Part 26 (1/2)

They did not know how the captain at their back received his orders; they only heard the note of the whistle, with a command familiar to a trained instinct on the edge of antic.i.p.ation. It released a spring in their nerve-centres. They responded as the wheels respond when the throttle is opened. Jumping to their feet they broke into a run, bodies bent, heads down, like the peppered silhouette that faced Westerling's desk. What they had done repeatedly in drills and manoeuvres they were now doing in war, mechanically as marionettes.

”Come on! The bullet is not made that can get me! Come on!” cried the giant Eugene Aronson.

He leaped over a white post and then over the plough, which was also in his path. Little Peterkin felt his legs trembling. They seemed to be detached from his will, and the company's and the captain's will, and churning in pantomime or not moving at all. If Hugo Mallin had been called a coward, what of himself? What of the stupid of the company, who would never learn even the manual of arms correctly, as the drill-sergeant often said? A new fear made him glance around. He would not have been surprised to find that he was already in the rear. But instead he found that he was keeping up, which was all that was necessary, as more than one other man a.s.sured his legs. After thirty or forty yards most of the legs, if not Peterkin's, had worked out their s.h.i.+ver and nearly all felt the exhilaration of movement in company. Then came the sound that generations had drilled for without hearing; the sound that summons the imagination of man in the thought of how he will feel and act when he hears it; the sound that is everywhere like the song s.n.a.t.c.hes of bees driven whizzing through the air.

”That's it! We're under fire! We're under fire!” flashed as crooked lightning recognition of the sound through every brain.

There was no sign of any enemy; no telling where the bullets came from.

”Such a lot of them, one must surely get me!” Peterkin thought.

Whish-whis.h.!.+ Th-ipp-whing! The refrain gripped his imagination with an unseen hand. He seemed to be suffocating. He wanted to throw himself down and hold his hands in front of his head. While Pilzer and Aronson were not thinking, only running, Peterkin was thinking with the rapidity of a man falling from a high building. Worse! He did not know how far he had to go. He was certain only that he was bound to strike ground.

”An inch is as good as a mile!” He recollected the captain's teaching.

”Only one of a thousand bullets fired in war ever kills a man”--but he was certain that he had heard a million already. Then one pa.s.sed very close, its swift breath brus.h.i.+ng his cheek with a whistle like a s-s-st through the teeth. He dodged so hard that he might have dislocated his neck; he gasped and half stumbled, but realized that he had not been hit. And he must keep right on going, driven by one fear against another, in face of those ghastly whispers which the others, for the most part, in the excitement of a charge, had ceased to hear.

Again he would be sure that his legs, which he was urging so frantically to their duty, were not playing pantomime. He looked around to find that he was still keeping up with Eugene and felt the thrill of the bravery of fellows.h.i.+p at sight of the giant's flushed, confident face revelling in the spirit of a charge. And then, just then, Eugene convulsively threw up his arms, dropped his rifle, and whirled on his heel. As he went down his hand clutched at his left breast and came away red and dripping. After one wild, backward glance, Peterkin plunged ahead.

”Eugene!” Hugo Mallin had stopped and bent over Eugene in the supreme instinct of that terrible second, supporting his comrade's head.

”The bullet is not--made--.” Eugene whispered, the ruling pa.s.sion strong to the last. A flicker of the eyelids, a gurgle in the throat, and he was dead.

Fraca.s.se had been right behind them. The sight of a man falling was something for which he was prepared; something inevitably a part of the game. A man down was a man out of the fight, service finished. A man up with a rifle in his hand was a man who ought to be in action.

”Here, you are not going to get out this way!” he said in the irritation of haste, slapping Hugo with his sword. ”Go on! That's hospital-corps work.”

Hugo had a glimpse of the captain's rigid features and a last one of Eugene's, white and still and yet as if he were about to speak his favorite boast; then he hurried on, his side glance showing other prostrate forms. One form a few yards away half rose to call ”Hospital!”

and fell back, struck mortally by a second bullet.

”That's what you get if you forget instructions,” said Fraca.s.se with no sense of brutality, only professional exasperation, ”Keep down, you wounded men!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

The colonel of the 128th had not looked for immediate resistance. He had told Fraca.s.se's men to occupy the knoll expeditiously. But by the common impulse of military training, no less than in answer to the whistle's call, in face of the withering fire they dropped to earth at the base of the knoll, where Hugo threw himself down at full length in his place in line next to Peterkin.

”Fire pointblank at the crest in front of you! I saw a couple of men standing up there!” called Fraca.s.se. ”Fire fast! That's the way to keep down their fire--pointblank, I tell you! You're firing into the sky! I want to see more dust kicked up. Fire fast! We'll have them out of there soon! They're only an outpost.”

Hugo was firing vaguely, like a man in a dream, and thinking that maybe up there on the knoll were the two Browns he had met on the road and perhaps their comrades were as fond of them as he was of Eugene. It is a mistake for a soldier to think much, as Westerling had repeatedly said.

Pilzer was shooting to kill. His eye had the steely gleam of his rifle sight and the liver patch on his cheek was a deeper hue as he sought to avenge Eugene's death. Drowned by the racket of their own fire, not even Peterkin was hearing the whish-whish of the bullets from Dellarme's company now. He did not know that the blacksmith's son, who was the fourth man from him, lay with his chin on his rifle stock and a tiny trickle of blood from a hole in his forehead running down the bridge of his nose.

Fraca.s.se, glancing along from rifle to rifle, as a weaver watches the threads of a machine loom, saw that Hugo was firing at too high an angle.

”Mallin!” he called. Hugo did not hear because of the noise, and Fraca.s.se had to creep nearer, which was anything but cooling to his temper. ”You fool! You are shooting fifty feet above the top of the knoll! Look along your sight!” he yelled.

Fraca.s.se observed, with some surprise, that Hugo's hand was steady as he carefully drew a bead. Hugo saw a spurt of dust at the point slightly below the crest where he aimed; for he was the best shot in the company at target practice.

”I'm not killing anybody!” he thought happily.

XIX