At Blaisencourt it was spring again. The war was nearly a year old.
Blaisencourt was now a street of houses' ghosts, of rubble and dirt,
populated by soldiers. A little new grass sprouted peevishly here and
there; an occasional house retained enough of its original shape to
harbour an industry. Captain Crouan, his arm in a sling, was looking
over a heap of débris with the aid of field glasses.
"I see him," he said, pointing to a place on the boiling field where an
apparent lump of soil had detached itself.
"He rises! He goes on! He takes one of his mighty leaps! Ah, God, if I
only had a company of such men!"
His aide, squatted near by, muttered something under his breath. The
captain spoke again. "He is very near their infernal little gun now. He
has taken his rope. Ahaaaa! He spins it in the air. It falls. They are
astonished. They rise up in the trench. Quick, Phèdre! Give me a rifle."
The rifle barked sharply four, five times. Its bullet found a mark.
Then another. "Ahaaa! Two of them! And M. Danner now has his rope on
that pig's breath. It comes up. See! He has taken it under his arm! They
are shooting their machine guns. He drops into a shell hole. He has been
hit, but he is laughing at them. He leaps. Look out, Phèdre!"
Hugo landed behind the débris with a small German trench mortar in his
arms. He set it on the floor. The captain opened his mouth, and Hugo
waved to him to be silent. Deliberately, Hugo looked over the rickety
parapet of loose stones. He elevated the muzzle of the gun and drew back
the lanyard. The captain, grinning, watched through his glasses. The gun
roared.
Its shell exploded presently on the brow of the enemy trench, tossing up
a column of smoke and earth. "I should have brought some ammunition with
me," Hugo said.
Captain Crouan stared at the little gun. "Pig," he said. "Son of a pig!
Five of my men are in your little belly! Bah!" He kicked it.
* * * * *
Summer in Aix-au-Dixvaches. A tall Englishman addressing Captain Crouan.
His voice was irritated by the heat. "Is it true that you French have an
Indian scout here who can bash in those Minenwerfers?"
"_Pardon, mon colonel, mais je ne comprends pas l'anglais._"
He began again in bad French. Captain Crouan smiled. "Ah? You are
troubled there on your sector? You wish to borrow our astonishing
soldier? It will be a pleasure, I assure you."
Hot calm night. The sky pin-pricked with stars, the air redolent with
the mushy flavour of dead meat. So strong it left a taste in the mouth.
So strong that food and water tasted like faintly chlorinated
putrescence. Hugo, his blue uniform darker with perspiration, tramped
through the blackness to a dug-out. Fifteen minutes in candlelight with
a man who spoke English in an odd manner.
"They've been raisin' bloody hell with us from a point about there." The
tap of a pencil. "We've got little enough confidence in you, God
knows--"
"Thank you."
"Don't be huffy. We're obliged to your captain for the loan of you. But
we've lost too many trying to take the place ourselves not to be fed up
with it. I suppose you'll want a raiding party?"
"No, thanks."
"But, cripes, you can't make it there alone."
"I can do it." Hugo smiled. "And you've lost so many of your own men--"
"Very well."
* * * * *
Otto Meyer pushed his helmet back on his sandy-haired head and gasped in
the feverish air. A non-commissioned officer passing behind him shoved
the helmet over his eyes with a muttered word of caution. Otto
shrugged. Half a dozen men lounged near by. Beside and above them were
the muzzles of four squat guns and the irregular silhouette of a heap of
ammunition. Two of the men rolled onto their backs and panted. "I wish,"
one said in a soft voice, "that I was back in the Hofbrau at Munich with
a tall stein of beer, with that fat _Fräulein_ that kissed me in the
Potsdam station last September sitting at my side and the orchestra
playing--"
Otto flung a clod of dank earth at the speaker. There were chuckles from
the shadows that sucked in and exhaled the rancid air. Outside the pit
in which they lay, there was a gentle thud.