Part 11 (2/2)

And the soldiers were seized with a savage anger, immense and terrible, similar to the nervous fury with which one tramples upon a snake. Scattered bullets began flying amidst the wet trees, and wild outcries filled the air. The bullets hissed far over the forest and sank with a swish into the clay; birch leaves, quietly circling, were falling to the ground where three light-grey figures were writhing in convulsions of pain and horror.

The husky non-commissioned officer was the first among these to cease stirring. He lay there with his face stuck in the cold mud of the stream. A volley of bullets, still more uneven than the first answered it, and presently single shots, interrupted by furious outcries of pain, by groans of the wounded and rattling of the dying came from both sides.

Pale flames flickered everywhere; the bark was being ripped from the small birch trees; here and there were seen ghastly distorted faces and s.h.i.+vering hands hurriedly fussing with the guns. The biting odour of blood and gun-powder filled the air, and a bluish smoke rose slowly to the sky, pa.s.sing through the twigs s.h.i.+vering, as it were, with fear, and under the birches there lay two groups of men, charging their guns, shooting, slaying one another, and strewing the wet earth with crippled, writhing, moaning bodies.

Suddenly the shooting ceased just as unexpectedly as it had begun.

There was no one upon the clearing except the wounded, and the dead.

The reddish soldiers hid behind the stones and the grey behind the trees.

The fire ceased. The hearts of the men beat rapidly and painfully with a vicious inhuman terror, but no one fired a single shot. An hour pa.s.sed and then another. The men lay silently behind the stones and the trees, each group eyeing the enemy sharply and closely watching their slightest movements.

”Uncle” alone, his back leaning on a trunk of a tree, was moaning plaintively and softly like a fly caught in a spider's web. And on the other side a young soldier was making severe attempts to lift up his body out of the mud puddle, while the eyes of his pale youthful face were already covered with the film of death. But no one paid the slightest attention to either of them. Each one felt upon himself the keen, merciless eye of the enemy and dared not budge or even stretch out a benumbed foot. A grey soldier attempted once to change his place, whereupon three shots thundered from the other side, and the man only turned over and remained still. Later two men were killed, one on each side, and again everything grew still.

The clatter of the rain alone was heard, as though, invisible to the eye, some one wept bitterly in the forest. The hours were pa.s.sing, and the nervous tension grew intolerable, a.s.suming the intensity of agony.

It was quite apparent that things could not go on in this way much longer, and every one knew that whoever would lift his head would be killed on the spot. Lord only knows the odd and horrible thoughts that were pa.s.sing in these terror-stricken, muddled minds.

Hershel Mak felt very keenly that he was eager to live; that like the rest of these men, he had a father and mother and also his own little desires, remote from this place and sacred to him alone. He was also sorry for ”uncle” and for that dying German, who lay in the puddle, and who had been killed, perhaps by a bullet from ”uncle's” rifle.

The hours were pa.s.sing and the unbearable nervous horror grew, and the inner tension, terrible and so taut that it seemed to be ready to snap every second, was beginning to turn into a sort of nightmare, which makes one s.h.i.+ver all over, which dims one's eyes with red mist, which banishes all fear of death and suffering and turns all that is human into an elemental, savage fury.

At the very moment, when the tension reached its highest point and the nightmare was about to pa.s.s in a ruthless engagement, Hershel Mak, unable to control his strained nerves any longer began to pray plaintively in the tongue of his forefathers. ”_Shma Isroel! Shma Isroel!_” ... His comrades did not understand him and glanced at him in terror, as at a madman, but from the opposite side another frightened and plaintive voice answered him in Jewish: ”A Jew!... A Jew!...”

Hershel Mak's heart fell within him. The mad joy that took hold of him is indescribable. It was undefiled human joy that filled him to the brim, when from the place whence he expected only death and hatred there came familiar human words. Forgetting the deathly peril, he sprang to his knees, threw up his arms and cried out, as if responding to a voice heard in the desert.

”I!... I!...”

A shot crashed; but it was only Mak's cap, that jumped up and landed in the mud puddle. From beyond the stream and the trees a typical head with ears projecting from under the varnished helmet looked straight at him.

”Don't shoot!... Don't shoot!” yelled Hershel Mak in Russian, German and Jewish all at once, waving his hands frantically. And the other Jew, in a long light-grey cloak was also yelling something to his fellow-soldiers. Now not one but about ten pairs of eyes looked at Hershel Mak, with astonishment and sudden joy. A vague, faint hope was seen in these frightened human eyes, which suddenly became simple and sympathetic. Then Hershel Mak and the Jew in the light-grey cloak rushed to the clearing and, splas.h.i.+ng in the water, trustingly ran to each other.

They met between the two ranks of still hostile gun-barrels and embraced each other in a fit of unreasoning human gladness.

”Are you a Jew?” asked the grey soldier. They kept looking at each other like two old friends who met where they least expected to find each other.

In the twilight, after the soldiers gathered up their dead and wounded, they went each their own way along the ravine, now blue with the evening fog. Those in the rear kept looking back at the enemy, suspiciously eyeing them, and nervously clutching with their hands the cold muzzles of their guns.

Only Hershel Mak and the Jew in the light-grey cloak walked calmly.

Hershel chattered like a monkey, joining now one now another of the soldiers. He was saying something about his joy, about the great mission of Judaism. But no one listened to him, and one of the soldiers said good-naturedly: ”Go to the devil, you dirty Jew.”

THE END

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