High overhead three red rockets burst in the sky, and the German guns ceased at the signal.
In the dazzling gleam of the concentrated searchlights, Dennis saw a Prussian officer raise himself cautiously to peer across the sandbags, and reconnoitre the obliterated British trench.
His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis recognised young Wetherby.
Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet.
Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a trigger the battalion was into them.
There was no quarter asked or given. The Reedshires were out to kill, and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his being itching tobe in it. But between him and that raving, raging tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection of the strong trench.
In a flash of time Dennis saw many things: the slanting rain on our helmets, the wisp of fog that rolled lazily between him and that Homeric combat. He recognised his brother, half a head taller than anybody else, thrusting and hewing like a hero of old, and Littlewood working a Lewis gun on the top of the sandbags, the shots just clearing our own fellows' heads.
From an embrasure in the angle of the salient above him the hateful hammering of a German machine-gun began. The brutes were playing into the mêlée, regardless of their own men, in a frantic endeavour to stop the Reedshires' rush, and as A Company recoiled before that stream of bullets, Dennis drew his revolver.
Already one of the Prussian battalions had swarmed over into their own trench, paying no heed to the solitary figure in the black shadow as they passed him, and, marking the position of the gun, Dennis scrambled up in their wake with the agility of a cat, and darted into the gun emplacement single-handed, just as young Wetherby and Hawke saw him and gave a shout of recognition.
The Germans were chained to the piece, and as he shot the last man of the gun crew, his brother officer overtook him.
At his heels A Company had arrived with a hearteningroar, and jumped down on to the crowded mass in the trench below them, a perfect forest of arms going up as the demoralised runaways bellowed for mercy.
"Bravo, Hawke! Go it, boys!" shouted Dennis, almost overturning Wetherby.
"My hat!" exclaimed the boy, as they gripped each other to save falling into the tightly packed trench below them, "that was no end of a stunt of yours. If we hadn't shifted forward we should have been killed to a man. Hadn't left our position five minutes before their shells found us!"
"And I never knew you'd moved," said Dennis. "Look at those chaps bolting into that dug-out there! Give 'em a couple of bombs!"
Young Wetherby hurled two Mills grenades into an opening in the wall of the German parados, and the double explosion was followed by a chorus of piercing screams. As for the trench, it was piled up with bodies five and six deep, for the Prussians were sturdy men and fought like wild cats.
But already the Highland battalion on the Reedshires' left had come up. Other battalions away to the east were making good, and the brigade was carrying all before it.
"Forward!" rang the whistles, and, leaving the supports to consolidate, the leading battalions cleared the parados and pushed on.
It was a wild flounder over the sodden ground, three hundred yards of it, with shell-holes where the rain took you up to your armpits, but the Reedshires had tasted the glories of conquest, and there was no holding them back, if, indeed, anyone had wished to do so.
"Next stop, Berlin!" yelled Harry Hawke, tripping up as the words left his mouth, and sliding twice his own length to the edge of a crump-hole, into which another inch would have plunged him head foremost.
"Stick it, Den!" shouted a voice in his ear, and he saw that it was his brother Bob, a red smear on his cheek and a light in his eyes Dennis had only seen there on the football field.
"Come on, old chap!" yelled the C.O., "every fifty yards is worth a monarch's ransom to Haig. Let's see if we can't carry that wood yonder while their searchlights last"; and he pointed to the ridge beyond the captured trench. "I'd like to know who silenced that machine-gun just now. I suppose half a dozen men will claim it to-morrow, while the real chap may be dead."
"Oh no, he isn't," laughed a voice.
"Shut your head, young Wetherby, unless you want it punched!" was Dennis's angry retort, but his fellow subaltern only laughed the louder.
"It was Dennis," said the boy; "he went in alone and shot the whole lot, Major!"
Bob Dashwood opened his lips to speak, but made a mental note instead, for the searchlights had been suddenly withdrawn, and were now concentrated in one blinding blaze about fifty yards in front of the charging brigade.
The German gunners also had shortened their fuses, transferring their barrage to the spot, where they poured in a hail of shells through which no man might try to pass and live.
"Halt there—hang you—halt!" roared the Majorcommanding; "don't you see we've reached our limit for to-night?"
The whistles shrilled amid the red and yellow shell bursts, and the victory-maddened men, realising the impossible, even before the word reached them, pulled up and looked to their right.
"Dig in—dig in!" shouted somebody.
"No, fall back, you fools!" bellowed a stentorian sergeant, and, checked in full career, they fell back by companies in any sort of order under a rain of shrapnel.
Bob and his brother, still side by side, were retiring after them at a brisk walk, when a man of Dennis's section passed them at the double, going in the direction of the redoubt which they had carried, and they saw him run up alongside Hawke, who was a few yards ahead of them.
The crash of the shells in their rear drowned Hawke's exclamation, but they saw him stop and turn, look under his hand at the barrage, and dart back towards it like a hare.
"Hawke, stop! Are you mad?" cried Bob, making a grab at him as he went by, but Hawke's face was white and set, and he paid no heed as they watched him curiously.
"I know!" shouted Dennis in his brother's ear, "his chum's hit. Look at that, Bob—there's devotion for you! Those two fellows are the greatest toughs in the regiment, and they're inseparables."
They saw the little Cockney private fling himself down on his knees beside a fallen man, tear with both hands at the front of his tunic, and then fling his arms up abovehis head with a tragic gesture of despair. Then he slung his rifle, and, stooping again, dragged the figure up, hoisted him across his shoulder, and came staggering back under the heavy load, the heroic group telling blackly out against the searchlights' white glare.
A shell burst thirty feet way, but the little Cockney came doggedly on, and they waited for him, even retracing their steps to meet him.
"What's up, Hawke?" shouted Dennis; "do you want us to give you a hand?" And he was about to add something else, but the look of piteous entreaty in Hawke's eyes checked the words.
"I'd rather take him in myself, sir," he said hoarsely; "it's true what they says in the papers abart making a man a new face in the 'orspitals, ain't it? They'll be able to patch 'im up, don't you think, sir?"
Dennis and Bob exchanged a look, for the savage earnestness hit them both hard from its very hopelessness.
Tiddler's visage was nothing but a hideous pulp.
And they knew in a moment that poor Tiddler had already passed beyond all human aid; Major Dashwood made another mental note, to be placed upon official record later on—if he himself should be spared!
At the mouth of a communication Hawke paused to readjust his burden. The limp figure was somehow slipping from his grasp, and, seeing at last, he realised that his errand had been in vain.
As he stood looking down at the crumpled thing that a few minutes before had been a living, moving part ofthe great war machine, Dennis laid a hand on his shoulder.
"He was a good plucked 'un, Hawke, and you did your best for him," said Dennis; "now you've got to keep a stiff upper lip."
"Yus, I know, sir," was the husky reply, as something rolled glistening down the dirty cheek. "'Im and me 'listed the same day, and Tiddler was the only pal I ever 'ad."
He turned a fierce and flashing eye towards the enemy barrage; an eye that positively flamed vengeance to come, and then he pointed with his hand.
"See that, sir?" he cried hoarsely, "ain't that Mr. Wetherby?"
A long way out across the wet slope, where the raging Reedshires had taken heavy toll of the flying foe before the German gunners had drawn that barrier of fire across the way, a figure was crawling back towards them, dragging one useless leg behind him.
A very wicked piece of shrapnel had carried young Wetherby's knee-pan away, and, lodging in the joint, gave the sufferer excruciating agony every time he knocked it. More than once he almost fainted, and each time the wounded knee jarred against the rough ground young Wetherby groaned through his clenched teeth.
"Why don't the stretcher bearers come out?" he moaned.
He could see the strong enemy trench from which they had made their final advance, and knew by the bustle there that active preparations were being made to hold itshould the Prussians counter-attack again, which was not unlikely.
The enemy searchlights still concentrated upon it, and the barrage never ceased to boom and burst behind him with useless expenditure of shells which had already served their object.
No doubt behind that barrage the discomfited Prussian battalions were being reorganised, but young Wetherby had no thought of them, all his energies were directed to getting in as soon as possible that the doctor might ease his pain.
An unusually heavy burst of shrapnel cut up the ground round about him as he gained the crest of a bank, where three dead men lay piled one on top of the other, and, taking advantage of that gruesome cover, a Prussian officer was crouching on his face. Wetherby paused a moment as he came alongside him.
"Have you any water in your bottle, Kamerad?" said the man in excellent English.
"Yes, here you are," replied the boy, unshipping it and handing it to him; "are you badly hurt?"
The Prussian emptied the bottle before he made answer. "Both legs broken," he said; "might be worse, might be better."
The man's cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings, shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on his forehead.
He had scarcely placed twice his own length between himself and the Prussian officer when the brute, who wasshamming wounded all the time, levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed bullets in his back!
"Great Scott! Did you see that?" shouted Dennis.
"Yus, not 'arf!" And he and Hawke jumped off the mark together, racing neck and neck out into the open, heedless of a withering fire from some machine-guns that began to play on the slope.
The German cowered flat as a pancake, his head turned sideways, watching them as they came.
"Had they seen?" he thought, "or was this some senseless freak of those mad-brained English?"
The next moment any doubt in his mind vanished, all the blood left the scoundrel's face, and, starting to his knees, he covered the foremost figure with his weapon. Twice he raised it, staring hard, and a feeling as of an electric shock passed through Dennis Dashwood as the pair recognised each other.
Then they fired their revolvers simultaneously, but the cylinders of both were empty, and into the livid face of Von Dussel there came an extraordinary look of mingled doubt and terror.
"But you are dead!" he gasped, as the memory of the mined brewery came back to him.
"Not the first mistake you have made, you infernal scoundrel!" shouted Dennis; and clubbing his revolver, he smote him fair and square between the eyes, dropping the spy like a stone.
"Stop, Hawke, I want that man alive!" panted the avenger, "he's got enough to go on with"; and, checkingthe remorseless bayonet with which Hawke was about to run him through, Dennis turned and knelt beside the body of his chum.
Little Wetherby was lying on his side, but his eyes brightened as he saw who it was.
"Go back, Dashwood," said the boy, speaking with difficulty, "it's no use, I'm done."
"Nonsense, old chap; we're going to get you in between us," said Dennis. "Hawke and I can carry you."
"No, no—do go back, there's a dear fellow," gurgled the boy, a rush of blood from his lungs almost choking him. "But I say, Dashwood, there is one thing you might do for me. You'll find a writing pad in my kit-bag, the Mater would like to have it."
"She shall, Wetherby. But let's have a look at you, and see if we can stop the hæmorrhage before we pick you up. Where did that fiend get you?"
"Through the heart," replied the dying boy. "Please let me lie here, and tell the Mater I don't regret it, except for her sake; say that I wouldn't have missed this for anything. I've only known what it was to live since I came out here!" And then, with his hand clasped in his friend's hand, Cuthbert Wetherby knew what it was to die, and passed into the great beyond with a fearless smile on his young lips.
Dennis had seen so many men "go out" in the few brief weeks of his fighting that he had deemed himself case-hardened against anything, but now he had to look away, a little ashamed that Hawke should see the spasm that came into his face.
"You are not the only one that's lost a pal to-night, Hawke," he said in a choking voice; "now give me a hand with this Prussian hog."
As Hawke jumped up with alacrity he gave a yell of positive anguish. "Why didn't you let me tickle 'im in the ribs, sir? He's gone!" he howled.
Von Dussel's head must have been as hard as his black heart, for he had recovered his senses at the moment Wetherby died, and a mighty gust of passion swept over Dennis Dashwood's soul.
"He can't be far off, and I'll find him if I die for it. Get you back to cover, Hawke."
"Is it likely?" cried his companion, giving vent to his overcharged feelings by a very ugly laugh, which changed into a howl of delight as a bullet grazed the tip of his ear. "There he is, sir, hiding in that there crater!—and he's some shot too—look out!"
Von Dussel, armed with a rifle—there were scores lying about littering the ground—lodged his second bullet in the leather case that held Dennis's field glasses, and, instantly dividing, the two ran a zigzag course towards the crater as they saw his head dodging down.
It was not twenty yards away, but as they reached it, one on either flank, they saw their prey scramble out of the opposite side and bolt like a hare across the open ground beyond.
There were two shell-holes in the distance, for one of which he was obviously making, but just as Hawke dropped to his knee and covered him with his rifle, theGerman searchlights went out, leaving everything pitch dark.
"That's done us, Hawke," cried Dennis bitterly, as the marksman of A Company fired a random shot.
"'Arf a mo, sir. If I didn't wing 'im, I'll bet I've 'eaded 'im orf to the right"; and he sent a brace of bullets pinging into the darkness.
"Lor lumme!" he chuckled the next moment, "there ain't no fool like an Allemong. What did he want to fire back for?" And he wiped a great gout of the chalky mud that had splashed up into his face as a Mauser bullet struck the ground between them. "'E's in that 'ole to the right—that's where we'll find 'im, sure as my name's 'Arry 'Awke. Come on, sir, don't make a sound!"
With the switching off of the searchlights the enemy barrage had ceased, and the deafening crash of the German shells was succeeded by a weird silence.
The distant boom of the British firing seemed very far off and almost insignificant in that sudden transition, and recharging his empty revolver as he went forward, Dennis wormed himself cautiously to the edge of the crump-hole, where he hoped to find his enemy.
It was still pouring in torrents as his chin came on a level with the ragged rim, but the fierce hope died out of his heart.
The shell-hole was an old one, the rain had filled it almost to the brim, and he ground his teeth, knowing that the spy had outwitted them after all. He knew now that, in spite of Hawke's shots, the villain with the charmed life must have chanced his arm and kept straight onbetween the two shell-holes, and would even then be nearing the German position, gloating over his success.
"I have missed the chance of my lifetime," he thought bitterly, when a star shell burst directly above him, lighting up the rain pool like a sheet of silver.
He had already picked himself up, and was clearing his throat to give his unseen companion a hail, when a warning whistle came from the opposite edge of the hole, and he saw Hawke's head and shoulders and a pointing arm.
Among the splashing raindrops in the centre of the pool a white face parted the water.
It was Von Dussel come up to breathe, and as the face sank out of sight again, Dennis dived in after it, regardless of all consequences.
Major Dashwood and the Brigadier, stumbling forward along the German communication, met three men carrying something between them, and the third man had the fingers of his left hand twined in a tight clutch on the collar of one of the bearers.
"What is all this, Dennis?" demanded the Brigadier, who had been an indignant witness of that strange chase, without in the least understanding what it meant.
"Little Wetherby dead, pater, and Von Dussel very much alive, and none the worse for a cold bath," came the answer; "the court martial that sits on his wife to-morrow will be able to kill two birds with one stone."
"My wife!" exclaimed the spy. "Ottilie in your hands!"
"Yes, you brute, we've bagged the pair of you," said Dennis, with a grim laugh; "it's been Von Dussel versus Dashwood for a long time, but the Dashwoods have 'won out' in the end."
"I do not understand," faltered Von Dussel in a choking voice, and then instantly recovering his true Prussian bluster: "I demand the right treatment accorded to every officer who has the misfortune to be taken prisoner. I have high connections in my country, and I am willing to give you my parole."
"Parole for a cowardly murderer!" interrupted Dennis hotly. "You are talking through the back of your neck, and you know it. Besides, apart from all that, there is only one end for spies."
Then all the bluster went out of the cur, and he shivered like a man with ague as they took him away under escort into a safe place.
In the rear of that formidable trench, which they had taken with such gallantry, the Reedshires buried their dead. There were not many of them, considering the fury of the fight, but the little row of white wood crosses told of good comrades gone for ever, and had a grim significance all its own.
Harry Hawke stood in the rain, leaning on his rifle before one of the crosses, reading the simple inscription which the armourer-sergeant had painted for him on the rough wood: "Jim Tiddler, 2/12th R.R.R., aged 21. He was a good pal."
"Yus, he was a good pal," muttered Hawke, "one of the best, and so was Mr. Wetherby. I'm glad old Tiddler's planted alongside 'im."
His wicked little eye ranged away to another chalk mound which had no name upon it. It stood apart from the rest, and was close to that angle of the German salient where Dennis had crouched on the night that all the survivors would remember as long as they remembered anything. An ugly red smear on the sandbags at the head of the mound had not been washed away by the rain.
Two spies had been buried there, after a court martial held in a dug-out, and one of them had been a woman, who had tried to brazen it out in spite of the overwhelming evidence produced against them. Threats, tears, piteous appeals for mercy, Ottilie's big black eyes, all had proved in vain.
Then she had swallowed poison, but the tabloid she tried to pass to her husband was intercepted, and the volley of ball cartridge that dealt stern justice in the grey light of a wet afternoon had rid our lines of a deadly and insidious peril that had cost us many lives.
"Shooting was too good for 'im, the dirty dog," said Private Hawke, as he lit a woodbine and turned away.
And that was the requiem of the Von Dussels!
The weather brightened and the Great Push still rolled on. Day by day the shell dumps grew to incredible size, and the British guns never ceased their remorseless preparations. Names hitherto unknown to British readers became household words to those at home, who, reading between the lines, knew that at last our great and glorious armies were on the high road to victory.
It was not to be yet, but it was coming, slowly but surely, and Mrs. Dashwood, in the old home with the greenlawn sloping to the water's edge, wished a thousand times that she had been born a man that she might have taken her share in the great achievement.
A month passed, and to the house in Regent's Park came a letter, written on a folding-table by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, and in the writer's ears as he scrawled the lines was the tramp of the relief filing past his dug-out door.
"Darling little Mater," wrote Dennis, "I'm going to give you a surprise, unless theGazette'sout already. You've heard me speak of Private Hawke of ours, the crack shot of my company, well, he and I have got three days' leave for a special reason. The King is going to present Hawke with the V.C., which he has deserved over and over again, at Buckingham Palace next Thursday. Incidentally I might mention that I am also to receive it on the same day. Also the Military Cross, likewise the D.S.O. It makes me positively blush as I sit here, and I really believe I'm the most fortunate beggar in the whole of our crush, if not in the Army."Don't make any mistake, dear, it has been sheer luck on my part. I've just happened to be there at the right moment. Some beggars who have done far more than I have have got nothing—but there it is."By the way, the French have been awfully decent to me. Somehow, Joffre got to know about a little scrap I had when the French attacked a German trench, and I helped to carry out the commandant, who was badly wounded. They have given me their Military Medal for that, and for inducing a German company to surrenderI've got the Croix de Guerre, their newest decoration, you know; and I'll be hanged, but on top of it all the Cross of the Legion of Honour has come along for a little air raid into the Black Forest with a charmingpilote-aviateurnamed Laval. It was really only a sort of joy ride, but I managed to bring Laval back after he was hit. Thank goodness, they tell me he's almost well again, and I must say I like the French awfully."I never told you anything about that business, because I was afraid you might think I was risking my neck unnecessarily, but you know, dear, one's got to do it on a job like this. And oh, I say, what a pig I am, gassing about myself before I tell you that dear old Bob is coming over with us to receive the M.C. It's an awfully pretty thing with silver-and-blue ribbon—and—though mind you, mater, this is not to be put about yet in case it doesn't come off—but there's a strong rumour round here that the Governor's to have a division! Haig was awfully delighted at the way he handled that business about a month ago—I mean when we downed your old friend Van Drissel. Hope you are not running any more refugees, eh, what? Now be at the station to meet us, and if you like to kiss Hawke, you may. He's saved my life more than once."
"Darling little Mater," wrote Dennis, "I'm going to give you a surprise, unless theGazette'sout already. You've heard me speak of Private Hawke of ours, the crack shot of my company, well, he and I have got three days' leave for a special reason. The King is going to present Hawke with the V.C., which he has deserved over and over again, at Buckingham Palace next Thursday. Incidentally I might mention that I am also to receive it on the same day. Also the Military Cross, likewise the D.S.O. It makes me positively blush as I sit here, and I really believe I'm the most fortunate beggar in the whole of our crush, if not in the Army.
"Don't make any mistake, dear, it has been sheer luck on my part. I've just happened to be there at the right moment. Some beggars who have done far more than I have have got nothing—but there it is.
"By the way, the French have been awfully decent to me. Somehow, Joffre got to know about a little scrap I had when the French attacked a German trench, and I helped to carry out the commandant, who was badly wounded. They have given me their Military Medal for that, and for inducing a German company to surrenderI've got the Croix de Guerre, their newest decoration, you know; and I'll be hanged, but on top of it all the Cross of the Legion of Honour has come along for a little air raid into the Black Forest with a charmingpilote-aviateurnamed Laval. It was really only a sort of joy ride, but I managed to bring Laval back after he was hit. Thank goodness, they tell me he's almost well again, and I must say I like the French awfully.
"I never told you anything about that business, because I was afraid you might think I was risking my neck unnecessarily, but you know, dear, one's got to do it on a job like this. And oh, I say, what a pig I am, gassing about myself before I tell you that dear old Bob is coming over with us to receive the M.C. It's an awfully pretty thing with silver-and-blue ribbon—and—though mind you, mater, this is not to be put about yet in case it doesn't come off—but there's a strong rumour round here that the Governor's to have a division! Haig was awfully delighted at the way he handled that business about a month ago—I mean when we downed your old friend Van Drissel. Hope you are not running any more refugees, eh, what? Now be at the station to meet us, and if you like to kiss Hawke, you may. He's saved my life more than once."
Mrs. Dashwood closed her eyes, and her lips moved in silent prayer. She was thanking Heaven that her husband and sons were "making good" in the hour of her country's triumph!
Transcriber's NoteTypographical errors corrected in the text:Page 22 Right-oh changed to Right-oPage 26 Right-oh changed to Right-oPage 55 Right-oh changed to Right-oPage 180 reconnaisance changed to reconnaissance
Transcriber's Note