“It’s very goot,” Hans murmured, licking his lips for more. “Wisky not so goot as vasser,” and then he trailed off into a delirium. “Don’t tell. Don’t tell,” he pleaded. “I neffer mean to get Schmitt. I not know he would be der yet. I hide for Yacob, an’ I get Schmitt in der back and I only want Yacob. He send me to der pen for sure yet next time. I hate Yon Yacob.”
A little silence, then Hans murmured:
“I didn’t go to Kansas City. I coom back to Gretchen’s home by Little Wolf. I hide where I watch for Yacob. I shoot twice to be sure of Yacob, an’ Schmitt, hidin’ in der crack by der roat, get one shot. So I coom to Yermany and enlist. Gretchen, she coom too an’ she stay der. Vell! I help fight Boxer some. Mine Gott, forgif me. I do once some goot for der world dis day.”
And that was the last of Wyker.
The twilight hour was near. The wounded had been borne away by busy Red Cross angels of mercy. Wide away across the Chinese plain the big red sun slipped down the amber summer sky into a bath of molten flame. Then out of sight behind the edge of the world it turned all the west into one magnificent surge of scarlet glory, touching to beauty the tiny gray cloud flecks far away to the eastward; while long rivers of golden light by rivers of roseate glow mingled at last along the zenith in one vast 377 sweep of mother-of-pearl. A cool breeze came singing in from the sea—fanning the fevered faces of the weary soldiers. The desolate places were hidden by the deepening shadows, and the serenity of the twilight hour fell on the battlefield.
Then the men of each nationality went out to bury their dead. Swiftly the little brown Japanese digged and filled up the graves into which their comrades were deftly heaped. The Russian and Siberian Cossack lunged their fallen ones in heavily and unfeelingly. The Bengalese and Sikhs thrust their own out of sight as they were planting for an uncertain harvest. Each soldier from France who lost his life on that battlefield fell on his own grave and there his countrymen covered him over, an unmarked spot in a foreign land.
Thaine straightened a minute above his spade. The cool breezes were grateful to his heated brow. The after-sunset glow seemed like the benediction of the Infinite on the closing act of the day. He saw the hurried and unfeeling dumping of bodies into the holes awaiting them. Then his heart grew big with something unspeakable as he noted how in all that irreverent and unsympathetic action the American and English soldiery alone were serving as brother for brother. In the long trenches prepared for them their dead were laid with reverent dignity and gentleness. Each one’s place was carefully marked with a numbered slab that in a future day the sacred dust might be carried back to the soil of the homeland. As the sunset deepened to richer coloring and the battlefield grew still and still, far along the lines the bands of the English Royal Artillery and the Welsh Fusiliers, with the bagpipes 378 of the Scottish Highlanders, mingled their music with the music of the splendid band of the Fourteenth American Infantry in the sweet and sacred strains of the beloved old hymn:
| Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me. Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. |
And Thaine Aydelot knew that his last and biggest lesson was learned.