The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne

by Joseph A. Altsheler

As his eyes cleared he saw the four soldiers standing at the far edge of the pond, looking at the water. Doubtless they were waiting for his body to reappear, as his action, half fall, half spring, and the roaring of the rifles had been so close together that they seemed a blended movement.

He was trembling all over from intense nervous exertion and excitement, but his mind steadied enough for him to observe the soldiers. Undoubtedly they were talking together, as he saw them making the gestures of men who speak, but, even had he heard them, he could not have understood their German. They were watching for his body, and as it did not reappear they might make the circle of the pond looking for it. He intended, in such an event, to leap out and run, but the elements were intereceding in his favor. Thunder now preponderated greatly in that rumble on the western horizon, and a blaze of yellow lightning played across the surface of the pond. It was followed by a rush of rain and the soldiers turned back toward the house, evidently sure that they had not missed.

John drew himself out of the water and climbed up the bank. His knees gave way under him and he sank to the ground. Excitement and emotion had been so violent that he was robbed of strength, but the condition lasted only a minute or two. Then he rose and began to pick a way.

The rain was driving hard, and it had grown so dark that one could not see far. But he felt that the German sentinels now would seek a little shelter from the wrath of the skies, and keeping in the shelter of a hedge he passed by the stables, where many of the hussars and Uhlans slept, through an orchard, the far side of which was packed with automobiles, and thence into a wood, where he believed at last that he was safe.

He stopped here a little while in the lee of a great oak to protect himself from the driving rain, and he noticed then that it was but a passing shower, sent, it seemed then to him, as a providential aid. The part of the rumble that was real thunder was dying. The yellow flare of the lightning stopped and the rain swept off to the east. The moon and stars were coming out again.

John tried to see the château, but it was hidden from him by trees. They would miss him there, and then they would know that it was he whom the soldiers had fired upon at the edge of the pond. All of them would believe that he was dead, and he remembered suddenly that Julie, who was there among them, would believe it, too. Would she grieve? Or would he merely be one of the human beings passing through her life, fleeting and forgotten, like the shower that had just gone? It was true that he had escaped, but he might be killed in some battle before she was rescued from Auersperg—if she was rescued.

These thoughts were hateful, and turning into the road by which they had come to the château he ran down it. He ran because he wanted motion, because he wished to reach the French army as quickly as he could, and help Lannes organize for the rescue of Julie.

He ran a long distance, because his excitement waned slowly, and because the severe exercise made the blood course rapidly through his veins, counteracting the effects of his cold and wetting. When he began to feel weary he turned out of the road, knowing that it was safer in the fields. He had the curious belief or impression now that the black shower was all arranged for his benefit. Providence was merely making things even. The soldiers had been brought upon him when the chances were a hundred to one against him, and then the shower had been sent to cover him, when the chances were a hundred to one against that, too.

He saw far to the south a sudden faint radiance and he knew that it was the last of the lightning. The little feathery clouds, which looked so friendly and pleasant against the blue of the sky, came back and the moaning on the western horizon toward which he was traveling was wholly that of the guns.

He heard a noise over his head, a mixture of a whistle and a scream, and he knew that a shell was passing high. He walked on, and heard another. But they could not be firing at him. He was still that mere mote in the infinite darkness, but, looking back for the bursting of the shells, he saw a blaze leap up near the point from which he had come.