Armistice Day/Stories
VIII
STORIES
THE CALL[1]
I was second lieutenant of a hastily recruited Oregon company in the American Expeditionary Force, and the incident I relate occurred in the difficult and anxious weeks of the American conquest of the Argonne. The forest was intricate, the trails narrow, and the signs which the native read with ease were inscrutable to the foreigner. The men were forced to advance in small linear detachments, which were separated for hours from the main body, and the danger of any group that failed to rejoin its companions at the appointed time and place was very great. A French guide was assigned to each detachment. His place was at the head of the column, while the second lieutenant who directed the movement took his place in the rear except when actual fighting was in progress. The reason for this was simple but sufficing. Americans between battles are only human, and in the course of a trying march through hilly and woody country the temptation to leave ranks in quest of a rabbit or squirrel, of rest, or,—most of all, in quest of water,—was nearly irresistible. To see that it did not become altogether irresistible was the business of the second lieutenant in the rear of the line.
My own guide, Pierre Bonnat, was an Auvergnat, tallish for a Frenchman,—dark-haired, with a high sugar-loaf forehead, melancholy, half-retreating eyes, and a bow-shaped mustache thin enough not to screen the play of sensitive and shapely lips. He had a chipped and splintered English, which invariably proved more useful in a crisis than my own college-born and café-nourished French. Between French and English I came soon to know and love this peasant as one of the most faithful, tender, manly souls whom I had known in any country. His Catholic faith was untouched by the license of the times; he believed in ghosts as simply as his forebears, and was wont to tell a tale of the spirit of a grandsire who, when the family estate was in danger through the disappearance of a title-deed, appeared one night to Pierre's oldest uncle, and led him up the stairway to a little loft in which the precious document had been too carefully secreted. "When need is, they come back—sí, sí, M'sieu, they come back," he would say with the meekest insistence when I allowed myself to smile faintly at these delusions. He had a low-pitched, mellow voice, and nature or practice had gifted him with a very low but remarkably penetrating call or whistle, which, heard at a distance, no stranger could have distinguished from the ordinary feral noises of the wood. The men in my detachment had been taught to recognize and obey this call.
On the night before the march, Pierre and I, sitting in my tent, traced together on an official map the route which the detachment was to take on the ensuing day. Pierre spoke of the official map with the extreme deference which masked his contempt, and put on a pleased surprise whenever any allegation of the map agreed with the facts in his memory. Our route lay to the northwest. The great landmark for the stranger was Mont St. Robert, about twelve miles east, mostly hid by the forest, but emerging into plain view wherever a westerly ravine broke the density of the woods. The Germans lay between our route and Mont St. Robert to the east and north, and their fire was expected to diminish toward the close of the day, as our route diverged more and more toward the northwest. Pierre pointed out to me a stone bridge over a stream called the Aure; our arrival at which, some time between four and six p.m., would mean the attainment of comparative safety. These few facts fixed themselves in my mind; the fullness of my trust in Pierre made me slightly inattentive to the rest.
In the morning all went well. The day was fine, the trees were a shield from the sun, and for hours I had no occasion to remind a straggler of his duty. I amused myself by watching Mont St. Robert as it showed itself from time to time through the ravines that seamed the forest. On its side was a decayed fortification of the Roman era, in which windows or rather openings of various sizes could be made out by the help of a field-glass. I counted twenty-three distinct apertures with various flecks or patches which might be openings or might be stains. The fire of the enemy, though often heard, rarely grazed our column. At ten o'clock a ball nipped a soldier's knee; at half-past three a sergeant's cheek was ripped open. When Pierre and I met for a few moments, his tranquillity was reassuring.
In the later afternoon the men's spirits flagged a little; the fire, though mainly harmless, was steady as ever, and about four o'clock I was disturbed by an incident of absolutely no importance, as it seemed, except the importance which the smallest mystery possessses to men traversing an unknown and hostile country. A file like ours is a spinal column in which the vertebræ are men. That column has a spinal marrow which on occasion can quiver from end to end. About four o' clock I felt what I can only describe as a shudder run down this cord and terminate in me. The column scarcely paused; no accident was reported; my inquiries of the half-dozen men in front of me elicited nothing but confused or humorous replies. From that moment, however, I was a little anxious. I had a sense of moving east instead of west, a sense which it was hard to prove or disprove, since the path ran first east, then west, like the lacings of a shoe, and landmarks were rarely to be seen.
I began to look a little eagerly for signs of the end of the day's journey. After four o'clock we might hope to come upon the stone bridge that crossed the little river Aure. Four o'clock came, half-past, five o'clock, but no river. It was nearly six o'clock when Mont St. Robert, which had last been seen about an hour after midday, emerged into clear view through another break in the forest. It looked strangely near and clear, and the impulse to count as a sedative to the nerves made me reckon up again the visible openings on its hoary and broken front. I counted twice: the total was certain; there were twenty-nine. Only one inference was possible: we were approaching Mont St. Robert, from which we should gradually have receded, and were moving northeast toward the points where the German force was concentrated.
I was sure that Pierre had been wounded or blinded; nothing less could have beguiled his vigilance. Hastily halting the line, I made my way forward with some effort, only to find Pierre gone and an American private in the lead. To my angry question this man replied a little shakily: "Dead, sir—didn't you know? Shell splinter—the heart. About four o'clock." Between grief, wrath, and alarm, I could hardly put the questions that hurried to my lips. Pierre had died, as the man said, about four o'clock, and the soldier nearest him had tried to send a message back to me. That message had evaporated on the way. It had passed, as it crept down the line, from certainty to probability, from probability to conjecture, from conjecture to a vague hint of unknown evil, till it reached me finally as a shapeless fear. At the point where Pierre fell, the trail was unusually distinct, and the head soldier, in the absence of orders and the vanity of leadership, had passed on. He had failed to note the point where the trail diverged to the northwest, and we were astray without a guide near set of sun in the depths of an intricate and unknown forest raked by German fire.
The head soldier protested that he could guide us back, and after a moment's irresolution I allowed him to try. Twilight falls early and blurs the trails in a great forest. In a quarter of an hour he admitted his bewilderment. A second tried, a third, I tried myself—all to no purpose. Extrication by our own means at that hour was plainly out of the question. I ordered the men to halt and lie down at intervals of six feet. The distress of the men, though not extreme, was very evident. Brave men are not brave in all situations, even in war. They are brave in certain well-defined situations, and are likely to be overset by something, perhaps not so dangerous in itself, which lies outside their program of contingencies. The earth and air themselves seem suddenly hostile, and the very stars, gleaming through the tree-trunks, seemed to signal their whereabouts to the enemy.
We lay in this suspense for about three-quarters of an hour. We had grown used to all the sounds of the forest, even to the firing and distant shellbursts, when the attention of the troop was suddenly arrested by a new sound—a long, vaguely musical, surprisingly low, surprisingly penetrating sound. The men stirred, half sat up, awaited some signal from me, whispered inaudibly, and, remembering orders, crouched on the ground again. I spoke to the man beside me—a phlegmatic but trustworthy fellow named Jenkins—in what I meant to be a steady voice.
"Jenkins, you heard that sound?"
"Yes, sir."
"What was it?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What do you think it was?"
"Pierre's whistle, sir."
"But Pierre—" I could not end the sentence.
"I know, sir. In the heart."
"Then it's not his whistle?"
"No, sir." (Tone perfectly respectful, but quite incredulous.)
I lay down with a brusque movement intended to bring back Jenkins to his senses. In less than three minutes the sound came again—this time with something like an appeal, an urgency, in its long concluding glide. It brought half the men to a sitting posture. I was not angry with them, but I spoke angrily for all that.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing, sir." They lay down again obediently.
Something forced me to turn to Jenkins again.
"Was that Pierre's whistle, Jenkins?"
"I think so, sir."
"You think dead men whistle?"
"I don't know much about dead men, sir. But I know Pierre's whistle."
"Is he dead or alive, do you think?"
"I don't know." He stopped, then resumed respectfully: "Does it matter, sir?"
"Matter?"
"I mean, I would trust Pierre, alive or dead. He would still be Pierre. I would trust him to help us."
I looked hard at the blurred human shape beside me in the shadow. "Jenkins," I said, "you're the one man of sense in this detachment. Alive or dead, we'll follow his whistle."
I drew the men around me as noiselessly as I could, and told them of my purpose. The red mounted to my cheek in the dark when I thought of re-telling the story to the club at home or reporting it to my senior officer the next day. But the ripple of smothered laughter which I had expected from Americans informed of a design so puerile did not come. The men were alert, almost hopeful, as I ranged them in a somewhat shortened line and took my place at their head. Jenkins came next, and the third man was a young physician whose advice and skill had served me more than once. The whistle had stopped, and, after my preparations were made, I had a moment's fear lest the redescending silence should prove that I had been a fool. I was almost cursing myself for succumbing to the vagaries of an untaught man like Jenkins, when from the southwest, about a hundred yards away, the sound came again, low, clear, restrained, imperative. I felt the line behind me tighten like a bowstring. "Forward," I said, and we plunged into the gloom.
The travel was very slow at first, but as our feet grew adept in the manners of the ground, we were able slowly to increase our pace. At brief intervals I ordered the men to number themselves—one, two, three, four, etc.—to make sure that no one had fallen from the ranks. After about ten minutes, the increasing firmness and flatness of the ground indicated that we had come upon a trail. We should have lost the track repeatedly, however, but for the variations in the note of the whistle, which took on a sharp, short, warning emphasis when we deviated from the path. The German fire crossed our route rather irregularly and aimlessly from time to time, and I noticed, or thought I noticed, that the voice timed itself to these explosions, bringing us to a halt by its cessation just before a tract of ground in our front was swept by hostile fire. A cheerfulness and trust, remarkable in view of the danger and difficulty that still encircled us, animated the entire column, and I felt its rebound in the rise of my own spirits. We were clearly retracing our route, and I tried to recall remembered objects, though in that darkness it was very hard to make out a correspondence between dim sights and dimmer memories.
I should have been glad to identify the spot at which the route that our companions had taken diverged to the northwest. But any such discovery was clearly not to be hoped for; a route which we had missed in daylight would not disclose itself to the most anxious scrutiny in the dark. The whistle came more and more decidedly from the south; it was guiding us back to our camp of the previous day. One spot on that route I still hoped to ascertain, the spot where Pierre had fallen. A moment came when one of the men who had been close to Pierre when he fell pointed out a large oak under which he was nearly sure that we should find the dead body of our guide. He was wrong; there was nothing under the tree but knotted roots and trampled grass tufts. We resumed our course; he pointed out more timidly another tree, and, on reaching the spot, we came upon a dusky, horizontal object, in which, by the glimmer of the single lantern we had dared to light, we made out successively a body, a face, the face of Pierre. He had bled freely, and the ground beside him was moist to the hand. The doctor felt his heart. "Quite dead," he said. "Has he been dead long?" I asked. "Three hours at least." It was not five minutes since we had heard the whistle, a whistle that seemed bright with the confidence of rescue.
"Go back to the file," I said. "I'll join you presently." I stooped down once more and looked into my friend's face. There was a peace on the lips that might have been taken for a smile. I am an Anglo-Saxon, with a liberal share of the self-curbing instincts of my race, but I think that if the whole troop had been there in full daylight I could not have withstood the impulse which made me stoop and press my lips to Pierre's. As I was about to lift my head I was seized with a still less rational impulse. I put my ear to those lips. In the excitement of my shaken nerves I mistook for a sound in the ear what was—what must have been—an echo in the memory. Fancy or truth, I heard these whispered words:
"When need is, they come back."
THE CONTRACT OF CORPORAL TWING
Two men sat on a sandstone ledge, looking out across the desert. Behind them stood a third.
To the north, just visible over the edge of the dun-hued cliff, two hawks wheeled and circled in the cloud-flecked sky. These and the figures on the ledge were the only life in the compass of hills and bluffs which ringed them round on every side.
It was that transitional period when—the last of the snows a month gone, the terrible heat of Mesopotamian summer weeks in the future—the upland valleys of the Jebel Hamrin still bloom like a garden, their fragrance riding down the wind even past Deli Abbas far out on the desert, already parched and burning under the ardent sun.
The country was such as would have delighted the eye of the scenic painter: the long, serrated ridges of crumbling sandstone, the broad swales, the grass- and flower-grown valleys between the bold, upstanding cliffs, and an occasional flaring patch of scarlet poppies giving a touch of color to their towering drabness.
At their right, its spidery legs asprawl on the rock, the steel ferrules firmly wedged in a natural fissure, and two holes drilled for them, the tripod of a signaler's glass was standing, the telescope pointed through the break in the escarpment four miles away, where the Mosul road debouched from the hills, meandered across the desert to Deli Abbas; and, crossing the Khalis, straggled on through Baqubah to Baghdad, sixty miles away.
The smallest of the three had the air of one intently watching, his hands clasped about his bare knees, the iron heelplates of his heavy ammunition boots braced in a jagged crack of the rock. The other seated figure, his face shaded by the peak of his topee, was setting down, letter by letter, in carefully made block capitals, the message repeated by the man whose eye was glued to the lens of the telescope.
The desert spread its immensity before them.
Far away to the southwest, a dark smudge of cloud against the dancing horizon showed where Abu Saida and Abu Jezra, the most advanced outpost of the British, across the Diyalah, lay baking under the brassy sun. A blue-green island in the tawny sea betokened Deli Abbas; the caravan routes, threading their way hither and yon across the vast emptiness, looked for all the world like streaks of foam left on the placid surface of the unrippled ocean by some vessel long since hull down over the horizon.
Here and there, attracting the eye rather by motion than color, a black bar, like a water-logged spar, bespoke a random Aram; his aba merging into the desert background as soon as motion ceased. Brown patches, as of floating seaweed, resolved themselves into camel-hair khayyams of Bedouins; their scattered flocks like schools of slow-moving fish.
The men were silent, impressed by the dreary majesty of the scene unrolled like a map before their feet. The garish sun beat down out of a brazen sky on the tortured world. Under its rays objects five miles away were well-nigh as distinctly seen as if half a mile distant in a less clear atmosphere. So it was that the askari, crouching in the shelter of a great upstanding dun-colored bowlder, was able to make the shot he would otherwise never have attempted.
For more than an hour, moving with infinite caution, he had made his way along the narrow, sand-covered bench, a quarter of a mile distant. It was the only spot in the immediate circle of hills from which a rifle bullet could reach the ledge occupied by the signalers without coming in range of the machine gun standing with legs wide aspraddle a few feet from the glass. His tarboosh was laid aside, his head wrapped in a strip of khaki, the same tint as the sandstone ledge along which he crawled. His khundaras, the heavy, hob-nailed Turkish marching boots, had been removed, and his feet wrapped in a pair of puttees. His buttons were blackened in the fire, every bit of metal about his rifle sandpapered, and covered with khaki paint. For the Turkish snipers left nothing undone to insure success when stalking their human prey.
Taking advantage of every projection in the dun-hued wall, crawling flat on his belly, lying for long periods absolutely motionless, he gained the nearest point, on the desert side of the valley. So skillful had been his approach, that the sharp eyes of the seated cockney, ceaselessly moving up and down the valley, narrowly scanning the face of the opposite bluff from time to time, had failed to notice him.
Reaching the narrowed end of the ledge, where another foot's advance would have plunged him over the edge, to go hurtling down two hundred feet to the rocks below, he carefully thrust forward his rifle, moving with infinite slowness and patience. He knew the range; and carefully adjusted the telescope sight, which he extracted from the padded case strapped to his side under his armpit. Resting the muzzle on the edge, he took aim. Holding his lungs half full, his sinewy forefinger curling about the trigger with a steady pressure instead of a pull, he fired.
As the echoes reverberated in avalanches of sound, flying back and forth from wall to wall, filling the gorge with thunderous roars, the seated figure sprang to his feet, threw his arms aloft with the jerky motion of a marionette, and half spun about on his toes. Then he plunged, face downward on the scorching surface of the rock, his head striking with the sickening crunch of bone. His splaying fingers clawed the rock, his body gave a convulsive twitch, and then lay still in the garish sunlight.
Instinctively the two remaining men threw themselves flat beside the gun.
"From across the valley," whispered the man who had been looking through the telescope. "Right through the chest. It couldn't have come from any other direction."
"Yuss," answered his companion in a hoarse, broken voice, "bli-me! That Johnny can shoot. Poor ole Perkins—"
In far-away Deli Abbas a heliograph was twinkling, and the signaler's voice trailed away into tense silence, as he read the pregnant dots and dashes.
A A A Message received A A A If can hold out till dark relieving party leaves Deli Abbas hr past dark A A A Repeat back for confirmation if recd A A A
The cockney uttered a crackling oath, snarling in savage anger as he turned to his companion.
"Much bloody good it'll do us, the bleeders starting an hour arter dark. 'Owever, we'll 'ave to bloody well acknowledge their—message. Gawd's truth! You'd think the barstards was in barricks, pipe-claying their belts and a-polishin' of their buttons, they're that cashul like.
"Gawd stri-me pink! British Harmy? Mob of perishing—!
"Watch out for that there Johnny, an' fire at anythink wot moves; 'e 'as 'imself wrapped in khaki, more'n likely; but 'e must rise to fire, an' you'll see 'im move."
Waiting till his silent companion had the gun adjusted, the muzzle trained tentatively toward the opposite bluff, the signaler cautiously raised himself; and, with lowered head, advanced slowly to the helio. A puff of smoke sprang out from the ledge, and he fell flat on the rock beside the instrument, uttering a string of lurid obscenities as the bullet struck within six inches of his head, ricochetted, and hummed down the valley like some angry giant fly.
As an echo to the thunderous roar of the Turk's rifle, the gun's prattle sounded like the ripping and tearing of some gigantic fabric. The steel stream swept the wall a quarter of a mile away. In the clear air they saw the sniper stagger half way to his feet, claw wildly at his chest, and spin over the edge, his body twisting round and round before it struck the bottom with a sickening crunch which carried to their ears.
Once more the cockney rose. He made a lightning adjustment, and flashed back the RD signifying they were alive, and the message received. He did not dare stand upright long enough to repeat the message back, not knowing what unseen eyes might be watching from some concealed niche in the rocks. As he threw himself down, his blue eyes darting up and down the valley with quick, terrierlike glances, he reached out a scrawny, sunburned hand and drew his rifle toward him. The other raised his head slightly, and sent a long, searching look in the direction of the Sakaltuton Pass, seven miles away. He started to speak. His eyes wandered toward the break in the escarpment; and he remained silent, as his eyes ranged the vast expanse of drab desolation. Insensibly, he yielded to the influence of the wonderful prospect unfolded maplike before him. No one can look for long at the desert and remain unresponsive to its subtle quiescence.
The rock became hotter and hotter as the morning advanced and the sun climbed toward the zenith. From time to time puffs of dead, sterile wind blew over them, making the flesh tingle where the drenched flannel shirts clung to them like plaster. The metal work of the gun was almost unbearable to the touch; and their spine-pads were heated as if by the blast from an open furnace door.
"Gawd bli-me!" the smaller man's voice broke the pervasive quiet, the tones, for all their sharpness, sounding dead and flat in the still void. "Saint Peter fryin' on 'is bleedin' grid was 'aving a chill to wot we're getting 'ere, along of roasting on this—rock, and blistering under this bloody sun, wiv no water to drink between nah and sun-dahn.
"Gawd's curse on this country, and them as wants to tyke it! Let Johnny keep it an' be damned to 'im! The whole damned Mespot ain't worth the life of one Tommy—such as 'im," and he choked suddenly, as he indicated the motionless form of their mate, face downward on the scorching rock, above which two tayaaras, the Mesopotamian vultures, were already slowly circling high in the blue emptiness.
"Well, well," the other answered, his voice, quiet, grave, deep-toned, sounding in strange contrast to his companion's querulous, hysterical speech, "swearing never did any good yet, that I could see. Keep your pecker up, and carry on. We only have to sit tight, and keep our eyes open, and they'll be here before midnight.
"Though God knows—"
The cockney interrupted with a snarling laugh.
"Oh, yuss! Of course Gawd knows all abaht it, no daht. But a bloody lot 'e cares for the likes of you and me. 'Ere's you, an' me, and 'im," with a convulsive movement of the throat, as he indicated the quiet form, "we're blinkin' Christians—or so our crime sheets an' medical 'istries says. Rahnd in these yere 'ills is the bleedin' Turks, wot worships Aller, and their bleedin' Mahomet. They're tykin' pot shots at our Christian 'eads, like narsty little boys shyin' cocoanuts on 'Ampstead 'Eath August bank 'oliday, every time we raises our nappers. Garn! You give me the pip. The ruddy chaplains say the cross'll prove triumphant over the blinkin' crescent. But—wot price the cross, with us a-grillin' like two—kippers, 'ere on this sizzlin' rock?"
"If we only trust—"
"Yah! You gospel wallahs is all alike. You give me the bleedin' sick, wiv your trust and bloody faif . We 'ad faif and trust in our bleedin' officer; an' 'ere we walks plumb into this nullah, wiv the Turks pottin' us from every rock, till there's only me an' you an' poor ole Perkins 'ere, waitin' till some sniper sends us West. Arf the Turkish harmy between us an' Abu Saida, an' you tell me to trust.
"If Gawd knows we're 'ere, why don't 'e stretch out 'is hand, an' bloody well get us aht of it; or at least go arsty wiv the 'eat of the ruddy sun."
The other did not answer. His long, lean figure, asprawl on the rock, looked like some fantastic mannikin, thrown carelessly down, its part played out. The spidery supports of telescope and heliograph looked too tenuous to be real. The squat gun was like some great toy beetle, the stumpy tripod fixed firmly in the fissured rock giving it a maimed, one-sided appearance, as if one of its legs had been torn off in the drama just played.
The cockney continued, after a brief pause. His voice was low and far-away, the monotonous sing-song showing that he talked as much for his own satisfaction, as for the other's ears.
"Elijah Twing. Elijah! That's me: signaler corpril, passed aht at Canterbury, expert signaler, wiv two glags up, and droring proficiency pay. Gawd bli-me! Wiv a monniker like Elijah—an' the 'eathen Turks a-chasin' of me through these perishin' 'ills, leavin' me 'ere a-grillin' on the rocks.
"The sparrers fed Elijah in the wilderness, an' took 'im up in a bleedin' chariot of fire—w'ich couldn't 'ave been pleasant, if it was arf as 'ot as this sun on my backside, and the rock a-scorchin' of me in front. And Joshua 'e told the sun to stand still. Why? 'E was a blinkin' genril. 'E 'ad a bloody E.P. tent to sit under the shyde of. Wot did 'e care—grantin' it's all true—if 'is men 'ad to march in the 'eat, carryin' their rifles an' baynits, an' their bleedin' packs. 'E was a perishing officer. It's them as always 'as the best of it. 'Ere's us—roasting. Does the officer oo got us into this mess 'ave to lie 'ere an' bake? Nah. 'E cops it peaceful-like, an' leaves the likes of you an' me to be roasted, an' baked, an' potted, w'ile another officer, miles away across the bleedin' desert 'eliographs to us to trust in 'im—'e'll bloody well get us aht of it.
"Yuss; they'll get us aht of it—w'en we've snuffed it, and the —— wild 'ill Arabs 'as cut an' 'acked us, an' took our clobber off, and left us nakid 'ere for the —— jackals to sniff and gnaw at.
"An' you a-wantin' to snuffle a yimn. Oh, yuss, I know. Me favver an' me muvver was bible punchers same as you, always a-tellin' of 'im an' 'is ways. But 'e's always for them wot has. I've seed it since I came 'ere to the East—always on the side of the officers. The Tommies? Bli-me! They can shift for themselves: Gawd's busy lookin' out for the officers, an' the bloody Turks.
"One of us must be right. You're C. of E. I'm chapel, Perkins there was R.C. One of the three must 'a been Christians. But w'en night comes, the 'eathen Turks'll come, led by this Aller they worships, an' oo'll be better off—me, as trusted my officer, oo trusted to Gawd, Perkins oo went to Mass last week, or Johnny, as trusts to Aller an' cops the bloody lot of us?"
The low, monotonous voice droned on. Under garish light of Eastern midday, death ringing them round, death beating down from the unclouded sky, to strike them down with a touch if their heads were for a moment uncovered by the pith topees, he droned of his home in the London slums, the life of hardship and semi-starvation, the years in the board school, the voyage, the return to the slums, the enlistment to escape the prospect of a quick old age, the workhouse, and the potter's field at the end. The war came; and he looked on death in every hideous form, never to see the shielding, guiding hand of God, though every Gospel wallah and bible puncher told of His mercy and loving kindness.
He laughed cynically.
"So," he concluded,"'ave it as you like. Gawd or no Gawd, I'm 'aving none in mine. A signaler corpril I am, Elijah Twing wot rose from the ranks by 'is own 'elp, knowing that if 'e must trust somebody, it was 'imself, Signaler Corpril Twing."
He had said it all before, in barracks, on the transport, in camp on the desert's outermost rim. It was long familiar to the man at his side, who gave no heed, his eyes incessantly sweeping the valley's length.
Watchful as he was, he did not see the figure six hundred yards away, clinging like a fly to the sheer wall, up which he had been working for an hour past.
The ledge on which they lay commanded the knife-cut in the hills known as the Abu Hajar Pass. To gain the desert and Deli Abbas, the Turks must run the gauntlet of the gun's murderous fire. Alone of the outpost of twenty men, Twing and Carson had been able to gain it; where they remained, straining anxious eyes toward Deli Abbas and the supporting column. The Thirteenth Turkish Army Corps, and the British Thirteenth Division were speeding toward the pass; one from the plains between the Jebel Hamrin and the Persian frontier, the other across the desert from the railhead at Abu Saida. British and Turkish planes had plotted the hills, engaged in battle, returned to their commands to report. The British outpost had arrived first in the pass, been surprised, wiped out with the exception of the men on the rock. And in their hands, an unbelieving, ignorant cockney, and a deeply religious, taciturn clerk, was the fate of two armies. So are the destinies of nations decided.
The climbing askari, like his luckless precursor, gained the seemingly inaccessible peak, uncoiled the rope wrapped about him, fastened it to a pinnacle of the rock. Half-screened by the shoulder of the cliff, clinging to the rope as they climbed, a dozen Turks swarmed up, to find ample footing. The machine gun was hoisted, assembled, trained on the unconscious figures on the lower ledge.
Twing was about to resume his monody of unbelief when the valley once more resounded with the tattoo of machine-gun fire, and the steel struck the rock about the two signalers, whirring down the stony corridor like a flight of insane bumblebees. The tall man gave a sudden, sharp cry, half-starting from his recumbent position. Then he collapsed and lay still, the stain on the rock telling its own grim story.
There was a slight depression a few feet away. To it the corporal dragged his wounded mate. His first-aid kit was torn open, and the hurt, a ragged groove across the chest, quickly and skillfully dressed.
"Right-o, matey!" and one who had heard the blasphemous utterances would not have recognized the voice, its tones soft and gentle as a woman's. "Right as a top, my old brancher. Lie doggo, w'ile I give the bleeders wot for."
Clinging like a limpet to the rock, he moved cautiously forward, an inch at a time, till he could reach the ankle of the dead signaler. He pulled the body forward till it lay, a parapet of flesh and bone, along the edge of the depression. With a sudden spring and rush, he reached the gun, picked it up, and slid into the depression, the bullets from the Turks' weapon singing about him like angry wasps. With quick and capable hands he adjusted the piece, straightened the belt.
Many and long were the hours when, cursing the sergeants mentally, filled with hot, blind rage at this intangible, compelling something called discipline, his eyes burning, his face grimy with sweat and powder-smoke, his throat smarting with the pungent fumes, he had fired at the butts on Salisbury Plain. Now he thanked whatever gods he worshiped that the sergeants had been men who knew their work, that he had learned it well, hateful though it was.
The smoking muzzle just clear of his mate's dead body, he sent a tentative shot or two droning up the gorge. The range found, the tap-tapping of the gun quickened to the steady roar of the weapon served by expert hands. The Turkish fire died away, as the crew threw themselves down to escape the steel messengers of death.
As soon as their fire ceased, he ceased in turn, watching the ledge cautiously, above the dead body.
Telescope and helio had been smashed, but the night lamp, safe in the depression, had escaped injury.
The heat grew and grew as the sun reached the meridian, and began sliding down toward the Tigris and Lake Shari. The wounded man, unprotected, burning with the raging fever induced by a gunshot wound, had not uttered a complaint since that first sharp cry. Twing raised his head, and rested it on his knee, placing his own body so that it would shade the other somewhat.
The long afternoon dragged its seemingly interminable length across the brazen sky. Now and again the Turks, perched on their dizzy pinnacle, sent a desultory shot in the direction of Twing and his wounded companion. Each time it was received with a snarling curse, and answered by a withering stream of fire which made them throw themselves flat for safety on the rock.
Once, the party in the pass attempted a sudden rush, thinking to catch him unawares, and gain the shelter of the fallen sandstone slabs, just inside the mouth of the pass. This done, they could have held it against any force from the desert till their main body, five hours' march away, came up.
At the first echoing sound of the iron-heeled khundaras, which carried far through the somnolent air, Twing depressed the gun, traversing to the left. As the askaris dashed into the open, the gun spat fire, the bullets ricochetting from the rocky bottom; the bent and twisted steel inflicting wounds more terrible than direct hits. Followed by the cries, the groans, the calls on Allah from their stricken fellows, they crowded back into the shelter of the rock.
Carson was delirious, the burning fever of the gunshot wound increased by the terrific heat. There was nothing Twing could do to ease him. Their water was gone, spilled from bullet-struck bottles in the night. That in the casing of the gun was all but boiling, inpregnated with oil. His ears tortured by the ceaseless moaning, which was occasionally broken by wild cries as his mate strove frantically to rise and dash away in search of a cooling drink, the little corporal sat huddled behind the gun, his body interposed between the sun and the raving man. He cast his eyes toward the desert, and stiffened in every fiber, as his eyes swept the far-away horizon.
Far away, almost at the desert's rim, something was moving. Out from the smudge which represented Qualat al Mufti, midway between Abu Jezra, and Deli Abbas it came, skirting the Serajik Marshes: a long, slow-moving snake, crawling toward the hills.
"Oh, yuss!" he said hoarsely; his broken, discolored teeth showing in a snarl like a dog's. "You're a-comin' for us—arter we're done in by these bleedin' Turks. And I 'ope they don't arf mess you abaht, afore you drives 'em aht of it."
Both tripods were smashed by the Turkish bullets. But, "grouse" as he might, the instinct of discipline was strong within him. He reached out with infinite caution, and drew the brass-bound telescope to him. It drew a shot, which he automatically returned; and the torrid silence once more settled down. Luckily, the lenses were unbroken. He focussed the glass, resting it across the dead man's haunches. Yes, the long column, advancing slowly, determinedly, was heading straight into the escarpment. As he looked, the helio at Abu Jezra twinkled, and he caught the CC signifying a code message. He read. It was to the effect that the column was to rest at Deli Abbas an hour upon arrival. The men already there were to fall in as soon as darkness fell, take the pass, relieve the party established there, hold the position till the supporting column moved up.
"Oh, yuss! But would the bleeders be so bloody anxious if they knew all that was left of their party was us, and—this! This, wot was poor ole Perkins? Tell 'em? I don't think!"
Mile by mile, as the sky became overcast with the afternoon's banked-up clouds, the column wound its way across the desert while the unprotected corporal held his sun-tortured body before his mate. Had the summer been at its height, he would never have lasted the day. As it was, the crest of the heat passed, leaving him weak, spent, half-crazed with heat, thirst, and anxiety.
The western horizon dimmed, and faded, as the sun drooped low behind Lake Shari and the Tigris. The flamboyant colors of the Mesopotamian sunset flaunted their chromatic splendors across the sky, which purpled, flamed into saffron and crimson-gold, faded into pink, to pearly grey. Then the all-pervading purple wrapped the world in mystery. A lone jackal yapped once, somewhere far off in the twisting maze of gorges and valleys.
As the darkness settled, Twing sent a tentative shot wailing down the gorge, to warn the Turks that he was watching, always watching. There was no answer; the hills were as quiet as the desert.
The night lamp was uninjured and again discipline asserted itself. He adjusted it. Then taking off his shirt, he wrung out the sweat, and rolled it into a cushion for Carson's head. Rising, he stretched his cramped limbs, drawing in deep breaths of the keen night air. With night, coolness came with a suddenness almost startling. In ten minutes, though the rock was still almost unbearable to the touch, he was shivering, his teeth chattering.
He had thought the day long. He did not know the seconds could drag so slowly by, as he sat down again, straining tensely in the dark; now to hear a rumor of the British approach, now to discern some stealthy sound telling that the Turks were stealing down the pass. For eighteen hours he had been without water, the greater part of the time under the fiercest heat in Asia. He had heard his mates struck down in that wild mêlée in the dark, and had barely won his way by stealth back to the ledge where Perkins and Carson were left with the instruments. Their fire had stemmed the rush of the Turks, uncertain what strength was there. The last to die had done so, horribly, within reach of his outstretched hand—and he unable to do a thing.
Through the day he had had something to watch, on which to concentrate his mind. The care of his wounded mate engaged his attention when he was not watching the Turks. Now, Carson slept. And, stark and stiff, the body of Perkins served him as a back rest, as he sat, legs asprawl straight out in front of him.
The mysterious night noises of the hills, intensified a hundredfold by the echoes, filled the air with vague, unreal whisperings, as if the dead walked through the night, whispering to themselves and him. His head throbbed from the sun which had beat down on him all day. He broke into a sweat, despite the chill; felt himself cringing with unnamed dread, greater than any fear ever experienced when he looked Death in the eyes, smiling and unconcerned. A sudden tinkling sound caused him to spring frantically to the gun, and sear the darkness with the flashes from its muzzle. Whether or not the Turks had ventured into the open, he did not know.
"My Gawd, my Gawd! will the bleeders ever come!" he cried aloud; and then shrank within himself at the sound of his voice, thin and flat in the pervasive stillness. And he had not noticed till then how very still it was, as if the whispering dead ceased for a moment, listening to his cry.
"Bloody well balmy; off my chump," he muttered, getting control of his jangled nerves.
He had thought it quiet. Now; he knew that never, in London's busiest hour, had he heard so many sounds, so many whispering voices, unseen, but close at hand.
Carson awoke with a moaning request for water.
"Yuss, yuss, matey. I know its cruel 'ard. But there just ain't a drop. I'd drain my 'eart's blood, if that'd 'elp. But wot can I do, nah; wot can I do?"
"Oh, my God, water, water—just one drop," and the wounded man's voice trailed off incoherently; though ever and again Twing caught the one word, "water!"
"W'en they come," Twing began, pausing as a sudden thought struck him. "Wot if..."
Bending low, he lit the night lamp, adjusted the shutter, trained it toward where he thought the break in the escarpment to be. If they could see, if they had hearts, they would hurry, hurry, bringing water to his wounded mate. Again and again he sent the cry for help, peering into the darkness desertward for the flashed RD which would tell him his message was caught. It was useless; and the hours dragged by with no sound from Turks or British.
The noises of the hills again began their chorus. Carson woke calling for water in a weak whisper, fainter than before. The sound wrenched Twing's heart. With proper care, Carson's wound would not be fatal. But, burning with fever, two hours under the morrow's sun would end in raving madness, and ghastly, searing death. Unless...
He cast a quick glance upward at the spreading, thickening canopy of cloud—the same over-spreading blackness that the leading files of the British column, lying among the rocks outside the pass were watching, as they awaited the supporting column.
"My word!" the speaker seemed to have uttered the exclamation without volition. "Lightning—and at this time of the year."
The words drew a sharply whispered reprimand from the nearest sergeant. But it drew the men's eyes aloft. And as they watched with an interest which deepened into wonder, the flash on the clouds was followed by a series of shorter ones, revolving themselves into the preliminary of a message, flashed by the shutter of a signal lamp.
The signalers among them read, repeating word by word the message dashed and dotted against the cloud-screened sky; a message the column heard with a rustle of amazed whisperings, which the officers did not think to stop. Slowly and evenly the dots and dashes followed each other in measured, ordered sequence, filling them with an emotion they could not have expressed in words.
A A A God this is corporal Twing expert signaler passed out Canterbury A A A I here on bloody rock my mate private Carson wounded A A A Rest of us gone West Some of them will get to you A A A God I said I didn't believe in you I don't now A A A Get my mate out of this bleeding mess and I believe in you A A A It's a bargain A A A God it ain't for myself I say this A A A It is laid down that NCO at all times see to comfort and safety of men in their charge A A A So I got to get him to British lines A A A It's a damn hard job A A A God give me the guts to carry on what I'm a doing of and carry on
Corporal Twing signaler
and there followed the VE signifying the end of the message.
There was no order given to the leading platoons. The platoons, as disciplined bodies of men, for a space were non-existent, for a space were stricken from the rolls of the British Army. There arose a murmur, which grew and strengthened to the deep-chested, roaring cheer of the English going into action, the wild yells of the Irish, the sullen shouts of the Highlanders, the eerie screeching of the Gurkhas, their sworn blood-brothers. There came the clatter of accouterments, the scraping of iron-shod heels on the rocks. Instinctively opening out, they moved at a run, straight toward the dark, sinister mouth of the pass. Their officers shouted at them unheeded, unheeded beat them with their fists, menaced them with a drawn revolver here and there. They went forward steadily into the menacing darkness. Far up the pass sounded a shot, a rocket streaked up, burst into a blossom of flame, illuminating for an instant the dun, drab walls of the Abu Hajar. Then came the steady prattle of a machine gun.
"Damn your eyes, then!" a boyish voice sounded above the clatter of feet, as a subaltern cursed his men with fearsome blasphemies. "Come along, and see if you're as willing to carry on as you were to start."
They answered according to their nature. The English and the Scots fixed bayonets as they ran; the Irish clubbed their rifles; the little Gurkhas threw theirs clattering on the rocks, drawing the curved, wicked kukris dangling against their buttocks.
The Turks, too, had seen the message flashed on the clouds. Not able to read it, they had taken it as a signal to advance; and, reënforced by the rapidly arriving companies, started down the pass to meet the British.
Jamned in the narrow gut, they met breast-on in the dark; and, pressed forward by the eager men behind, were crushed so closely together, straining, grunting, swearing, sweating, neither side able to raise arms with which to strike, till the Gurkhas, wriggling between the legs of their brothers, the Highlanders, ham-strung the foremost Turks, or ripped their bellies with the murderous knives. Stumbling and sliding, their weapons freed from the pressure by the fallen Turks, the British advanced a pace, swung their bayonets with the "hay-maker's" cut, uttering a sobbing "hu-uh!" as the steel struck home. The Highlanders cut and stabbed cannily in dour silence. Here and there a dull thud told when an Irish rifle crushed a Turkish skull. The Gurkhas yelped incessantly, as they plied their kukris, like eager hounds pulling down their prey.
Brought up hurriedly from the rear, a machine gun was mounted on a jutting ledge, and its streaming fire went above the advancing men into the Turks massed at the turn of the pass.
The Turks fought bravely. But the pressure of the British was irresistible. Their foe retreated slowly, sullenly, fighting doggedly, as is their habit. The turn of the pass was reached; and as the gorge opened into the broader valley, the leading files opened out, and sent a scattering volley into the rearmost companies. As more and more men came up, bringing the machine gun, the fire increased, and the retreating Turks moved faster and faster, back toward the heart of the hills, followed by the exultant, triumphant British. Through the range, till they streamed out onto the plain of the Nahrin.
The open country before him, dimly seen as a blue-gray shadow, vague, unreal under the stars, the British commander gave an order, and a bugle shrilled the recall.
When the sun came up behind the towering, snow-clad Pusht-I-Koh, the mighty Persian Hills, and the day flamed suddenly into the Abu Hajr, the Thirteenth moved up, company by company, to occupy the coveted pass. The search party was already afoot before dawn; but it was not till day made clear the configuration of the pass that Corporal Twing was found.
He was lying at the foot of the steep, tortuous path leading up to the ledge where he had made his bargain. Creeping down, the unconscious Carson on his back, he was caught in the jam, knocked off his feet, trod upon alike by Gurkha, Scot and Turk. Throwing himself on his prostrate mate, he saved him from the tramplings of the iron-shod press. When the pressure lessened he was able to struggle back a few feet, dragging Carson with him. Once clear of the mêlée, his exhausted body could do no more. He drifted into unconsciousness, kicked, bruised, terribly punished. He was restored to consciousness by the ministrations of a sergeant of the R.A.M.C.
As an officer, regarding him with wonder, kindliness, an abashed self-consciousness at the memory of the message he had read, gave orders to carry him to the rear, Twing spoke, his voice tremulous and weak, but a certain doggedness in his tones.
"Begging your pardon, sir. But might I arsk a favor, sir?"
"Yes, corporal. What is it? Certainly. Anything that's possible."
"Well, sir; you see, sir, it's like this here. I didn't know you was comink, so I made a contrack."
"Yes?" the officer asked, as the other paused.
"Well, if it's possible, sir, I'd like the sergeant to 'elp me up to that perishing ledge. My dead mate's up there—Perkins. Privit Carson'll pull through, sir."
"Well?"
"Well, sir, I been a bit of a rotter—but I bloody well 'ave to keep a contrack, bein' a N.C.O., 'aven't I?
"Could you, sir?" and his drawn, haggard cheeks were suffused, as a shamefaced expression flitted across his face, to leave his jaw set doggedly. "I'd like to stay there arf a mo by myself, sir, afore they tykes me to the bleedin' 'orspital.
"I want to kneel by my mate to say me prayers."
THE IMAGE
"It is mankind that is crucified," said my mate; "mankind! in the person of each individual, common man! Take one such from each of the warring nations. There would be twenty of them, would there not? Lay the dead, tortured, mangled bodies in a row and contemplate them, what can one feel but bitter, fierce, rebellious pity for their agony? Pity for friend and foe alike. Close your eyes, can you not see each separate wretch upon his cross? Each has given his life for an ideal, a dream, and each, perchance, has cried out in his anguish: 'Why hast thou forsaken me?'"
We were awaiting the signal to attack. It wanted but five minutes to the hour. The giant guns had been doing their work of preparation for two nights and a day. Behind the lines we had rehearsed our particular business with minute and exhaustive care. Our objective was a wrecked village beyond the enemy's third line. We had studied every street and every building until we knew them by heart. The village church, as we had learned from our airmen, had been transformed into a fortress. We were to take and hold it at all costs. The morning was dark and misty, and as we stood in our trench, knee-deep in the slush, despite the excitement of the anticipated charge, the blood was chilled.
"Yes," said I. "I suppose the bravest sometimes weaken; but in our stronger moments we must feel that the sacrifice is not in vain. Those who come after will remember. If we win, they will have owed the victory, the redemption, to us."
"And if we fail?" said my friend.
"The manner of our going will teach them how to 'follow on!'"
My companion had but recently joined our regiment—a youngster of twenty-two, fresh from a sedentary occupation in the city of London; the toughening process of his training had not yet inured him to the horrors of war. He had been in action only once since coming to the front, and after the fury of the slaughter was past he had sobbed like a child at the thought of what he had called the "murder" he himself had wrought. During the last four days we had discussed constantly that inevitable law of the universe which demands that all evolution, all progress, shall result only from perpetual conflict. My own reading had made me familiar with the philosophers and the metaphysicians, and our dingy dugout had reëchoed with the valiant blows my new acquaintance had delivered against the stubborn doors of experience, fact, natural law, and the deductions of the sages. "Why? Wherefore? To what end?" The madness of war! The fearful contest of the creeds! The rival gods of stone, and gold, and flesh, and spirit! Wherein were the South Sea Islanders less sane than the Christians, who now raised their blood-stained hands aloft in prayers for victory, spending alternate days in praise and massacre?
"Christianity has failed," sighed the new soldier. "The world has relapsed into barbarism. Civilization will be overwhelmed as it has been before. To what end, then, is perfection won from conflict, if the hard-earned result of all our suffering is still the repeated annihilation of our hope?
"'What are men that He should heed us?' cried the king of sacred song,
"'Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insects wrong.'"
At this juncture a mutual friend, one McMahon, had entered the dugout. He was followed to the door by a number of other men who grasped his hands and hugged him roughly.
"What's the matter?" we asked.
"Victoria Cross!" said several voices, and the coy hero was hauled off to more commodious quarters across the way.
"That's the other side of the question," said I.
"What is?" said my pessimist.
"What that bit of copper stands for."
"The God that lives in man."
"The God that is born of war?"
"The God that is born of conflict."
"Did you ever see the Passion Play?" said my friend.
"I saw it once at Oberammergau," said I.
"Yes, I know," said he. "But it seemed to me so much of a business there, so much of a spectacle in a theater. I saw it many years ago in a more remote Bavarian village—a place visited by very few tourists."
"Do you mean Oberfells?" said I, for I had a vivid recollection of the place, with its vineyards, its cow-bells, its calvaries, and the circle of snow-covered sentinel mountains; its rushing torrent, whose roar, in the gorge below, only emphasized the sleepy quiet of the tiny hamlet. Just now I recalled too a charnel-house in the church, the walls lined with thousands of skulls and a life-size group of the Nativity in the crypt.
"Yes," said he, "Oberfells. You have been there?"
"I passed a night there while on a walking tour when I was studying art in Munich."
"You speak German, then?"
"Yes, fairly well."
"Did you witness 'The Passion' there?"
"No."
"Well," said my friend, "I happened to be there in 1910. I shall not forget it. The Passion Play was performed amid an awful storm. At Oberfells everything is most primitive and the representation is all the more appealing because of its very simplicity. There is no theater, no stage, a background of everlasting mountains, and a foreground of somber rocks and solemn pines—an audience composed entirely of villagers and the neighboring peasants. On that occasion I was the only stranger. The thing is not advertised; the guide-books ignore it, very few persons know about it.
"As I say, there was a fearful storm which burst forth soon after the play began and which raged with fury for two days. The performance was abandoned, the people believing the tempest was an evidence of divine wrath. The peasant who should have appeared as Christus, and who was to have impersonated that character for the first time, was overwhelmed with grief, for he felt that God had pronounced him unworthy. He was a simple creature and would not be comforted.
"As you know, these peasants are brought up to play this and the other characters of the sacred tragedy from childhood, selected and ordained. To take part in this rite is the crowning ambition of their lives. This poor lad nearly died of mortification, but was upheld by the assurance that he would live to impersonate the Saviour on the next occasion, in 1915. For at Oberfells the Passion Play is given every five years.
"However, fate has again interposed. You have heard, no doubt, that he has been drafted and sent to the front—Christ in the trenches! Think of it! What must this gentle spirit think and feel, who from childhood has shaped every thought and hope to train his soul into the likeness of the Prince of Peace? We said just now: 'Mankind is crucified!' Here is one who wept because fortune had kept him from the cross. I wonder if he has had his will? I wonder if, already, he has found his Calvary?"
The uproar of the guns ceased suddenly. I was about to speak when a sharp whistle cut short my reply. In a moment we were over the top of the trench, a young officer, with a little cane in one hand and a pistol in the other, leading us on. We ran low, men dropping here and there, the machine-guns bidding us welcome. Things happen quickly in a charge. The first thing I knew quite clearly we had fought our way past the third line and were in the village. My friend was on the ground, a bayonet in his shoulder, but he had seized his foe's rifle and held onto it desperately. I struck at his opponent with all my strength. My bayonet entered his side. I withdrew it and struck again. As I did so the man released his own weapon and held both hands crossed—the palms outward—before his face. My bayonet pierced both palms, made an ugly gash on his forehead, and glanced upward. He fell like a log. Meanwhile our men had rushed on and the battle had passed into the heart of the village. I lifted my mate to his feet and tried to drag him to some shelter. His gaze was fixed on his fallen enemy.
"Come on!" I cried.
"Did you hear what he said?"
"What did he say? Come!" and I struggled to force him on.
"As he lay there, he said: 'Father, forgive them.' I must go back. I can't leave him there."
At this moment a crowd of our men swept us forward. The enemy attacked on our flank. My pal forgot his wound and we both fought like madmen. The lust to kill is like a mighty hunger and we fed our fill. The church was defended obstinately, but after about twenty minutes we were in it, a panting, blood-stained, reeking lot of conquerors.
The great guns had created havoc. The place was in ruins. As so often happened in this war, the figures of the saints, although fallen, remained intact, unbroken. In this instance, however, the life-size image of the Christ had been torn loose from the nails which had held it and stood among the scattered masonry upon the ground strangely poised with three other figures, the head bent as though looking down upon the vacant cross, a huge instrument at least ten feet high, made of walnut, which, torn down, reclined at an angle on the steps of the altar.
For half an hour we defended the church from counter-attacks. Then the fight died down and our men began to establish the guns and consolidate our position.
It was toward evening of this winter day when the injured were gathered into the various dilapidated buildings. My mate, hit in the legs as well as in the shoulder, lay near the chancel of the church among the long rows of wounded friends and enemies.
I was busy with some first aid when the stretcher-bearers brought in a German soldier and put him down against the broken column opposite. The man was conscious, but his eyes were wild with fever. A lantern which hung over his head showed a great gash on his brow; blood streamed from his side, and both hands were pierced through. His face was livid and his great dark eyes looked like the eyes of a wounded deer. His hair was wet with blood and his thin auburn beard completed his resemblance to One whose effigy we well knew.
We looked at him spellbound.
"They know not what they do," said the wounded man, and he continued to mutter brokenly in German.
My mate seized my hand in both of his. "It is the Christus!" said he.
Stretcher bearers were now taking the disabled back to the ambulances behind our lines. I was unhurt and, after I had done what I could to make my pal comfortable, I went over to my late opponent and tried to help him. It was evident that his mind was wandering. In the ghastly light of the lamp his eyes shone with madness.
The dreadful thunder of the guns had begun again—a barrage of terror to keep the enemy from bringing up reserves.
"The storm!" whispered the wounded Christus. "It is God's anger! I am not worthy of the cross."
My mate sat propped against the pillar opposite, gazing pale and fascinated; other wounded men, British and German, leaned toward the strange figure. The shattered, roofless church; the feeble glimmer of some half-dozen lanterns; the three figures of the fallen saints supporting, upright, the image of Christ, which, with bowed head crowned with thorns, arms outstretched, and pierced hands, looked down upon the overthrown cross as though he saw thereon some vision of as great a sacrifice; the crashes of the distant cannonade; the groans of the dying—I see and hear all this now as clearly as I saw and heard it then.
"Hush!" said one. "He is speaking"; and through the turmoil Christus spoke, while the crowd listened.
Now he was again a boy in his little village, now learning his father's craft as a potter, now the sweet secrets of a childish courtship made men turn away as though they should not hear. Now he is selected to impersonate the Saviour of the world, and is ordained with simple rites and solemn prayer. His voice grows stronger as he speaks broken and detached sentences of the rôle which he studied from boyhood until the great day when the village gathers to see the new Christus. Then the guns burst forth again; and again he cries: "The storm! The storm! I am not worthy of the cross." Now is he taken from his cottage and taught the soldier's trade, and now he cries to God for pity that he too has learned the lust of blood and killed, and killed, and killed. "Not peace!" he cries. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword!"
A signal-rocket from without sent a flash of weird light through the shattered roof. The delirious man sprang to his feet and in an instant was standing before the group of fallen images. He stood in front of the ruined altar, at the foot of the prostrate cross, his arms upraised. Many of the disabled men staggered to their feet, most of them still bleeding from fearful wounds; others lifted themselves on their elbows or struggled to their knees. Above them upon the elevated platform Christus confronted the saints.
"The graves were opened!" he cried. "The graves were opened! and the saints which slept awoke!" And again he cried: "The sun was darkened and the veil of heaven was rent!"
Even as he spoke a shell fell in front of the chancel, a fearful explosion shook the ruined building. When the smoke cleared away many poor wretches had paid the last tribute of devotion. Those who yet lived looked toward the altar. There, stretched upon the huge cross, every shred of clothing torn from his body by the bursting shell, lay the dead Christus of Oberfells, his arms extended upon the beam, a red flood flowing from his side, the pierced palms near the cruel nails where Christ's had been. The saints stood by unharmed and He still gazed where He, Himself, had hung in agony.
The cries of dying men rent the air, the living clung together on their knees, my mate and I were kneeling side by side. He threw his arms about me, trembling.
"It is mankind!" he cried—and he pointed to the naked figure on the cross—"Mankind! Mankind is crucified!"
- ↑ This story is not based on fact.