Von Halwig did not extinguish the lamp, but tucked it under his left arm. He lighted a cigarette. With each movement of his body the beam of light shifted. Now it played on the wall, against which Dalroy leaned, because the cramped state of his arms was already becoming irksome; now it shone through the doorway, forming a sort of luminous blur in the rain, now it dwelt on the Englishman, standing there in his worn blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots, an old flannel shirt open at the neck, and a month’s growth of beard on cheeks and chin. The hat which Irene made fun of had been tilted at a rakish angle when the corporal removed the cloak. Certainly he was changed in essentials since he and the Guardsman lastmet face to face on the platform at Aix-la-Chapelle.
But the eyes were unalterable. They were still resolute, and strangely calm, because he had nerved himself not to flinch before this strutting popinjay.
“You wonder why I have brought you in here, eh?” began Von Halwig, in English.
“Perhaps to gloat over me,” was the quiet reply.
“No. Is it necessary? At Aix I was excited. The Day had come. The Day of which we Germans have dreamed for many a year. I am young, but I have already won promotion. I belong to an irresistible army. War steadies a man. But when we reach Oombergen you will be paraded before a crusty old General, and even I, Von Halwig of the staff, and a friend of the Emperor, may not converse with a spy and a murderer. So we shall have a little chat now. What say you?”
“It all depends what you wish to talk about.”
“About you and her ladyship, of course.”
“May I ask whom you mean by ‘her ladyship’?”
“Isn’t that correct English?”
“It can be, if applied to a lady of title. But when used with reference presumably to a young lady who is a governess, it sounds like clumsy sarcasm.”
“Governess the devil! With whom, then, have you been roaming Belgium?”
“Miss Irene Beresford, of course.”
“You’re not a fool, Captain Dalroy. Do you honestly tell me you don’tknow?”
“Know what?”
“That the girl you brought from Berlin is Lady Irene Beresford, daughter of the Earl of Glastonbury.”
There was a moment of intense silence. In some ways it was immaterial to Dalroy what social position had been filled by the woman he loved. But, in others, the discovery that Irene was actually the aristocrat she looked was a very vital and serious thing. It made clear the meaning of certain references to distinguished people, both in Germany and in England, which had puzzled him at times. Transcending all else in importance, it might even safeguard her from German malevolence, since the Teuton pays an absurd homage to mere rank.
“I did not know,” he said, and his voice was not so thoroughly under control as he desired.
Von Halwig laughed loudly. “Almächtig!” he spluttered, “our smart corporal of hussars seems to have spoiled a romance. What a pity! You’ll be shot before midnight, my gallant captain, but the lady will be sent to Berlin with the utmost care. Even I, who have an educated taste in the female line, daren’t wink at her. Has she never told you why she bolted in such a hurry?”
“No.”
“Never hinted that a royal prince was wild about her?”
“No.”
“Well, you have my word for it.Himmel!women are queer.”
“She has suffered much to escape from your royal prince.”
“She’ll be returned to him now, slightly soiled, but nearly as good as new.”
“I wish my hands were not tied.”
“Oh, no heroics, please. We have no time for nonsense of that sort. Is the light irritating you? I’ll put it here.”
Von Halwig stooped, and placed the torch on the broken ladder. Its radiance illumined an oval of the rough, square stones with which the barn was paved. Thenceforth, the vivid glare remained stationary. The two men, facing each other at a distance of about six feet, were in shadow. They could see each other quite well, however, in the dim borrowed light, and the Guardsman flicked the ash from his cigarette.
“You’re English, I’m German,” he said. “We represent the positive and negative poles of thought. If it hurts your feelings that I should speak of Lady Irene, let’s forget her. What I really want to ask you is this—why has England been so mad as to fight Germany?”
The question struck Dalroy as so bizarre—in the conditions so ludicrous—that, despite the cold fury evoked by Von Halwig’s innuendoes with regard to Irene, he nearly laughed.
“I am in no mood to discuss international politics,” he answered curtly.
The other, who seemed to have his temper well under control, merely nodded. Indeed, he was obviously, if unconsciously, modelling his behaviour on that of his prisoner.
“I only imagined that you might be interested in hearing what’s going to happen to your damned country,” he said.
“I know already. She will emerge from this struggle greater, more renowned, more invincible than ever.”
“Dummes zeug!All rubbish! That’s your House of Commons and music-hall patter, meant to tickle the ears of the British working-man. England is going to be wiped off the map. We’re obliterating her now. You’ve been in Belgium a month, and must have seen things which your stupid John Bulls at home can’t even comprehend, which they never will comprehend till too late.”
He paused, awaiting a reply perhaps. None came.
“It’s rough luck that you, a soldier like myself, may not share in the game, even on the losing side,” went on Von Halwig. “But you would be a particularly dangerous sort of spy if you contrived to reach England, especially with the information I’m now going to give you. You can’t possibly escape, of course. You will be executed, not as a spy, but as a murderer. You left a rather heavy mark on us. Two soldiers in a hut near Visé, three officers and a private in the mill, five soldiers in the wood atArgenteau——”
“You flatter me,” put in Dalroy. “I may have shot one fellow in the wood, a real spy, named Schwartz. But that is all. Your men killed one another there.”
“The credit was given to you,” was the dry retort. “But—es ist mir ganz einerlei—what does it matter? You’re an intelligent Englishman, and that is why I am taking the trouble to tell you exactly why Great Britain will soon be Little Britain. Understand, I’m supplying facts, not war bulletins. On land you’re beaten already. Our armies are near Paris. German cavalry entered Chantilly to-day. Your men made a great stand, and fought a four days’ rearguard action which will figure in the text-books for the next fifty years. But the French are broken, the English Expeditionary Force nearly destroyed. The French Government hasdeserted Paris for Bordeaux. And, excuse me if I laugh, Lord Kitchener has asked for a hundred thousand more men!”
“He will get five millions if he needs them.”
Von Halwig swept the retort aside with an impatient flourish.
“Too late! Too late! I’ll prove it to you. Turkey is joining us. Bulgaria will come in when wanted. Greece won’t lift a finger in the Balkans, and a great army of Turks led by Germans will march on Egypt. South Africa will rise in rebellion. Ireland is quiet for the time, but who knows what will happen when she sees England on her knees? Italy is sitting on the fence. The United States are snivelling, but German influence is too strong out there to permit of active interference. And, in any event, what can America do except look on, shivering at the prospect of her own turn coming next? Russia is making a stir in East Prussia and along the Austrian frontier, so poor Old England is chortling because the Slav is fighting her battles. It is to laugh. We’ll pen the Bear long before he becomes dangerous. I am not boasting, my friend. Why shouldI, Captain von Halwig of the Imperial Guard, be messing about in a wretched Flemish village when our men are about to storm Paris in the west and tackle Russia in the east? I’ll explain. I’m here because I know England so well. My job is to help in organising the invading force which will gather at Calais. Ah!that amuses you, does it? The British fleet is the obstacle, eh? Not it. Seriously now, do you regard us Germans as idiots? No; I’m sure you don’t. Youknow. These fellows in Parliamentdon’tknow. I assure you, on my honour, our general staff is confident that a German army will land on British soil—in Britain itself I mean—before Christmas.”
The speaker interrupted this flood of dire prophecy in order to light a fresh cigarette. Then clasping his hands behind his back, and strutting with feet well apart, he said quite affably, “Why don’t you put a question or two? If you believe I’m reciting a fairy tale, say so, and point out the stupidities.”
Now, Dalroy had not been “amused” by the statement that the Germans might occupy Calais. He had already discounted even worse reverses as lying well within the bounds of possibility. He was certain, too, that the Prussian was saying that which he really believed. But his nerves of steel were undoubtedly tried almost beyond endurance at the instant Von Halwig noticed the involuntary movement which elicited that uninvited comment on the British fleet.
As the word “Calais” quitted the Guardsman’s lips, a rope, with a noose at the end, dropped with swift stealth through the open trap-door. Its descent was checked when the noose dangled slightly higher than his head, and whoever was manipulating it began atonce to swing it slowly forward and backward. Von Halwig stood some six or seven feet nearer the wall than the point which the rope would have touched if lowered to the floor, so the objective aimed at by that pendulum action was not difficult to grasp, being nothing else than his speedy and noiseless extinction by hanging.
It is an oft-repeated though far-fetched assertion that a drowning man reviews the whole of his life during the few seconds which separate the last conscious struggle from complete anæsthesia. That may or may not be true, but Dalroy now experienced a brain-storm not lacking many of the essentials of some such mental kinema.
Think what that swinging rope, with its unseen human agency, meant to a captive in his hapless position! It was simply incredible that one man alone would attempt so daring an expedient. Not only, then, were a number of plucky and resourceful allies concealed in the loft, but they must have been hidden there before the detachment of Death’s-Head Hussars occupied the barn beneath. Therefore, they knew the enemy’s strength, yet were not afraid. That they were ready-witted was shown by the method evolved for the suppression of that blatant Teuton, Von Halwig. It was evident, too, that they had intended to lieperdutill the cavalry were gone, but had been moved to action by a desire to rescue the boundEnglishman who was being twitted so outrageously on his own and his country’s supposed misfortunes. Who could they be? Were they armed, and sufficiently numerous to rout the Germans? In any event, how could they deliver an effective attack? He, Dalroy, took it for granted that the imminent strangulation of the Guardsman, if successful, was but the prelude to a sharp fight, since Von Halwig’s death, though supremely dramatic as an isolated incident, would neither benefit the prisoners nor conduce to the well-being of the people in the loft. How, then, did they purpose dealing with a score of trained soldiers, who must already be fidgeting in the rain, and whose leader, the corporal, might look in at any moment to ascertain what was delaying the young staff captain. Discipline was all very well, but these hussars belonged to a crack regiment, and their colonel would resent strongly the needless exposure of his men and horses to inclement weather. Moreover, how easy it was for the corporal to convey a polite hint to Von Halwig by asking if the chauffeur should not turn the car in readiness for his departure!
All this, and more, cascaded through Dalroy’s brain while his enemy was lighting the second cigarette. He was in the plight of a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a sinking craft, who saw a lifeboat approaching, yet dared neither look at nor signal to it. He must bendall his energies now to the task of keeping Von Halwig occupied. What would happen when the noose coiled around the orator’s neck? Would it tighten with sufficient rapidity to choke a cry for help? Would it fall awkwardly, and warn him? Were any of the troopers so placed that they could see into that section of the barn, and thus witness their officer’s extraordinary predicament? Who could tell? How might a man form any sort of opinion as to the yea or nay of a juggler’s feat which savoured of black magic?
Dalroy gave up the effort to guess what the next half-minute might bring forth. Those mysterious beings up there needed the best help he could offer, and his powers in that respect were strictly limited to two channels—he must egg on the talker—he must not watch that rope.
“I am ready to admit Germany’s strength on land,” he said, resolutely fixing his eyes on an iron cross attached to the Prussian’s tunic above the top button. “That is a reasonable claim. How futile otherwise would have been your twenty years of preparation for this very war! But my mind is far too dense to understand how you can disregard the English Channel.”
“TheEnglishChannel!” scoffed Von Halwig. “The impudence of youverdammt——No, it’s foolish to lose one’s temper. Well, I’ll explain. The really important part of theEnglishChannel is about to become German.For a little time we leave you the surface, but Germany will own the rest. Your navy is about to receive a horrible surprise. We’ve caught you napping. While Britain was ruling the sea we Germans have been experimenting with it. Our visible fleet is good, but not good enough, so we allowed your naval superiority to keep you quiet until we had perfected our invisible fleet. We are ready now. We possess three submarines to your one; and can build more, and bigger, and better under-sea boats than you. Do you realise what that means? Already we have sunk four of your best cruisers, and they never saw the vessel that destroyed them. We are playing havoc with your mercantile marine. Britain is girdled with mines and torpedoes. No ship can enter or leave any of your ports without incurring the almost unavoidable riskof——”
A rat scampered across one of the speaker’s feet, and startled him.
He swore, dropped the cigarette, and lighted another, the third. Like every junior officer of the Germancorps d’élite, he had sedulously copied the manners and bearing of the commissioned ranks in the British army. But your true German is neurotic; the rat had scratched the veneer. Meanwhile the rope rose quickly half-way to the trap-door; it fell again when Von Halwig donned the prophet’s mantle once more.
“We can not only ruin and starve you,” hesaid exultantly, “but we have guns which will beat a way for our troops from Calais to Dover against all the ships you dare mass in those waters. We have you bested in every way. Each German company takes the field with more machine-guns than a British regiment. We have high explosives you never heard of. While you were playing polo and golf our chemists were busy in their laboratories.”
His voice rose as he reeled off this litany of war. His perfect command of English was not proof against the guttural clank and crash of German. He became a veritable German talking English, rather than an accomplished linguist using a foreign tongue. Oddly enough, his next tirade showed that he was half-aware of the change. “Old England is done, Captain Dalroy,” he chanted. “Young Germany is about to take her place. The world must learn to speak German, not English. Six months from now I’ll begin to forget your makeshift language. Six months from now the German Eagle will flaunt in the breeze as securely in London as it flies to-day in Berlin and Brussels, and, it may be, in Paris. If I’m lucky, and get through thewar——Gott inHimm——”
With a sudden vicious swoop the noose settled on Von Halwig’s shoulders, and was jerked taut. A master-hand made that cast. No American cowboy ever placed lasso more neatly on the horns of unruly steer. At one instantthe rope was swinging back and forth noiselessly; at the next, rising under the impetus of a gentle flick, it whirled over the Prussian’s head and tightened around his neck. He tore madly at it with both hands, but was already lifted off his feet, and in process of being hauled upward with an almost incredible rapidity. There was a momentary delay when his head reached the level of the trap-door; but Dalroy distinctly saw two hands grasp the struggling arms and heave the Guardsman’s long body out of sight.
An astounding feature of this tragic episode was the absence of any outcry on the victim’s part. He uttered no sound other than a stifled gurgle after that half-completed exclamation was stilled. Possibly, his dazed wits concentrated on the one frantic endeavour—to get rid of that horrible choking thing which had clutched at him from out of the surrounding obscurity.
And now a thick knotted rope plumped down until its end lay on the floor, and a rough-looking fellow, clothed like Maertz or Dalroy himself, descended with the ease and agility of a monkey. He was just the kind of shaggy goblin one might expect to emerge from any such hiding-place; but he carried a slung rifle, and the bewildered prisoner, taking a few steps forward to greet his rescuer, realised that the weapon was a Lee-Enfield of the latest British army pattern.
“’Arf a mo’, sir,” gurgled the new-comer in a husky and cheerful whisper. “I’ll ’old the rope till the next of ahr little knot ’as shinned dahn. Then I’ll cut yer loose, an’ we’ll get the wind up ahtside. Didjever ’ear such a gas-bag as that bloomin’ Jarman? Lord luv’ a duck, ’e couldn’t ’arf tork! But Shiney Black, one of ahrs, ’as just shoved a bynit through ’is gizzard, sothatcock won’t crow agine!”
Dalroy owned only a reader’s knowledge of colloquial cockney. He inferred, rather than actually understood, that several British soldiers were secreted in the loft, and that one of them, named “Shiney Black,” had closed Von Halwig’s career in the twinkling of an eye.
By this time another man had reached the ground. He seized the rope and steadied it, and a third appeared. The first gnome whipped out a knife, freed Dalroy, unslung his rifle, and picked up the electric torch, which he held so that its beam filled the doorway. Man after man came down. Each was armed with a regulation rifle; Dalroy, for once thrown completely off his balance, became dimly aware that in every instance the equipment included bayonet, bandolier, and haversack.
The cohort formed up, too, as though they had rehearsed the procedure in the gymnasium at Aldershot. There was no muttered order, no uncertainty. Rifles were unslung, bayonetsfixed, and safety catches turned over soundlessly.
Conquering his blank amazement as best he could, Dalroy inquired of the first sprite how many the party consisted of, all told.
“Twelve an’ the corp’ral, sir,” came the prompt answer. “The lucky thirteen we calls ahrselves. An’ we wanted a bit o’ luck ter leg it all the w’y from Monze to this ’ole. Not that we ’adn’t ter kill any Gord’s quantity o’ Yewlans when they troied ter be funny, an’ stop us——Here’s the corp’ral, sir.”
Dalroy was confronted by a clear-eyed man, whose square-shouldered erectness was not concealed by the unkempt clothes of a Belgian peasant. Carrying the rifle at “the slope,” and bringing his right hand smartly across to the small of the butt, the leader of this lost legion announced himself.
“Corporal Bates, sir, A Company, 2nd Battalion of the Buffs. That German officer made out, sir, that you were in our army.”
“Yes, I am Captain Dalroy, of the 2nd Bengal Lancers.”
Corporal Bates became, if possible, even more clear-eyed.
“Stationed where last year, sir?”
“At Lucknow, with your own battalion.”
“Well, I’m—beg pardon, sir, but are you the Lieutenant Dalroy who rode the winner of the Civil Service Cup?”
“Yes, the Maharajah of Chutneypore’s Diwan.”
“Good enough! You understand, sir, Ihadto ask. Will you take command, sir?”
“No indeed, corporal. I shall only humbly advise. But we must rescue the lady.”
“I heard and saw all that passed, sir. The Germans are mounted. The lady’s in the car. We were watching through a hole in the roof. The last man remained there so as to warn us if any of ’em came this way. As you know their lingo, sir, I recommend that when we creep out you tell ’em to dismount. They’ll do it like a shot. Then we’ll rush ’em. Here’s the officer’s pistol.Youmight take care of the shuffer and the chap by his side.”
“Excellent, corporal. Just one suggestion. Let half of your men steal round to the rear, whether or not the troopers dismount. They should be headed off from Oombergen, the village near here, where they have two squadrons.”
“Right, sir.—Smithy, take the left half-section, and cut off the retreat on the left.—Ready, sir?—Douse that glim!”
Out went the torch. Fourteen shadows flitted forth into the darkness and rain. The car, with its staring head-lights, was drawn up about thirty yards away, and somewhat to the left. On both sides and in rear were grouped the hussars, men and horses looming up in spectral shapes. The raindrops shone like tinyshafts of polished steel in the two cones of radiance cast by the acetylene lamps.
Dalroy, miraculously become a soldier again, saw instantly that the troopers were cloaked, and their carbines in the buckets. He waited a few seconds while “Smithy” and his band crept swiftly along the wall of the barn. Then, copying to the best of his ability the shrill yell of a German officer giving a command, he shouted, “Squad—dismount!”
He was obeyed with a clatter of accoutrements. He ran forward. Not knowing the “system” perfected by the “lucky thirteen,” he looked for an irregular volley at close range, throwing the hussars into inextricable confusion. But not a rifle was fired until some seconds after he himself had shot and killed or seriously wounded the chauffeur and the escort. For all that, thirteen hussars were already out of action. The men who had crossed Belgium from Mons had learnt to depend on the bayonet, which never missed, and was silent and efficacious.
The affair seemed to end ere it had well begun. Only two troopers succeeded in mounting their plunging horses, and they, finding the road to Oombergen barred, tried to bolt westward, whereupon they were bowled over like rabbits. Their terrified chargers, after scampering wildly a few paces, trotted back to the others. Not one of the twenty got away. Hampered by their heavy cloaks, and taken completelyby surprise, the hussars offered hardly any resistance, but fell cursing and howling. As for the pair seated in front of the car, they never knew why or how death came.
“Now, then, Smithy, show a light!” shouted Corporal Bates. “Ah! there you are, sir! I meant to make sure ofthischap. I got him straight off.”
The torch revealed Corporal Franz stretched on his back, and frothing blood, Bates’s bayonet having pierced his lungs. It were better for the shrewd Berliner if his wits had been duller and his mind cleaner. Not soldierly zeal but a gross animalism led him in the first instance to make a really important arrest. His ghoulish intent was requited now in full measure, and the life wheezed out of him speedily as he lay there quivering in the gloom and mire of that rain-swept woodland road. Seldom, even when successfully ambushed, has any small detachment of troops been destroyed so quickly and thoroughly. This killing was almost an artistic triumph.
“Fall in!” growled Bates. “Any casualties?”
“If there is, the blighters oughter be court-mawshalled,” chirped Smith.
A momentary shuffling of grotesque forms, and a deep voice boomed, “Half-time score—England twenty, Germanynil.”
“Left section—look ’em over, and carry any wounded men likely to live into the barn,” saidthe corporal. “Give ’em first aid an’ water-bottles. Step lively too! Right section—hold the horses.”
This leader and his men were as skilled in the business of slaying an enemy as Robin Hood and his band of poachers in the taking of the king’s venison. Dalroy knew they needed no guidance from him. He opened the door of the car.
“Irene!” he said.
She was sitting there, a forlorn figure huddled up in a corner. The windows were closed. Each sheet of glass was so blurred by the swirling rain that she could not possibly make out the actual cause of the external hubbub. After the hard schooling of the past month she realised, of course, that a rescue was being attempted. Naturally, too, she put it down to the escape of Maertz. Although her heart was thrumming wildly, her soul on fire with a hope almost dangerous in its frenzy, she resolved not to stir from her prison until the one man she longed to see again in this world came to free her.
Yet when she heard his voice the tension snapped so suddenly that there was peril in the other extreme. She sat so still that Dalroy said a second time, with a curious sharpness of tone, “Irene!”
“Yes, dear,” she contrived to murmur hoarsely.
“It’s all over. A squad of British soldiersdropped from the skies. Every German is laid out, Von Halwig with the rest.”
“Von Halwig! Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“I am glad. Arthur, they have not wounded you?”
“Not a scratch.”
“And Maertz?”
“We must see to him. Will you come out? Never mind the rain.”
“The rain! Ah, dear God, that I should feel the blessed rain beating on my face once more in liberty!”
She gave him her hand, and they stood for a moment, peering deep into each other’s eyes.
“Arthur,” she said, so quietly now that the storm seemed to have passed from her spirit, “you have work to do. I shall not keep you. Tell me where to wait, and there you shall find me. But, before you go, promise me one thing. If we fall again into the hands of the Germans, shoot me before I become their prisoner.”
“No need to talk of that,” he soothed her. “We have a splendid escort. In two hours——”
She caught him by both shoulders.
“Youmustpromise,” she cried vehemently.
He was startled by the vibrant passion in her voice. He began then to understand the real horrors of Irene’s vigil, whether in the rat-infested darkness of the barn or the cushioned luxury of the limousine.
“Yes,” he muttered savagely, “I promise.”
Taking her by the arm, he led her to the front of the car, where, clearly visible herself, she would see little if aught of the shambles in rear.
Corporal Bates hurried up.
“Her ladyship all right, sir?” he inquired briskly.
“Yes,” replied Dalroy, conscious of a slight tremulousness in the arm he was holding.
Corporal Bates, though in all probability he had never even heard of Bacon’s somewhat trite aphorism, was essentially an “exact” man. He never erred as to distinctions of rank or title. His salute was the pride of the Buffs. Blithely regardless of the fact that not more than five minutes earlier Captain Dalroy had confessed himself ignorant of Lady Irene Beresford’s actual social status, he alluded to her “correctly.”
“I think, sir,” he rattled on, “that we ought to be moving. It’s quite dark now, an’ we have our route marked out.”
“How?”
“We’ve been directed by a priest, sir. The Belgian priests have done us a treat. In every village they showed us the safest roads. Even when they couldn’t make us understand their lingo they could always pencil a map.”
“I see. Do you follow the road to Oosterzeele?”
“For about a mile, sir. Then we branch off into a lane leading west to the river Schelde, which we cross by a ferry. Once past that ferry, an’ there’s no more Germans.”
“Very well. Have you searched the enemy for papers?”
“Yes, sir. We’re stuffed with note-books an’ other little souveeners.”
“Do your men ride?”
“Some of ’em, sir, but they’ll foot it, if you don’t mind. They hate killing horses, so we turn ’em loose generally. This lot should be tied up.”
“What of the car?”
“Smithy will attend to that with a bomb, sir.”
Bates evidently knew his business, so evidently that Dalroy did not even question him as to the true inwardness of Smithy’s attentions.
The squad cleared up their tasks with an extraordinary celerity. Smithy crawled under the automobile with the flashlight, remained there exactly thirty seconds, and reappeared.
The corporal saluted.
“We’re ready now, sir,” he said. “Perhaps her ladyship will march with you behind the centre file?”
“Do you head the column?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, for a little way, we’ll accompany you. There were three in our party, corporal. One,a Belgian named Jan Maertz, risked death to get away and bring help. I’m afraid he has been captured on the Oosterzeele road by two hussars detailed for the job. So, you see, I must try and save him.”
“
That’s awkward, sir,” said the corporal, as the detachment moved off into the night, leaving the motor-car’s acetylene lamps still blazing merrily.
“Why ‘awkward’?” demanded Dalroy.
“Because, when we fellows met in a wood near Monze, we agreed that we’d stick together, and fight to a finish; but if any man strayed by accident, or got hit so badly that he couldn’t march, he took his chances, and the rest went on.”
“Quite right. How does that affect the present situation?”
“Well, sir,” said Bates, after a pause, “there’s you an’ the lady. Our chaps are interested, if I may say it. You ought to have heard their langwidge, even in whispers, when that—well, I can’t call him anything much worse than what he was, a German officer—when he was telling you off, sir.”
“What did the German officer say, sergeant?” put in Irene innocently.
“Corporal, your ladyship. Corporal Bates, of the 2nd Buffs.”
“I’m sorry to have to interrupt,” said Dalroy. “You must give Lady Irene a full accountsome other time. If you are planning to cross the Schelde to-night there is a long march before you. We part company at the lane you spoke of. I leave her ladyship in the care of you and your men with the greatest confidence. I make for Oosterzeele. If Jan Maertz is a prisoner, I must do what lies in my power to rescue him. If I fail, I’ll follow on and report at Gand in the morning.”
For a little while none spoke. The other men marched in silence, a safeguard which they had made a rigid rule while piercing their way by night through an unknown country held by an enemy who would not have given quarter to any English soldier.
Bates was really a very sharp fellow. He had sense enough to know that he had said enough already. Dalroy’s use of Irene’s title conveyed a hint of complications rather beyond the ken of one whose acquaintance with the facts was limited to an overheard conversation between strangers. Moreover, soldier that he was, the corporal realised that one of his own officers was not only deliberately risking his life in order to save that of a Belgian peasant, but felt in honour bound to do no less.
So Irene was left to tread the narrow path unaided. To her lasting credit, she neither flinched nor faltered.
“We may find it difficult to reach Gand, so I’ll wait for you in Ostend, Arthur,” she said composedly.
Now, these two young people had just been snatched from death, or worse, in a manner which, a few weeks earlier, the least critical reader of romantic fiction would have denounced as so wildly improbable that imagination boggled at it. Irene, too, had unmistakably told the man who had never uttered a word of the love that was consuming him that neither rank nor wealth could interpose any barrier between them. It was hard, almost unbearable, that they should be parted in the very hour when freedom might truly come with the dawn.
Dalroy trudged a good twenty paces before he dared trust his voice. Even then, he blurted out, not the measured agreement which his brain dictated, but a prayer from his very heart. “May God bless and guard you, dear!” was what he said, and Irene’s response was choked by a pitiful little sob.
Suddenly Dalroy, whose hearing was quickened by the training of Indianshikar, touched the corporal’s arm, and stood fast. Bates gave a peculiar click in his throat, and the squad halted, each man’s feet remaining in whatever position they happened to be at the moment.
“Horses coming this way,” breathed Dalroy.
“Right, sir. This’ll be your two, with Jan wot’s-his-name, I hope. Leave them to us, sir.—Smithy, Macdonald, and Shiner—forward!”
Three shapes materialised close to the trio in front. The rain was still pelting down, and the trees nearly met overhead, so the road wasdiscernible only by a strip of skyline, itself merely a less dense blackness.
“Them two Yewlans,” explained the corporal, “probably bringing a prisoner. Mind you don’t hurt him.”
No more explicit instructions were given or needed. Of such material were the First Hundred Thousand.
“Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir,” gurgled Bates. “The horses may bolt. If they do we must stop ’em before they gallop over us.”
Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for his escort’s methods, and he awaited developments now with keen professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke. The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos’s description of the death of Busch: “He squealed like a pig.”
Then came a cockney voice, “Cheer-o, mitey! We’re friends, ammies! Damn it all, you ain’t tikin’ us for Boshes, are yer?”
“Hola!Jan Maertz!” shouted Dalroy.
“Monsieur!”
Irene laughed—yes, laughed, though two menhad died before her eyes!—at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon’s gruff yelp.
“Don’t be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers,” went on Dalroy.
“I thought they were devils from hell,” was the candid answer.
Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Léontine, whose buxom waist he would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.
The soldiers had caught both horses. Dalroy, a cavalryman, had abandoned the earlier remounts with a twinge of regret. He thought now there was no reason why he and Irene should not ride, as the day’s tramp, not to speak of the strain of the past hour, might prove a drawback before morning.
“Can you sit a horse astride?” he asked her.
“I prefer it,” she said promptly.
Bates offered no objection, as long as they followed in rear. The hussar’s cloaks came in useful, and Dalroy buckled on a sword-belt.Jan announced that he was good for another twenty miles provided he could win clear of thosesales Alboches. He was eager to relate his adventures, but Dalroy quieted him by the downright statement that if his tongue wagged he might soon be either a prisoner again or dead.
A night so rife with hazard could hardly close tamely. The rain cleared off, and the stars came out ere they reached the ferry on the Schelde, and a scout sent ahead came back with the disquieting news that a strong cavalry picket, evidently on the alert, held the right bank. But the thirteen had made a specialty of disposing of German pickets in the dark. In those early days of the war, and particularly in Flanders, Teuton nerves were notoriously jumpy, so the little band crept forward resolutely, dodging from tree to tree, and into and out of ditches, until they could see the stars reflected in the river. Dalroy and Irene had dismounted at the first tidings of the enemy, turning a pair of contented horses into a meadow. They and Maertz, of course, had to keep well behind the main body.
The troopers, veritable Uhlans this time, had posted neither sentry nor vedette in the lane. Behind them, they thought, lay Germany. In front, across the river, the small army of Belgium held the last strip of Belgian territory, which then ran in an irregular line from Antwerp through Gand to Nieuport. So the picketwatched the black smudge of the opposite bank, and talked of the Kron-Prinz’s stalwarts hacking their way into Paris, and never dreamed of being assailed from the rear, until a number of sturdy demons pounced on them, and did some pretty bayonet-work.
Fight there was none. Those Uhlans able to run ran for their lives. One fellow, who happened to be mounted, clapped spurs to his charger, and would have got away had not Dalroy delivered a most satisfactory lunge with the hussar sabre.
No sooner had Bates collected and counted sixteen people than the tactics were changed. Five rounds rapid rattled up the road and along the banks.
“I find that a bit of noise always helps after we get the windup with the bayonet, sir,” he explained to Dalroy. “If any of ’em think of stopping they move on again when they hear a hefty row.”
A Belgian picket, guarding the ferry, and, what was of vast importance to the fugitives, the ferry-boat, wondered, no doubt, what was causing such a commotion among the enemy. Luckily, the officer in charge recognised a new ring in the rifles. He could not identify it, but was certain it came from neither a Belgian nor a German weapon.
Thus, in a sense, he was prepared for Jan Maertz’s hail, and was even more reassured by Irene’s clear voice urging him to send the boat.
Two volunteers manned the oars. In a couple of minutes the unwieldy craft bumped into a pontoon, and was soon crowded with passengers. Never was sweeter music in the ears of a little company of Britons than the placid lap of the current, followed by the sharp challenge of a sentry: “Qui va là?”
“A party of English soldiers, a Belgian, and an English lady,” answered Dalroy.
An officer hurried forward. He dared not use a light, and, in the semi-obscurity of the river bank, found himself confronted by a sinister-looking crew. He was cautious, and exceedingly sceptical when told briefly the exact truth. His demand that all arms and ammunition should be surrendered before he would agree to send them under escort to the village of Aspen was met by a blank refusal from Bates and his myrmidons. Dalroy toned down this cartel into a graceful plea that thirteen soldiers, belonging to eight different regiments of the British army, ought not to be disarmed by their gallant Belgian allies, after having fought all the way from Mons to the Schelde.
Irene joined in, but Jan Maertz’s rugged speech probably carried greater conviction. After a prolonged argument, which the infuriated Germans might easily have interrupted by close-range volleys, the difficulty was adjusted by the unfixing of bayonets and the slinging of rifles. A strong guard took them to Aspen,where they arrived about eleven o’clock. They were marshalled in the kitchen of a comfortable inn, and interviewed by a colonel and a major.
Oddly enough, Corporal Bates was the first to gain credence by producing his map, and describing the villages he and his mates had passed through, the woods in which they hid for days together, and the curés who had helped them. Bates’s story was an epic in itself. His men crowded around, and grinned approvingly when he rounded off each curt account of a “scrap” by saying, “Then the Yewlans did a bunk, an’ we pushed on.”
Dalroy, acting as interpreter, happened to glance at the circle of cheerful faces during a burst of merriment aroused by a reference to Smithy’s ingenuity in stealing a box of hand grenades from an ammunition wagon, and destroying a General’s motor-car by fixing an infernal machine in the gear-box. The mere cranking-up of the engine, it appeared, exploded the detonator.
“Is that what you were doing under the car outside the barn?” he inquired, catching Smithy’s eye.
“Yes, sir. I’ve on’y one left aht o’ six,” said Smithy, producing an ominous-looking object from a pocket.
“Is the detonator in position?”
“Yus, sir.”
“Will you kindly take it out, and lay it gently on the table?”
Smithy obeyed, with reassuring deftness.
Dalroy was about to comment on the phenomenal risk of carrying such a destructive bomb so carelessly when he happened to notice the roll collar of a khaki tunic beneath Smithy’s blue linen blouse.
“Have you still retained part of your uniform?” he inquired.
“Oh, yus, sir. We all ’ave. We weren’t goin’ to strip fer fear of any bally Germans—beg pawdon, miss—an’ if it kime to a reel show-dahn we meant ter see it through in reggelation kit.”
Every man of twelve had retained his tunic, trousers, and puttees, which were completely covered by the loose-fitting garments supplied by the priest of a hamlet near Louvignies, who concealed them in a loft during four days until the mass of German troops had surged over the French frontier. The thirteenth, a Highlander, actually wore his kilt!
The Belgian officers grew enthused. They insisted on providing avin d’honneur, which Irene escaped by pleading utter fatigue, and retiring to rest.
Dalroy opened his eyes next morning on a bright and sunlit world. It might reasonably be expected that his thoughts would dwell on the astounding incidents of the past month. They did nothing of the sort. He tumbled outof a comfortable bed, interviewed the proprietor of the “Trois Couronnes,” and asked that worthy man if he understood the significance of a Bank of England five-pound note. During his many and varied ’scapes, Dalroy’s store of money, carried in an inner pocket of his waistcoat, had never been touched.Monsieur le Patronknew all that was necessary about five-pound notes. Very quickly a serviceable cloth suit, a pair of boots, some clean linen, a tin bath, and a razor were staged in the bedroom, while the proprietor’s wife was instructed to attend to mademoiselle’s requirements.
Dalroy was shaving, for the first time in thirty-three days, when voices reached him through the open window. He listened.
Smithy had cornered Shiney Black in the hotel yard, and, in his own phrase, was puttin’ ’im through the ’oop.
“You don’t know it, Shiney, but you’re reely a verdamd Henglishman,” he said, with an accurate reproduction of Von Halwig’s manner if not his accent. “The grite German nytion is abart ter roll yer in the mud, an’ wipe its big feet on yer tummy. You’ve awsked fer it long enough, an’ nah yer goin’ ter git it in the neck. Blood an’ sausage! The cheek o’ a silly little josser like you tellin’ the Lord-’Igh-Cock-a-doodle-doo that ’e can’t boss everybody as ’e dam well likes! Shiney, you’re done in! The Keyser sez so, an’ ’eought ter know. W’y? That shows yer miserable hignorance! The Keyser sez so, I tell yer, so none o’ yer lip, or I, Von Schmit, o’ the Dirty ’Alf-Hundredth, will biff you on the boko. But no! I must keep me ’air on. As you an’ hevery hother verdamd Henglishman will be snuffed aht before closin’-time, I shall grashiously tell thee wot’s wot an’ ’oo’s ’oo. Germany, the friend o’ peace—no, you blighter, not Chawlie Peace, the burglar, but the lydy in a nightie, wiv a dove in one ’and an’ a holive-branch in the other—Germany will wide knee-deep in Belgian an’ French ber-lud so as to ’and you the double Nelson. By land an’ sea an’ pawcels post she’ll rine fire an’ brimstone on your pore thick ’ead. What ’aveyoudone, you’d like ter know? Wot’aven’tyou done? Aren’t you alive? Wot crime can ekal that when the Keyser said, ‘Puff! aht—tallow-candle!’Ach, pig-dorg, I shpit on yer!”
“You go an’ wash yer fice once more, Smithy,” said Shiney, forcing a word in edgeways. “It’ll improve your looks, per’aps. I dunno.”
“That’s done it,” yelped Smithy, warming to his theme. “That’s just yer narsty, scoffin’ British w’y o’ speakin’ to quiet, respectable Germans. That’s wot gets us mad. I’m surprised at yer, Shiney! Yer hattitude brings tears to me heyes. Time an’ agine you’ve ’eard ahr bee-utifullangwidge——”
“I ’ave, indeed,” interrupted Shiney. “Butnone o’ it ’ere, me lad. There’s a reel born lydy in one o’ them bedrooms.”
“I’m not torkin’ o’ the kind of toshyouhunderstand,” retorted Smithy. “I’m alludin’ to the sweet-sahndin’ langwidge o’ our conquerors. You’ve ’eard it hoffen enuf from the sorft mowves o’ Yewlans. On’y larst night you ’eard it spoke by that stawr hactor, Von ’Allwig, of the Potsdam Busters. Yet you can git nothink orf yer chest but a low-dahn cockney wheeze w’en a benefactor’s givin’ yer the strite tip. Pore Shiney! Ye think yer goin’ back to Hengland, ’ome, an’ beauty—to the barrick-square, bully-beef an’ booze, an’ plenty o’ it. Dontcher believe it! Wot you’re in fer is a dose o’ GermanKultur. W’en yer ship’s been torpedoed fourteen times between Hostend an’ Dover, w’en yer sarth-eastern trine ’as bumped inter a biker’s dozen o’ different sorts o’ mines, w’en you’re Zepped the minnit you crorse the Strend to the nearest pub, you’ll begin ter twig wot the Hemperor of All the ’Uns is ackshally a-doin’ of. It’s hall hup wiv yer, Shiney! You’ve ether got ter lie dahn an’ doi, er learn German. Nah, w’ich is it ter be? Go west wiv yer benighted country, or go nap on the Keyser?”
“Torkin’ o’ pubs reminds me,” yawned Shiney. “I couldn’t get any forrarder on that ginger-pop the Belgian horficers gev us. In one o’ them Yewlans’ pawket-books there was five French quid. Wot abart a bottle o’ beer?”
“What abart it?” agreed Smithy instantly.
The soap was drying on Dalroy’s face, but he thrust his head out of the window to look at two of Britain’s first line swaggering through the gateway of the inn, and whistling, “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.” Smith and Shiney were true types of the somewhat cynical but ever ready-witted and laughter-loving Londoner, who makes such a first-rate fighting man. They were just a couple of ordinary “Tommies.” The deadly fury of Mons, the daily and nightly peril of the march through a land stricken by a brutal enemy, the score of little battles which they had conducted with an amazing skill and hardihood—these phases of immortality troubled them not at all. An eye-rolling and sabre-rattling emperor might rock the social foundations of half the world, his braggart henchmen destroy that which they could never rebuild, his frantic gang of poets and professors indite Hymns of Hate and blasphemous catch-words like “Gott strafe England”; but the Smithies and Shinies of the British army would never fail to cock a humorous eye at the vapourers, and say sarcastically, “Well, an’ wot abart it?”
Somehow, on 7th September 1914, there was a hitch in the naval programme devised by theDeutscher Marineamt. The Belgian packet-boat,Princess Clementine, steamed from Ostend to Dover through a smiling sea unvexedby Krupp or any other form ofKultur. Warships, big and little, were there in squadrons; but gaunt super-Dreadnought and perky destroyer alike was aggressively British.
England, too, looked strangely unperturbed. There had been sad scenes on the quay at the Belgian port, but a policeman on duty at the shore end of the gangway at Dover seemed to indicate by a majestic calm that any person causing an uproar would be given the alternative of paying ten shillings and costs or “doing” seven days.
The boat was crowded with refugees; but Dalroy, knowing the wiliness of stewards, had experienced slight difficulty in securing two chairs already loaded with portmanteaus and wraps. He heard then, for the first time, why Irene fled so precipitately from Berlin. She was a guest in the house of a Minister of State, and one of the Hohenzollern princelings came there to luncheon on that fateful Monday, 3rd August.
He had invited himself, though he must have been aware that his presence was an insult and an annoyance to the English girl, whom he had pestered with his attentions many times already. He was excited, drank heavily, and talked much. Irene had arranged to travel home next day, but the wholly unforeseen and swift developments in international affairs, no less than the thinly-veiled threats of a royal admirer, alarmed her into an immediate departure.At the twelfth hour she found that her host, father of two girls of her own age—the school friends, in fact, to whom she was returning a visit—was actually in league with her persecutor to keep her in Berlin.
She ran in panic, her one thought being to join her sister in Brussels, and reach home.
“So you see, dear,” she said, with one of those delightfully shy glances which Dalroy loved to provoke, “I was quite as much sought after as you, and I would certainly have been stopped on the Dutch frontier had I travelled by any other train.”
The two were packed into a carriage filled to excess. They had no luggage other than a small parcel apiece, containing certain articles of clothing which might fetch sixpence in a rag-shop, but were of great and lasting value to the present owners.
At Charing Cross, while they were walking side by side down the platform, Irene shrieked, “There they are!” She darted forward and flung herself into the arms of two elderly people, a brother in khaki, with the badges of a Guard regiment, and a sister of the flapper order.
Dalroy had been told at Dover to report at once to the War Office, as he carried much valuable information in his head and Von Halwig’s well-filled note-book in his pocket. He hung back while the embracing was in progress. Then Irene introduced him to her family.
“You’ll dine with us, Arthur,” she said simply. “I’ll not tell them a word of our adventures till you are present.”
“You could have heard a pin drop,” was the excited comment of the flapper sister when endeavouring subsequently to thrill another girl with the sensation created by Irene’s quiet words. Literally, this trope was not accurate, because the station was noisier than usual. Figuratively, it met the case exactly.
Lady Glastonbury, a gray-haired woman with wise eyes, promptly emulated the action of the British army during the retreat from Mons, and “saved the situation.”
“Of course you’ll stay with us, too, Captain Dalroy,” she said with pleasant insistence. “Like Irene, you must have lost everything, and need time to refit.”
Dalroy murmured some platitude, lifted his hat, and only regained his composure after two narrow escapes from being run over by taxis while crossing Northumberland Avenue.
A newsboy tore past, shouting in the vernacular, “Great Stand by Sir John French.”
Dalroy was reminded of Smithy, and Shiney, and Corporal Bates. He saw again Jan Maertz waving a farewell from the quai at Ostend. He wondered how old Joos was faring, and Léontine, and Monsieur Pochard, and the curé of Verviers.
Another boy scampered by. He carried acontents bill. Heavy black type announced that the British were “holding” Von Kluck on the Marne. Dalroy’s eyes kindled.Hiswork laythere. When the soldier’s task was ended he would come back to Irene.
After a few delightful days in London, Dalroy walked down Whitehall one fine morning to call at the War Office for orders. Irene went with him. He expected to be packed off to France that very evening, so the two meant making the utmost of the fast-speeding hours. The Intelligence Department had assimilated all the information Dalroy could give, had found it good, and had complimented him. As a Bengal Lancer, whose regiment was presumably in India, he would probably be attached to some cavalry unit of the Expeditionary Force; from being an hunted outlaw, with a price on his head, he would be quietly absorbed by the military machine. Very smart he looked in his khaki and brown leather; Irene, who one short week earlier deemedsabots en cuirthe height of luxury, was dressedde rigueurfor luncheon at the Savoy.
Many eyes followed them as they crossed Trafalgar Square and dodged the traffic flowing around the base of King Charles’s statue. An alert recruiting-sergeant, clinching the argument, pointed out the tall, well-groomed officer to a lanky youth whose soul was almost afire with martial decision.
“There y’are,” he said, with emphatic thumb-jerk, “that’s wot the British army will make of you in a couple of months. An’ just twig the sort o’ girl you can sort out of the bunch. Cock yer eye atthat, will you?”
Thus, all unconsciously, Irene started the great adventure for one of Kitchener’s first half-million.
She was not kept waiting many minutes in an ante-room. Dalroy reappeared, smiling mysteriously, yet, as Irene quickly saw, not quite so content with life as when he entered those magic portals, wherein a man wrestles with an algebraical formula before he finds the department he wants.
“Well,” she inquired, “having picked your brains, are they going to court-martial you for being absent without leave?”
“I cross to-night,” he said, leading her toward the Horse Guards’ Parade. “It’s Belgium, not France. I’m on the staff. My appointment will appear in the gazette to-morrow. That’s fine, but I’drather——”
Irene stopped, almost in the middle of the road.
“And you’ll wear a cap with a red band and a golden lion, and those ducky little red tabs on the collar! Come at once, and buy them! I refuse to lunch with you otherwise.”
“A man must not wear the staff insignia until he is gazetted,” he reminded her.
“Oh!” She was pathetically disappointed.
“But, in my case,” he went on, “I am specifically ordered to travel in staff uniform, so, as I leave London at seveno’clock——”
“You can certainly lunch in all your glory,” she vowed. “There’s an empty taxi!”
Of course, it was pleasant to be on the staff, and thus become even more admired by Irene, if there is a degree surpassing that which is already superlative; but the fly in the ointment of Dalroy’s new career lay in the fact that the battle of the Aisne was just beginning, and every British heart throbbed with the hope that the Teuton hordes might be chased back to the frontier as speedily as they had rushed on Paris. Dalroy himself, an experienced soldier, though he had watched those grim columns pouring through the valley of the Meuse, yielded momentarily to the vision splendid. He longed to be there, taking part in the drive. Instead, he was being sent to Belgium, some shrewd head in the War Office having decided that his linguistic powers, joined to a recent first-hand knowledge of local conditions, would be far more profitably employed in Flanders than as a squadron leader in France.
Thus, when that day of mellow autumn had sped all too swiftly, and he had said his last good-bye to Irene, it was to Dover he went, being ferried thence to Ostend in a destroyer.
In those early weeks of the war all England was agog with the belief that Antwerp wouldprove a rankling thorn in the ribs of the Germans, while men in high places cherished the delusion that a flank attack was possible along the Ostend-Bruges-Brussels line.
But Dalroy was an eminently sane person. Two hours of clear thinking in the train re-established his poise. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the destroyer took him below in mid-Channel for a smoke and a drink, and the talk turned on strategy, the soldier dispelled an alluring mirage with a breath of common sense.
“The scheme is nothing short of rank lunacy,” he said. “We haven’t the men, France can spare none of hers, and Belgium must be crushed when the big battalions meet. Germany has at least three millions in the field already. Paris has been saved by a miracle. By some other miracle we may check the on-rush in France, but, if we start dividing our forces, even Heaven won’t help us.”
“Surely you’ll admit that we should strengthen the defence of Antwerp?” argued the sailor.
“I think it impracticable. Liège only held out until the new siege howitzers arrived. Namur fell at once. Why should we expect Antwerp to be impregnable?”
The navy deemed the army pessimistic, but, exactly a month later, the Lieutenant-Commander remembered that conversation, and remarked to a friend that about the middle ofSeptember he took to Ostend “a chap on the Staff who seemed to know a bit.”
It is now a matter of historical fact when Von Kluck and Sir John French began their famous race to the north, the Belgian army only escaped from Antwerp by the skin of its teeth. The city itself was occupied by the Germans on October 9th, Bruges was entered on the 13th, Von Bessler’s army reached the coast on the 15th, and the British and Belgians were attacked on the line of the Yser next day.
Thus, fate decreed that Dalroy should witness the beginning and the end of Germany’s shameless outrage on a peaceful and peace-loving country. On August 2nd, 1914, King Albert ruled over the most prosperous and contented small kingdom in Europe. Within eleven weeks he had become, as Emile Cammaerts finely puts it, “lord of a hundred fields and a few spires.”
Though Dalroy should live far beyond the alloted span of man’s life, he will never forget the strain, the misery, the sheer hopelessness of the second month he spent in Belgium. The climax came when he found himself literally overwhelmed by the host of refugees, wounded men, and scattered military units which sought succour in, and, as the iron ring ofKulturdrew close, transport from Ostend.
With the retreat of the Belgian army towards Dunkirk, and the return to England of such portion of the ill-fated Naval Division as wasnot interned in Holland, his military duties ceased. In his own and the country’s interests he ought to have made certain of a berth on the last passenger steamer to leave Ostend for England. He, at least, could have done so, though there were sixty thousand frenzied people crowding the quays, and hundreds, if not thousands, of comparatively wealthy men offering fabulous sums for the use of any type of vessel which would take them and their families to safety.
But, at the eleventh hour, Dalroy heard that a British Red Cross Hospital party, which had extricated itself from the clutch of the mailéd fist, was even thenen routefrom Bruges to Ostend by way of Zeebrugge. Knowing they would be in dire need of help, he resolved to stay, though his action was quixotic, since no mercy would be shown him if he fell into the hands of the Germans. He took one precaution, therefore. Some service rendered to a tradesman had enabled him to buy a reliable and speedy motor bicycle, on which, as a last resource, he might scurry to Dunkirk. His field service baggage was reposing in a small hotel near the harbour. For all he can tell, it is reposing there yet; he never saw it again after he leaped into the saddle of the Ariel, and sped through the cobbled streets which led to the north road along the coast. The hour was then about six o’clock on the evening of October 13th.
A Belgian staff officer had assured him thatthe Germans could not possibly occupy Ostend until late next day. The Belgian army, though hopelessly outnumbered, had never been either disorganised nor outmanœuvred. The retreat to the Yser, if swift, was orderly, and the rearguard could be trusted to follow its time-table.
Hence, before it was dark, Dalroy determined to cover the sixteen miles to Zeebrugge. The Hospital, which was convoying British and Belgian wounded, would travel thence by the quaint steam-tramway which links up the towns on the littoral. It might experience almost insuperable difficulties at Zeebrugge or Ostend, and he was one of the few aware of the actual time-limit at disposal, while a field hospital bereft of transport is a peculiarly impotent organisation.
Road and rail ran almost parallel among the sand dunes. At various crossings he could ascertain whether or not any train had passed recently in the direction of Ostend, thus making assurance doubly sure, though the station-master at the town terminus was positive that the next tram would not arrive until half-past seven. Dalroy meant intercepting that tram at Blankenberge.
Naturally, the train was late in reaching the latter place, but the only practicable course was to wait there, rather than risk missing it. A crowd of terrified people gathered around the calm-eyed, quiet-mannered Briton, and appealed for advice. Poor creatures! they imposeda cruel dilemma. On the one hand, it was monstrous to send a whole community flying for their lives along the Ostend road; on the other, he had witnessed the fate of Visé and Huy. Yet, by remaining in their homes, they had some prospect of life and ultimate liberty, while their lot would be far worse the instant they were plunged into the panic and miseries of Ostend. So he comforted the unhappy folk as best he might, though his heart was wrung with pity at sight of the common faith in the Red Cross brassard. Men, women, and children wore the badge indiscriminately. They regarded it as a shield against the Uhlan’s lance! Most fortunately for that strip of Belgium, the policy of “frightfulness” was moderated once the country was overrun. So far as local occurrences have been permitted to become known, the coast towns have been spared the fate of those in the interior.
To Dalroy’s great relief, the incoming tram from Zeebrugge brought the British hospital. There were four doctors, eight nurses, and fifty-three wounded men, including a sergeant and ten privates of the Gordon Highlanders, who, like Bates, Smithy, and the rest, had scrambled across Belgium after Mons.