One Man's Initiation-1917 Part 13

At the wrist of the arm he rested his head on, the watch ticked comfortably.

He began to think how ridiculous it would be if he, Martin Howe, should be extinguished like this. The gas-mask might be defective.

G.o.d, it would be silly.

Outside the gas-sh.e.l.ls were still coming in. The lamp showed through a faint bluish haze. Everyone was still waiting.

Another hour.

Martin began to recite to himself the only thing he could remember, over and over again in time to the ticking of his watch.

"_Ah, sunflower, weary of time.

Ah, sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the sun; Ah, sunflower, weary of time, Who countest ..._"

"One, two, three, four," he counted the sh.e.l.ls outside exploding at irregular intervals.

There were periods of absolute silence, when he could hear batteries pong, pong, pong in the distance.

He began again.

"_Ah, sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the sun In search of that far golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done._

"_Where the youth pined away with desire And the pale virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves and aspire Where my sunflower wishes to go._"

Whang, whang, whang; the battery alongside began again, sending out the light. Someone pulled the blanket aside. A little leprous greyness filtered into the dugout.

"Ah, it's getting light."

The doctor went out and they could hear his steps climbing up to the level of the ground.

Howe saw a man take his mask off and spit.

"Oh, G.o.d, a cigarette!" Tom Randolph cried, pulling his mask off. The air of the woods was fresh and cool outside. Everything was lost in mist that filled the sh.e.l.l-holes as with water and wreathed itself fantastically about the shattered trunks of trees. Here and there was still a little greenish haze of gas. It cut their throats and made their eyes run as they breathed in the cool air of the dawn.

Dawn in a wilderness of jagged stumps and ploughed earth; against the yellow sky, the yellow glare of guns that squat like toads in a tangle of wire and piles of bra.s.s sh.e.l.l-cases and split wooden boxes. Long rutted roads littered with sh.e.l.l-cases stretching through the wrecked woods in the yellow light; strung alongside of them, tangled ma.s.ses of telephone wires. Torn camouflage fluttering greenish-grey against the ardent yellow sky, and twining among the fantastic black leafless trees, the greenish wraiths of gas. Along the roads camions overturned, dead mules tangled in their traces beside shattered caissons, huddled bodies in long blue coats half buried in the mud of the ditches.

"We've got to pa.s.s.... We've got five very bad cases."

"Impossible."

"We've got to pa.s.s.... Sacred name of G.o.d!"

"But it is impossible. Two camions are blocked across the road and there are three batteries of seventy-fives waiting to get up the road."

Long lines of men on horseback with gas-masks on, a rearing of frightened horses and jingle of harness.

"Talk to 'em, Howe, for G.o.d's sake; we've got to get past."

"I'm doing the best I can, Tom."

"Well, make 'em look lively. d.a.m.n this gas!"

"Put your masks on again; you can't breathe without them in this hollow."

"Hay! ye G.o.d-d.a.m.n sons of b.i.t.c.hes, get out of the way."

"But they can't."

"Oh, h.e.l.l, I'll go talk to 'em. You take the wheel."

"No, sit still and don't get excited."

"You're the one's getting excited."

"d.a.m.n this gas."

"My lieutenant, I beg you to move the horses to the side of the road. I have five very badly wounded men. They will die in this gas. I've got to get by."

"G.o.d d.a.m.n him, tell him to hurry."

"Shut up, Tom, for G.o.d's sake."

"They're moving. I can't see a thing in this mask."

"Hah, that did for the two back horses."

"Halt! Is there any room in the ambulance? One of my men's just got his thigh ripped up."

"No room, no room."

"He'll have to go to a poste de secours."

The fresh air blowing hard in their faces and the woods getting greener on either side, full of ferns and small plants that half cover the strands of barbed wire and the rows of sh.e.l.ls.

At the end of the woods the sun rises golden into a cloudless sky, and on the gra.s.sy slope of the valley sheep and a herd of little donkeys are feeding, looking up with quietly moving jaws as the ambulance, smelling of blood and filthy sweat-soaked clothes, rattles by.

Black night. All through the woods along the road squatting mortars spit yellow flame. Constant throbbing of detonations.

Martin, inside the ambulance, is holding together a broken stretcher, while the car jolts slowly along. It is pitch dark in the car, except when the glare of a gun from near the road gives him a momentary view of the man's head, a ma.s.s of bandages from the middle of which a little bit of blood-soaked beard sticks out, and of his lean body tossing on the stretcher with every jolt of the car. Martin is kneeling on the floor of the car, his knees bruised by the jolting, holding the man on the stretcher, with his chest pressed on the man's chest and one arm stretched down to keep the limp bandaged leg still.

The man's breath comes with a bubbling sound, now and then mingling with an articulate groan.

"Softly.... Oh, softly, oh--oh--oh!"

"Slow as you can, Tom, old man," Martin calls out above the pandemonium of firing on both sides of the road, tightening the muscles of his arm in a desperate effort to keep the limp leg from bouncing. The smell of blood and filth is misery in his nostrils.