give _me_ a hand, sir? Look at this!" and
unshipping one of his lamps he turned the light on to the car.
Sitting rigidly erect was the body of a staff officer, decapitated.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Dennis, bending over with eyes of horror as
he recognised the officer who less than half an hour before had shown
him his own route at Divisional Headquarters. "It's Captain Thompson!"
"It was Captain Thompson, and one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever
driven," said the man. "I don't know what to do. He told me he was
taking a message to the French general on the other side of Hardecourt,
and that it was of the very greatest importance. We were doing sixty
miles an hour, even on this road, when that shell copped us."
There were sobs in the man's voice as he pointed to the leather
dispatch-case still clutched tightly in the dead hand.
"Look here," said Dennis. "My machine's smashed up. How long would it
take you to reach the French lines?"
"A quarter of an hour--twenty minutes at the outside. But what's the
good of that, sir? I can't speak a word of their blooming language."
"I can," said Dennis, gently disengaging the wallet. "I'll carry the
dispatch, and I'll drive if you like, if your nerve's gone."
"My nerve's all right, sir. Haven't any left after eighteen months of
this job," and as Dennis climbed into the front seat, the chauffeur
turned the handle over and the engine began to whir.
It was good to turn one's back on that hideous thing, and when they
heard the headless trunk topple over on to the floor of the car behind
them, both shivered, and the chauffeur's knuckles stood out white as he
gripped the steering-wheel.
"I've seen two officers, one a brigadier-general, treated the same way,
and their shover huddled forward against the screen dead as a door
nail," said the man. "That was up near St. Julien, when Princess Pat's
got wiped out; but it sort of hits you when you know the man, and this
was his own car too. You'd better have your papers ready now, sir;
they'll stop us at yonder white house."
The examining post at the little cabaret detained them, but did not hold
them up more than a moment or so.
"A dispatch for Monsieur le General," said Dennis to the sergeant in
charge, who recoiled as he saw the tragedy that had taken place.
"_Decapite, mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed. "Pass, mon lieutenant," and they
proceeded, leaving a red pool on the road where the car had halted.
While Dennis was inside the farmhouse a crowd of commiserating officers
surrounded the car, and they would have rid it of its grim burden and
interred poor Thompson among the little harvest of rude crosses that
marked where their own dead were laid, but when one of them, who spoke
English, suggested so doing, the chauffeur said "No."
"Beg your pardon, sir, but he'll be better buried in our own lines,
where they'll give him the Last Post and all that." He was protesting
when Dennis came out again quickly.
"It's a very good thing we took the bull by the horns," he said. "That
message was tremendously important, and the general has been good enough
to say all kinds of nice things about our bringing it along. We've got
to go back top speed to Divisional Headquarters," and he stepped in.
All the officers saluted the dead man as the motor started on its return
journey, and already the darkness was giving place before a ghostly grey
feeling in the east, which was not light as yet, but heralded the near
approach of dawn.
The chauffeur turned up his coat collar, for it had grown very cold, and
he could not get rid of the oppression of that dread something which
they were carrying--that something which a short hour before had been so
full of life and vigour and kindly thought for all with whom it had come
in contact.
"I shall put in for a rest after this," said the man as they repassed
the post at the cabaret, and he opened out the engines. "They tell me
there's going to be a week of this firing, and upon my sam, I don't
think I can stand it now!"
"I suppose one gets used to the guns," said Dennis. "But what an
infernal row they make!"
"Been out here long, sir?" said the chauffeur, whose quick eye had
detected the newness of his companion's uniform, notwithstanding the
chalk stains which were the result of his adventure earlier in the
evening.
"As a matter of fact, I haven't been up at the front three days yet,
but, of course, I've done a lot of training at Romford with the
Artists'," replied Dennis.
"Lord! you don't know you're born yet, in a manner of speaking, sir,"
said the driver with a little toss of his head. "You've got a lot to go
through before you've seen as much as I have. Blow 'em! Those Boches are
still at it," and he craned his head forward over his wheel. "They've
got the range of this blooming road to a T. I don't funk risks, but
it's madness to shove ahead through that!" And he slowed the car down as
a rain of shells crashed among the trees in front of them, bringing half
a dozen tall poplars down on to the road itself, while the whole
_terrain_ to their left hand was alive with bursts of high explosives.
"Well, what's to be done? I must reach the general at once. Isn't there
another way round?"
"There's only this turning on the right, sir," replied the man. "It
seems to be pretty clear, and it will run us close behind our own line.
I've been there before, and we can double back past General Dashwood's
headquarters."
"Right-o!" assented Dennis eagerly, and the car swung into a narrow
track between two swelling rises that had not long before been peaceful
farm land under cultivation.
It was little more than a cart track, and they plunged and swayed like a
boat on a choppy sea, the wheels now mounting the bank at a dangerous
angle in the uncertain light of the dawn.
"It's better going a bit farther ahead," said the chauffeur. "You sit
tight, and I'll bring you through somehow."
The words had scarcely left his lips when everything seemed to be
suddenly swallowed up in a soul-terrifying roar. A vivid orange flame
rose skyward, and as Dennis soared upward through the air and fell with
a plump into a field of beetroot, the world turned black and he lost
consciousness.
How long he lay he did not know, but when he opened his eyes it was
almost light, and the face of his wristlet watch had been smashed to
atoms.
For a few seconds he remained quite still, not daring to move from fear
of what movement might tell him, but at last, sitting up, he felt
himself all over and breathed a sigh of deep thankfulness to find that
he had no bones broken.
He remembered that they had been running into an avenue where the trees
met overhead and formed a species of tunnel, and the avenue was still
there before him, one of the poplars headless like poor Captain
Thompson, and showing a great white scar where the shell had caught it.
And then he rose to his feet, to find himself half a dozen yards from
the narrow road, his heart standing still as he saw the mangled chassis
of the motor, entirely stripped of its body works, reared up on one end
at the edge of the crater.
The whole road seemed to have been scooped out to the depth of several
feet, and how he had escaped destruction was little short of miraculous.
The skirt of his own tunic was rent to rags and ribbons, his Sam Browne
belt, map-case, and glasses were gone, and the French general's message
with them, and a great sob shook the lad as he walked slowly to the
ruined car.
The first thing he saw was a human leg swathed to the knee in a stained
puttee, and a stride farther on was the rest of his companion, so
shockingly mutilated that it was only with an effort he could bring
himself to examine it.
"Poor chap, poor chap!" he muttered. "An end like this after eighteen
months at the wheel!"
There was no trace of the captain's body; it was probably buried deep
in the shell hole, or else plastered far and wide over the hillside with
the debris of the motor.
He stooped and opened the chauffeur's coat, which bulged suggestively,
and drew out a little case containing his identification papers and
driver's licence, perhaps also letters from home.
Pulling himself together, he placed the case in one of his own breast
pockets which had escaped injury, with a soldier's "small book" he had
picked up from one of the dead Saxons in their own trench as a memento
to send home to his mother, and then he looked about him, without seeing
sign or trace of living thing or human habitation.
There was a green wheatfield on his right hand, from which the mist was
curling away, and in the glory of the dawn overhead the larks were
trilling. A patch of scarlet poppies was almost startling in its
vividness, and beyond the poppies a long ribbon of yellow mustard was
backed by a thick wood.
"Where on earth am I?" was the thought that passed through his brain.
"This poor chap said the road would bring us near to our firing line,
and I may be able to borrow another motor-bike there. I must return to
the French headquarters and get that message duplicated, or I'm not
worth my salt."
He straightened one of his leggings which had been twisted round, and,
skirting the shell hole, started out on his voyage of discovery, feeling
rather dizzy at first, but surprised to find that his cap was still upon
his head, for he had not yet been served out with a trench helmet.
The narrow way wound along the edge of the wood through a hollow, the
banks of which were clothed with purple scabious, and he had gone some
distance before he thought of taking his bearings by the sun, which
showed him that he was heading due south.
"I'm on the right road, anyhow," he muttered, and then he suddenly
stopped and crouched low.
In the mist wreath that still filled the hollow he had caught sight of a
figure in uniform, which recalled the field grey of the Saxon. The man
was standing motionless beside a clump of trees that tufted the skyline,
and, uncertain whether he could gain the shelter of the wood behind him
unseen, Dennis was looking backwards over his shoulder when the decision
was taken very unexpectedly out of his hands by the appearance of
another man, who suddenly covered him with a rifle from the bank top not
a yard away, and challenged him in German.
"_Wer da!_" said the man, and although he recognised that his
interrogator was wearing a French uniform, Dennis unthinkingly replied
to the question in German also.
"I am an English officer," he said. "Perhaps you will be good enough to
direct me to our nearest brigade."
The man rose slowly from the wet wheat which had concealed his coming,
and, still covering Dennis with his rifle, slid down the bank until he
was within arm's length, a thick-set Alsatian corporal, powerful as a
bull.
"So," he said with a short laugh, as he seized Dennis by the collar.
"You are an English officer, are you? We shall see. We had one of your
sort through our lines yesterday--a staff captain, who gave us orders
from the British general which turned out to be false. Come along, my
pig. We will see what our captain has to say to you. English officers do
not speak German with a Prussian accent. You are a Boche, I tell you;
and you will breakfast off ball cartridge unless I am very wrong!"