Part 18 (2/2)

”Perhaps you can come after the war and marry one,” he said. ”Personally I hope you'll have the chance.”

”Thanks,” said von Arnheim, a bit wistfully, ”but I'm afraid now it will be a long time, if ever. I need not seek to conceal from you that we were turned back today. You know it already.”

”Yes, I know it,” said John, speaking without any trace of exultation, ”and I'm willing to tell you that it was one of the results I saw from the aeroplane. Can I ask what you intend to do with the prisoners you have here, including myself?”

”I do not know. You are to sleep where you are tonight. Your bed, the earth, will be as good as ours, and perhaps in the morning we'll find an answer to your question.”

Von Arnheim bade him a pleasant good night and turned to duties elsewhere. John watched him as he strode away, a fine, straight young figure. He had found him a most likable man, and he was bound to admit that there was much in the German character to admire. But for the present it was--in his view--a Germany misled.

The prisoners numbered perhaps six hundred, and at least half of them were wounded. John soon learned that the hurt usually suffered in stoical silence. It was so in the great American civil war, and it was true now in the great European war.

Rough food was brought to them by German guards, and those who were able drank at the brook. Water was served to the severely wounded by their comrades in tin cups given to them by the Germans, and then all but a few lay on the gra.s.s and sought sleep.

John and his new friend, Fleury, were among those who yet sat up and listened to the sounds of battle still in progress, although it was far in the night. It was an average night of late summer or early autumn, cool, fairly bright, and with but little wind. But the dull, moaning sound made by the distant cannonade came from both sides of them, and the earth yet quivered, though but faintly. Now and then, the searchlights gleamed against the background of darkness, but John felt that the combat must soon stop, at least until the next day. The German army in which he was a prisoner had ceased already, but other German armies along the vast line fought on, failing day, by the light which man himself had devised.

Fleury was intelligent and educated. Although it was bitter to him to be a prisoner at such a time, he had some comprehension of what had occurred, and he knew that John had been in a position to see far more than he. He asked the young American many questions about his flight in the air, and about Philip Lannes, of whom he had heard.

”It was wonderful,” he said, ”to look down on a battle a hundred miles long.”

”We didn't see all of it,” said John, ”but we saw it in many places, and we don't know that it was a hundred miles long, but it must have been that or near it.”

”And the greatest day for France in her history! What mighty calculations must have been made and what tremendous marchings and combats must have been carried out to achieve such a result.”

”One of the decisive battles of history, like Plataea, or the Metaurus or Gettysburg. There go the Uhlans with Captain von Boehlen at their head.

Now I wonder what they mean to do!”

A thousand men, splendidly mounted and armed, rode through the forest.

The moonlight fell on von Boehlen's face and showed it set and grim.

John felt that he was bound to recognize in him a stern and resolute man, carrying out his own conceptions of duty. Nor had von Boehlen been discourteous to him, although he might have felt cause for much resentment. The Prussian glanced at him as he pa.s.sed, but said nothing.

Soon he and his hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed out of sight in the dusk.

John, wondering how late it might be, suddenly remembered that he had a watch and found it was eleven o'clock.

”An hour of midnight,” he said to Fleury.

Most all the French stretched upon the ground were now in deep slumber, wounded and unwounded alike. The sounds of cannon fire were sinking away, but they did not die wholly. The faint thunder of the distant guns never ceased to come. But the campfire, where he knew the German generals slept or planned, went out, and darkness trailed its length over all this land which by night had become a wilderness.

John was able to trace dimly the sleeping figures of Germans in the dusk, sunk down upon the ground and buried in the sleep or stupor of exhaustion. As they lay near him so they lay in the same way in hundreds of thousands along the vast line. Men and horses, strained to their last nerve and muscle, were too tired to move. It seemed as if more than a million men lay dead in the fields and woods of Northeastern France.

John, who had been wide awake, suddenly dropped on the ground where the others were stretched. He collapsed all in a moment, as if every drop of blood had been drained suddenly from his body. Keyed high throughout the day, his whole system now gave way before the acc.u.mulated impact of events so tremendous. The silence save for the distant moaning that succeeded the roar of a million men or more in battle was like a powerful drug, and he slept like one dead, never moving hand or foot.

He was roused shortly before morning by some one who shook him gently but persistently, and at last he sat up, looking around in the dim light for the person who had dragged him back from peace to a battle-mad world. He saw an unkempt, bearded man in a French uniform, one sleeve stained with blood, and he recognized Weber, the Alsatian.

”Why, Weber!” he exclaimed, ”they've got you, too! This is bad! They may consider you, an Alsatian, a traitor, and execute you at once!”

Weber smiled in rather melancholy fas.h.i.+on, and said in a low tone:

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