XIX
RECEIVING THE CHARGE
What about Stransky of the Reds, who would not fight to please the ruling classes? What about Grandfather Fragini, who would fight on principle whenever a Gray was in sight? Now we leave the story of Fracasse's men at the foot of the knoll for that of the Browns on the crest.
Young Dellarme, new to his captain's rank, with lips pressed tightly together, his delicately moulded, boyish features reflecting the confidence which it was his duty to inspire in his company, watching the plain through his glasses, saw the movement of mounted officers to the rear of the 128th as a reason for summoning his men.
"Creep up! Don't show yourselves! Creep up—carefully—carefully!" he kept repeating as they crawled forward on their stomachs. "And no one is to fire until the command comes."
Hugging the cover of the ridge of fresh earth which they had thrown up the previous night, they watched the white posts. Stransky, who had been ruminatively silent all the morning, was in his place, but he was not looking at the enemy. Cautiously, to avoid a reprimand, he raised his head to enable him to glance along the line. All the faces seemed drawn and clayish.
"They don't want to fight! They're just here because they're ordered here and haven't the character to defy authority," he thought. "The leaven is working! My time is coming!"
But Grandfather Fragini's cheeks had a hectic flush; his heart was beating with the exhilaration of an old war-horse. Looking over Tom's shoulder, he squinted into the distance, his underlip quivering against his toothless gums.
"My eyesight's kind of uncertain," he said. "Can you see 'em?"
"There by the white posts—those lying figures!" said Tom. "They're almost the color of the stubble."
"So I do, the land-sharks! Down on their bellies, too! No flag, either! But that ain't no reason why we shouldn't have a flag. It ought to be waving at 'em in defiance right over our heads!"
"Flags draw fire. They let the enemy know where you are,' Tom explained.
"The Hussars didn't bother about that. We let out a yell and went after 'em!" growled grandfather. "Appears to me the fighting these days is grovelling in the dirt and taking care nobody don't get hurt!"
"Oh, there'll be enough hurt—don't you worry about that!" said a voice from the line.
"Good thing an old fellow who's been under fire is along to stiffen you rookies!" replied grandfather tartly. "You'll be all right once you get going. You'll settle down to be real soldiers yet. And I'd like to hear a little more cussing. How the Hussars used to cuss! Too much reading and writing nowadays. It makes men too ladylike."
By this time he had once more attracted the captain's attention.
"Grandfather Fragini, you must drop back—you must! If you don't, I'll have you carried back!" called Dellarme, sparing the old man only a glance from his concentrated observation on the front.
When he looked again at the enemy any thought of carrying out his threat vanished, for the minute had come when all his training was to be put to a test. The figures on the other side of the white posts were rising. He was to prove by the way he directed a company of infantry in action whether or not he was worthy of his captain's rank. He breathed one of those unspoken prayers that are made to the god of one's own efficient, conscientious responsibility to duty. The words of it were: "May I keep my head as if I were at drill!" Then he smiled cheerily. In order that he might watch how each man used his rifle, he drew back of the line, his slim body erect as he rested on one knee, his head level with the other heads while he fingered his whistle. His lieutenants followed his example even to the detail of his cheery smile. There was a slight stirring of heads and arms as eyes drew beads on human targets. The instant that Eugene Aronson sprang over the white post a blast from Dellarme's whistle began the war.
It was a signal, too, for Stransky to play the part he had planned; to make the speech of his life. His six feet of stature shot to its feet with a Jack-in-the-box abruptness, under the impulse of a mighty and reckless passion.
"Men, stop firing!" he cried thunderously. "Stop firing on your brothers! Like you, they are only the pawns of the ruling class, who keep us all pawns in order that they may have champagne and caviare. Comrades, I'll lead you! Comrades, we'll take a white flag and go down to meet our comrades and we'll find that they think as we do! I'll lead you!"
Grandfather Fragini, impelled by the hysterical call of the Hussar spirit, also sprang up, waving his hat and trembling and swaying with the emotion that racked his old body.
"Give it to 'em! Aim low! Give it to 'em—give it to 'em, horns and hoofs, sabre and carbine!" he shouted in a high, jumpy voice. "Give it to 'em! Make 'em weep! Make 'em whine! Make 'em bellow!"
Both appeals were drowned in the cracking of the rifles working as regularly as punching-machines in a factory. Every soldier was seeing only his sight and the running figures under it. Mechanically and automatically, training had been projected into action, anticipation into realization. A spectator might as well have called to a man in a hundred-yard dash to stop running, to an oarsman in a race to jump out of his shell.
So centred was Dellarme in watching his men and the effect of their fire that he did not notice the two silhouettes on the sky-line, making ridicule of all his care about keeping his company under cover, until the doctor, who alone had nothing to do as yet, touched him on the arm. At the moment he looked around, and before he could speak a command, a hospital-corps man who was near Grandfather Fragini threw himself in a low tackle and brought the old man to earth, while the company sergeant sprang for Stransky with an oath. But Stransky was in no mood to submit. He felled the sergeant with a blow and, recklessly defiant, stared at Dellarme, while the men, steadily firing, were still oblivious of the scene. The sergeant, stunned, rose to his knees and reached for his revolver. Dellarme, bent over to keep his head below the crest, had already drawn his as he hastened toward them.
"Stransky," said Dellarme, "you have struck an officer under fire! You have refused to fight! Within the law I am warranted in shooting you dead!"
"Well!" answered Stransky, throwing back his head, his face seeming all big, bony nose and heavy jaw and burning eyes.
"Will you get down? Will you take your place with your rifle?" demanded Dellarme.
Stransky laughed thunderously in scorn. He was handsome, titanic, and barbaric, with his huge shoulders stretching his blouse, which fell loosely around his narrow hips, while the fist that had felled the sergeant was still clenched.
"No!" said Stransky. "You won't kill much if you kill me and you'd kill less if you shot yourself! God Almighty! Do you think I'm afraid? Me—afraid?"
His eyes in a bloodshot glare, as uncompromising as those of a bull in an arena watching the next move of the red cape of the matador, regarded Dellarme, who hesitated in the revulsion of the horror of killing and in admiration of the picture of human force before him. But the old sergeant, smarting under the insult of the blow, his sandstone features mottled with red patches, had no compunctions of this order. He was ready to act as executioner.
"If you don't want to shoot, I can! An example—the law! There's no other way of dealing with him! Give the word!" he said to Dellarme.
Stransky laughed, now in strident cynicism. It was the laugh of the red, of bastardy, of blanketless nights in the hedgerows, and boot soles worn through to the macadam, with the dust of speeding automobiles blown in the gaunt face of hunger. Dellarme still hesitated, recollecting Lanstron's remark. He pictured Stransky in a last stand in a redoubt, and every soldier was as precious to him as a piece of gold to a miser.
"One ought to be enough to kill me if you're going to do it to slow music," said Stransky. "You might as well kill me as the poor fools that your poor fools are trying to—"
Another breath finished the speech; a breath released from a ball that seemed to have come straight from hell. The fire-control officer of a regiment of Gray artillery on the plain, scanning the landscape for the origin of the rifle-fire which was leaving many fallen in the wake of the charge of the Gray infantry, had seen two figures on the knoll. "How kind! Thank you!" his thought spoke faster than words. No need of range-finding! The range to every possible battery or infantry position around La Tir was already marked on his map. He passed the word to his guns.
The burst of their first shrapnel-shell blinded all three actors in the scene on the crest of the knoll with its ear-splitting crack and the force of its concussion threw Stransky down beside the sergeant. Dellarme, as his vision cleared, had just time to see Stransky jerk his hand up to his temple, where there was a red spot, before another shell burst, a little to the rear. This was harmless, as a shrapnel's shower of fragments and bullets carry forward from the point of explosion. But the next burst in front of the line. The doctor's period of idleness was over. One man's rifle shot up as his spine was broken by a jagged piece of shrapnel jacket. Now there were too many shells to watch them individually.
"It's all right—all right, men!" Dellarme called again, assuming his cheery smile. "It takes a lot of shrapnel to kill anybody. Our batteries will soon answer!"
His voice was unheard, yet its spirit was felt. The men knew through their training that there was no use of dodging and that their best protection was an accurate fire of their own.
"Shelling us, the ———- ———!" gasped Grandfather Fragini, who had experience, if he were weak in reading and writing. "All noise and smoke!"—as it was to a larger degree in his day.
Stransky had half risen, a new kind of savagery dawning on his features as he regained his wits. With inverted eyes he regarded the red ends of his fingers, held in line with the bridge of his nose. He felt of the wound again, now that he was less dizzy. It was only a scratch and he had been knocked down like a beef in an abattoir by an unseen enemy, on whom he could not lay hands! He glared around as if in search of the hidden antagonist. The sergeant had crept forward to be a steadying influence to the men in their first trial, if need be, and the doctor and a hospital-corps man were dragging a wounded man out of fine without exposing their own shoulders above the crest. Stransky rolled his eyes in and out; the tendons of his neck swelled; his jaw worked as if crunching pebbles. Deafeningly, the shrapnel jackets continued to crack with "ukung-s-sh—ukung-s-sh" as the swift breath of the shrapnel missiles spread.
"Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em!" Grandfather Fragini cried, his old voice a quavering bird note in the pandemonium. "My, but they do come fast!" he gasped.
Yes, a trifle faster than in your day, grandfather, when a gun of the horse-artillery had to be relaid after the recoil, which is now taken up by an oil chamber, while the gunner on his seat behind the breech keeps the sight steady on the target. The guns of one battery of that Gray regiment of artillery, each firing six fourteen-pound shells a minute methodically, every shell loaded with nearly two hundred projectiles, were giving their undivided attention to the knoll.
How long could his company endure this? Dellarme might well ask. He knew that he would not be expected to withdraw yet. With a sense of relief he saw Fracasse's men drop for cover at the base of the knoll and then, expectation fulfilled, he realized that rifle-fire now reinforced the enemy's shell fire. His duty was to remain while he could hold his men, and a feeling toward them such as he had never felt before, which was love, sprang full-fledged into his heart as he saw how steadily they kept up their fusillade.
The sergeant, who now had time to think of Stransky, was seized with a spasm of retributive rage. He drew his revolver determinedly.
"You brought this on! I'll do for you!" he cried, turning toward the spot where he had left Stransky, only to lower his revolver in amazement as he saw Stransky, eager in response to a new passion, spring forward into place and pick up his rifle.
"If you will not have it my way, take it yours!" said the best shot in the company, as he began firing with resolute coolness.
"They have a lot of men down," said Dellarme, his glasses showing the many prostrate figures on the wheat stubble. "Steady! steady! We have plenty of batteries back in the hills. One will be in action soon."
But would one? He understood that with their smokeless powder the Gray guns could be located only by their flashes, which would not be visible unless the refraction of light were favorable. Then "thur-eesh—thur-eesh" above every other sound in a long wail! No man ever forgets the first crack of a shrapnel at close quarters, the first bullet breath on his cheek, or the first supporting shell from his side in flight that passes above him.
"That is ours!" called Dellarme.
"Ours!" shouted the sergeant.
"Ours!" sang the thought of every one of the men.
Over the Gray batteries on the plain an explosive ball of smoke hung in the still air; then another beside it.
"Thur-eesh—thur-eesh—thur-eesh," the screaming overhead became a gale that built a cloud of blue smoke over the offending Gray batteries—beautiful, soft blue smoke from which a spray of steel descended. There was no spotting the flashes of the Browns' guns in order to reply to them, for they were under the cover of a hill, using indirect aim as nicely and accurately as In firing pointblank. The gunners of the Gray batteries could not go on with their work under such a hail-storm, they were checkmated. They stopped firing and began moving to a new position, where their commander hoped to remain undiscovered long enough to support the 128th by loosing his lightnings against the defenders at the critical moment of the next charge, which would be made as soon as Fracasse's men had been reinforced.
There was an end to the concussions and the thrashing of the air around Dellarme's men, and they had the relief of a breaking abscess in the ear. But they became more conscious of the spits of dust in front of their faces and the passing whistles of bullets. In return, they made the sections of Gray infantry in reserve rushing across the levels, leave many gray lumps behind. But Fracasse's men at the foot of the slope poured in a heavier and still heavier fire.
"Down there's where we need the shells now!" spoke the thought of Dellarme's men, which he had anticipated by a word to the signal corporal, who waved his flag one—two—three—four—five times. Come on, now, with more of your special brand of death, fire-control officer! Your own head is above the sky-line, though your guns are hidden. Five hundred yards beyond the knoll is the range! Come on!
He came with a burst of screams so low in flight that they seemed to brush the back of the men's necks with a hair broom at the rate of a thousand feet a second. Having watched the result, Dellarme turned with a confirmatory gesture, which the corporal translated into the wigwag of "Correct!" The shrapnel smoke hanging over Fracasse's men appeared a heavenly blue to Dellarme's men.
"They are going to start for us soon! Oh, but we'll get a lot of them!" whispered Stransky gleefully to his rifle.
Dellarme glanced again toward the colonel's station. No sign of the retiring flag. He was glad of that. He did not want to fall back in face of a charge; to have his men silhouetted in the valley as they retreated. And the Grays would not endure this shower-bath long without going one way or the other. He gave the order to fix bayonets, and hardly was it obeyed when he saw flashes of steel through the shrapnel smoke as the Grays fixed theirs. The Grays had five hundred yards to go; the Browns had the time that it takes running men to cover the distance in which to stop the Grays.
"We'll spear any of them who has the luck to get this far!" whispered Stransky to his rifle. The sentence was spoken in the midst of a salvo of shrapnel cracks, which he did not hear. He heard nothing, thought nothing, except to kill.
The Gray batteries on the plain, having taken up a new position and being reinforced, played on the crest at top speed instantly the Gray line rose and started up the slope at the run. With the purpose of confusing no less than killing, they used percussion, which burst on striking the ground, as well as shrapnel, which burst by a time-fuse in the air. Fountains of sod and dirt shot upward to meet descending sprays of bullets. The concussions of the earth shook the aim of Dellarme's men, blinded by smoke and dust, as they fired through a fog at bent figures whose legs were pumping fast in dim pantomime.
But the guns of the Browns, also, have word that the charge has begun. The signal corporal is waiting for the gesture from Dellarme agreed upon as an announcement. The Brown artillery commander cuts his fuses two hundred and fifty yards shorter. He, too, uses percussion for moral effect.
Half of the distance from the foot to the crest of the knoll Fracasse's men have gone in face of the hot, sizzling tornado of bullets, when there is a blast of explosions in their faces with all the chaotic and irresistible force of a volcanic eruption. Not only are they in the midst of the first lot of the Browns' shells at the shorter range, but one Gray battery has either made a mistake in cutting its fuses or struck a streak of powder below standard, and its shells burst among those whom it is aiming to assist.
The ground seems rising under the feet of Fracasse's company; the air is split and racked and wrenched and torn with hideous screams of invisible demons. The men stop; they act on the uncontrollable instinct of self-preservation against an overwhelming force of nature. A few without the power of locomotion drop, faces pressed to the ground. The rest flee toward a shoulder of the slope through the instinct that leads a hunted man in a street into an alley. In a confusion of arms and legs, pressing one on the other, no longer soldiers, only a mob, they throw themselves behind the first protection that offers itself. Fracasse also runs. He runs from the flame of a furnace door suddenly thrown open.
The Gray batteries have ceased firing; certain gunners' ears burn under the words of inquiry as to the cause of the mistake from an artillery commander. Dellarme's men are hugging the earth too close to cheer. A desire to spring up and yell may be in their hearts, but they know the danger of showing a single unnecessary inch of their craniums above the sky-line. The sounds that escape their throats are those of a winning team at a tug of war as diaphragms relax.
With the smoke clearing, they see twenty or thirty Grays plastered on the slope at the point where the charge was checked. Every one of those prostrate forms is within fatal range. Not one moves a finger; even the living are feigning death in the hope of surviving. Among them is little Peterkin, so faithful in forcing his refractory legs to keep pace with his comrades. If he is always up with them they will never know what is in his heart and call him a coward. As he has been knocked unconscious, he has not been in the pell-mell retreat.
His first stabbing thought on coming to was that he must be dead; but, no; he was opening his eyes sticky with dust. At least, he must be wounded! He had not power yet to move his hands in order to feel where, and when they grew alive enough to move, what he saw in front of him held them frigidly still. His nerves went searching from his head to his feet and—miracle of Heaven!—found no point of pain or spot soppy with blood. If he were really hit there was bound to be one or the other, he knew from reading.
Between him and the faces of the Browns—yes, the actual, living, terrible Browns—above the glint of their rifle barrels, was no obstacle that could stop a bullet, though not more than three feet away was a crater made by a shell burst. The black circle of every muzzle on the crest seemed to be pointing at him. When were they going to shoot? When was he to be executed? Would he be shot in many places and die thus? Or would the very first bullet go through his head? Why didn't they fire? What were they waiting for? The suspense was unbearable. The desperation of overwhelming fear driving him in irresponsible impulse, he doubled up his legs and with a cat's leap sprang for the crater.
A blood-curdling burst of whistles passed over his head as a dozen rifles cracked. This time he was surely killed! He was in some other world! Which was it, the good or the bad? The good, for he had a glimpse of blue sky. No, that could not be, for he had been alive when he leaped for the crater, and there he was pressed against the soft earth of its bottom. He burrowed deeper blissfully. He was the nearest to the enemy of any man of the 128th, and he certainly had passed through a gamut of emotions in the half-hour since Eugene Aronson had leaped over a white post.
"Confound it! If we'd kept on we'd have got them! Now we have to do it all over again!" growled Fracasse distractedly as he looked around at the faces hugging the cover of the shoulder—faces asking, What next? each in its own way; faces blank and white; faces with lips working and eyes blinking; faces with the blood rushing back to cheeks in baffled anger. One, however, was half smiling—Hugo Mallin's.
"You did your share of the running, I'll warrant, Mallin!" said Fracasse excitedly, venting his disgust on a particular object.
"Yes, sir," answered Hugo. "It was very hard to maintain a semblance of dignity. Yes, sir, I kept near you all the time so you could watch me. Wasn't that what you wanted me to do, sir?"
"Good old Hugo! The same old Hugo!" breathed the spirit of the company. Three or four men burst into a hysterical laugh as if something had broken in their throats. Everybody felt better for this touch of drollery except the captain. Yet, possibly, it may have helped him in recovering his poise. Sometimes even a pin-prick will have this effect.
"Silence!" he said in his old manner. "I will give you something to joke about other than a little setback like this! Get up there with your rifles!"
He formed the nucleus of a firing-line under cover of the shoulder, and then set the remainder of his company to work with their spades making a trench. The second battalion of the 128th, which faced the knoll, was also digging at the base of the slope, and another regiment in reserve was deploying on the plain. After the failure to rush the knoll the Gray commander had settled down to the business of a systematic approach.
And what of those of Fracasse's men who had not run but had dropped in their tracks when the charge halted? They were between two lines of fire. There was no escape. Some of the wounded had a mercifully quick end, others suffered the consciousness of being hit again and again; the dead were bored through with bullet holes. In torture, the survivors prayed for death; for all had to die except Peterkin, the pasty-faced little valet's son.
Peterkin was quite safe, hugging the bottom of the shell crater under a swarm of hornets. In a surprisingly short time he became accustomed to the situation and found himself ravenously hungry, for the strain of the last twelve hours had burned up tissue. He took a biscuit out of his knapsack and began nibbling it, as became a true rodent.