Action Front Part 10

"Those Bos.h.i.+es thought they was bloomin' clever to twig we was English," he told the others of B Company; "but you wait till the lime-light's on me. I'll puzzle 'em."

The two French artillery signalers were sleeping in the forward trench, and after some explanation readily lent their long-skirted coats. The officer and Robinson donned one each, and 'Enery carefully arrayed himself in a torn and discarded pair of old French baggy red breeches and the damaged French cap, and discarded his own jacket. His gray s.h.i.+rt might have been of any nationality, so that on the whole he made quite a pa.s.sable Frenchman. While they waited for darkness he paraded the trench, shrugging his shoulders, and gesticulating. "Bon joor, mays ong-fong," he remarked with a careless hand-wave. "Hey, gar-song!

Donney-moi du pang eh du beurre, si voo play--and donnay-moi swoy-song cans--rapeed--exploseef! Merci, mes braves, mes bloomin' 'eroes ... mes n.o.ble warriors, merci. Snapper, strike up the 'Conkerin' 'Ero,' if you please."

Before the time came to go he added to his make-up by marking on his face with a burnt stick huge black mustachios and an imperial, and although the officer stared a little when he came along he ended by laughing, and leaving 'Enery his "make-up" disguise.

An hour after dark the three slipped quietly over the parapet and out through the barbed wire, dragging a stretcher after them. It was a fairly quiet night, with only an occasional rifle cracking and no artillery fire. A bright moon floated behind scudding clouds, and perhaps helped the adventure by the alternate minutes of light and dark and the difficulty of focusing eyes to the differences of moonlight and dark and the blaze of an occasional flare when the moon was obscured.

Behind the parapet the Towers waited with rifles ready, and stared out through the loopholes; and behind them the French artillery officer, and his signalers standing by their telephone, also waited with the loaded guns and ready gunners at the other end of the wire. The watchers saw the dark blot of men and stretcher slip under the wires, and slowly, very slowly, creep on through the long gra.s.s. Half-way across, the watchers lost them amidst the other black blots and shadows, and it was a full half-hour after when a private exclaimed suddenly: "I see them," he said. "There, close where we saw the hand."

The moon vanished a moment, then sailed clear, throwing a strong silvery light across the open ground, and showing plainly the German wire entanglements and the black-and-white patchwork of their barricade. There were no visible signs of the rescue party, for the good reason that they had slipped into and lay p.r.o.ne in the wide sh.e.l.l crater that held the wounded Frenchman. Far spent the man was when they found him, for he had lain there three nights and two days with a bullet-smashed thigh and the sc.r.a.pe across his skull that had led the rest of his night patrol to count him dead and so abandon him.

Now the moon slid again behind the racing clouds, and patches of light and shadow in turn chased across the open ground.

"Here they come," said the captain of B Company a few minutes later.

"At least I think it's them, altho' I can only see two men and no stretcher."

"Do you see them?" said an eager voice in French at his ear, and when he turned and found the gunner captain and explained to him, the captain made a gesture of despair. "Perhaps it is that they cannot move him," he said. "Or would they, do you think, return for more help? I should go myself but that I may be needed to talk with the battery.

Perhaps one of my signalers----"

But the Englishman a.s.sured him it was better to wait; they could not be returning for help; that the three could do all a dozen could.

Again they waited and watched in eager suspense, glimpsing the crawling figures now and then, losing them again, in doubts and certainty in swift turns as to the whereabouts and ident.i.ty of the crawling figures.

"There is one of them," said the captain quickly; "there, by himself, in those cursed red breeches. They show up in the flarelight like a blood-spot on a clean collar. Dashed idiot! And I was a fool, too, to let him go like that."

But it was plain now that 'Enery Irving was dragging his red breeches well clear of the others, although it was not plain, what the others had done with the stretcher. There were two of them at the length of a stretcher apart, and yet no visible stretcher lay between them. It was the sergeant who solved the mystery.

"I'm blowed!" he said, in admiring wonder; "they've covered the stretcher over with cut gra.s.s. They've got their man too--see his head this end."

Now that they knew it, all could see the outline of the man's body covered over with gra.s.s, the thick tufts waving upright from his hands and nodding between his legs.

They were three-quarters of the way across now, but still with a dangerous slope to cross. It was ever so slight, but, tilted as it was towards the enemy's line, it was enough to show much more plainly anything that moved or lay upon its face. They crawled on with a slowness that was an agony to watch, crawled an inch at a time, lying dead and still when a light flared, hitching themselves and the dragging stretcher onwards as the dullness of hazed moonlight fell.

The French captain was consumed with impatience, muttering exhortations to caution, whispering excited urgings to move, as if his lips were at the creepers' ears, his fingers twitching and jerking, his body hitching and holding still, exactly as if he too crawled out there and dragged at the stretcher.

And then when it seemed that the worst was over, when there was no more than a score of feet to cover to the barbed wire, when they were actually crawling over the brow of the gentle rise, discovery came.

There were quick shots from one spot of the German parapet, confused shouting, the upward soaring of half a dozen blazing flares.

And then before the two dragging the stretcher could move in a last desperate rush for safety, before they could rise from their p.r.o.ne position, they heard the rattle of fire increase swiftly to a trembling staccato roar. But, miraculously, no bullets came near them, no whistling was about their ears, no ping and smack of impacting lead hailed about them--except, yes, just the fire of one rifle or two that sent aimed bullet after bullet hissing over them. They could not understand it, but without waiting to understand they half rose, thrust and hauled at the stretcher, dragged it under the wires, heaved it over to where eager hands tore down the sandbags to gap a pa.s.sage for them.

A handful of bullets whipped and rapped about them as they tumbled over, and the stretcher was hoisted in, but nothing worth mention, nothing certainly of that volume of fire that drammed and rolled out over there. They did not understand; but the others in the trench understood, and laughed a little and swore a deal, then shut their teeth and set themselves to pump bullets in a covering fire upon the German parapet.

The stretcher party drew little or no fire, simply and solely because just one second after those first shots and loud shouts had declared the game up, a figure sprang from the gra.s.s fifty yards along the trench and twice as far out in the open, sprang up and ran out, and stood in the glare of light, the baggy scarlet breeches and gray s.h.i.+rt making a flaring mark that no eye, called suddenly to see, could miss, that no rifle brought sliding through the loophole and searching for a target could fail to mark. The bullets began to patter about 'Enery Irving's feet, to whine and whimper and buzz about his ears. And 'Enery--this was where the trench, despite themselves, laughed--'Enery placed his hand on his heart, swept off his cap in a magnificent arm's length gesture, and bowed low; then swiftly he rose upright, struck an att.i.tude that would have graced the hero of the highest cla.s.s Adelphi drama, and in a shrill voice that rang clear above the hammering tumult of the rifles, screamed "Veev la France! A baa la Bos.h.!.+" The rifles by this time were pelting a storm of lead at him, and now that the haste and flurry of the urgent call had pa.s.sed and the shooters had steadied to their task, the storm was perilously close. 'Enery stayed a moment even then to spread his hands and raise his shoulders ear-high in a magnificent stage shrug; but a bullet s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap from his head, and 'Enery ducked hastily, turned, and ran his hardest, with the bullets snapping at his heels.

Back in the trench a frantic French captain was raving at the telephone, whirling the handle round, screaming for "Fire, fire, fire!"

Private Flannigan looked over his shoulder at him, "Mong capitaine," he said, "you ought, you reely ought, to ring up your telephone; turn the handle round an' say something."

"Drop two pennies in," mocked another as the captain birr-r-red the handle and yelled again.

Whether he got through, or whether the burst of rifle fire reached the listening ears at the guns, n.o.body knew; but just as 'Enery did his ear-embracing shoulder-shrug the first sh.e.l.ls screamed over, burst and leaped down along the German parapet. After that there was no complaint about the guns. They scourged the parapet from end to end, up and down, and up again; they shook it with the blast of high explosive, ripped and flayed it with, driving blasts of shrapnel, smothered it with a tempest of fire and lead, blotted it out behind a veil of writhing smoke.

At the sound of the first shot the gunner captain had leaped back to the trench. "Is he in? Is he arrived?" he shouted in the ear of the B Company captain who leaned anxiously over the parapet. The captain drew back and down. "He's in--bless him--I mean dash his impudent hide!"

The Frenchman turned and called to his signaler, and the next moment the guns ceased. But the captain waited, watching with narrowed eyes the German parapet. The storm of his sh.e.l.ls had obliterated the rifle fire, but after a few minutes it opened up again in straggling shots.

The captain snapped back a few orders, and prompt to his word the sh.e.l.ls leaped and struck down again on the parapet. A dozen rounds and they ceased, and again the captain waited and watched. The rifles were silent now, and presently the captain relaxed his scowling glare and his tightened lips. "Vermin!" he said. He used just the tone a man gives to a ferocious dog he has beaten and cowed to a sullen submission.

But he caught sight of 'Enery making his way along the trench past his laughing and chaffing mates, and leaped down and ran to him. "Bravo!"

he beamed, and threw his arms round the astonished soldier, and before he could dodge, as the disgusted 'Enery said afterwards, "planted two quick-fire kisses, smack, smack," on his two cheeks.

"_Mon brave_!" he said, stepping back and regarding 'Enery with s.h.i.+ning eyes, "_Mon brave, mon beau Anglais, mon_----"

But 'Enery's own captain arrived here and interrupted the flow of admiration, cursing the grinning and sheepish private for a this, that, and the other crazy, play-acting idiot, and winding up abruptly by shaking hands with him and saying gruffly, "Good work, though. B Company's proud of you, and so'm I."

"An' I admit I felt easier after that rough-tonguin'," 'Enery told B Company that night over a mess-tin of tea. "It was sort of natural-like, an' what a man looks for, and it broke up about as unpleasant a sit-u-ation as I've seen staged. I could see you all grinnin', and I don't wonder at it. That s...o...b..rin' an' kissin'

business, an' the Mong Brav Conkerin' 'Ero may be all right for a lot o' bloomin' Frenchies that don't know better--"

He took a long swig of tea.

"Though, mind you," he resumed, "I haven't a bad word to fit to a Frenchman. They're real good fighting stuff, an' they ain't arf the light-'earted an' light-'eaded grinnin' giddy goats I used to take 'em for."

"There wasn't much o' the light 'eart look about the Mong Cappytaine to-night," said Robinson. "'Is eyes was snappin' like two ends o' a live wire, and 'e 'andled them guns as business-like as a butcher cutting chops."

"That's it," said 'Enery, "business-like is the word for 'em. I noticed them 'airy-faces shootin' to-day. They did it like they was sent there to kill somebody, and they meant doin' their job thorough an'

competent. Afore I come this trip on the Continong I used to think a Frenchman was good for nothing but fiddlin' an' dancin' an' makin'

love. But since I've seen 'em settin' to Bosh partners an' dancin'

across the neutral ground an' love-makin' wi' Rosalie,[Footnote: _Rosalie_--the French nickname for the bayonet.] I've learned better.

'Ere's luck to 'im," and he drained the mess-tin.

And the French, if one might judge from the story _mon capitaine_ had to tell his major, had also revised some ancient opinions of their Allies.

"Cold!" he said scornfully; "never again tell me these English are cold. Children--perhaps. Foolish--but yes, a little. They try to kill a man between jests; they laugh if a bullet wounds a comrade so that he grimaces with pain--it is true; I saw it." It _was_ true, and had reference to a sight sc.r.a.pe of a bullet across the tip of the nose of a Towers private, and the ribald jests and laughter thereat. "They make jokes, and say a man 'stopped one,' meaning a sh.e.l.l had been stopped in its flight by exploding on him--this the interpreter has explained to me. But cold--no, no, no! If you had seen this man--ah, sublime, magnificent! With the whistling b.a.l.l.s all round him he stands, so brave, so n.o.ble, so fine, stands--so! '_Vive la France_!' he cried aloud, with a tongue of trumpets; '_Vive la France! A bas les Boches_!'"

The captain, as he declaimed "with a tongue of trumpets," leaped to his feet and struck an att.i.tude that was really quite a good imitation of 'Enery's own mock-tragedian one. But the officers listening breathed awe and admiration; they did not, as the Towers did, laugh, because here, unlike the Towers, they saw nothing to laugh at.

The captain dropped to his chair amid a murmur of applause. "Sublime!"

he said. "That posture, that cry! Indeed, it was worthy of a Frenchman.

But certainly we must recommend him for a Cross of France, eh, my major?"

'Enery Irving got the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But I doubt if it ever gave him such pure and legitimate joy as did a notice stuck up in the German trench next day. Certainly it insulted the English by stating that their workers stayed at home and went on strike while Frenchmen fought and died. _But_ it was headed "Frenchman!" _and it was written in French._

THE FEAR OF FEAR

_"At ---- we recaptured the portion of front line trench lost by us some days ago."_--EXTRACT FROM DISPATCH.