THE CAPTIVE KAISER
When, on the night of that first bombardment, Horace Monroe struck
across the fields to take the river path homewards, the boy's spirit
thrilled with a keen eagerness for the future. To his very finger-tips
he seemed to be a-quiver with life. Action and the clacking blare of
the cannonade heightened his sensations.
Death had come near to him but it had not made him afraid, rather it
had given him a sense of exultation. He was still partly deaf from the
shock of the shell-burst and to his memory was continually returning
the scene of Deschamps lying on the Embourg road, the blood trickling
from his forehead.
"It's hard luck for Deschamps, though," he muttered to himself, "to be
put out of everything, without even having seen the fighting!"
This, the fact that his chum had been debarred from participation in
the Great War which seemed to be bursting over his head, loomed up to
Horace as far more lamentable than the wreck of his chum's life and the
ruin of his ambitions to be an artist.
The footpath by the river, as the master had premised, was well
protected. The Ourthe ran swiftly at the bottom of a wooded gully and
the path closely followed the windings of the stream. The shells,
Horace thought, would scarcely reach him there. The boy's mind,
however, was not running on personal danger, but he was reviewing the
tangled skein of circumstances which the master had explained to him as
forming the cause of the war.
Ah!
From far away came a sound like the crushing of tissue-paper, which
rapidly deepened and angered into a high droning hum suggestive of a
hurricane of flying hornets.
A shell!
Facing it alone was a very different matter from when he had been with
the master. In a flash the boy realized the value of companionship in
peril.
Choking suddenly in panic and with a prickling sense all over his body
as though the blood had gone to sleep and would not run in his veins,
Horace threw himself down on the soft ground. The shell seemed to be
coming straight for where he lay. The air quivered like a violin-string
across which a demon-bow was drawn. One--two seconds passed, each
apparently an hour long.
Then--a flash!
The shell had fallen on the other side of the river.
A frantic desire urged Horace to leap to his feet and run on, but his
legs refused to obey.
"My legs are cowards," said Horace, half aloud, "but I'm not. I'm going
to get up."
Yet he lay there, and lay there for some time. It was fear, and he
recognized it, but the cool, moist earth of the forest was very
welcome. His forehead was hot and he rested it against the mulch of the
fallen leaves.
Another shell buzzed in the distance.
Again the soft swish, again the loud hum and again the deafening crash,
this time within the little valley of the river itself. Stones and
earth flew in every direction. The boy could hear them snitch through
the trees. He flattened himself closer to the ground.
With a certain tranquillity he watched the cloud of dust settling,
not sure whether his inward quietness was the regaining of control or a
certain numbness of the senses. Gradually he realized that it was the
former. This was the fourth shell which had struck quite near him and
he was still unhurt.
[Illustration: _French Official Photograph._
THE MODERN OGRE OF THE FOREST.
Mammoth French howitzer, well camouflaged in a dense wood.]
A strange sense of safety took possession of the boy. If four shells
had missed him, why not forty, why not four hundred?
With that thought, the strange fiber of life which welds will and
muscle into action resumed its course, like a wire when electric
contact is made, and Horace, ere he was aware, leaped to his feet and
found himself walking along the path again.
Where the shell had struck, he stopped. The hole was twenty feet
across. Dust was still sifting through the trees and the tearing
radius of the steel splinters could be traced in the riven and mangled
branches overhead.
Then, in his new spirit of confidence, Horace laughed aloud.
"How could I be killed now?" he said aloud. "I've got those messages to
deliver. A chap can't stop to think about himself when he's got a job
to do!"
Although he did not realize it, the lad had passed his baptism of fire,
had learned the first great lesson of the battlefield--that only those
things happen which are fated.
He broke into a smooth, easy run. The cloud lifted from his thoughts,
the weakness from his body. A wonderful lightness and ease possessed
him, a joy, an exaltation. Life took on new values. He had fought out
his battle with himself, by himself, alone in the woods by the river,
his teacher a high-explosive shell.
Again he heard the soft swish in the air, but, this time, the sound had
a different character. Horace paused before throwing himself on the
ground for safety, for the sound did not grow louder. It came nearer,
however, rustling like the flutter of great wings.
Certainly it could not be a shell.
Nearer and nearer came the uncertain fluttering sound until it
was directly overhead, and Horace, looking up, saw two amber eyes
glittering in the fast-falling dark.
The pinions of the creature beat hard but with quick irregular strokes
which failed to sustain the body, and down, down it came, striking
ground heavily almost at the boy's feet.
The instinct of the chase welled up in the lad and he stretched out a
hand to seize, but the bird sprang upwards from the ground, dealt him a
blow in the face with its powerful wing and threw him headlong. At the
same time, it cluttered away through the bushes.
Thoroughly roused, now, Horace dived into the undergrowth after the
bird. The huge creature turned and faced him, with a vicious croak.
A flash from one of the guns of Fort Embourg lighted up the scene.
Boy and bird faced each other, and, when he saw his opponent, the lad's
pulse beat quick and high.
It was an eagle, a black eagle from the forest of Germany!
Was it a symbol? Was this a personification of the ravening invader?
He, Horace, had seen the first boy victim of the war; he, Horace, would
make the first prisoner. He set his determination to the task.
The baleful amber eyes followed the boy as he maneuvered round in
the deepening dark. Horace feared for his face, for he knew that the
eagle's method of attack would be an endeavor to peck his eyes out. In
the faint light that remained, the bird's wings gave it the advantage,
even though the fluttering fall suggested injury.
The boy slipped off his coat.
Advancing imperceptibly, inch by inch, until he felt that he was
within reach, suddenly Horace threw himself forward, holding his coat
outstretched before him as he fell with all his weight on the eagle.
The rending beak and talons of the savage bird entangled in the
yielding cloth. Horace, dragged over the ground by his captive's
struggles, felt blindly with his hands until he grasped the creature's
neck.
"I meant to strangle it, then and there," said Horace, when telling the
story afterwards, "but when I got hold of the neck, I found I couldn't
choke it because of the layers of cloth. All my squeezing didn't seem
to do any good. Then I thought that it might be more fun if I brought
him in alive, but it was a tussle!"
The struggle lasted long and, before the bird was mastered, its talons
had scored the boy's thigh. None the less, he succeeded in pinning the
fierce beak and talons into the coat and tying the sleeves together in
such wise that the bird was tightly nipped. Thus triumphant, he set out
with his capture. It was not long until he reached the Tilff road and
turned off towards his home.
The flickering light from the flaming streaks of the guns of Fort
Embourg gave the outlines of the village houses a queer look of
unreality and Horace received a sudden shock.
How long was it--how many days, how many weeks--since he had passed by
the school in that walk to Liége in the twilight? Not, surely not the
same day, only three hours before! Three hours! Yes, three hours of
experience, more than three years of untroubled boyhood life.
He had gone out of Beaufays seeking, as a matter of excitement, to
see something of the war. He returned, one who had been under fire,
a bearer of war tidings, ready to fight for Belgium. He had learned,
besides, the soldier's fatalism which keeps him from flinching because
of the belief that he will not be shot as long as he has his work to do.
From the task of notifying the parents of Deschamps he shrank.
If only his father were there! Horace was proud of his father,
regarding him as the ideal of what he would like to be himself. It was
one of his greatest sorrows that his father spent only half his time
in Belgium, where he represented the interests of certain American
manufacturers. He was expected back on the first of September, but that
was nearly a month away.
On his way through the village, Horace met Croquier, the hunchback. He
told his news.
"And what's queer about the bird," he said, "is that it seems to have
one wing shorter than the other."
Croquier stopped dead.
"Is it the left wing?"
Horace thought for a moment.
"Yes," he answered, "I think it is."
"Show!"
Cautiously the boy loosened his grip, and, in the light from the guns,
displayed his prize.
The eyes of the hunchback burned. He caught the lad eagerly by the arm.
"But you must tell Mme. Maubin at once!" he cried. "At once!"
"Why?" protested Horace, hanging back.
"She must know. She is the wise woman!" the other spluttered in his
excitement. "She sees unseen things. She hears the voices of the
future! Come! Come quickly!"
He half-led, half-dragged the boy on.
The hunchback's excitement was infectious. Besides, Horace remembered
that he had a message to give.
The master's wife was standing a step or two from the door of her
house. The window was open and the lamplight, shining through, fell on
her spare figure. Few people were asleep in Beaufays that first night
that red-eyed War stalked abroad.
"I hear footsteps that bear a message," she said, peering into the
darkness as they approached.
"It is I, Madame, Horace Monroe," the boy answered.
"You carry news of disaster and triumph on your shoulders," she
declaimed, "disaster that has been, triumph that is to come."
"I--I don't know, Madame," the boy replied, hesitatingly, surprised and
a little afraid of this oracular form of address.
"Show her your capture!" ejaculated the hunchback, in a hard fierce
whisper.
Horace stepped forward into the oblong of light shed by the lamp
shining through the open window.
The woman advanced swiftly and looked down at the bird, which, pinned
under the boy's arm, snapped at her viciously.
She looked long and movelessly.
"The Eagle of Germany!" she said at last, "hungry and exhausted,
vanquished and a captive in Belgium."
"The left wing is withered," put in Croquier, but she did not seem to
hear.
"Your news?" she asked, not turning to the boy but staring fixedly at
the eagle, which glared at her evilly.
"M. Maubin is safe, Madame," the boy began, with a blunt desire to give
good news first.
"Yes," she said, "as yet. But he will not return."
Horace jumped at this repetition of the master's prophecy.
"Deschamps--"
"I warned them that the lad would suffer. He is dead?"
"No, Madame, but he was struck by a splinter of shell, and--" the words
stuck in his throat.
"Yes?" she queried, gently.
"The doctor says he will be totally blind, Madame!"
The bird croaked harshly, as though with a laugh of evil satisfaction.
It never took its eyes from the woman nor did she relax her gaze upon
the bird.
"So," she said, "he is blind, my husband has gone to his death, and
you, an American, return safe, bearing a captive."
The woman's figure stiffened, as though in a trance.
The hunchback clenched the boy's arm in a grip so powerful that he had
difficulty in repressing a cry.
"Listen to every word," warned Croquier.
Even the bird ceased struggling against his bonds, only the rumble of
the cannonade and the irregular crashes of the replying guns ripping
apart the stillness.
"It is much," the woman said at last, in a faraway voice, "for the
Fates to show on the first day of the war. Look you," she continued,
"the signs are clear.
"Our own dear Belgium will suffer, will suffer so terribly that for
many years to come she will grope among the nations as one that has
been blinded, but not as one that has lost courage or is mortally hurt.
France will suffer, even unto death, but her spirit will be undefeated
to the last. Germany shall come fluttering down to ruin only when
a young America throws herself upon a famished and half-exhausted
Germany."
Croquier listened with arrested breath. To him, every word of the
prophecy was a gospel.
"Then America will come to the aid of Belgium, Madame?" the boy
queried, eagerly.
The woman did not reply. She tottered back and rested her hand heavily
upon the window-sill, as though her strength were spent.
Horace moved restlessly, with a certain disquieting fear of the
supernatural, although his heedless American nature disregarded
superstition. Could it be true that one might look into the future?
The woman spoke again.
"Croquier," she said, "you are a Frenchman. Take you the captive Kaiser
with his withered pinion. See that it does not escape. You understand?
It must never escape. Look you! Never!"
"Never!" said the hunchback, in a deep solemn voice that registered a
vow.
Horace hesitated. A boyish pride held him back. The bird was his prize.
He wanted to show his captive to the school, and, perhaps, brag a
little of his exploit. Suppose Croquier should let the bird escape!
Then he remembered the hunchback's phenomenal strength and felt a
momentary shame at his own desire to boast.
"You may not keep the bird, American boy," said the woman, "it is not
for you. To win, but not keep, so runs the future."
"Give me the bird!" The hunchback's voice was rasping and authoritative.
Horace turned and held out the eagle.
The hunchback took it in his iron grip, catching the boy's hand with
it. The clench was like a vise.
"You've my hand!" the boy cried out.
The grip relaxed. Horace withdrew his fingers. They were bruised as
though he had been caught in a closing door.
"You'll kill the bird," said Horace, "if you grip it that way."
"I shall not kill the bird," boomed the hunchback. His tones became
sinister, "And it shall not escape!"
There was a gripping prescience in the scene: in the figure of the
master's wife, all in black, standing by the window, the light just
catching the side of her chalk-white face; in the twisted shoulder
and large head of the powerful hunchback; in the evil glitter of the
eagle's amber eyes which, despite the change of owners, had not wavered
from their intent malevolence upon the woman's face; in the overtones
of sullen wrath vibrating from the cannonade.
The silence became unendurable and Horace, uncomfortable in the
tension, blundered into the breaking of it.
"Madame," he hazarded, "about Deschamps?"
She turned her head slightly to listen.
The boy had a sudden plan.
"If you could come with me to tell his folks?" he pleaded timidly.
The expression and manner of the master's wife changed on the instant.
From the personification of vengeance, she turned to tenderness and
sympathy.
"Dear lad," she said, at once, "it is a hard thing for you to do, is it
not? I will come at once. Shall I tell them, or will you?"
"If, Madame," begged Horace, "you could speak. I--I--" he broke off,
with a lump in his throat. "You see, Madame, Deschamps and I were
chums."
"I understand," she answered softly. "I will tell them, as gently as
I can, and you will answer what they ask you. Is not that best?"
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Sphere."_
THE CHARGE IRRESISTIBLE.
Bengal lancers in the open warfare of the first few months driving the
Germans before them like chaff before the wind.]
"Oh, Madame!" His voice was full of thankfulness.
She sighed long and heavily.
"We shall soon grow accustomed to telling and hearing sad news in
Belgium," she said. Then, turning to Croquier, she added, "You have the
bird safe?"
"Safe as the grave!" boomed the hunchback in reply and disappeared into
the darkness.
The village street, usually so quiet at this hour, stirred feverishly.
Lights glimmered in every house. One woman was kneeling at the foot of
the great wooden cross which stood in the marketplace. Another came out
from the church, weeping silently. Their husbands were in the army.
The boy's heart sank as he came up to the little house from which he
had started a few hours before with Deschamps and the master. He opened
the garden gate and Mme. Maubin entered. The click of the latch, as
the gate closed behind Horace, had been heard. The door opened and
the burly figure of Deschamps' father stood outlined. He welcomed the
master's wife with hearty hospitality. The woman said nothing, but
entered the house. She went straight to the mother, who had risen to
her feet and was standing by the table, a frightened look in her eyes.
"You are of Belgium, Madame?" the master's wife began.
The mother winced.
"But yes," she said.
"Then you will know how to be brave."
Mme. Deschamps' lips trembled.
"Is it my boy?" she asked anxiously, turning to Horace.
"He is not killed, Madame," said the boy, chokingly.
"He is hurt! He is dying!"
"No, Madame," Horace answered, "the doctor said that he would soon get
well. But--"
The master's wife intervened.
"Your son will need you now more than ever before," she said softly.
"He is not lost to you. He is closer to you."
The mother struggled for composure.
"He is crippled?"
"He is blind, Madame," said Horace.
She staggered back a step and steadied herself with a hand on the table.
"My boy! My boy! Blind!" she cried.
No one moved. The distant guns beat their menace more insistently into
the room.
"M. Maubin told me to say," added Horace, in a low voice, "that he bid
you remember that your son was Belgium's first boy hero."
"Where is he?" broke in the father.
"At Embourg, Monsieur, at the house of Dr. Mallorbes."
"I will go see him. Tell me exactly how it happened."
So Horace, overcoming his embarrassment in the sight of the mother's
courage, told the story of the bursting shell, of the splinter which
struck the boy's forehead and of the removal to the doctor's house.
Then he told of the surgeon's work and, finally, of the departure for
Liége and his own return.
It was late before the boy had finished his story and he was beginning
to drop with sleep. Moreover, he expected that all his adventures would
have to be recounted anew at home, where, possibly, his old maid aunt
would have begun to grow nervous over his non-return.
Leaving Deschamps' house, relieved of the strain of telling his tale of
sorrow, Horace sank under a terrible fatigue. The sound of the guns
rapped at his brain and the night air was heavy with the pulsing of
evil destiny. He stumbled with weariness as he reached his own house,
glad to find the place dark and his aunt asleep. Evidently, his return
was not expected.
The boy's rest was troubled and disturbed by dreams of war. He wakened
in the morning, stiff and sore, wondering where he was and what had
happened. The tumult of the shells bursting on Fort Embourg, a mile
away, brought all back to his remembrance. Besides, through the morning
haze, which bore promise of a sultry day, a vicious drumming which had
not been audible the night before betrayed itself to the lad's instinct
as rifle-fire. He got up and dressed hurriedly.
His aunt was already seated at breakfast and was surprised at seeing
the boy, for she had not heard her nephew's entrance the night before.
Though eager to get out into the village and learn the news, Horace
was compelled to tell the night's doings in detail, but his aunt was
utterly unable to realize the significance of the breaking-out of war.
Having lived nearly all her life in the United States, she was unable
to grasp the serious importance of European alliances. Moreover, she
possessed to the full a certain American love of words and Horace
could not make her see that the time for speechmaking had gone by.
Being, herself, always ready to bluff a little, she suspected the same
in every one else. The guns, thundering near by, did not disturb her
confidence a whit.
"Of course they'll fire a few rifles and shoot off some guns," she
said, "that's always done for effect. But the governments will get
together and fix it up; you'll see."
The boy groaned inwardly at this slack belief in the policy of "fixing
things up" which he knew so well, but he replied, earnestly,
"I don't think so, Aunt Abigail, from what the master told us. He
thinks it's going to be a big war, like the kind you read about in
history."
"Nonsense," retorted the old maid, sententiously. "The world has got
much too civilized for people to go around killing each other. Finish
your breakfast!"
Horace knew that there was little likelihood of changing the ideas of
Aunt Abigail. Though kindly and generous at heart, in spite of her
brusque ways, she belonged to that class of Americans which is honestly
convinced that everything in the New World is progressive and sound
and that everything in the Old World is backward and decaying.
"Did you say that the schoolmaster had gone to the war?" she asked.
"Yes, Aunt."
The old maid sniffed.
"More fool he," she said crisply; "he's old enough not to get romantic.
What's going to be done with the school?"
"That's all been arranged," the boy replied, without explaining
further, for he knew that his aunt would regard the master's action as
"high-falutin and romantic."
"Well, you'd better get ready," she said sharply, "though I don't see
how you can do much study with all the noise those forts are making. I
should have thought they'd have had sense enough to build them farther
away from where folks live."
"Aunt," said Horace, "suppose the Germans should take Beaufays?"
"Well, what about it?"
"If they burn the houses and steal everything and kill everybody and--"
"Get along with your foolishness," his aunt replied. "I've known plenty
of Germans. They weren't much different from any other kind of humans
I ever saw. Burn and steal and murder? What next! Get on to school,
Horace, or you'll be late."
The boy put on his cap and left the house.
The air was heavy with the smell of powder, drifting from the
not-distant bombardment. Groups of villagers and peasants loitered
aimlessly about the streets. Work was at a standstill. One of the old
men called him.
"Was it you who caught the eagle?" he asked.
"Yes," Horace answered, "I caught him."
The old peasant chuckled with toothless gums.
"Perched on a pole he is," he said, "and we'll have the Kaiser himself
there, presently."
"Where is the bird?" asked the boy.
"In front of the inn. Croquier's got it. He won't take his eyes off it."
A few steps brought Horace to the _estaminet_ and there, blinking in
the strong August sunlight, perched the eagle that he had captured the
night before. During the night an excessively strong cage had been made
of twisted strips of wrought iron. It would have resisted an elephant's
strength. Welded into the top of the cage was a ring and to this ring
was fastened a steel chain. The end was clamped around Croquier's
wrist.
So much, at least, ensured that the bird would not escape, but there
was a surer sign still, for Horace, looking on the hunchback's
face, saw the face of a man who had been transfigured. The savage
petulance, born of misfortune, had been replaced by an equally savage
determination, born of confidence and trust. It did not need two looks
to see that the man would be cut in pieces before he would betray his
trust. He spoke as soon as the lad approached.
"I have been wondering," he said, "how you, with your little strength,
managed to capture this bird. Bird! It is an evil spirit. I have never
seen a bird so strong, and I know what is strength. Twice, last night,
it tried to escape."
"How?" asked the boy.
"When I left you, I went home, put it in a huge cage of twisted wicker
and closed my eyes, to see what would happen. I kept my fingers crooked
for action, though. I did not close my eyes for more than ten seconds.
There was a cracking sound and when I opened my eyes, the cage was a
tangle of splinters and the bird was preening its wings to fly."
"But it can't fly!"
"I'm not so sure of that," the hunchback answered, "but it had no
chance, my fingers were round its throat in a second. I had hard work
to hold it and I am three, yes, ten times as strong as you.
"Then I put it in a wire frame in which a badger had once been kept.
Its amber eyes glared, but it made no resistance. Again I closed my
eyes, to tempt it, and when I opened them again, beak and talon had
riven the frame apart and the body was rasping through. I grappled
it again. It pecked at me, almost reaching my eyes, but my hands are
strong, and it could not get away."
He looked down at his hands with a touch of pride.
"There's not another man in the village could have done it," he said.
"I believe that," said Horace, whose hand was still sore and bruised
from the grip of the day before. "What did you do then?"
"I went to my brother, the blacksmith.
"'Pierre!' I said to him, 'get up! Get up at once and light the fire in
your forge. We have a demon to cage.'
"'Are the Germans here?' he asked.
"'Come at once,' I said, 'you are needed.'
"So, when he came out, I showed him the bird and told him the words of
the master's wife.
"'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
"'Make me a cage of bands of twisted iron,' I said, 'which would defy
the beak and talon of Jupiter's eagle that wields the thunderbolts, and
finish it before daybreak.'
"So, all the long night through, I sat there in the forge, while the
fetters were being made to hold this evil thing a prisoner. There is no
bolt or screw in the cage, every bar is welded on the other, save for
one intricate opening. Just before daylight it was done.
"'Good,' said I, 'now come with me to the curé, Pierre, and we will
speak to him.'"
"To the curé?" queried Horace, "why?"
"That was what my brother asked," the hunchback answered, "but to the
church we went. The curé was there already, praying at the altar,
though it was yet more than an hour before the service.
"'Bless me this cage, Monsieur le Curé,' I said to him, 'it has been
made to hold an evil spirit, a demon, a German demon.'
"The curé looked at the eagle and crossed himself.
"'It is ill to traffic with demons, Croquier,' he said to me, 'but I
have never heard of anything made by God or man which was the worse for
a blessing. Give me the cage and I will bless it before the altar, as
you ask.'
"He blessed the cage and gave it back to me. I got ready to put the
bird in it. There followed such a fight as I have never seen. Into the
wicker cage the bird had gone willingly enough, I had put it into the
wire frame without difficulty, but when I tried to put it into the cage
that the good priest had blessed, a thousand furies entered the bird's
black heart and he fought with beak and claw as though he were inspired
by fiends. It took the three of us, the curé, my brother, and myself--"
"The curé helped you?" interrupted the boy, in surprise.
"He said it was the business of a churchman to fight demons, whether
in the spirit or in feathers," the hunchback answered, his hard face
softening into a smile. "Together we forced it into the cage. There it
is now and there it stays. My brother has riveted the door."
Horace looked at the bird.
"It certainly is curious," he said, "especially with that crippled
left wing. It does seem symbolic of the crippled left arm of the
Kaiser.[7] Perhaps it may be a prophecy. Perhaps Mme. Maubin's words
may come true. Perhaps America may have to join in the war!"
The hunchback nodded portentously.
"Her words will come true," he said. "I don't know what she will say
over the fact that the curé had to help us cage the bird. Will it turn
into a Holy War?"
This was beyond Horace, but, just as he was about to answer, the "last
bell" pealed from the little school building down the street.
Croquier started.
"But I saw the schoolmaster going to Liége!" he cried. "The boy has
forgotten!"
"He hasn't forgotten," answered Horace; "I'll tell you about it after
school," and dashed across the street lest he should be late.
The boys filed in quietly, with a profound solemnity. It is not easy
to touch a boy's honor to the depth, but when it is reached, and
especially when no adult is present, it is a force more sensitive and
more ruthless than that of any man or woman. Which fact the master knew.
When the bell had stopped ringing, there was a moment's hesitation, for
the masterless boys knew scarcely how to begin. Horace, rising in his
seat, told the school the master's message and spoke of the blinding of
Deschamps. A deft word led the boys to a voluntary resumption of their
class-work.
One lad, less responsive to the spirit of boy-honor, whispered to his
neighbor.
A roar of anger burst over the school and the culprit slunk into
his book. It is not good to awake the primitive and rude justice of
self-governing boys.
In spite of the distracting influence of the continuous bombardment,
the morning passed without incident. Some of the boys wandered in their
attention and many shuffled restlessly, but the sense that each one
was on honor kept them in hand and the school dismissed itself at the
regular hour, proud of its own accomplishment of self-control.
That evening Horace found his aunt in defiant mood.
"While you were at school to-day," she said, "the mayor came to tell
me to go away, either to Brussels or Antwerp, where, perhaps, I could
escape to America."
"And what did you say, Aunt Abigail?" the boy asked anxiously.
The old maid tossed back her head.
"I told them that the little finger of the American minister in
Brussels was stronger than Germany a dozen times over. I told him that
the United States wasn't looking for trouble, but was perfectly willing
to whip any one when necessary. I said we could whip our weight in
wild-cats, and we can.
"Then he had the nerve to talk the way you talked this morning. He said
that the Germans would commit all sorts of horrible atrocities if they
broke through Liége. I told him that just as I didn't think the Germans
were fools enough to fight with Americans, so I didn't think they were
brutes enough to fight against women and children."
"What did the mayor say to that?" queried the boy, regretting that he
had not heard the discussion.
"He didn't tell me I was a fool, but I could see he thought I was, and
I didn't tell him he was a fool, but he could see I thought he was, so
the matter stopped at that."
"But, Aunt Abigail," said Horace, puzzled between the truth in the
master's words and the grain of truth in his aunt's ideas, "suppose the
army runs amuck and the officers can't control it?"
"Then it isn't much of an army," she snapped back. "I hear a lot of
talk about discipline. If the officers can't keep the men from turning
into savages, the way you and the mayor think they will, then it's time
a war came along for somebody to beat sense into their heads. Not that
that has anything to do with it. I told your father I'd be here when he
came back, and it'll take more than a fight between two of these little
European countries--which we could tuck into the State of Texas without
noticing it--to make me break my word."
Horace realized the ignorant narrowness of his aunt's position. He had
often deplored the arrogant Americanism which estranged her foreign
friends. It hurt him, sometimes, when his schoolfellows made fun of
America's boastfulness and bluff, for he knew that many of their
criticisms were just. At the same time, he knew, too, that there were
many things in America wherein his country was superior to Europe. And,
while he raged inwardly at his aunt's prejudices, he could not but
admire her pluck.
"Lots of people are leaving to-night," he ventured.
"I know. I've been helping them to pack. Some of them have gone with
nothing more than the clothes they stood in, others wanted to carry
their house, yes, their gardens, too, I reckon, on their backs. Such
weeping and making a to-do I never saw. I'm not criticizing any one,
understand, only--I stay. Do you want to go?"
"No," said Horace, "I stay, too."
"Good thing," she said, tartly; "I'd hate to see any nephew of mine
show a yellow streak."
Horace spent a large part of that night in helping householders who
had decided to flee from the German advance, every one having been
warned by the mayor. Hardly any one slept that night in Beaufays. Up
to midnight and after, the roads were thronged with the people of the
little village, escaping for their lives. Every horse in the village
or on the farms around was hitched to the largest vehicle that it
could draw, while many walked, carrying their goods. It was the first
installment of that host of misery which, for the next month, crowded
Belgium from Liége to the sea. All night the bombardment grew heavier
and heavier, and, toward morning, heavy cannonading to the west told
that the fort of Boncelles was being attacked. Beaufays, lying just
outside the line of defense, as yet had seen no other evidence of the
battle than the drifting clouds of smoke by day and the flashes of fire
by night.
Breakfast-time came on the morning of August 6 in the little village
of Beaufays, the last breakfast its citizens would eat under their own
flag for many a weary year. Horace was just finishing his meal when a
bugle-call rent the air, followed by the clattering of horses' hoofs.
He jumped up and went to the door.
"Aunt! Aunt! The Germans!" he called.
A party of Uhlans, lances raised, magnificently mounted and looking
soldierly, every inch of them, scouted in advance. The officer in
command summoned the mayor of the village and informed him that the
village was in German hands. He ordered that every door be left open
so that the houses might be searched for arms. The mayor had no
alternative but to comply.
A short distance behind the cavalry came a company of cyclists and
then the ground shook under the short slow tread of the infantry,
swinging along the Verviers road.
Horace stood at the cottage door watching what was, at that time, one
of the most perfect examples of human organization that the world had
seen--the march of the German invading army. These troops had not seen
action. As yet, they were not a fighting army, they were advancing into
the plains of Belgium, to take up the forward charge when the fall
of the Liége forts would enable the establishment of a sound line of
communication.
In these marching men, there was no hint of parade. These troops were
prepared for war. They swung along by tens, by hundreds, by thousands,
by tens of thousands, grimly organized and made for slaughter. The
eye reeled with the steady onward motion, the brain dizzied with the
ponderous human force of it all. These were not a part of Von Emmich's
advance divisions, which were busily engaged in the effort to reduce
Liége, but divisions of the great army under General Von Kluck. Though,
probably, less than a division passed Beaufays, to Horace it seemed
that all the soldiers in the world were in iron-gray uniforms and
pouring through the village street in front of him.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Sketch."_
A MAMMOTH GERMAN WAR CAR.
The terror of the road, armored with 6-inch Krupp steel, shell-proof,
carrying 120 men and two 4.7-inch quick-firers; speed 25 miles per
hour.]
Rank by rank, company by company, regiment by regiment, weapons of
death at their sides, messages of death in their cartridge belts,
thoughts of death in their hearts, they passed, all dressed in the
earthly iron-gray which betokened that the death they gave they would
have to face and that it were well to be as protectively concealed as
possible.
Rank by rank, company by company, regiment by regiment, the sun
glinting on their field equipment, the sun burning the frames already
wearied by the march from garrisons in Germany, the sun waiting to turn
the slain bodies of those marching men to sights of which a soldier
even fears to dream, years after the war is over.
By tens, by thousands, by tens of thousands they came. The details of
organization were incredible. Waiting for each column to pass were men
with buckets of drinking water into which the men dipped their aluminum
cups. Temporary field post-offices were established so that messages
could be gathered as the armies passed and forwarded back to Germany.
Here and there men passed out handfuls of biscuits and prunes.
The infantry strode through in heavy marching order, many of them lame
and footsore, heads and beards shaved under the spiked helmets, bearing
the look of bestial stolidity which is the inseparable result of the
deliberately brutalizing German discipline.
Two trucks passed by with cobblers at work on the march. When a
soldier's shoes wore out on the road, he dropped out of rank, mounted
the running board of the cobbler's truck until he received back his
foot-gear, mended.
Machine-gun companies accompanied the infantry, sprinkled with a few
quick-firers of 2.6-inch caliber, easy to man-handle in action, firing
15 shots a minute. Secondary batteries of this arm also accompanied the
heavy artillery.
Behind the infantry came the field artillery, in which, at this time,
the German Army was weaker than the armies of the other powers.
The field gun was the .96NA, corresponding closely to the British
15-pounder which had been discarded, save for the Territorial Army. It
could not be compared to the famous French "Soixante-Quinze," the most
marvelous of all field-guns, with a 2.9-inch (75 mm.) caliber and the
most mobile weapon known.[8]
On the other hand, the light field howitzers of 4.1-inch caliber
and the heavier field howitzers of 5.9-inch caliber were far in
advance of those of any other army. They were modern, formidable and
admirably handled. This 5.9-inch howitzer shared with the French
"Soixante-Quinze" the dubious honor of being the most death-dealing
weapon of the war.
Following upon the light artillery came the heavy artillery, with
8.4- and 11-inch howitzers. Parts of a heavy siege train followed.
Behind that, again, came the ammunition and provision columns, heavy
horses attached to sections of pontoons for bridges, huge motor plows
for excavating trenches, field hospitals, field motor repair shops,
field forges and field kitchens of every sort. Behind these, again,
came motor busses for the officers of the staff, whom Horace could see
studying their road maps within, and high-powered automobiles for the
military commanders. The stamping of the tens of thousands of feet, of
the horses' hoofs, the grinding of the wheels, and the pounding of the
caterpillar treads filled the air with a cloud of dust through which
the army marched as though it had lungs of steel.
A small detachment, by prearranged orders, was detailed to search and
occupy the village. Few resisted, but the spirit of Belgium was to find
at least one exemplar.
At the door to her house stood Mme. Maubin. A soldier entered the
house, went up-stairs, pulled things into general confusion, and left.
Swiftly the woman reached from the outside through the open window,
struck a match and set the fluttering window-curtains ablaze. In
seconds the flames blazed up and threatened the house.
The officer in command sharply ordered his men to put out the fire,
then turned to the master's wife.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Because the house was defiled by a German foot," she answered.
The officer ground his teeth and turned away. Not for a few days yet
did the Hun want to show his hand. Germany wanted first to seize the
telegraph lines and means of communication before slipping the leash on
the brute instincts of mankind.
"I suppose they'll want to search this house," Aunt Abigail remarked
when the army had passed and the news was spread abroad that a
search-party had been left behind to take possession of the village.
"Why, of course, Aunt, they're sure to," the boy replied.
"Well, they won't!"
She pointed to the Stars and Stripes which she had hung out over her
door.
"I'm going to lock my door," she announced, "and never mind about
any of their old regulations or military rules. If any German tries
to break in under Old Glory, he'll be sorry he started. We've licked
England twice and we'd lick Germany just as easy."
Several times since his aunt had come to keep house after his mother's
death three years before, Horace had disputed this highly inaccurate
historical reference, but always uselessly. He let the point pass by.
"They may respect the flag," he said, "but suppose they don't?"
The old maid faced him.
"There's been a power of soldiers gone by this morning, hasn't there?"
she retorted. "Well, if the whole lot of them were drawn up in front
of my house and they all shouted together 'Open the door!' I wouldn't
open it. So there!"
Horace laughed admiringly. Decidedly his aunt had grit. The passage of
the German Army had not shaken her nerve a scrap.
"Well, Aunt," he said, "if that's the way you feel about it, there's no
need for me to stay. I've got to go to school."
"If you take care of yourself as well as I can take care of myself,
there'll be no trouble," quoth she, and went back to wash her breakfast
dishes as nonchalantly as though a detachment of men were not searching
cottage after cottage.
When, a little later, there came a knock at the door, she went and
looked out. The officer spoke to her in French.
Aunt Abigail, who, in the three years that she had been in the country,
had only learned enough French to do her marketing, answered,
"Talk English!"
"Are you English?" the officer demanded in that tongue, a look of hate
on his face.
"Is that an English flag?" she replied testily.
"We have come to search the house," said the officer and strode
forward.
"Search nothing!" declared Aunt Abigail. "This is an American house!"
and she slammed the door in his face.
There was a heated conference outside between the German officer and
the mayor, but the result was that the search-party passed on. The
telegraph lines were not yet closed and Germany was still trying to
keep the friendship of the United States.
Meantime, school had opened with but few boys present, for almost half
of the boys had fled with their families, and many of those remaining
had been kept at home by their frightened parents. As the morning wore
on, however, a few of the boys came straggling in. Jacques Oopsdiel,
the bell-ringer, the youngest boy in the school, was one of those who
had remained. The lads struggled hard to keep discipline under the
strong spirit of the placard on the master's chair, but the excitement
of the morning had been too great and little work was done.
Suddenly, an ominous figure darkened the wide-open door.
"What is this--a school?" the officer of the search-party asked, in
German.
"Yes," answered Horace, taking the lead, as head boy, now that
Deschamps was no longer there, but answering in French.
"Where is your schoolmaster?"
"At Liége."
Horace ached to add that he was probably aiding in the defense of the
forts but thought that such a statement might bring vengeance on the
school, and so he desisted.
"But where is the schoolmaster who is teaching you now?"
"In his chair!" replied Horace, a trifle defiantly.
The officer strode in, followed by six of his men. He clanked up to the
chair and read the word on the placard. With a German oath he tore it
off, threw it on the floor and ground it under his heel. Then he picked
up a piece of chalk and wrote heavily on the blackboard the word:
DEUTSCHLAND
"There," he said. "That is your master now!"
Jacques Oopsdiel, the little lad, who was known throughout the village
for his obstinate Holland ways, slipped off his chair. Without a word
to any one, in absolute disregard of the German officer and the six
soldiers, he took the sponge and erased the offending word.
"M. Maubin said before he went away," he declared in his high-pitched
childish voice, "that no one was to write on the blackboard without his
permission."
In the astonished silence that followed he returned to his seat.
The officer growled audibly, but he was only empowered to search for
arms and had received strict instructions not to allow any violence to
the civilian population until the invasion was actually accomplished.
So, swearing vengeance on the school in general and on Jacques in
particular, he did not order the child slain on the spot--as he would
have done had it been a week later--but smothered his wrath and walked
out.
The placard, showing the nail-marks of the invader's heel, was replaced
on the master's chair, but it was out of the question to expect that
the school could settle down to work after such intrusion. Jacques
was the hero of the hour, and Horace, though he feared trouble would
result, said nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of his fellows.
The next day witnessed the deepening of the hate between the invaders
and the villagers. The story of the "captive Kaiser" had been spread
abroad and, wherever the Germans went, the prophecy was dinned into
their ears. Wherever they went, jeers and allusions greeted them, for
as yet the people of Beaufays did not realize what malice the Germans
brooded. The erection of a field hospital not far from the borders of
the village increased the friction, for there the Germans saw their
wounded being brought in such countless numbers that they could not
be accommodated. The wounded were billeted in many of the houses of
the village and such of the men and women as remained in Beaufays were
ordered about like slaves.
Each succeeding day the cloud fell blacker. German surgeons and
hospital orderlies strode here and there with kick and curse. Steel was
drawn several times. And still, everywhere, the story of the "captive
Kaiser" percolated, yet, though every house was searched over and over
again, no trace of the crippled eagle could be found. Each day the
restraint upon the soldiers grew slacker and deeds grew more reckless.
The inn-keeper, who had asked for payment of wine drunk by an officer,
was answered by a swordslash across his face. As yet no murder had
been done, but savagery lurked in eye and lip.
One morning, a proclamation was posted on the village walls. It read:
The inhabitants of the town of Andenne, after having declared their
peaceful intentions, have made a surprise attack on our troops.
It is with my consent that the Commander-in-chief has ordered the
whole town to be burned and that about one hundred people have been
shot.
I bring this fact to the knowledge of the City of Liége, so that
citizens of Liége may realize the fate with which they are menaced if
they adopt a similar attitude.
The General Commanding in Chief
VON BUELOW.
From that morning on, terror ruled. Human wolves, emboldened by
official permission, wrought whatever crime they would in Beaufays.
The Germans, checked before Liége and held up to the world's scorn
by a handful of Belgian soldiers, took their vengeance on women and
children, on the aged and on babies alike.
Aunt Abigail, though doubting the evidence of her senses, was compelled
to admit that the hysteria of blood had changed the bodies inside those
iron-gray uniforms and made them something other than human beings. It
was the were-wolf come again.
"These are not men," she said, to Horace, one dreadful night, "they are
maddened machines marked with the Mark of the Beast."
On Saturday, August 15, the eastern forts fell and the troops which
had been billeted in Beaufays received orders that they were to march
westward the next day, but, before they left, they were given full
liberty to ravage the village as they would.
The orgy of devastation began. The soldiers racked and pillaged every
house, seizing every valuable article they could find and committing
acts so vile that they cannot be told. They came, at last, to the house
of Mme. Maubin. Remembering her defiance, the officer in command, in
cruel jest, bade his men leave the house unpillaged and as they drew
back in surprise at this unexpected mercy, he added,
"But she wished her house burned down!"
His men grinned comprehension.
With the special incendiary fuses and bags of compressed powder
officially served out to the German soldiers for their work of
"frightfulness," they set fire to the house, men with fixed bayonets
being stationed at the door to drive the master's wife back into the
flames should she try to escape.
Horace heard the cries of the woman, as she was being burned alive,
and, boy though he was, vowed to avenge her.
The horrors of the day continued under a sky like blue-hot steel.
The heat was terrific and rendered hotter by the flaming houses of
the village. The wild delirium of license gleamed in the eyes of the
soldiers. The school was among the buildings set on fire. It was the
officer's poor revenge.
Late in the afternoon, darting out from some hiding-place, probably
chased by the flames, suddenly the hunchback shot across the street
carrying the black eagle which had been sought so long. At the sight of
the iron cage a shout of rage went up. The officer would have ordered
his men to fire, but the superstition that this might be regarded as an
evil omen seized him. The "captive Kaiser" must be rescued, not killed.
"After him, men!" he cried.
The soldiers, most of them drunk and all of them blind with blood and
fire, raced after the hunchback.
Into the open door of the church the fugitive turned--and disappeared.
The soldiers stormed in after him in a transport of fury and
expectation, but the church was empty save for the figure of the curé
standing at the altar. They searched for the hunchback, but he was
nowhere to be seen. They threatened the curé, but he made no answer.
Then a corporal, avarice overcoming revenge, seeing a gold cross on the
church wall above the pulpit, rushed up the pulpit steps and laid hand
on it.
A "click" resounded through the church.
The curé said, quietly,
"The first man who robs the Church, dies, and dies with the sin on his
head."
The words rolled down in German--the first German words ever spoken
from those altar steps.
A peal of thunder crashed overhead and the soldiers paused as they
gazed at the dimly-lit figure of the priest, standing in the chancel,
in full vestments but--strange contrast--with a pistol in his hand.
The moment passed and then the corporal, with a rude oath, laid both
hands on the cross and tore it from the wall.
There came a quick report and a cry.
While one might count five, the corporal stood erect, holding the
cross, then slowly his body sank, collapsed, crumpled in a heap and he
fell huddled down the pulpit steps--dead.
A howl of rage answered the shot and a dozen men rushed forward and
leaped over the altar rail. The curé made no resistance and a bayonet
thrust through his shoulder pinned him to the ground.
"Why did you shoot?" cried the officer, stamping his foot angrily.
The curé looked up calmly.
"Shall a man be less a patriot for his Church than for his country?" he
asked, simply.
"Drag him out!" came the order.
In the market place, a few steps from the church, stood the great
wooden cross. They dragged the curé there and set him against it,
binding his hands.
Jacques Oopsdiel, who was one of the acolytes of the church, saw the
curé, with the blood flowing over his white vestments, and ran forward
to him with a cry, throwing his arms about him.
A non-commissioned officer caught hold of the lad and tried to pull him
from the priest.
The boy turned like a flash and put his teeth into the soldier's hand.
There was a glint of steel and a bayonet passed through the child's
body. He fell at the feet of the priest.
Overhead, the sky grew darker.
The firing party took up its position.
"Fire!"
The villagers, such as dared to listen, heard the crackle of the
volley, but, before the sound died away, a vivid flash threw the scene
into fierce relief, accompanied by a crash as though the vaults of
heaven had been smitten asunder.
In that one second's glare, those who watched saw the German officer
leap upwards, writhing, and then fall, struck by the thunderbolt.
The thunder pealed on and rolled into the distance, as the figure of
the curé, which had remained for a moment supported by the cross, fell
dead beside the moaning figure of the little acolyte.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This happened in Alouville, on Dec. 11, 1914. The German eagle
with a deformed left wing fluttered down in an exhausted state into
the hands of a French gamekeeper. It was widely heralded as an omen of
victory.
[8] Later (in 1915) the Germans added a 3.9-inch and a 5.1-inch
field-gun, with ranges of 6 and 8 miles respectively.