Two great nations at each other's throats and God's image being shattered everywhere.... Blizzards of Lead and Iron, Steel and Fire raging over six miles square of ground. Rivers of blood being poured out, and yet, in spite of the terrific din of War, the insects and birds and beasts went about their usual business. The shrill laugh of the green woodpecker sounded in the copses, the jackdaws were gossiping as they darted in and out of the clefts of the gray rock. Two magpies were feeding a late-hatched fledgling among the dwarfy oak-scrub. Rabbits were showing their white scuts on the edges of the oak-plantations; and the black and gray humble-bees were buzzing as they rifled the lavender scabious and the blue corn-bottles and the late white clover-blooms.
Looking northeast toward the richly wooded hill where perches Fort Queleu, you could see the French flag flying from there, and from St. Privat, and the great cathedral of Metz sitting in the lap of the Moselle. The railway bridge crossing the green, slowly rolling river above Ars was guarded by Uhlans and Engineers. A stray outpost with half a field-battery held the island below the bridge, and the rear squadrons of a brigade of cavalry,—Blue Dragoons, White Cuirassiers, Uhlans, and Red Hussars, with two batteries of Horse Artillery, were traversing the iron roadway, the troopers walking beside the horses as they delicately picked their way along. The Advance was almost out of sight, the midpost squadrons, remounted, were under the bluff that runs beside the river road from Ars to below Aney, and with the Staff of the Cuirassier brigade-commander—the dazzling scarlet-and-gold of his British Dragoon's uniform contrasting forcibly with the steel cuirasses and white coats, his red-plumed silver helmet shining like a miniature sun—rode Brotherton, on a powerful dappled-gray horse, his handsome face animated and eager as he replied to some remark addressed to him by the Brigadier.
"Certainly, General, but I should think the sword could never be superseded. It is, with the bow and spear, the traditional weapon of war."
"You omit the sling, Colonel!" called out an officer who rode behind him. And then the scrap of English talk was swamped in the clink of steel on steel, and the rhythmical trampling of the squadrons that followed.
P. C. Breagh sat astride of a hot boulder, got out the Doctor's map and adjusted his cherished binoculars. They showed him the battalion he had marched with halted by the side of the river road. The bridge at Pagny showed black with solid columns of infantry, marching eight abreast; their sun-touched bayonets rippling lines of molten silver, each helmet-spike a flame of ruddy gold.
The First and Second Armies of United Germany, hitherto compelled to a strenuous inactivity, were having their innings with a vengeance now.... Looking Metzwards, one could see that three new lines of pontoons were thrown across the river below Yaux. A division of the dark-blue soldiers, with eight squadrons of cavalry and half a dozen batteries of mounted artillery, were crossing almost within range of the guns of Mount St. Quentin and Plappeville.
How thickly the white tents were clustered on the green slopes about both fortresses, Red Breeches swarming in thousands without and within the walls. Were the gunners of the huge bronze Creusots one had read of asleep, or lazy or indifferent? The answer came in a spirt of white vapor from an embrasure of the middle salient of St. Quentin's long, eight-pointed star. A white-hot flame leaped, a towering cloud of smoke soared, the roar of a heavy piece of artillery followed; and a shell of big caliber soared above Moulins and burst with a shattering explosion and an uprush of flame. Some Artillery-horses on the nearest pontoon reared, causing a momentary confusion. Their dismounted drivers quieted them, and the orderly crossing went on.
Boom-Boom! Crack! A clatter like old iron and a heavy splashing and pounding of hoofs. St. Quentin had got the range.—No! the shrapnel shell had been fired from a French field-battery placed behind earthworks above St. Ruffine. Another shell hit the upper pontoon and must have smashed it adrift on the landing side. For dark-blue men and struggling horses were drifting away in the direction of Metz, and the green river was tinged with red. The wheelers of a gun-team, dragged downward by the weight attached to them, had gone to the bottom almost without a struggle. The leaders, submerged all but their wild heads and splashing fore-hoofs, battled a while with the current before one of them vanished. The other, whose rope-and-chain traces had somehow broken, swam gallantly down-stream, and finally landed on the farther bank.
Further successful practice on the part of France's artillerists may have followed. At this juncture the attention of P. C. Breagh became diverted by a curious fact. One of the stone-pines seemed to be lobbing cones at him. Whiff-phutt! they were dropping on all sides. Or could it? ... A shrill whistling sound close by his ear, and a simultaneous bristling of the hairs upon his scalp and body, told him that it could. The missiles were bullets.
They came, sometimes with a sharp whistle that told of unexpended energy, at others with the pleasant humming that had at first attracted him, from the woods that clothed the rising ground northwest and west of the platform he occupied.