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CHAPTER X
THE GHOULS
They dined by the latticed window; two candles lighted them; old Anne served them—old Anne of Fäouette in her wide white coiffe and collarette, her velvet bodice and her chaussons broidered with the rose.
Always she talked as she moved about with dish and salver—garrulous, deaf, and aged, and perhaps flushed with the gentle afterglow of that second infancy which comes before the night.
"Ouidame! It is I, Anne Le Bihan, who tell you this, my pretty gentleman. I have lived through eighty years and I have seen life begin and end in the Woods of Aulnes—alas!—in the Woods and the House of Aulnes–"
"The red wine, Anne," said her mistress, gently.
"Madame the Countess is served.... These grapes grew when I was young, Monsieur—and the world was young, too, mon Capitaine—hélas!—but the Woods of Aulnes were old, old as the headland yonder. Only the sea is older, beau jeune homme—only the sea is older—the sea which always was and will be."
"Madame," he said, turning toward the young girl beside him, "—to France!—I have the honour—" She touched her glass to his and they saluted France with the ancient wine of France—a sip, a faint smile, and silence through which their eyes still lingered for a moment.
"This year is yielding a bitter vintage," he said. "Light is lacking. But—but there will be sun enough another year."
"Yes."
"B'en oui! The sun must shine again," muttered old Anne, "but not in the Woods of Aulnes. Non pas. There is no sunlight in the Woods of Aulnes where all is dim and still; where the Blessed walk at dawn with Our Lady of Aulnes in shining vestments all–"
"She has seen thin mists rising there," whispered the Countess in his ear.
"In shining robes of grace—oui-da!—the martyrs and the acolytes of God. It is I who tell you, beau jeune homme—I, Anne of Fäouette. I saw them pass where, on my two knees, I gathered orange mushrooms by the brook! I heard them singing prettily and loud, hymns of our blessed Lady–"
"She heard a throstle singing by the brook," whispered the châtelaine of Aulnes. Her breath was delicately fragrant on his cheek.
Against the grey dusk at the window she looked to him like a slim spirit returned to haunt the halls of Aulnes—some graceful shade come back out of the hazy and forgotten years of gallantry and courts and battles—the exquisite apparation of that golden time before the Vendée drowned and washed it out in blood.
"I am so glad you came," she said. "I have not felt so calm, so confident, in months."
Old Anne of Fäouette laid them fresh napkins and set two crystal bowls beside them and filled the bowls with fresh water from the moat.
"Ho fois!" she said, "love and the heart may change, but not the Woods of Aulnes; they never change—they never change.... The golden people of Ker-Ys come out of the sea to walk among the trees."
The Countess whispered: "She has seen the sunbeams slanting through the trees."
"Vrai, c'est moi, Anne Le Bihan, qui vous dites cela, mon Capitaine! And, in the Woods of Aulnes the werewolf prowls. I have seen him, gallant gentleman. He walks upright, and, in his head, he has only eyes; no mouth, no teeth, no nostrils, and no hair—the Loup-Garou!—O Lady of Aulnes, adored and blessed, protect us from the Loup-Barou!"
The Countess said again to him: "I have not felt so confident, so content, so full of faith in months–"
A far faint clamour came to their ears; high in the fading sky above the forest vast clouds of wild fowl rose like smoke, whirling, circling, swinging wide, drifting against the dying light of day, southward toward the sea.
"There is something wrong there," he said, under his breath.
Minute after minute they watched in silence. The last misty shred of wild fowl floated seaward and was lost against the clouds.
"Is there a path to the Étang?" he asked quietly.
"Yes. I will go with you–"
"No."
"Why?"
"No. Show me the path."
His shotgun stood by the door; he took it with him as he left the house beside her. In the moat, close by the bridge, and pointing toward the house, L'Ombre lay motionless. They saw it as they passed, but did not speak of it to each other. At the forest's edge he halted: "Is this the path?"
"Yes.... May I not go?"
"No—please."
"Is there danger?"
"No.... I don't know if there is any danger."
"Will you be cautious, then?"
He turned and looked at her in the dim light. Standing so for a little while they remained silent. Then he drew a deep, quiet breath. She held out one hand, slowly; half way he bent and touched her fingers with his lips; released them. Her arm fell listlessly at her side.
After he had been gone a long while, she turned away, moving with head lowered. At the bridge she waited for him.
A red moon rose low in the east. It became golden above the trees, paler higher, and deathly white in mid-heaven.
It was long after midnight when she went into the house to light fresh candles. In the intense darkness before dawn she lighted two more and set them in an upper window on the chance that they might guide him back.
At five in the morning every clock struck five.
She was not asleep; she was lying on a lounge beside the burning candles, listening, when the door below burst open and there came the trampling rush of feet, the sound of blows, a fall–
A loud voice cried:—"Because you are armed and not in uniform!—you British swine!"—
And the pistol shots crashed through the house.
On the stairs she swayed for an instant, grasped blindly at the rail. Through the floating smoke below the dead man lay there by the latticed window—where they had sat together—he and she–
Spectres were flitting to and fro—grey shapes without faces—things with eyes. A loud voice dinned in her ears, beat savagely upon her shrinking brain:
"You there on the stairs!—do you hear? What are those candles? Signals?"
She looked down at the dead man.
"Yes," she said.
Through the crackling racket of the fusillade, down, down into roaring darkness she fell.
After a few moments her slim hand moved, closed over the dead man's. And moved no more.
In the moat L'Ombre still remained, unstirring; old Anne lay in the kitchen dying; and the Wood of Aulnes was swarming with ghastly shapes which had no faces, only eyes.
CHAPTER XI
THE SEED OF DEATH
It was Dr. Vail whose identification secured burial for Neeland, not in the American cemetery, but in Aulnes Wood.
When the raid into Finistère ended, and the unclean birds took flight, Vail, at Quimper, ordered north with his unit, heard of the tragedy, and went to Aulnes. And so Neeland was properly buried beside the youthful châtelaine. Which was, no doubt, what his severed soul desired. And perhaps hers desired it, too.
Vail continued on to Paris, to Flanders, got gassed, and came back to New York.
He had aged ten years in as many months.
Gray, the younger surgeon, kept glancing from time to time at Vail's pallid face, and the latter understood the professional interest of the younger man.
"You think I look ill?" he asked, finally.
"You don't look very fit, Doctor."
"No.... I'm going West."
"You mean it?"
"Yes."
"Why do you think that you are—going West?"
"There's a thing over there, born of gas. It's a living thing, animal or vegetable. I don't know which. It's only recently been recognized. We call it the 'Seed of Death.'"
Gray gazed at the haggard face of the older man in silence.
Vail went on, slowly: "It's properly named. It is always fatal. A man may live for a few months. But, once gassed, even in the slightest degree, if that germ is inhaled, death is certain."
After a silence Gray began: "Do you have any apprehension—" And did not finish the sentence.
Vail shrugged. "It's interesting, isn't it?" he said with pleasant impersonality.
After a silence Gray said: "Are you doing anything about it?"
"Oh, yes. It's working in the dark, of course. I'm feeling rottener every day."
He rested his handsome head on one thin hand:
"I don't want to die, Gray, but I don't know how to keep alive. It's odd, isn't it? I don't wish to die. It's an interesting world. I want to see how the local elections turn out in New York."
"What!"
"Certainly. That is what worries me more than anything. We Allies are sure to win. I'm not worrying about that. But I'd like to live to see Tammany a dead cock in the pit!"
Gray forced a laugh; Vail laughed unfeignedly, and then, solemn again, said:
"I'd like to live to see this country aspire to something really noble."
"After all," said Gray, "there is really nothing to stifle aspiration."
It was not only because Vail had been gazing upon death in every phase, every degree—on brutal destruction wholesale and in detail; but also he had been standing on the outer escarpment of Civilization and had watched the mounting sea of barbarism battering, thundering, undermining, gradually engulfing the world itself and all its ancient liberties.
He and the young surgeon, Gray, who was to sail to France next day were alone together on the loggia of the club; dusk mitigated the infernal heat of a summer day in town.
On the avenue below motor cars moved north and south, hansoms crept slowly along the curb, and on the hot sidewalks people passed listlessly under the electric lights—the nine—and—seventy sweating tribes.
For, on such summer nights, under the red moon, an exodus from the East Side peoples the noble avenue with dingy spectres who shuffle along the gilded grilles and still façades of stone, up and down, to and fro, in quest of God knows what—of air perhaps, perhaps of happiness, or of something even vaguer. But whatever it may be that starts them into painful motion, one thing seems certain: aspiration is a part of their unrest.
"There is liberty here," replied Dr. Vail—"also her inevitable shadow, tyranny."
"We need more light; that's all," said Gray.
"When light streams in from every angle no shadow is possible."
"The millennium? I get you.... In this country the main thing is that there is some light. A single ray, however feeble, and even coming from one fixed angle only, means aspiration, life...."
He lighted a cigar.
"As you know," he remarked, "there is a flower called Aconitum. It is also known by the ominous names of Monks-Hood and Helmet-Flower. Direct sunlight kills it. It flourishes only in shadow. Like the Kaiser-Flower it also is blue; and," he added, "it is deadly poison.... As you say, the necessary thing in this world is light from every angle."
His cigar glimmered dully through the silence. Presently he went on; "Speaking of tyranny, I think it may be classed as a recognized and tolerated business carried on successfully by those born with a genius for it. It flourishes in the shade—like the Helmet-Flower.... But the sun in this Western Hemisphere of ours is devilish hot. It's gradually killing off our local tyrants—slowly, almost imperceptibly but inexorably, killing 'em off.... Of course, there are plenty still alive—tyrants of every degree born to the business of tyranny and making a success at it."
He smoked tranquilly for a while, then:
"There are our tyrants of industry," he said; "tyrants of politics, tyrants of religion—great and small we still harbor plenty of tyrants, all scheming to keep their roots from shriveling under this fierce western sun of ours–"
He laughed without mirth, turning his worn and saddened eyes on Gray:
"Tyranny is a business," he repeated; "also it is a state of mind—a delusion, a ruling passion—strong even in death.... The odd part of it is that a tyrant never knows he's one.... He invariably mistakes himself for a local Moses. I can tell you a sort of story if you care to listen.... Or, we can go to some cheerful show or roof-garden–"
"Go on with your story," said Gray.
CHAPTER XII
FIFTY-FIFTY
Vail began:
Tyranny was purely a matter of business with this little moral shrimp about whom I'm going to tell you. I was standing between a communication trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed and clambered over the débris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.
The din of the guns was terrific; overhead our own shells passed with a deafening, clattering roar; the Huns continued to shell the town in front of us where our first and second lines were still fighting in the streets and houses while the third line were reconstructing a few yards of trenches and a few craters won.
Stretchers and bearers from my section had not yet returned from the emergency dressing station; the crater was now cleared up except of enemy dead, whose partly buried arms and legs still stuck out here and there. A company of the Third Foreign Legion had just come into the crater and had taken station at the loopholes under the parapet of sandbags.
As soon as the telephone wires were stretched as far as our crater a message came for me to remain where I was until further orders. I had just received this message and was walking along, slowly, behind the rank of soldiers, who stood leaning against the parapet with their rifles thrust through the loops, when somebody said in English—in East Side New York English I mean—"Ah, there, Doc!"
A soldier had turned toward me, both hands still grasping his resting rifle. In the "horizon blue" uniform and ugly, iron, shrapnel-proof helmet strapped to his bullet head I failed to recognize him.
"It's me, 'Duck' Werner," he said, as I stood hesitating.... You know who he is, political leader in the 50th Ward, here. I was astounded.
"What do you know about it?" he added. "Me in a tin derby potting Fritzies! And there's Heinie, too, and Pick-em-up Joe—the whole bunch sewed up in this here trench, oh my God!"
I went over to him and stood leaning against the parapet beside him.
"Duck," I said, amazed, "how did you come to enlist in the Foreign Legion?"
"Aw," he replied with infinite disgust, "I got drunk."
"Where?"
"Me and Heinie and Joe was follerin' the races down to Boolong when this here war come and put everything on the blink. Aw, hell, sez I, come on back to Parus an' look 'em over before we skiddoo home—meanin' the dames an' all like that. Say, we done what I said; we come back to Parus, an' we got in wrong! Listen, Doc; them dames had went crazy over this here war graft. Veeve France, sez they. An' by God! we veeved.
"An' one of 'em at Maxeems got me soused, and others they fixed up Heinie an' Joe, an' we was all wavin' little American flags and yellin' 'To hell with the Hun!' Then there was a interval for which I can't account to nobody.
"All I seem to remember is my marchin' in the boolyvard along with a guy in baggy red pants, and my chewin' the rag in a big, hot room full o' soldiers; an' Heinie an' Joe they was shoutin', 'Wow! Lemme at 'em. Veeve la France!' Wha' d'ye know about me? Ain't I the mark from home?"
"You didn't realize that you were enlisting?"
"Aw, does it make any difference to these here guys what you reelize, or what you don't? I ask you, Doc?"
He spat disgustedly upon the sand, rolled his quid into the other cheek, wiped his thin lips with the back of his right hand, then his fingers mechanically sought the trigger guard again and he cast a perfunctory squint up at the parapet.
"Believe me," he said, "a guy can veeve himself into any kind of trouble if he yells loud enough. I'm getting mine."
"Well, Duck," I said, "it's a good game–"
"Aw," he retorted angrily, "it ain't my graft an' you know it. What do I care who veeves over here?—An' the 50th Ward goin' to hell an' all!"
I strove to readjust my mind to understand what he had said. I was, you know, that year, the Citizen's Anti-Graft leader in the 50th Ward.... I am, still, if I live; and if I ever can get anything into my head except the stupendous din of this war and the cataclysmic problems depending upon its outcome.... Well, it was odd to remember that petty political conflict as I stood there in the trenches under the gigantic shadow of world-wide disaster—to find myself there, talking with this sallow, wiry, shifty ward leader—this corrupt little local tyrant whom I had opposed in the 50th Ward—this ex-lightweight bruiser, ex-gunman—this dirty little political procurer who had been and was everything brutal, stealthy, and corrupt.
I looked at him curiously; turned and glanced along the line where, presently, I recognized his two familiars, Heinie Baum and Pick-em-up Joe Brady with whom he had started off to "Parus" on a month's summer junket, and with whom he had stumbled so ludicrously into the riff-raff ranks of the 3rd Foreign Legion. Doubtless the 1st and 2nd Legions couldn't stand him and his two friends, although in one company there were many Americans serving.
Thinking of these things, the thunder of the cannonade shaking sand from the parapet, I became conscious that the rat eyes of Duck Werner were furtively watching me.
"You can do me dirt, now, can't you, Doc?" he said with a leer.
"How do you mean?"
"Aw, as if I had to tell you. I got some sense left."
Suddenly his sallow visage under the iron helmet became distorted with helpless fury; he fairly snarled; his thin lips writhed as he spat out the suspicion which had seized him:
"By God, Doc, if you do that!—if you leave me here caged up an' go home an' raise hell in the 50th—with me an' Joe here–"
After a breathless pause: "Well," said I, "what will you do about it?"—for he was looking murder at me.
Neither of us spoke again for a few moments; an officer, smoking a cigarette, came up between Heinie and Pick-em-up Joe, adjusted a periscope and set his eye to it. Through the sky above us the shells raced as though hundreds of shaky express trains were rushing overhead on rickety aërial tracks, deafening the world with their outrageous clatter.
"Listen, Doc–"
I looked up into his altered face—a sallow, earnest face, fiercely intent. Every atom of the man's intelligence was alert, concentrated on me, on my expression, on my slightest movement.
"Doc," he said, "let's talk business. We're men, we are, you an' me. I've fought you plenty times. I know. An' I guess you are on to me, too. I ain't no squealer; you know that anyway. Perhaps I'm everything else you claim I am when you make parlor speeches to Gussie an' Reggie an' when you stand on a bar'l in Avenoo A an' say: 'my friends' to Billy an' Izzy an' Pete the Wop.
"All right. Go to it! I'm it. I got mine. That's what I'm there for. But—when I get mine, the guys that back me get theirs, too. My God, Doc, let's talk business! What's a little graft between friends?"
"Duck," I said, "you own the 50th Ward. You are no fool. Why is it not possible for you to understand that some men don't graft?"
"Aw, can it!" he retorted fiercely. "What else is there to chase except graft? What else is there, I ask you? Graft! Ain't there graft into everything God ever made? An' don't the smart guy get it an' take his an' divide the rest same as you an' me?"
"You can't comprehend that I don't graft, can you, Duck?"
"What do you call it what you get, then? The wages of Reeform? And what do you hand out to your lootenants an' your friends?"
"Service."
"Hey? Well, all right. But what's in it for you? Where do you get yours, Doc?"
"There's nothing in it for me except to give honest service to the people who trust me."
"Listen," he persisted with a sort of ferocious patience; "you ain't on no bar'l now; an' you ain't calling no Ginneys and no Kikes your friends. You're just talkin' to me like there wasn't nobody else onto this damn planet excep' us two guys. Get that?"
"I do."
"And I'm tellin' you that I get mine same as any one who ain't a loonatic. Get that?"
"Certainly."
"All right. Now I know you ain't no nut. Which means that you get yours, whatever you call it. And now will you talk business?"
"What business do you want to talk, Duck?" I added; "I should say that you already have your hands rather full of business and Lebel rifles–"
"Aw' Gawd; this? This ain't business. I was a damn fool and I'm doin' time like any souse what the bulls pinch. Only I get more than thirty days, I do. That's what's killin' me, Doc!—Duck Werner in a tin lid, suckin' soup an' shootin' Fritzies when I oughter be in Noo York with me fren's lookin' after business. Can you beat it?" he ended fiercely.
He chewed hard on his quid for a few moments, staring blankly into space with the detached ferocity of a caged tiger.
"What are they a-doin' over there in the 50th?" he demanded. "How do I know whose knifin' me with the boys? I don't mean your party. You're here same as I am. I mean Mike the Kike, and the regular Reepublican nomination, I do.... And, how do I know when you are going back?"
I was silent.
"Are you?"
"Perhaps."
"Doc, will you talk business, man to man?"
"Duck, to tell you the truth, the hell that is in full blast over here—this gigantic, world-wide battle of nations—leaves me, for the time, uninterested in ward politics."
"Stop your kiddin'."
"Can't you comprehend it?"
"Aw, what do you care about what Kink wins? If we was Kinks, you an' me, all right. But we ain't Doc. We're little fellows. Our graft ain't big like the Dutch Emperor's, but maybe it comes just as regular on pay day. Ich ka bibble."
"Duck," I said, "you explain your presence here by telling me that you enlisted while drunk. How do you explain my being here?"
"You're a Doc. I guess there must be big money into it," he returned with a wink.
"I draw no pay."
"I believe you," he remarked, leering. "Say, don't you do that to me, Doc. I may be unfortunit; I'm a poor damn fool an' I know it. But don't tell me you're here for your health."
"I won't repeat it, Duck," I said, smiling.
"Much obliged. Now for God's sake let's talk business. You think you've got me cinched. You think you can go home an' raise hell in the 50th while I'm doin' time into these here trenches. You sez to yourself, 'O there ain't nothin' to it!' An' then you tickles yourself under the ribs, Doc. You better make a deal with me, do you hear? Gimme mine, and you can have yours, too; and between us, if we work together, we can hand one to Mike the Kike that'll start every ambulance in the city after him. Get me?"
"There's no use discussing such things–"
"All right. I won't ask you to make it fifty-fifty. Gimme half what I oughter have. You can fix it with Curley Tim Brady–"
"Duck, this is no time–"
"Hell! It's all the time I've got! What do you expec' out here, a caffy dansong? I don't see no corner gin-mills around neither. Listen, Doc, quit up-stagin'! You an' me kick the block off'n this here Kike-Wop if we get together. All I ask of you is to talk business–"
I moved aside, and backward a little way, disgusted with the ratty soul of the man, and stood looking at the soldiers who were digging out bombproof burrows all along the trench and shoring up the holes with heavy, green planks.
Everybody was methodically busy in one way or another behind the long rank of Legionaries who stood at the loops, the butts of the Lebel rifles against their shoulders.
Some sawed planks to shore up dugouts; some were constructing short ladders out of the trunks of slender green saplings; some filled sacks with earth to fill the gaps on the parapet above; others sharpened pegs and drove them into the dirt façade of the trench, one above the other, as footholds for the men when a charge was ordered.
Behind me, above my head, wild flowers and long wild grasses drooped over the raw edge of the parados, and a few stalks of ripening wheat trailed there or stood out against the sky—an opaque, uncertain sky which had been so calmly blue, but which was now sickening with that whitish pallor which presages a storm.
Once or twice there came the smashing tinkle of glass as a periscope was struck and a vexed officer, still holding it, passed it to a rifleman to be laid aside.
Only one man was hit. He had been fitting a shutter to the tiny embrasure between sandbags where a machine gun was to be mounted; and the bullet came through and entered his head in the center of the triangle between nose and eyebrows.
A little later when I was returning from that job, walking slowly along the trench, Pick-em-up Joe hailed me cheerfully, and I glanced up to where he and Heinie stood with their rifles thrust between the sandbags and their grimy fists clutching barrel and butt.
"Hello, Heinie!" I said pleasantly. "How are you, Joe?"
"Commong ça va?" inquired Heinie, evidently mortified at his situation and condition, but putting on the careless front of a gunman in a strange ward.
Pick-em-up Joe added jauntily: "Well, Doc, what's the good word?"
"France," I replied, smiling; "Do you know a better word?"
"Yes," he said, "Noo York. Say, what's your little graft over here, Doc?"
"You and I reverse rôles, Pick-em-up; you stop bullets; I pick 'em up—after you're through with 'em."
"The hell you say!" he retorted, grinning. "Well, grab it from me, if it wasn't for the Jack Johnsons and the gas, a gun fight in the old 50th would make this war look like Luna Park! It listens like it, too, only this here show is all fi-nally, with Bingle's Band playin' circus tunes an' the supes hollerin' like they seen real money."
He was a merry ruffian, and he controlled the "coke" graft in the 50th while Heinie was perpetual bondsman for local Magdalenes.
"Well, ain't we in Dutch—us three guys!" he remarked with forced carelessness. "We sure done it that time."
"Did you do business with Duck?" inquired Pick-em-up, curiously.
"Not so he noticed it. Joe, can't you and Heinie rise to your opportunities? This is the first time in your lives you've ever been decent, ever done a respectable thing. Can't you start in and live straight—think straight? You're wearing the uniform of God's own soldiers; you're standing shoulder to shoulder with men who are fighting God's own battle. The fate of every woman, every child, every unborn baby in Europe—and in America, too—depends on your bravery. If you don't win out, it will be our turn next. If you don't stop the Huns—if you don't come back at them and wipe them out, the world will not be worth inhabiting."
I stepped nearer: "Heinie," I said, "you know what your trade has been, and what it is called. Here's your chance to clean yourself. Joe—you've dealt out misery, insanity, death, to women and children. You're called the Coke King of the East Side. Joe, we'll get you sooner or later. Don't take the trouble to doubt it. Why not order a new pack and a fresh deal? Why not resolve to live straight from this moment—here where you have taken your place in the ranks among real men—here where this army stands for liberty, for the right to live! You've got your chance to become a real man; so has Heinie. And when you come back, we'll stand by you–"
"An' gimme a job choppin' tickets in the subway!" snarled Heinie. "Expec' me to squeal f'r that? Reeform, hey? Show me a livin' in it an' I carry a banner. But there ain't nothing into it. How's a guy to live if there ain't no graft into nothin'?"
Joe touched his gas-mask with a sneer: "He's pushin' the yellow stuff at us, Heinie," he said; and to me: "You get yours all right. I don't know what it is, but you get it, same as me an' Heinie an' Duck. I don't know what it is," he repeated impatiently; "maybe it's dough; maybe it's them suffragettes with their silk feet an' white gloves what clap their hands at you. I ain't saying nothin' to you, am I? Then lemme alone an' go an' talk business with Duck over there–"
Officers passed rapidly between the speaker and me and continued east and west along the ranks of riflemen, repeating in calm, steady voices:
"Fix bayonets, mes enfants; make as little noise as possible. Everybody ready in ten minutes. Ladders will be distributed. Take them with you. The bomb-throwers will leave the trench first. Put on goggles and respirators. Fix bayonets and set one foot on the pegs and ladders … all ready in seven minutes. Three mines will be exploded. Take and hold the craters.... Five minutes!… When the mines explode that is your signal. Bombers lead. Give them a leg up and follow.... Three minutes...."
From a communication trench a long file of masked bomb-throwers appeared, loaded sacks slung under their left arms, bombs clutched in their right hands; and took stations at every ladder and row of freshly driven pegs.
"One minute!" repeated the officers, selecting their own ladders and drawing their long knives and automatics.
As I finished adjusting my respirator and goggles a muffled voice at my elbow began: "Be a sport, Doc! Gimme a chanst! Make it fifty-fifty–"
"Allez!" shouted an officer through his respirator.
Against the sky all along the parapet's edge hundreds of bayonets wavered for a second; then dark figures leaped up, scrambled, crawled forward, rose, ran out into the sunless, pallid light.
Like surf bursting along a coast a curtain of exploding shells stretched straight across the débris of what had been a meadow—a long line of livid obscurity split with flame and storms of driving sand and gravel. Shrapnel leisurely unfolded its cottony coils overhead and the iron helmets rang under the hail.
Men fell forward, backward, sideways, remaining motionless, or rolling about, or rising to limp on again. There was smoke, now, and mire, and the unbroken rattle of machine guns.
Ahead, men were fishing in their sacks and throwing bombs like a pack of boys stoning a snake; I caught glimpses of them furiously at work from where I knelt beside one fallen man after another, desperately busy with my own business.
Bearers ran out where I was at work, not my own company but some French ambulance sections who served me as well as their own surgeons where, in a shell crater partly full of water, we found some shelter for the wounded.
Over us black smoke from the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that shell crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook earth and sods down on us and wrinkled the pool of water at our feet.
