Little Peterkin, always pale but not so pale now as his comrades, flushed at the distinction.
"Yes, sir!" and he saluted.
In his eyes was the exaltation of his simple-minded faith. He did not think too much. What more could kings and conquerors ask than such a soldier as the valet's son, secure in the belief that his charmed life would bring him through the assault unharmed?
"My God! I can't!" exclaimed the banker's son. "I've suffered enough. There's life and wealth and all that it gives waiting for me at home! I'm young—I can't!"
There was a rustle of bodies in a restless movement of drawn breaths at common thought taking form, desperately fraught with alarm to Fracasse.
"You will!" Fracasse said, thrusting his revolver muzzle against the ribs of the banker's son. "If you don't, I'll shoot you dead, or you'll be trampled to death by the rush from the rear!"
The wedge point may not strike back at the hammer that drives it. Close packed behind Fracasse's company was a seemingly limitless mass of soldiery, palpitant with their short breaths, a steamy, sickening odor rising from their water-soaked clothes. Here were men so wet, so tired, so nerve-worn that they did not care when death came; men who wanted to curse and strike out against their fate; men who wanted to turn in flight, their natural impulse held down by the bonds of discipline and that pride of fellowship which is shamed to confess to a shiver along the spine. Some saw pictures of home, of sweethearts; some saw nothing. Some were in a coma of merciless suspense that grew more and more unendurable, until it seemed that anything to break it would be welcome.
Occasionally came a sob from a man gone hysterical under the strain, a moan of mental misery; and once a laugh, a strange, hiccoughy, delirious laugh, a strident attempt at the wit that keeps up courage; and from Pilzer, the butcher's son, a string of oaths mixed with brimstone and obscenity. After each outbreak an automatic, irritable whisper for silence came from an officer. Legs and arms, bodies and souls and brains in a nauseating press! Humanity reckoned by the pound, high-priced from breeding and rearing and training; yet very cheap.
Hearts thumped and watches ticked off the time, until suddenly the heavens were racked by the prologue of the guns. Child's play that baptism of shell fire in the first charge of the war beside later thunders; and these, in turn, mild beside this terrific outburst, with all the artillery concentrated to support the ram in a sudden blast. The passing projectiles formed the continuous scream and roar of some many-toned siren that penetrated the flesh as well as the ears with its sound. Orders could not have been heard if given. There was no need for orders. Fracasse, counting off the minutes between him and eternity on his watch face by his flash-light, saw that ten had passed. Then his finger that pressed a button, his brain that spoke to his hand, were those of an automaton acting by time release. He exploded the mine. This was the signal for the charge; for all the legs of the ram to move.