"Oh, I know!—but I can't," Jeb muttered, despairingly. "Since Barrow told me I had to lug a stretcher I haven't eaten a meal a day, Tim. It isn't sea-sickness, either, for the ocean's like a mill pond; it's just knowing the Medical mortality is heavier than any branch of the service—heavier'n air fighting, even!"
"Thot's right," Tim said thoughtfully. "Medical comes first—fifty-fifty, mind ye; thin the infantry, an' thin the air—or maybe 'tis the artillery; I forget now. But, anyway, thot's w'ot makes it worth a domn, can't ye see, lad? I own thot it don't strike me funny-bone,though. Whin I stand up for to be shot at, I want to do some shootin' meself; I don't want to have me hands glued to no stretcher, an' me heart bleedin' for the poor divil on it, an' let a lot of 'arf-fed outcasts plug me lights out! No, sor! Whin anny lunatic av a Hun pulls his trigger at Tim Doreen it arouses me timper, an' I'd be apt to drop me load an' go back an' take a swat at 'im; thin, like as not, the doctors 'd have me court-martialled!"
"If you hadn't got blown up first," Jeb bitterly replied.
"Now, don't ye go thinkin' 'bout bein' blowed up! 'Tis the worst kind av weed a soldier can smoke!—an' I'm sayin' 'tis been the trouble wid ye, Jeb; ye think too much! Transfer thim thoughts to how quick ye're goin' to blow up the inimies av yer country; thin yell wanst or twict like the ould divil hisself, an' ye'll be itchin' for a scrap so's ye can't sleep! Quit thinkin' thot rot 'bout bein' kilt—which ye can't control in anny case; an' begin thinkin' how ye'll kill a Hun—which yecancontrol! Thot's the creed, as good soldiers sees it!"
"But hell, Tim," he said, with something likea whine, "I can't possibly shut out the dangers! They loom up like mountains."
"Hell yerownself," the sergeant turned on him. "Dangers as looks mountain high ain't no more'n a hill o' beans whin ye git ye're belly on 'em! W'y, look!—me ould fayther, wanst, waked me in the night sayin' as a gang o' burglars was downstairs lootin' the family silver. Well, lad, bein' but half awake I believed 'im, an' the goose flesh growed out on me ar-rms so that—'tis the truth I'm tellin' ye—I plucked enough for a parlor duster! But whin I got downstairs investigatin', the gang was no more'n a loose shutter flappin' in the wind. The burglars was just a noise—d'ye git me? No danger, but a noise—an' w'ot's a noise? Ye see, Jeb, 'twas the wrong kind of thinkin'; an' the wrong kind of thinkin' breeds fear, an' fear shrinks up a man whilst it makes the inimy grow six inches. Put them six inches on yeself, say I, an' let the Boche shrink—which he'll do, too, whin he sees ye've the bigger courage!"
It did not occur to Jeb that this man was doing his very utmost to inspire one spark of the lacking courage; he did not realize thatTim was thoughtfully picking his words, as carefully as though he were telling stories to a little child. Tim would not have been the crack sergeant that he was had Jeb suspected this!
"I can see them shrinking now," Jeb said, with something like a sneer at Tim's assurance. "Why, everybody says they're the finest fighters on earth!"
"Thin iverybody lies, an' 'tis Tim Doreen as says it! There ye go again wid a lot of domn fool thinkin' of w'ot ye got no cause to think. Wasn't I just after tellin' ye there ain't no worse dry-rot for a soldier? The Boche can put up as good a scrap as most, lad, whin they're bunched in a crowd, but take 'em mon for mon an' they ain't no fighters a-tall, a-tall. I ain't denyin' their officers is hep to the game—but thot's just w'ot proves me p'int: for do ye s'pose their fat-headed gineral staff'd be silly enough to march ar-rmy after ar-rmy jam up aginst our strong positions, bunched like a herd o' sheep, if they didn't know the men was too spineless to go into the fray like us, or the British, or the Frinch—which is to say, in open order an' like hell?"
"I don't see how that'll get us anywhere," Jeb remarked.
"'Twill get usiverywhere," Tim replied emphatically. "Didn't it get us as far as we've got, whin we were at our wur-rst, an' thim at their best? An' they was shure a rattlin' ar-rmy thot first year, make no mistake on thot, lad! There was fine steel in 'em, mind ye: the 2nd Bavarian Corps, now, which did me heart good to fight wid!—cruel, unprincipled outcasts, to be shure, an' wid no mercy nor respect for women—still, they was good fighters! But of late the b'ys tells me their whole ar-rmy's been so watered down wid inferior stuff thot ye'd not know it for the same; an' lest they're touchin' elbows an' absorbin' courage w'ot comes from bein' clost, they ain't w'ot ye'd call reliable, anny more. They can't stand the gaff as they wanst could! W'y, I was in at the takin' av wan av their artillery positions on the Somme, lad, an' may I be shot for a spy if we didn't find gunners chained to the wheels! Ye don't need no searchlight to find the answer av thot, do ye now? Their fightin'machineis good, mind ye; but it ain't no more nor less'na red sausage machine whin iverythin's considered! But as for the individual fightin' mon, w'y, he don't grow over there, a-tall, a-tall!"
"That's all very well, Tim, but they kill a lot of our fellows, just the same!"
"Shure, ivery now an' thin wan av the b'ys is sent west; but ye wouldn't have a war all wan-sided, would ye? 'Twould be no war if ye did."
"It's all so horrible," Jeb shuddered. The mention of being "sent west" did not appeal to him since he had learned that it was the Tommy's way of saying that a man had been killed.
"Now, thot's where ye're wrong, lad," Tim straightened up to reach in his breeches pockets for "the makings," but his hand came out empty and he continued: "There's plenty av fun goin' on, an' laughs, too. I mind me wan day whin the '75's was barkin' their throats out an' bein' answered by God knows w'ot mighty ingines av war. We'd been brought up clost an' was lookin' for a rush anny minute, so the men was jokin' for the most part—thot or cussin'; 'tis all the same whin a rigiment feelsgood! I was sint along to help the bombers adjust detonators an' straighten out pins, whin I come on a little cockney lad—timid like yeself, Jeb—holdin' a puddin' an' not knowin' w'ot to do wid it; so I says to 'im:
"'Whin they git clost, now, pull out thot pin, count four, an' let her fly!'
"''Ow let 'er fly?' he asks.
"'W'y, chuck 'er, ye blighter!' says I.
"'But 'ow farst must Hi count four?' he asks agin, lookin' worrit; 's'pose she goes hoff in me 'and?' he says.
"'Well,' says I, 'if she goes hoff in ye 'and, sonny, ye may stop countin'.'
"An', Jeb," the sergeant added, "he laughed so 'twas all he could do to keep from droppin' it; but he got the hang, so help me, an' did a man's work thot day!"
"Oh, I couldn't do anything like that," Jeb cried despairingly. "I just couldn't! The whole idea is horrible! And look at their submarines, all around us everywhere!"
"Well,lookat 'em! Where the divil d'ye see 'em! Has anny wan av 'em been comin' aboard for a nip av grog? There ye go thinkin'wrong again, Jeb; ye make me lose me timper! Haven't we been sailin' right along in a sea as smooth as a lass's cheek, now comin' sivin days? W'y, me b'y, even this ould tub's too fast for 'em!" Tim yawned and rolled over on the deck, where they had been sitting with their backs against a partition wall that, in former days of German ownership, had inclosed the "gesellschafthalle." He searched again through his pockets, and yawned once more, saying: "Shure, an' 'tis a long time gittin' back wid the b'ys! But don't ye worry over w'ot's ahead—wait till it comes clost enough for ye to grab it. Most ivery trouble, lad, dies 'asy whin ye git yer teeth in good, an' shake it wanst or twict! Give me a bit av the makin's, Jeb; I left me own below!"
Jeb passed over his pouch and papers, then watched the sergeant roll a cigarette, light it, and give the match an outward flip. Taking a few deep inhalations he eyed Jeb back, and said thoughtfully:
"Lad, I don't want ye to take this wrong, but I've a mind to be askin' if ye have less courage than a gir-rl—aladygir-rl, w'ot's beenraised in silver an' gold an' soft pilleys! I want ye to keep thot in mind whilst I tell ye a story; 'tis a story av me own wound, whin I got me 'packet' for Blighty—an' av a nurse w'ot had jist come out from the States, an' av a Frinch doctor w'ot's the king av all men, so help me! 'Twas 'im as brought me in off No Man's Land, where I was bleedin' me life away! He come right out through a rain av fire thot would have curled yer hair into little kinks av wire—for his stretcher bearers had been sore shot up thot day, an' he was doin' ivery kind av wur-rk at wanst. But, to git along: Whin I opened me eyes in the dressin' station dug-out I scarce knowed if I was alive or dead—so weak did I feel. He was standin' near, shakin' his head at a purty nurse, an' sayin': 'We got to lose 'im, for he's lost too much blood! If we had anny to transfuse,' he says, 'we'd pull 'im through, but thot's impossible,' he says, 'for me b'ys have bled too much a-ready,' he says."
Tim took another inhalation, and slowly continued:
"I was too weak to say me prayers—not thot I wasn't in need av thim! The nurse was lookin' up at 'im wid big, wonderin' eyes, an' her breast was heavin'. 'Will thot save 'im?' she asks. ''Tis the only thing,' he answers, sorrowful. 'Thin save 'im,' she says, rollin' up her sleeve; 'here's the blood—save 'im, quick!'
"Well, Jeb," Tim sighed, "I never see sich a look as come into thot doctor's face. He stared at her, thin shouted so's ye could a-heerd 'im a mile: 'I won't do it!' But still she stands her ground, an' says in a flash: 'Ye will, if ye do yer dooty!' 'But I need ye', he cries again; 'I can't spare ye!' But she gives it to 'im strong, lad, an' says: 'A fightin' man is worth more'n a nurse jist now! Hurry, Doctor Bonsecours!'—for thot's his name, Jeb. 'But I need ye anither way, me darlin',' he pleads wid her—an' I hope to be shot for a spy if iver I see a holier look in a mon's face! She weakened a bit, an' her cheeks got r-rosy red, but she says up to him, brave as iver: 'Save this mon first, for all av France needs him!' Mind ye, lad, her sayin' thot all av France needed a beggar like me!—but 'twas because he hisself was Frinch, no doubt!"
Tim wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Hemade no pretense at hiding the tears that sprang to them, for they were tokens of a deep and lasting gratitude, and he was not ashamed.
"An' so they did it, right there, lad, for a little runt av an Irishman; an' the last thing I heerd her sayin', as she breathed in thot stuff—I can't for the life av me remember its name—was: 'Plase be shure to take enough, Doctor!'"
Tim did not mention how he had joined what little voice he possessed with that of Bonsecours, pleading with her to make no such sacrifice; and then, finding this useless, threatening to kill the great surgeon if he so much as scratched her arm.
"Thot's the way people fight an' live out there, lad. Mind ye, the blessed nurse hadn't known 'im more'n a week—maybe less; but it don't take long for men or women to see the kind av stuff as is in each ither, whin they're totterin' on the edge av No Man's Land! Annyway, I don't know as she iver give 'im the answer he wanted; but w'ot's more to the p'int av me story is this; thot she's nothin' but a blessed gir-rl, from a little town back home, mind ye,but I'd have ye know thot the gr-reat wur-rk Doctor Bonsecours has done is the talk av the Frinch ar-rmy—an' she's his right-hand liftenant. She's as tender as tears, lad, but as brave as a lion—an' in about the same job as yeself. She don't mind the shells a-tall, a-tall! D'ye git that, Jeb?"
"What town did she come from?" Jeb asked, his eyes growing thoughtful.
"Sure, an' I can't think av it!"
"Was it——" He stopped abruptly, as a strange and curious sensation seized him. It seemed as though the deck suddenly heaved upward—very much like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim dragged him through the door, as a shower of débris came down upon the place where they had been sitting. The huge smoke funnel crashed to the deck, scattering soot in all directions, then balanced an instant, and plunged into the sea.
In the midst of this confusion, even before the funnel disappeared, Tim was bellowing a command. His captain, at his side, waited as the men poured up to them, then said drily:
"Belts on the nurses; see that everyone's on deck, and belt yourselves!"
Life belts were everywhere within easy reach and, as the men scattered, Tim stopped an instant to hand one of them to his captain, who smilingly took it but was later seen tying it on Dr. Barrow.
The sergeant then dashed below, hurrying toward the staterooms to be sure that everyone got up to deck. In his reckless determination to make Jeb see this duty through, he had not let go of his sleeve.
"Take the doors on thot side," he now yelled at him in a voice of thunder, "an' I'll take this! Smash 'em down where they're jammed, an' look clost iverywhere inside! Sometimes women faints!"
With this he released his hold; but Jeb, trying to go on, could not—he could only cross his arms against the panels and press his head there to shut out the terror. When Tim, kicking in a door three staterooms away, saw this he made one spring back and landed his next kick on a spot that made Jeb flinch. This was followed by another, and still another, while a string of lurid oaths poured from his lips which burned like a lash of fire. Jeb sprang around, one fist drawn back to kill, his eyes glittering as points of iron; but the sergeant's eyes were as points of steel. The next moment Jeb had started on the work of rescue. Tim worked across from him—and smiled.
When Tim had become satisfied that no one remained below, they began their retreat. By now the ship was listing to a degree which made it necessary for them to walk with one foot on the panelled wall, and to jump the cross halls. The stairs upward they negotiated with one foot on the balusters. At the landing above a number of life belts, having slid along the floor, lay piled in confusion against the wall; and before stepping out on deck Tim tied one of these on Jeb, then safeguarded himself, saying briefly:
"Stay clost to me!"
They found moving more difficult now, as theship had not stopped listing. The deck leaned so precipitously that they had to grasp the hand-rail, and work themselves by this means slowly around to the upper side. Tim moved with the coolness of a veteran. Jeb scrambled with the energy of despair.
There were plenty of boats at this upper rail, but to let them over was a difficult problem, since they must scrape down the ship's hull and risk being capsized or smashed. Those at the lower rail were entirely out of commission—splintered by the torpedo.
Tim saluted the captain—the ship's captain, this time—and barked his report. He was ordered to boat No. 1. When he reached this position Jeb was close behind, terror still pictured on his face. In a fury the sergeant turned to him, crying:
"Look at the courage av thim nurses, ye —— —— ——! Can't ye try to be a man? 'Ere, give a hand!" Another string of profanity rolling from his tongue was as potent as the kick had been, for Jeb, still gasping, fell to work.
And then a cry went up! It came from thebreasts of those who waited with limitless courage, and those who worked feverishly to save. It was the heartrending, bloodcurdling cry of people doomed—for the ship had begun to settle! Through his megaphone the captain yelled:
"Jump! Jump! For the love of God, jump!"
Jeb felt himself seized by the shoulder and torn from the davit to which he held. Confusedly he heard Tim yelling: "Swim off as far as ye can, lad!" and the next instant he was plunging downward, striking the ship's side and sliding, bounding off, turning, striking again and sliding, till he splashed into the water.
When his head came up—providentially with its senses—the sergeant's command lingered and he set his face away, swimming with all his might. Once or twice he paused for breath, because it is hard work propelling a life belt through the water, but these rests were momentary; till, feeling himself safe from suction, he turned over on his back and floated. In this position he could see the ship, and was just in time to watch the last of its passengers leave the rail. These were Tim and a prettynurse who had been too frightened at the dizzy height to take the leap until, tearing free her hold, he had lifted her in his arms and skidded down the side.
There was no confusion now. The sea had never seemed more peaceful. Heads were bobbing merrily in the water, as though in for a pleasure swim; beyond them lay the steamer, abjectly motionless—looking like a monster which might have arisen from the deeps to bask upon the surface. Jeb was wondering if he should not yet swim back and try to climb aboard, when the great hulk swayed—gently at first, this way and that; then, as if tender hands were lowering it into a grave, it slowly began to sink.
At this point the prevailing quiet was shattered by a hell of sounds. Had a score of nearby thunder storms been raging and a hundred frame houses ruthlessly been crushed between two great forces, their combined noises might have been compared to those issuing from the stricken vessel as she took her plunge—until the closing waters choked them into a kind of gurgling silence, as though a bellowing giantwere being drowned instead of a thing of splintering wood and groaning steel.
Dazed as Jeb was, he saw a mountain-high wave of seething foam rise from the grave and roar toward him with the speed of unchecked horses. Tossing like jack-straws on its crest were bunks, in part or whole, chairs, planking, and débris of all descriptions. As it drew near he took a deep breath and crossed his arms to protect his face. The next second it was atop of him.
An eternity seemed to pass before he came up—an eternity during which he rolled over and over in a seething green wilderness. When, choked and coughing, he gained the surface he felt that it had been changed into another world. The former peace of waters scarcely disturbed by gentle waves whereon heads had bobbed in apparent merriment, the listed ship that had lain sleeping on the skyline, were gone; in their stead was a great waste of hissing bubbles which burst about his face and blinded him. The surface had become an ocean of hisses—as though the submarine, agent of that nation which generates hate, had by some wicked magicchanged the water with its hatred, too! And in the midst of this confusion a chorus of three hundred passionate voices wailed their anguish to a passive God; for, while these human beings had been whole before, there were now many whom the sweeping wreckage had torn—some with fractured bones, some disembowled, some mercifully dead! Never could Jeb have dreamed a transition so horrible!
Already scores of panic-stricken were climbing on an overturned boat, drifting off to the right. Another upturned boat floated at a greater distance, and Jeb saw the bobbing heads appear again, beginning to move as a flock of swimming ducks toward it. But many heads did not move at all, and he knew what their inertia meant. One of this kind floated close to him, and made him sick. He pushed it away, but it kept drifting back, seeming unwilling to leave him, till in desperation he untied the life belt tapes and let it sink. An hour earlier, had Jeb been told he could do this, he would have screamed denials.
Presently a voice hailed him cheerily, and he beheld Tim, still holding the little nurse, balanced on a kind of box affair that floated almost flush with the water.
"Come over, Jeb," the sergeant called. "Shure, an' there's room for wan more, an' 'tis cold ye'll be, I'm thinkin' afore we turn in tonight!"
"He oughtn't to joke like that," Jeb thought, beginning now to shiver; for he had become tired, and swam the intervening distance painfully.
"Easy, lad," Tim leaned to give him a hand, "for if ye don't look smart 'tis off we go agin, an' 'twon't do the lass no good bein' colder'n she is! Did I hurt ye now, me darlin'?" he asked a moment later of the little nurse, who smiled back at him. Blood and water were trickling down her ashen face from a scalp wound; yet she was many times more fortunate than scores of other poor creatures near to them. There is an unparalleled ruthlessness in a sweeping wave of heavy débris, beneath which a human body can be ground to atoms.
Jeb had no more than safely got astride the box—a tippy affair it was—when they were startled by someone blaspheming in a way thatmade their flesh creep. Even Tim blanched; for in the voice he recognized the timbre of insanity. He had seen this happen in the trenches, when men driven mad by concussion or gas or horrors ran amuck among their fellows. The one who now swam toward them was evidently a stoker—a powerful creature. His face was grimed with coal dirt, his eyes were red, and his blasphemies were interspersed with hilarity at the prospect of cutting their throats. When thirty yards off he stopped swimming, reached beneath the life belt and got out a knife—then, holding it conveniently between his teeth, came on.
Jeb would have left the box and made a dash for the open sea had not Tim checked him by a firm command; for, with the little nurse wounded in his arms, the sergeant had but one recourse and he was man enough to take it.
"Be smart now, Jeb," he said. "Reach thot broken oar, lad, lest it floats past ye! Now brace yeself, an' whin the poor divil gits clost, belt 'im wan on the head wid all yer might! Kill 'im the first crack!"
"Kill him!" Jeb screamed in horror. "Kill him! Man, I can't!"
"Ye fool, ye can an' ye will!" Tim's voice bit into him like a file. "D'ye want 'im up here slittin' the throats av us—an' this gir-rul to boot? He's looney, man! 'Tis 'im, or the three av us! Quick—str-rike!"
Jeb felt his muscles turn to steel under this commanding voice. The piece of oar rose high above his head and, as the crazed stoker was about to lay hand upon the box, came down with all his strength.
The little nurse clung tighter to the sergeant and buried her face in his tunic.
"Dear Christ!" she whispered, shivering.
The man floated slowly by, rising and falling easily with the waves. His face hung downward in the water, his arms were extended in the attitude of a benediction. After him trailed a narrow streak of red, growing wider though less bright as it mingled with the sea.
"I wonder if the poor divil still has thot knife in his teeth," was Tim's observation, spoken from the depth of sorrow.
Jeb held the broken oar out before him as athing unclean, then opened his fingers and let it fall.
Scarcely more than twenty minutes could have passed since the vessel sank, but she had been struck late in the afternoon and the sun now slanted perilously near the horizon. Tim and the little nurse looked at it thoughtfully, but neither spoke. Only a slight pressure of their arms suggested that each believed it would never rise for them—or, rising, would look upon a sea of floating dead. Jeb had not noticed the sun. His face was lowered close to the planking of their frail refuge. The ocean had again become a thing of peace and beauty—and silence. Those who were on upturned boats had realized the impotency of screaming, and merely clung with dogged tenacity; those who had been too much lacerated to reach these places of imperfect shelter, had yielded to the cradling waves and were now asleep. Thus the minutes dragged. Then the sergeant gave a cry of consternation.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot! May I be shot for a spy, if 'tain't the submarine!"
Little more than a hundred yards away amonster was rising from the sea. Jeb looked up just as the conning tower emerged with water rushing off it like small Niagaras. Then, on a line of its submerged length, the ocean seemed to heave, pressed upward by the long gray hull that now broke through. It arose majestically, sleek as a bathing seal, reflecting the westering sun like wet granite. Almost at once the man-hatch in the conning tower opened, two sailors bobbed out and drew respectfully aside as an officer climbed leisurely to deck. He stood awhile twisting his mustache, gazing at the overturned boats with their desperate crews; for the partially submerged box nearer by, and its three human atoms, he had not yet noticed.
At sight of him the sergeant's temper flared.
"Look!" he cried. "Look, Jeb!—look, me darlin'!—see for wanst in yer lives a murderin' sore dressed in the livery av a rotten master!" As the officer turned in their direction Tim shook his fist at him, this time becoming the incarnation of rage. "Turn yer ugly mug away!—turn it away, I tell ye, from a sight too blessed for yer dirty eyes to see!—ye choleragerm!—ye fester!—ye—ye——Oh, me darlin'," he wailed to the little nurse, "if ye'd but go deaf a minute whilst I tell 'im what's in me 'art!" And in disappointment he held his thumb to his nose, by this most desperate sign trying to express the insults his tongue could not utter.
Jeb was trembling.
"Don't make him mad, Tim," he implored. "He might kill us!"
"The dirty coward can only kill wan thing, an' thot's me body, but me soul'll go on cussin' 'im till the ind av doom." He shook his fist again, becoming more derisive: "Look at his head, now! If 'tain't the shape av a rotten pear may I be shot for a spy!—mind ye how it slopes up to a p'int, both fore-and-aft, and amidships; the fat-jowled swine!"
The man had been regarding them stolidly. He may not have understood Tim's insults, but the gestures were unmistakable. Without taking away his stare he spoke a brief command to one of the sailors who ducked below, reappearing with a rifle.
Tim grew at once thoughtful, but Jeb, cowering lower, began to hurl abuses at him. He had warned him, he cried; and now see what was going to happen!
Without further ado the sailor took deliberate aim and fired; the little nurse flinched, shuddered, and relaxed. Tim looked down at her with widening, almost unbelieving, eyes; then raised his face to the sky and, like a wounded animal, emitted one long howl. All of the plucky sergeant's grief, fury, self-condemnation—aye, and love—were in that wail of agony.
The sailor was aiming for another shot when Jeb's ears were filled with a weird, screeching noise; a violent jolt of air almost knocked him from the box, and a geyser of spray shot up ten feet from the submarine's bow. Before even the deep boom of the distant gun that had fired this projectile reached him, another screeching followed, another jolt of air struck him in the face, and this time, with a mighty roar, the undersea boat split almost in two.
Had not the officer and two sailors been so intent upon a petty revenge they might have seen, coming at express speed between themselves and the sun, a British fast patrol; however, it is difficult at best to detect spots against so dazzling a light—and there is, besides, the working of an all-powerful justice to be reckoned with!
The two sailors, standing between their commander and the explosion, crumpled up as if they were air bags pricked with a knife; but the officer did not fall. He staggered once, nearly losing his balance, and then looked stupidly at the great hole into which roared a revenging sea. His U-boat was sinking fast; though by no agency from within. Those below would forever remain below; they had made their own grave, and their casket would be the steel monster which typified the steel-clad hand of another monster—their master!
But the officer did not think so loyally of his master when he found himself about to face a Higher King. The steel-clad hand had forsaken him; even the German God—the "made in Germany" one which German professors and German pastors were loud in proclaiming as distinct and more refined than the God who watches over England, France and America—had now forsaken him. He felt the same impulse to howl that Tim had felt, although love and self-condemnation were not a part of it; only hatred. The water had reached his feet; with one more look around he sprang outward and began to swim.
"I've been prayin' for thot, me darlin'," Tim whispered. His arms relaxed from about the little dead nurse. With fingers of tenderness he untied the life belt tapes, then let her sink gently into the waves. "God bless ye, lass! 'Tis only today we met, but ye'll live wid Tim Doreen an' no ither till he's sent west to ye!" Leaning forward he watched her as she sank into the light green water, her hair streaming gracefully upward as though waving him goodbye, till the brightness of it was claimed by the darker green below. Then Tim became another man.
"Which way is thot——" he bellowed, but he saw the pear-shaped head before Jeb could answer. With one gesture of fury he stripped off his own life belt, and yelled: "Now, ye murderer av women, wan av us is due in hell, an' 'tain't Tim Doreen, ayther, ye tub av slop!"
He struck out powerfully, straight for theman he had sworn to kill, but in changing once from the overhand to side stroke he saw Jeb, white as a sheet, swimming directly behind. Without pausing, he asked:
"W'ot the divil brings ye here?"
"I owe him something, too," Jeb panted. "I'm coming."
For an instant the sergeant forgot his oath, and a slow grin overspread his face.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot?" he said. "God bless ye, lad; but ye can help best by settin' on the box. 'Tis me own fight; do as I tell ye, now!"
Jeb could not have described that fight, because he was too far off to see distinctly—and Tim never referred to it. But he saw the German, when Tim had come to within ten feet of him, turn and begin swimming frantically away. There was doubtless something in the sergeant's eyes that sapped the other's courage. Relentlessly Tim gained, each stroke bringing him a few inches nearer, till he seemed to crawl up on the officer's back. After that they might have been two splashing fish—till Tim began slowly to swim back.
"God, Tim," Jeb cried, holding out a hand. "I wish you'd let me come! I—I believe I might have done it!"
The sergeant drew himself on the tippy box, and panted:
"Ye'll have a chance, lad whin ye see ither dastardly things thim outcasts do! No man can keep from fightin', Jeb! Shure, an' the Boches make their own wur-rst inimies!"
He sat despondently, regaining his breath and blinking the water from his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon—the Order of the Iron Cross—which the German had worn in a breast button-hole of his uniform.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot," he mused.
Slowly he twisted off the button, and the ribbon with it, then leaned above the spot where the little nurse's hair had waved her last farewell, and let them sink.
"'Tis me first dicoration, darlin'," he whispered; and it was not the ocean water now that blinded him.
Just as the red sun dipped that night thepatrol boat picked up the last piece of human wreckage, and dashed toward the coast of France.
Barrow's unit had suffered sorely, but its gaps were filled from other sources and fresh supplies received from home. Close upon the middle of August it moved to take the field. This delay had not been without advantages, perhaps the chief of which was a fluency in French that many of his men were able to acquire. It had also given Jeb an opportunity to acquire an entirely new viewpoint regarding the purposes of this war, which had not penetrated to Hillsdale.
As the train now proceeded slowly, switching here and there to let other strings of cars pass toward the front with more important freight, Jeb felt that he was at last nearing the great adventure. His experience with the submarine left an indelible effect without producing anything like the result Tim would have desired. For Jeb had been involuntarily projected intothat crisis before being given time to think; he had gone with the stream, not buoyed by courage but spurred by despair. Once tossed into the hideous vortex, he simply had to get out—which was vastly different from deliberately going into it with eyes ahead, as now when he approached the battle front! Nevertheless, the torture he faced upon the floating box, although unknown to him, left an impress for the good.
As he sat uncomfortably drawn up on the seat of a third-class compartment he missed Tim, and wondered dully if the regiment, which that little son of Mars had said was waiting for him—at attention!—could now be in the thick of things. He pictured Tim chasing Germans with the same dogged nerve that he had chased and caught the murderer of the little nurse. As evening fell, battle scenes grew vivid in the twilit compartment, because he was thinking again! Whenever speeding trains passed, their approaching rumbles would make him start, and leave him sick in spirit; for each time he would at first mistake them for the growling of distant guns, and he dreaded the hour when these sounds would reach him. He despised thethought of guns, despised the military trains, despised the war, the blood and maiming;—he despised himself. He needed Tim!
"Is there anything on your mind, old fellow?" one of the unit asked him kindly.
"Oh, no," he forced himself to laugh. "Have a cigarette, won't you?"
Early next morning, after an almost sleepless night, the unit disembarked at a village standing as a solitary outpost on the edge of a great unknown wilderness. Beyond this point the railroad, even civilization, had been paralyzed by the dragon that fed upon humanity. If Jeb expected the villagers to be out in force to greet Barrow's unit, he was disappointed; for, with the exception of a crippled man laboriously pushing a cart, a nun who with bowed head came from one doorway and hurried into another, and a bent old woman struggling to take down the night shutters from her shop window, the place might have been deserted. On the far side of his train, however, where he had not looked, a group of soldiers lounged about their wagons waiting to take these passengers of mercy forward; unshaven chaps they were, wellmeriting the nickname ofpoilus—"the hairy ones."
Now that the train had stopped he could hear the far-off growling of guns; deep-voiced monsters which his imagination pictured straining on their leashes while snarling at each other across the space of miles—truly dogs of war! He drew farther back in the seat, dreading to get out; but the moment had come, the fellows and nurses were moving to the door, the great task was at hand! He tried, while standing, to simulate indifference, but his legs were weak and his teeth chattered, just a little, in spite of his effort to control himself. It seemed as if he were forever wanting to yawn, conscious of the heaviness upon his chest.
With Dr. Barrow and a lieutenant on the first creaking wagon, the others followed, but there was no road. A morass was there, that formerly had been a road—a ditch sloshy with mud which, in some places, made it necessary for all hands to climb down and put their shoulders to the wheels.
"It is trying, this traveling in limbers," the lieutenant smiled apologetically. "The incessant hauling up of shells from our bases destroys the best of roads in a few days. But what would you?" he shrugged, smiling again. "If the ammunition dumps are constantly depleted, they must be fed!"
The far-off French artillery, in skillfully emplaced positions to right and left, seeming to enfilade on a point immediately ahead, was so vigorously directed that the German guns must have been dazed, since their counter-battery work sounded spasmodic and—so far as distance permitted Jeb to guess—never effective. Yet he was moving toward that tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to the driver, asking—but fearful of the answer:
"Who's winning this battle?"
It was spoken only in Hillsdale French, aided by a two months stop in Paris; but his poilu companion smiled brightly and replied in the average Paris English:
"Oh, Monsieur, there is now for three days what you callmoment decalme. Tomorrow, if no rain,oui!—perhaps a ver' fine battle!"
Then this was a lull!—this cannonading, that to Jeb seemed reaching from skyline to skyline, was only a lull! Merciful God, he cried in his soul, what might a battle be like!
By midday, after hours of frightful tugging, they were halfway on their journey, being well out on what two weeks ago was the battle field, but now presenting a picture of broadcast desolation. Shell craters, caused by heavier projectiles burrowing and bursting, pockmarked the ground like a telescopic photograph of the moon. Fields, so lately rich with waving grain, were blasted into subsidences and cavities, bisected by crumbled trenches before which the wreckage of barbed-wire entanglements—a fortnight since forming barriers so impregnable as to resemble from a distance walls of red rust—lay snarled and tied into a million knots by the ruthless lyddite fingers.
It was a pastoral landscape distorted by the paralysis of suffering and death, and Jeb realized that not for many years would these tortured fields regain their tranquillity. Where were rises, now lay depressions; the loamy top soil was blown into dust and scattered to the winds, while sterile clay and pebbly strata had been boiled up from below to take its place. Mixed with this mass of unprofitable earth, strewn over its surface and buried for a depth of thirty feet, were thousands of tons of other wire, iron stakes, and wire stanchions; cartridge cases, rifles, and gas gongs; sand bags, iron scraps, and forge tools; steel helmets, spades, and telephones; pieces of uniforms, water pipes, pick axes, gas masks, binoculars, trench periscopes, blankets, surgical dressings, boots, aye, and human bones—all, all things which the plow shares of coming generations would be turning up to remind man (should man ever forget) that Humanity had once been outraged by a people who, although made in the imitation of Christ, preferred to assume the habits of beasts.
"How, in the name of God," Jeb cried, "could any army stand before such a blasting as must have been here!"
"Our army did, Monsieur," the driver saidquietly. "It not only stood, but drove the Boche far back."
"Well, I take off my hat to your army!"
"The world does, also, Monsieur," his companion replied; although it was modestly spoken, without a hint of boastfulness. "We do not fight like the Boche, Monsieur," he added simply. "Their methods are more like a mob with a bad conscience; they fight more with a dread of being defeated than with the honesty of soldiers who have an honest cause."
He then explained to Jeb that these fields, after all, represented merely the face to face struggle of man and man, and were therefore less sickening than the devastation they would see farther on, which stood as a monument to the enemy's vilest cupidity. This became apparent when they began to cross that stretch of country gloatingly described by German newspapers as "the empire of death"—meaning a territory seven or eight miles in width, extending over the entire front, which by order of "the High German Command" was converted absolutely into waste. Forced by the Allies to retreat, this "High German Command" conceived that, by leaving a barrier of desolation and cruelty so terrible, no army would be hardy enough, or have heart enough, to advance across it. Their system was complete, as the results now showed—although their calculations had gone wrong.
"First, Monsieur," he said, "they began by robbing the American Relief Committee's supplies, immediately following their solemn pledge to permit this food to succor the starving peasantry; therefore those pitiable folk, already tragic human wrecks, continued to starve. Next they killed these peasants' cows to fill their own precious bellies, and then the little babies began, by slow starvation, to die. But the men, women, and boys old enough to till the soil, or work in German factories, were fed and sent away; the girls pretty enough to wait upon German officers—you know what that means, Monsieur—were dressed in stolen finery and, weeping, driven to their new positions—six hundred of them taken from within the space that you are looking on now, although we have learned that many succeeded in killing themselves. Only the helpless aged and the babes escaped these brutalities; forthey, being useless, were left to the mercy of the vultures, unless salvaged by our army. Right on this ground we saved many such, Monsieur;Mon Dieu!but how our army did weep over them!"
Jeb had already seen enough to bring this recital well within the focus of truth, and as the wagons wound slowly forward he further saw to what depth of hatred and cold malice the mind of that "High Command" descended. Burned villages and hamlets might have been expected, as conflagrations spring from bursting shells, yet even his inexperienced eye detected a very sharp distinction between ruins wrought by military operations and the vandalism caused by unbridled, bestial passions. For nowhere upon this barren outlook had a house been left standing—all was a mass of tumbled brick and stone and clay and twisted timbers, licked by flames or crumbled by explosions scientifically placed by German engineers; nay, nor was there even a barn, nor an agricultural implement with which some palsied peasant woman might in time reclaim her land. Iron of plows, of harrows, of cultivators, lay in pilesamidst the ashes of their frames; spokes of wagon and cart wheels had been hacked to splinters, and harness cut into useless bits. Wells had been fouled by chucking in their own dead, or stable refuse. In the orchards every tree stood girdled, the immature fruit wrinkled amidst withered leaves. Never again, unless French nurserymen sped here hastily to bridge from bark to bark, or graft onto the old stumps,—as they had elsewhere attempted with varying promise—would these slopes of arboriculture put forth buds; neither would the poplars, planes, mulberries, willows—all had been granted citizenship to this newly created German Empire, "the empire of death."
"Where are those whom you did not salvage—I mean the girls? Are they still in the German lines?" Jeb asked.
"Not if they have found a way to die," his comrade answered in a whisper. "The Belshazzar feast of those Prussian swine, Monsieur, is the Calvary of every maid who does not find a swifter way to God—but the debauched officers know that, and keep them closely guarded. Oh," he cried, "our heartsgive thanks that your country is coming to help us avenge these things! All along we have said that if the American spirit of decency and fairness—so well known and loved by us—could but see even the little which you have seen, your armies would be pouring to our aid!—just as your wonderful nurses have come!"
Jeb felt a rush of self-righteous anger that for the moment transcended his horror of going forward. While in Paris he had read official translations from the German press; now with his own eyes he was looking upon the things gloatingly described in theBerliner Tageblatt[1]when it told the people of Berlin: "The enemy's mouth must stay dry, his eyes turn in vain to the wells—they are buried in rubble. No four walls for him to settle down into; all levelled and burnt out, the villages turned into dumps of rubbish, churches and church towers laid out in ruins. Smouldering fires and smoke and stench; a rumble spreading from village to village—the mine charges still doing their final work, which leaves nothing more to do."
It was a cry of false triumph that must have stirred the German soul to joy, because the very next day, he now remembered, theLokalanzeiger[2]had boastfully added: "No village or farm was left standing, no road was left passable, no railroad track or embankment, nothing, nothing whatever, not a tub, not a bench for those who will succeed them in the abandoned places.What they could not take with them they have burnt or smashed.In front of our new positions runs an Empire of Death—a Death which lays the shrivelled hands of destruction uponall the works of Man and all the bloom of Nature." This, "by order of the High German Command."
It was the last word of Barbarity! But what theBerliner Tageblattand theLokalanzeigerdid not tell their readers, Jeb now realized with a shudder, would have made a chapter of degeneracy and revolting crime unparalleled in history.
Yet, even in the face of this, he turned sick at the thought of going forward to the certain annihilation awaiting him in that ghostly wilderness of mist and wet and wreckage ahead. On the other hand, how in God's name could he keep from going, he asked himself, when the blood of innocents was calling on every side! He felt again the "something strong within him which commanded";—but he hated it!
Had Dr. Barrow been sufficiently skillful with the knife, he might have dissected out this better Jeb who insisted on going forward, and let the other crawl into a shell hole to hide for the rest of time; then both Jebs would have been supremely satisfied. But, being first and foremost a courageous man, he did not suspect that any one of his unit could possibly falter. Jeb knew this, and it made him feel all the more alone.
They reached a rise in the rolling landscape and stopped to breathe their beasts which were shaking the heavy limbers by their desperate gasps for air. The ground sloped down and up again, and there, protected from the enemy, a new world came into view—a world wherein American, French and English engineers, commanding an army of construction, worked feverishly, as ants. For an instant the nobler Jeb prevailed, and he raised his eyes in a mute prayer of thankfulness for this trio of forces—the strongest combination the world has ever seen! The rumbling cannon ceased to jar his nerves, while he gazed wistfully at the low clouds sweeping by in companies that seemed to hasten from this theatre of wrath. Occasional gusts of white smoke burst into being just beneath them and hung a moment suspended before racing on; or a distant squirt of lace-like shrapnel, curving ever downward, came to see what went on behind the Allied lines.
Beyond these gusts and squirts of man-made clouds, observation balloons—the "sausages" of the enemy—floated motionless above the horizon, sometimes catching a fleck of sunlight and glistening like dull silver. There were no German fliers in the air that day, but high above, as gray vultures hungrily soaring over one spot, two American, two British and four French airmen glided back and forth, in and out, circling, circling. With such grace and ease did they pirouette through their reconnaisance that Jeb was reminded of an aerial quadrille beingdanced five thousand feet above the earth; or, seeming to tire of this, one of them would change the play to hide-and-seek, point toward the translucent blue and scoot behind a cloud, with the others following. It was a cordial invitation for the Boche to come up and fight! Jeb did not see them again for several minutes, but he noticed that one of the kite balloons suddenly burst into a little puff of flame and disappeared. Unconsciously, he grinned.
"Sacre bleu!" thepoilucried delightedly. "More honor to our '75's'!"
"I thought the planes did it!" Jeb turned in surprise.
"Oh, no, Monsieur! That was done by one of our guns six miles away!"
Below the pirouetting airmen there was no poetry of motion. Here men strained and panted and wiped grimy sweat from their eyes. A month ago this ground ahead had been vigorously contested—the very spot on which Jeb now stood had been well within the German lines.
In the thoroughness with which the engineers were making fast their gains, a military observer would have read that not only would the Allied army draw the sting from this "empire of death," but that never again would this part of France be yielded to alien hands. As far as the eye could reach roads were being improved, others made; the buried railways were being excavated, metals straightened, or replaced if too far bent; shell-proof dug-outs were having their finishing touches, some to be used as dressing-stations for the wounded whom to-morrow might bring in, others for storing ammunition. In a nearby wood, where trees had been reduced to little more than gaunt trunks barren of leaf and twig, observation posts were built with many tons of branches hauled from the rear, and so artfully wired in place that the stricken giants seemed almost ready to live again. This work in itself constituted reason enough for the Allied airmen to sweep the sky of German observers, since only by "putting out the enemy's eye" could such secrets of camouflage be preserved. Wells were being bored by gas engine power and pipes laid, as spider webs, to bring untainted water to man and beast. Then, of course, shallow trencheshad to be dug for telephone wires which otherwise would perish in the first onslaught of artillery fire.
Among the trenches of greater magnitude, recently pounded to the point of obliteration, activities were being pressed at highest tension, for here the destruction had been particularly severe. The Germans had held them well, but no human agency could have prevailed against the unfaltering valor of the Allies. Now they were in Allied hands, and being prepared for Allied shelter. From sunken approaches to the assembly trenches, and from there forward through an intricate maze of communicating passages to the firing trench, tens of thousands of men were busy with pick and shovel—not, however, constructing the narrow, steep-sided affairs which proved so disastrous to the Germans on the Somme, but a shallower type of trench having more flare and a wider sole. Just behind them worked the plumbers and pipemen, the carpenters and timber placers, the electricians with their coils of wire and telephones; everything perfected with the greatest nicety today, which tomorrow—or the next, or next,tomorrow—would be buried for future plowshares. War could not be war unless it were the highest expression of construction and destruction, even as it raises life and death to the highest power of sublimity!
Boring like huge worms from the front line outward, were tunnellers, biting into the earth with grim persistence to lay mines beneath the enemy; not that this work would be finished in time for tomorrow's action, wherein plans were already completed to press forward, but should the German positions prove firm enough to establish another temporary deadlock, then they would serve a purpose. By such forethought are battles won, when nothing is underestimated, nothing overlooked, no shade of opportunity neglected, and all chances accounted for.
"I never dreamed it was so gigantic a game as this," Jeb gasped.
"But there is much more, Monsieur," his companion smiled.
"Does no one ever rest?" Jeb asked, in a voice of awe.
"Oh, yes, Monsieur," thepoilusmiled again. "In places where the trenches have been clearedand mended, where telephone wires have been connected to instruments, where water pipes have been brought down and fauceted, flooring built across mucky places, gas gongs installed, ammunition, grenades and tinned food stored in the newly finished shell-proof chambers, you will find a few over-exhausted men sprawled out, sleeping."
While Jeb could see nothing of this, the driver promised to get him into it soon enough—a suggestion that turned him away in search of other scenes and thoughts. Off to the right two lines of snags marked what had once been graceful poplars edging a famousroute national, but now——! He glanced quickly backward along the direction from which he came. Here, at first, a brighter prospect met his eyes: the far-off rolling slopes were green, the far-off woods had not been stripped of leaves; but never could the grim story be quite wiped out for, across this verdant scene, as a long, thin reptile with a million legs, crawled an endless line of artillery and munition trains.
"Can't I ever get away from it!" he cried to himself, shutting his eyes in agony.
The horses had been rested and word came to proceed; the limbers creaked and moved. Jeb gripped the seat in terror, feeling now that before they got half way down the slope a German gunner would pick them out and touch the magic spring which reduces men—not symbolically but literally—to dust. Yet he breathed more freely and sent another prayer up for the engineers when almost at once they entered a sunken road, converging toward the enemy although keeping well out of sight. At places where the terrain did not admit of this shelter, or other roads went off at tangents, long strips of canvas were stretched across the openings, their outer sides being painted, in theatre scenery fashion, to represent the surrounding ground. If the Germans had only known that thousands of troops and thousands of tons of ammunition passed daily within easy range of their guns, protected by a wall of 10-ounce canvas! Another important reason for sweeping their planes from the sky!
Thepoilucalled Jeb's attention to these ingenious devices of camouflage, seeming to think them a great joke.
"But for the good God having made the Boche, Monsieur, I should call them asses with long ears for never estimating ourfinesseand resource."
"It wouldn't be disrespectful, Frenchie," one of the unit laughed, "because the good God made asses, too!"
"Well, Monsieur, I feel there should be an apology somewhere! Perhaps it is to the four-footed asses."
They climbed down at last and, each loaded with supplies, tramped through half a mile of communicating trenches to the protected dressing-stable dug-outs—roomy affairs, twenty feet below the surface and opening rearward into a kind of quadrangle. Five hundred yards ahead were the firing trenches, where things would happen; and thepoilu, observing this, grimly remarked:
"Sacre bleu!They certainly have ordered you up to the very front, Monsieur! 'Tis not often the women are brought so close—but it means, Monsieur, that our Generals are positive of driving the Boche far back tomorrow!"
The chief surgeon in charge here rushed tomeet them with open arms, embracing Dr. Barrow warmly; and then Barrow stepped back to look at him, for this was the great Bonsecours! Georges Bonsecours! He saw a man of medium height, and of medium build, slightly gray about his temples, and in the neighborhood of forty years of age. No one of these things was particularly distinguishing, but when he spoke—ah, then the impelling magnetism which drew others close to him, the force which sent them flying off to various duties, was easily explained. His eyes, while twinkling merrily as though everything in life possessed a touch of humor, also gave the impression that they could see beneath five layers of skin tissue—that by some canny second sight they could detect a piece of shrapnel without the aid of probes or X-ray; but a closer inspection showed that they were set in a face which had become seamed by weariness. His arms, also, hung with a directness that indicated great fatigue.
While supplies were being stored away and the women nurses had retired for a needed rest, the world-famed surgeon escorted Dr. Barrowfarther down the line of dressing-stations, particularly to see his own unit which had been in this sector since the middle of April.
"Monsieur le Doctor," he said,—then continued in beautiful English—"I am greatly impressed with the fortitude of your American women who have assisted me. There is one—but why mention one, when they all typify to my mind graceful columns of ivory; pure in their strength and certainty, crystal in their thoughts and deeds! My operating table is a Grecian temple, Monsieur, when they surround it."
"That is a beautiful tribute," said Barrow, flushing with pride.
"Not as beautiful, Monsieur, as the inspiration and assistance which one of them has given me." He stopped, blushing like a girl, then continued frankly with an infectious smile: "We learn to be outspoken on the edge of No Man's Land—perhaps it is because we never know at what moment our lips may be completely sealed that we appreciate the value of saying fearlessly what is in our minds; therefore I will finish by telling you that, next to anAllied victory, my greatest hope is that she may be persuaded to share my fortune in Paris, after we are finished with the fortunes of war!"
"I could wish no girl better luck than that," Barrow smiled. "To us at home you stand as a kind of demi-god, a wizard, who——"
"Ah, Monsieur, I have accomplished nothing, really, until I came here, where her sympathy and bravery have made me see new things! I tell her that she inherits these traits from an angel mother and an American Indian father."
Both men laughed delightedly; Dr. Barrow little dreaming at the moment that this American girl, beloved by every one around her, was the daughter of an old friend who edited a paper down—or was it up?—in Hillsdale.
"You see that we are close to things here," Bonsecours continued, as they walked along.
"I had wondered about the women being so near the front," Barrow replied.
"Well, Monsieur, in some sectors this position is safer for them than farther back—only, of course, when our artillery and line is as strong as here, and the dressing-stations aswell protected. Besides," he added softly, "we are needing many nurses, and have lost fearfully in men and orderlies."
The sun set clear that evening, putting a sparkle in the air which touched one's nerves like wine. Shortly before twilight Jeb was drawn to the entrance of his dug-out by the tramping and sloshing of many feet. He walked the length of the quadrangle to where it joined a communicating trench and for half an hour—even after the night had grown too dark to see distinctly—watched an incessant line of soldiery moving forward to positions. Tramp, tramp, they went, under orders of silence, because something big was on the boards for tomorrow. But 'twas not the quiet of glumness that enveloped them, for they showed in every step an elasticity of spirits, as of muscles. He might have called it a fluid line, so lithely did it flow by; he might have called it a line of gods, so proudly did each man hold his steel-capped head!
The firing trench lay about six hundred yards from the German first line; six hundred yards of No Man's Land waiting passively for theshambles! Jeb wrung his hands and leaned against the earthen wall. With that stark struggle for existence but a few hours off, how was it possible for men to step out happily! What would he be doing, were he amongst them!
The line was still passing, coming out of the impenetrable and marching—who knew where! when he stumbled through the dark entrance of the dug-out.
"What's going on out there?" a comrade asked.
"Ghosts," he answered, feeling for his bunk and throwing himself face down on it.
He was tired to exhaustion, his nerves were starved for rest. The dug-out was chilly after sundown and he reached fumblingly for his blanket, found himself lying upon it and awkwardly wriggled under.
The warmth was good. In a little while the steady tramp of men going to kill or die—for 'tis thus the gods play with us!—became a soothing lullaby, and lured him into sleep.