VI
But most of the time now the spirit of the herd mastered Jimmie; he wanted what all the men about him wanted--to hold back the Beast from these fair French fields and quaint old villages, and these American hospitals and rest-camps and Y.M.C.A. huts--to say nothing of motor-cycle repair-sheds with Jimmie Higgins in them! And the trouble was that the Beast was not being held back; he was coming nearer and nearer--one bull rush after another! Jimmie"s village was near the valley of the Marne, and that was the road to Paris; the Beast wanted to get to Paris, he really expected to get to Paris!
The sound of guns grew louder and louder, and rumour flew wild-eyed and wild-tongued about the country. The traffic in the roads grew denser, but moving more slowly now, for the Germans were sh.e.l.ling the road ahead, and blockades were frequent; one huge missile had fallen into a French artillery-train only a couple of miles away.
"They"ll be moving us back, if this keeps up," said Jimmie"s sergeant; and Jimmie wondered: suppose they didn"t move them!
Suppose they forgot all about it? Was there any person whose particular duty it was to remember to see that motor-cycle units got moved in the precise nick of time? And what if the Germans were to break through and sweep over all calculations? This was a little more than Jimmie Higgins had bargained for when he entered the recruiting-office in Leesville, U.S.A.!
They gave out gas-masks to everyone in Jimmie"s unit, and put an alarm bell in the shed, and made everybody practise putting on the masks in a hurry. Jimmie was so scared that he thought seriously of running away; but--such is the perversity of human nature--what he did was to run in the opposite direction! His officer in command came into the shed and demanded, "Can any of you men ride?" And imagine any fellow who worked at repairing motor-cycles admitting that he couldn"t ride! "I can!" said Jimmie. "I can!" said every other workman in the place.
"What is it!" asked Jimmie--always of the forward and pushing sort.
"The French ask for half a dozen men in a rush. They"ve had several motor-cycle units wiped out or captured."
"Gee!" said Jimmie. "I"ll go!"
"And me!" said another. "And me!" "And me!"
"All right," said the officer, and told them off: "You and you and you. And you, Cullen, take command. Report to French headquarters at Chatty Terry. You know where it is!"
"Sure, Mike!" said Cullen. "I been there." Jimmie hadn"t been to "Chatty Terry", but he knew it was somewhere across the Marne. The officer gave him a map, showing the villages through which he would go. Jimmie and his companions named these villages, using sensible language, without concession to the fool notions of the natives.
Wipers, Reems, Verdoon, Devil Wood, Arm-in-tears, Saint Meal--all these Jimmie had heard about; also a place where the Americans had won their first glorious victory a week ago, and which they called, sometimes Cantinny, sometimes Tincanny. And now Jimmie was going to "Chatty Terry", in charge of a red-headed Orangeman who a few days ago had expressed the opinion that all Socialists were traitors and should be shot!
The officer gave them pa.s.ses, one for each man, in case they got separated, and they started towards the place where the new machines were lined up. On the way Jimmie had a moment of utter panic. What was this he was getting himself in for, idiot that he was? Going up there where the sh.e.l.ls were falling, wiping out motor-cycle units!
And sh.e.l.ls that were full of poison gases, most of them! Of all the fool things he had done in his life this was the crown and climax!
His knees began to shake, he turned sick inside. But then he glanced about, and caught Pat Cullen"s menacing blue eye; Jimmie returned the glare, and the spirit of battle flamed up in him, he laid hold of the handles of a motor-cycle and strode towards the door. Was any Irish mick going to catch him in a funk, and "bawl him out" before this crowd, and put the Socialist movement to shame? Not much!
CHAPTER XXIII
JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE HUN
I
The six motor-cyclists leaped on to their machines and went chugging down the road. Of course they raced one another; all motor-cyclists always race--and here was the best of all possible excuses, the French army in dire need of them, several of its precious cycle-units wiped out or captured! They tore along, dodging in and out between trucks and automobiles, ambulances and artillery caissons, horse-wagons and mule-wagons, achieving again and again those hair"s-breadth escapes which are the joy in life of every normal motor-cyclist. Now and then, when things were too slow, they would try a crawl in the ditches, or push their machines over the ploughed fields. So it happened that Jimmie found himself competing with his red-headed Irish enemy; there was a narrow opening between two stalled vehicles, and Jimmie made it by the width of his hand, and vaulted on to his machine and darted away, free and exulting--his own boss! He shoved in the juice and made time, you bet; no "mick" was going to catch up and shout orders at him!
There were long trains of refugees streaming back from the battle-fields; pitiful peasant-people with horse-carts and dog-carts and even wheelbarrows, toothless old men and women trudging alongside, children and babies stuck in amidst bedding and furniture and saucepans and bird-cages. This was war, as the common people saw it; but Jimmie could not stop now to think about it--Jimmie was on his way to the front! There were big observation balloons up over his head, looking like huge grey elephants with broad ears; there were aeroplanes whirring about, performing incredible acrobatic feats, and spraying each other with showers of steel; but Jimmie had no time for a single glance at these marvels--Jimmie was on his way to the front!
He swept around a curve, and there directly in front of him was a hole in the middle of the road, as big as if a steam-shovel had been working for a week. Jimmie clapped on the brakes, and swerved sideways, missing a tree and plunging into a cabbage patch. He got off and said, "Gee!" once or twice; and suddenly it was as if he were whacked on the side of the ear with a twelve-inch board--the whole world about him turned into a vast roar of sound, and a mountain of grey smoke leaped into being in front of him. Jimmie stared, and saw out of a little clump of bushes a long black object thrust itself out, like the snout of a gigantic tapir from some prehistoric age. It was a ten-inch gun, coming back from its recoil; and Jimmie, smelling its fumes, struggled back to the road with his machine, before the monster should speak again and stifle him entirely.
There was a frame-house in the distance, and in front of it a barnyard, and sheds with thatched roofs. There came a scream, exactly like the siren of Hook and Ladder Company Number One that used to go tearing about the streets in Leesville, U.S.A; a light flashed in one of the sheds, and everything disappeared in a burst of smoke, which spread itself in the air like a huge duster made from turkey feathers. There came another shriek, a little nearer, and the ground rose in a huge black mushroom, which boiled and writhed like the clouds of an advancing thunderstorm. Boom! Boom!
Two vast, all-pervading roars came to Jimmie"s ears; and his knees began to quake. By heck! He was under fire! He looked ahead; there must be Germans just up there! Was a fellow supposed to ride on without knowing?
There was a big battle on, that much was certain; but the uproar was so distributed that one could hardly tell whether it was in front or behind. However, the transport was steadily advancing--horse-wagons, mule-wagons, motor-wagons, all plodding patiently, paying no heed to the sh.e.l.l-bursts. And then Jimmie took a look behind, and saw that infernal red-headed Orangeman! He imagined a raucous voice, shouting: "C"mon here! Whatcher waitin" fer?" Jimmie bounced on to his machine and turned her loose!
He came to a place where something had hit a load of ammunition, and there were pieces of a wagon and a driver scattered about; it was a horrible mess, but Jimmie pa.s.sed it without much emotion--his whole soul was centred on beating Pat Cullen into "Chatty Terry"! He came to the outskirts of a village, and there was a peasant"s cottage with the roof blown off, and a smell fresh out of the infernal regions, and a terrified old woman standing by the road side with two terrified children clinging to her skirts. Jimmy stopped his machine and shouted: "Chatty Terry?" When the old woman did not answer quickly, he shouted again: "Chatty Terry? Chatty Terry? Don"t you understand French? Chatty Terry?" The old woman apparently did not understand French.
He rode up the street of the village, and came to a military policeman directing traffic at a crossing. This fellow understood English, and said: "Chatty Terry? Eet ees taken!" And when Jimmie stood dismayed, wondering what he was to do now, the policeman told him that headquarters had been shifted to this village--it was in the chateau; he did not say "chatty", so Jimmie did not understand his kind of English. But Jimmie rode as directed, and came to a place with iron gates in front, and a big garden, and a sentry in front, and a bustle of coming and going, so he knew that he had reached his destination, and had beaten his Irish enemy!
II
Jimmie"s pa.s.s was in duplicate French and English, so the sentry could read it, and signed him to pa.s.s in. At the door of the chateau he showed the paper again, and a French officer in the hall-way espied him, and exclaimed, "A cyclist? Mon Dieu!" He half-ran Jimmie into another room, where another officer sat at a big table with a chart spread out on it, and innumerable filing cabinets on the walls. "Un courier Americain!" he exclaimed.
"Only one?" asked the officer, in English.
"Five more"s comin"," said Jimmie quickly. He hated Pat Cullen like the devil, but he wouldn"t have any French officer think that Pat would lie down on his job. "The road"s cut up, an" there"s lots o"
traffic. I come as fast--"
"See!" interrupted the officer--not quite as polite as Frenchmen are supposed to be. "This packet contains maps, which we make from aeroplane-photographs--you comprehend? It is for the artillerist--"
The officer paused for a moment; there came a deafening crash outside, and the window of the room collapsed and something grazed Jimmie"s face.
"Voila!" remarked the officer. "The enemy draws nearer. Our wires are cut; we send couriers, but they perhaps do not arrive; it needs that we send many--what you say?--duplicates. You comprehend?"
"Sure!" said Jimmie.
"It is most urgent; the battle depends upon it--the war, it may be.
You comprehend?"
"Sure!" said Jimmie again.
"You are brave, mon garcon?"
Jimmie did not reply so promptly to that; but the officer was too tactful to wait. Instead, he asked, "You know French?" And when Jimmie shook his head: "It needs that you learn. Say this: Botteree Normb Cott. Try it, if it pleases you: Botteree Normb Cott."
Jimmie, stammering like a schoolboy, tried; the officer made him repeat the sounds, a.s.suring him gravely that he need have no doubts whatever; if he would make those precise sounds, any Frenchman would know what he was looking for. He was to take the main road east from the village and ride till he came to a fork; then he was to bear to the right, and when he came to the edge of a dense wood, he was to take the path to the left, and then say to everybody he met: "Botteree Normb Cott!"
"Is it that you have a weapon?" inquired the officer; and when Jimmie answered no, he pressed a b.u.t.ton, and spoke quick words to an orderly, who came running with an automatic revolver and a belt, which Jimmie proceeded to strap upon him with thrills, half of delighted pride and half of anguished terror. "You will say to the men of the botteree that the Americans come soon to the rescue. You will find them, my brave American?" The officer spoke as if to a son whom he dearly loved; and Jimmie, who had never received an order in that tone of voice, reciprocated the affection, and clenched his hands suddenly and answered, "I"ll do my best, sir." He turned to leave the room, when whom should he see coming in--Mike Cullen!
Jimmie gave him a wink and a grin, and hustled outside and leaped upon his machine.