"But you do not know ... Donnerwetter! how should you?—lying here like a stuck pig! Yesterday—in the neighbourhood of Ypres—took place the ultimate, conclusive battle, in which the German mammoth pounded the British Lion into pulp. Your little British Expeditionary Force may be said to exist no longer. Your Brigade of Guards, who boast that, like the Samurai, they do not surrender while yet unwounded, is practically extinct. Maddened by despair the officers shot the few men who remained and then blew one another's brains out. Your Commander-in-Chief is our prisoner, Sir Rothesay Craig has been killed, also General Callonby and General Jones-Torrian. The French Generalissimo has surrendered, with the 5th French Army. The 6th French Army has been chopped into sausage-meat. So, all is over! Total Kaput!"
"If what you say is Gospel," said the weak voice, and the faded eyes had the ghost of a smile in them, "why do I keep on hearing our guns?"
For the hurly-burly of battle in the South had broken out afresh as though in contradiction. The crazy floor vibrated, the tottering walls shook with the distant fury of sound:
Thud—thud—thud—thud! and the muffled Boom!—Crash! of immense explosions. And through all the steady slogging of Royal Garrison Artillery howitzers, and the tireless, dogged hammering of Field Artillery eighteen-pounders.
"Macht nicht!"
Von Herrnung shrugged contemptuously, though his keen ear did not miss the fact that the guns were coming nearer: "That must go on—for a little!—until the last show of resistance is broken down. If it be a military virtue not to be aware when you are beaten—your big-jawed, dull-brained, short-headed British bull-dogs of soldiers have that virtue, of course. But comes the awakening! The Russian Navy has been blown off the Baltic, the Czar has accepted our Kaiser's ultimatum—the Belgian Government has made its submission—the Belgian Army has laid down its arms. Our 17-inch siege-howitzers are bombarding the shores of England from their emplacements at Calais. The Army of Invasion is embarking—your British Navy—the floating bulwark of your Empire—lies at the bottom of the North Sea. Ministers run from one end of England to the other, begging, coaxing, persuading—your proletariat. There is panic in the English War Office, and despair at Buckingham Palace; rebellion in the streets of London, débâcle in the City, and stampede in the West End. To-morrow the Emperor of Greater Germany and the Crown Prince, Viceroy of the Brito-German Possessions, will, with the Empress enter Paris. Ten miles of films will record for all Posterity this colossal and magnificent scene. The London pageant of triumph follows. Well may you weep, my unlucky fellow, over the collapse and ruin of your proud country"—for tears were really trickling from the puckered eyelids of the now flushed and quivering face. "Himmelkreuzbombenelement! You are not weeping. You are laughing, you dirty English swine!"
"What else do you—expect—when you're so—dashed amusin'?" gasped Franky painfully. "Roll along with some more of it—why don't you, Anatole?"
"You do not believe me, no? You think that I am rotting," von Herrnung shrugged his huge shoulders and laughed with forced heartiness. "Always to rot, that is the English custom." He added, with a cruel relish: "Desto besser, you will die more pleasantly. For of course you will die. This is the third day you have lain here, Alter junge, and you have the smell and colour of gangrene. You are a lump of carrion, Norwater, not worth the taking away!"
"Possibly not!"
The eyes met his calmly, though their laughter had died out. It angered von Herrnung to be baulked of the ferocious enjoyment he had promised himself. He finished the Cognac slowly, seeking in the fiery drink a spur to inventiveness, and sucked his moustache slowly as he capped and pocketed the flask.