The Woman of Mystery Part 6

The colonel pursued his tactics. In an hour there were thirty men killed or wounded. One of the guns was destroyed. And it was only nine o'clock.

"d.a.m.n it all!" cried the colonel. "How can they spot us like this?

There's witchcraft in it."

He was hiding, with his majors, the captain of artillery and a few dispatch-riders, behind a bank from above which the eye took in a rather large stretch of undulating upland. At no great distance, on the left, was an abandoned village, with some scattered farms in front of it, and there was not an enemy to be seen in all that deserted extent of country. There was nothing to show where the hail of sh.e.l.ls was coming from. The seventy-fives had "searched" one or two points with no result.

The firing continued.

"Three more hours to hold out," growled the colonel. "We shall do it; but we shall lose a quarter of the regiment."

At that moment a sh.e.l.l whistled between the officers and the dispatch-riders and plumped down into the ground. All sprang back, awaiting the explosion. But one man, a corporal, ran forward, lifted the sh.e.l.l and examined it.

"You're mad, corporal!" roared the colonel. "Drop that sh.e.l.l and be quick about it."

The corporal replaced the projectile quietly in the hole which it had made; and then without hurrying, went up to the colonel, brought his heels together and saluted:

"Excuse me, sir, but I wanted to see by the fuse how far off the enemy's guns are. It's two miles and fifty yards. That may be worth knowing."

"By Jove! And suppose it had gone off?"

"Ah, well, sir, nothing venture, nothing have!"

"True, but, all the same, it was a bit thick! What's your name?"

"Paul Delroze, sir, corporal in the third company."

"Well, Corporal Delroze, I congratulate you on your pluck and I dare say you'll soon have your sergeant's stripes. Meanwhile, take my advice and don't do it again. . . ."

He was interrupted by the sudden bursting of a shrapnel-sh.e.l.l. One of the dispatch-riders standing near him fell, hit in the chest, and an officer staggered under the weight of the earth that spattered against him.

"Come," said the colonel, when things had restored themselves, "there's nothing to do but bow before the storm. Take the best shelter you can find; and let's wait."

Paul Delroze stepped forward once more.

"Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what's not my business; but we might, I think, avoid . . ."

"Avoid the peppering? Of course, I have only to change our position again. But, as we should be located again at once. . . . There, my lad, go back to your place."

Paul insisted:

"It might be a question, sir, not of changing our position, but of changing the enemy's fire."

"Really!" said the colonel, a little sarcastically, but nevertheless impressed by Paul's coolness. "And do you know a way of doing it?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do you mean?"

"Give me twenty minutes, sir, and by that time the sh.e.l.ls will be falling in another direction."

The colonel could not help smiling:

"Capital! You'll make them drop where you please, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir."

"On that beet-field over there, fifteen hundred yards to the right?"

"Yes, sir."

The artillery-captain, who had been listening to the conversation, made a jest in his turn:

"While you are about it, corporal, as you have already given me the distance and I know the direction more or less, couldn't you give it to me exactly, so that I may lay my guns right and smash the German batteries?"

"That will be a longer job, sir, and much more difficult," said Paul.

"Still, I'll try. If you don't mind examining the horizon, at eleven o'clock precisely, towards the frontier, I'll let off a signal."

"What sort of signal?"

"I don't know, sir. Three rockets, I expect."

"But your signal will be no use unless you send it off immediately above the enemy's position."

"Just so, sir."

"And, to do that, you'll have to know it."

"I shall, sir."

"And to get there."

"I shall get there, sir."

Paul saluted, turned on his heel and, before the officers had time either to approve or to object, he slipped along the foot of the slope at a run, plunged on the left down a sort of hollow way, with bristling edges of brambles, and disappeared from sight.

"That's a queer fellow," said the colonel. "I wonder what he really means to do."

The young soldier's pluck and decision disposed the colonel in his favor; and, though he felt only a limited confidence in the result of the enterprise, he could not help looking at his watch, time after time, during the minutes which he spent with his officers, behind the feeble rampart of a hay-stack. They were terrible minutes, in which the commanding officer did not think for a moment of the danger that threatened himself, but only of the danger of the men in his charge, whom he looked upon as children.

He saw them around him, lying at full length on the stubble, with their knapsacks over their heads, or snugly ensconced in the copses, or squatting in the hollows in the ground. The iron hurricane increased in violence. It came rus.h.i.+ng down like a furious hail bent upon hastily completing its work of destruction. Men suddenly leapt to their feet, spun on their heels and fell motionless, amid the yells of the wounded, the shouts of the soldiers exchanging remarks and even jokes and, over everything, the incessant thunder of the bursting bomb-sh.e.l.ls.

And then, suddenly, silence! Total, definite silence, an infinite lull in the air and on the ground, giving a sort of ineffable relief!

The colonel expressed his delight by bursting into a laugh:

"By Jupiter, Corporal Delroze knows his way about! The crowning achievement would be for the beet-field to be sh.e.l.led, as he promised."

He had not finished speaking when a sh.e.l.l exploded fifteen hundred yards to the right, not in the beet-field, but a little in front of it. The second went too far. The third found the spot. And the bombardment began with a will.

There was something about the performance of the task which the corporal had set himself that was at once so astounding and so mathematically accurate that the colonel and his officers had hardly a doubt that he would carry it out to the end and that, notwithstanding the insurmountable obstacles, he would succeed in giving the signal agreed upon.