CHAPTER XIV
LIFE AND DEATH
The night wore on. Clouds overhung the sky and it began to drizzle. RoyFlynn, on duty in No Man's Land, felt that in a little while he andWatson would need their slickers and he was about to return for them,believing that his comrade and two others on the watch could be certainof any improbable attempts of the Huns to make a raid, when a strangething happened.
The ground was suddenly lighted up as though by flashes of fire; atearing, ripping sound came to the two riflemen, and they saw bits ofearth, stones, grass, bushes, torn, blown, lifted, and whizzing by them.Myriads of bullets sung mournful snatches of promised death and howledin derision of life as they struck the rocky earth and bounded onward.
"Back to the quarry! There's no place like home!" yelled Roy to Watson,and firing three shots into the air he turned to see the two Regularswho had also been out on the slope running for the pit. Watson alsostarted and Roy felt conscious that, go as they might, he would not bethe last to get under cover. And then suddenly he knew he would be thelast and as the pain in his hip seemed to shoot up into his very vitalshe wondered, as he pitched headlong, whether he would ever get undersuch cover again as would protect him from the barrage. Would he,indeed, have a chance to get behind some very nearby shelter while theinnumerable bullets paved the way for a German attack on the pit? And,even so, would the coming Huns not find and kill him?
It was hard going. He held to his rifle, believing that it might be themeans of either saving his life or of avenging it at the last moment.Once the barrel was struck by a bullet that glanced harmlessly, but witha wild shriek, as a flattened bullet will.
Then the stock was struck and splintered, and even amidst the awfuldanger, the near certainty of death in a veritable rain of lead, the boyfelt one swift regret for an injury to his beloved weapon. Such are thevagaries of the human mind.
Roy dragged himself forward toward a rise of ground. It was terriblypainful going, but he must get out of this first; see to his wound.
"If I've got to pass up, or down," he said aloud to himself, "I want todo it according to Hoyle and not as Hamburger steak or mincemeat. Let usproceed where we can estimate on repairs, if the works are worth it."
He got on, suffering from time to time bitter stabs of pain just belowhis hip when his limb twisted. Not able to lift the lower portion of hisbody from the ground by his uninjured leg because of the agony when theother dangled he was compelled to drag his entire weight on his elbows,gun still in hand, but the lad's pluck and spirit never left him.
"A turtle's got nothin' on me for getting down to it. Wish I was asnake. Then I could bite a Hun. Mebbe this little thing--" thinking ofhis pistol--"might do it yet; drat 'em! Here's this little old heap ofearth, and--oh, glory be! It's a shell pit! Like home and mother! In wego! Whurrah! That'n nearly got me!"
It had almost. A conical mass of iron ripped clear across his back,cutting the cloth like a knife, but doing no other damage. The boyspread himself out, feeling a little easier, and lay still for a moment.The cold rain fell on his face and he pulled his hat over his eyes.
"But ye don't sting quite like those Boche hailstones," he said. "Well,I've luxuriated enough now. Go to it, m'lad, and look to your hurt. Ifnot, the rain'll help to make this slope all unnatural blue with mearterial fluid; me ancestors way back to Brian Boru would have it thatit's as blue as indigo. Better look to see the damage; but how can I?"
How could he, indeed? Was there nothing for him but to lie there and lethis blood ebb away, unless his comrades missed him in the pit and thebarrage fire ceased? And then a fear seized him. Would they tell Herband would that loyal friend risk his life to reach him?
The bullets fell thicker and faster now, the rattle of the guns at theGerman trench had increased and no man could steal out from the pit andhope to survive. Perhaps Roy could drag himself out again and up theslope in time to keep his friend from attempting----
The boy struggled to get his arms fully under him and then to sustainthe weight of head and shoulders. But the former effort had been toogreat; the reaction now was final. He sank back on the soggy ground andthe hem of his blouse stretched across the wound, his weight firmlyholding it. This and the coagulating effect of the cold earth must havestopped the flow. But the lad lay white and still, no longer gazing upat the black sky, nor conscious of his hurt, nor the curtain of lead andiron above and about him.
"Flynn? Where is he?" was Herbert's first question of the men who hadleaped into the welcome shelter of the pit.
Watson glanced around. "He was with me; yelled to me. Must have beenhit! I was; my heel's off, and one hit my pocket fair. And there'swhat's-his-name, wounded, though he got in. Flynn must have been hurtbad, or he'd made it!"
One of the Regulars limped away to his couch, a bullet had cut his sideand broken a rib, but this was a minor matter. The other man who hadbeen out on the slope had lost his hat; a shot had struck his gun also.A barrage fire is truly a curtain of missiles, a shower of bulletsthat, like rain, reaches in time every spot in the area against which itis directed.
"You musn't go out, Corporal! My orders, please! You couldn't live toreach Flynn now, and he may be dead or out of harm's way in someshelter."
"But, Lieutenant, think of it! He may be suffering, dying out there,unable to help himself, bleeding to death! If I could only try toreach----"
"No! A thousand times no! You are too useful here; have done too much ofvalue already to run a risk of that kind. Just wait a bit until ourfellows down there in their trench start a fusillade. I wish Letty couldget at his gun and perhaps he can."
And Letty did. The telescopic-looking weapon stood on a revolving ironbase at such a height as to be within zone of the enemy's fire when thegun was being used; and though it took but an instant to elevate, aimand shoot with accuracy under ordinary conditions, it now was likely tobe pelted thoroughly by the barrage. So Corporal Letty called on his mento sand-bag the gun clearance space, standing by to pull bags away wherehe would indicate it; this gave him a chance, after he had timed hisfuse, to slip in a shell, elevate and let her go straight at the line ofbarrage guns.
"There goes Susan Nipper at last!" exclaimed Smith, who was a reader ofDickens and had named the big gun after a noted character in "Dombey andSon," which name stuck.
"Yes, and a few of them placed like Letty knows how to place 'em willfix their feet good and proper. Hit 'em again, old girl!"
And the old girl did. She was a termagant, altogether too violent oftongue and slap to suit those "laying down the barrage," as they termit, and after a lot of the German machine and rapid-fire gunners, whohad believed they were so strafing the Americans as to have rendered thebig gun useless, had felt the effects of her bursting shells even fiftyfeet away, they lay down on their jobs.
But this was only a little sooner than they expected to do it, anyway.As soon as the firing ceased, out of their trench and up the slope camethe Boches, more than two hundred of them to oppose less than quartertheir number in the pit. But the pit boys were on the job.
It took the clumsy, heavily-booted Huns quite a while to get up theslope and Susan Nipper paid them some compliments as they came, but whenordered to do a certain thing by their superior officers they tried hardto do it, or they died trying.
Yes, they died trying, and the Americans, experienced now in thefighting game, saw to it that this program was carried out.
Two things the Boches had for an objective: the recapture of theirgeneral, made a prisoner the night before, and the destruction of theterrible gun of American manufacture.
Lieutenant Jackson lifted the little 'phone in his quarters and spokequite calmly into it.
"Jackson talking. North side gun pit. The Germans are coming; from thesound and what lights we have been able to use I think there are a greatmany of them. You heard the barrage, of course. They're hot foot afterthese prisoners of ours. Better come a-runnin' some of you and if Imight be permitted to suggest it, have a company or two make a de
tourover the hill and below the pit; this might cut off the Huns when theygo back and get a good many of them. What's that? Oh, yes. We can holdthem awhile. Eh? Sure! Good-by."
Rapid orders quickly followed, the Regulars, however, knowing welltheir places and having already had experience in repulsing two smallraids, much to the enemy's discomfort. But Herbert's squad was a littlegreen in the matter.
"Get your men out there on their bellies, on the hillside, so you canpick off all the Huns you can get a line on! Letty, got your Coltspitters placed? Good! Now, boys, line up at the trench and use yourguns first, but hold your bayonets till the very last; they'll outnumberus, as you know. Make use of your revolvers; that's the game! Every manof you ought to be good for about four Germans at close range, countingthe misses. A revolver will reach farther than a hand grenade or liquidfire. Give it to them a little before you see the whites of their eyesand make every shot tell! Go to it!"
They went to it, with a muffled cheer that the Germans must have thoughtwas an expression over a game or a joke, perhaps; anyway, it seemedapparent that, until two powerful searchlights were thrown upon theadvancing enemy, they had believed they were taking the Americansentirely by surprise.
But when the beams of light suddenly glared upon them, to be followedinstantly by the staccato of the three machine-guns and the crack ofrifles, the first phalanx of Teutons became demoralized for a moment,with more than half their number struck down.
The second rank also had suffered, but their purpose now was a big oneand with that dogged determination for which the German soldiers undertraining and supported by each other in close touch are noted, ratherthan a dashing bravery that sweeps all before it, they rallied andreturned to the charge.
On they came again, in open formation, and at a run, the darknessenveloping them, except when the flashes of gun fire illuminated dimlythe surroundings. For they had instantly shot out the searchlights andtheir objective was now the black hillside in the center of which theyknew the gun pit and dugout lay. And they meant to penetrate that spotand wipe it out past further injury to them.
Is it not best, even when the most graphic recital seems necessary inthe portrayal of a battle scene, to draw the mantle of delicacy overthose details of horror that follow a close conflict between forces longtrained and superbly fitted to kill?
It suffices to say that the Americans found their Southern leader,experienced in the choice of weapons with which man can do most injuryto his fellowman when he so desires, was right concerning the revolveras a most effective means of defense and offense.
Even in the dark the pet American weapon worked wonders. An arm drawnback to hurl a grenade or bomb was pretty sure to drop limp, with itsowner down and out, and a flashing bayonet in the hands of a chaptumbled over by the same means was hardly a weapon to be feared, evenagainst vastly inferior numbers.
After the machine-guns and rifles had performed their work the readyrevolvers, each hand holding one trained in its use to practicalperfection, did a work that was more murderous than anything the Hunshad so far witnessed.
It is not pleasant to think even of enemies going down in such numbers.The death of one man, forced into a death grapple by the red-tonguedfuries of war, is enough to draw pity from all who are humane, but whendozens, scores, in the space of a few minutes are made to suffer and diefor a cause not rightly known to them, and others also, because of theinhumanity of a power-mad despot, it is beyond the full telling.
If the raiders were slaughtered and turned back from their purpose, theydid not make their effort entirely in vain, as was proved shortly afterthe Americans had seen the last of the dusky backs of the remaining Hunsdisappearing down the slope and the defenders of the pit had turned totake account of the results.
When they counted their own dead and wounded, could they be greatlyblamed for being overjoyed upon hearing, half way to the Germantrenches, several more shots fired and a clear American voice call out:"Surrender, all of you!"
The lieutenant's suggestion had been adopted and all that were left ofthe raiding companies, fully a hundred men, were cut off in theirretreat and so swiftly disarmed and thrust back over the hill that norally to their relief from the farther trenches could be made.
But however ill the wind that had blown those raiding Huns to the attackof the gun pit, leaving death and suffering in their wake and many moreof their own to care for, it was indeed ill if it blew no good.
Part way down the slope a German helmet, knocked from the head of asoldier boy by a fateful bullet, rolled into a certain shell pit and layby a prostrate form.
In the retreat, with the glare of a renewed searchlight upon them, thevengeful Huns would have thrust a bayonet into every one of theirenemies that might possibly have been alive, but the helmet deceivedthem; this must be one of their own who had fallen in the first fire.And so they went on.
After the supporting force and their prisoners had gone to the rear,there crept into the renewed blackness of the night figures thatsearched everywhere for the unfortunate.
"Here's a Boche, Corporal, that looks as if he was asleep, not dead. Ayoung fellow, from the get-up of him, but can't quite see his face.Red-headed--and, hello, look here!"
Herbert, with his one free hand, the other having had a Boche bullet cutacross the thumb, flashed the electric torch on the occupant of theshell pit. Then, with an order, he was down on hands and knees and withknowing fingers feeling for possible heart beats.
"Bring a stretcher, quick, two of you! It's Flynn! Dear old Roy! Ibelieve he's alive! Yes, yes; he's still alive! Come on, you fellows,quick!"