Chapter V: Part 5

Everton had missed Halliday, and his anxious inquiries failed to find him or any word of him, until at last one man said he believed Halliday had been dropped in the rush on the first trench. Everton stood up and peered back over the ground behind them. Thirty yards away he saw a man lying prone and busily at work with his trenching-tool, endeavoring to build up a scanty cover. Everton shouted at the pitch of his voice, "Halliday!" The digging figure paused, lifted the trenching-tool and waved it, and then fell to work again. Everton pressed along the crowded trench to the sergeant.

"Sergeant," he said breathlessly, "Halliday's lying out there wounded, he's a good pal o' mine and I'd like to fetch him in."

The Sergeant was rather doubtful. He made Everton point out the digging figure, and was calculating the distance from the nearest point of the trench, and the bullets that drummed between.

"It's almost a cert you get hit," he said, "even if you crawl out. He's got a bit of cover and he's making more, fast. I think--"

A voice behind interrupted, and Everton and the Sergeant turned to find the Captain looking up at them.

"What's this?" he repeated, and the Sergeant explained the position.

"Go ahead!" said the Captain. "Get him in if you can, and good luck to you."

Everton wanted no more. Two minutes later he was out of the trench and racing back across the open.

"Come on, Halliday," he said. "I'll give you a hoist in. Where are you hit?"

"Leg and arm," said Halliday briefly; and then, rather ungraciously, "You're a fool to be out here; but I suppose now you're here, you might as well give me a hand in."

But he spoke differently after Everton had given him a hand, had lifted him and carried him, and so brought him back to the trench and lowered him into waiting hands. His wounds were bandaged and, before he was carried off, he spoke to Everton.

"Good-by, Toffee," he said and held out his left hand, "I owe you a heap. And look here---" He hesitated a moment and then spoke in tones so low that Everton had to bend over the stretcher to hear him. "My leg's smashed bad, and I'm done for the Front and the old Hotwaters. I wouldn't like it to get about--I don't want the others to think--to know about me feeling--well, like I told you back there before the charge."

Toffee grabbed the uninjured-hand hard. "You old frost!" he said gayly, "there's no need to keep it up any longer now; but I don't mind telling you, old man, you fairly hoaxed me that time, and actually I believed what you were saying. 'Course, I know better now; but I'll punch the head off any man that ever whispers a word against you."

Halliday looked at him queerly. "Good-by, Toffee," he said again, "and thank ye."

ANTI-AIRCRAFT

"_Enemy airmen appearing over our lines have been turned hack or driven off by shell fire."_--EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.

Gardening is a hobby which does not exist under very favorable conditions at the front, its greatest drawback being that when the gardener's unit is moved from one place to another his garden cannot accompany him. Its devotees appear to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from the mere making of a garden, the laying-out and digging and planting; but it can be imagined that the most enthusiastic gardener would in time become discouraged by a long series of beginnings without any endings to his labors, to a frequent sowing and an entire absence of reaping.

There are, however, some units which, from the nature of their business, are stationary in one place for months on end, and here the gardener as a rule has an opportunity for the indulgence of his pursuit. In clearing-hospitals, ammunition-parks, and Army Service Corps supply points, there are, I believe, many such fixed abodes; but the manners and customs of the inhabitants of such happy resting-places are practically unknown to the men who live month in month out in a narrow territory, bounded on the east by the forward firing line and on the west by the line of the battery positions, or at farthest the villages of the reserve billets. In any case these places are rather outside the scope of tales dealing with what may be called the "Under Fire Front," and it was this front which I had in mind when I said that gardening did not receive much encouragement at the front. But during the first spring of the War I know of at least one enthusiast who did his utmost, metaphorically speaking, to beat his sword into a plowshare, and to turn aside at every opportunity from the duty of killing Germans to the pleasures of growing potatoes. He was a gunner in the detachment of the Blue Marines, which ran a couple of armored motor-cars carrying anti-aircraft guns.

It is one of the advantages of this branch of the air-war that when a suitable position is fixed on for defense of any other position, the detachment may stay there for some considerable time. There are other advantages which will unfold themselves to those initiated in the ways of the trench zone, although those outside of it may miss them; but everyone will see that prolonged stays in the one position give the gardener his opportunity. In this particular unit of the Blue Marines was a gunner who intensely loved the potting and planting, the turning over of yielding earth, the bedding-out and transplanting, the watering and weeding and tending of a garden, possibly because the greater part of his life had been lived at sea in touch with nothing more yielding than a steel plate or a hard plank.

The gunner was known throughout the unit by no other name than Mary, fittingly taken from the nursery rhyme which inquires, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" The similarity between Mary of the Blue Marines and Mary of the nursery rhyme ends, however, with the first line, since Blue Marine Mary made no attempt to rear "silver bells and cockle shells" (whatever they may be) all in a row. His whole energies were devoted to the raising of much more practical things, like lettuces, radishes, carrots, spring onions, and any other vegetable which has the commendable reputation of arriving reasonably early at maturity.

Twice that spring Mary's labors had been wasted because the section had moved before the time was ripe from a gardener's point of view, and although Mary strove to transplant his garden by uprooting the vegetables, packing them away in a box in the motor, and planting them out in the new position, the vegetables failed to survive the breaking of their home ties, and languished and died in spite of Mary's tender care. After the first failure he tried to lay out a portable garden, enlisting the aid of "Chips" the carpenter in the manufacture of a number of boxes, in which he placed earth and his new seedlings. This attempt, however, failed even more disastrously than the first, the O.C. having made a most unpleasant fuss on the discovery of two large boxes of mustard and cress "cluttering up," as he called it, the gun-mountings on one of the armored cars, and, when the section moved suddenly in the dead of night, refusing point-blank to allow any available space to be loaded up with Mary's budding garden. Mary's plaintive inquiry as to what he was to do with the boxes was met by the brutal order to "chuck the lot overboard," and the counter-inquiry as to whether he thought this show was a perambulating botanical gardens.

So Mary lost his second garden complete, even unto the box of spring onions which were the apple of his gardening eye. But he brisked up when the new position was established and he learned through the officer's servant that the selected spot was considered an excellent one, and offered every prospect of being held by the section for a considerable time. He selected a favorable spot and proceeded once more to lay out a garden and to plant out a new lot of vegetables.

The section's new position was only some fifteen hundred yards from the forward trench; but, being at the bottom of a gently sloping ridge which ran between the position and the German lines, it was covered from all except air observation. The two armored cars, containing guns, were hidden away amongst the shattered ruins of a little hamlet; their armor-plated bodies, already rendered as inconspicuous as possible by erratic daubs of bright colors laid on after the most approved Futurist style, were further hidden by untidy wisps of straw, a few casual beams, and any other of the broken rubbish which had once been a village. The men had their quarters in the cellars of one of the broken houses, and the two officers inhabited the corner of a house with a more or less remaining roof.

Mary's garden was in a sunny corner of what had been in happier days the back garden of one of the cottages. The selection, as it turned out, was not altogether a happy one, because the garden, when abandoned by its former owner, had run to seed most liberally, and the whole of its area appeared to be impregnated with a variety of those seeds which give the most trouble to the new possessor of an old garden. Anyone with the real gardening instinct appears to have no difficulty in distinguishing between weeds and otherwise, even on their first appearance in shape of a microscopic green shoot; but flowers are not weeds, and Mary had a good deal of trouble to distinguish between the self-planted growths of nasturtiums, foxgloves, marigolds, forget-me-nots, and other flowers, and the more prosaic but useful carrots and spring onions which Mary had introduced. Probably a good many onions suffered the penalty of bad company, and were sacrificed in the belief that they were flowers; but on the whole the new garden did well, and began to show the trim rows of green shoots which afford such joy to the gardening soul. The shoots grew rapidly, and as time passed uneventfully and the section remained unmoved, the garden flourished and the vegetables drew near to the day when they would be fit for consumption.

Mary gloated over that garden; he went to a world of trouble with it, he bent over it and weeded it for hours on end; he watered it religiously every night, he even erected miniature forcing frames over some of the vegetable rows, ransacking the remains of the broken-down hamlet for squares of glass or for any pieces large enough for his purpose. He built these cunningly with frameworks of wood and untwisted strands of barbed wire, and there is no doubt they helped the growth of his garden immensely.

Although they have not been torched upon, it must not be supposed that Mary had no other duties. Despite our frequently announced "Supremacy of the Air," the anti-aircraft guns were in action rather frequently. The German aeroplanes in this part of the line appeared to ignore the repeated assurances in our Press that the German 'plane invariably makes off on the appearance of a British one; and although it is true that in almost every case the German was "turned back," he very frequently postponed the turning until he had sailed up and down the line a few times and seen, it may be supposed, all that there was to see.

At such times--and they happened as a rule at least once a day and occasionally two, three, or four times a day--Mary had to run from his gardening and help man the guns.

In the course of a month the section shot away many thousands of shells, and, it is to be hoped, severely frightened many German pilots, although at that time they could only claim to have brought down one 'plane, and that in a descent so far behind the German lines that its fate was uncertain.

It must be admitted that the gunners on the whole made excellent shooting, and if they did not destroy their target, or even make him turn back, they fulfilled the almost equally useful object of making him keep so high that he could do little useful observing. But the short periods of time spent by the section in shooting were no more than enough to add a pleasant flavor of sport to life, and on the whole, since the weather was good and the German gunnery was not--or at least not good enough to be troublesome to the section--life during that month moved very pleasantly.

But at last there came a day when it looked as if some of the inconveniences of war were due to arrive. The German aeroplane appeared as usual one morning just after the section had completed breakfast. The methodical regularity of hours kept by the German pilots added considerably to the comfort and convenience of the section by allowing them to time their hours of sleep, their meals, or an afternoon run by the O.C. on the motor into the near-by town, so as to fit in nicely with the duty of anti-aircraft guns.

On this morning at the usual hour the aeroplane appeared, and the gunners, who were waiting in handy proximity to the cars, jumped to their stations. The muzzles of the two-pounder pom-poms moved slowly after their target, and when the range-indicator told that it was within reach of their shells the first gun opened with a trial beltful. "Bang--bang--bang--bang!" it shouted, a string of shells singing and sighing on their way into silence. In a few seconds, "Puff--puff--puff--puff!" four pretty little white balls broke out and floated solid against the sky. They appeared well below their target, and both the muzzles tilted a little and barked off another flight of shells. This time they appeared to burst in beautiful proximity to the racing aeroplane, and immediately the two-pounders opened a steady and accurate bombardment. The shells were evidently dangerously close to the 'plane, for it tilted sharply and commenced to climb steadily; but it still held on its way over the British lines, and the course it was taking it was evident would bring it almost directly over the Blue Marines and their guns. The pom-poms continued their steady yap-yap, jerking and springing between each, round, like eager terriers jumping the length of their chain, recoiling and jumping, and yelping at every jump. But although the shells were dead in line the range was too great, and the guns slowed down their rate of fire, merely rapping off an occasional few rounds to keep the observer at a respectful distance, without an unnecessary waste of ammunition.

Arrived above them, the aeroplane banked steeply and swung round in a complete circle.

"Dash his impudence," growled the captain. "Slap at him again, just for luck." The only effect the resulting slap at him had, however, was to show the 'plane pilot that he was well out of range and to bring him spiraling steeply down a good thousand feet. This brought him within reach of the shells again, and both guns opened rapidly, dotting the sky thickly with beautiful white puffs of smoke, through which the enemy sailed swiftly. Then suddenly another shape and color of smoke appeared beneath him, and a red light burst from it flaring and floating slowly downwards. Another followed, and then another, and the 'plane straightened out its course, swerved, and flashed swiftly off down-wind, pursued to the limit of their range by the raving pom-poms. "Which it seems to me," said the Blue Marine sergeant reflectively, "that our Tauby had us spotted and was signaling his guns to call and leave a card on us."

That afternoon showed some proof of the correctness of the sergeant's supposition; a heavy shell soared over and dropped with a crash in an open field some two hundred yards beyond the outermost house of the hamlet. In five minutes another followed, and in the same field blew out a hole about twenty yards from the first. A third made another hole another twenty yards off, and a fourth again at the same interval.

When the performance ceased, the captain and his lieutenant held a conference over the matter. "It looks as if we'd have to shift," said the captain. "That fellow has got us marked down right enough."

"If he doesn't come any nearer," said the lieutenant, "we're all right. We won't need to take cover when the shelling starts, and even if the guns are shooting when the German is shelling, the armor-plate will easily stand off splinters from that distance."

"Yes," said the captain. "But do you suppose our friend the Flighty Hun won't have a peep at us to-morrow morning to see where those shells landed? If he does, or if he takes a photograph, those holes will show up like a chalk-mark on a blackboard; then he has only to tell his gun to step this way a couple of hundred yards and we get it in the neck. I'm inclined to think we'd better up anchor and away."

"We're pretty comfortable here, you know," urged the lieutenant, "and it's a pity to get out. It might be that those shots were blind chance. I vote for waiting another day, anyhow, and seeing what happens. At the worst we can pack up and stand by with steam up; then if the shells pitch too near we can slip the cable and run for it"

"Right-oh!" said the captain.

Next morning the enemy aeroplane appeared again at its appointed hour and sailed overhead, leaving behind it a long wake of smoke-puffs; and at the same hour in the afternoon as the previous shelling the German gun opened fire, dropping its first shell neatly fifty yards further from the shell-holes of the day before. The aeroplane, of course, had reported, or its photograph had shown, the previous day's shells to have dropped apparently fifty yards to the left of the hamlet. The gun accordingly corrected its aim and opened fire on a spot fifty yards more to the right. For hours it bombarded that suffering field energetically, and at the end of that time, when they were satisfied the shelling was over, the Blue Marines climbed from their cellar. Next morning the aeroplane appeared again, and the Blue Marines allowed it this time to approach unattacked. Convinced probably by this and the appearance of the numerous shell-pits scattered round the gun position, the aeroplane swooped lower to verify its observations. Unfortunately another anti-aircraft gun a mile further along the line thought this too good an opportunity to miss, and opened rapid fire. The 'plane leaped upward and away, and the Blue Marines sped on its way with a stream of following shells.

"If the Huns' minds work on the fixed and appointed path, one would expect the same old field will get a strafing this afternoon," said the captain afterwards. "The airman will have seen the village knocked about, and if he knew that those last shells came from here he'll just conclude that yesterday's shooting missed us, and the gunners will have another whale at us this afternoon."

He was right; the gun had "another whale" at them, and again dug many holes in the old field.

But next morning the Germans played a new and disconcerting game. The aeroplane hovered high above and dropped a light, and a minute later the Blue Marines heard a shrill whistle, that grew and changed to a whoop, and ended with the same old crash in the same old field.

"Now," said the captain. "Stand by for trouble. That brute is spotting for his gun."

The aeroplane dropped a light, turned, and circled round to the left. Five minutes later another shell screamed over, and this time fell crashing into the hamlet. The hit was palpable and unmistakable; a huge dense cloud of smoke and mortar-, lime-, and red brick-dust leapt and billowed and hung heavily over the village.

"This," said the captain rapidly, "is where we do the rabbit act. Get to cover, all of you, and lie low."

They did the rabbit act, scuttling amongst the broken houses to the shelter of their cellar and diving hastily into it. Another shell arrived, shrieking wrathfully, smashed into another broken house, and scattered its ruins in a whirlwind of flying fragments.

Now Mary, of course, was in the cellar with the rest, and Mary's garden was in full view from the cellar entrance, and twenty or twenty-five yards from it. The rest of the party were surprised to see Mary, as the loud clatter of falling stones subsided, leap for the cellar steps, run up them, and disappear out into the open. He was back in a couple of minutes. "I just wondered," he said breathlessly, "if those blighters had done any damage to my vegetables." When another shell came he popped up again for another look, and this time he dodged back and said many unprintable things until the next shell landed. He looked a little relieved when he came back this time. "This one was farther away," he said, "but that one afore dropped somebody's hearth-stone inside a dozen paces from my onion bed." For the next half-hour the big shells pounded the village, tearing the ruins apart, battering down the walls, blasting huge holes in the road and between the houses, re-destroying all that had already been destroyed, and completing the destruction of some of the few parts that had hitherto escaped.

Between rounds Mary ran up and looked out. Once he rushed across to his garden and came back cursing impotently, to report a shell fallen close to the garden, his carefully erected forcing frames shattered to splinters by the shock, and a hail of small stones and the ruins of an iron stove dropped obliteratingly across his carrots.

"If only they'd left this crazy shooting for another week," said Mary, "a whole lot of those things would have been ready for pulling up. The onions is pretty near big enough to eat now, and I've half a mind to pull some o' them before that cock-eyed Hun lands a shell in me garden and blows it to glory."

Later he ran out, pulled an onion, a carrot, and a lettuce, brought them back to the cellar, proudly passed them round, and anxiously demanded an opinion as to whether they were ready for pulling, and counsel as to whether he ought to strip his garden.

"Now look here!" said the sergeant at last; "you let your bloomin' garden alone; I'm not going to have you running out there plucking carrot and onion nosegays under fire. If a shell blows your garden half-way through to Australia, I can't help it, and neither can you. I'll be quite happy to split a dish of spuds with you if so be your garden offers them up; but I'm not going to have you casualtied rescuing your perishing radishes under fire. Nothing'll be said to me if your garden is strafed off the earth; but there's a whole lot going to be said if you are strafed along with it, and I have to report that you had disobeyed orders and not kept under cover, and that I had looked on while you broke ship and was blown to blazes with a boo-kay of onions in your hand. So just you anchor down there till the owner pipes to carry on."

Mary had no choice but to obey, and when at last the shelling was over he rushed to the garden and examined it with anxious care. He was in a more cheerful mood when he rejoined the others. "It ain't so bad," he said. "Total casualties, half the carrots killed, the radish-bed severely wounded (half a chimney-pot did that), and some o' the onions slightly wounded by bits of gravel. But what do you reckon the owner's going to do now? Has he given any orders yet?"

No orders had been given, but the betting amongst the Blue Marines was about ninety-seven to one in favor of their moving. Sure enough, orders were given to pack up and prepare to move as soon as it was dark, and the captain went off with a working party to reconnoiter a new position and prepare places for the cars. Mary was sent off in "the shore boat" (otherwise the light runabout which carried them on duty or pleasure to and from the ten-mile-distant town) with orders to draw the day's rations, collect the day's mail, buy the day's papers, and return to the village, being back not later than five o'clock.

It was made known that the position to which the captain contemplated moving was one in a clump of trees within half a mile of the position they were leaving. Mary was hugely satisfied. "That ain't half bad," he said when he heard. "I can walk over and water the garden at night, and pop across any time between the Tauby's usual promenade hours and do a bit o' weeding, and just keep an eye on things generally. And inside a week we're going to have carrots for dinner every day, _and_ spring onions. Hey, my lads! what about bread and cheese and spring onions, wot?"

He climbed aboard the run-about, drove out of the yard, and rattled off down the road. He executed his commissions, and was sailing happily back to the village, when about a mile short of it a sitting figure rose from the roadside, stepped forward, and waved an arresting hand. To his surprise, Mary saw that it was one of the Blue Marines.

"What's up?" he said, as the Marine came round to the side and proceeded to step on board.

"Orders," said the Marine briefly. "I was looking out for you. Change course and direction and steer for the new anchorage."

"The idea being wot!" asked Mary.

"We've been in action again," said the Marine gloomily. "Only two shells this time, but they did more damage than all the rest put together this morning."

"More damage?" gasped Mary. "Wot--wot have they damaged?"

The Marine ticked off the damages on his fingers one by one.

"Car hit, badly damaged, and down by the stern; gun out of action--mounting smashed; the sergeant hit, piece of his starboard leg carried away; and five men slightly wounded."

He dropped his hands, which Mary took as a sign that the tally was finished. "Is that all?" he said, and breathed a sigh of relief. "Strewth! I thought you was going to tell me that my garden had been gott-straffed."

A FRAGMENT

This is not a story, it is rather a fragment, beginning where usually a battle story ends, with a man being "casualtied," showing the principal character only in a passive part--a very passive part--and ending, I am afraid, with a lot of unsatisfactory loose ends ungathered up. I only tell it because I fancy that at the back of it you may find some hint of the spirit that has helped the British Army in many a tight corner.

Private Wally Ruthven was knocked out by the bursting of a couple of bombs in his battalion's charge on the front line German trenches. Any account of the charge need not be given here, except that it failed, and the battalion making it, or what was left of them, beaten back. Private Wally knew nothing of this, knew nothing of the renewed British bombardment, the renewed British attack half a dozen hours later, and again its renewed failure. All this time he was lying where the force of the bomb's explosion had thrown him, in a hole blasted out of the ground by a bursting shell. During all that time he was unconscious of anything except pain, although certainly he had enough of that to keep his mind very fully occupied. He was brought back to an agonizing consciousness by the hurried grip of strong hands and a wrenching lift that poured liquid flames of pain through every nerve in his mangled body. To say that he was badly wounded hardly describes the case; an R.A.M.C. orderly afterwards described his appearance with painful picturesqueness as "raw meat on a butcher's block," and indeed it is doubtful if the stretcher-bearers who lifted him from the shell-hole would not rather have left him lying there and given their brief time and badly needed services to a casualty more promising of recovery, if they had seen at first Private Ruthven's serious condition. As it was, one stretcher-bearer thought and said the man was dead, and was for tipping him off the stretcher again. Ruthven heard that and opened his eyes to look at the speaker, although at the moment it would not have troubled him much if he had been tipped off again. But the other stretcher-bearer said there was still life in him; and partly because the ground about them was pattering with bullets, and the air about them clamant and reverberating with the rush and roar of passing and exploding shells and bombs, and that particular spot, therefore, no place or time for argument; partly because stretcher-bearers have a stubborn conviction and fundamental belief--which, by the way, has saved many a life even against their own momentary judgment--that while there is life there is hope, that a man "isn't dead till he's buried," and finally that a stretcher must always be brought in with a load, a live one if possible, and the nearest thing to alive if not, they brought him in.

The stretcher-bearers carried their burden into the front trench and there attempted to set about the first bandaging of their casualty. The job, however, was quite beyond them, but one of them succeeded in finding a doctor, who in all the uproar of a desperate battle was playing Mahomet to the mountain of such cases as could not come to him in the field dressing station. The orderly requested the doctor to come to the casualty, who was so badly wounded that "he near came to bits when we lifted him." The doctor, who had several urgent cases within arm's length of him as he worked at the moment, said that he would come as soon as he could, and told the orderly in the meantime to go and bandage any minor wounds his casualty might have. The bearer replied that there were no minor wounds, that the man was "just nothing but one big wound all over"; and as for bandaging, that he "might as well try to do first aid on a pound of meat that had run through a mincing machine." The doctor at last, hobbling painfully and leaning on the stretcher-bearer--for he himself had been twice wounded, once in the foot by a piece of shrapnel, and once through the tip of the shoulder by a rifle bullet--came to Private Ruthven. He spent a good deal of time and innumerable yards of bandages on him, so that when the stretcher-bearers brought him into the dressing station there was little but bandages to be seen of him. The stretcher-bearer delivered a message from the doctor that there was very little hope, so that Ruthven for the time being was merely given an injection of morphia and put aside.

The approaches to the dressing station and the station itself were under so severe a fire for some hours afterwards that it was impossible for any ambulance to be brought near it. Such casualties as could walk back walked, others were carried slowly and painfully to a point which the ambulances had a fair sporting chance of reaching intact. One way and another a good many hours passed before Ruthven's turn came to be removed. The doctor who had bandaged him in the firing-line had by then returned to the dressing station, mainly because his foot had become too painful to allow him to use it at all. Merely as an aside, and although it has nothing to do with Private Ruthven's case, it may be worth mentioning that the same doctor, having cleaned, sterilized, and bandaged his wounds, remained in the dressing station for another twelve hours, doing such work as could be accomplished sitting in a chair and with one sound and one unsound arm. He saw Private Ruthven for a moment as he was being started on his journey to the ambulance; he remembered the case, as indeed everyone who handled or saw that case remembered it for many days, and, moved by professional interest and some amazement that the man was still alive, he hobbled from his chair to look at him. He found Private Ruthven returning his look; for the passing of time and the excess of pain had by now overcome the effects of the morphia injection. There was a hauntingly appealing look in the eyes that looked up at him, and the doctor tried to answer the question he imagined those eyes would have conveyed.

"I don't know, my boy," he said, "whether you'll pull through, but we'll do the best we can for you. And now we have you here we'll have you back in hospital in no time, and there you'll get every chance there is."

He imagined the question remained in those eyes still unsatisfied, and that Ruthven gave just the suggestion of a slow head-shake.

"Don't give up, my boy," he said briskly. "We might save you yet. Now I'm going to take away the pain for you," and he called an orderly to bring a hypodermic injection. While he was finding a place among the bandages to make the injection, the orderly who was waiting spoke: "I believe, sir, he's trying to ask something or say something."

It has to be told here that Private Ruthven could say nothing in the terms of ordinary speech, and would never be able to do so again. Without going into details it will be enough to say that the whole lower part of--well, his face--was tightly bound about with bandages, leaving little more than his nostrils, part of his cheeks, and his eyes clear. He was frowning now and again, just shaking his head to denote a negative, and his left hand, bound to the bigness of a football in bandages, moved slowly in an endeavor to push aside the doctor's hands.

"It's all right, my lad," the doctor said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The frown cleared for an instant and the eloquent eyes appeared to smile, as indeed the lad might well have smiled at the thought that anyone could "hurt" such a bundle of pain. But although it appeared quite evident that Ruthven did not want morphia, the doctor in his wisdom decreed otherwise, and the jolting journey down the rough shell-torn road, and the longer but smoother journey in the sweetly-sprung motor ambulance, were accomplished in sleep.

When he wakened again to consciousness he lay for some time looking about him, moving only his eyes and very slowly his head. He took in the canvas walls and roof of the big hospital marquee, the scarlet-blanketed beds, the flitting figures of a couple of silent-footed Sisters, the screens about two of the beds; the little clump of figures, doctor, orderlies, and Sister, stooped over another bed. Presently he caught the eye of a Sister as she passed swiftly the foot of his bed, and she, seeing the appealing look, the barely perceptible upward twitch of his head that was all he could do to beckon, stopped and turned, and moved quickly to his side. She smoothed the pillow about his head and the sheets across his shoulders, and spoke softly.

"I wonder if there is anything you want?" she said. "You can't tell me, can you? just close your eyes a minute if there is anything I can do. Shut them for yes--keep them open for no."

The eyes closed instantly, opened, and stared upward at her.

"Is it the pain?" she said. "Is it very dreadful?"

The eyes held steady and unflickering upon hers. She knew well that there they did not speak truth, and that the pain must indeed be very dreadful.

"We can stop the pain, you know," she said "Is that what you want?"

The steady unwinking eyes answered "No" again, and to add emphasis to it the bandaged head shook slowly from side to side on the pillow.

The Sister was puzzled; she could find out what he wanted, of course, she was confident of that; but it might take some time and many questions, and time just then was something that she or no one else in the big clearing hospital could find enough of for the work in their hands. Even then urgent work was calling her; so she left him, promising to come again as soon as she could.

She spoke to the doctor, and presently he came back with her to the bedside. "It's marvelous," he said in a low tone to the Sister, "that he has held on to life so long."

Private Ruthven's wounds had been dressed there on arrival, before he woke out of the morphia sleep, and the doctor had seen and knew.

"There is nothing we can do for him," he said, "except morphia again, to ease him out of his pain."

But again the boy, his brow wrinkling with the effort, attempted with his bandaged hand to stay the needle in the doctor's fingers.

"I'm sure," said the Sister, "he doesn't want the morphia; he told me so, didn't you?" appealing to the boy.

The eyes shut and gripped tight in an emphatic answer, and the Sister explained their code.

"Listen!" she said gently. "The doctor will only give you enough to make you sleep for two or three hours, and then I shall have time to come and talk to you. Will that do!"

The unmoving eyes answered "No" again, and the doctor stood up.

"If he can bear it, Sister," he said, "we may as well leave him. I can't understand it, though. I know how those wounds must hurt."

They left him then, and he lay for another couple of hours, his eyes set on the canvas roof above his head, dropped for an instant to any passing figure, lifting again to their fixed position. The eyes and the mute appeal in them haunted the Sister, and half a dozen times, as she moved about the beds, she flitted over to him, just to drop a word that she had not forgotten and she was coming presently.

"You want me to talk to you, don't you?" she said. "There is something you want me to find out?"

"Yes--yes--yes," said the quickly flickering eyelids.

The Sister read the label that was tied to him when he was brought in. She asked questions round the ward of those who were able to answer them, and sent an orderly to make inquiries in the other tents. He came back presently and reported the finding of another man who belonged to Ruthven's regiment and who knew him. So presently, when she was relieved from duty--the first relief for thirty-six solid hours of physical stress and heart-tearing strain--she went straight to the other tent and questioned the man who knew Private Ruthven. He had a hopelessly shattered arm, but appeared mightily content and amazingly cheerful. He knew Wally, he said, was in the same platoon with him; didn't know much about him except that he was a very decent sort; no, knew nothing about his people or his home, although he remembered--yes, there was a girl. Wally had shown him her photograph once, "and a real ripper she is too." Didn't know if Wally was engaged to her, or anything more about her, and certainly not her name.

The Sister went back to Wally. His wrinkled brow cleared at the sight of her, but she could see that the eyes were sunk more deeply in his head, that they were dulled, no doubt with his suffering.

"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions," she said, "and you'll just close your eyes again if I speak of what you want to tell me. You do want to tell me something, don't you?"

To her surprise, the "Yes" was not signaled back to her. She was puzzled a moment. "You want to ask me something?" she said.

"Yes," the eyelids flicked back.

"Is it about a girl?" she asked. ("No.")

"Is it about money of any sort?" ("No.")

"Is it about your mother, or your people, or your home? Is it about yourself?"

She had paused after each question and went on to the next, but seeing no sign of answering "Yes" she was baffled for a moment. But she felt that she could not go to her own bed to which she had been dismissed, could not go to the sleep she so badly needed, until she had found and answered the question in those pitiful eyes. She tried again.

"Is it about your regiment?" she asked, and the eyes snapped "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes" again. She puzzled over that, and then went back to the doctor in charge of the other ward and brought back with her the man who "knew Wally." Mentally she clapped her hands at the light that leaped to the boy's eyes. She had told the man that it was something about the regiment he wanted to know; told him, too, his method of answering "Yes" and "No," and to put his questions in such, a form that they could be so answered.

The friend advanced to the bedside with clumsy caution.

"Hello, Wally!" he said cheerfully. "They've pretty well chewed you up and spit you out again, 'aven't they? But you're all right, old son, you're going to pull through, 'cause the O.C. o' the Linseed Lancers[Footnote: Medical Service.] here told me so. But Sister here tells me you want to ask something about someone in the old crush." He hesitated a moment. "I can't think who it would be," he confessed. "It can't be his own chum, 'cause he 'stopped one,' and Wally saw it and knew he was dead hours before. But look 'ere," he said determinedly, "I'll go through the whole bloomin' regiment, from the O.C. down to the cook, by name and one at a time, and you'll tip me a wink and stop me at the right one. I'll start off with our own platoon first; that ought to do it," he said to the Sister.

"Perhaps," she said quickly, "he wants to ask about one of his officers. Is that it?" And she turned to him.

The eyes looked at her long and steadily, and then closed flutteringly and hesitatingly.

"We're coming near it," she said, "although he didn't seem sure about that 'Yes.'"

"Look 'ere," said the other, with a sudden inspiration, "there's no good o' this 'Yes' and 'No' guessin' game; Wally and me was both in the flag-wagging class, and we knows enough to--there you are." He broke off in triumph and nodded to Wally's flickering eyelids, that danced rapidly in the long and short of the Morse code.

"Y-e-s. Ac-ac-ac."[Footnote: Ac-ac-ac: three A's, denoting a full stop. In "Signalese" similar-sounding letters are given names to avoid confusion. A is Ac; T, Toe; D, Don; P, Pip; M, Emma, etc.]

"Yes," he said. "If you'll get a bit of paper, Sister, you can write down the message while I spells it off. That's what you want, ain't it, chum?"

The Sister took paper and pencil and wrote the letters one by one as the code ticked them off and the reader called them to her.

"Ready. Begins!" Go on, Miss, write it down," as she hesitated. "Don-I-Don--Did; W-E--we; Toc-ac-K-E--take; Toc-H-E--the; Toc-R-E-N-C-H--trench; ac-ac-ac. Did we take the trench?"

The signaler being a very unimaginative man, possibly it might never have occurred to him to lie, to have told anything but the blunt truth that they did not take the trench; that the regiment had been cut to pieces in the attempt to take it; that the further attempt of another regiment on the same trench had been beaten back with horrible loss; that the lines on both sides, when he was sent to the rear late at night, were held exactly as they had been held before the attack; that the whole result of the action was _nil_--except for the casualty list. But he caught just in time the softly sighing whispered "Yes" from the unmoving lips of the Sister, and he lied promptly and swiftly, efficiently and at full length.

"Yes," he said. "We took it. I thought you knew that, and that you was wounded the other side of it; we took it all right. Got a hammering of course, but what was left of us cleared it with the bayonet. You should 'ave 'eard 'em squeal when the bayonet took 'em. There was one big brute----"

He was proceeding with a cheerful imagination, colored by past experiences, when the Sister stopped him. Wally's eyes were closed.

"I think," she said quietly, "that's all that Wally wants to know. Isn't it, Wally?"

The lids lifted slowly and the Sister could have cried at the glory and satisfaction that shone in them. They closed once softly, lifted slowly, and closed again tiredly and gently. That is all. Wally died an hour afterwards.

AN OPEN TOWN

_"Yesterday hostile artillery shelled the town of_ ---- _some miles behind our lines, without military result. Several civilians were killed_."--EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.

Two officers were cashing checks in the Bank of France and chatting with the cashier, who was telling them about a bombardment of the town the day before. The bank had removed itself and its business to the underground vaults, and the large room on the ground floor, with its polished mahogany counters, brass grills and desks, loomed dim and indistinct in the light which filtered past the sandbags piled outside. The walls bore notices with a black hand pointing downwards to the cellar steps, and the big room echoed eerily to the footsteps of customers, who tramped across the tiled floor and disappeared downstairs to the vaults.

"One shell," the cashier was saying, "fell close outside there," waving a hand up the cellar steps. "_Bang! crash!_ we feel the building shake--so." His hands left their task of counting notes, seized an imaginary person by the lapels of an imaginary coat and shook him violently.

"The noise, the great c-r-rash, the shoutings, the little squeals, and then the peoples running, the glasses breaking--tinkle--tinkle--you have seen the smoke, thick black smoke, and smelling--pah!"

He wrinkled his nose with disgust. "At first--for one second--I think the bank is hit; but no, it is the street outside. Little stones--yes, and splinters, through the windows; they come and hit all round, inside--rap, rap, rap!" His darting hand played the splinters' part, indicating with little pointing stabs the ceiling and the walls. "Mademoiselle there, you see? yes! one little piece of shell," and he held finger and thumb to illustrate an inch-long fragment.

The two officers looked at Mademoiselle, an exceedingly pretty young girl, sitting composedly at a typewriter. There was a strip of plaster marring the smooth cheek, and at the cashier's words she looked round at the young officers, flashed them a cheerful smile, and returned to her hammering on the key-board.

"My word, Mademoiselle," said one of the officers. "Near thing, eh? I wonder you are not scared to carry on."

The girl turned a slightly puzzled glance on them.

"Monsieur means," explained the cashier friendlily to her, "is it that you have no fear--_peur_, to continue the affairs?"

Mademoiselle smiled brightly and shook her head. "But no," she said cheerfully, "it is nossings," and went back to her work.

"Jolly plucky girl, I think," said the officer. "Nearly as plucky as she is pretty. I say, old man, my French isn't up to handling a compliment like that; see if you can--"

He did not finish the sentence, for at that moment there was a faint far-off _bang_, and they sensed rather than felt a faint quiver in the solid earth beneath their feet. The cashier held up one hand and stood with head turned sideways in an attitude of listening.

"You hear?" he said, arching his eyebrows.

"What was it?" said the officer. "Sounded like a door banging upstairs."

"No, no," said the cashier. "They have commenced again. It is the same hour as last time, and the time before."

Mademoiselle had stopped typing, and the ledger clerk at the desk behind her had also ceased work and sat listening; but after a moment Mademoiselle threw a little smile towards them--a half-pleased, half-deprecating little smile, as of one who shows a visitor something interesting, something one is glad to show, and then resumed her clicking on the typewriter. The ledger clerk, too, went back to work, and the cashier said off-handedly: "It is not near--the station perhaps--yes!" as if the station were a few hundred miles off, instead of a few hundred yards. He finished rapidly counting his bundle of notes and handed them to the officer.

When the two emerged from the bank they found the street a good deal quieter than when they had entered it. They walked along towards the main square, noticing that some of the shopkeepers were calmly putting up their shutters, while others quietly continued serving the few customers who were hurriedly completing their purchases. As the two walked along the narrow street they heard the thin savage whistle of an approaching shell and a moment later a tremendous _bang_! They and everybody else near them stopped and looked round, up and down the street, and up over the roofs of the houses. They could see nothing, and had turned to walk on when something crashed sharply on a roof above them, bounced off, and fell with a rap on the cobble-stones in the street. A child, an eager-faced youngster, ran from an arched gateway and pounced on the little object, rose, and held up a piece of stone, with intense annoyance and disgust plainly written on his face, threw it from him with an exclamation of disappointment.

The two walked on chuckling. "Little bounder!" said one. "Thought he'd got a souvenir; rather a sell for him--what?"

In the main square, they found a number of market women packing up their little stalls and moving off, others debating volubly and looking up at the sky, pointing in the direction of the last sound, and clearly arguing with each other as to whether they should stay or move. A couple of Army Transport wagons clattered across the square. One driver, with the reins bunched up in his hand and the whip under his arm, was busily engaged striking matches and trying to light a cigarette; the other, allowing his horses to follow the first wagon, and with his mouth open, gazed up into the sky as if he expected to see the next shell coming. A few civilians scattered about the square were walking briskly; a woman, clutching the arm of a little boy, ran, dragging him, with his little legs going at a rapid trot. More civilians, a few men in khaki, and some in French uniform, were standing in archways or in shop-doors.

There was another long whistle, louder and harsher this time, and followed by a splintering crash and rattle. The groups in the doorways flicked out of sight; the people in the open half halted and turned to hurry on, or in some cases, without looking round, ran hurriedly to cover. Stones and little fragments of débris clacked down one by one, and then in a little pattering shower on the stones of the square. The last of the market women, hesitating no longer, hurriedly bundled up their belongings and hastened off. The two officers turned into a café with a wide front window, seated themselves near this at a little marble table, and ordered beer. There were about a score of officers in the room, talking or reading the English papers. All of them had very clean and very close-shaven faces, and very dirty and weather-stained, mud-marked clothes. For the most part they seemed a great deal more interested in each other, in their conversations, and in their papers, than in any notice of the bombardment. The two who were seated near the window had a good view from it, and extracted plenty of interest from watching the people outside.

Another shell whistled and roared down, burst with a deep angry bellow, a clattering and rending and splintering sound of breaking stone and wood. This time bigger fragments of stone, a shower of broken tiles and slates rattled down into the square; a thick cloud of dirty black smoke, gray and red tinged with mortar and brick-dust, appeared up above the roofs on the other side of the square, spread slowly and thickly, and hung long, dissolving very gradually and thinning off in trailing wisps.

In the café there was silence for a moment, and many remarks about "coming rather close" and "getting a bit unhealthy," and a jesting inquiry of the proprietor as to the shelter available in the cellar with the beer barrels. A few rose and moved over to the window; one or two opened the door, to stand there and look round.