THE DISPATCH-RIDER
"Do you suppose," said Horace, after the veteran had gone, "that they'd
let me join in the fight? It may begin any time, some one said."
"You wouldn't be any use," the hunchback answered, shaking his head.
"What could you do?"
"I could try the cavalry, I ride pretty well," suggested the boy. "I
used to live on a ranch when I was a kid."
His companion smiled indulgently.
"What do you know of bugle calls? What practice have you had with a
saber? How much do you know about cavalry maneuvers? Why, boy, you'd
bungle up a cavalry charge so badly that the kindest thing they could
do would be to tie your hands together and let the horse do all the
work."
Horace looked crestfallen but he knew his comrade was in the right.
"I'd like to be in the artillery, too," he said, "but I don't know
anything about guns, and that's a fact. But the infantry?"
"You'd be no better there," Croquier answered frankly. "You couldn't
even pack your kit. You don't understand the orders. You've never
drilled. You don't know the first thing about it. With continuous work
eight hours a day, it takes at least two years to make a real soldier.
You don't know how to use a single weapon. You couldn't fix a bayonet.
You don't know the workings of a Lebel rifle, which, by the way, is the
only repeating rifle used in modern armies."
"What are all the rest?"
"Magazine rifles."
"What's the difference?"
This time Croquier was at fault. He called to a soldier who was
strolling near by, smoking his pipe.
"As a matter of fact," the soldier said, when the question was put to
him, "all magazine rifles are repeaters, though they are not called so.
The Lebel is an old type and has a tube fitted in the rifle under the
barrel, the cartridge being fed onto the carrier by a spiral spring and
plunger, the advancing bolt carrying the cartridge into the chamber."
"And the other armies, what gun have they got?"
"Germans and Belgians have a Mauser, Austrians use a Mannlicher--and
the British have a short Lee-Enfield. All of them have magazines under
the bolt way for containing cartridges and can be loaded with a clip,
which is quicker."
"Which is the best?"
"The Lee-Enfield, by far, so the experts say," the rifleman answered,
"because it's shorter, easier to handle, and carries ten cartridges in
its magazine against the Mauser's five. But," and he patted his rifle
affectionately, "I like my Lebel better than any of them, maybe because
I'm used to it. The Mannlicher, though, is very accurate. It's a good
weapon for sniping."
"This lad," the hunchback remarked, "wants to jump right into the
fighting-line without joining the army or ever having handled a gun."
"You'd get shot for nothing, boy," the soldier replied, halting as he
strode off. "One trained soldier is worth fifty raw civilians. The
greenhorn wastes ammunition, eats food, and is no manner of good. He's
sick half the time. When there's an advance he wants to lead the way
and runs into the fire of his own artillery. When there's a retreat,
he starts a panic. When he's on sentry-duty he hears a suspicious noise
about once in every three minutes. When he's told to do something he
doesn't like, he tries to argue about it. If you want to be a soldier,
boy, join it in the right way and learn your soldiering like a man.
Then, if a war comes, you can do your duty until you're killed; or, if
you're invalided home crippled, or blinded, or with a serious wound
which will prevent you from further fighting, you can thank your stars
that you were born lucky."
"And I did so want to fight!" said Horace mournfully, as the
infantryman moved away.
"You may have the chance," remarked the hunchback, a curious glint in
his eyes. "How long do you think the war will last?"
"A month or two?" hazarded the boy.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it lasted a year or two," came the reply,
"that is, unless the Germans smash our lines before we have a chance to
stiffen them."
"Well," said Horace, "if it lasts a year or two, I can learn!"
"Yes," said Croquier, "we'll all learn."
That afternoon, the officer sent for Horace and his companion.
"Namur has fallen!" he said, as soon as they were alone.
Croquier's jaw fell.
"Already, sir!" he said. "I thought it wouldn't hold out very long."
"Yes," said the officer, "Von Buelow seems to have learned from Liége.
You were there, were you not?"
"I was, sir," the hunchback answered; "we lived just a mile from Fort
Embourg."
"Did you see any of the fighting?"
"Only the bombardment."
"Or hear any details?"
"Yes, sir," Croquier replied, "mainly from the wounded. I was in
hiding, though, and the lad, here, heard more than I did."
Thus prompted, Horace told all that he knew of the story of the attack
on Liége, of the fearful loss of life in the massed attacks and of the
valor of the defense, as he had been told by the wounded officers and
men nursed by Aunt Abigail.
"They never gave us a chance like that," the officer sighed. "Namur had
no defense. Von Buelow's too wise a fox of warcraft to waste men when
guns will do the trick. It seems he brought his 42-centimeter guns into
position five miles from Namur about sundown yesterday. All the ranges
had been tested out by the bombardments during the two days before with
the lighter guns.
"Last night the real bombardment commenced. The shells were directed
into the trenches, first, where General Michel and his men were eagerly
awaiting the chance to mow down Germans as Leman did at Liége. They
never saw a German. The hail of death on those trenches was so furious
that no troops could live through it. There was no resistance. The
guns of the forts could not reply, they were outranged. There was no
possibility of a counter-attack, for scouts reported the Germans in
force. For ten hours a scythe of shells swept the defenses. Not a man
lifted his head above the parapet but was killed. The trenches were
leveled flat. Few officers survived.
"By morning," the officer continued, "the Belgians could stand the
tornado of slaughter no longer. The decimated troops fled from the
trenches, leaving a gap between Forts Cognelée and Marchovelette. The
Germans then turned their fire on the forts. Fort Maizeret received
1200 shells, at the speed of twenty to the minute, but was only able to
reply with ten rounds. In that sixty minutes, the fort was reduced to
a mass of crumpled masonry and a few shreds of armor-steel. Others of
the forts, on which the 42-centimeters were turned, were blown to atoms
with less than half a dozen shells. By ten o'clock this morning, five
of the forts were silenced and the German infantry poured through the
gap.
"We sent a cavalry brigade, mainly of Chasseurs d'Afrique, and two
Turco and Zouave regiments up to stiffen General Michel's defense, but
they arrived too late to be of any use to the Belgian infantry. It
would have been madness for Michel to have faced that fire any longer.
"Before the war, we had expected," the officer continued, "that the
forts of Namur would hold the enemy back for three weeks. After Liége,
we hoped that they would hold out three days. They did not hold out
three hours. Apparently there is nothing made by the hands of man that
can resist the incredible destructiveness of those huge high-explosive
shells. Our point of defense will have to be at Charleroi. Our airmen
report a gap between the armies of Von Buelow and Würtemberg. You said,
this morning, that you had seen troops in between. It is excessively
important. Tell me again, exactly, and with all the detail that you can
remember."
Croquier repeated his information of the morning, Horace supplementing
from time to time. When he had finished, the officer tapped his fingers
meditatively on the table.
"You're sure you can't tell me where they came from, who commands them,
or what regiments they are?"
Croquier was silent.
"I'm not sure," said Horace, after racking his brain, "but I think the
woman whose boy was killed, said that Saxons had done it."
"Saxons, h'm! Well, that's a slight clew. I hope you're wrong, because
the Saxons are about the best troops in the German Army, pretty clean
fighters, too, as a rule. I hope you're wrong," he repeated; "we're in
a desperate position and we need three days' time."
Little, however, did the officer, with all his special information,
suspect the nearness of the impending blow. Even at the time that he
was speaking, a detachment of German hussars had crossed the Meuse near
Namur, ridden through Charleroi and trotted on towards the Sambre. At
first they were mistaken for British hussars, to whose uniform theirs
was similar. Soon, however, they were recognized and driven back, with
the loss of a few killed and wounded. Simultaneously, an artillery
engagement began between the armies of Lanrezac and Von Kluck at the
bridges above and below Charleroi.
In the afternoon, that part of Langle de Cary's army to which Horace
and Croquier had irregularly attached themselves moved north. The two
fugitives followed, not because they were wanted, but Croquier had
been told to stay and Horace, although he had been told to go back
with the refugees, had not been served with a point-blank military
order. He decided to chance it, not being punishable for disobedience
as a soldier. The boy was wild to see a battle, if there should be
one, but Croquier forbade his attaching himself to any infantry
regiment. He, himself, had made friends with one of the gunners of a
"Soixante-Quinze" and the battery was delighted with being chosen as
the escort of the "captive Kaiser." The battery-commander took the boy
under his protection, feeling that this was better than setting him
adrift and took on himself the responsibility of seeing that the lad
should be sent on to Paris that night.
"But I won't see the fight, back here with the artillery," persisted
Horace.
A gunner looked round at him with his mouth twisted on one side.
"I hope you're right, my boy," he said. "I'm thinking we'll see too
much of it."
"I don't want to see a lot of battles," reiterated the lad, "I just
want to see one!"
As though his words had conjured it up, with startling suddenness,
rifle-fire broke out near by. It sounded like the crackling of dry wood
in an immense bon-fire. Horace looked up eagerly and listened for the
heavy booming of the artillery. None was to be heard.
"Don't they use big shells, except on forts?" he asked.
"They'll come before long," the gunner answered. "Something's going to
happen. I feel it in the air."
Infantry regiments swung by, marching north, with the quick, French
step.
Though late in the afternoon, the sun was hot, the air sultry. The men
were tired, grim, and silent. The faces were young, but every man had
white eyebrows and either a gray beard or a gray stubbly chin. It took
a moment's thought to realize that this was the effect of dust and not
a regiment of old men. So thick was the dust that even the red of the
breeches was absolutely hidden as the men marched on.
From over the hill, a machine-gun began its continuous death-bark.
"That means close action," said the hunchback. "They must be on us."
Horace felt his desire to see a battle slipping away quite rapidly.
"Probably action against cavalry," Croquier continued. "I hope so.
We're considerably too close for an infantry attack to be comfortable."
Then, with majestic grandeur, the heavy artillery began to speak. As it
opened, the crackling of the rifle-fire spread all round the horizon
and the machine-guns yapped from a hundred points ahead. But, over
all, the great guns boomed. It was as though, in the middle of a fight
between terriers, two lions had sprung into the arena and deafened all
other noise with their roars.
"Clear for action!"
At the words of the battery commander, every man of the crew of the
"Soixante-Quinze" sprang to his post. The gun-numbers, who had been
clustered about the "captive Kaiser," reached their places with a
single spring.
"Attention!"
[Illustration: _French Official Photograph._
FRENCH INFANTRY ADVANCING.]
[Illustration: _From "Illustrirte Zeitung."_
GERMAN INFANTRY ADVANCING.]
Horace watched the deft movements of the artillerists, as they made
sure that the sighting-gear was in place and that the training and
elevating levers were working smoothly.
"You wanted to see fighting, Horace," said Croquier, pointing with his
finger, "well, look!"
In the dull, hot afternoon haze, the boy saw black figures which seemed
no larger than ants run up the hillside, far, far ahead and then
suddenly disappear as they threw themselves down. Jets of up-thrown
earth showed where the shells were striking, and a rising cloud of
dust, like to that raised by a tooth-harrow being dragged over plowed
land on a dry day, told, to accustomed eyes, the terrible tragedy of
the curtain of leaden hail.
"Gun-layers--forward!" came the sharp command.
A pause.
"That twisted willow, two points this side of the church-steeple."
"We see it."
"Use that!"
The commander gave the elevation and the range.
The guns were laid, the breeches returning smoothly to rest with their
burden of death.
"All ready, sir."
"First round!"
Fear lay heavy on Horace, but an overmastering desire to watch the
modern gladiatorial arena, drove him to look.
The firing number bent down to seize the lanyard.
"Fire!"
His experience at Beaufays had taught the boy to put his fingers to
his ears, but it was the first time he had heard a .75, the famous
"Soixante-Quinze" which the French believed--and rightly--to be the
best field-gun in the world. It cracked deafeningly, stridently. The
flame which darted out of the muzzle was long and thin and seemed to
lick the air as though envious of the shell's flight. The smell of
the powder was acrid and bitter, somewhat like the taste of an unripe
persimmon, Horace thought.
"One thousand, five hundred!" the battery commander called.
And Number One of the gun crew repeated:
"One thousand, five hundred."
"Fire!"
The men worked as in a frenzy, loading, extracting, and loading again.
The shells, twelve to a minute, poured out of the flame-belching muzzle
of the gun.
The gun-crew fell back to mechanical automatic speed, muscle and sinew
moving with the precision of things of steel. Cartridge-cases littered
the ground in irregular piles, smoking for a minute where they fell.
"Cease firing!"
The gunners drew their hands over their foreheads, black with dust and
sweat.
"Hot work!" said one.
On the hillside, far away, the little dots who were men jumped up to
run ahead and then fell to earth once more. Some never rose again.
"Is the enemy on this side of the hill?" Horace asked.
"No," answered Croquier, "on the other side."
"Then the Germans can't see us?"
"No."
"Why, then, do our fellows go ahead in short bursts? If they're not in
sight of the Germans, what difference does it make if they stand up or
lie down?"
"The difference between being shot and not being shot," replied the
hunchback. "A modern rifle, using smokeless powder, will send a
bullet 700 yards with an almost flat trajectory, that is to say, the
bullet does not have to curve upwards much in order to reach its mark.
Therefore every man standing up, within the distance of 700 yards, who
is in line with that bullet, can be hit by it. A man, lying down, can
only be hit by a bullet which is dropping to earth, so that the zone of
danger is low. For example, a man standing at 1000 yards range is in a
danger zone 65 yards wide, within which he will be shot; if lying down,
the danger zone is reduced to 13 yards, or, in other words, he is five
times as likely to be shot when standing up, irrespective of the fact
whether the enemy can see him or not."
The sonorous tumult of the battle increased steadily. The dome of the
sky beat like the parchment of an angry drum. High-explosive shell
and shrapnel was bursting overhead, filling the air with splinters
of shell and bullets. Now and again a clang on the gun-shield of the
"Soixante-Quinze" told of some fragment that would have brought death
to the gun-crew in default of such protection.
Horace, crouched down behind the gun-shield, watched a tall thistle,
swaying in the breeze a couple of arm's-lengths away, and found
himself wondering what would happen to him if he were lying there.
He never saw the answer to his question. Suddenly, the thistle was no
more to be seen, probably cut athwart by a splinter of shell.
In the heat of that August afternoon, Horace shivered. He was not
precisely afraid, his experience in the woods near Embourg had freed
him of fear, but death seemed very near. If this were battle, he had
seen enough.
"Ah!" muttered a gunner, "they're falling back."
The wooded hill became alive with columns of infantry. They broke out
of the woods, some still holding their formations under the orders of
their officers, others scattered and disorganized. The roar of the
artillery took on a wilder howl, as the high-explosive shells gave
place to a larger proportion of the shriller-voiced shrapnel.
"They think they have us on the run," remarked the gunner.
"They have!" said Croquier gravely.
The infantry drew nearer, passing on the road just below the gun
position, stricken, beaten, war-dulled--and dismayed. It does not take
many minutes of fighting in the open against machine-guns to break
the spirit and numb the hope of victory. A machine-gun spitting 600
bullets to the minute, swaying its muzzle from side to side like a jet
of murder, is the material embodiment of the very spirit of slaughter.
These men had seen it and terror had taken up its dwelling in their
eyes. Panic and discipline struggled for the mastery.
But, as always, blood tells. The guns belched death behind them and
carnage rode, shrieking, on the blast, but their officers were there,
cool and masterful. On the very verge of disgraceful rout, the French
steadied to the words of command from leaders whom they not only
admired and respected, but loved.
In spite of the magnificent evidence of courage, Horace groaned.
"We're licked!"
Tattered remnants of troops, wounded, half-delirious, many without
rifle or pack, surged back. The torrent of smitten humanity filled the
road. The weaker were pushed into the ditch. Not a man but had bleared
eyes looking wildly out of sweat-rimmed sockets. The way was littered
with mess-tins, cartridge belts, kepis and broken rifles. But training,
only a little less strong than the instinct of life itself, came to
their aid. The sight of an officer brought the hand to the forehead in
salute, and the gesture brought back the sense of control. Even as the
regiments fled, they reformed.
Horace bit his parched lips.
"Are we going to stay here and be killed?" he cried.
The hunchback, his iron will unmoved by the imminent peril, answered in
a perfectly even tone,
"None of the guns have moved."
Harsh and wild, the air overhead screamed like a living thing. Men
dropped on every side. The road of flight was a shambles.
"Won't they even try to save the guns?" gasped the boy, battling with
panic.
"Second round!" remarked the battery commander, as calmly as though on
maneuvers.
"A man!" declared Croquier admiringly, under his breath.
"But everything's lost!" gasped Horace.
"Is it?" said the hunchback.
"In echelon!" came the order, followed by correction and range for each
gun.
"Eight hundred and fifty!"
"... and fifty!"
"Fire!"
The battery had scarcely fired, the first shell was but half-way on
its mission of revenge, when, as though at a signal, a dozen other
batteries replied.
A cloud of men in iron-gray uniforms topped the hill, met the
concentrated fire of those batteries of seventy-fives and melted into a
gray carpet on the earth which would never stir again.
Sweeping up through the scattered and broken troops, as jaunty and
full of fight as though they had not been marching for hours and had
not encountered the débris of a defeat, came the French reserves. They
cheered as they passed the battery.
"Back us up!" they cried.
"Third round," said the battery commander.
The guns roared again, and under their fire, the Germans broke and
fled, deserting some of their guns. As they wavered and gave way, the
French cavalry, who had been waiting their chance, charged down and
cleared the hillside of the last invader.
"Cease firing!" came the order.
The gunners threw themselves down on the grass to rest.
Then, from the rear, came a new sound, a whip-like crackle, of little
sharp explosions, rapidly coming nearer.
"That's a queer machine-gun," said one of the gunners, listening.
"It's not a gun," put in Horace, whose composure had begun to return
when the cavalry made their triumphant dash, "it's a motor-cycle. I
used to ride one in Beaufays."
The dispatch-rider whizzed by on the road below. The men watched him,
and, ignoring their own dangers, one of the gunners remarked,
"It takes a hero or a fool to risk his neck in that part of the work!"
A dragoon galloped up with orders for the officers of the battery.
"Limber up!"
Instantly all was excitement. The gun was to take up a new position.
The German infantry rush had failed, but the artillery halted not its
tempest of shell.
Three of the horses had been killed. This left only five for the gun.
They strained at their collars, but the wheels had sunk in the soft
soil.
The shrapnel whined murderously. Another horse fell.
"Peste!" cried the hunchback.
He thrust the cage into Horace's hands, ran up to the wheels of the
gun, where two gunners were lifting, shouldered the men aside, stooped
and put his tremendous strength into the heave and the gun jerked
forward.
"Hey, but you are strong!" said the sergeant.
"But yes," the hunchback replied, "I am almost as good as a horse."
The guns moved off at a sharp trot.
Horace and the hunchback jumped on the rear of the ammunition wagon.
They had not gone a hundred yards when a shrapnel bullet struck one of
the gun-drivers in the head and he fell.
The horses commenced to plunge.
There was a moment's confusion, and, before any one could say a word,
Horace had dropped from the wagon, run forward to the gun and leapt on
the plunging horse. Old memories of the ranch came back to him and the
rearing animal quieted at once.
The gun-team trotted on.
The keen eye of the major caught the strange figure on the horse.
"Where do you come from, boy?"
Horace saluted, trying hard to do it with military precision, and
explained.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
"THEY DO NOT PASS!"
"THE VETERAN'S ADVICE."
Two famous pictures by Georges which awoke red-hot interest in France
at the beginning of the war.]
"But you may be shot, there!" the major remarked, in a conversational
tone of voice, as he cantered beside the gun-team.
"If you'll excuse me, sir," said the boy, "but I'm in no more danger
than the rest of us."
"But that of course!"
"It is 'that of course' for me, too, sir, if you'll let me," Horace
said.
The major smiled under his grizzled mustache and galloped on.
The road was cut into deep ruts and great care was needed in driving,
for the ditches were filled with wounded. To lighten the loads, the
gunners ran alongside the guns and ammunition wagons. Darkness fell
over the scene. The battle came to a lull. Night covered the slaughter.
Never in his life before had Horace been so glad to see the dark.
The boy's first battle was over.
None of the gun crew, now, rode on the limbers. Every available point
on which a man could lie or sit was crowded with wounded. Many of the
wounds were terrible, but few of the sufferers complained.
One man was lifted off, dying, as the battery stopped for a moment.
"Is it the end?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so, my boy," said the major.
"My mother wished to give a son to France. Tell her she is victorious!"
and he died.
Said another, when the surgeon told him that one leg would have to be
amputated,
"Only one, my doctor? Then France has made me a gift of a leg. I was
willing to give her both."
The battery passed on through the village. There were no cries of
welcome. The women gave food to the soldiers, all silently. With a
noble restraint, moreover, none of the women raised a word of blame.
The men drove through with hanging heads, downcast, humiliated by the
mute reproach in the eyes of the villagers, who knew they were being
abandoned to their fate by their own army, which was powerless to aid
them. The morrow would bring ruin, brutality, and massacre.
It was late in the evening before the battery halted and Horace took
his turn in watering the horses and doing the chores of a driver
attached to a gun. Croquier, in a manner attached to the battery, felt
he could be of principal service in trying to secure information. When
he returned, his expression was full of concern.
"What's happened?" Horace asked sleepily.
The reply came like a shot from a gun,
"The Germans have reached Charleroi!"
Horace pondered for a minute to think what this might mean, then raised
himself on his elbow, suddenly wide-awake.
"That smashes the corner!" he cried. "They've pierced our line! The
whole strategy is gone!"
"Not quite," said the hunchback grimly, "but unless something happens
to-morrow, it will be smashed."
Therein, Croquier was right. The next day, Saturday, August 22, Von
Buelow attacked Charleroi in full strength. The two main bridges east
and west of the city, at Chatelet and Thuin, fell under the impact
of the combined light and heavy field howitzers, and, before noon,
Charleroi was in German hands. Von Buelow thrust swiftly round the
eastern end of the Fifth French Army, in order to roll up its flank and
force it into the arms of Von Kluck for annihilation.
"Unless something happens to-morrow!" Croquier had said.
That something did happen.
The Chasseurs d'Afrique, Turco and Zouave troops which had been
detached from the Fourth Army to help the Belgians at Namur, arrived
unexpectedly in Charleroi during the middle of the engagement. They
were too late to keep the Germans from entering the city, but not
too late to drive them out again, not too late to put a spike in Von
Buelow's plan to flank the Fifth Army.
In all the history of modern war, there has never been more savage
street-fighting, hand to hand, tooth and claw, sword and bayonet, than
in Charleroi. The Germans were more than five to one, but they could
not stand cold steel. The onslaught of the French colonials was a spume
of wrath that the invaders dared not face. They fled like gray rats.
Then, upon doomed Charleroi, crashed the full force of the German field
artillery. Church steeples and foundry chimneys fell like dry sticks
before a whirlwind's blast, factories crumbled into ruin under the
disintegrating effects of high explosive shells, burying French and
Belgian defenders in the ruins. The blue sky overhead was gray with the
web of flying steel, the gutters of the streets ran red.
Trebly reënforced, the Germans charged Charleroi again. Here were no
modern tactics, here was no battle born in the military schoolroom,
but a savage, primitive combat, where each man fired, stabbed, thrust
and clubbed to save himself and to fell his foe. Though outnumbered ten
to one, the French drove the sharp-biting rats, back, back, and back
beyond the outskirts of the town.
Again the artillery deluged Charleroi with an avalanche of shell.
Again the German infantry charged forward, now twenty to one, all
fresh troops, against the wearied but still defiant Turco and Zouave
regiments. The torrent was irresistible and Charleroi was again in
German hands.
This was the moment for which the French artillery had been waiting.
No sooner was Charleroi filled with German troops than the French guns
hammered at the shattered town. The French Army, however, had almost
ignored the development of howitzers, which proved so valuable to the
Germans. They had but few of their 3.9-inch (105 mm.) and 5.7-inch (155
mm. Rimailho) guns available for a reply to the German batteries and
they could not retake the town. About midnight, the city burst into
flames.
That same Saturday had been one of disaster, also, for the Fourth
Army, though in a lesser degree. Horace had partaken in the retreat
from Givet, though, naturally, he did not know the character of the
engagement, the night before. All next morning he stayed by the
battery, acting as a driver, but the battery was not in action more
than an hour. The army suffered heavily, but retreated in good order,
the line stiffening, and holding the Germans in check. The battery
slept that night on heaps of straw in a little chapel.
A dispatch-rider on a motor-cycle whizzed by. He was traveling thirty
or forty miles an hour on a road which was nothing more than a series
of holes and ruts. A few guns fired from time to time, but the air
reverberated with the grumbling breathing of that master of modern
war--petrol.
At half-past two o'clock the sergeant came.
"Get up there, Battery Two. There's coffee ready outside."
The little red lamp over the altar in the chapel burned steadily and
comfortingly; the red camp fires in the village streets wavered in the
chill air of the early morning. A heavy dew had fallen. The German guns
were beginning to speak in the distance, but, as it seemed, sleepily
and sulkily.
"Those are the ten- and thirteen-centimeter pop-guns," said a gunner,
listening.
"And they've all the seventy-sevens in the world, there," added
another, "hear those bunches of sixes coming over!"
The sky was still dark enough to show the distant flashes of the
heavier guns, like the glare from the eyes of a herd of giant beasts of
prey.
As the day lightened, in the half-dawn, the columns of earth upthrown
by the shells seemed like gray specters that appeared for a moment and
then vanished. An 8.2-inch (220 mm.) shell buried itself in the ground
behind the battery, drawn up at the edge of the village, waiting for
orders to take up position, and then, thirty seconds after, exploded
like a miniature volcano.
From the distance came the clacking of the motor-cycle.
"That's the dispatch-rider again," muttered Horace, turning to watch
the flying rider, though his ears warned him of a heavy shell humming
on its way, and a few seconds later, the wind of its passage blew cold
upon his cheek.
The next second, the earth heaved itself up as though a subterraneous
monster were emerging from its lair, and the 10.1-inch (270 mm.)
shell[14] burst with a slow majestic grandeur. A tree near by, at
whose roots the shell had fallen and burrowed, was tossed into the air
like a twig. In the pattering silence as the fragments of the shell and
earth hurled outward, a shrill human scream penetrated.
Through the cloud of salmon-colored dust, with its gagging acrid fumes,
could be seen the motor-cycle. It had plunged off sharply from the
road, jumped a low ditch and was stuck fast in a thick, dense hedge.
The motors were running still. The rider--
Horace jumped from the back of the wheel-horse, followed by a couple
of the gunners, and ran across the road. The lad stopped the motor
while the gunners lifted the cyclist from the saddle. He was terribly
mangled. Horace turned his eyes away, in spite of himself.
"Let me go on!" cried the rider, in a voice so full of agony that it
was almost a screech. "I have dispatches."
They laid him down on the grass by the edge of the road, grass scorched
and crispened by the explosion.
The dispatch-rider looked up and saw the major, who had hurried to the
scene.
"Dispatches! They are life or death for France!" he gasped.
The major stooped down and the wounded man guttered out a few
sentences, while feebly trying to reach the paper he bore.
Life was ebbing fast, but though the man's sufferings must have been
intense, he said no word of himself. Only he cried out again.
"I have dispatches!"
Then the major, in order that the gallant soldier should not die in the
despair of an unaccomplished trust, answered, in a firm tone,
"They shall be delivered. I promise it."
The dispatch-rider smiled through all his pain.
"My France!" he whispered proudly, and tried to salute the officer.
The major laid his hand lightly on the terribly torn body.
"It is not you, who salute me," he said, "but I, who salute you!"
With those words in his ears, the dispatch-rider joined the immortal
host of the dead heroes of France.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] In strict accuracy, this particular type of gun was not in use
until the following spring.