Part 32 (2/2)

Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the handle which was to grind death.

”Lie down, you sweeps!” he called to us. ”Flat--not a head up.”

We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me.

”GO!”

And then all h.e.l.l broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out the moon.

The attacking party was mown as with a clean-swept scythe. For an instant three swathes were clearly visible--Jack Jaikes, Brown, and Allerdyce had each made his share of the crop lie down.

There came an explosion of rage and anguish.

”Again!” shouted Jack Jaikes. ”Keep down that head,” he cried to me, and kicked savagely in my direction as he danced about. I obeyed. No account could be required of men at such moments. He might stamp on my head if he found it in his way.

”Sweep the wall and fire low!” was the next order. ”Mind, Donald Iverach and the boys are on top. We must not shoot them, but we _must_ help those ladders down. It is a pity we dare not run out the four-inch--only we could never get her back.”

Again the rending siren shriek divided the night. We lay on the ground seeing gigantic shapes twisted in seeming agony over guns high above us.

Our chins were in the dust and the play of the lightning flashes made the thing somehow demoniacal and unearthly.

”h.e.l.l upside down!” as the man next to me pithily said--a parson's son like myself, but from Kent, Pembury in Kent, where young Battersby is still not forgotten.

The mitrailleuses flared red below and the skies flared blue above. The thunder roared continuously and the noise of the machine guns cut it like the thin notes in the treble corner of a piano. Heaven raged against earth, and earth in the person of Jack Jaikes ground out shrill defiance. But that night the bolts from the earthly artillery were the more deadly.

”Cleaned the beggars out!” shouted Jack Jaikes, or at least that is near enough to what he said. ”Now then, up you fellows and we will get them back!”

It was easier said than done. For it was one thing to get the little guns down the rubble heaps beneath the battered gateway and quite another to fetch them back. We were compelled to put all our three gun crews into one, and even then we could not have succeeded without the help of the men with ropes pulling from within. I saw Rhoda Polly tugging like one possessed, though why she was not on her tower I do not know.

We had left the other two machine guns unprotected and had to jump back to rescue them. Still there was no enemy in sight and we got Brown's fine No. 1 back into shelter. Remained Allerdyce, and as we rattled down to fetch her up, suddenly the whole of the square in front of us was swept by a storm of bullets. Somehow I found Hugh Deventer beside me.

”You gave us a good eas.e.m.e.nt up at the corner,” he said, ”I was sure they would get back on you next. Give me a place. I can hoist a gun better than you!”

He was behind the wheel, but even as he set his weight to it Allerdyce---eternally smiling Scot from Ayrs.h.i.+re, called Soda Bannocks--collapsed over the piece he had commanded and worked. Another man yelled with sudden pain, and I felt a sharp blow on the calf of my leg.

”Clear!” shouted Jack Jaikes, ”I will fetch the men. Up with the gun.”

And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might gather a wet rag.

The storm pa.s.sed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back.

”Great G.o.d, what's that?” I turned at the anguish and surprise in the voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm was--Alida!

I dreamed--I was sure I dreamed. That bullet--those fellows knocked over--Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own gun--Jack Jaikes gathering him up--all these things had crazed me, and no wonder. I saw ”cats in corners,” as I used to do in old college days when I studied too much and too long.

But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not speak. They keep an exact distance away--about four yards and always in the corner of a room or in a stairway--never in the open. What was he saying? One word recurred.

”Treve!--Treve!--Treve!”

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