The Forest of Swords Part 20

John sat with the other prisoners for more than two hours listening to the thunder of the great battle or rather series of battles which were afterwards cla.s.sified under the general head the Battle of the Marne. He was not a soldier, merely a civilian serving as a soldier, but he had learned already to interpret many of the signs of combat. There was an atmospheric feeling that registered on a sensitive mind the difference between victory and defeat, and he was firm in the belief that as yesterday had gone today was going. Certainly this great German army which he believed to be in the center was not advancing, and something of a character most menacing was happening to the wings of the German force. He read it in the serious, preoccupied faces of the officers who pa.s.sed near. There was not a smile on the face of the youngest of them all, but deepest anxiety was written alike on young and old.

John and Fleury sat together at the edge of the brook, and for a while forgot their chagrin at not being on the battle line. The battle itself which they could not see, but which they could hear, absorbed them so thoroughly that they had no time to think of regrets.

John had thought that man's violence, his energy in destruction on the first day could not be equalled, but it seemed to him now that the second day surpa.s.sed the first. The cannon fire was distant, yet the waves of air beat heavily upon them, and the earth shook without ceasing. Wisps of smoke floated toward them and the air was tainted again with the acrid smell of burned gunpowder.

"You're a mountaineer, Fleury, you told me," said Scott, "and you should be able to judge how sound travels through gorges. I suppose you yodel, of course?"

"Yodel, what's that?"

"To make a long singing cry on a peak which is supposed to reach to somebody on another peak who sends back the same kind of a singing cry.

We have a general impression in America that European mountaineers don't do much but stand in fancy costumes on crests and ridges and yodel to one another."

"It may have been so once," said the young Savoyard, "but this is a bad year for yodeling. The voice of the cannon carries so far that the voice of man doesn't amount to much. But what sound did you want me to interpret?"

"That of the cannon. Does its volume move eastward or westward? I should think it's much like your mountain storms and you know how they travel among the ridges."

"The comparison is just, but I can't yet tell any shifting of the artillery fire. The wind brings the sound toward us, and if there's any great advance or retreat I should be able to detect it. I should say that as far as the second day is concerned nothing decisive has happened yet."

"Do you know this country?"

"A little. My regiment marched through here about three weeks ago and we made two camps not far from this spot. This is the wood of Senouart, and the brook here runs down to the river Marne."

"And we're not far from that river. Then we've pressed back the Germans farther than I thought. It's strange that the German army here does not move."

"It's waiting, and I fancy it doesn't know what to do. I've an idea that our victory yesterday was greater than the French and British have realized, but which the Germans, of course, understand. Why do they leave us here, almost neglected, and why do their officers walk about, looking so doubtful and anxious? I've heard that the Germans were approaching Paris with five armies. It may be that we've cut off at least one of those armies and that it's in mortal danger."

"It may be so. But have you thought, Fleury, of the extraordinary difference between this morning and yesterday morning?"

"I have. In conditions they're worlds apart. Hark! Listen now, Scott, my friend!"

He lay on the gra.s.s and put his ear to the ground, just as John had often done. Listening intently for at least two minutes, he announced with conviction that the cannonade was moving eastward.

"Which means that the Germans are withdrawing again?" said John.

"Undoubtedly," said Fleury, his face glowing.

They listened a quarter of an hour longer, and John himself was then able to tell that the battle line was shifting. The Germans elsewhere must have fallen back several miles, but the army about him did not yet move. He caught a glimpse of the burly general walking back and forth in the forest, his hands clasped behind him, and a frown on his broad, fighting face. He would walk occasionally to a little telephone station, improvised under the trees--John could see the wires stretching away through the forest--and listen long and attentively. But when he put down the receiver the same moody look was invariably on his face, and John was convinced as much by his expression as by the sound of the guns that affairs were not going well with the Germans.

Another long hour pa.s.sed and the sun moved on toward noon, but a German army of perhaps a quarter of a million men lay idle in the forest of Senouart, as John now called the whole region.

Presently the general walked down the line and John lost sight of him.

But Weber reappeared, coming from the other side of the hillock, and John was glad to see him, since Fleury had gone back to attend to a wounded friend.

"There doesn't seem to be as much action here as I expected," said Weber, cheerfully, sitting down on the gra.s.s beside young Scott.

"But they're shaking the world there! and there!" said John, nodding to right and to left.

"So they are. This is a most extraordinary reversal, Mr. Scott, and I can't conceive how it was brought about. Some mysterious mind has made and carried through a plan that was superbly Napoleonic. I'd give much to know how it was done."

John shook his head.

"I know nothing of it," he said.

"But doubtless your friend Lannes does. What a wonderful thing it is to carry through the heavens the dispatches which may move forward a million armed men."

"I don't know anything about Lannes' dispatches."

"Nor do I, but I can make a close guess, just as you can. He's surely hovering over the battle field today, and as I said last night he certainly has some idea where you are, and sooner or later will come for you."

John looked up, but again the heavens were bare and clear. Then he looked down and saw walking near them a heavy, middle-aged, bearded man to whom all the German officers paid great deference. The man's manner was haughty and overbearing, and John understood at once that in the monarchical sense he was a personage.

"Do you know the big fellow there?" he said to Weber. "Have you heard anyone speak of him?"

"I saw him this morning, and one of the guards told us who he is. That is Prince Karl of Auersperg. The house of Auersperg is one of the oldest in Germany, much older than the Emperor's family, the Hohenzollerns. I don't suppose the world contains any royal blood more ancient than that of Prince Karl."

"Evidently he feels that it's so. I'm getting used to princes, but our heavy friend there must be something of a specialist in the princely line. I should judge from his manner that he is not only the oldest man on earth, speaking in terms of blood, but the owner of the earth as well."

"The Auerspergs have an immense pride."

"I can see it, but a lot of pride fell before Paris yesterday, and a lot more is falling among these hills and forests today. There seems to be a lot of difference between princes, the Arnheims and the Auerspergs, for instance."

Then a sudden thought struck John. It had the vaguest sort of basis, but it came home to him with all the power of conviction.

"I wonder if Prince Karl of Auersperg once owned a magnificent armored automobile," he said.

Weber looked puzzled, and then his eyes lightened.

"Ah, I know what you mean!" he exclaimed. "The one in which we took that flight with Carstairs the Englishman and Wharton the American. It belonged to a prince, without doubt, yes. But no, it couldn't have been Prince Karl of Auersperg who owned the machine."

"I'm not so sure. I've an intuition that it is he. Besides, he looks like just the kind of prince from whom I'd like to take his best automobile, also everything else good that he might happen to have. I shall feel much disappointed if this proves not to be our prince."

"You Americans are such democrats."

"I don't go so far as to say a man is necessarily bad because of his high rank, but as I reminded you a little while ago, there are princes and princes. The ancient house of Auersperg as it walks up and down, indicating its conviction of its own superiority to everything else on earth, does not please me."

"The Uhlans are coming back!" exclaimed Weber in tones of excitement.

"And that's von Boehlen at their head! I'd know his figure as far as I could see it! And they've had a brush, too! Look at the empty saddles and the wounded men! As sure as we live they've run into the French cavalry and then they've run out again!"

The Uhlans were returning at a gallop, and the German officers of high rank were crowding forward to meet them. It was obvious to every one that they had received a terrible handling, but John knew that von Boehlen was not a man to come at a panicky gallop. Some powerful motive must send him so fast.

He saw the Prussian captain spring from his horse and rush to a little group composed of the general, the prince and several others of high rank who had drawn closely together at his coming.

Von Boehlen was wounded slightly, but he stood erect as he saluted the commander and talked with him briefly and rapidly. John's busy and imaginative mind was at work at once with surmises, and he settled upon one which he was sure must be the truth. The French advance in the center was coming, and this German army also must soon go into action.

He was confirmed in his belief by a hurried order to the guards to go eastward with the prisoners. As the captives, the wounded and the unwounded, marched off through the forest of Senouart they heard at a distance, but behind them, the opening of a huge artillery fire. It was so tremendous that they could feel the shaking of the earth as they walked, and despite the hurrying of their guards they stopped at the crest of a low ridge to look back.

They gazed across a wide valley toward high green hills, along which they saw rapid and many flashes. John longed now for the gla.s.ses which had been taken from him when he was captured, but he was quite sure that the flashes were made by French guns. From a point perhaps a mile in front of the prisoners masked German batteries were replying. Fleury with his extraordinary power of judging sound was able to locate these guns with some degree of approximation.