The Revellers Part 58

"Is this sort of thing going on all over the country?" he gasped.

"More or less. Naturally, the east coast has been the chief hunting ground, as that must provide the terrain of any attack. Of course, so long as the political sky remains fairly clear, as it is at this moment, there is always a chance that humanity will escape Armageddon for another generation. The world is growing more rational and its interests are becoming ever more identical. Even the Junkers are feeling the pressure of public opinion, and the great ma.s.ses of the people demand peace. That is why I want Martin to learn the power of voice and pen rather than of the sword. I have been a soldier all my life, and I hate war!"

The man who had so often faced death in his country's cause spoke with real feeling. He longed to make war impossible by making victory impossible for an aggressor. He claimed no rights for Britain that he would deny Germany or any other country in the comity of nations.

Suddenly he took the map off the table and folded it.

"I'll send this curio to Whitehall," he said with a smile. "It will form part of a queer collection. Now, let's talk of something else....

Martin, after the valuer has inspected that furniture, you might see to it that the whole lot is stored in the east bedrooms. The architect will not disturb that part of the house."

"Oh, when can we look at the plans?" chimed in Elsie.

These four people, who in their way fairly represented the forty millions of Great Britain, discussed the spy's map in the drawing-room of Elmsdale vicarage on July 6th, 1914. On the sixth of August, exactly one month later, two German army corps, with full artillery and commissariat trains, were loaded into transports and brought to the mouth of the Elbe. They hoped to avoid the British fleet, and their objective was the Yorkshire coast between Whitby and Filey. Once ash.o.r.e, they meant entrenching a camp on the Elmsdale moor. Obviously, they did not dream of conquering England by one daring foray. Their purpose was to keep the small army of Britain fully occupied until France was humbled to the dust. They would lose the whole hundred thousand men. But what of that? German soldiers are regarded as cannon fodder by their rulers, and the price in human lives would not be too costly if it retained British troops at home.

It was an audacious scheme, and audacity is the first principle of successful war. Its very spine and marrow was the knowledge of the North and East Ridings gained in time of peace by the officers who would lead the invading host. That it failed was due to England's sailors, the men who broke Napoleon, and were destined, by G.o.d's good grace, to break the robber empire of Germany.

CHAPTER XX

THE RIGOR OF THE GAME

Elmsdale at war is very like Elmsdale in peace. At least, that was Martin's first impression when he and General Grant motored to the village from York on a day in September, 1915. Father and son had pa.s.sed unscathed through the h.e.l.lfire of Loos, General Grant in command of a brigade, and Martin a captain in a Kitchener battalion. They were in England on leave now, the middle-aged general for five days, and the youthful captain for ten, and the purpose of this joint home-coming was Martin's marriage.

When it became evident that the world struggle would last years rather than months, General Grant and the vicar put their heads together, metaphorically speaking, since the connecting link was the field post-office, and arranged a war wedding. Why should the young people wait? they argued. Every consideration pointed the other way. With Martin wedded to Elsie, legal formalities as to Bolland's and the general's estate could be completed, and if Heaven blessed the union with children the continuity of two old families would be a.s.sured.

So, to Martin's intense surprise, he was called to the telephone one Sat.u.r.day morning in the trenches and told that he had better hand over his company to the senior subaltern as speedily as might be, since his ten days' leave began on the Monday, such being the amiable device by which commanding officers permit juniors to reach Blighty before an all-too-brief respite from the business of killing Germans begins officially.

He met his father at Boulogne, and there learnt that which he had only suspected hitherto: he and Elsie were booked for an immediate honeymoon on a Scottish moor--at Cairn-corrie, to be exact. By chance the two travelers ran into Frank Beckett-Smythe, a gunner lieutenant in London, and he undertook to rush north that night to act as "best man." Father and son caught a train early on Sunday and hired a car at York, Elmsdale having no railway facilities on the day of rest.

They arrived in time to attend the evening service at the parish church, to which, _mirabile dictu_, John and Martha Bolland accompanied them.

The war has broken down many barriers, but few things have crumbled to ruin more speedily than the walls of prejudice and sectarian futilities which separated the many phases of religious thought in Britain.

The church, with its small graveyard, stood in the center of the village, and the Grants had to wring scores of friendly hands before they and the others walked to the vicarage for supper. Martin and Elsie contrived to extricate themselves from the crowd slightly in advance of the older people. They felt absurdly shy. They were wandering in dreamland.

Early next morning Martin strolled into the village. He wanted to stir the sluggish current of enlistment, for England was then making a final effort to maintain her army on a voluntary basis. Elmsdale was so unchanged outwardly that he marveled. He hardly realized that it could not well be otherwise. He had seen so many French hamlets torn by war that the snug content of this sheltered nook in rural Yorkshire was almost uncanny by contrast. The very familiarity of the scene formed its strangest element. Its sights, its sounds, its homely voices, were novel to the senses of one whose normal surroundings were the abominations of war. Here were trim houses and well-filled stockyards, smiling orchards and cattle grazing in green pastures. Everywhere was peace. He was the only man in uniform, until Sergeant Benson appeared in the doorway of a cottage and saluted. The village had its own liveries--the corduroys of the carpenter, redolent of oil and turpentine, the tied-up trouser legs of the laborer, the blacksmith's leather ap.r.o.n, ragged and burnt, a true Vulcan's robe, the shoemaker's, shiny with the stropping of knives and seamed with cobbler's wax. The panoply of Mars looked singularly out of place in this Sleepy Hollow.

But, by degrees, he began to miss things. There were no young men in the fields. All the horses had gone, save the yearlings and those too old for the hard work of artillery and transport. He questioned Benson and found that little Elmsdale had not escaped the levy laid on the rest of Europe. Jim Bates was in the Yorkshire Regiment. Tommy Beadlam's white head was resting forever in a destroyed trench at Ypres. Tom Chandler had fallen at Gallipoli. Evelyn Atkinson was a nurse, and her two sisters were "in munitions" at Leeds. Yes, there were some shirkers, but not many. For the most part, they were hidden in the moorland farms. "T'

captain" would remember Georgie Jackson? Well, he was one of the stand-backs--wouldn't go till he was fetched. The village girls made his life a misery, so he "hired" at the Broad Ings, miles away in the depths of the moor. One night about a month ago one of those "d--d Zeppelines" dropped a bomb on the heather, which caught fire. A second, following a murder trail to Newcastle, saw the resultant blaze and dropped twelve bombs. A third, believing that real damage was being done, flung out its whole cargo of twenty-nine bombs.

"So, now, sir," grinned Benson, "there's a fine lot o' pot-holes i' t'

moor. Georgie was badly scairt. He saw the three Zepps, an' t' bombs fell all over t' farm. Next mornin' he f'und three sheep banged te bits.

An' what d'ye think? He went straight te Whitby an' 'listed. He hez a bunch o' singed wool in his pocket, an' sweers he'll mak' some Jarman eat it."

So Martin only recruited a wife that day, and evidently secured a sensible one, for Elsie, taking thought, on hearing certain vivid descriptions of trench life on the Sunday evening, vetoed the wedding trip to Scotland, and persuaded her husband to "go the limit" in London, where plenty of society and a round of theaters acted as a wholesome tonic after the monotony of high-explosive existence in a dugout.

In February, 1917, Martin was "in billets" at Armentires. He had been promoted to the staff, and had fairly earned this coveted recognition by a series of daring excursions into "No Man's Land" every night for a week, which enabled him to plan an attack on the German lines at Chapelle d'Armentires. Never thinking of any personal gain, he drew up a memorandum, which he submitted to his colonel. The latter sent the doc.u.ment to Divisional Headquarters; the scheme was approved. Fritz was pushed forcibly half a mile nearer Lille, and "Captain Reginald Ingram Grant" was informed, in the dry language of the _Gazette_, that in future he would wear a red band around his field service cap and little red tabs on the shoulders of his tunic.

That was a great day for him, but his elation was as nothing compared with the joy of Elmsdale when the _Messenger_ reprinted the announcement. Elsie, of course, imagined that her husband was now comparatively safe for the rest of the war, and he has never undeceived her. As a matter of fact, his first real "job" was to carry out a fresh series of observations at a point south of Armentires along the road to Arras. This might involve another six days of lurking in dugouts at the front and six nights of crawling through and under German barbed wire.

His companion was a sapper sergeant named Mason. They suspected that the German position was heavily mined in antic.i.p.ation of an attack at that very point, and it was part of their business at the outset to ascertain whether or not this was the case.

The enemy's lines were about one hundred and fifty yards away, and all observers agree that the chief difficulty experienced in the pitch-black darkness of a cloudy, moonless night is to estimate the distance covered. Crawling over sh.e.l.l-torn ground, slow work at the best, is rendered slower by the frequent waits necessary while rockets flare overhead and Verrey lights describe brilliant parabolas in unexpected directions. Martin, up to every trick and dodge of the "listening post," surveyed the field of operations through a periscope, and noticed that one of the ditches which mark boundaries in northern France ran almost in a straight line from the British trenches to the German, and had at one time been reinforced by posts and rails. The fence was destroyed, but many of the posts remained, some intact, others mere jagged stumps. He estimated that the nineteenth was not more than a couple of yards from the enemy's wire, and knew of old that it was in just such an irregular hollow he might expect to find a weak place in the entanglement.

Mason agreed with him.

"We can save a lot of time by following that trail, sir," he said.

"There's only one drawback----"

"That Fritz may have hit on the same scheme," laughed Martin. "Possible; but we must chance it."

Mason and he were old a.s.sociates. They had perfected a code of signals, by touch, that enabled them to work in absolute silence. Thus, a slight hold meant "Halt"; a slight push, "Advance"; a slight pull, "Retire."

Each carried a trench knife and a revolver, the latter for use as a last resource only. They were not going out for fighting but for observation.

If enemy patrols were encountered, they must be avoided. Germans are not phlegmatic, but, on the contrary, highly nervous. Continuous raids by British bombing parties had put sentries "on the jump," and the least noise which was not explained by a whispered pa.s.sword attracted a heavy spray of machine-gun fire. Especially was this the case during the hour before dawn. By hurrying out immediately after darkness set in, the two counted on nearing the German front-line trench at a time when reliefs were being posted and fatigue parties were plodding to the "dump" for the next day's rations.

"What time will you be back?" inquired the subaltern in charge of the platoon holding that part of the British trench. It was his duty to warn sentries to be on the lookout for the return of scouting parties.

Martin glanced at the luminous watch on his wrist. It was then seven o'clock, and the night promised to be dark and quiet. The evening "strafe" had just ended, and the German guns would reopen fire on the trenches about five in the morning. During the intervening hours the artillery would indulge in groups of long shots, hoping to catch the commissariat or a regiment marching on the _pav_ in column of fours.

"About twelve," said Martin.

"Well, so long, sir! I'll have some coffee ready."

"So long!" And Martin led the way up a trench ladder.

No man wishes another "Good luck!" in these enterprises. By a curious inversion of meaning, "Good luck!" implies a ninety per cent chance of getting killed!

The two advanced rapidly for the first hundred yards. Then they separated, each crawling out into the open for about twenty yards to right and left. Snuggling into a convenient sh.e.l.l hole, they would listen intently, with an ear to the ground, their object being to detect the rhythmic beat of a pick, if a mining party was busy. Each remained exactly ten minutes. Then they met and compared notes, always by signal.

If necessary, they would visit a suspected locality together and endeavor to locate the line of the tunnel.

It was essential that the British side of "No Man's Land" should not be too quiet. Every few minutes a rocket or a Verrey light would soar over that torn Golgotha. But there was method in the seeming madness. The first and second glare would illuminate an area well removed from Martin's territory. The third might be right over him or Mason, but they were then so well hidden that the sharpest eye could not discern their presence.

By nine o'clock they had covered more than a hundred yards of the enemy's front, skirting his trip-wire throughout the whole distance.

They had heard no fewer than six mining parties. Each had advanced some thirty yards. In effect, if the German trench was to be taken at all, the attack must be made next day, and the artillery preparation should commence at dawn. Instead of returning to the subaltern's dugout at midnight, Martin wanted to reach the telephone not later than ten, and hurry back to headquarters. The staff would have another sleepless night, but a British battalion would not be blown up while its successive "waves" were crossing "No Man's Land."

Mason and he crept like lizards to the sunk fence. All they needed now was a close scrutiny of the German parapet in that section. It was a likely site for a machine-gun emplacement and, in that case, would receive special attention from a battery of 4.7's.

They reached the ditch shortly before a rocket was due overhead. Making a.s.surance doubly sure, they flattened against the outer slope of a sh.e.l.l hole, took off their caps, and each sought a tuft of gra.s.s through which to peer.

Simultaneously, by two short taps, both conveyed a warning. They had heard a slight rustling directly in front. A Verrey light, and not a rocket, flamed through the darkness. Its brilliancy was intense. But the Verrey light has a peculiar property: far more effective than the rocket when it reveals troops in motion, it is rendered practically useless if men remain still. Working parties and scouts counteract its vivid beams by absolute rigidity. The uplifted pick or hammer, the advanced foot, the raised arm, must be kept in statuesque repose, and the reward is complete safety. A rocket, on the other hand, though not half so deadly in exposing an attack, demands that every man within its periphery shall endeavor forthwith to blend with the earth, or he will surely be seen and shot at.

The two Britons, looking through stalks of withered herbage, found themselves gazing into the eyes of a couple of Germans crouching on the level barely six feet away. It seemed literally impossible that the enemy observers should not see them. But strange things happen in war. The Germans were scanning all the visible ground; the Englishmen happened to be on the alert for a recognized danger in that identical spot. So the one party, watching s.p.a.ce, saw nothing; the other, prepared for a specific discovery, made it. What was more, when the light failed, the Germans were a.s.sured of comparative safety, while their opponents had measured the extent of an instant peril and got ready to face it.

They knew, too, that the Germans must be killed or captured. One was a major, the other a noncommissioned officer, and men of such rank were seldom deputed by the enemy to roam at large through the strip of debated land which British endeavor, drawn by its sporting uncertainties, had rendered most unhealthy for human "game" of the Hun species.