He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening to the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward Messines and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess the lightning of big guns flickered along the sky.
“Anny way I w'u'd go,” mused McDermott, “I w'u'd run into that war if I was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan I want to do, here will I sthay.”
He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more.
“The hotel here,” he remarked, “is filled wid hospitality and midical tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?”
And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came still nearer to McDermott.
The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall the struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with a Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up floating flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and the bodies of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and whimpered in the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still could crawl, to whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary shelter and praying for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still McDermott slept.
At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun into the Hôtel Fauçon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from the window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy bottle beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the floor and murmured: “An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't belave there is anny war!”
And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap of ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake McDermott.
By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses at the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the village, and between was a “no man's land,” of which the Grande Place was a part. What was left of the Hôtel Faucon, with the sleeping McDermott in it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. In the streets to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed with grenade and bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further advance in any force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more men; no doubt, with the first morning light, they would move forward a regiment or two, possibly even a division, against the British who still clung stubbornly to the western side of the town. All the way from Wytschaete south to Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many little bitter struggles of this sort, the British at every point facing great odds.
When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south side of that part of “no man's land” which was the Grande Place, entered the open door of the Hôtel Fauçon.