The Last Shot Part 26

They did not know how the captain at their back received his orders; they only heard the note of the whistle, with a command familiar to a trained instinct on the edge of antic.i.p.ation. It released a spring in their nerve-centres. They responded as the wheels respond when the throttle is opened. Jumping to their feet they broke into a run, bodies bent, heads down, like the peppered silhouette that faced Westerling's desk. What they had done repeatedly in drills and manoeuvres they were now doing in war, mechanically as marionettes.

"Come on! The bullet is not made that can get me! Come on!" cried the giant Eugene Aronson.

He leaped over a white post and then over the plough, which was also in his path. Little Peterkin felt his legs trembling. They seemed to be detached from his will, and the company's and the captain's will, and churning in pantomime or not moving at all. If Hugo Mallin had been called a coward, what of himself? What of the stupid of the company, who would never learn even the manual of arms correctly, as the drill-sergeant often said? A new fear made him glance around. He would not have been surprised to find that he was already in the rear. But instead he found that he was keeping up, which was all that was necessary, as more than one other man a.s.sured his legs. After thirty or forty yards most of the legs, if not Peterkin's, had worked out their shiver and nearly all felt the exhilaration of movement in company. Then came the sound that generations had drilled for without hearing; the sound that summons the imagination of man in the thought of how he will feel and act when he hears it; the sound that is everywhere like the song s.n.a.t.c.hes of bees driven whizzing through the air.

"That's it! We're under fire! We're under fire!" flashed as crooked lightning recognition of the sound through every brain.

There was no sign of any enemy; no telling where the bullets came from.

"Such a lot of them, one must surely get me!" Peterkin thought.

Whish-whish! Th-ipp-whing! The refrain gripped his imagination with an unseen hand. He seemed to be suffocating. He wanted to throw himself down and hold his hands in front of his head. While Pilzer and Aronson were not thinking, only running, Peterkin was thinking with the rapidity of a man falling from a high building. Worse! He did not know how far he had to go. He was certain only that he was bound to strike ground.

"An inch is as good as a mile!" He recollected the captain's teaching.

"Only one of a thousand bullets fired in war ever kills a man"--but he was certain that he had heard a million already. Then one pa.s.sed very close, its swift breath brushing his cheek with a whistle like a s-s-st through the teeth. He dodged so hard that he might have dislocated his neck; he gasped and half stumbled, but realized that he had not been hit. And he must keep right on going, driven by one fear against another, in face of those ghastly whispers which the others, for the most part, in the excitement of a charge, had ceased to hear.

Again he would be sure that his legs, which he was urging so frantically to their duty, were not playing pantomime. He looked around to find that he was still keeping up with Eugene and felt the thrill of the bravery of fellowship at sight of the giant's flushed, confident face revelling in the spirit of a charge. And then, just then, Eugene convulsively threw up his arms, dropped his rifle, and whirled on his heel. As he went down his hand clutched at his left breast and came away red and dripping. After one wild, backward glance, Peterkin plunged ahead.

"Eugene!" Hugo Mallin had stopped and bent over Eugene in the supreme instinct of that terrible second, supporting his comrade's head.

"The bullet is not--made--." Eugene whispered, the ruling pa.s.sion strong to the last. A flicker of the eyelids, a gurgle in the throat, and he was dead.

Fraca.s.se had been right behind them. The sight of a man falling was something for which he was prepared; something inevitably a part of the game. A man down was a man out of the fight, service finished. A man up with a rifle in his hand was a man who ought to be in action.

"Here, you are not going to get out this way!" he said in the irritation of haste, slapping Hugo with his sword. "Go on! That's hospital-corps work."

Hugo had a glimpse of the captain's rigid features and a last one of Eugene's, white and still and yet as if he were about to speak his favorite boast; then he hurried on, his side glance showing other prostrate forms. One form a few yards away half rose to call "Hospital!"

and fell back, struck mortally by a second bullet.

"That's what you get if you forget instructions," said Fraca.s.se with no sense of brutality, only professional exasperation, "Keep down, you wounded men!" he shouted at the top of his voice.

The colonel of the 128th had not looked for immediate resistance. He had told Fraca.s.se's men to occupy the knoll expeditiously. But by the common impulse of military training, no less than in answer to the whistle's call, in face of the withering fire they dropped to earth at the base of the knoll, where Hugo threw himself down at full length in his place in line next to Peterkin.

"Fire pointblank at the crest in front of you! I saw a couple of men standing up there!" called Fraca.s.se. "Fire fast! That's the way to keep down their fire--pointblank, I tell you! You're firing into the sky! I want to see more dust kicked up. Fire fast! We'll have them out of there soon! They're only an outpost."

Hugo was firing vaguely, like a man in a dream, and thinking that maybe up there on the knoll were the two Browns he had met on the road and perhaps their comrades were as fond of them as he was of Eugene. It is a mistake for a soldier to think much, as Westerling had repeatedly said.

Pilzer was shooting to kill. His eye had the steely gleam of his rifle sight and the liver patch on his cheek was a deeper hue as he sought to avenge Eugene's death. Drowned by the racket of their own fire, not even Peterkin was hearing the whish-whish of the bullets from Dellarme's company now. He did not know that the blacksmith's son, who was the fourth man from him, lay with his chin on his rifle stock and a tiny trickle of blood from a hole in his forehead running down the bridge of his nose.

Fraca.s.se, glancing along from rifle to rifle, as a weaver watches the threads of a machine loom, saw that Hugo was firing at too high an angle.

"Mallin!" he called. Hugo did not hear because of the noise, and Fraca.s.se had to creep nearer, which was anything but cooling to his temper. "You fool! You are shooting fifty feet above the top of the knoll! Look along your sight!" he yelled.

Fraca.s.se observed, with some surprise, that Hugo's hand was steady as he carefully drew a bead. Hugo saw a spurt of dust at the point slightly below the crest where he aimed; for he was the best shot in the company at target practice.

"I'm not killing anybody!" he thought happily.

XIX

RECEIVING THE CHARGE

What about Stransky of the Reds, who would not fight to please the ruling cla.s.ses? What about Grandfather Fragini, who would fight on principle whenever a Gray was in sight? Now we leave the story of Fraca.s.se's men at the foot of the knoll for that of the Browns on the crest.

Young Dellarme, new to his captain's rank, with lips pressed tightly together, his delicately moulded, boyish features reflecting the confidence which it was his duty to inspire in his company, watching the plain through his gla.s.ses, saw the movement of mounted officers to the rear of the 128th as a reason for summoning his men.

"Creep up! Don't show yourselves! Creep up--carefully--carefully!" he kept repeating as they crawled forward on their stomachs. "And no one is to fire until the command comes."

Hugging the cover of the ridge of fresh earth which they had thrown up the previous night, they watched the white posts. Stransky, who had been ruminatively silent all the morning, was in his place, but he was not looking at the enemy. Cautiously, to avoid a reprimand, he raised his head to enable him to glance along the line. All the faces seemed drawn and clayish.

"They don't want to fight! They're just here because they're ordered here and haven't the character to defy authority," he thought. "The leaven is working! My time is coming!"

But Grandfather Fragini's cheeks had a hectic flush; his heart was beating with the exhilaration of an old war-horse. Looking over Tom's shoulder, he squinted into the distance, his underlip quivering against his toothless gums.

"My eyesight's kind of uncertain," he said. "Can you see 'em?"

"There by the white posts--those lying figures!" said Tom. "They're almost the color of the stubble."

"So I do, the land-sharks! Down on their bellies, too! No flag, either!

But that ain't no reason why we shouldn't have a flag. It ought to be waving at 'em in defiance right over our heads!"

"Flags draw fire. They let the enemy know where you are,' Tom explained.

"The Hussars didn't bother about that. We let out a yell and went after 'em!" growled grandfather. "Appears to me the fighting these days is grovelling in the dirt and taking care n.o.body don't get hurt!"

"Oh, there'll be enough hurt--don't you worry about that!" said a voice from the line.

"Good thing an old fellow who's been under fire is along to stiffen you rookies!" replied grandfather tartly. "You'll be all right once you get going. You'll settle down to be real soldiers yet. And I'd like to hear a little more cussing. How the Hussars used to cuss! Too much reading and writing nowadays. It makes men too ladylike."

By this time he had once more attracted the captain's attention.

"Grandfather Fragini, you must drop back--you must! If you don't, I'll have you carried back!" called Dellarme, sparing the old man only a glance from his concentrated observation on the front.

When he looked again at the enemy any thought of carrying out his threat vanished, for the minute had come when all his training was to be put to a test. The figures on the other side of the white posts were rising. He was to prove by the way he directed a company of infantry in action whether or not he was worthy of his captain's rank. He breathed one of those unspoken prayers that are made to the G.o.d of one's own efficient, conscientious responsibility to duty. The words of it were: "May I keep my head as if I were at drill!" Then he smiled cheerily. In order that he might watch how each man used his rifle, he drew back of the line, his slim body erect as he rested on one knee, his head level with the other heads while he fingered his whistle. His lieutenants followed his example even to the detail of his cheery smile. There was a slight stirring of heads and arms as eyes drew beads on human targets. The instant that Eugene Aronson sprang over the white post a blast from Dellarme's whistle began the war.

It was a signal, too, for Stransky to play the part he had planned; to make the speech of his life. His six feet of stature shot to its feet with a Jack-in-the-box abruptness, under the impulse of a mighty and reckless pa.s.sion.

"Men, stop firing!" he cried thunderously. "Stop firing on your brothers! Like you, they are only the p.a.w.ns of the ruling cla.s.s, who keep us all p.a.w.ns in order that they may have champagne and caviare.

Comrades, I'll lead you! Comrades, we'll take a white flag and go down to meet our comrades and we'll find that they think as we do! I'll lead you!"

Grandfather Fragini, impelled by the hysterical call of the Hussar spirit, also sprang up, waving his hat and trembling and swaying with the emotion that racked his old body.

"Give it to 'em! Aim low! Give it to 'em--give it to 'em, horns and hoofs, sabre and carbine!" he shouted in a high, jumpy voice. "Give it to 'em! Make 'em weep! Make 'em whine! Make 'em bellow!"

Both appeals were drowned in the cracking of the rifles working as regularly as punching-machines in a factory. Every soldier was seeing only his sight and the running figures under it. Mechanically and automatically, training had been projected into action, antic.i.p.ation into realization. A spectator might as well have called to a man in a hundred-yard dash to stop running, to an oarsman in a race to jump out of his sh.e.l.l.