The ridge above Flavigny seemed farther off and more inaccessible
than the Great Atlas. One must get off the highroad to some elevated
bit of ground, consult the Doctor's map, and use the Chancellor's
binoculars. Here was a broad track, green with grass grown over
ancient wheel-ruts, leading off upon the left near the crest of the
hill.
The grass-road led to a stone quarry evidently long abandoned.
Skirting the quarry, P. C. Breagh began to climb the grassy scarp of
the hill. It grew steeper, and presently he awakened to the
difficulties of mountaineering with a velocipede, and hid away, with
the intention of retrieving it later, his stolen giant-wheel in a
clump of whins. Alas! its bones, like those of many a sentient
charger, were to rust in rains and blister in suns upon that hillside
of the Meurthe Department for many and many a year.
But not knowing this, P. C. Breagh continued climbing. The ridgy
backbone of turf-jacketed rock proved a natural buttress rising to a
towering platform sparsely grassed, tufted with thorn and
furze-bushes, stunted pines and dwarfy oak-trees, all mossy of stem
and bending to the southwest.
The afternoon sunshine was mellow rather than hot. The pure dustless
air was fragrant with hill-thyme and the meadow-sweet. The
autumn-tinted woods were golden, the hills hathed in clear blue air.
The short herbage clothing the steep was warm, smelling like the
clean hide of some great grass-feeding animal. But for the restless
bickering of trumpets and bugles, and the hellish noise that men with
guns were making, it would have been sweet to be upon the hillside
alone with God.
There was a great view from the summit of the colossal limestone....
You could see that bone of contention, the road leading to Verdun,
stretching away southwestward, a dusty-white ribbon between its lines
of whitening poplars, over the tops of three thick patches of
rusty-golden woodland, and the bushy uplands above Gravelotte and the
church spire of Vernéville.
Dark blue Prussian columns showed on the grassy slopes traversed by
the road that ran from Ars to Bagneux. Near the Quarries of
Rezerieulles was a huge French battery served by red-legged
artillerymen, who ran about like ants. But one could only guess at
the fact that Germany and the Bad Neighbor were locked in the
death-grips over six miles square of battle-ground, the breasting
plumps of trees and towering bush-clad ridges hid so much away.
Ah! but the din was hellish! The woods vomited fire. White balloons
that meant shrapnel-shells described arcs against the hot blue sky,
crossing and recrossing between Rezonville and Gravelotte. When they
fell upon the slippery grass slopes they exploded with fearful
crashes, or became black balls that rolled merrily a while and then
lay quiet. In the grass near them were shapeless lumps and masses,
red and blue, and dark blue; and things with stiff legs sticking up
grotesquely,--the human and equine _débris_ of the morning's fighting
and the battle of the previous day. The soft westerly breeze brought
an ugly taint upon it--less loathsome, but more horrible than the
stench coming from the huge crowded camps of French about St. Quentin
and Plappeville and Les Carrières and St. Eloy.
Two great nations at each other's throats and God's image being
shattered everywhere.... Blizzards of Lead and Iron, Steel and Fire
raging over six miles square of ground. Rivers of blood being poured
out, and yet, in spite of the terrific din of War, the insects and
birds and beasts went about their usual business. The shrill laugh
of the green woodpecker sounded in the copses, the jackdaws were
gossiping as they darted in and out of the clefts of the gray rock.
Two magpies were feeding a late-hatched fledgling among the dwarfy
oak-scrub. Rabbits were showing their white scuts on the edges of
the oak-plantations; and the black and gray humble-bees were buzzing
as they rifled the lavender scabious and the blue corn-bottles and
the late white clover-blooms.
Looking northeast toward the richly wooded hill where perches Fort
Queleu, you could see the French flag flying from there, and from St.
Privat, and the great cathedral of Metz sitting in the lap of the
Moselle. The railway bridge crossing the green, slowly rolling river
above Ars was guarded by Uhlans and Engineers. A stray outpost with
half a field-battery held the island below the bridge, and the rear
squadrons of a brigade of cavalry,--Blue Dragoons, White Cuirassiers,
Uhlans, and Red Hussars, with two batteries of Horse Artillery, were
traversing the iron roadway, the troopers walking beside the horses
as they delicately picked their way along. The Advance was almost
out of sight, the midpost squadrons, remounted, were under the bluff
that runs beside the river road from Ars to below Aney, and with the
Staff of the Cuirassier brigade-commander--the dazzling
scarlet-and-gold of his British Dragoon's uniform contrasting
forcibly with the steel cuirasses and white coats, his red-plumed
silver helmet shining like a miniature sun--rode Brotherton, on a
powerful dappled-gray horse, his handsome face animated and eager as
he replied to some remark addressed to him by the Brigadier.
"Certainly, General, but I should think the sword could never be
superseded. It is, with the bow and spear, the traditional weapon of
war."
"You omit the sling, Colonel!" called out an officer who rode behind
him. And then the scrap of English talk was swamped in the clink of
steel on steel, and the rhythmical trampling of the squadrons that
followed.
P. C. Breagh sat astride of a hot boulder, got out the Doctor's map
and adjusted his cherished binoculars. They showed him the battalion
he had marched with halted by the side of the river road. The bridge
at Pagny showed black with solid columns of infantry, marching eight
abreast; their sun-touched bayonets rippling lines of molten silver,
each helmet-spike a flame of ruddy gold.
The First and Second Armies of United Germany, hitherto compelled to
a strenuous inactivity, were having their innings with a vengeance
now.... Looking Metzwards, one could see that three new lines of
pontoons were thrown across the river below Yaux. A division of the
dark-blue soldiers, with eight squadrons of cavalry and half a dozen
batteries of mounted artillery, were crossing almost within range of
the guns of Mount St. Quentin and Plappeville.
How thickly the white tents were clustered on the green slopes about
both fortresses, Red Breeches swarming in thousands without and
within the walls. Were the gunners of the huge bronze Creusots one
had read of asleep, or lazy or indifferent? The answer came in a
spirt of white vapor from an embrasure of the middle salient of St.
Quentin's long, eight-pointed star. A white-hot flame leaped, a
towering cloud of smoke soared, the roar of a heavy piece of
artillery followed; and a shell of big caliber soared above Moulins
and burst with a shattering explosion and an uprush of flame. Some
Artillery-horses on the nearest pontoon reared, causing a momentary
confusion. Their dismounted drivers quieted them, and the orderly
crossing went on.
_Boom-Boom!_ Crack! A clatter like old iron and a heavy splashing
and pounding of hoofs. St. Quentin had got the range.--No! the
shrapnel shell had been fired from a French field-battery placed
behind earthworks above St. Ruffine. Another shell hit the upper
pontoon and must have smashed it adrift on the landing side. For
dark-blue men and struggling horses were drifting away in the
direction of Metz, and the green river was tinged with red. The
wheelers of a gun-team, dragged downward by the weight attached to
them, had gone to the bottom almost without a struggle. The leaders,
submerged all but their wild heads and splashing fore-hoofs, battled
a while with the current before one of them vanished. The other,
whose rope-and-chain traces had somehow broken, swam gallantly
down-stream, and finally landed on the farther bank.
Further successful practice on the part of France's artillerists may
have followed. At this juncture the attention of P. C. Breagh became
diverted by a curious fact. One of the stone-pines seemed to be
lobbing cones at him. _Whiff-phutt!_ they were dropping on all
sides. Or could it? ... A shrill whistling sound close by his ear,
and a simultaneous bristling of the hairs upon his scalp and body,
told him that it could. The missiles were bullets.
They came, sometimes with a sharp whistle that told of unexpended
energy, at others with the pleasant humming that had at first
attracted him, from the woods that clothed the rising ground
northwest and west of the platform he occupied.
Were they Prussian bullets or French? At the moment, the question
did not interest him. He had pocketed his map and crawling on his
belly towards the southern edge of his platform, looked cautiously
over, meditating descent. Beyond was a sandwich-shaped stretch of
woodland climbing to a ridge; and beyond the ridge a considerable
expanse of bush-dotted common bordered by a stream and speckled with
a few farm-buildings. Quite a decent-sized town lifted its Norman
church-tower nearly a mile away.
The town must be Gorze. Withdrawing his eyes from it, they dropped
into a deep ravine or combe running parallel with the western and
southern sides of the giant limestone rock he sprawled on. Ferns
clothed the deep, hollow sides, and oaks and birches, springing from
the bottom, lifted their bushy heads to the level of his face.
Spying between the branches, he saw that the ravine was full of
garishly colored lights and shadows, and that a steady current of
glittering white metal snaked in and out between the tree-trunks,
setting from west to east.
Bayonets, carried on the shoulders of red-breeched French soldiers,
moving with startling rapidity over the dry leaves at the bottom of
the ravine. A battalion, at least, of wiry, active-looking
Voltigeurs, a mitrailleuse-battery, each weapon hauled by a team of
three gunners.... Green-coated Chasseurs _à pied_, with cocks'
plumes shading the peaks of their _képis_ followed. Would a surprise
be intended for the cavalry-brigades that had crossed the
railway-bridge and ridden eastward down the river-road a few minutes
previously? In that case, what ought one to do?
Even as he asked, the advanced company of Voltigeurs discovered the
Prussian squadrons. He saw a ripple of excitement pass down the
ranks, and the Voltigeurs hurry forward at the double. He saw the
mitrailleuse-batteries string out in line, push up the sloping sides
of the ravine, and scatter among the trees of the plantation that
climbed the ridge. The Chasseurs followed. Their intention was
obvious. They were going to enfilade the passing brigades from the
cover of the wood.
Even as the hounds of hell seemed to break loose, and a sheet of pure
yellow-white flame ran from end to end of the ridge where the trees
ended, the foremost brigade of three Hussar regiments came in view,
trotting over a track that traversed the common, became a road, and
plunged between deep woodlands trending west. His map had told him
that the road led to Rezonville and Gravelotte.
He heard the Prussian trumpets sound through the ear-splitting racket
of the French rifle-fire. He saw through the thin haze of
powder-smoke that hung above the wood, the massed columns split into
squadrons, the squadrons divide into troops, the troops become
units--scattered over the common, galloping to re-form again upon the
road that led through the woods to Rezonville.
They were two of the brigades forming Rheinbaben's Fifth Division,
under Von Barby and Von Bredow, pushing forward to join General von
Redern in the neighborhood of Mac La Tour. Their mobility saved them
from decimation on a grand scale, but they left dead horses and men
and officers dead and wounded. Their retreat was covered by one of
their batteries of Horse Artillery, and two squadrons of a Uhlan
regiment.
In the distance a riderless gray charger galloped wildly over the
common, and a prone figure in a brilliant scarlet coat lay motionless
beside the track. More could not be observed just then, for the
battery of Horse Artillery got into position, while the Uhlans
dismounted and coolly returned with carbine-fire the enfilade from
the chassepots in the wood.
They knelt, and aimed and shot without hurry, and that their shooting
was effective was demonstrated to the noncombatant onlooker, by half
a dozen French Artillerymen and Chasseurs _à pied_ who came
staggering or limping back through the trees, and got down into the
ravine. One toppled over in the act of negotiating the descent, and
lay sprawling and head downward. Another, who kept putting a hand to
his streaming cheek, and taking it away to stare at the blood upon
it, was shot again in a vital part, spun around, and collapsed in a
heap.
"_Lee-ee eer!_"
The wailing, stinging screech of a bullet that had shaved
unpleasantly near was accompanied by the whisking of the sun-scorched
straw hat from the head of P. C. Breagh, and an acute pang of deadly
fear. In the same instant the Prussian field-battery opened fire.
Beyond the trees four puffs of white smoke went up, and four tongues
of bright yellow flame preceded the quadruple crash of the
driving-charges. Lanes opened through the smoke-filled wood, as
trees split into kindling and match-sticks. And heaps of green and
scarlet rags mixed with bloody flesh and shattered bones mingled with
the _débris_. And something that screamed like a devil unchained
hurtled through intervening space, and plumped upon the limestone
platform within a dozen feet of P. C. Breagh. And he shrieked like a
shot rabbit as it exploded with a splitting crash, and a spurt of
evil yellow fire licked the skin off his ear and cheek.
Dazed and stupefied, he removed himself to the farther and more
sheltered side of the platform. But the skirmish was over, the
Voltigeurs and the Chasseurs _à pied_, with what remained of the
mitrailleuse-battery, had not waited for the Uhlans to charge, but
were in pell-mell retreat along the ravine. He heard a French voice
cry savagely:
"We are cut off! These woods are full of Prussians!"
And in the same instant, through the lanes that had been hacked
through the trees, P. C. Breagh saw the Prussian artillery limber up
and ride off with what remained of the Uhlan squadrons. They were
wanted badly at the front, and the infantry-battalions with which P.
C. Breagh had marched from Pont à Mousson, and the Division coming up
from Pagny, striking into the Ars road, had crossed the upper end of
the ravine. The woods were indeed full of them. And they also were
wanted at the front and had no time to spare.
As blue uniforms and crimson faces topped by gilt-spiked helmets came
crowding through the trees, the human river, flowing along the bottom
of the defile, rose in a wave and splashed back upon itself. A
red-haired young officer of Voltigeurs, drawing his sword, used his
voice and the flat of the weapon to restore order; and succeeded so
far that his company formed in straggling lines and began to send in
volleys with the courage of despair. The gunners of the mitrailleuse
that was not smashed by the German shell-fire could not use the piece
effectively at the bottom of the death-trap. They were shot down in
the attempt.
It was cool, scientific slaughter--merciless carnage. Before it
began, a bugle cautioned attention. A flat-capped field-officer
pushed his horse to the front and cried in stentorian tones:
"Aimed fire!"
The men of the chassepot made a gallant stand, but the odds were
heavy, and the men of the needle-gun did not waste a cartridge. They
loaded and aimed, fired and reloaded with machine-like precision.
When the ravine was piled with bloody corpses the bugles sounded
"Cease fire!" Then the Prussian field-officer spurred to the edge of
the red ditch and shouted, looking down:
"Does anyone here ask quarter?"
There was a laugh. But something raised itself from a heap of
bullet-pierced bodies. A rattling voice cried:
"No, dog of a Prussian!"
A revolver cracked, and the speaker, a Voltigeur, was silent. His
voice had sounded like that of an old man, but he wore the epaulettes
of a lieutenant and had carroty-red hair. At this juncture, being
overtaken by grievous retching and vomiting, P. C. Breagh's
observations ceased.
He sat up presently and wiped his dripping neck and mopped his
forehead. It seemed to him that he had seen the whole French Army
exterminated, and yet he had witnessed but a skirmish ending in a
battue. He shook his wits into some order, and controlled the
shuddering that took him in the pit of the stomach, when he
remembered that in common decency he must go to Brotherton.
The descent from the rock-platform was nothing more than a risky
scramble. There were plenty of pine and furze roots and jutting
stones for holding to and clefts into which to thrust one's toes.
But the crossing of that ravine cumbered with bloody corpses was not
effected without revolt of body and soul. He slipped once and fell,
and struggled up all horribly besmeared and sick and shaking. For
the teeth of a head from which the face had been shot away had
snapped close by his ear. Then came the negotiation of the bit of
woodland. Here were more Voltigeurs and Chasseurs _à pied_ dead and
horribly mutilated, and the wreck of a mitrailleuse, with two of its
gunners. Some of these poor wounded creatures were living, and
moaned for water.
"My God!--my God! how I suffer!" one feeble voice kept crying.
Help was coming, for from the direction of the town some carts were
being driven, one by a stout priest in cassock and broad-brimmed hat,
others by men with Red Cross armlets. Black-habited, white-capped
Sisters of Mercy were in these vehicles, with baskets, and pitchers,
and pails.
Seven dead Hussars showing hideously the effect of
mitrailleuse-fire,--a troop-horse or two, and a White Cuirassier shot
through the body and swearing horribly in Low German, were the fruits
of the French enfilade. The fine gray charger had ceased careering;
it grazed peaceably on the short herbage by the track that led over
the common. But Chris Brotherton would never sit in saddle again.
P. C. Breagh turned him gently over and opened the gold-laced scarlet
tunic. There was no blood upon it, only clean dust, nor was the dead
man bruised or cut, having fallen where it was grassy. Upon the
broad breast, under the white cambric shirt, was an oval miniature,
pearl-set, of a pretty woman. The handsome mouth of the wearer
smiled under the drooping fair mustache, and his blue eyes stared
glassily. A bluish hole in the right temple and a bloody clot amid
the hair upon the left side showed where the chassepot bullet had
traversed the brain.
He had been high-handed, arrogant, and domineering, yet the Doctor
and the horsey Towers had seemed to love him. No doubt that woman in
the miniature had held Chris Brotherton dear.... P. C. Breagh would
have left her fair face lying on the yet warm breast of her lover,
but something he saw going on among the casualties upon the edge of
the wood caused him to change his mind.
That gaunt-eyed, greedy-fingered creature in the peasant's blouse and
Red Cross brassard, who glided from body to body, rifling pockets,
should not plunder the Doctor's friend. With this determination,
Carolan took away the portrait, a packet of letters, and Brotherton's
watch and purse and pocketbook, then went forward to meet the
Sisters, just descending from the foremost of the string of peasants'
carts; and began:
"My Sister..."
The nun addressed turned a pleasant face upon him, and cried, with a
sympathetic clasping of her small, work-roughened hands:
"There is blood on Monsieur! ... He has been wounded."
P. C. Breagh explained with economy of words how and where he had
been watching the fighting, and whence came the ugly stains upon his
clothes. The nun glanced toward the wood, paled and shuddered, and
said, making the sign of the Cross upon her starched, cape-like
_guimpe_:
"But all cannot be dead who lie bleeding in that _ravin_--the hollow
where our poor school-children gather primroses in Spring?"
"I think they must be. The massacre was carried out deliberately.
Aimed fire--and there is not a movement, not a groan...."
P. C. Breagh shuddered, remembering the crossing of the red ditch.
The nun said with energy, as other black habits and white guimpes
came crowding round her:
"We must make sure.... Each of those bodies must be lifted and
examined. Life often lingers, sir, when it seems to have fled. We
learned that in the Crimea, when we worked in the base-hospitals of
Kamiesch. What of these things?" P. C. Breagh was holding out the
portrait, purse, pocketbook, and letters. "You wish our Reverend
Mother to take charge of them? They belonged to that dead officer
yonder, in the scarlet uniform? He was English, you tell me--and
you, too, are of England? Very well! It shall be as you wish,
Monsieur--I am free to decide, as I am the Superior of our community.
But I will not receive the valuables at your hands until you have
helped us to clear that terrible ravine. We have only our good
priest with a few peasants and one surgeon, and some charitable
ladies and gentlemen of the Association of the Red Cross. Everyone
else is panic-stricken--they have barricaded themselves within their
shops and houses, and taken refuge in the cellars.... The explosions
of cannon have been so terrible--they are becoming yet more alarming,
and when the fighting came quite close.... Our people are not brave,
you think!--Still, everyone cannot be courageous.... But, Monsieur,
who watches men being killed by guns to gain experience--we may look
to Monsieur for help?"
The clear woman-eyes went to the sun-browned, freckled face of the
young man in the travel-worn, dusty, blood-stained clothing, and
realized that a struggle was going on within him. She said:
"If Monsieur is of necessity compelled to go and leave us, I will
take charge of the dead English officer's property for Monsieur. But
a great blessing is for those who succor the wounded. Our Lord has
always promised this!"
No one listened to the little colloquy; some of the Sisters were
already stooping beside the prone bodies, two of them were helping
the vocal Cuirassier into a cart....
With a great longing P. C. Breagh had longed to make the ridge south
of Flavigny, and see with his own eyes how the Man of Iron comported
himself in the clash of war. And to stay behind and forego the
possibility cost him poignant anguish, but one could not leave the
Superior and the Sisters to dabble unaided in that ghastly ravine.
"I will stay, Reverend Mother," he said, with a bow that might have
been more clumsy. Next moment Brotherton's property had vanished
into a huge pocket hidden somewhere in the black habit. The nun
clapped her hands, crying to the peasants:
"Thanks! thanks! Come, Antoine, Pichegru, Eloi, Bénoit! Dubois! To
the wood, my friends! and the hollow, where are many sufferers! I
place you under the orders of this English Monsieur."