"Per la più grande Italia!" Both officers drank the toast. "To-morrow morning she will be a little greater if the fates are kind," added the captain.
A few minutes later he was lying full-length in a narrow low-sided cage, suspended from a pulley on a thick wire-rope, and being hauled up, with much creaking and strident protest of the pulley-wheel andvicious jerking of the loose rope, to the summit of the cliff.
There he was again in a scene of activity. Broad-shouldered porters in frayed and much-worn Territorial uniforms were bearing away the ammunition boxes that had arrived at the summit, carrying them towards the next station of theTeleferica. The captain followed in their track.
The wire-rope railway ran in short sections from station to station. The gaps between the sections—stretches of comparatively level ground—were filled by the sturdy Alpine porters or, in the case of longer distances, by pack-mules. It was the line of communications to the sector of the front immediately ahead—a front that for the most part of 450 miles is thrust out amid the eternal snows of lofty mountains, along the edges of deep chasms, upon the knife-ridges ofarêtes, across the Arctic desolation of glacier andneve. Over it was transported food and ammunition, light guns, clothing, equipment, all the necessaries for an army in action. By it descended the wounded and the sick, the unwanted stores.
Over section after section the staff-captain passed, ascending higher and ever higher towards his goal. About him rose the great peaks, their robes of snow dazzling white under the sun, splendidly superior to the ragged army of stunted pines that sought to climb them, last lost sentinels straggling half submerged in the snow. Up sheer rock-faces whence birds of prey darted frightened from their nests, over deep chasms where he looked down to a dark profundity of pines and rushing streams, over greatempty fields of snow far away beneath him on which zigzagged long lines of tiny black figures insignificant in the immensity, bearing burdens, upward and ever upward to the regions where snow and ice reign in eternal winter, theTelefericabore him. And ever between the stations there were throngs of busy men, more and more thickly clad at each successive height, who marched under heavy loads.
Always there was a thunder rolling among the mountains. From apparently inaccessible crags dark against the blue, from bare snow ridges, from bleak white wastes where there seemed nothing to detain the eye, spurted little darts of flame, drifted faint smoke. Detonations came in sharp direct cracks, fantastically re-echoed; in a long rumbling angry mutter from the more distant guns. From steep mountain-sides, avalanches, loosened by the concussions, rushed downwards in a white smoke of flying snow, their thunders rivalling the persistent artillery.
The staff-captain dallied not. The bombardment which was to prepare the way for the attack had already commenced. He hurried over the intervening spaces between the wire-rope stations, ascended higher and ever higher in the little dangling cages.
It was afternoon when he reached the limit of theTeleferica—a little snow-covered hut on a desolate ledge. Here, sheeted down from the weather, stacks of supplies awaited further transportation. It was the depot of the quartermaster of the battalion holding the sector. An Alpino soldier, thickly clad, was in waiting to act as guide.
The staff-captain borrowed an alpenstock from the quartermaster and set out. In front of him stretched a great smooth slope of snow that ascended until, high above him, it cut—in sharp contrast—across the blue of the sky. Its whiteness was blinding—the captain fitted on a pair of darkened spectacles. Far across it, dark dots strung like beads on an invisible thread, a company of soldiers was marching in a long single file zigzagged over the snow, climbing to the crest. Nearer at hand to the right, vivid spurts of yellow flame shot out from mounds of snow aligned at a little distance from each other. The detonations of the battery came crisply to the ear, predominant over the rumble and roll and confused echoes of the general bombardment.
As the captain followed his guide up the vast empty slope he heard a long plaintive whining in the air, descending a scale of tones. It had not ceased when over to his right a great fountain of snow leaped skywards from the field—subsided leaving a smother of dirty smoke. The whine finished in an ugly rush, a muffled detonation. Another and another followed, in each case the visible effects of the shell's explosion preceding the noise of its arrival. The Austrian batteries were replying.
The echoing thunder of the bombardment continued all through the dreary fatiguing climb up the slope of snow. The higher peaks began to throw long blue shadows across its whiteness, their argent heads to be suffused with gold.
The ridge to which they climbed was not, after all, the summit. There was another, yet higher, whencesplintered crags serrated the sky. They reached it, stood among rocky pinnacles.
"Attenzione, signor capitano!" said the guide. "It is dangerous to linger!"
Followed by the captain he swung himself round a jut of rock, dropped into a trench excavated deeply in the snow. As they dropped a couple of ugly "phutts!" just above their heads explained the warning.
The Alpino grinned.
"Tirolese!" he said. "We could have gone round by a safer way,signor capitano, but their snipers do not often hit if one is quick."
The deep trench, in cold blue shadow through the gilded surface of the snow, descended the ridge at a gentle angle to the summit. It emerged into another trench that ran roughly parallel to the ridge. This was filled with soldiers who, well below the high parapet, larked with one another, threw snowballs, wrestled and laughed. They were keeping themselves warm during their enforced wait. Every one of them was garbed in a thick white outer coat, with a hood. This was the main trench; these were the men who presently were going to attack.
On steps cut in the parapet stood sentries, peering towards the enemy. The captain ceded to an impulse of curiosity, interrupted his hurried progress towards the battalion advanced headquarters, mounted to the side of one of these sentries, looked out.
About him was a sea of mountains, their lower flanks in cold blue light, their snow-covered peaks orange against the azure sky. Immediately in frontof him were the nearly submerged stakes, the snow-thickened upper wires, of wide entanglements. Beyond them stretched the confused, humped and fractured white surface of a high glacier. On the other side of it was again a snow ridge, and in front of that ridge could be discerned a belt of wire entanglements—the enemy's. In the midst of that entanglement, and all up the snow to the ridge, leaped fountain after fountain of white snow, momentarily brilliant against the sky, falling back into a persistent cloud of dark smoke. The noise of the explosions overwhelmed the roar of the guns behind. The preparatory bombardment was in full swing.
Warfare in the high Alps, with their difficult communications, is necessarily carried on by comparatively small bodies of men. The vast masses of the Western and Eastern fronts could not possibly be maintained among the crags and glaciers of the Italian frontier. Operations by single battalions have all the importance of a divisional attack elsewhere. In this case one battalion had been allotted the task of storming and retaining the enemy's position.
In the little low timber hut sunk beneath the snow-level which was the battalion headquarters, the captain found the colonel commanding the regiment in conference with the local commander and the company leaders. The atmosphere of the cramped interior was thick with the exhalations of the half-dozen men, warm with the heat of a petrol-stove. Capitano Ricci saluted the colonel, was received affably. A pair of keen eyes under level browsappraised him, smiled upon him. For his benefit the colonel recapitulated.
"The plan is briefly this. The artillery is cutting the wire and shelling the trenches immediately in front of us. The Austrians of course will assume that we are going to attack there. They will keep strong reserves at hand in the vicinity—as strong as they can, for we know that there is no very large force opposite. The artillery is making it difficult to bring up the reserves from the rear. All their communications are under fire. Now, we hope that the enemy will concentrate on the damaged trench in front of us. The attack is being made by four companies. One company will advance at 9 p.m., using every precaution not to be seen, and will cross the glacier at an angle to its right. It will fall upon the enemy's trench here"—he indicated a spot on the left of the enemy's position as marked on a plan spread over the table. "It should effect a surprise as the enemy will be far from expecting an attack on a part of the line which has not been bombarded at all. Directly that attack gets into the trench it will turn to the left and continue to press on as hard as possible. If it is progressing well it will send up a green rocket. If it is in difficulties it will send up a red rocket. The second company will advance to within about a hundred metres of the trench that has been bombarded. There it will halt. If matters go as I expect them to, the company on the right will send up a green rocket. Then the Austrians, realising that they have made a mistake, will rush up their men from the damaged sector and put up a resistance.The green light will be followed by a red one which will automatically indicate that the enemy's reserves are engaged.Whenever that red light goes up, whether preceded by a green one or not, the second company will rush the trench in front of it. I hope that it will find it thinly held. The third company will advance, with every precaution, at 9.30 p.m. in support of the second company. The fourth company I will retain as general reserve under my command. The men will be served with hot cocoa at 8.30 p.m. Is that quite clear, gentlemen?"
There was a general murmur of assent. The staff-captain requested permission to advance with the second company, the one that was attacking straight ahead. He received it.
The conference was at an end. Officers went out to give final instructions to their subalterns, came in again, beating powdered snow from their huge fur coats. One and all looked like Polar explorers.
Presently orderlies entered, put a steaming hot meal upon the table. Crowded closely together in the confined space, the officers ate—talking and laughing in high confidence, though in all was the tension which precedes the moment of action. Occasionally during the meal they heard the dull thud of an Austrian shell's arrival. They sat over coffee and smoked.
At last the colonel looked at his watch, stood up.
"It is time to go to your companies, gentlemen. I rely upon all of you as upon myself. I have promised the general that the trench shall be taken—andheld.Per la più grande Italia!And good luck to all of you!"
Some time later the staff-captain found himself by the side of the company commander in the deep trench hewn through the snow. It was night and in the faint reflected radiance of the white walls he could just dimly discern the figures of a long line of men, all garbed in white like himself. Only when their heads moved did they detach themselves from their surroundings. Overhead, above the crisp line of the parapet, the sky was a black background for an immense multitude of strangely brilliant stars. A wind raised little whirls of powdered snow upon the lip of the parapet, blew down into the trench in chill gusts that penetrated the clothing. Not a sound broke the intense silence. It seemed almost that one could hear the crackle of the sparkling vivid stars. The artillery bombardment had long since ceased. There was nothing to suggest that a death-dealing enemy was hidden only eight hundred metres away across the glacier. No sound came from the company that had already advanced. Along the trench was a murmur of conversation, stifled laughter. The company commander stood gazing at the luminous dial of his watch.
9.15! He turned his head, gave a command in a low voice.
"Avanti!"
It was repeated in a low murmur to right and left.
In an instant the company commander, the staff-captain at his side, had sprung up on to the parapet. A bitter wind smote upon them from the darkness,chilling to the bone. The commander glanced back, saw his men like a line of ghosts faint in the dim light, already over the parapet. Then the company commenced to thread its way through the openings previously cut in their own wire.
Stealthily, with the utmost precautions to avoid any unnecessary sound, the company stole across the uneven, heaped and riven snow and ice of the glacier. Under that black night of stars it stretched away white to a near indistinctness. The black masses of the mountains occulting the stars near the horizon were too indefinite to indicate direction. Compass in hand, the commander counted his paces over the snow, his only means of judging distance. For greater accuracy the staff-captain counted also. They spoke not a word. From the obscurity came the whispers of the men as they preserved a rough alignment.
Sliding, stumbling over the inequalities of the frozen surface, they pressed onwards. Somewhere over to their right, higher on the glacier in front of them, the other company was advancing also. There was neither sound nor sign of it. In that dim desolation the staff-captain might with difficulty see his immediate companions. The remainder of the company was swallowed up, was noiseless. It seemed that they were stumbling on alone—on and on, an interminable distance—a few lost figures struggling through an Arctic night.
Suddenly from the blackness straight ahead a beam of intensely white light shot out horizontal with the ground, sweeping it. At its first birth-splutter theyflung themselves upon the snow, lay motionless. The searchlight—a wall of milky radiance to one side of them, suffusing the snow with a pale reflection—then, as it shone full on them, a lane of intolerable light from a blindingly violent source, casting long pitch-black shadows from every hump and hummock of the ice—swept questingly over the glacier, rested doubtfully here and there for a moment, passed on again. The Austrians were on the alert. Cautiously, still repeating to himself the number of paces they had marched when they dropped, the staff-captain glimpsed to right and left of him, looking for the company. The nearer figures he saw, immobile, their white humped backs looking like inequalities of the snow. Those more distant were utterly indistinguishable. The searchlight ceased abruptly. The world was annihilated in a profound blackness where the stars reigned alone.
The two officers rose to their feet, marched onward, resumed their count of the paces. To right and left of them rose ghostly figures, stumbling forward. On and on they went, bruising themselves on sudden obstacles in the black night, the dim uniform whiteness of the snow a bewilderment to the vision. Far away in the mountains of the Austrian position a livid flash leaped to the sky. The reverberation of a gun's discharge rolled heavily and ominously to their ears, the long hurrying whine of a shell approached them. There was an instant of suspense. Were they after all discovered? The shell passed overhead to burst far behind, inaudible. The trench in front was invisible in thedarkness—not a flare, not a rifle-spurt marked its position.
"Seven hundred!" Both officers murmured the number at the same moment.
"Alt!" The whispered order was passed to right and left. The line of ghostly figures sank down, was merged in the ice and snow under the twinkling stars. "Baionett' cann!" There was a faint rustling, a just audible click and clink of bayonets being fixed. Then again silence. The company might have ceased to exist.
The company commander and the staff-captain gazed earnestly to their right front, towards the point where the other company should be attacking. At any moment now! Their comrades had a quarter of an hour's start, had a rather longer, more difficult stretch to traverse. But they should have reached their objective. At this moment stealthy white-clad figures should be crawling among the stakes of the entanglements, snipping at the wire. The two officers stared in the fateful direction—in suspense for the up-flung flare, the shouts and stabs of flame. They stared at complete obscurity.
The searchlight on the trench in front leaped out again to the night, its origin startlingly close. This time as it swept over them, it illumined the short heads of the stakes of the wire entanglement that cast black shadows on the snow which all but submerged them. They were very near. In the intense light the white craters of the shell-holes produced by the afternoon's bombardment, hung with broken wire from supports all askew, gleamed like craters of themoon seen in uncanny proximity. Once more the light swept the glacier, searched doubtfully and was extinguished.
A sudden shot, off to the right front—a swift succession of loud reports—woke wild echoes from unseen cliffs. High up on the glacier, to the left of the Austrian position, flare after flare was flung into the sky, eerily illuminant, plucking strange rock-forms into grotesque relief. There was a fierce shout that rolled in repeated reverberation, a wild tumult of voices in a crisis of human lives, confused shots, isolated and in irregular volleys, the dull thudding explosions of bombs. The first company was attacking.
The two officers lying in the snow gazed with fixed intensity towards the distant fight whose tumult swelled louder and louder with every moment. The wild flares continued to soar into the night, but as yet no rocket—neither red nor green—had leaped up to tell them of its fortunes. The searchlight in front shot out again, swept quickly from side to side. It illumined only the apparently empty, tumbled desolation of the glacier. But it continued to blaze out into the night. Both officers cursed it under their breath. From the trenches they had left, far behind, rifle-shots rang out, the rapid hammering of a machine-gun. The reserve company was indulging in a little tricky target-practice at the searchlight. It was successful. The beam of light vanished.
At the same moment a little spark of trailing fire went rushing skywards from the tumult of the flank attack. It was watched with suspended breath—green or red? The rocket burst into an effulgenceof uncanny green light. The cheer which came from under it was like a ghostly utterance of the cheer repressed on the lips of the men lying prone and motionless on the glacier. The colonel's forecast was sound.
But now the uproar on the flank increased to a wild intensity. Incessant were the sharp detonations of the rifles, the dull thuds of the bombs, mingling with a clamour of voices, shrieks and yells. No more flares went up from the point of conflict, but from all along the trench they soared into the air, symptomatic of the nervousness of the unseen defenders. Machine-guns began to rap out their streams of bullets in blind hazard across the glacier.
The staff-captain pressed himself close to the snow, overhead cracked the rapid bullets of the Austrian machine-guns. The wind that blew over the glacier, ruffling the loose surface snow on to his face, was intensely cold. He felt himself a heavy leaden thing, frozen stiff. Over to his right front the savage noises of the contest, weird and awe-inspiring on this summit of the world that seemed so uncannily near to the flashing stars, swelled hideously cacophonous. Livid bursts of flame flickered and were reflected redly on snow surfaces, on black jagged spires of rock. All along the trench the blindingly white flares leaped upward, another soaring as its predecessor circled down in a parabola that illumined the unearthly confusion of the glacier surface. He seemed a mortal for ever severed from his fellow-men, set down in a world that was primitive Arctic chaos, a paralysed spectator of a contest of fierce mountainspirits fighting over spectral issues, remote from the interests of humanity. A part of his mind harked back to the warm summer, the green fields, the somnolent little town of the valley he had left that morning, and it seemed that those things belonged to another existence. Yet all the time he gazed fixedly to the point whence the next rocket should shoot up. He awaited it as he would await the breaking of a spell.
At last! The trailing spark of fire shot upwards, burst into hanging globes of red light, the snow rosy beneath them. On the instant the company was erect, rushing forward. Leaping, soaring flares from the trench revealed them—white moving figures casting black shadows on the white glacier. Spurts of livid flame, loud quick detonations darted from the white ridge in front. "Avanti! Avanti! Italia! Italia!" shouted the commander. "Italia! Italia! Savoia!" came the fierce antistrophe from the rushing men flinging aside their alpenstocks, brandishing their bayoneted rifles.
They were fighting their way through the deep loose snow, the wreck of the wire entanglements. The staff-captain floundered in a white shell-crater pitilessly illumined by an overhanging flare. The loose ends of the barbed wire tore at his clothes, clutched round his legs like tentacles that would hold him for death to strike. In front the spurts of flame sprang from a wall of darkness above the white, high up. Near him was the company commander, extricating himself from the shell-hole, the last of the wire safely passed. He had a sense of tensely strugglingfigures all around him. He, too, got clear of the wire. He saw the company commander throw up his hands, roll sideways over the snow, still shouting "Avanti! Avanti! Italia!"
He passed him, took up the cry: "Avanti! Avanti! Italia! La più grande Italia!" leading the company that yelled behind him like a pack of mountain wolves. He topped the snow parapet, saw a fierce face glaring up at him in a strange light, a rifle-barrel levelled. His revolver seemed to go off of itself, a sharp autonomous detonation. The face opened a black mouth, sank out of vision.
He sprang into the trench, shouting like a madman. Behind him came the Italians, tumbling down in fierce onslaught. One of them struck him violently on the back as he slid down, knocked him face forward into the snow. As he went he heard a sudden heavy crash, saw a flare of lurid light. A bomb! He picked himself up, only half realising his escape, fired at once into a dark body that wrestled with a white-clad soldier. There was a confusion of blows, of shots, of ear-splitting detonations—shouts, cries, shrieks. At one moment he was in close contact with a panting man, warm breath upon his face, eyes flashing momentarily in the reflection of a rifle-shot, looking into his—the next the man was gone, there was space about him. The confusion cleared—there were bodies underfoot—white-clad men about him shouting unintelligibly. Further along the trench another flare went up.
The staff-captain turned to his right along the trench.
"Avanti! Avanti! A destra! Italia! Italia!"
Behind him followed a rush of fiercely yelling soldiery.
"Italia! Italia!"
They were held up by a traverse of snow-covered rock. A shower of bombs came over it. From a communication trench a mass of dark figures rushed at them, shouting with guttural voices. There was bitter conflict—an ebb and flow in the surge of men.
Then another fierce shout: "Italia! Italia! Savoia!" It was the third company flinging itself in the trench to support the attack.
In the midst of the tumult could be distinguished the scream of Italian shells passing overhead to burst dully on the Austrian avenues of approach.
Suddenly the angry dominant note of the babel of voices changed. Accents of supplication rang out amid the jarring reports: "Kamerad! Kamerad!"
The staff-captain made his way along the deep dark gully in the snow where motionless figures stood with arms stretched up above their heads, rifles at their feet. Ghostly white figures who had retained their weapons joked at them in roughpatois. He met the commander of the company which had attacked upon the flank. The trench was completely captured.
There followed a period of fierce toil in the trench. Under the twinkling stars in the black sky, men delved at the snow of the parados, cutting fire-steps, building it up into a breastwork. Behind them little parties of prisoners, stretcher-bearers and slightly wounded men, stumbled across the broken surface of the glacier. The toiling men gave no thought tothem as they laboured to prepare for the storm which would surely burst.
It came. An ugly hissing rush heralded the first Austrian shell. It exploded with re-echoing violence and a great fount of up-flung snow right on the newly-strengthened breastwork. Another and another followed in a methodical bombardment directed by calmly judicial gunners ensconced in little huts far back in the mountains. Amid the nerve-harrying rush of ever new arrivals, constant explosions, the men toiled frenziedly. Reserves of ammunition were brought up. Machine-guns were put in position. Telephone wires were laid. The fourth company took up a post on the glacier whence it could rush into the trench in a counter-attack if needed.
Suddenly the bombardment ceased. The Alpini crouched behind the parapet, fingering their rifles with gloved hands, peered out into the indistinctness of the snow.
There was a rush of dimly-seen figures from the obscurity, a blaze of fire from the trench. Near the staff-captain the colonel sat speaking into the mouth-piece of a telephone. Rush after rush of hurrying shells passed overhead. Out there on the slope where an Austrian battalion was surging to the attack, shrapnel after shrapnel lit fierce sudden flares in the dark sky. There was again a tumult of voices, a re-echoing chaos of men at strife. It persisted, swelled, died down.
The silence of an Alpine night rested once more over the battleground, was broken only by the roar of a distant avalanche.
In the twilight of approaching morn an officer made his tour of the outposts on what had been Austria.
"Chi va là?" rang the sharp challenge of a white-garbed sentry almost indistinguishable against the snow.
"Italia!" came the proud response.
The first rays of the sun gilded the surrounding summits in the glory of a new dawn.
FOOTNOTES:[2]"For Greater Italy!"—the theme of d'Annunzio's discourses in the doubtful days preceding Italy's intervention.
FOOTNOTES:
[2]"For Greater Italy!"—the theme of d'Annunzio's discourses in the doubtful days preceding Italy's intervention.
[2]"For Greater Italy!"—the theme of d'Annunzio's discourses in the doubtful days preceding Italy's intervention.
PANZERKRAFTWAGEN!
Hauptmann von Waldhofer, Batteriechef of the —th Battery Fussartillerie, stood, helmeted and with buttoned coat, hastily sipping a cup of steaming hot coffee in his dug-out. The electric light, fed from the power-station at Cambrai, miles back, illumined a cosy little apartment. Portraits of the Kaiser and Hindenburg looked stiffly from the matchboard walls in the incongruous company of a medley of coloured pages fromSimplicissimus,Jugend, and, quaintly enough, theVie Parisienne. One side was fully occupied by an enormous large-scale map of the Somme area, divided into numbered squares, heavily scored with blue pencil here and there, across which ran a great curve of red lines massed in intricate pattern—the enemy trenches, and radiating pin-supported coloured threads from a point slightly E.S.E. of Flers fan wise far across the opposing line. The battery-made bed, wiremesh stretched over a wooden frame, sloping slightly from the head downwards towards the foot, on which lay blankets in the disarray of recent use, bulked largely in the apartment. But there was still room for a little table, on which books and writing material were neatly arranged, and two comfortable plush-covered armchairs, besides the camp washstand in which thewater yet steamed. A carpet, mudstained but thick and soft to the tread, covered the floor. In the corner remote from the bed was a stove whose long pipe bent at right angles below the roof and followed it until it ascended the steep stairway at the entrance. The deliberate comfort of the dug-out indicated long residence and the expectation of an indefinite stay. Only the pick and shovel in readiness by the door gave a hint of possible cataclysm.
An orderly stood stiffly at attention while his master finished his coffee. The captain put down the cup.
"What time is it?" he asked sharply.
"A quarter to seven,[3]Herr Hauptmann."
"What sort of morning?"
"Clear, Herr Hauptmann, but very cold."
"Any aeroplanes?"
"None over the battery, Herr Hauptmann."
The captain gave a final glance at himself in the French wall-mirror which hung over the table, touched lightly with his finger-tips the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross upon his breast, as though flickering away a speck of dust, and turned to go. As he went the hanging calendar caught his eye. He tore off the top leaf. The date revealed was September 15th, 1916.
He climbed, with the heavy step of an oldish man, the narrow steep thirty-tread stairway, and emerged into the blue sky of a clear dawn. Around him was bare rolling downlike country. About half a miledirectly in front of him the village of Flers huddled itself among thin trees, its skeletal roofs silhouetted against the blue. Between him and it, but close at hand in a slight depression of the ground, the four 105[4]mm. guns of his battery stood spaced and silent under veils of a gauzelike material tufted with green and brown that blended well with the terrain. Inconspicuous even to a side view, thus covered they were invisible from above. Near them were stacks of ammunition also shrouded. Save for a sentry the guns were deserted. The personnel of the battery was lined up in two queues, where the smoke of a couple of field kitchens betokened breakfast.
The battery dug-outs were excavated in the breast of a slight swelling of the downs, their exits looking N.W., on the flank of the gun positions. The battery commander stood for a moment surveying his little community banded for the service of the four veiled idols lying unhuman and aloof from the domestic needs of men. Then, following his morning habit, he turned and climbed the little rise of ground. On his accustomed view-point he stopped and gazed westward. Before him, clear in the cold early light, the undulating downs gathered themselves into a long, fairly regular ridge, some two miles distant at the summit. A maze of communication and support trenches, just visible, criss-crossed their white lines in the chalk of the hither slope. On the skyline of the ridge directly west a large clump of bare, shell-sharpened tree-stumps broke its emptiness. It wasthe Bois de Foureaux. Further south a similar group of stumps spiked up into the sky—the Bois de Delville.[5]That clean-swept landscape mounting to the desolate skyline was the great dominant fact in his existence. Ever concrete in his mind, it claimed his first waking vision even as the weather horizon claims the first heed of the sailor, or Vesuvius the morning glance of the Neapolitan. This morning it lay cloudless—save for the towering smoke of an occasional shell-burst in the vicinity of the Bois de Foureaux—and strangely quiet. The whole wide stretch would have seemed untenanted by man had it not been for the occasional primrose twinkle of a field-gun's flash. The reports of such guns came in isolated slams at varying intervals. To his right an English shell hurried with a long-drawn whine to burst heavily in Flers. Far back several enemy aeroplanes, tiny specks in the cold blue sky yellowing to the dawn, were dodging like midges among a smother of little brown shell puffs. From overhead came the drone of a German machine. But, by contrast with the frequent uproar which welled out of this region to translate itself into long thick smoke along the ridge, the scene was curiously clear and silent.
Satisfied with his scrutiny, the Captain turned and descended again to the battery position. He passed along the line of dug-outs in the flank of the rise until he reached one whose entrance bore the notice "Fernsprecher und Befehls Unterstand"[6]neatlypainted on a board. The Oberfeldwebel standing at the doorway sprang to a precise, heel-clicking salute. The officer acknowledged it curtly and dived into the dug-out.
Here yellow electric light replaced the cool grey dawn and tobacco smoke floated in long wreaths about the bulb. A young lieutenant, seated at the telephone instrument on the table, took the pipe out of his mouth and rose smartly as his superior entered.
"Good morning, Eberstein," said the captain. "Anything fresh?"
"Nothing, Herr Hauptmann," replied the lieutenant respectfully.
"Nothing of this rumoured attack?"
"Nothing."
The captain seated himself heavily at the table and the lieutenant was at liberty to resume his chair.
"And that frightful bombardment all last night, Eberstein, what do you make of it?" he asked as he lit himself a cigarette.
The mouth under the fair moustache of the young lieutenant twisted into a contemptuous smile.
"Bah! the Englanders want to make us nervous or to persuade themselves that their wonderful 'great push' is not played out."
The captain blew out a long puff of smoke and nodded his head in dubious thought.
"And you think it is?"
Von Waldhofer, a man of somewhat deliberate mental processes, was never unwilling to discussgeneral topics with his subordinate. Eberstein's cheering, if crude, optimism was a welcome stimulus to him.
"Of course it is," said the lieutenant. "Since the first rush they have been practically fought to a standstill. Here it is two and a half months since the offensive began and where are they? Now in one week on the Donajetz we——"
"Yes, I know, Eberstein," his superior interrupted him. "You did wonders. But it is the Somme and not the Donajetz that interests us now." He removed his helmet and passed his hand wearily over a high semi-bald brow. "I wish I could be as certain as you. These Englanders do not know when they are beaten——" He stopped, then broke out again with the over-emphasis of a man wearied with long brooding over a problem. "The colonel was so positive last night! And he had just come from the General Staff. At dawn, he said, we might expect it. I can't make it out. All night that frightful bombardment, obviously preparation. Then this quiet! I feel something is coming." He shook his head. "We are much too near in this position."
"If they come, so much the better!" cried Eberstein. "We will annihilate them. But I do not for a moment believe——"
He was stopped by a heavy distant roar that commenced with the suddenness of a thunderclap and continued in one never-ending roll.
"There we are!" exclaimed von Waldhofer. He looked at his watch. It marked 7 o'clock precisely.[7]
A moment later the telephone bell rang in an excavated offshoot of the main dug-out. The orderly on duty there answered the call. "Message from the observation officer!" he announced in a loud voice. Eberstein picked up the receiver lying on the table in front of him.
"Yes?"
"Intense artillery fire all calibres upon entire sector. Whole front being heavily bombarded. Infantry attack expected momentarily."
Eberstein repeated the message, and ere he had finished the battery commander had sprung to the door of the dug-out, shouting his orders. He heard them megaphoned on by the sergeant-major above. Out there in the first rays of the sun the four squat idols had shaken aside their veils, lay surrounded by tensely waiting acolytes. The moment for their dread speech was at hand.
In the electric-lit dug-out the two officers sat silently listening to the distant storm. It rolled in one unnerving continuous thunder. Not their duty was it to reply. They were detailed for barrage upon a particular sector. But near at hand the heavy detonations of guns told off for counter-battery work followed one another ever more quickly. Near at hand, too, came the long whine and crash of the English counter-battery shells hurled in reply.
Again the bell rang and again the telephone orderly called out. "Speak to battalion commander,[8]please!"
This time von Waldhofer picked up the receiver himself.
"Ja, ja!We are all ready!" he said. "Yes. It is coming this time. No. No further message. Oh, yes, we are in communication. No? Have you heard anything definite? No. I wonder if there's any truth in it? Good-bye." He put down the receiver and turned to Eberstein, stopping for a moment to listen to the roll of the hostile bombardment.
"That old story again![9]You remember we heard it before the first of July? Some wonderful invention the Englanders are supposed to have for annihilating us all. I wonder if there's anything in it?"
The lieutenant laughed mockingly.
"The Englanders invent anything? Not they! Besides, I don't believe in the possibility of any new invention that can revolutionise war. Just think! Here have all the nations of the world been fighting for two years, and what new inventions have we seen? None! There have been perfections and the rediscovery of old methods—that's all. What is the Zeppelin but a perfected Montgolfier? It is neither the first nor the only dirigible even! Poison gas and liquid fire—what are they but the stinkpots and Greek fire of the middle ages, rediscovered and brought up to date? There is nothing, can be nothing really new!"
Von Waldhofer shook his head.
"You are very positive in all your ideas, Eberstein. I don't know. The English do get hold of new things sometimes—it is true that generally they leave it to us to make use of them. But these rumours are so persistent! They are vague, I admit. Yet where there is so much smoke there is generally a fire. We are very close here. Just listen to that bombardment!"
For a moment or two both officers sat silent again, listening to the roll of awful menace. Then von Waldhofer shouted an order to the telephonist.
"Get through to the observation officer!"
Almost immediately the orderly called out:
"Speaking, Herr Hauptmann!"
Von Waldhofer picked up the receiver.
"What is happening?"
"The bombardment is continuing," came the reply. "Much damage is being done to the trenches. Some sectors are almost obliterated. My wire has already been cut twice."
"No infantry attack?"
"Not yet. This is evidently preparatory."
"Keep me informed," said von Waldhofer, and put down the receiver. He turned to Eberstein. "Well, we shall soon see."
"There will be nothing," replied the lieutenant with his contemptuous laugh. "I should like to bet on it. If there were a patent way of breaking down trench lines, it would not be the Englanders who invented it. It would be we Germans!—--"
"Hush!" said von Waldhofer. "Listen!"
The roll of the hostile artillery ceased as though controlled by a single volition, remained silent for a few seconds and then, with one thunder-surge of sound, recommenced.
"The barrage has lifted!" cried von Waldhofer. He raised his voice to be heard by the Oberfeldwebel who waited megaphone in hand, his legs visible halfway down the dug-out steps. "All ready, sergeant-major?"
"All ready, Herr Hauptmann," replied the tranquil voice of the N.C.O.
The telephone bell rang again in the dug-out.
"Message from observation officer!" proclaimed the orderly.
Von Waldhofer snatched up the instrument.
"Yes?"
"Barrage!"
"Fire!" shouted von Waldhofer to the Oberfeldwebel.
Eberstein looked at his watch. The hour was 7.20.
As though the commanding officer had pressed an electric firing-button, the four heavy crashes of his guns followed, merging into each other, renewed in a never-ending chain of detonations as fast as the crews could load, relay and fire. A constant stream of 4.2" shells was rushing from the battery to fall in a narrow area at the predetermined range. But loud as were the violent concussions of the guns close at hand, they were but one element in the chaos of frenzied sound that had leaped from the whole countryside at the moment of their first report.Every German battery was firing at its maximum intensity. On the background of the dull continuance of the English guns danced the rapid reports of the quick-firers at full pressure of urgency, and surged ponderously the gruff double-roar of the howitzers, and the sharper, louder crash of the heavies, blended without a moment's interval into one unceasing peal. The rifle-fire from the trenches was inaudible, swallowed up.
Von Waldhofer sat with one telephone receiver pressed to his ear. Eberstein picked up the other. They heard the observation officer's voice, faintly.
"What?" shouted von Waldhofer into the instrument.
"Something is coming—something strange—I cannot see well, there is so much smoke—something—slow and crawling—a machine—firing—more—schreckliche——!" The voice ceased abruptly.
Von Waldhofer and his lieutenant looked at one another.
"The wire has gone!" cried Eberstein. He had to shout to be heard in the din.
"Let us hope it is only that," replied his chief. Both strove deliberately to ignore the fear in the forefront of their minds. Von Waldhofer shouted loudly into the telephone: "Kurt! Kurt! Are you there?"
There was no answer.
Outside the dug-out the battery was still firing furiously, would continue to do so until it received fresh orders. The general uproar had abated not at all, had if anything intensified. Into the welter ofsound came a familiar, heart-stopping, hissing rush followed by a loud crash. Another and another and another swooped down on the heels of the first. An English 60 pr. battery was searching for their position. But the two officers, fascinated by the mysterious distant menace that was crawling into their world, did not hear and gave no thought to the shells. Once more von Waldhofer shouted into the telephone "Kurt! Kurt!" Still there came no answer. The eyes of the two men met.
"What can it be?" demanded Eberstein impatiently. "Is he dreaming?"
"Perhaps the wire has been cut close here," said his chief, resolute like a good soldier to allow no disturbing speculations in this battle crisis. He shouted an order to the Oberfeldwebel.
The telephone bell rang sharply.
"Order from the battalion commander," announced the telephonist.
Von Waldhofer was already listening.
"Yes?"
"Feindliche Panzerkraftwagen[10]übersteigen die Schützengräben Punkt C 32 d 4.1. Sofort Feuer dagegen mit aller Kraft eröffnen!" ("Enemy armoured motor-cars are crossing the trenches at point C 32 d 4.1. Open heaviest possible fire upon them immediately!")
The battery commander sprang to a little table, outspread with a large-scale map upon which layprotractor and dividers. A second or two of hasty calculation and he shouted his orders to the Oberfeldwebel.
"Cease fire! All guns 20 degrees more right! With percussion! Left half at 3150 metres! Right half at 3100 metres! Forty rounds battery fire!"
He heard them repeated in stentorian tones through the Oberfeldwebel's megaphone. The rapid detonations of the guns ceased. There was a pause, a few seconds only. Then the voice of the sergeant-major announced.
"All ready!"
"Fire!"
Again the fury of the guns burst forth.
"Panzerkraftwagen!" said Eberstein. "But surely armoured cars cannot cross wire entanglements and trenches! There is a mistake somewhere."
"There is no mistake that something has gone wrong and that we are without observation," returned von Waldhofer irritably, indisposed to abstract argument just then. The orderly had once more failed to elicit any response from the observation officer. "Take a couple of men and a new instrument, follow the wire along as far as possible, get into a good position for observing, and open up communication with the battery. No, wait a moment!" The telephone bell was ringing again.
"Message from battalion commander," said the orderly.
"Yes?" von Waldhofer spoke into the instrument. "I am firing on them now. No. I am without observation. Five minutes ago. Really? Whatare they? Not ordinary cars? Something quite new? Herr Gott, this is serious! Yes. Yes. I quite understand. I am not to retreat while I have ammunition. Good. You may rely on us. We shall stand to the last man.Für Gott und Kaiser! Lebewohl!" He put down the receiver and stood for a moment in deep thought, his hand pressed to his high bald brow. Then he shook himself alert. He turned to Eberstein. "Hurry!" he said irritably. "Everything is at stake!" The lieutenant sprang up the stairway and vanished.
Von Waldhofer put on his helmet and gave a last order to the telephonist before he followed his subaltern.
"Ring up Captain Pforzheim. Tell him to send up every available round as quickly as possible. Urgently required!"
Then he also ran up the narrow stairway into the bright morning light.
"Two telephonists, all necessary instruments, with me into flank observing station at once!" he shouted to the sergeant-major.
He went swiftly towards the battery. The last gun had just finished its allotted ten rounds. They lay now in their wide-spaced row, smoke upcurling from their muzzles. Their attendant crews stood, coatless, mopping the sweat on their brows. Far and near the thunderous uproar of the battle swelled; it seemed louder than ever now that he had come from the dug-out into the open air. The English batteries had lengthened their range. As he walked he glanced at Flers. It was whelmed in fumes. Explosion uponexplosion leaped up among the huddled houses in the trees, fragments, timbers, earth-clods momentarily poised upon a dome of dark smoke. White shrapnel puffs sprang incessantly into existence above the roofs. He heard the hissing rush of an approaching shell without faltering in his pace, so preoccupied was he with the urgency of the moment. He saw the quick upspout of smoke; the heavy metallic crash came to his ears. He noted only that it was well behind the battery. His eyes were fixed on the officer with the guns.
"Oberleutnant Schwarz!" he called, stopping suddenly some twenty yards from the battery.
The long-coated, helmeted lieutenant stiffened as though galvanised, walked smartly up to him, saluted, and waited rigidly for his orders. Oberleutnant Schwarz, a young freckled-face fellow, set the pattern for discipline in that battery. The commander noted the punctilious attitude without his wonted inward smile. The occasion had found the man.
"Schwarz, communication with the forward officer is interrupted. Eberstein has gone to re-establish it if possible. I am going into the flank observing station. Orders will come from there. Put the Einjähriger into the telephone dug-out. The situation is critical. Something has gone wrong. A new kind of armoured car has broken through the trench-line. They must be stopped at all costs. The orders from the battalion commander are formal. The battery will not retire while it has ammunition. I have ordered up every available round. The battery willmaintain its position,whatever happens, while it has a man and a shell. Is that clear?"
Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted in precise parade-ground fashion.
"Quite, Herr Hauptmann," he replied unemotionally.
"If I become a casualty the command devolves upon you," continued von Waldhofer. "Remember these armoured cars are your target, wherever they can be fired on. Use direct laying if you get the opportunity." A flight of shells burst in a succession of heavy crashes on the swelling ground to his right. He glanced at them. "Keep a couple of groundmen going over the wire to the flank observing station. Here, two of you!" he shouted suddenly to some mounted N.C.O.'s who at that moment trotted up to the battery with a string of ammunition limbers. Upon his sign one of them dismounted. The captain swung himself into the vacated saddle. Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted once more. Accompanied by the other N.C.O. the battery commander set off at a hard gallop, up the rising ground into the welter of dark smoke from the just-burst shells.
The flank observing station was a splinter-proof dug-out on a little knoll some 500 yards away to the left flank of the battery. It had been constructed in prevision of the unexpected. Von Waldhofer spurred towards it now at the top pace of his horse. Despite many shell-bursts, on the ground and in the air, he reached it safely. Leaping to earth, he threw the reins to his follower and sent both horses back. Then he dived into the dug-out.
Both telephonists were there awaiting him. The large-scale map was pinned out on a board, instruments upon it. The range-finder stood by the observation-slit. One of the orderlies was testing the telephone communication to the battery. Von Waldhofer pulled his glasses out of their case, pressed himself against the observation-slit and looked out.
Directly in front of him the bare ground with many minor undulations rose steadily to the shattered silhouette of the Bois de Foureaux on the skyline. But no longer was the view clear as when he last had gazed on it. Over all lay a haze which the early morning sun was powerless to penetrate. In the foreground and wide to right and left in the middle distance spurted and twinkled the primrose flashes of the guns, more rapidly multiplied than any eye could count. On the ridge the smoke lay thick, bellying in dark masses over the tree-stumps of the wood, poised on the horizon in tall, heavy-headed columns like elm trees in full foliage. In the air long bands of white shrapnel smoke reached out and clung to each other in a lazy drift, while among them the large dead-black bursts of heavy high-explosive shrapnel appeared suddenly, darted a head from the round nucleus and then unfolded themselves slowly and snakily earthward. Between him and the ridge the whole wide amphitheatre was being thickly sown with English shells. Near and far the smoke-columns shot incessantly into the air. Over the road from Flers to the Bois de Delville, which crossed his view at right angles, the white shrapnel puffs clustered inever-renewed groups. Over all, English aeroplanes in scores flitted to and fro, daringly low yet apparently unchallenged. No longer did this arena appear untenanted. In every part there was movement and confusion of Lilliputian figures. Far away three tiny ammunition wagons raced towards a battery. Closer at hand, grey-clad infantry dashed in sections along the shell-swept road from Flers. They tugged low bomb-carts on long hand-ropes. He knew, subconsciously, that they were going to reinforce the great trench-line that stretched east and west from Martinpuich to Lesbœufs. Further afield other bands of grey midgets, scarcely visible, were rushing forward. Everywhere from the rim of battle-pressure grey figures were filtering in ragged streams down towards the lower ground. A long way off, on that rim, his glasses revealed a nodal point of confusion. He focussed on it. There were tiny grey figures grouped, in quick movement to and fro. Little smoke-dots were all round them. Then the confusion cleared. He saw darker figures, running forward, the twinkle of sun on a distant bayonet. For a moment he held them under view anxiously. Then with an impatient movement he swept his glasses round. Not there was the target that he sought.
Suddenly he arrested his sweep. To his left, much closer to him than he had been looking, a field battery topped a little rise, retiring at full gallop among a welter of shell-smoke. It passed down below his vision. His glasses remained steadily focussed on the rise over which it had come, fascinated by the abnormality, expectant of the cause.
It appeared. Slightly to the right of the course of the retreating battery, something emerged over the crest—something slow, ponderous, shapeless—drawing itself up. The silhouette of a gun projecting from its flank barred the sky. Swiftly he replaced his glasses by the range-finder. As he twisted the thumbscrews that brought the inverted vision into juxtaposition with the normal, he saw a group of grey soldiers surround the monster, hurl little puffs of smoke at it. He saw the gun slue, spit, saw soldiers who waved white rags tripping over those already fallen. The double visions met, he read the range. The thing drew itself up, turned slightly, creeping on its belly, snout in the air, like an uncouth saurian from the prehistoric slime. It was moving more quickly than he at first realised. In another instant he had taken the angle to the aiming post, plotted another, and was shouting orders to the telephonist.
"All guns 28·3 degrees left! Right half-section No. 1 gun 980 metres, No. 2 gun 960 metres! With percussion! one round! Fire!"
Through the range-finder he saw the burst of the two shells at the same moment that the detonations of the guns came to his ears. One fell full in the midst of the group of grey soldiery, whelmed them in black smoke. The other burst beyond. The thing paused not nor hurried. At an even pace it drew its low bulk along, dipped now for the descent.
"Right half-section 970 metres! Left half-section 960 metres! With percussion! Twenty rounds battery fire! Fire!"
Spout upon spout of black smoke heralded therapid explosions of the guns. The monster was blotted out. Feeling like one engaged in a struggle with a creature born not in our time and space, of another world, von Waldhofer prayed for a direct hit. The smoke cleared. He looked for what should be its ripped and stationary bulk. It was not there. Only the grey bodies of the dead lay under the drifting fumes. The thing had passed onward, dipped into the hollow, out of sight.
He was suddenly aware that the enemy shell-fire, always heavy, had increased in intensity. The smoke-spouts shot up more numerously, grouped themselves more densely. Gradually they extended to new areas, abandoned those already covered. He realised in a flash that the monster was moving behind its special barrage, aeroplane directed from above. He shouted fresh orders, altering the range. Blindly he hurled his shells into the hollow behind the screen of smoke.
If only he had direct observation! He shouted to the telephonist.
"Ask if communication has been made with Leutnant Eberstein?"
The reply came: "Nothing has been heard of Leutnant Eberstein. Six men have just been killed in the battery."
Von Waldhofer's exclamation expressed annoyance rather than grief at the loss of his subordinate. He turned again to look through the observation slit. There was a blinding crash——
When he came to, he found himself gazing at the blue sky. The deep breath he drew half-choked himwith the fumes of burnt explosive. Shaking in every limb he struggled to his feet. Before him lay his two orderlies, dead. The dug-out was wrecked and roofless. The telephone instrument was strewn in fragments on the floor. He himself was unwounded.
He listened, with a sudden anxiety, for the detonations of his guns. The general uproar had diminished not at all, but the familiar crashes were wanting in the din. How long had he lain there? A wild fear seized him. Scrambling out of the ruined dug-out he ran breathlessly towards the battery.
The enemy fire was as intense as ever. The air was filled with the whine and scream of arriving shells and the heavy crashes of their explosion. From somewhere behind came the rattle of rifles and machine-guns and the dull thud of bombs. Grey-clad men in swarms were running across the open ground athwart his path. He heard them shouting, saw officers gesticulating, realised as in a dream that they were running from the battle. But their fear touched him not. He was enveloped in concern for his beloved battery.
He arrived on the lip of the depression where it lay. In a surge of joy he saw the four guns lying in the familiar places, saw them strangely naked, their protective veils ripped and hurled aside, saw barely sufficient crews standing at their posts, saw the position gashed with shell-holes and littered with prone grey bodies, shattered limbers and dead horses. Even as he looked a salvo of shrapnel burst with deafening cracks above them, and white fleecy clouds floated over the battery. On the near flank, in the positionof command, stood Oberleutnant Schwarz, rigid and precise as on the parade-ground.
Von Waldhofer ran down the slope towards him.
"Schwarz! Schwarz!" he called.
The Oberleutnant advanced to meet him, and, looking calmly at his chief as though his smoke-blackened face and torn clothing were in no way out of the normal, saluted with perfect gravity.
"What has been happening?"
"We have been under heavy fire, Herr Hauptmann. All the wires are cut in many places. The telephone dug-out has been blown in. We are absolutely without communications. The battery has fired whenever there was a chance of a target. Your orders have been obeyed. The battery has stood its ground. We have only three rounds per gun left. I am waiting now for an opportunity to fire."
Listening to the cool report of his subordinate, von Waldhofer recovered his soldierly poise.
"Excellent. You have done well, Schwarz. And the casualties?"
"I regret are heavy." He waved a gloved hand towards the bare dozen standing by the guns. "All that are left."
There was the loud, hissing, nerve-paralysing rush of a shell at arrival. Simultaneously with the shattering crash that leaped from the fountain of black smoke, Oberleutnant Schwarz put his hand to his breast, performed a sharp half-turn and fell—dead.
The reverberation yet rang when a second rush and crash followed the first. A third and fourth shook the air almost too quickly for distinction. Thebattery commander's brain worked with the timeless speed of a great crisis or a dream. In an incomputable fraction of a second he saw the heavy barrage which preceded the slowly crawling monster, was conscious of an aeroplane overhead, saw his opportunity and his plan. He ran towards the guns, shouting: "Lie down! Lie down!" The crews obeyed. Standing among the strewn corpses the guns seemed manned only by the dead. He flung himself prone on the flank of the battery.
Shell after shell swooped and burst on the stretch of ground in front of him. Fed by the constantly spouting black geysers, an ever-thickening dark mist drifted across, blotted out the distance. Through it he saw the freshly thrown edges, brown and white, of unfamiliar shell-craters pocking the undulating ground. The worn, smooth greensward that he had known was being churned into loose clay and chalk, mingled haphazard in their fall from the fierce upward gush. The reiterated crash upon crash of near explosions all but obliterated the far-flung din of the general battle, but through them he caught waves of an appalling uproar welling out of Flers. Slowly, riving, crashing, upspouting its black fountains of smoke and earth, the barrage marched onward, passing across the battery front. Now? Through the mist he saw the directing aeroplane sweep down in front of him, absurdly low, rattling its machine-gun. A group of grey figures sprang up beneath it, both arms high above the head, tumbling among the shell-holes as they ran. A temptation flitted across his mind. One round gun-fire and that aeroplanewas blown to fragments. His lips tightened. He did not move. The battery seemed abandoned by all its dead.
Age-long seconds passed as he watched, peering through the thinning mist. Save for one little group of hasty, self-obliterating men, his immediate front was a deserted waste of churned earth, sloping gently upwards away from him. Once, over the low near skyline seen from his prone position, he thought he saw the spurt of a bomb. But he could not be sure. And a bomb did not necessarily betoken the presence of the—Thing. Yes! What was that?
Something was lifting itself, slowly and with jerks, beyond that near skyline. Ponderously, with the efforts of a limbless living thing, it drew its bulk up, seemed to stop—nosing the air with its blind snout. Now? Not yet! He had only one chance—certainty. The monster moved on again, downward now, lurching and wallowing among the shell-holes like a ship in a heavy sea. He saw the gun swinging in the side-turret as it rolled, the bright-splashed colouring of its flank. It was passing diagonally across his front. It must climb to escape.Now!
He sprang to his feet, shouting with all his lungs.
"To the guns!" The crews leaped up, resuscitated. "Point blank! At the devil! With percussion! All guns! Fire!"
But quick as he and his men had been, the monster was quicker. At his first movement, with a mighty jerk it had slued itself nose-on to the battery. Ere a hand could clutch a firing lever, a storm of smallviolently exploding shells burst right in among the guns, a hail of whip-cracking machine-gun bullets smote on men and metal. Von Waldhofer looked towards the monster lurching heavily towards him, keyed to a frenzy of suspense. To his horror he heard—not four—but one detonation. The Thing dipped. He saw the shell burst—over! He glanced towards the guns in speechless agony. The last gunner was in the act of falling lifeless across the trail.
High-nosed, seeming to smell its enemies rather than see them, like an uncouth blind monster of the rudimentary past, the Thing crept on, its speed as surprising as a reptile's. Viciously, with unallayed suspicions, it spat its missiles at the dead battery. Von Waldhofer stood alone, erect, praying that one might strike him.
Suddenly its fire ceased. He heard the loud clatter of its machinery as it approached, saw the rolling bands on which it moved. He felt that it was coming to mark its triumph over his beloved guns, felt its disdain for him their helpless master. An insane hatred for it gushed up in him, swept away his conscious self. He whipped out his pistol, ran like a madman towards it. He fired again and again, desperately seeking the eye, the brain, like a hunter at bay with a crocodile. But eyeless, featureless, the great snout slanted upwards above him, impenetrable steel plates, on which his bullets flattened.
Blindly the Thing rolled on, ponderous, invulnerable. It bulked huge above him. He heard a shriek. It was his own.
In the bright sunshine of a September morning the strange new monsters crawled over that bare countryside racked with noise and tortured with the leaping, eddying smoke of countless explosions. Behind them crowds of khaki-clad men, hatted with inverted bowls like Samurai, followed cheering and laughing like boys behind a circus-car. They waved newspaper posters, obtained Heaven knows whence, that proclaimed in fat bold type: "Great British Victory!"