I got Sandy to listen, but he shook his head. “Those guns are a dozen miles off,” he said. “They’re no nearer than three days ago. But it looks as if the sportsmen on the south might have a chance. When they break through and stream down the valley, they’ll be puzzled to account for what remains of us ... We’re no longer three adventurers in the enemy’s country. We’re the advance guard of the Allies. Our pals don’t know about us, and we’re going to be cut off, which has happened to advance guards before now. But all the same, we’re in our own battle-line again. Doesn’t that cheer you, Dick?”
It cheered me wonderfully, for I knew now what had been the weight on my heart ever since I accepted Sir Walter’s mission. It was the loneliness of it. I was fighting far away from my friends, far away from the true fronts of battle. It was a side-show which, whatever its importance, had none of the exhilaration of the main effort. But now we had come back to familiar ground. We were like the Highlanders cut off at Cite St Auguste on the first day of Loos, or those Scots Guards at Festubert of whom I had heard. Only, the others did not know of it, would never hear of it. If Peter succeeded he might tell the tale, but most likely he was lying dead somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the lines. We should never be heard of again any more, but our work remained. Sir Walter would know that, and he would tell our few belongings that we had gone out in our country’s service.
We were in the castrol again, sitting under the parapets. The same thoughts must have been in Sandy’s mind, for he suddenly laughed.
“It’s a queer ending, Dick. We simply vanish into the infinite. If the Russians get through they will never recognize what is left of us among so much of the wreckage of battle. The snow will soon cover us, and when the spring comes there will only be a few bleached bones. Upon my soul it is the kind of death I always wanted.” And he quoted softly to himself a verse of an old Scots ballad:
“Mony’s the ane for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane.
Ower his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.”
“But our work lives,” I cried, with a sudden great gasp of happiness. “It’s the job that matters, not the men that do it. And our job’s done. We have won, old chap—won hands down—and there is no going back on that. We have won anyway; and if Peter has had a slice of luck, we’ve scooped the pool ... After all, we never expected to come out of this thing with our lives.”
Blenkiron, with his leg stuck out stiffly before him, was humming quietly to himself, as he often did when he felt cheerful. He had only one song, “John Brown’s Body”; usually only a line at a time, but now he got as far as the whole verse:
“He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so true,
And he frightened old Virginny till she trembled through and through.
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul goes marching along.”
“Feeling good?” I asked.
“Fine. I’m about the luckiest man on God’s earth, Major. I’ve always wanted to get into a big show, but I didn’t see how it would come the way of a homely citizen like me, living in a steam-warmed house and going down town to my office every morning. I used to envy my old dad that fought at Chattanooga, and never forgot to tell you about it. But I guess Chattanooga was like a scrap in a Bowery bar compared to this. When I meet the old man in Glory he’ll have to listen some to me.”