But Hugo and Pilzer and those of Peterkin's immediate group were alive. They were in their places, while he was alone and out of his place. He had bolted, while they held their ground; now he would be revealed in his true light. The bronze cross would be lost before it was pinned to his breast. From where he lay, however, he could see the other face of the redoubt and a wedge of men about to mount the sand-bags. His next act was born of the inspired cunning of his fear of being exposed, which was almost as compelling as his fear of death. He waved his hand excitedly to the others to come on.
"Charge! Charge! This is the way!" shrieked Peterkin.
His voice had the terror of a man floating toward a falls and calling for a rope, but not so to Fracasse, to whom it was the voice of a great chance. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Of course, he should move around under cover of the reverse wall of the redoubt to join in the attack on the weak point! The valet's son had shown him the way.
"Come, men, come! Follow me and Peterkin!" cried Fracasse.
Did they follow? Westerling or any expert in the psychology of war could understand how ripe was their mood. "It is the wait under right conditions that will make men fiends unleashed when the word to storm is given," an older authority had written. Under sentence of death for six hours, they welcomed any opportunity to get at grips with those who had held death suspended over their heads.
You will use hand-grenades, will you? Snug behind sand-bags you will tear the flesh of our comrades to pieces, will you? They saw red, the red of raw fragments of flesh; the red of the gush from torn artery walls—all except Hugo and Peterkin, who might well begin to believe that there was a measure of art in heroism. Peterkin seemed to share leadership at the captain's side, but he slipped and fell—he had weak ankles, anyway—as Fracasse's men pressed the rear of the wedge forward with the strength of mass, only to be borne back by men, riddled with bullets, tumbling fairly into their faces.
As we have seen, there was no getting through a breach under the concentrated blasts of a hundred rifles, and Pilzer, who, by using human shoulders for steps, had reached the parapet, turned a back somersault with out his rifle. However, he seized one from a dead man's hand before the captain had noticed the loss. Some of the company joined in the flight of the attackers from the town into the open, but Hugo and Pilzer and their friends remained under cover of the wall. They still saw red, the red of a darker anger—that of repulse.
When, finally, they burst into the redoubt after it was found that the Browns had gone, all, even the judge's son, were the war demon's, own. The veneer had been warped and twisted and burned off down to the raw animal flesh. Their brains had the fever itch of callouses forming. Not a sign of brown there in the yard; not a sign of any tribute after all they had endured! They had not been able to lay hands on the murderous throwers of hand-grenades. Far away now was the barrack-room geniality of the forum around Hugo; in oblivion were the ethics of an inherited civilization taught by mothers, teachers, and church.
But here was a house—a house of the Browns; a big, fine house! They would see what they had won—this was the privilege of baffled victory. What they had won was theirs! To the victor the spoils! Pell-mell they crowded into the dining-room, Hugo with the rest, feeling himself a straw on the crest of a wave, and Pilzer, most bitter, most ugly of all, his short, strong teeth and gums showing and his liver patch red, lumpy, and trembling. In crossing the threshold of privacy they committed the act that leaves the deepest wound of war's inheritance, to go on from generation to generation in the history of families.
"A swell dining-room! I like the chandeliers!" roared Pilzer.