Fritz and Eric Part 5

But, the s.h.i.+powner's face did not look as if he brought any pleasing news; and, after one brief glance at his countenance, the widow's fell in sympathy. She almost antic.i.p.ated the evil tidings which she was certain he had in store for her.

"Madame Dort," he began, "pray compose yourself."

"I am quite calm, Herr Grosschnapper," she answered. "Go on with what you come to tell me. You have heard something of my poor boy Eric; is it not so?"

"It is, madame," replied the merchant, deceived by her composure. "I grieve to say that I have received intelligence through the English house of Lloyd's that the _Gustav Barentz_ foundered at sea in the Southern Ocean early this year. Two boats escaped from her with the crew and pa.s.sengers, one of which, containing the first officer and several hands, was picked up when those on board were in the last stage of exhaustion, by a vessel bound to Australia. The men were taken to Melbourne before any communication could be received from them, so that is why the news of the wreck has been so long in reaching us."

"And Eric?" asked the widow, with her head bent down.

"He was with the captain in the other boat, dear madame," said Herr Grosschnapper; "but, I'm afraid there is little or no chance of their having been saved, or else we would have heard of them by this time.

Pray bear up under the loss, madame. He was a good son, I believe, and would have made a good sailor and officer; but it was not to be!

Remember, you have another son left."

"Ah, but not Eric, my little one, my darling!" burst forth the poor bereaved mother in a pa.s.sion of tears; and then, the merchant, seeing that any words of comfort on his part would be worse than useless, withdrew.

The violence of Madame Dort's grief, however, was soon a.s.suaged, for she had long been preparing herself for this blow. She had given up all hope of ever hearing from Eric again, even before Fritz left home.

Thenceforth, all her motherly love was bound up in her firstborn, now the only son left her; and daily she scanned the papers to learn news of the war.

Time pa.s.sed on, the widow occasionally receiving a hurried scrawl from Fritz, who, as she knew, was now no longer resting with the reserve battalions in the fortresses of the Rhine, but marching onwards with the invading army through France.

She heard of the terrible battle of Gravelotte, in which she dreaded that he had taken part; but, almost before she could read the full official details published in the German newspapers under military censors.h.i.+p, her anxieties were relieved by a long letter coming from Fritz, telling of his partic.i.p.ation in the colossal contest and of his miraculous escape without a wound, although he had been in the thick of the fire and numbers of his comrades from the same part of the country had been killed.

But, he had better news to tell--that, at least, is what he wrote, only the mother doubted whether any intelligence could be more important to her than the fact of his safety!

What would she think of hearing that he had been promoted to be an officer "for gallantry in the field of battle," as the general order read out to the whole army worded it? Would she not be proud of her Fritz after that?

Aye, would she not, would not Lorischen?

And did not the entire gossiping community of Lubeck know all about it by and through the means of the old nurse before the close of the self- same day, eh?

Certainly; still, would it be believed that the very first person whom Lorischen told the news to was her special antipathy, Burgher Jans? She actually went up to and accosted him of her own free-will on the Market Platz for the very purpose of telling him of Fritz's promotion! Yes, such was the case; and she not only was friendly to the little fat man on this occasion, but she actually patted his dog at the same time!

Still, Eric, the lost sailor laddie, was not forgotten in his brother's success. The mother's grief was only chastened; and almost the very first thought she had on receiving the news from Fritz, and afterwards when she read it in official print, was "how pleased poor Eric would have been at this!"

Bye-and-bye, Fritz wrote again, telling that their task had become very monotonous. The Tenth Army Corps was detained along with several others to besiege Metz, so hemming in Bazaine and the remainder of the army that had endeavoured so gallantly at Gravelotte to pierce the German lines, that they were powerless to a.s.sist the rest of their countrymen in driving the Teuton invader from their soil. The besieging army, which was formed of the united forces of the different corps under Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz, had nothing to do, said Fritz, save to stand to their guns and perform sentry duty; for the French, since the fearful battle of the 18th of August, had not once attempted to push their way out beyond range of the guns of the fortress, under whose shelter they were cantoned in an extended entrenched camp, and were apparently being daily drilled and disciplined for some great effort.

On the 31st of the month, however, Fritz told his mother later on, Bazaine made a desperate effort to break the German cordon around Metz; and this being repulsed with heavy loss, the Marshal again remained quiet for the s.p.a.ce of another six weeks.

During this period Madame Dort heard regularly from her son through the field post. She sent him letters in return, telling him all the home news she could glean, and saying that she expected him back before the winter. She hoped, at least, that he would come by that time, for Herr Grosschnapper had informed her that he would have to fill up Fritz's place in his counting-house if the exigencies of the war caused his whilom clerk to remain away any longer.

Things went on like this up to the month of October, the anniversary of poor Eric's going away; when, all at once, there came a cessation of the weekly letters of Fritz from headquarters.

His mother wrote to inquire the reason.

She received no answer.

Then she read in the papers of another heavy battle before Metz, in which the Tenth Army Corps had taken part. The engagement had happened more than a week before, and Fritz was silent. He might be wounded, possibly killed!

Madame Dort's anxiety became terrible.

"No news," says the proverb, "is good news;" but, to some it is the very worst that could possibly be; for, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s are filled with a storm of mingled doubts and fears, while hope is deadened and there is, as yet, no balm of resignation to soothe the troubled heart! The proverb is wrong; even the most heartbreaking confirmation of one's most painful surmise is infinitely preferable to being kept in a state of perpetual suspense, where one dreads the worst and yet is not absolutely certain of it.

It was so now with Madame Dort. She thought she could bear the strain no longer, but must go to the frontier herself and seek for information of her missing son, as she had read in the newspapers of other mothers doing. However, one afternoon, as she was sitting in the parlour in a state of utter dejection by the side of the lighted stove, for winter was coming on and the days were getting cold, Lorischen brought in a letter to her which had just come by the post.

It was in a strange handwriting!

The widow tore it open hurriedly, glancing first at the signature at the end. "Madaleine Vogelstein!" she said aloud. "I wonder who she is; I never heard of her before!" She then went on to read the letter.

It did not take her long to understand the sense of it.

For, after scanning the contents with startled eyes, she exclaimed, "My son! oh, my son!" and then fell flat upon the floor in a dead faint.

CHAPTER SIX.

WOUNDED.

The stupendous events of the war rushed on with startling rapidity.

The invasion of France, in retaliation for the projected invasion of Germany, was now an accomplished fact; and, day after day, the Teuton host added victory to victory on the long list of their triumphant battle-roll, almost every engagement swelling the number of Gallic defeats and lessening the power of the French to resist their relentless foe, who now, with iron-clad hand on the throat of the prostrate country, marched onward towards Paris, scattering havoc with fire and sword wherever the acc.u.mulating legions of armed men trod.

The battle of Woerth succeeded that of Weissembourg; Forbach that of Woerth; and then came Vionville and Gravelotte to add their thousands of victims to the valhalla of victory. The surrender of Sedan followed, when the Germans pa.s.sed on their way to the capital; but the brave general Urich still held out in besieged Strasbourg, and Bazaine had not yet made his last brilliant sortie from the invested Metz. The latter general especially kept the encircling armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz on the constant alert by his continuous endeavours to search out the weakest spot in the German armour. The real attempt of the French Marshal to break through the investing lines was yet to come; that of the 31st of August, to which Fritz alluded in his letter to his mother, having been only made apparently to support Mcmahon as a diversion to the latter's attack on Montmedy, before the surrender of Sedan.

From this period, up to the beginning of October, the French remained pretty quiet, the guns of the different forts lying without the fortifications of Metz only keeping up a hara.s.sing fire on the besieging batteries that the Germans had erected around on the heights commanding the various roads by which Bazaine's army could alone hope to force a pa.s.sage through their lines. Summer had now entirely disappeared and cold weather set in, so the Teuton forces found it very unpleasant work in the trenches when the biting winds of autumn blew through their encampments of a night, making their bivouac anything but comfortable; while the sharp morning frosts also made their rising most unpleasantly disagreeable; add to this, whenever they succeeded in making their quarters a trifle more cosy than usual, as certainly would the cannon of Fort Quelin or the monster guns of Saint Julien send a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l to awaken them, causing an instant turn-out of the men in a body to resist a possible sortie. Bazaine made perpetual feints of this sort, with the evident intention of wearying out his antagonists, even if he could do them no further harm.

The position was like that of a cat watching a mouse-hole, the timid little occupant of which would every now and then put out its head to see whether the coast were clear; and then, perceiving its enemy on the watch, provokingly draw it in again, leaving p.u.s.s.y angry at her repeated disappointments and almost inclined to bite her paws with vexation at her inability to follow up her prey into its stronghold; for, the heavy artillery of the fortress so protected the surrounding country adjacent to Metz, that the Germans had to place the batteries of their works out of its range, that is, almost at a distance of some four miles from the French camp--of which any bombardment was found after a time to be worse than useless, causing the most infinitesimal amount of damage in return for an enormous expenditure of ammunition and projectiles that had to be conveyed over very precarious roads all the way from the frontiers of the Rhine into the heart of Lorraine.

"Oh, that the French would only do something!" cried Fritz and his companions, sick of inactivity and the wearisome nature of their duties, which, after the excitement of battle and the stirring campaigning they had already gone through, seemed now far worse than guard-mounting in Coblentz. "Oh, that the French would only do something to end this tedious siege!"

Soon this wish was gratified.

On the morning of the 6th of October, when the invest.i.ture of Metz had lasted some six weeks or more--just at daybreak--a heavy, dull report was heard at Mercy-le-Haut. It was like the bursting of a mine.

"Something is up at last!" exclaimed one of the staff-officers, entering the tent where Fritz and others were stretched on the bare ground, trying to keep themselves as warm as they could with all the spare blankets and other covering that could be collected heaped over them--"Something is up at last! Rouse up; the general a.s.sembly has sounded!"

The ringing bugle notes without in the frosty air emphasised these words, causing the young fellows to turn out hastily, without requiring any further summons.

Aye, something was up. The pioneers of the Seventh German army corps, on the extreme right, had mined and blown up the farm buildings of Legrange aux Bois, close to Peltre. These farm buildings had hitherto served as a cover to the French troops when they made their foraging sorties, but they could not be held by the Germans, for they were situated within the line of fire of Fort Quelin; so, as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently antic.i.p.ating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. Whole broadsides of projectiles from the great guns flew into the valley of the Moselle as far as Ars, sweeping away the entrenchments as if they were mere packs of cards; and, presently, an onward movement of French battalions of infantry, supported by field artillery and cavalry, showed that, this time at least, something more was intended by Marshal Bazaine than a mere feint.

Trumpet called to trumpet in the German ranks, and speedily the whole of the second army under Prince Frederick Charles mustered its forces in line of battle, the men gathering in imposing ma.s.ses towards the threatened point at Ars. Here the 61st and 21st infantry regiments, which were on outpost duty, were the first: to commence hostilities, rus.h.i.+ng to meet the French who were advancing from Metz. Aided by the batteries erected by the side of the Bois de Vaux, the Germans, after a sharp conflict, succeeded in repulsing the enemy, who had ultimately to retire again under the guns of Fort Quelin, although they made a vigorous resistance while the engagement lasted--only falling back on suffering severe loss from the shower of shrapnel to which they were subjected, besides losing many prisoners. During all the time of this attack and repulse, Fort Saint Julien, on the other side of the fortress, was sh.e.l.ling the Landwehr reserve, causing many casualties amongst the Hanoverian legion; and, but that the men here were quite prepared for their foe, the combat might have extended to their lines.

As it was, the expected fight, for which the Tenth Corps was ready and waiting, was only delayed for a few hours; when, if Fritz and his comrades had complained of the cold of the weather, they found the work cut out for them "hot" enough in all conscience!

In the afternoon of the following day, Bazaine made a desperate effort to break through the environment of the Germans in the direction of Thionville. On the previous evening, in resisting the attack from Saint Julien, which had been undertaken at the same time as that from Saint Quelin on Ars, the French had been driven from the village of Ladonchamps, and their adversaries had established foreposts at Saint Remy, Pet.i.tes et Grandes Tapes, and Maxe; and now, under cover of a thick fog, the French Marshal advanced his troops again and commenced a vigorous attempt, supported by a heavy artillery fire, for the recovery of the lost Ladonchamps. Failing in this, although possibly the attack might have been a blind, the general being such a thorough master of strategy, Bazaine made a dash for Pet.i.tes et Grandes Tapes, annihilating the foreposts and hurling great ma.s.ses of men at their supports. Having occupied these villages, the French Marshal then sent forward a large body of troops to the right, close to the Moselle. These advanced up the valley against the German entrenchments on the heights until checked by cannon fire from batteries on both sides of the river, and were only finally stopped by an advance in force of two brigades of the Landwehr, the men of whom occupied a position just in front of Pet.i.tes et Grandes Tapes.

Amongst these latter troops was the regiment of our friend Fritz.