The Guns of Europe Part 19

"I've no doubt it's so," said John with abundant sympathy.

"The fire seems to be dying. Probably the night is too dark for the combat to go on. What do you think we ought to do, John?"

"You're the airman, Phil. I'm only a raw beginner."

"But a beginner who has learned fast. I think the sound of that battle in France has weakened my nerve for the moment, and I want your advice.

I ask for it again."

"Then suppose we stay where we are. This isn't a bad little forest, as forests go in Europe, and in the night, at least, it's pretty dark. The enemy is all around us, and in the air over our heads. Suppose we sleep here beside the Arrow."

"That's a good sound Yankee head of yours, John. Just as you think, it would be dangerous for us to run either on land or in the air, and so we'll stay here and take the chances. I secured two blankets at the village, and each will have one. You go to sleep, John, and I'll take the first watch."

"No, I'll take the first. You need rest more than I do. You've been sailing the Arrow, and, besides, your nerves have been tried harder by the echo of that battle. Just for a little while I mean to boss. 'Boss,'

I'll explain to you, means in our American idiom a commander, a Napoleon. Now, stop talking, wrap yourself in your blanket and go to sleep."

"I obey. But keep your automatic handy."

He fell asleep almost instantly, and John, lying near with his own blanket about him, kept watch over him and the Arrow. He did not feel sleepy at all. His nerves had been keyed to too high a pitch for rest to come yet. His situation and the scenes through which he had pa.s.sed were so extraordinary that certain faculties seemed to have become blunted.

Although surrounded by many dangers all sensation of fear was gone.

The blanket was sufficient protection even against the cool European night, and he had found a soft and comfortable place on the turf. The wood was silent, save for the rustle of a stray breeze among the leaves.

Far in the night he heard twice the faint boom of the giant cannon deep down on the western horizon. For all he knew the sounds may have come from a point twenty miles away.

He walked a little distance from the Arrow, and listened intently. But after the two shots the west was silent. The earth settled back into gloom and darkness. He returned to the _Arrow_ and found that Lannes was still sleeping heavily, his face pale from exertion and from the painful emotions that he had felt.

John was sorry for him, sorry from the bottom of his heart. Love of country was almost universal, and it must be almost death to a man, whose native land, having been trodden deep once, was about to be trodden again by the same foe.

He went once more to the little stream and took another drink. He sat by its banks a few minutes, and listened to its faint trickle, a pleasant soothing sound, like the almost unheard sigh of the wind. Then he returned to his usual place near the Arrow.

Dead stillness reigned in the grove. There was no wind and the leaves ceased to rustle. Not another note came from the battle of the nations beyond the western horizon. The _Arrow_ and its master both lay at peace on the turf. The stillness, the heavy quiet oppressed John. He had been in the woods at night many times at home, but there one heard the croaking of frogs at the water's edge, the buzzing of insects, and now and then the cry of night birds, but here in this degenerate forest nothing stirred, and the air was absolutely pulseless.

Time began to lengthen. He looked at his watch, but it was not yet midnight, and Lannes was still motionless and sleeping. He had resolved, as most of the strain had fallen upon his comrade, to let him sleep far beyond his allotted half, and he walked about again, but soundlessly, in order to keep his faculties awake and keen.

The night had been dark. Many clouds were floating between him and the moon. He looked up at them, and it seemed incredible now that beyond them human beings could float above the thunder and lightning, and look up at the peaceful moon and stars. Yet he had been there, not in any wild dash of a few minutes, but in a great flight which swept over nights and days.

His early thoughts were true. A long era had ended, and now one, charged with wonders and marvels, had begun. This mighty war was the signal of the change, and it would not be confined to the physical world. The mind and soul would undergo like changes. People would never look at things in the same way. There had been such mental revolutions in the long past, and it was not against nature for another to come now.

John was thoughtful, perhaps beyond his years, but he had been subjected to tremendous emotions. The unparalleled convulsion of the old world was enough to make even the foolish think. Event and surmise pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed through his mind, while he walked up and down in the wood.

Hours crept slowly by, the clouds drifted away, and the moon came out in a gush of silver. The stars, great and small, danced in a sky that was always blue, beyond the veil.

He came back for the third time to the brook. He was thirsty that night, but before he knelt down to drink he paused and every muscle suddenly became rigid. He was like one of those early borderers in his own land who had heard a sinister sound in the thicket. It was little, a slight ring of steel, but every nerve in John was alive on the instant.

Still obeying the instincts of ancestors, he knelt down among the trees.

His vivid fancy might be at work once more! And then it might not! The ringing of steel on steel came again, then a second time and nearer. He slid noiselessly forward, and lay with his ear to the earth. Now he heard other sounds, and among them one clear note, the steady tread of hoofs.

Cavalry were approaching the grove, but which? German or French? John knew that he ought to go and awake Lannes at once, but old inherited instincts, suddenly leaping into power, held him. By some marvelous mental process he reverted to a period generations ago. His curiosity was great, and his confidence in his powers absolute.

He dragged himself twenty or thirty yards along the edge of the brook toward the tread of hoofs, and soon he heard them with great distinctness. Mingled with the sound was the jingling of bits and the occasional impact of a steel lance-head upon another. John believed now that they were Germans and he began to creep away from the brook, toward which the troop was coming directly. It was not possible to estimate well from sound, but he thought they numbered at least five hundred.

He was back thirty yards from the brook, lying flat in the gra.s.s, when the heads of horses and men emerged from the shadows. The helmets showed him at once that they were the Uhlans, and without the helmets the face of the leader alone was sufficient to tell him that the Prussian hors.e.m.e.n had ridden into the wood.

The one who rode first with his helmet thrown back a little was Rudolf von Boehlen, the man with whom John had talked at Dresden, and who had made such an impression upon him. He had known the scholarly Prussian, the industrial Prussian, and the simple good-natured Prussian of the soil, but here was the Prussian to whom the first G.o.d was Mars, with the Kaiser as his prophet. It was he, and such as he, who ruled the industrious and kindly German people, teaching them that might was right, and that they always possessed both.

John saw through the eyes of both fact and fancy. Von Boehlen was a figure of power. Mind and body were now at the work for which they had been trained, and to which the nature of their owner turned them.

Despite his size and weight he sat his horse with lightness and grace, and his cold blue eyes searched the forest for victims rather than foes.

John saw in him the product of ceaseless and ruthless training, helped by nature.

But von Boehlen, keen as his eyes were, did not see the figure of the watcher p.r.o.ne in the gra.s.s. He let his horse drink at the brook, and others rode up by his side, until there was a long line of horses with their heads bent down to the stream. It occurred to John then that their only purpose in entering the wood was to water their animals. He saw von Boehlen take a map from his pocket, and study it while the horse drank.

He was not surprised at the act. He had no doubt that the brook, tiny though it might be, was marked on the map. He had heard that the Germans foresaw everything, attended to the last detail, and now he was seeing a proof of it. How was it possible to beat them!

He did not consider the danger great, as he listened to the long lapping and gurgling sound, made by so many horses drinking. It was likely that the whole troop would ride away in a few minutes, and only a possible chance would take them in the direction where the _Arrow_ and Lannes lay. But the trees grew thickly in the circle about them, and that chance was infinitely small.

The Uhlans, under the lead of von Boehlen, turned presently, and rode back through the edge of the wood into a field, but they went no farther. John, following a safe distance, saw them unsaddle on the gra.s.s and make their camp. Then he hurried back to Lannes and awoke him gently.

"What! what is it?" exclaimed Lannes. "The Germans in Paris! The capital fallen, you say!"

"No! No! Not so loud! Come out of your dreams! Paris is all right, but there are Uhlans just beyond the edge of the wood, and some scouts of theirs may come tramping here."

Lannes was thoroughly awake in another instant.

"You did not wake me when my time came, John," he said.

"I didn't because you needed the rest more than I did."

"Where did you say the Uhlans were?"

"In a field at the eastern edge of the wood. They are Prussians led by an officer, von Boehlen, whom I saw at Dresden before the war began.

They rode into the wood to water their horses, but now they've gone back to make a camp."

"You've certainly watched well, John, and now I suppose we must run again. They follow us in the air and they follow us on the ground. This is a bad trap, John. Suppose you go to von Boehlen, tell him who you are, how you were kidnapped in a way, and throw yourself on his mercy.

You'll be safe. The Germans want the friendship of the Americans."

"And desert you at such a time? Philip Lannes, you're not worthy to bear the name of the great Marshal!"

Lannes laughed in an embarra.s.sed manner.

"It was merely an offer," he said. "I didn't expect you to accept it."

"You knew I wouldn't. Come, think quick, and tell us what we're going to do!"

"You fit fast into your new role of what you call boss, Monsieur Jean the Scott!"

"And I mean to be boss for the next five minutes. Then you will have decided how we're going to escape and you'll resume your place."

"As I said we won't abandon the Arrow, so our pa.s.sage will be through the air. John, I mean that we shall run the gantlet. We'll pa.s.s their air fleet and reach our own."

He spoke in low tones, but they contained the ring of daring. John responded. With the ending of the era, the changing of the world, he had changed, too. Shy and sensitive the spirit of adventure flamed up in him. Those flights in the air had touched him with the magic of achievements, impossible, but which yet had been done.