internally; her wheel-bands made a slow revolution or two, churning
out a barrowload or so of soft mud, and bit through the loose upper
soil into the firmer ground; she jerk-jerked convulsively two or three
times, crawled out of the deep wheel-ruts she had dug, turned, nosing
a cautious way between the bigger shell craters, and then ploughed
off on a straight course towards the road across the sticky mud—mud
which the dispatch-rider had utterly failed to negotiate, and which,
being impassable to him, he had, out of the knowledge born of long
experience, concluded impassable to anything, light or heavy, that ran
on wheels. A wide ditch lay between the field and the road, but the
Hotstuff steered straight for it and crawled tranquilly across. The
dispatch-rider watched the progress across the mud with great interest,
whistled softly as he saw the Tank breast the ditch and reach out for
the far bank, with her fore-end and nearly half her length hanging
clear out over the water, gasped as the bows dipped and fell downward,
her fore-feet clutching at and resting on the further bank, her bows
and under-body—the descriptive terms are rather mixed, but then, so is
the name and make-up of a Land Ship—hitting the water with a mighty
splash. And then, in spite of himself, he broke from wide grins into
open laughter as the Hotstuff got a grip of the far bank, pushed with
her hind and pulled with her fore legs and dragged herself across.
If ever you have seen a fat caterpillar perched on a cabbage leaf’s
edge, straining and reaching out with its front feet to reach another
leaf, touching it, catching hold, and letting go astern, to pull over
the gap, you have a very fair idea of what the Hotstuff looked like
crossing that ditch.
She wheeled on to the road, and as the dispatch-rider, with mingled
awe, amazement, and admiration, watched her lumbering off down it he
saw an oil-blackened hand poked out through a gun port and waggled
triumphantly back at him. “Damme,” he said, “I believe she _can_
swim, or stand on her head, or eat peas off a knife. She looks
human-intelligent enough for anything.”
But the Hotstuff on that particular trip was to display little enough
intelligence, but instead an almost human perversity, adding nothing to
her battle honours but very much to her skipper’s and crew’s already
overcrowded vocabulary of strong language. The engineer showed signs
of uneasiness as she trundled down the road, cocking his head to one
side and listening with a look of strained attention, stooping his ear
to various parts of the engines, squinting along rods, touching his
finger-tips to different bearings.
“What’s wrong?” asked the Skipper. “Isn’t she behaving herself?”
The engineer shook his head. “There’s something not exactly right wi’
her,” he said slowly. “I doubt she’s going to give trouble.”
He was right. She gave trouble for one slow mile, more trouble for
another half-mile, and then most trouble of all at a spot where the
road had degenerated into a sea of thin, porridgy mud. We will say
nothing of the technical trouble, but it took four solid hours to get
the Hotstuff under way again. The road where she halted was a main
thoroughfare to the firing line, and the locality of her break-down,
fortunately for the traffic, was where a horse watering trough stood a
hundred yards back from the road, and there was ample room to deflect
other vehicles past the Hotstuff obstacle, which lay right in the
fair-way. All the four hours a procession of motor-cars and lorries,
G.S. waggons, and troops of horses streamed by to right and left of
the helpless Hotstuff. The cars squirted jets of liquid mud on her as
they splashed past, the lorries flung it in great gouts at her, the
waggons plastered her lower body liberally, and the horses going to and
from water raised objections to her appearance and spattered a quite
astonishing amount of mud over her as high as her roof.
When finally she got her engines running and pulled out of the
quagmire, it was too late to attempt to get her up into the action she
had been called to, so her bows were turned back to her anchorage and
she plodded off home. And by the luck of war, and his volunteering out
of turn for the trip, the same dispatch-rider brought another message
to her early next morning in her berth behind the line.
The crew’s night had been spent on internal affairs, and, since there
had been no time to attempt to remove any of the accumulation of mud
that covered every visible inch of her, she looked like a gigantic wet
clay antheap.
The dispatch-rider stared at her.
“Looks as if she wanted her face washed,” he remarked. “What _has_ she
been up to? Thought you said she was going swimming. She don’t look
much as if she’d had a bath lately.”
His former glib informant slowly straightened a weary back, checked
a tart reply, and instead spoke with an excellent simulation of
cheeriness.
“Didn’t you come an’ watch us yesterday, then?” he said. “Well, you
missed a treat—brand-new dodge our Old Man has invented hisself. When
we got ’er in the canal, we closed all ports, elevated our periscope
an’ new telescopic air-toob, submerged, and sank to the bottom. And she
walked four measured miles under water along the bottom o’ the canal.
That”—and he waved his hand towards the mud-hidden Hotstuff—“is where
she got all the mud from.”
And to this day that dispatch-rider doesn’t know whether he told a
gorgeous truth or a still more gorgeous lie.
V
IN THE MIST
WHEN the Lieutenant turned out of his dug-out in the very small hours,
he found with satisfaction that a thin mist was hanging over the ground.
“Can’t see much,” he said half an hour later, peering out from the
front trench. “But so much the better. Means they won’t be so likely to
see us. So long, old man. Come along, Studd.”
The other officer watched the two crawl out and vanish into the misty
darkness. At intervals a flare light leaped upward from one side or
the other, but it revealed nothing of the ground, showed only a dim
radiance in the mist and vanished. Rifles crackled spasmodically up and
down the unseen line, and very occasionally a gun boomed a smothered
report and a shell _swooshed_ over. But, on the whole, the night was
quiet, or might be called so by comparison with other nights, and the
quietness lent colour to the belief that the Hun was quietly evacuating
his badly battered front line. It was to discover what truth was in the
report that the Lieutenant had crawled out with one man to get as near
as possible to the enemy trench—or, still better, into or over it.
Fifty yards out the two ran into one of their own listening posts,
and the Lieutenant halted a moment and held a whispered talk with the
N.C.O. there. It was all quiet in front, he was told, no sound of
movement and only a rifle shot or a light thrown at long intervals.
“Might mean anything, or nothing,” thought the Lieutenant. “Either a
trench full of Boche taking a chance to sleep, or a trench empty except
for a ‘caretaker’ to shoot or chuck up an odd light at intervals.”
He whispered as much to his companion and both moved carefully on.
The ground was riddled with shell-holes and was soaking wet, and very
soon the two were saturated and caked with sticky mud. Skirting the
holes and twisting about between them was confusing to any sense of
direction, but the two had been well picked for this special work and
held fairly straight on their way. No light had shown for a good many
minutes, and the Lieutenant fancied that the mist was thickening.
He halted and waited a minute, straining his eyes into the mist and
his ears to catch any sound. There was nothing apparently to see or
hear, and he rose to his knees and moved carefully forward again. As
he did so a flare leaped upward with a long hiss and a burst of light
glowed out. It faintly illumined the ground and the black shadows of
shell-holes about them, and—the Lieutenant with a jump at his heart
stilled and stiffened—not six feet away and straight in front, the
figure of a man in a long grey coat, his head craned forward and
resting on his arms crossed in front of him and twisted in an attitude
of listening. Studd, crawling at the Lieutenant’s heels, saw at the
same moment, as was told by his hand gripped and pressing a warning on
the Lieutenant’s leg. The light died out, and with infinite caution the
Lieutenant slid back level with Studd and, motioning him to follow,
lay flat and hitched himself a foot at a time towards the right to
circle round the recumbent German. The man had not been facing full
on to them, but lay stretched and looking toward their left, and by a
careful circling right the Lieutenant calculated he would clear and
creep behind him. A big shell-crater lay in their path, and after a
moment’s hesitation the Lieutenant slid very quietly down into it. Some
morsels of loose earth crumbled under him, rolled down and fell with
tiny splashings into the pool at the bottom. To the Lieutenant the
noise was most disconcertingly loud and alarming, and cursing himself
for a fool not to have thought of the water and the certainty of his
loosening earth to fall into it, he crouched motionless, listening for
any sound that would tell of the listening German’s alarm.
Another light rose, filling the mist with soft white radiance and
outlining the edge of the crater above him. It outlined also the dark
shape of a figure halted apparently in the very act of crawling down
into the crater from the opposite side. The Lieutenant’s first flashing
thought was that the German watcher had heard him and was moving to
investigate, his second and quick-following was of another German
holding still until the light fell. But a third idea came so instantly
on the other two that, before the soaring flare dropped, he had time
to move sharply, bringing the man’s outline more clearly against the
light. That look and the shape, beside but clear of the body, of a bent
leg, crooked knee upward, confirmed his last suspicion. Studd slid over
soundless as a diving otter and down beside him, and the Lieutenant
whispered, “See those two on the edge?”
“Both dead, sir,” said Studd, and the Lieutenant nodded and heaved a
little sigh of relief. “And I think that first was a dead ‘un too.”
“Yes,” whispered the Lieutenant. “Looked natural and listening hard.
Remember now, though, he was bareheaded. Dead all right. Come on.”
They crept out past the two dead men, and, abating no fraction of their
caution, moved noiselessly forward again. They passed many more dead in
the next score of yards, dead twisted and contorted to every possible
and impossible attitude of unmistakable death and uncannily life-like
postures, and came at last to scattered fragments and loose hanging
strands of barbed-wire entanglements. Here, according to previous
arrangements, Studd—ex-poacher of civilian days and expert scout of
the battalion—moved ahead and led the way. Broken strands of wire
he lifted with gingerly delicate touch and laid aside. Fixed ones he
raised, rolled silently under and held up for the Lieutenant to pass.
Taut ones he grasped in one hand, slid the jaws of his wire-nippers
over and cut silently between his left-hand fingers, so that the
fingers still gripped the severed ends, released the ends carefully,
one hand to each, and squirmed through the gap.
There was very little uncut wire, but the stealthy movements took time,
and half an hour had passed from first wire to last and to the moment
when the Lieutenant, in imitation of the figure before him, flattened
his body close to the muddy ground and lay still and listening. For
five long minutes they lay, and then Studd twisted his head and
shoulders back. “Nobody,” he whispered. “Just wait here a minute, sir.”
He slipped back past the Lieutenant and almost immediately returned to
his side. “I’ve cut the loose wires away,” he said. “Mark this spot
and try’n hit it if we have to bolt quick. See—look for this,” and he
lifted a bayoneted rifle lying beside them, and stabbed the bayonet
down into the ground with the rifle butt standing up above the edge of
the broken parapet.
“Cross the trench,” whispered the Lieutenant, “and along behind it.
Safer there. Any sentry looking out forward?”
Studd vanished over the parapet and the Lieutenant squirmed after
him. The trench was wide and broken-walled back and front, and both
clambered up the other side and began to move along the far edge. In
some places the trench narrowed and deepened, in others it widened
and shallowed in tumbled shell-craters, in others again was almost
obliterated in heaped and broken earth. The mist had closed down and
thickened to a white-grey blanket, and the two moved more freely,
standing on their feet and walking stooped and ready to drop at a
sound. They went for a considerable distance without seeing a single
German.
Studd halted suddenly on the edge of a trench which ran into the one
they were following.
“Communication trench,” said the Lieutenant softly. “Doesn’t seem to be
a soul in their front line.”
“No, sir,” said Studd, but there was a puzzled note in his voice.
“Is this their front line we’ve been moving along?” said the Lieutenant
with sudden suspicion. “Those lights look further off than they ought.”
The dim lights certainly seemed to be far out on their left and a
little behind them. A couple of rifles cracked faintly, and they heard
a bullet sigh and whimper overhead. Closer and with sharper reports
half a dozen rifles _rap-rapped_ in answer—but the reports were still
well out to their left and behind them.
“Those are German rifles behind us. We’ve left the front line,” said
the Lieutenant with sudden conviction. “Struck slanting back. Been
following a communication trench. _Damn!_”
Studd without answering dropped suddenly to earth and without
hesitation the Lieutenant dropped beside him and flattened down. A
long silence, and the question trembling on his lips was broken by a
hasty movement from Studd. “Quick, sir—back,” he said, and hurriedly
wriggled back and into a shallow hole, the Lieutenant close after him.
There was no need of the question now. Plainly both could hear the
squelch of feet, the rustle of clothes, the squeak and click of leather
and equipment. Slowly, one by one, a line of men filed past their
hiding-place, looming grey and shadowy through the mist, stumbling and
slipping so close by that to the Lieutenant it seemed that only one
downward glance from one passing figure was needed to discover them.
Tumultuous thoughts raced. What should he do if they were discovered?
Pass one quick word to Studd to lie still, and jump and run, trusting
to draw pursuit after himself and give Studd a chance to escape and
report? Or call Studd to run with him, and both chance a bolt back
the way they came? The thick mist might help them, but the alarm
would spread quickly to the front trench.... Or should he snatch his
revolver—he wished he hadn’t put it back in his holster—blaze off
all his rounds, yell and make a row, rousing the German trench to fire
and disclose the strength holding it? Could he risk movement enough to
get his revolver clear? And all the time he was counting the figures
that stumbled past—five ... six ... seven ... eight.... Thirty-four he
counted and then, just as he was going to move, another lagging two.
After that and a long pause he held hurried consultation with Studd.
“They’re moving up the way we came down,” he said. “We’re right off
the front line. Must get back. Daren’t keep too close to this trench
though. D’you think we can strike across and find the front line about
where we crossed?”
“Think so, sir,” answered Studd. “Must work a bit left-handed.”
“Come on then. Keep close together,” and they moved off.
In three minutes the Lieutenant stopped with a smothered curse at the
jar of wire caught against his shins. “’Ware wire,” he said, and both
stooped and felt at it. “Nippers,” he said. “We must cut through.” He
pulled his own nippers out and they started to cut a path. “_Tang!_”
his nippers swinging free of a cut wire struck against another, and
on the sound came a sharp word out of the mist ahead of them and
apparently at their very feet a guttural question in unmistakable
German. Horrified, the Lieutenant stood stiff frozen for a moment,
turned sharp and fumbled a way back, his heart thumping and his nerves
tingling in anticipation of another challenge or a sudden shot. But
there was no further sound, and presently he and Studd were clear of
the wire and hurrying as silently as they could away from the danger.
They stopped presently, and the Lieutenant crouched and peered about
him. “Now where are we?” he said, and then, as he caught the sound of
suppressed chuckling from Studd crouched beside him, “What’s the joke?
I don’t see anything specially funny about this job.”
“I was thinkin’ of that Germ back there, sir,” said Studd, and giggled
again. “About another two steps an’ we’d have fell fair on top of ’im.
Bit of a surprise like for ’im, sir.”
The Lieutenant grinned a little himself. “Yes,” he said, “but no more
surprise than I got when he sang out. Now what d’you think is our
direction?”
Studd looked round him, and pointed promptly. The Lieutenant disagreed
and thought the course lay nearly at right angles to Studd’s selection.
He had his compass with him and examined it carefully. “This bit of
their front line ran roughly north and south,” he said. “If we move
west it must fetch us back on it. We must have twisted a bit coming out
of that wire—but there’s west,” and he pointed again.
“I can’t figure it by compass, sir,” said Studd, “but here’s the way I
reckon we came.” He scratched lines on the ground between them with the
point of his wire nippers. “Here’s our line, and here’s theirs—running
this way.”
“Yes, north,” said the Lieutenant.
“But then it bends in towards ours—like this—an’ ours bends back.”
“Jove, so it does,” admitted the Lieutenant, thinking back to the
trench map he had studied so carefully before leaving. “And we moved
north behind their trench, so might be round the corner; and a line
west would just carry us along behind their front line.”
Studd was still busy with his scratchings. “Here’s where we came along
and turned off the communication trench. That would bring them lights
where we saw them—about here. Then we met them Germs and struck off
this way, an’ ran into that wire, an’ then back—here. So I figure we
got to go that way,” and he pointed again.
“That’s about it,” agreed the Lieutenant. “But as that’s toward the
wire and our friend who sang out, we’ll hold left a bit to try and
dodge him.”
He stood and looked about him. The mist was wreathing and eddying
slowly about them, shutting out everything except a tiny patch of wet
ground about their feet. There was a distinct whiteness now about the
mist, and a faint glow in the whiteness that told of daylight coming,
and the Lieutenant moved hurriedly. “If it comes day and the mist
lifts we’re done in,” he said, and moved in the chosen direction. They
reached wire again, but watching for it this time avoided striking into
it and turned, skirting it towards their left. But the wire bent back
and was forcing them left again, or circling back, and the Lieutenant
halted in despair. “We’ll have to cut through again and chance it,” he
said. “We can’t risk hanging about any longer.”
“I’ll just search along a few yards, sir, and see if there’s an
opening,” said Studd.
“Both go,” said the Lieutenant. “Better keep together.”
Within a dozen yards both stopped abruptly and again sank to the
ground, the Lieutenant cursing angrily under his breath. Both had
caught the sound of voices, and from their lower position could see
against the light a line of standing men, apparently right across
their path. A spatter of rifle-fire sounded from somewhere out in the
mist, and a few bullets whispered high overhead. Then came the distant
_thud_, _thud_, _thud_ of half a dozen guns firing. One shell wailed
distantly over, another passed closer with a savage rush, a third burst
twenty yards away with a glaring flash that penetrated even the thick
fog. The two had a quick glimpse of a line of Germans in long coats
ducking their “coal-scuttle” helmets and throwing themselves to ground.
They were not more than thirty feet away, and there were at least a
score of them. When their eyes recovered from the flash of the shell,
the two could see not more than half a dozen figures standing, could
hear talking and laughing remarks, and presently heard scuffling sounds
and saw figure after figure emerge from the ground.
“Trench there,” whispered Studd, leaning in to the Lieutenant’s ear.
“They jumped down.”
“Yes,” breathed the Lieutenant. He was fingering cautiously at the
wire beside him. It was staked out, and as far as he could discover
there was something like a two-foot clearance between the ground and
the bottom strands. It was a chance, and the position was growing so
desperate that any chance was worth taking. He touched Studd’s elbow
and began to wriggle under the wires. Six feet in they found another
line stretched too low to crawl under and could see and feel that
the patch of low wire extended some feet. “More coming,” whispered
Studd, and the Lieutenant heard again that sound of squelching steps
and moving men. They could still see the grey shadowy figures of the
first lot standing in the same place, and now out of the mist emerged
another shadowy group moving down the line and past it. There was a
good deal of low-toned calling and talking between the two lots, and
the Lieutenant, seizing the chance to work under cover of the noise,
began rapidly to nip his way through the wire. It was only because
of their low position they could see the Germans against the lighter
mist, and he was confident, or at least hoped, that from the reversed
position it was unlikely they would be seen. The second party passed
out of sight, and now the two could see a stir amongst the first lot,
saw them hoist and heave bags and parcels to their shoulders and backs,
and begin to move slowly in the opposite direction to that taken by the
party passing them.
“Ration party or ammunition carriers,” said Studd softly.
“And moving to the front line,” said the Lieutenant quickly. In an
instant he had a plan made. “We must follow them. They’ll guide us to
the line. We keep close as we can ... not lose touch and not be seen.
Quick, get through there.” He started to nip rapidly through the
wires. The party had moved and the outline of the last man was blurring
and fading into the mist. The Lieutenant rose and began to stride over
the low wires. A last barrier rose waist high. With an exclamation of
anger he fell to work with the nippers again, Studd assisting him. The
men had vanished. The Lieutenant thrust through the wires. His coat
caught and he wrenched it free, pushed again and caught again. This
time the stout fabric of the trench coat held. There was no second to
waste. The Lieutenant flung loose the waist-belt, tore himself out of
the sleeves and broke clear, leaving the coat hung in the wires. “Freer
for running if we have to bolt at the end,” he said, and hurried after
the vanished line, with Studd at his heels. They caught up with it
quickly—almost too quickly, because the Lieutenant nearly overran one
laggard who had halted and was stooped or kneeling doing something to
his bundle on the ground. The Lieutenant just in time saw him rise and
swing the bundle to his shoulder and hurry after the others. Behind
him came the two, close enough to keep his dim outline in sight,
stooping low and ready to drop flat if need be, moving as silently as
possible, checking and waiting crouched down if they found themselves
coming too close on their leader. So they kept him in sight until he
caught the others up, followed them again so long that a horrible doubt
began to fill the Lieutenant’s mind, a fear that they were being led
back instead of forward. He would have looked at his compass, but at
that moment the dim grey figures before him vanished abruptly one by
one.