White Lies Part 68

They wrung one another's hands, and turned away and hid their faces from each other, for their eyes were moist.

"This won't do, comrade, I must go. I shall attack from your position.

So I shall go down the line, and bring the men up. Meantime, pick me your detachment. Give me a good spice of veterans. I shall get one word with you before we go out. G.o.d bless you!"

"G.o.d bless you, Raynal!"

The moment Raynal was gone, Camille beckoned a lieutenant to him, and ordered half the brigade to form in a strong column on both sides Death's Alley.

His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. "Come here," said he. Dard came and saluted.

"Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be sorry if you were killed?"

"Yes, colonel! Jacintha, that used to make your broth, colonel."

"Take this line to Colonel Raynal. You will find him with the 12th brigade."

He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard went off with them, little dreaming that the colonel of his brigade was taking the trouble to save his life, because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel Dujardin then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and took the good book the priest had given him, and prayed humbly, and forgave all the world.

Then he sat down, his head in his hands, and thought of his child, and how hard it was he must die and never see him. Then he lighted a candle, and sealed up his orders of valor, and wrote a line, begging that they might be sent to his sister. He also sealed up his purse, and left a memorandum that the contents should be given to disabled soldiers of his brigade upon their being invalided.

Then he took out Josephine's letter. "Poor coward," he said, "let me not be unkind. See, I burn your letter, lest it should be found, and disturb the peace you prize so highly. I, too, shall soon be at peace." He lighted the letter, and dropped it on the ground: it burned slowly away.

He eyed it, despairingly. "Ay," said he, "you perish, last record of an unhappy love: and even so pa.s.s away my life; my hopes of glory, and my dreams of love; it all ends to-day: at nine and twenty."

He put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Josephine had given it him.

He cried a little.

When he had done crying, he put his white handkerchief in his bosom, and the whole man was transformed beyond language to express. Powder does not change more when it catches fire. He rose that moment and went like a flash of lightning out of the tent. The next, he came down between the lines of the strong column that stood awaiting orders in Death's Alley.

"Attention!" cried the sergeants; "the colonel!"

There was a dead silence, for the bare sight of that erect and inspired figure made the men's bosoms thrill with the certainty of great deeds to come: the light of battle was in his eye. No longer the moody colonel, but a thunderbolt of war, red-hot, and waiting to be launched.

"Officers, sergeants, soldiers, a word with you!"

La Croix. Attention!

"Do you know what pa.s.sed here five minutes ago?"

"The attack of the bastion was settled!" cried a captain.

"It was; and who was to lead the a.s.sault? do you know that?"

"No."

"A colonel FROM EGYPT."

At that there was a groan from the men.

"With detachments from the other brigades."

"AH!" an angry roar.

Colonel Dujardin walked quickly down between the two lines, looking with his fiery eye into the men's eyes on his right. Then he came back on the other side, and, as he went, he lighted those men's eyes with his own.

It was a torch pa.s.sing along a line of ready gas-lights.

"The work to us!" he cried in a voice like a clarion (it fired the hearts as his eye had fired the eyes)--"The triumph to strangers! Our fatigues and our losses have not gained the brigade the honor of going out at those fellows that have killed so many of our comrades."

A fierce groan broke from the men.

"What! shall the colors of another brigade and not ours fly from that bastion this afternoon?"

"No! no!" in a roar like thunder.

"Ah! you are of my mind. Attention! the attack is fixed for five o'clock. Suppose you and I were to carry the bastion ten minutes before the colonel from Egypt can bring his men upon the ground."

At this there was a fierce burst of joy and laughter; the strange laughter of veterans and born invincibles. Then a yell of exulting a.s.sent, accompanied by the thunder of impatient drums, and the rattle of fixing bayonets.

The colonel told off a party to the battery.

"Level the guns at the top tier. Fire at my signal, and keep firing over our heads, till you see our colors on the place."

He then darted to the head of the column, which instantly formed behind him in the centre of Death's Alley.

"The colors! No hand but mine shall hold them to-day."

They were instantly brought him: his left hand shook them free in the afternoon sun.

A deep murmur of joy rolled out from the old hands at the now unwonted sight. Out flashed the colonel's sword like steel lightning. He pointed to the battery.

Bang! bang! bang! bang! went his cannon, and the smoke rolled over the trenches. At the same moment up went the colors waving, and the colonel's clarion voice pealed high above all:--

"Twenty-fourth brigade--FORWARD!"

They went so swiftly out of the trenches that they were not seen through their own smoke until they had run some sixty yards. As soon as they were seen, coming on like devils through their own smoke, two thousand muskets were levelled at them from the Prussian line. It was not a rattle of small arms--it was a crash, and the men fell fast: but in a moment they were seen to spread out like a fan, and to offer less mark, and when the fan closed again, it half encircled the bastion. It was a French attack: part swarmed at it in front like bees, part swept round the glacis and flanked it. They were seen to fall in numbers, shot down from the embrasures. But the living took the place of the dead: and the fight ranged evenly there. Where are the colors? Towards the rear there. The colonel and a hundred men are fighting hand to hand with the Prussians, who have charged out at the back doors of the bastion.

Success there, and the bastion must fall--both sides know this.

The colors disappeared. There was a groan from the French lines. The colors reappeared, and close under the bastion.

And now in front the attack was so hot, that often the Prussian gunners were seen to jump down, driven from their posts; and the next moment a fierce hurrah from the rear told that the French had won some great advantage there. The fire slackening told a similar tale and presently down came the Prussian flag-staff. That might be an accident. A few moments of thirsting expectation, and up went the colors of the 24th brigade upon the Bastion St. Andre.

The French army raised a shout that rent the sky, and their cannon began to play on the Prussian lines and between the bastion and the nearest fort, to prevent a recapture.

Sudden there shot from the bastion a cubic acre of fire: it carried up a heavy mountain of red and black smoke that looked solid as marble. There was a heavy, sullen, tremendous explosion that snuffed out the sound of the cannon, and paralyzed the French and Prussian gunners' hands, and checked the very beating of their hearts. Thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder were in that awful explosion. War itself held its breath, and both armies, like peaceable spectators, gazed wonder-struck, terror-struck. Great h.e.l.l seemed to burst through the earth's crust, and to be rushing at heaven. Huge stones, cannons, corpses, and limbs of soldiers, were seen driven or falling through the smoke. Some of these last came quite clear of the ruins, ay, into the French and Prussian lines, that even the veterans put their hands to their eyes. Raynal felt something patter on him from the sky--it was blood--a comrade's perhaps.

The smoke cleared. Where, a moment before, the great bastion stood and fought, was a monstrous pile of blackened, b.l.o.o.d.y stones and timbers, with dismounted cannon sticking up here and there.

And, rent and crushed to atoms beneath the smoking ma.s.s, lay the relics of the gallant brigade, and their victorious colors.