Part 28 (1/2)

each in its own way; faces blank and white; faces with lips working and eyes blinking; faces with the blood rus.h.i.+ng back to cheeks in baffled anger. One, however, was half smiling--Hugo Mallin's.

”You did your share of the running, I'll warrant, Mallin!” said Fraca.s.se excitedly, venting his disgust on a particular object.

”Yes, sir,” answered Hugo. ”It was very hard to maintain a semblance of dignity. Yes, sir, I kept near you all the time so you could watch me.

Wasn't that what you wanted me to do, sir?”

”Good old Hugo! The same old Hugo!” breathed the spirit of the company.

Three or four men burst into a hysterical laugh as if something had broken in their throats. Everybody felt better for this touch of drollery except the captain. Yet, possibly, it may have helped him in recovering his poise. Sometimes even a pin-p.r.i.c.k will have this effect.

”Silence!” he said in his old manner. ”I will give you something to joke about other than a little setback like this! Get up there with your rifles!”

He formed the nucleus of a firing-line under cover of the shoulder, and then set the remainder of his company to work with their spades making a trench. The second battalion of the 128th, which faced the knoll, was also digging at the base of the slope, and another regiment in reserve was deploying on the plain. After the failure to rush the knoll the Gray commander had settled down to the business of a systematic approach.

And what of those of Fraca.s.se's men who had not run but had dropped in their tracks when the charge halted? They were between two lines of fire. There was no escape. Some of the wounded had a mercifully quick end, others suffered the consciousness of being hit again and again; the dead were bored through with bullet holes. In torture, the survivors prayed for death; for all had to die except Peterkin, the pasty-faced little valet's son.

Peterkin was quite safe, hugging the bottom of the sh.e.l.l crater under a swarm of hornets. In a surprisingly short time he became accustomed to the situation and found himself ravenously hungry, for the strain of the last twelve hours had burned up tissue. He took a biscuit out of his knapsack and began nibbling it, as became a true rodent.

XX

MARTA'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF WAR

As Marta and the children came to the door of the chapel after the recitation of the oath, she saw the civil population moving along the street in the direction of the range. Suddenly they paused in a common impulse and their heads turned as one head on the fulcrum of their necks, and their faces as one face in a set stare looked skyward.

”Keep on moving! No danger!” called the major of the brigade staff.

”Pa.s.s the word--no danger! It's not going to drop any bombs; it's only a scout plane trying to locate the positions of the defences we've thrown up overnight. No danger--keep moving!”

He might as well have tried to distract the attention of the grand stand from the finish of a horse-race. More than the wizard's spell, years before, at the first sight of man in flight held them in suspense as they watched a plane approaching with the speed of an albatross down the wind straight on a line with the church tower where the sharpshooters were posted. The spread of the wings grew broader; the motor was making a circle of light as large as a man's hat-box, and the aviator was the size of some enormous insect when three or four sharp reports were audible from the church tower.

Still the plane came on intact over the spire. The sharpshooters had only rimmed the target, without injury to braces or engine. But they had another chance from the windows on the nearer side of the tower; and the crowd saw there the glint of rifle barrels. This time they got the bull's-eye. The aviator reeled and dropped sidewise, a dead weight caught by the braces, with his arm dangling. A teetering dip of the plane and his body was shaken free. His face, as he neared the earth in his descent, bore the surprised look of a man thumped on the back unexpectedly.

Marta pressed her fingers to her ears, but not soon enough to keep out the sound of a thud on the roof of the building across the street from the chapel.

”I was a coward to do that! I shall see worse things!” she thought, and went to the major, who had turned to the affairs of the living directly he saw that neither the corpse of the aviator nor the wreck of the plane was to strike in the street. ”I will look after these children,” she said, ”and we will care for as many of the old and sick as we can in our house.”

”The children will find their relatives or guardians in the procession there,” he answered methodically. ”If they do not, the government will look after them. It will not do for you to take them to your house. That would only complicate the matter of their safety.” Here he was interrupted by a precipitate question from one of his lieutenants, who had come running up. ”No! No matter what the excuse, no one can remain!”

he answered. ”The nation is not going to take the risk of letting spies get information to the enemy for the sake of gratifying individual interests. Every one must go!” Then he called to an able-bodied citizen of thirty years or so in the procession: ”Here, you, if you're not in the reserve I have work for you!”

”But I was excused from army service on account of heart trouble!”

explained the able-bodied citizen.

”We all have heart trouble to-day,” remarked the major pithily. ”Men are giving up their lives in defence of you and your property. Every man of your age must do his share when required. Go with this orderly!” was the final and tart conclusion of the argument. ”And see that he is made useful,” he added to the orderly.

An explosion in the factory district made windows rattle and brought an hysterical outcry from some of the women.

”It's nothing!” the major called, in the a.s.surance of a shepherd to his sheep. ”Blowing up some building that furnish cover for the enemy's approach in front of our infantry positions! You will hear more of it.

Don't worry! Do as you're told! Keep moving! Keep moving!”