[Illustration: Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back
into mid-air.]
BARBARIANS
By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
AUTHOR OF
"The Dark Star," "The Girl Philippa," "Who Goes There," Etc.
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With Frontispiece
By A. I. KELLER
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A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with D. APPLETON & COMPANY
TO
LYLE and MADELEINE MAHAN
I
"Daughter of Light, the bestial wrath
Of Barbary besets thy path!
The Hun is beating his painted drum;
His war horns blare! The Hun is come!"
"Father, I feel his fœtid breath:
The thick air reeks with the stench of death;
My will is Thine. Thy will be done
On Turk and Bulgar, Czech and Hun!"
II
_She understands._
_Where the dead headland flare_
_Mocks sea and sand;_
_Where death-lights shed their glare_
_On No-Man’s-Land._
_France takes her stand._
_Magnificently fair,_
_The Flaming Brand_
_Within her slender hand;_
_Christ’s lilies in her hair._
III
"Daughter of Grief, thy House is sand!
Thy towers are falling athwart the land.
They’ve flayed the earth to its ribs of chalk
And over its bones the spectres stalk!"
"Father, I see my high spires reel;
My breast is scarred by the Hun’s hoofed heel.
What was, shall be! I read Thy sign:
Thy ocean yawns for the smitten swine!"
IV
_Then, from Verdun_
_Pealed westward to the Somme_
_From every gun_
_God’s summons: "Daughter! Come!"_
_Then the red sun_
_Stood still. Grew dumb_
_The universal hum_
_Of life, and numb_
_The lips of Life, undone_
_By Death.... And so--France won!_
V
"Daughter of God, the End is here!
The swine rush on: the sea is near!
My wild flowers bloom on the trenches’ edge;
My little birds sing by shore and sedge."
"Father, raise up my martyred land!
Clothe her bones with Thy magic hand;
Receive the Brand Thy angel lent,
And stanch my blood with Thy sacrament."
CONTENTS
I. FED UP
II. MAROONED
III. CUCKOO!
IV. RECONNAISSANCE
V. PARNASSUS
VI. IN FINISTÈRE
VII. THE AIRMAN
VIII. EN OBSERVATION
IX. L’OMBRE
X. THE GHOULS
XI. THE SEED OF DEATH
XII. FIFTY-FIFTY
XIII. MULETEERS
XIV. LA PLOO BELLE
XV. CARILLONETTE
XVI. DJACK
XVII. FRIENDSHIP
XVIII. THE AVIATOR
XIX. HONOUR
XX. LA BRABANÇONNE
XXI. THE GARDENER
XXII. THE SUSPECT
XXIII. MADAM DEATH
XXIV. BUBBLES
XXV. KAMERAD
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CHAPTER I
FED UP
So this is what happened to the dozen-odd malcontents who could no longer
stand the dirty business in Europe and the dirtier politicians at home.
There was treachery in the Senate, treason in the House. A plague of liars
infested the Republic; the land was rotting with plots.
But if the authorities at Washington remained incredulous, stunned into
impotency, while the din of murder filled the world, a few mere men, fed
up on the mess, sickened while awaiting executive galvanization, and
started east to purge their souls.
They came from the four quarters of the continent, drawn to the decks of
the mule transport by a common sickness and a common necessity. Only two
among them had ever before met. They represented all sorts, classes,
degrees of education and of ignorance, drawn to a common rendezvous by
coincidental nausea incident to the temporary stupidity and poltroonery of
those supposed to represent them in the Congress of the Great Republic.
The rendezvous was a mule transport reeking with its cargo, still tied up
to the sun-scorched wharf where scores of loungers loafed and gazed up at
the rail and exchanged badinage with the supercargo.
The supercargo consisted of this dozen-odd fed-up ones--eight Americans,
three Frenchmen and one Belgian.
There was a young soldier of fortune named Carfax, recently discharged
from the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, who seemed to feel rather sure
of a commission in the British service.
Beside him, leaning on the blistering rail, stood a self-possessed young
man named Harry Stent. He had been educated abroad; his means were ample;
his time his own. He had shot all kinds of big game except a Hun, he told
another young fellow--a civil engineer--who stood at his left and whose
name was Jim Brown.
A youth on crutches, passing along the deck behind them, lingered,
listening to the conversation, slightly amused at Stent’s game list and
his further ambition to bag a Boche.
The young man’s lameness resulted from a trench acquaintance with the game
which Stent desired to hunt. His regiment had been, and still was, the 2nd
Foreign Legion. He was on his way back, now, to finish his convalescence
in his old home in Finistère. He had been a writer of stories for
children. His name was Jacques Wayland.
As he turned away from the group at the rail, still amused, a man
advancing aft spoke to him by name, and he recognized an American painter
whom he had met in Brittany.
"You, Neeland?"
"Oh, yes. I’m fed up with watchful waiting."
"Where are you bound, ultimately?"
"I’ve a hint that an Overseas unit can use me. And you, Wayland?"
"Going to my old home in Finistère where I’ll get well, I hope."
"And then?"
"Second Foreign."
"Oh. Get that leg in the trenches?" inquired Neeland.
"Yes. Came over to recuperate. But Finistère calls me. I’ve _got_ to smell
the sea off Eryx before I can get well."
A pleasant-faced, middle-aged man, who stood near, turned his head and
cast a professionally appraising glance at the young fellow on crutches.
His name was Vail; he was a physician. It did not seem to him that there
was much chance for the lame man’s very rapid recovery.
Three muleteers came on deck from below--all young men, all talking in
loud, careless voices. They wore uniforms of khaki resembling the regular
service uniform. They had no right to these uniforms.
One of these young men had invented the costume. His name was Jack Burley.
His two comrades were, respectively, "Sticky" Smith and "Kid" Glenn. Both
had figured in the squared circle. All three were fed up. They desired to
wallop something, even if it were only a leather-rumped mule.
Four other men completed the supercargo--three French youths who were
returning for military duty and one Belgian. They had been waiters in New
York. They also were fed up with the administration. They kept by
themselves during the voyage. Nobody ever learned their names. They left
the transport at Calais, reported, and were lost to sight in the flood of
young men flowing toward the trenches.
They completed the odd dozen of fed-up ones who sailed that day on the
suffocating mule transport in quest of something they needed but could not
find in America--something that lay somewhere amid flaming obscurity in
that hell of murder beyond the Somme--their souls’ salvation perhaps.
Twelve fed-up men went. And what happened to all except the four French
youths is known. Fate laid a guiding hand on the shoulder of Carfax and
gave him a gentle shove toward the Vosges. Destiny linked arms with Stent
and Brown and led them toward Italy. Wayland’s rendezvous with Old Man
Death was in Finistère. Neeland sailed with an army corps, but Chance met
him at Lorient and led him into the strangest paths a young man ever
travelled.
As for Sticky Smith, Kid Glenn and Jack Burley, they were muleteers. Or
thought they were. A muleteer has to do with mules. Nothing else is
supposed to concern him.
But into the lives of these three muleteers came things never dreamed of
in their philosophy--never imagined by them even in their cups.
As for the others, Carfax, Brown, Stent, Wayland, Neeland, this is what
happened to each one of them. But the episode of Carfax comes first. It
happened somewhere north of the neutral Alpine region where the Vosges
shoulder their way between France and Germany.
After he had exchanged a dozen words with a staff officer, he began to
realize, vaguely, that he was done in.