"Yes. They did it! G.o.d, but they were a terrible sight to see--it sort of made me crazy!"
""Tis a Christian kind av insanity, lad," the sergeant mused. "I hope ye"ll be havin" a domn fine lot av it!"
Thus, when the low-lying moon flooded the dressing-station quadrangle, Jeb, with fourteen prisoners, nine wounded comrades and three little citizens from the "empire of death," was challenged by lookouts of a new regiment that had arrived during the night to occupy the old front line trench. The next minute cheers were ringing from a thousand throats.
Crossing the narrow bridge Tim, though weak from pain, yelled:
"Sind a squad after us, lads, an" ye can have our mules whin they"re unloaded!"
Dr. Bonsecours had turned with a sigh of relief from the last of his cases and stepped outside for a breath of air, when the sound of cheering reached him.
"There is some good news," he called to Marian, who came and stood nearby, listening. Yet, even at that moment, his thoughts were of her, and he turned, saying gently: "You must rest; I really insist upon it!
If you don"t, I--I shall break down, myself."
She looked at him searchingly, reading well the fatigue, the unutterable strain, which marked his face, and whispered:
"You"re the one who needs it! Don"t you realize how helpless we would be here without you?"
"And how helpless I would be without _you_?" he murmured. "Oh, my wonderful Marian----!" He checked himself with an effort; yet, had the moon been brighter, he would have seen the pallor in her face yield to a flood of warm color.
The tramp of men was coming nearer, men who slipped and stumbled down the steep road, and then a group of curious figures staggered into view, seeming in the uncertain light scarcely to be human. Turning right they marched heavily to the dressing-station entrance and, at Jeb"s command, halted.
Bonsecours, with mouth agape, stepped back at their approach, while Marian drew slightly closer to him. There is nothing in the French language which exactly corresponds to our expression of amazement: "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned!" but whatever comes nearest to it is what the great surgeon now said, like a common sapper. At the same instant the nurse at his side gave a low cry. She was not looking at Jeb, but at the children.
CHAPTER XVI
Scarcely were the children lifted down before Marian had kneeled and taken them in her arms. Quicker than Bonsecours she had read the story of their destruction, and now sobbed over them as though her heart would break. One had clasped her neck, but the other two, unable to stand, merely stared with wide-open eyes devoid of the slightest understanding.
It was when the great French surgeon looked upon these--little tots whose minds were shattered by cruelties purposely conceived for them, and whose bodies were starved to skeleton thinness in order that thieves and degenerates might grow fat--that he swore a mighty oath and buried his face in his hands.
"_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_," he muttered fiercely, "how many more will they add to the thousands I have already seen!"
Jeb had glanced only once at Marian, being afraid of the reproach her eyes might still hold for him; but as soon as a squad trotted up to receive the prisoners he turned away, welcoming another duty which sternly summoned him back to the plain. For the machine-gun redoubts had to be taken before their deadly fire could pour into those brave fellows who had swept ahead--and this must be done before uncompromising daylight made the work too costly! So he turned without glancing again at Marian. Yet no decoration for a brave deed might have been more brilliant than her look which followed him, could she have shut out the torturing picture of his debas.e.m.e.nt at the sh.e.l.l hole. A quick prayer sprang from her soul into s.p.a.ce as she whispered fervently: "G.o.d keep his courage stiff!" She had not thought about his body; she did not care about his body! It was to make a soldier that she prayed.
Bonsecours, having seen the look and movement of her lips, asked gently:
"Do you know him?"
"We grew up in the same town, back home," she answered, still gazing after Jeb.
"Oh!" he said. It was a gasp of pain, and he stood as though a sh.e.l.l had burst and stunned him. In his headlong work between guns of opposing armies, he had never stopped to wonder if there might be someone else in this Nurse Marian"s life; and now, stung by a possible realization of it, his mind leaped outward to fears and fancied facts--all of which she might have told him were groundless. Turning toward the dug-out, he said briefly over his shoulder: "Please see to the children. My own cases are waiting."
Down into the trench Jeb had run, calling for an officer, and was soon making his report to the Colonel, who peremptorily asked:
"You can show us these positions?"
"Two of them, sir; the others must occupy the same general line."
Silently, but in the highest spirits, three thousand men went over the top, deploying in open order to make their drag-net stretch to its farthest capacity and sweep up the redoubts, whose locations, after all, were largely a matter of conjecture.
Jeb, fighting hard to hold himself steady, pressed toward the right, where he thought the first digging party could be found; yet, before he sighted it, firing broke out to his left, then farther to his left--each time with the unmistakable fusillade of machine-guns answered by cracking rifles. One bunch at a time, the enemy was being flushed from cover; yet at each new outburst he gasped more and more for air,--feeling in his soul what was coming over him, and swearing roundly to drive it back.
"We ain"t going to miss anything, are we?" a cheery voice at his back called out.
"We"ll find it, all right," he panted; but might have saved his breath, for that very instant they were met by a fire which, in a light less deceptive, would have been gruelling even to their openly deployed skirmish line.
Without awaiting commands--were there any to wait for--the men, ducking low, dashed past him toward the pit, leaped down into it gouging their bayonets right and left. With the sentry"s rifle still in his hands he tried to follow; but at the brink, being confronted by sounds of steel upon steel, oaths, grunts, yells of victory and of pain, his legs refused to move. The old fear was wrapping itself about him. But then came cries of "Kamerad!"--and upon hearing these he bounded in, knowing the place had surrendered.
"The ruined hamlet next," he yelled. "There"s a lot of supplies there!"
The men sprang out after him, laughing now in sheer exuberance of spirits, and throwing taunts at a few of their disgruntled mates who had been left to watch the prisoners and spoils. But Jeb could not laugh.
His jaws were set in grim determination. He was soul-sick and furious.
He had not played fair--although his comrades were far from suspecting it. He swore to himself over and over, on the memory of those children whom he had saved at this place, that he would be the first to go in and the last to come out, were it to mean death a hundred times.
But the hamlet put up no resistance; it lay still and deserted, as though some marauding monster had torn it in its teeth and pa.s.sed on by.
This silence, however, did not deceive Jeb. Even through the chaos of his brain he had a rather fair idea of how many small engagements had taken place back on the plain, and judged them to be far short of the newly built redoubts; thereby conjecturing that several of the companies must have deserted their positions and fallen in upon the more secure catacombs. Advising the men to scatter and search the cellars, he discovered at last a large, although artfully disguised, opening to the subterranean area below.
"Who speaks German?" he asked, of those who stood about him.
"I," said one.
"Then yell down and tell "em to come out, or be blown out!"
But someone below must have understood English and quickly translated, because long cries of "Kamerad, Kamerad," floated eerily up, as if a cover had been lifted from some pit in h.e.l.l releasing the wails of incarcerated spirits. Answering with yells of derision the troops climbed to the street level and formed to receive prisoners; whereupon, casting rifles aside as they gained the open, the inhabitants of this underworld filed out.
When the catacombs had been searched and quant.i.ties of munitions for the machine-guns salvaged, Jeb led the way back across the now silent No Man"s Land that had pa.s.sed into the pages of history. One by one the other units were picked up, standing guard over captured positions.
Everything had been swept into the Allied pocket at an insignificant cost.
Dawn had not yet streaked the east. Except for a fitful shot somewhere back across the plain, where an overstrained sentry fired at a shadow, the world slept. The regiment, flushed and happy, sprang down into its trench; and Jeb was turning glumly toward the gravelly road, when the Colonel stepped after him.
"I haven"t your name," he said. "I want to send it in."
"Oh, that"s all right," Jeb answered, afraid to look at this commander of men, lest even in the dim light his stricken conscience might be revealed.
"But it isn"t all right," the officer smiled. "I heard what you did earlier to-night--a rather fine thing, that!--and now you"ve turned another trick, giving us eight hundred prisoners, twelve machine-gun sections, and various stuff. You deserve a mention."
"Then just tell "em," Jeb began; but he could not claim it and, blushing guiltily, hurried off, yelling over his shoulder: "It isn"t worth while, really!"
Yet there had been something else that happened out on the field which meant a great deal more to him. It had been while they were marching homeward, when this same officer had laid a hand upon his arm and said: "I hope the American army which landed yesterday is made up of your stuff!" The words did not in any sense imply doubt; merely compliment, but Jeb inwardly cringed because the American Army had been graded, even in ignorance, with such as he. At that instant he had made a resolve--an earnest, solemn resolve--to join that army and, by its influence, prove himself worthy.
He now went hurriedly down into the quadrangle and turned to the dug-out where he expected to find Bonsecours--the man who superseded Barrow in authority. For he guessed that an ambulance would be standing farther at the rear, waiting for the nine men whom he had brought in. When it took them back, he determined that it would also take him to the fellows from home who had just landed--to a new opportunity! Perhaps it was ready to leave at any moment, and this thought gave him greater speed.
As he entered Tim, the last to receive attention, lay in a stretcher ready to be moved. He had insisted upon being last, claiming this preference because of the fact that he was a sergeant; and now, although with a badly shattered leg which the surgeon had told him might later have to go, he grinned broadly as Jeb clasped his hand. Bonsecours"