IV—THE TORCH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH
The night was dark as a grave, and over the lowland of the garden hung a thick, milky fog. The feet sank deep into the sticky, soaking mud. The Lieutenant's assistant went slowly, bent to the ground and breathing heavily.
They continued on their way without seeing anything ahead. Though the distance between them and their object was only 200 yards, it seemed to them from time to time as if they had lost their bearings and were going in the wrong direction.
Soon they were aware of a heavy, suffocating smell; the next moment there loomed up before their eyes a sombre silhouette of a building. It stood there enveloped in fog.
Reaching a corner of the house, the Lieutenant stopped short, drew from his ulster a big field revolver and whispered to the man to come near.
It seemed that his main care was not to carry out the task he had undertaken, but to hide conveniently from the Russian fire, and then slip off to the rear as soon as the house caught fire. He figured that while the flames were spreading over the structure, and before they had reached the last wall, he could quietly and without the least danger remain under shelter. As soon as the fire enveloped the structure, and before the walls began crumbling, he would run back in time to avoid exposure by the conflagration.
With this in view, he gave orders to his subordinate to pile up straw on the side of the building directly facing the trenches. In the meantime the officer, having taken shelter behind the opposite wall, lit a cigar and remained waiting for developments.
A few moments of long and painful suspense followed. The poor Lieutenant was in a state of frenzy. It was not the personal danger alone that now excited his imagination. He was tormented by the mystic fear of that which he was about to carry out. In the darkness he drew a sombre sketch of all that was hidden behind the wall, the inevitable which he was to face within a few moments.
How many of them are there? In what stage of decomposition? How do they lie?
The officer suddenly recalled a conversation in which some one had told him that when the flames touched the dead in the crematory they coiled and twisted as if alive. In his excited imagination he quickly pictured a wild dance of the dead which was about to begin.
"When they calm down," he thought, "after they are burned, as soon as roast meat is scented I will run, and then let the Russians shoot at them. All I have to do is to get away in time. If we were only done with this! Quick! Quick!"
At this moment he became aware of a pleasant smell of straw smoke, and immediately afterward the opposite corner of the structure burst into a bright flame. Almost simultaneously with the flash firing began from the Russian trenches, and it seemed to the officer that a few bullets hissed near him.
The soldier succeeded in pouring a great quantity of kerosene into the interior of the house. The fire spread with unusual swiftness. In two minutes the structure was all ablaze.