Part 16 (1/2)
”But----” shouted the Corporal back at him, standing quite close to Henri, and bellowing in his ear; for, indeed, the little fellow was very excited. ”But you would like to call us cowards next, because we will not charge after the Germans.”
”One moment,” Henri said, patting him on the shoulder, ”one little moment, mon cher ami! Neither you nor I wish to be prisoners, eh?”
”Vraiment!” the little fellow answered, a trifle mollified, his anger oozing out at the tips of his fingers. ”But then---- Ah! It is Henri, eh? I did not recognize you earlier. Then what do you advise, Henri--you, who have tasted prison life in Germany?”
”Yes, yes! Let Henri tell us,” called a number of the others; for already our hero had won no small reputation amongst his fellows.
Let us advance the story just a little and explain that already that officer to whom Henri and Jules had given a report of their reconnaissance had urged upon his colonel that they should be promoted instantly, and even then, as the conflict raged about Fort Douaumont, their names were in Regimental Orders. They were to be ”non-commissioned” officers.
”What then?” the little Corporal asked again, eagerly peering up at Henri, for he was some inches shorter.
”I believe you, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Henri. ”Not being a bird, or, as you rightly observed, not belonging to the Flying Corps, we cannot very well get back to our fellows, that is, not yet. But--and that is just where you chipped in and prevented my saying what was in my mind--but we fellows might manage to hold out if we had some sort of decent cover.”
”Aye! Cover--that's it! Out here we should be shot to rags,”
exclaimed a veteran. ”Now, Henri, let's have your decision, and quickly, too, for the snow may stop at any moment.”
”Then here it is: take up every cartridge you can find--boxes of ammunition if you can hit on them--get as much food from the haversacks of the killed as you can carry, and then let's creep towards the fort.
There's a gateway on this side, for I noticed it in the early hours of the morning. Let's get behind those concrete and stone walls and search for a spot where we can hold out and stand a siege till our fellows counter-attack and relieve us.”
The veteran _poilu_ of the party smote his hands together and tilted his steel helmet backward.
”Mon Dieu,” he cried, ”but that is it! Our Henri has thought of a splendid thing for us. Ecoutez! Then I will tell you, I who have been of the Verdun garrison, not only during this war, but in peace times, I who helped to remove the big guns when the Kaiser showed us that guns behind a fort were no longer useful. There are caverns underneath that masonry, my boys, big galleries, and fortified chambers, to which even a big sh.e.l.l will hardly descend. Yes, there are rooms down below in the bowels of the earth which will shelter us, and hundreds beside us.
It is a magnificent plan. I, who know the place, can lead you; and, of a truth, we will find a spot where men such as we are, fighting for France, can hold up a hundred of the enemy. Be busy, then! Pick up cartridges, seek for food and water.”
”Yes--and water!” shouted Jules, darting from the trench and stooping over the nearest figure. All about them were the battered trenches of that thin force of n.o.ble Frenchmen who had fought hand to hand with the Brandenburgers. There were the bodies of the slain--of friend and foe--lying in every sort of posture, some half in and half out of the trenches; some, alas! unrecognizable, for such is the effect of high explosives; and others, yet again, almost buried already by upheavals of earth as sh.e.l.ls burst close beside them. There were not a few wounded, too, who lay waiting the succour which might come some hours hence, and which, it was quite possible, might never come, for in a little while, no doubt, French fire would command the ground on which they lay, and neither troops nor hospital bearers could cross it.
Very eagerly, then, for every one of the men in Henri's party was anxious to escape capture, and eager to rejoin the French forces and again fight the Germans, the _poilus_ scrambled about in the battered trench, or closely adjacent to it, taking up cartridges, despoiling the dead of their haversacks, from which they ejected all but the food contents, while every man loaded himself with as many water-bottles as he could conveniently carry.
”It's still snowing hard,” said Henri, when some ten minutes had pa.s.sed and the band was again collected. ”Don't let us get into a flurry, or spoil our chances by being too hurried. Let's number off, and see how many we are.”
”One! Two! Three!”----
Without a word of command the man on the left started, and Henri, at the far end of the line, announced his own number. It was twenty.
”Good!” he told them. ”More than I thought. Twenty resolute men fighting for France, for la belle France, my comrades----”
”Ah! For la belle France, for home, for victory!” the veteran shouted.
”Yes, for victory. And listen, my friends; we may help towards it,”
Henri told them. ”Resolute men, if they can reach some strong position in that fort, may well a.s.sist our friends battling farther back on the plateau. Well, now, there are twenty of us, and I see that there are half a dozen or more ammunition-boxes.”
”Ten,” the veteran corrected him instantly; ”ten, Monsieur Henri”--it had come to ”Monsieur” now, such was the veteran's opinion of our hero.
”Good! Ten boxes of cartridges is it? Ten thousand rounds. Now let's see to the water-bottles. How many are there?”
The men, on returning to the spot where Henri stood, had at once deposited their finds at the bottom of the trench, so that there was no difficulty in making an inventory; and now a mere glance discovered the fact that there were more than two water-bottles per man, all filled, as Henri was a.s.sured, and all big ones.
”One bottle will last a careful man, say, two days, eh?” he asked.
”In the dungeons of the fort, three days, Monsieur Henri,” the veteran replied; ”and, besides, it's bitterly cold weather, when a man does not need to drink so much.”