With Joffre at Verdun Part 21

"Bah! A bad choice then! Well, one makes mistakes," Max said, a grim smile on his face. "But you," he called, selecting another individual seated on the ground, his back resting against the wall--a man whose pallid face told that he was suffering--"you get up and go about your duty."

As if determined that there should be no error and no backsliding, no hesitation in this case, he applied his boot to the unfortunate individual, and drove him from his position. "Now, you, and you, and you! About your business! Get to your duty!"

Henri and Jules came in for his attentions, for they had crept away from that hideous row of dead, and both gaped at him for a while in open-mouthed amazement, wondering, indeed, whether they were discovered, wondering in a half-bewildered sort of way what they ought to do. For still Henri's ears buzzed, and still his brain reeled; not so much from the explosion--for the wall separating the hall from the corridor outside had sheltered him not a little, but reeling from the effects of his tumble downstairs and the mad melee which had taken place there. As for Jules, the fellow was quite light-headed, for the bomb had sent him backward against the wall with a crash, and he too had taken his share in that desperate fight at the top of the stairway.

He began to giggle, which was a way Jules had, and Max, happening to catch sight of him at the moment, and stung to fury by such mirth on the part of one of his men, by such a sign of insubordination, smote him across the face, little realizing that the one he struck was the same man, that very prisoner, whom he had struck not so long before, and whom he would willingly have executed.

"Come along!" Henri managed to whisper to his chum. "Better to be taken for Germans than to be discovered in our disguises. Let's get hold of rifles and take our post at some loophole. Those were French shouts we heard, and it may be that we shall have an opportunity of joining our people."

"And in any case one needn't fire into our fellows," responded Jules, his face still smarting from the blow that Max had dealt him. "But listen, Henri; if I get a chance I'll kill that fellow. Better still, if I get a chance I'll capture the brute, and carry him back to our lines, where he can be tried for offering violence to prisoners.

Crikey! How wobbly a fellow feels! My feet are too big and too clumsy for anything."

It was a sorry band which obeyed the peremptory order of the bullying German. Men staggered across the littered floor of that hall, steering their way between fallen blocks of masonry and wounded men damaged by the explosion of Henri's making. Pa.s.sing through the exit, they clambered over the bodies of the fallen Germans who lay thickly at the foot of the stairway, and across the bodies, too, of many a gallant Frenchman. Then, directed by the bullying Max, they climbed the stairway or went along the gallery, and presently were manning the embrasures through which the guns of the fortress of Douaumont--when it was indeed a fortress--commanded the surrounding country. Flashes could be seen through those embrasures--flashes close at hand, and others farther distant--while the air was torn and rent by the crash of distant guns, by the detonation of exploding sh.e.l.ls, and by the sharp snap and rattle of musketry. There were yells, too--shouts of terror from the Brandenburgers, now being driven back towards the fortress, and the bellows of excited and triumphant men wresting ground from them.

"Keep an eye round you," Henri told Jules, for the two were posted at one embrasure, and no one else was in the chamber. "What's to prevent a fellow lowering himself from this point and joining our fellows? A rope is what is wanted, but it's a plaguey thing to find in such a place and at such a moment. Hold on here, Jules, while I go skirmishing."

Staggering away from his comrade, Henri reached the head of the stairway and clambered down it, leaning against the side wall with both hands, for his feet were terribly uncertain. Then, reaching the gallery below, he turned along it, and in a little while, was within easy reach of the hall in which he and Jules had been lying, when suddenly the noise outside increased. There was a rush of steps somewhere near at hand, a crashing explosion as a bomb was thrown through an embrasure somewhere beyond him, and then a torrent of figures poured into the place--a torrent of gesticulating, shouting Frenchmen, of gallant Bretons, who had won their way to the western edge of the fortress. Lamps appeared, and flaring torches too were brought in by the soldiers, who at once proceeded to search that part of Douaumont.

In a dream, as it were, shaken by what he had gone through, and overcome somewhat by the sight and sound of friends, Henri had tumbled to the floor again, as he heard an officer give vent to a sharp order.

"Drive the fellows on before you as far as you can," he shouted, "then build up barricades across every corridor and gallery, and hold them off till we can get more men in here and drive them out of the fortress altogether. Bomb them, mes enfants! Blow them out of the place!

Douaumont belongs to France, and not to the Kaiser."

Yes, in a dream, Henri heard the words, and tried to raise his shaken figure, tried his utmost to join them; and in a dream, too, he watched the Bretons as they moved rapidly about and obeyed those orders. It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later, perhaps only a few minutes, but more likely half an hour after their first appearance, that, still in the same hazy sort of way, still somewhat in dreamland, his head whirling and his ears singing, Henri became aware of a strange fact, a fact, however, which hardly struck him as peculiar at that moment, that a man not far from him--one of those corpses stretched in the gallery and illuminated by a torch thrust into a crevice of the masonry not far away--was moving, was lifting his head craftily, was creeping along over other bodies, and was peering round corners and watching the Bretons.

"Strange!" thought Henri. "What on earth can the fellow be doing?

And--Christopher! He's not a Frenchman!"

That indeed was a peculiar thing; and, still in the same dazed sort of way, Henri watched and wondered.

"Not a Frenchman," he was telling himself, "then a German, and I don't know--yes, I do believe I know--the figure. Small, eh? Dressed in field-grey, yet not the usual sort of uniform. Who is he? What is the fellow? Well, I never!"

In ordinary times Henri would have made up his mind in an instant, would have acted promptly, and would have taken in the situation without a moment's hesitation. But now, what with that horrible feeling of nausea which a.s.sailed him, what with his miserable brain, which reeled and buzzed and whirled, making vision almost impossible and hearing almost out of the question, he could not, try as he would, collect his scattered wits. Indeed, he had no energy left with which to make any sort of an effort; he just gaped, smiled, and certainly grimaced at that crawling figure. He knew he was an enemy, knew that the man he watched boded no good to his comrades, and knew also that the fellow represented some subtle form of danger. Yet he could not move, could do no more than gape and grin and grimace, and could not properly realize the meaning of the situation. Then suddenly he started, for another crawling figure came from behind him, and a hand gripped his hand sharply.

"You, Henri! You here! And did not return! Why, you're sick! You're half stunned still!"

It was Jules, who, finding that his chum did not return, had descended to the gallery to find him, and, coming upon him stretched there amongst the dead, noticed, with the help of a flickering torch, that Henri's head hung, that perspiration dropped from his forehead, and that his face was deadly white and pallid. Yet his coming seemed suddenly to rouse Henri; for the latter's drooping eyelids opened widely at once, a frown crossed his forehead, and in a moment he had seized Jules's hand, and, tugging it, indicated that he was to lie down beside him.

"S--s--h!"

"What's up?" demanded Jules hoa.r.s.ely.

"Down!" whispered Henri; for at that moment the figure he had been watching, and which had stretched itself flat like one of the dead, doubtless because a Frenchman was approaching, had now begun to rise stealthily. "Look!" he whispered, pointing, and then watched Jules's face as the latter fixed his eyes upon that figure.

Henri noticed at once--and it was remarkable how his wits were a.s.sembling now that Jules had stimulated them--that Jules's eyes started, that an intent look came into them promptly, while something approaching a scowl gathered on his features.

"That man!" he heard him exclaim, and then watched as his friend flopped down amongst the dead and lay as close as possible. Then together the two watched as that German crept on still farther. A minute later and he had turned where the gallery swept round the corner of the fort abruptly and proceeded in another direction. Following promptly, creeping across the bodies of the fallen, or finding their way between them when they could--for it was not exactly nice to kneel upon the forms of men who, to whatever side they had belonged, had died fighting--Henri and Jules too turned that corner, only to find themselves now in almost complete darkness, with no light to guide them, with not a sound to tell them of the whereabouts of that sinister German, and nothing to indicate his presence.

"Stop! Let's wait and listen."

Henri's hand went out and gripped Jules's sleeve, while the two came to a halt at once, sitting up on their haunches, as it were, and peered into the darkness and listened--peered till Henri's bloodshot eyes positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon his ear-drums.

"Bah!" He felt that old nausea, and felt horribly giddy, and was forced to stretch his hands forward and lean upon them to support his weight, while everything went round and round, and, strangely enough, instead of darkness surrounding him, a thousand flashes appeared before his eyes. Jules coughed. With all his light-heartedness he was an observant and wonderfully sympathetic fellow, particularly where Henri was concerned, and now had double reason for showing him attention.

Putting his arm round Henri's waist, he supported him for a while.

"Pull yourself together, Henri," he said, "for we've got to go on in a little while and trap that beggar. What's he up to? Some dirty game, you may be sure. For he's a German, don't forget, and don't forget, either, what Stuart would have said----"

"Stuart!" gurgled Henri, trying to laugh. "That good fellow! Stuart?"

"A splendid beggar!" agreed Jules. "He'd have said, bluntly enough, that every German was a dirty beggar, wouldn't he?"

Henri chortled. Somehow or other Jules had a wonderful way of stirring up his old friend, of "bucking him up", to use a slang expression; and now, just the mention of the gallant Stuart, that very breezy, hefty Englishman, fixed Henri's wandering thoughts for a moment on a far more pleasant subject, and seemed to help to steady his reeling brain, and first set him giggling and then laughing merrily.

"You'll think I'm an old woman," he told Jules at last, shaking himself like a dog.

"Indeed! Like an old woman? Well, now, old women don't usually fight terrific combats at the top of a stone stairway, and finally tumble headlong down that same stairway locked in the arms of a German.

Polite old women don't do their utmost to strangle the subjects of the Kaiser; now do they, Henri? And, besides--of course this is only a very small matter--such old women as you have mentioned don't, when they've got a chance to escape the notice of such sinister gentlemen as we have been a.s.sociating with lately--I mean that Max beggar and his Brandenburg fellows, who would shoot a helpless prisoner--such old bodies don't as a rule, mind you, get hold of a bomb and sling it amongst them.

"It was fine--fine!" Jules told his chum, stretching out a hand and gripping Henri's energetically.

"Oh, rot!" Henri contrived to stutter. He was getting quite indignant now. "What utter nonsense you are talking! As if any old woman would fight a German!"

"Just so! That's why I retorted when you asked me if, or rather suggested that, I thought that you were one."

"Look here!" began Henri, quite nettled, and becoming increasingly impatient, whereat Jules grinned. Indeed, it was his turn to be amused, for intuitively in the darkness he had guessed at Henri's condition; and knowing already how shaken he was, how nearly on the verge of unconsciousness, he had racked his brain for some method which might revive him. Stimulants, water, food, things of that sort, were out of the question; words alone could be employed, and somehow the clever Jules had contrived to pick the proper subject. The mention of Stuart, then, had helped to revive his friend; and now mention of Henri's gallantry had made the owner of that name quite indignant.

"Utter rot!" shouted Henri again; "as if slinging a bomb was dangerous; and as if----"

"There's one thing you can't deny," said Jules; "it saved my life, as it was designed to do, and I've not forgotten. But how d'you feel?

Better, eh? Don't forget that we've lost sight of that German."

As if Henri had ever forgotten it since he had seen the lithe, cunning figure of the Brandenburger creeping in front of him. True, in that curious state in which he had been--a state bordering on unconsciousness--he had hardly been able to appreciate at times the significance of the German's presence; but now he had wakened fully to its importance.

"Jingo," he told Jules as they squatted there in the darkness, "we must find the beggar! He's armed, without a doubt; and, worse than all, he's behind our fellows, for they've gone forward into the fort.

What's to prevent him shooting 'em in the back? What's to prevent him carrying on any sort of vileness? We've got to follow at once, and, by hook or by crook, we've got to capture or kill the beggar."

"Whichever you like--either will suit me," Jules responded; "and in any case, if he's caught, it'll come to the same thing. Once we've marched him back behind our lines, and handed him over as a prisoner, he'll be shot, my boy. We can prove that he would have deliberately shot a prisoner; so it seems to me that, if we meet the gentleman, the best thing will be to end the matter promptly. But we've got to find him first, and perhaps he'll have something to say when it comes to a question of shooting."

Max, that sinister Brandenburger officer, was indeed likely enough to have a considerable amount to say in the question of his own disposal.

Knowing the cla.s.s of man he was--his fearlessness, for that seemed to be his one virtue; his frightfulness, for bullying and terrible deeds seemed to be the characteristic of every subject of the Kaiser--it was likely enough that this fellow would do anything to outwit the Frenchmen, and, if he could, would shatter the fort and bring it down upon his own head rather than see the French victorious.

"Stop! Wait a moment! I heard something move! Come on!" said Jules suddenly.

And together, creeping on hands and knees, the two went forward along that gallery in search of the German.

CHAPTER XIX