"To hell with discipline!" said Lieutenant Simpson, ex-mining engineer of Colorado. "I'm going——"
A corporal had halted before them and saluted. "O.C.'s compliments," he said tersely, "and the company is to go up the line as auxiliary infantry. Parade falling in now, sir. We move off in an hour."
When the officers reached their headquarters they found a scene of bustling activity. Gas-masks were being inspected, ammunition supplied, first-aid packages given out where they had been lost, rifles cleaned and inspected, and all the accouterments of war checked and shortages replaced.
Craighouse strode up to his section, ignoring the sergeant's salute. "We're going into this scrap," he said quietly, though his voice vibrated oddly, "and I want every mother's son of you to see red. There's a girl out on that road who is dying of fever, and its fear of the Hun that is driving her on, and before night she'll be lying dead by the side of the road. She's somebody's daughter—somebody's sister—and, by Heaven, we'll make the Hun pay for it! What do you say, you Yankee sons o' guns?"
They cheered him to the echo, and some of them swore, and some of them laughed (but the laugh had a cruel ring in it), and some of them felt the salt tears stinging their eyes—but every one saw red.
Craighouse slowly walked over to his hut to superintend the packing of his own things. In his heart was a great exaltation and a mad love for the men who looked to him for leadership. In the seclusion of his hut he did what he had not done for years. He knelt for a moment by the side of his kit and prayed that he might quit himself like a man.
There are moments in war when men's very souls are touched by a nobility, by a compassion, by a reverence that rises above all creeds. Out of the depths they have risen to heights supernal.
X
In a private ward at Abbeville an American officer lay in great pain, and tossed restlessly in a delirium of fever. A young woman in the uniform of a V.A.D. watched by his side, and, sponging his palms and forehead, sought to soothe him with a gentleness and a tenderness that a mother would show to her child. The man was badly wounded in chest and leg, and exposure had brought a fever to torment his sufferings. Once he sat up and glared wildly at her.
"Did the guns get away?" he cried. "Did they get away?"