The men began to curse. "Why can"t we see them?" they muttered through their teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as if he were directly reprehensible for this behavior of the enemy. "Wait a moment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them!" A little skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was really like shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ballroom.
But the men"s spirits improved as soon as the enemy--this mysterious enemy--became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foe to be shooting at them from the adjacent garden.
"Now," said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily if you men are good enough."
A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow on horseback, Bill? Isn"t he on horseback? I thought he was on horseback."
There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeant dashed into the room which commanded the situation. He found a dead soldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?
When was Knowles killed? When was Knowles killed? d.a.m.n it, when was Knowles killed?" It was absolutely essential to find out the exact moment this man died. A blackened private turned upon his sergeant and demanded: "How in h.e.l.l do I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of anger so brief that in the next second he cried: "Patterson!" He had even forgotten his vital interest in the time of Knowles" death.
"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality of determination. Still, he was a mere farm boy.
"Go in to Knowles" window and shoot at those people," said the sergeant hoa.r.s.ely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had made way to his lungs.
Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as if he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stood across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plum trees.
"They can"t take this house," declared the sergeant in a contemptuous and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men talking together feebly. "Don"t you think there is anything to do?" he bawled. "Go and get Knowles" cartridges and give them to somebody who can use them! Take Simpson"s too." The man who had been shot in the throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, one said: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant." He spoke apologetically.
Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot made a greasy red streak on the floor.
"Why, we can hold this place!" shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Who says we can"t?"
Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.
"Sergeant," murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of danger, "I can"t stand this. I swear I can"t. I think we should run away."
Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man.
"You are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid," he said softly. The man struggled to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach, and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitched forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his arms straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was pierced afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy.
The sergeant laid his rifle against the stonework of the window-frame and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man, simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "d.a.m.n it, shut up!" said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with little fleeting figures.
He grew furious. "Why didn"t he send me orders?" he cried aloud. The emphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road a galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.
The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.
Morton"s fury veered to this soldier. "Can"t you shut up? Can"t you shut up? Can"t you shut up? Fight! That"s the thing to do. Fight!"
A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off to a position upon the b.l.o.o.d.y floor. He turned himself with a last effort until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.
"Kim up, the Kickers," he said thickly. His arms weakened and he dropped on his face.
After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy"s infantry, followed by his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with a shrug to his sergeant. "G.o.d, I should have estimated them at least one hundred strong."
UPTURNED FACE
"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited.
"Bury him," said Timothy Lean.
The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of their comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the sky. Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on the top of the hill Lean"s prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry was firing measured volleys.
"Don"t you think it would be better--" began the adjutant. "We might leave him until tomorrow."
"No," said Lean. "I can"t hold that post an hour longer. I"ve got to fall back, and we"ve got to bury old Bill."
"Of course," said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenching tools?"
Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina sharp-shooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence the bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth sounded amid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other private began to shovel.
"I suppose," said the adjutant, slowly, "we"d better search his clothes for--things."
Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body.
Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself.
"Yes," he said, "we"d better see what he"s got." He dropped to his knees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But his hands wavered over the b.u.t.tons of the tunic. The first b.u.t.ton was brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it.
"Go on," said the adjutant, hoa.r.s.ely.
Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the blood-stained b.u.t.tons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a little case of cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean do all the grisly business.
"Well," said Lean, "that"s all, I think. You have his sword and revolver?"
"Yes," said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in a sudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don"t you hurry up with that grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never saw such stupid--"
Even as he cried out in his pa.s.sion the two men were laboring for their lives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting.
The grave was finished, It was not a masterpiece--a poor little shallow thing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curious silent communication.
Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terrible laugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is first moved by the singing of the nerves. "Well," he said, humorously to Lean, "I suppose we had best tumble him in."
"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him in ourselves."
"Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had made Lean search the body, he stooped with great fort.i.tude and took hold of the dead officer"s clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers, straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking at each other. They sighed with relief.
The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do you know the service, Tim?"
"They don"t read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean, pressing his lips to an academic expression.
"Don"t they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake.
"Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while he can hear us."
"All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?"
"I can"t remember a line of it," said the adjutant.