The Austrian commandant’s story of the frightful privations which his
garrison had undergone, stirred all four of the boys deeply. Buck took
Ned to one side and said:
“Did you note all of the awful things that the governor there says
these poor chaps have had to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you say to inviting him on the sly to have one little
square meal with us aboard the _Flyer_ before we leave? Just leave it
to me to make it a Jim dandy! I’d like to feed the whole lot of them if
only we had the victuals.”
“Let’s ask the commandant if he will accept,” said Ned, brightening.
The Austrian listened gravely to their well-meant offer, but the boys
could feel him stiffening.
“You forget, gentlemen, that whatever hardships the soldier of the dual
monarchy may have to suffer, his officers are proud to endure with
him. I thank you for your courtesy, but cannot honorably accept it.”
Many pitiful sights were seen by the Airship Boys on their tour of the
fortress, but none impressed them more deeply than that of a young man
in one of the hospital wards. He was wasted to mere skin and bones with
fever which flamed insanely in his eyes. His feet they had swathed
in great layers of bandages, at the ends of which wooden splints
protruded. All the time in his delirium he would keep whispering in the
most heart-rending accents:
“Ah, Liebchen, dich kann ich nicht mehr gruessen!”
“What is that he keeps saying?” asked Alan of their guide.
“He is speaking of his young bride in Vienna--bemoaning the fact
that he may never see her again. Lieutenant Racoszky here came of
a comparatively poor middle-class family but fell in love with the
heiress of Count Polnychek, one of the most influential noblemen of
Budapest, and the head of one of the oldest families in Hungary. The
girl was a reigning beauty of the fashionable set, but that did not
keep her from falling in love with Racoszky here. He was handsome,
gay, dashing, in those days before the war. So they were married
secretly.
“By and by the old Count found out about it and would not permit
Racoszky to see his girl-wife any more. Then she eloped one night and
they fled together. They settled in a little town not far from Budapest
and were happy. And one day she told Racoszky that she was about to
bear him a child.
“That was one week after war had been declared. Already the Serbs were
across our borders and Montenegro was daily threatening to join them.
The war office was in a panic. All available troops were rushed to the
southern frontier, where we were defeated badly. A second army was sent
and it too met with reverses. Then the Russians began to cross our
northeastern frontier by the millions. Every able-bodied man in the
land was drafted.
“Racoszky here hoped to escape until after his child was born, but
that he was not permitted to do. It was the hard-hearted old count,
her father, who himself told the recruiting officers that Racoszky was
a coward and was trying to avoid his duty. So one day they came and
seized him in the market place as he was coming out of the doctor’s
office.
“‘Come with us. You are called to the colors!’ they told him sternly.
“Racoszky was desperate. He tried to plead off.
“‘Good sirs,’ he pleaded, ‘I am but now come to hasten a doctor to the
bedside of my wife. See, he is running there now. Let me at least wait
until the crisis is past.’
“‘No!’ growled the recruiting sergeant roughly. ‘We have heard all
about you and your trickiness. Come along now before we make you.’
“Then Racoszky became like a madman. He tried to break away from them
and run back to his suffering wife. All in vain. They clubbed him
insensible with their pistol butts, handcuffed him and took him away to
Koloszvar, where the regiments were forming. For whole weeks thereafter
he remained like one distraught. It was then that I first met him and
learned the story. Finally a sort of dreadful calm came over him. He no
longer raved nor wept nor tried to escape. His face lost all expression
and he went methodically about his work like a person in a trance.
“Word had come that his old enemy, the count, had gone for his daughter
and taken her away with him down the Danube to Vienna. All of the idle
rich fled there when they saw there was really danger that the invading
foe might overrun all Hungary.
“Poor Racoszky never has heard from his girl-wife since then. He never
spoke of her to any of us until the delirium of this fever began to
rack him. He became a terrible fighter. His ferocity in hand-to-hand
combats with the Russians was appalling even to us who fought shoulder
to shoulder with him. He was that way at Slovno, on the blood-soaked
field of Lemberg, at Doukle in Galicia, where our great retreat first
began.
“Then we came here to Przemysl, and Racoszky was among the first to
volunteer to be one of the garrison which everybody agreed was doomed
to certain death. I said to him at that time:
“‘Racoszky, my friend, why do you not go on with the main army? They
are falling back upon Vienna, and there maybe you might see your
cherished wife again.’
“He gave me so terrible a look that I never have dared mention the
subject to him again.
“After that the army marched away and left us to our fate. Then came
the Russian hordes, until the whole plain was black with them. They
assaulted, they bombarded, they dug mines, and blood ran as freely
as water. We beat them back. So then they camped all around us here
like so many of their own Siberian wolves, waiting until the poor dog
dropped from hunger and they could rend him limb from limb.
“We of the garrison all suffered cheerfully together. There was very
little grumbling. The commandant’s hair turned white when we served up
the roast flesh of his favorite charger as a delicacy on his birthday.
“Two weeks ago it seemed as if we all were about to starve at last.
Only our spirits remained strong. Racoszky came forward and volunteered
to lead a sortie out into the enemy’s camp if twenty men would follow
him. He promised to bring back food, and did, but he came back with his
legs riddled with bullets. All but two of them who accompanied him fell
somewhere outside there.
“Long before this we had run out of all adequate medical supplies. Our
surgeons could not probe Racoszky’s legs properly to remove but one of
the three bullets which had lodged there. They wanted to amputate, but
he swore that he would kill himself if they did. So there he has lain
ever since, poor fellow, with his wounds festering, and blood poison
getting more assured every day. Always he keeps moaning in that way for
his girl-bride and the baby he has never seen.”
This touching story moved all of the boys profoundly and weighed on
their spirits to such an extent that Alan finally said:
“What do you fellows say to playing the Good Samaritan and taking
Lieutenant Racoszky out of here in the _Flyer_ to some place where he
can get the medical attention that his bravery deserves?”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” answered Bob.
“And I,” echoed Buck. “But where shall we take him?”
Ned spoke up.
“Why not to Vienna, the capital? The very best hospitals and surgeons
in the country are there and--so are his wife and baby. The sight of
them would undoubtedly do him as much good as all of the expert medical
attention he would receive.”
“The very thing! A great idea!” exclaimed the other boys. “But what
about that crabbed old count, her father! Do you think that he will
relent enough to permit Racoszky to see his daughter?”
“That,” said Ned briefly, “is up to us and can, I think, be managed.
Anyway, it certainly is worth the trial. Now let’s go to the commandant
and see if he will permit us to remove the lieutenant.”
The governor, they found, was only too pleased to afford his faithful
officer this unexpected chance of recovery, and helped remove the
invalid to a soft bed they had made ready in the airship’s spare
stateroom.
“By nightfall we shall have him in competent hands there in Vienna,”
said Ned, already at the wheel.
“Good luck and tell them there in the capital that Przemysl still holds
out,” called the commandant.
“No fear that we won’t do that!” the boys cried, and, amid the
increasing whir and roar of the powerful propellers, the _Ocean Flyer_
once more swept up into the sky and out over the great plain where the
Russian encampment lay.
Buck threw a large, black, pear-shaped object overboard and down at the
crowd below waving good-byes.
“Great heavens, what was that? A bomb?” exclaimed Bob, startled.
“No,” Buck replied solemnly, “that was a smoked ham--our last one,
too.”