"HELL UPSIDE DOWN!"
There was strangely little exultation. Each man felt the tussle was yet
to come and nerved himself for it. The big square lay out silent under
the moon, splashed with the shadows of the pollarded poplars, the
benches upturned, a tree or two uprooted, and beyond all the black gash
knocked in the row of white houses. It had a strange look, sinister,
threatening, all the more so because it had always been so peaceful and
well-ordered--like a man's tranquil life till the day Fate's
mortal-shell bursts and there is no more peace for ever and ever.
"Now mind, you fellows," said Jack Jaikes, "fire low and steady. They
are ten times our numbers, but we will fight in shelter and we have
these beauties!"
He patted the three mitrailleuses in turn. He had taken charge of the
middle one himself, and set his friend Allerdyce and young Brown to
command those on either side. We stood at attention, each man knowing
that the time could not be long.
Far down towards the Chateau we heard the rush and jar of an attack. A
similar noise came from farther up the wall towards the fitting shops.
"Jehoshaphat, they are flanking us!" exclaimed Jack Jaikes. And before
anyone could interfere--supposing that any had so dared--Jack Jaikes had
stepped outside the wall into the cumbered Cours of Aramon. I took the
liberty of following. Away to the right we could see nothing, except the
clouds of smoke drifting up or being tossed by the rough sudden swoop of
the blast, stooping down out of the moonlit heavens and the night of
stars.
Jack Jaikes must have been conscious of my presence, but he did not
order me back. He was talking to himself and he wanted a listener. As
Bacon says, he wanted a friend with whom to toss his ideas as a haymaker
tosses hay.
"Down there by the Chateau doesn't matter," he said, looking that way
long and earnestly, "Dennis Deventer is there--with MacIntyre and the
whole Clydebank gang--little to fear there. Listen, young fellow, how
the machine guns are barking--_U-r-r-r-rh!_ I wish ours were talking
too, but that mortar shot rather scared them--though it ought not--easy
thing to rush a four-inch gun firing shell at that distance and with
their numbers. One hole in the line, and then you are upon her.
But--see, young un, there they go butting in at the corner of the wall
yonder. We must give them a volley. Fellows, run out the
mitrailleuses--my own one first. Easy there over the stones! Now the
others!"
Presently with the three machine guns we were standing completely
shelterless in the Cours of Aramon with half a dozen darksome streets
and alleyways gaping at us truculently. "Turn them to the left," he
shouted. "Farther out, Allerdyce! Keep your alignment, you
Brown--swearing's forbidden, but think that ye hear Donald Iverach at
it!"
The light little guns with the pepperpot snouts were swiftly swung round
in the direction of the scaling ladders and the hurrying clouds of men.
Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the
handle which was to grind death.
"Lie down, you sweeps!" he called to us. "Flat--not a head up."
We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre
machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me.
"GO!"
And then all hell broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions
melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at
this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out
the moon.
The attacking party was mown as with a clean-swept scythe. For an
instant three swathes were clearly visible--Jack Jaikes, Brown, and
Allerdyce had each made his share of the crop lie down.
There came an explosion of rage and anguish.
"Again!" shouted Jack Jaikes. "Keep down that head," he cried to me, and
kicked savagely in my direction as he danced about. I obeyed. No account
could be required of men at such moments. He might stamp on my head if
he found it in his way.
"Sweep the wall and fire low!" was the next order. "Mind, Donald Iverach
and the boys are on top. We must not shoot them, but we _must_ help
those ladders down. It is a pity we dare not run out the four-inch--only
we could never get her back."
Again the rending siren shriek divided the night. We lay on the ground
seeing gigantic shapes twisted in seeming agony over guns high above us.
Our chins were in the dust and the play of the lightning flashes made
the thing somehow demoniacal and unearthly.
"Hell upside down!" as the man next to me pithily said--a parson's son
like myself, but from Kent, Pembury in Kent, where young Battersby is
still not forgotten.
The mitrailleuses flared red below and the skies flared blue above. The
thunder roared continuously and the noise of the machine guns cut it
like the thin notes in the treble corner of a piano. Heaven raged
against earth, and earth in the person of Jack Jaikes ground out shrill
defiance. But that night the bolts from the earthly artillery were the
more deadly.
"Cleaned the beggars out!" shouted Jack Jaikes, or at least that is near
enough to what he said. "Now then, up you fellows and we will get them
back!"
It was easier said than done. For it was one thing to get the little
guns down the rubble heaps beneath the battered gateway and quite
another to fetch them back. We were compelled to put all our three gun
crews into one, and even then we could not have succeeded without the
help of the men with ropes pulling from within. I saw Rhoda Polly
tugging like one possessed, though why she was not on her tower I do not
know.
We had left the other two machine guns unprotected and had to jump back
to rescue them. Still there was no enemy in sight and we got Brown's
fine No. 1 back into shelter. Remained Allerdyce, and as we rattled down
to fetch her up, suddenly the whole of the square in front of us was
swept by a storm of bullets. Somehow I found Hugh Deventer beside me.
"You gave us a good easement up at the corner," he said, "I was sure
they would get back on you next. Give me a place. I can hoist a gun
better than you!"
He was behind the wheel, but even as he set his weight to it
Allerdyce---eternally smiling Scot from Ayrshire, called Soda
Bannocks--collapsed over the piece he had commanded and worked. Another
man yelled with sudden pain, and I felt a sharp blow on the calf of my
leg.
"Clear!" shouted Jack Jaikes, "I will fetch the men. Up with the gun."
And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might
gather a wet rag.
The storm passed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our
ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way
and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back.
"Great God, what's that?" I turned at the anguish and surprise in the
voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours
of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand
held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm
was--Alida!
I dreamed--I was sure I dreamed. That bullet--those fellows knocked
over--Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own
gun--Jack Jaikes gathering him up--all these things had crazed me, and
no wonder. I saw "cats in corners," as I used to do in old college days
when I studied too much and too long.
But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller
Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not
speak. They keep an exact distance away--about four yards and always in
the corner of a room or in a stairway--never in the open. What was he
saying? One word recurred.
"Treve!--Treve!--Treve!"
"I proclaim a truce in the name of the Internationale!"
Mocking laughter answered him. The Internationale! What did they care
for the Internationale? They were out to kill and to take.
Little groups began to gather at the dark alley mouths. I could see the
glitter of rifles and bayonets. Present fear was arrested when they saw
us withdrawing our guns. Hope sprang into their minds that they might
capture the mitrailleuse abandoned halfway up. Their losses stung them
to a wild and reckless fury.
I do not know whence the first bullets came--I think from the north end
of the Cours Nationale, where some men had been busy removing their dead
and wounded. At any rate it was the signal for a general discharge. The
streets and alley-ways vomited fire. The crackle of rifle shots sprang
from the windows of houses. Somehow we found ourselves outside on the
Cours. We had abandoned the gun. Jack Jaikes seemed to be giving some
kind of instructions, but I could not make out what he was saying. What
I saw was too terrible--Keller Bey on the ground, the white flag of
truce stained with blood, and Alida kneeling beside him.
"Take them up!" yelled Jack Jaikes, "run for it!"
Before me strode Hugh Deventer, huge and blond like a Viking. He caught
up Alida and would have marched off with her, but that Jack Jaikes
barred the way.
"Idiot," he cried, "who can carry a man of Keller's size but you? Give
the girl to Cawdor!"
I think at that moment Hugh could have killed him, but he gave me Alida
as bidden, and bending he shouldered the dead weight of the wounded man.
"Put him higher, then, you fool," he shouted to Jack Jaikes.
"I can't, they are coming at us with the white weapon. Heave him
yourself," yelled back Jack Jaikes. I heard no more for Alida, waking
suddenly to her position, fought desperately in my arms, escaped, and
ran up the broken stones past the abandoned machine gun till I lost
sight of her in the dusk of the broken gateway. Hugh Deventer, stumbling
after with Keller Bey, cursed me for getting in his road. We did and
said a number of things that night which can't well go in a log book,
not even now.
I turned and in a moment was with the small band which Jack Jaikes had
gathered about the gun. At any cost we must not lose that. There were
too many men in Aramon who knew how to make ammunition for any purpose.
Yes, they were coming. They were so near that I had just time to snap in
my bayonet and get beside Jack Jaikes. I saw him shake something wet
from his hand.
"Are you wounded?" I asked anxiously, for that would have been the crown
of our misfortunes.
"No, that's Allerdyce!" he answered, with ghastly brevity, but
nevertheless the thing somehow nerved me. We all might be even as
Allerdyce, but in the meantime we must stop that ugly black rush--the
charge "with the white" as they called a bayonet charge. Behind was the
gun--Allerdyce's gun--and beyond that the open defenceless port, the
waiting men clewed there by their duty--and the girls!
Lord, how slow they were--these running men!
"Now then, one volley," said Jack Jaikes, "scourge them and then steady
for the steel! Remember we are taller men and we have on an average a
foot longer reach than they have. You, Gregory, keep behind and blow
holes in anybody you can see running."
I cannot remember very clearly this part. How could I? I rather think we
did not stand very firm. I seem to remember charging out to meet
them--the others too--and Jack Jaikes laying about him in front of
everybody with clubbed rifle, grunting like a man who fells bullocks.
The lines met with a clash of steel. I remember the click and lunge
perfectly. Then suddenly we seemed to be all back to back, and somehow
or other the centre of a terrible mixed business, a sort of whirlpool of
fighting. Men quite unknown to us had appeared mysteriously from the
direction of the Mairie. They were attacking our assailants on the
flank. It was warm there under the trees of the promenade for a few
minutes. But after a volley or two, as if they had come to seek for
Keller Bey, our new allies decided to retire without him. They sucked
back firing as they went, and taking with them the red mayoral flag they
had carried.
We were left with our own battle to fight. But they had done something.
The solidity of the attack had been somewhat fused down. We were not now
so closely surrounded.
"Glory, the tucker's out of them!" cried Jack Jaikes, "give them a
volley--Henry rifles to the front. Scourge them!"
It was his word--"scourge them." And that to the best of our ability was
what we did. The shooting was not very good, or we should have been rid
of the enemy much more quickly.
"Stand clear, there!" commanded a voice from above our heads. Rhoda
Polly had got a team of men together to lever up Allerdyce's machine
gun. She was now bending over it, and those who remained of the dead
man's crew bent themselves to the task of getting it in order.
"To right and left, and fire as they run. Now then----!" commanded Rhoda
Polly.
"Re-r-r-r-rach-rach-rach!"
The mitrailleuse spat hate and revenge over our heads. The young
"second-in-command," trained by Allerdyce, stood calmly to his post and
swept the muzzle wherever he saw a cluster of assailants.
"Allerdyce! Allerdyce!" yelled the crew of No. 4. They did not mean him
to hear. Allerdyce would never hear anything again--neither the voice of
his native Doon, running free over the shallows, nor the raucous voice
of his beloved gun, nor even the shouting of his men as they wrote their
vengeance for a dead leader across the Cours of Aramon in letters of
blood.
This happened almost at the end of the battle, but what I remember best
of it all, in all that unknown and unknowable turmoil of death, is the
half-wild, half-quixotic, altogether heroic figure of Jack Jaikes,
dancing and vapouring under the splendours of the moonlight.
"Come back and fecht!" he yelled. "Come back and fecht for the sowl o'
Allerdyce! On'y ten o' ye. I tell ye I'll slay ye for the sake o'
Allerdyce! Ye made what's no human o' him. Come back and I will choke ye
wi' my bare hands. We were chums, Allerdyce and me, at the Clydebank
yaird. God curdle your blood for what ye did to Allerdyce. Come back and
fecht, ye hounds o' hell, come back and fecht!"