Читать книгу The Seed of Empire - Fred M. White - Страница 13

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It had been a long and bitter day, and the little force known as the Honourable Company of Musketeers had been sorely pressed, and, though no man confessed it, they were praying for the darkness. They had come up a week or two before, and had been thrown directly into the firing line. It was trying them high indeed, a terrible ordeal for young, unseasoned troops, to thrust them headlong against the cream of the German infantry, but there had been no help for it. Over in England, people were rejoicing in successive victories, and some, indeed, were obsessed with the idea that the German flood was broken, and that the crisis was past. Heaven alone knows why the authorities at home were wrapping the people in the cotton wool of optimism, but those at the front knew better; they knew that every man was needed; they knew that if that line was broken Paris was doomed.

They knew how unprepared we were, and that France was not in much better case than ourselves. And so a harassed general, who hardly knew which way to turn, had welcomed the advent of the Musketeers as something like a godsend. He did not want to do it; he hated the necessity, but there was no alternative.

"It's got to be done," he told the colonel of the Musketeers. "Now, here's the map; there are the trenches, and you have got to hold them for 24 hours. And, what's more, you must hold them at any cost. You know what that means, and you know your own men better than I do. Good morning."

"Better make it good-bye, sir," the colonel replied. "That's about what it will come to. As you say, I do know my men, and they'll stay where they are told till the last one is left."

It was no idle boast. All that day the Musketeers had stuck grimly to their task under a hell of shot and shell and unprotected by their own artillery. They had seen the Prussians advance to the attack again and again in close formation, only to be mown down by the rain of lead and the hail of machine gun fire till the grey corpses were piled up in ghastly heaps out there in the open, and some of the Musketeers, more daring than the rest, were firing with red-hot barrels behind a rampart of the dead. The line was thinner now by something like 25 per cent of the battalion, but still they held on, black and grimed and bloodshot, tortured by thirst and racked with the pains of hunger. But they held on.

They were fighting now with one eye on the foe and the other on the sinking sun. They could expect no slackening in the attack, no mouthful of food or water for their parched lips, until darkness fell. Now and again a handful of the foe in advance of the rest slopped over into the trench like grey foam blown on the gale, only to find themselves bayoneted with savage thrusts and trampled underfoot. To the left of the trench the Germans had managed to establish a machine gun in a little hollow, half-enfilading the defenders, and rendering some of the younger men jumpy and unsteady. And yet they held on, these boys who only a few weeks before had been living in the soft lap of luxury or starving in the slums. And they were up against the pick and marrow of the Kaiser's troops. They were fighting desperately, hanging on with teeth and eyebrows, opposite men trained to the moment, men who had played the war game for years. It was a case of each for himself, for most of the officers were down now, and every one of the Musketeers had only himself to think of.

In the corner of the second trench Bentley and Kemp, together with Allen and Garton, had established themselves. Ginger, crouching at their feet, had made himself a porthole, through which he was firing grimly. Then came a shot from that accursed machine gun and smashed the rifle in his hand; then another that lifted his cap from his head.

"'Ot work, guvnors," he said. "That's wot in polite circles they used ter call 'a little bit off the top.' 'Ot work, boys, but it's goin' ter be 'otter where we sent them Germans to. 'As any gent got a gun 'e don't want?"

But there was no lack of rifles. Half a dozen lay at Ginger's feet for the asking. He shook his head angrily, like a terrier tormented by flies, as the machine gun bullets rattled round him; then he dropped the rifle he had snatched up and rose to his feet.

"'Ere," he said, "I'm going to stop that gime. Mr. Bentley, I knows you've got a revolver in yer pocket."

"I have," Bentley said. "What do you want it for?"

"Well, I'm goin' ter do in the bloke wot's playin' that trombone. If I don't get 'is number 'e'll get mine. An' I'll be just as sife wrigglin' on me belly aht yonder as doin' the livin' statuary busness 'ere."

There was logic in Ginger's remark, and in any case there was no officer by to say him nay. He edged his way cautiously over the corner of the trench, and crept along like a snake between two rows of beetroot. It was a mad action, rash and hazardous to the verge of insanity, but there were many such that day, and the dark days that followed, of which there is no record, and never will be now. And none knew better than Ginger, despite his cheery optimism, that the odds against him were as a thousand to one. But still he thrust his way forward with a cheery smile in his eyes and the familiar grin upon his parched and blackened lips.

Nearer and nearer he came till he could hear the bullets screaming like a telephone wire in the wind over his head; nearer and nearer he came till the discharge from the gun was hot upon his cheeks. He was fairly safe now, as far as the maxim was concerned, but the crux of his task had yet to come. He had to get behind that machine and take the three men working it. Inch by inch he crept on till the muzzle of the gun actually seemed to rest on his shoulder. Then he leapt to his feet and pushed the murderous weapon over sideways. He was looking so close into the eyes of the gun crew that he could see the colour of their lashes and their grinning teeth. Their rifles lay behind them, so that they were practically at his mercy. He stifled a cry of exultation that was bursting on his lips; then the revolver spoke three times, and three grey corpses lay in the sandy hollow. And then Ginger went mad.

He simply couldn't help it. He was so full of the insanity of triumph that he would have faced the whole of the German army at that moment. With a yell of defiance he jumped to his feet and lifted the Maxim upon his shoulder. Then he staggered coolly along with his burden and threw it down in the trench close to where Bentley and his friends were standing. He dropped lightly down under cover again, and wiped the dripping moisture from his eyes. He was absolutely untouched; it was one of the marvels that do happen on the field of battle.

"'Ere,"' he gasped. "Anybody got a birfday? Cos, if they 'ave, I've got a present for 'em."

"You'll hear more of this, my friend," Kemp said grimly. "I've seen some plucky things to-day, but nothing to touch that. Here the devils come again."

Once more the grey flood was beaten back; then as the darkness fell the attack gradually died down, save for an occasional shot from a big gun in the distance. Utterly exhausted, the Musketeers lay there waiting for the food and drink of which they were in such dire need. It came presently in the shape of a wagon or two and a relief of Army Service men, and with them a man in civilian dress, a dapper man with a glass carefully screwed into his eye, at the sight of whom Bentley gasped with astonishment. He forgot his thirst for the moment.

"D'you see that?" he asked Kemp. "Now, how on earth did he get here? You see who it is, don't you?"

"By Jove!" Kemp exclaimed. "Why, it's that chap Venables. Just think of the utter cheek of it!"