Chapter III: Part 3

Despite the apparent nearness of the strife, there was little of military spectacle about the depot. At the corner of the wood a squadron of dismounted troopers stood by their horses. A little further back, along the rough lane which led into the field, a gun mounted on a motor-lorry stuck its nose perpendicularly into the air. Three or four men sat on the lorry in easy attitudes and one stood up, glasses to his eyes, scanning the blue sky. The group of khaki-clad men paid no more attention to them than they did to the battle-din which swelled over the woodland. They were absorbed in contemplation of a large curious-looking bush which stood a few yards in front of them.

A closer look at that bush revealed that it was artificial. It was, in fact, a largish shed whose walls and roof were composed of green boughs. Men were busy within it and a shaft of sunlight that penetrated the leaves fell in a patch of gold upon some yellow fabric. The object thus illuminated was the wing of a small, single-seater monoplane.

A little apart from the other members of the group a slightly-built young fellow, garbed for the ascent, stood in earnest colloquy with a tall, lean staff-officer. Behind them the others conversed in tones just loud enough to be heard in the incessant roar. They were discussing the disaster of the dawn.

The blow of the enemy had been terrible. The Army had been smitten in its eyes. It was now only a blind giant striking at an adversary whose vision was unimpaired. The entire air-squadron of the force, rising from its harbourage at the break of day, had been suddenly assailed by a superior fleet that dropped out of the clouds upon them. Watchers from below had seen short lightning flashes stabbing the grey mist, had heard a sharp outbreak of firing, had seen phantom aeroplanes rising, circling, swooping, colliding in thin cloud, had seen the machines one after another tumble and dive, lapped by flames, in a sickening rush to earth. Not theirs alone now lay, crumpled and contorted masses of scrap-iron, over the countryside, but of theirs none had escaped. The rear of their battle-line was a picture that his scouts could report upon at leisure. What lay at the rear of his? None knew, but the vehemence of his fire told that he was pressing his advantage. The presentiment of defeat lay heavy on the little group as they disputed on the blame to be allotted for the catastrophe.

The staff-officer tugged impatiently at his little grey moustache. His teeth champed at a bit of grass that was no longer there. In his anxiety he had not noticed that it had fallen from his mouth.

"I wish those chaps would be quick," he said. "The General is most anxious to have that flank cleared up."

"They are being quick, sir," replied the aviator, with a smile. His keen, thoughtful face showed that he was not indifferent to the urgency of the situation, but his calm mouth told of nerves that nothing could shake. Within that green bower lay the one hope of the Army--its lightest and swiftest monoplane, damaged in landing the day before, now being repaired as fast as skilled hands could do the work.

"You quite understand, don't you?" said the staff-officer, repeating himself for the tenth time. "The General thinks that a movement is in progress against our right flank. A screen is extending there which he cannot penetrate. If they are moving a large force round us he can detach the Sixth Division to hold them, and with a massed attack he'll crumple up their left centre which they must have weakened. He'll repeat Salamanca, that's what he said--I don't know what happened at Salamanca," he concluded irritably, "but anyway he daren't move a man till he's sure. I wish your chaps would get finished." He looked up into the air above him with a circling glance. "How many have they got now?"

"Four, I make it," replied the aviator equably. "They had ten yesterday. Five were smashed up this morning. One got winged an hour ago."

At that moment a dirty and perspiring man came out of the bower and, approaching them, saluted.

"Ready, sir," he said.

"Right. Get her out, then," said the aviator. "No! Wait!" His gaze had gone up to the sky. "There he comes again."

"D--n!" said the staff-officer, staring upwards also.

High in the air an aeroplane was coming towards them, parallel with their own battle-line. In the swollen roar of the conflict, the hum of its engine was inaudible. It seemed to drift onward leisurely enough, sinking slightly as it approached but well above effective gun-fire. Tiny white dots of smoke that sprang into the air below it were a proof of that. Slowly, as though making a careful examination, it passed overhead. Suddenly it turned and dropped still lower, coming back towards them. Something had awakened suspicion in the men up there. The reason for that artificial bush became apparent. The staff-officer gazed at the aeroplane, now rapidly enlarging itself in his vision, as though mesmerised. Anxiety for that precious machine under the leaves paralysed him.

The aviator had turned to look at the gun on the motor-lorry. The group about it sat in quiet expectation. Its muzzle moved gently, came a little out of the perpendicular. The aviator looked up again at the machine drifting overhead. He heard a sudden heavy detonation on his left and almost simultaneously he saw a bright flash appear in the dark body of the aeroplane. The machine lurched, toppled, dived, and, falling rapidly, turned bottom up in the air. A couple of dark figures fell out, raced it in its rush to the ground. A long minute later it struck the centre of the field. Flames burst out of a shapeless wreck. The aviator did not heed it. He ran towards the bower.

"Quick!" he cried. "Get her out!"

Torn down by twenty pairs of eager hands, the bower fell apart. The little monoplane was run out, lay like a dragon-fly resting lightly on the earth.

The aviator climbed into his seat between the wings, sent a glance from the compass to the map held open in its frame, saw that the message bags were ready to his hand, tested the strap of the field-glasses hanging from his neck with a sharp tug. He was ready. In front of him two soldier mechanics stood holding the long blades of the tractor screw. Over there, beyond the wood, the uproar of the battle mounted in violent paroxysms each of which surpassed its predecessor. The tall staff-officer approached and held out his hand.

"Good-bye--and good luck," he said, "and for Heaven's sake let us know what's happening on that flank. Don't wait to get back--drop the message." He looked at his watch. "It's now twelve--if we don't know something within an hour it's all over with our chance. Can you manage it?"

"I'll try, sir," said the aviator, checking the hour with a glance at his own clock.

The staff-officer turned an anxious pair of eyes upward for a swift look into the sky, seemed about to make a remark and then obviously refrained. "Good luck!" was all he could trust himself to say.

The aviator smiled and nodded cheerfully. Then he ejaculated a sharp order to the mechanics. They flung the blades of the tractor into revolution. The machine, emitting a series of riflelike reports, commenced to run across the field. The tractor became a blur.

The woodland appeared to rush towards him and then suddenly dropped away in a diagonal underneath. His eyes on the dial of the barograph, the aviator warped the machine round and set the planes to an acute angle of elevation. Confident in the power of his engine he mounted steeply in a spiral. The record on the dial rose with every second--100 feet--200--400. In two and a half minutes he had risen 1000 feet. He cast a swift look below him. He was still over the field, had a glimpse of a group of tiny figures clustered in front of the sheds. The rim of the horizon came up, the earth fell into a great concavity. It was like looking down into a vast bowl containing woods and fields and flattened hills. From the bowl clouds of yellow-grey dust arose like smoke and out of the dust came a multiplicity of heavy crashes that detached themselves from a background of unceasing clatter mingled with one long rolling thunderous roar.

It was but a hasty glance the aviator threw below him. Still mounting, his eyes searched the blue air on a level with himself, above him. The enemy's three machines where were they? Far off to his left a dark speck hung in the sky. He watched it intently as his machine climbed. It was a biplane. It appeared to be drifting away from him, engaged in a reconnaissance of their left flank, he decided. At any rate as yet they seemed not to have perceived him. The others were not visible. He shot a glance at the barograph--3000 feet. He had been climbing for five and a half minutes. Almost immediately he saw a trail of smoke ascending with incredible velocity in the air a little below him to his right. The trail finished abruptly in a vivid flash, a burst of white smoke and a violent detonation. The monoplane rocked from side to side in the sudden disturbance of the air but continued to climb. A second later a similar trial ended in an explosion at a level with him on his left. He saw a gash appear suddenly in the fabric of one of his planes, and the needle of the barograph switch back 50 feet with a jerk. Then the altitude record mounted again steadily--3250--3500--4000. The noise of the battle diminished as he rose, dropped to a point where it was all but obscured by the roar of his own engine. Below him the smoke trails leaped up at him and burst viciously in vain.

Four thousand five hundred--he glanced at the hostile biplane to his left and saw that it hung larger in the sky. Even in the moment for which he watched it it dilated. It was approaching at top speed. He was discovered, pursued. Instantly he turned off to his right and raced across the battlefield in the direction of the threatening flank. As he did so, he perceived another aeroplane rising from the enemy's lines. It climbed swiftly in bold swoops and then shot off towards him in a great upward slant. Two! Where was the third? He failed to discover it and held on his course.

His direction was at an angle across the battlefield which took him towards the enemy's left flank rather than to their own right. As he sped over it, he looked down upon a broad miles-long belt of yellow-grey dust that rose raggedly into the air, and was spotted with an innumerable multitude of white puffs that renewed themselves as fast as they were dissipated. In many places these puffs congregated thickly and, as they broke, linked themselves with others until they floated like little narrow clouds in the air below him. As he looked down into the great concavity of the earth he seemed to be over some enormous smoking fissure in a crater whose circumference was the horizon. The rumble and roar which ascended from it assisted the illusion. Tiny sparks of flame darted and flickered in the fumes of that inferno, and here and there flashed a number of glittering points, the reflection of the sun from advancing bayonets. To distinguish men was impossible, but in occasional rifts in the dust curtain he could make out brown patches of varying size, and, over to his left, on the enemy's side, similar though darker patches.

He could permit himself no sustained scrutiny of the scene below him for the management of the machine began to claim all his attention. Even at that great height above the battle, the air on that windless day, shaken and riven by the unceasing concussions of the massed artillery of two armies, was full of flaws. The needle of the barograph flickered, oscillated violently in leaps to and fro. The monoplane, tilted dangerously, now on one side, now on the other, in eddies of the tortured atmosphere, slid downward dizzily ere it could be brought up to climb a bank of air. It needed strong arms at the controls, a quick brain and nerves of perfect tone to keep her upon the appointed course. Glancing back, the aviator saw that the flight of the nearer of the two hostile machines, the one which had risen from the enemy's lines and was now approaching him on his left, was similarly erratic.

An overpowering heat, as from a vast open furnace, arose from the battlefield below. It was the heat from thousands of explosions, renewed incessantly and sustained over many hours. Stifling gusts blew on to the aviator's face, carrying with them a peculiar smell of burning cloth. With these gusts the roar of the battle seemed to leap up to him. The air was oppressive despite the speed at which he clove it, highly charged with electricity, heavy with the menace of a storm. Yet no cloud broke the monotony of the blue sky. The machine raced onward, was now crossing the battle lines of the enemy's left flank.

Suddenly he heard a faint rattle behind him. The hostile aeroplane, realising that it had failed to head him off, was firing furiously. He felt the machine shiver under a quick succession of hard raps. Instinctively, he pressed upon his accelerator, and, with a touch on the warping lever, the machine shot forward at terrific speed. The raps ceased. He turned his head and saw his enemy rapidly diminish in size behind him, saw that the other aeroplane, the one he had seen first, had fallen far in rear. A confident smile came on the tight lips of the aviator. He could outpace them both.

He was now above the enemy's left flank--a little to the right of the spot that the Commander-in-Chief had designated as the object of his possible attack. The scout switched off his engine and commenced to drop along a slant towards the centre of the enemy's position. With the sudden silencing of his engine the roar of the battle came up at him in a crash and stayed there. He glanced at the time--12.13--and gave himself a limit of two minutes in which to reconnoitre. For the moment he ignored his adversaries in the air. As he gazed down through the transparent panel between his feet, his glasses to his eyes, the ground that slid away under him appeared to be subjected to a constantly increasing magnification. Fields, houses, roads grew momentarily more distinct. Without taking his gaze from the scene below the aviator checked the drop of his machine and drove forward. Quickly his trained eye took in the details of the ground, the position and approximate numbers of the men that he saw massed in dark patches here and there. Over a long stretch of the position the enemy's line was obviously thinner. The country behind it was empty of troops. The General's intuition was correct. The enemy had weakened his left centre. Point Number One was settled. Now what had he done with the troops he had withdrawn?

As the aviator turned his machine to reconnoitre in the new direction, he was surprised to see the hostile aeroplane between him and his objective. Absorbed in his scrutiny of the ground, he had all but forgotten it. It was slightly higher than himself and about half a mile distant. He could not carry out his reconnaissance without coming into fatal proximity to its machine-gun, and he could not return directly over the battle lines without passing between the crossed fires of this and the other machine now drawing close. Even as the realisation of his position flashed on him, a narrow slit appeared in one of his planes. The nearer of his foes was already firing.

Quicker than thought he turned and raced off into the country behind the battle. A plan, the only one with a possible chance of success, had sprung into his mind. He had no intention of failing in this all-important mission of his. But first he must get out of the range of that deadly machine-gun. He dared not rise across it at barely half a mile range. At full speed he raced away, inclining his machine downwards. The hostile aeroplane followed, depressing her course likewise, to get him into the zone of her fire or to force him to the ground. The scout's speedometer registered 100 miles an hour. Beneath his feet he had glimpses of trees and houses and fields flitting past in a stream where salient features prolonged themselves into long blurred lines. They looked oddly large after the altitude at which he had been contemplating them. He threw a glance over his shoulder at his pursuers. The nearer was now rather more than a mile away. The other had apparently given up the chase. The clock showed 12.15; in less than two minutes he distanced his adversary by nearly a mile--he had therefore a superiority in speed of about twenty-five miles per hour. He did not consciously deduce this result. His trained mind working with incomputable swiftness under the stimulant of imminent danger gave the result like an intuition. His plan presented itself to him completely formed. At this distance he could risk the danger zone of the machine-gun for the few moments he would be in it. He swerved his machine upward and climbed steeply. In a minute the other aeroplane was level with him; beneath him. The scout rose along a slant, slowing down his engine until his pace was almost equal to that of the machine below. Both rose steadily.

The battle din ceased altogether behind him. He flew in the seeming silence of the roar of his own engine and the deeper bass of the other machine, just audible, below. He bent forward over his map and picked out his approximate position. Then he noted a village some twenty miles in rear of the battle, and drew an imaginary line from it south-westward to the enemy's left flank. That village was to serve as turning-point. He should reach it, he calculated, at 12.27. The barograph indicated 3000 feet and still rising.

12.25--the scout bent his eyes on the ground. A couple of minutes later a handful of white cottages flitted past as he looked down between his feet. His enemy could not be seen. The body of the monoplane hid him as he flew below and slightly in rear, but the roar of his engine, louder than the scout's own, could just be heard.

Now was the time--the scout turned off abruptly at a tangent along the line he had marked out for himself and drove his engine at its fastest. The speedometer needle oscillated over 101 miles an hour. He calculated that he had approximately twenty miles to go ere he reached the patch of country he wished to explore. He should reach the commencement of the enemy's left flank at 12.39, and be able to spend six minutes in flying over five miles of ground and then have a couple of minutes in hand. To the trained intellect behind his keen eyes six minutes were amply sufficient. Having run along the left flank it was simplicity itself to turn to the right and glide down into his own lines. There seemed nothing to stop him. The pursuing machine was being quickly left behind. The slow biplane now far off to his right could not possibly arrive in time. The sky in front was clear of any menace.

Again he began to draw close to the great belt of dust-cloud which stretched out to his right and again the din of battle began to overpower the roar of his engine. Directly ahead was a dark mass of woodland. It was from thence that the enemy's screen around the right flank of the scout's army commenced. He swerved slightly to the left, behind it. The hour was a second or two over 12.38.

Below him was a network of country roads, and from four strands of that network which ran in an approximately parallel direction, coincident with his own course, arose long dense clouds of dust. It was the dust of marching columns. The scout shot a glance back at his pursuer, assured himself that it was five or six miles in rear, and slowed down his engine as he entered upon a long, gradual descent over the route of those marching columns.

For mile after mile on those four roads the dust cloud continued. The scout checked off the distances by villages on his map. Adding the length of the four roads together he estimated that about twenty miles of road was occupied by the marching force. It was a whole army corps, then, that was endeavouring to turn their flank. In the open fields between the roads he could distinguish small bodies of cavalry advancing in the same direction. The mass on the roads was certainly infantry, broken here and there by long columns of artillery. The low dense clouds of dust kicked up by the tramp of thousands of feet were cut into short sections where the guns and wagons of the batteries rolled onward. From a rough calculation of those intersected clouds he decided that four brigades of artillery were on the march. He had descended now to 2000 feet, and he kept at that height as he roared over the plodding columns. Behind him his pursuer had lessened the distance between them, was getting dangerously close. The biplane on his right was also approaching. Nevertheless, the scout held on his way comfortably. There was nothing to prevent him carrying out his plan.

He was already well beyond the prolongation of his own army's line of battle when he reached the head of the marching infantry. Contrary to his expectation, however, they were not wheeling to the right. They continued straight on, marching away from the battle, it seemed. The scout was puzzled for a moment. He searched the ground in front of him for more troops. It was apparently empty. Then, from a fold in the landscape considerably ahead, he saw another, smaller dust cloud arise. At his highest speed he raced towards it, overtook it in less than a minute. Below him a cavalry brigade, accompanied by two batteries of horse artillery, was trotting sharply forward. What was their objective? He scanned the country in front of them intently. Some three miles ahead of the cavalry was a wooded hill. He picked it out on the map, saw instantly that it commanded the main avenue of retreat of his army. The enemy's plan was clear. He would occupy it with the cavalry and the two batteries until the infantry got up. The threatened army, then attacked in flank and rear, would find its retreat cut off. If the scout's commander was aiming to repeat Salamanca, the enemy was endeavouring to repeat Jackson's march at Chancellorsville. The danger was pressing. The scout reckoned that within half an hour the hostile cavalry would be in possession of that hill. In an hour the infantry would begin to come up in support. Where was the Sixth Division that he had been told would check the flank movement of the enemy? He searched for it, saw a brown mass about two miles from the wooded hill. Its cavalry might get there in a quarter of an hour by a rapid dash. He had then a quarter of an hour to deliver his message and get the division set in motion. The hour was 12.46.

He wheeled towards his own line and commenced a downward glide at a gentle angle. Then, taking his hands from the controls, he rapidly wrote down a clear concise statement of the case in his report book. Even if he did not reach earth, his message might. He glanced up to see that his indefatigable pursuer was now swooping down to cut him off. Moments were precious. He ripped out the page, thrust it into the weighted message bag and tied it up. Then he started his engine again, aiming for the brown mass of the Sixth Division.

Something made him look to his left. He was startled to see a large biplane rushing up at him from the direction of the wooded hill. It had evidently descended to effect some repairs and had lain hidden far behind his own line. He recognised it at once. It was by far the swiftest and most powerful machine possessed by either army. On his present course a few seconds would bring him within range of its machine-gun. To his right the other machine was rapidly growing larger. In front, the slow biplane had sailed over the battle lines, was heading straight for him. The three machines were converging on him. The scout saw that he would either be forced away from the battle or destroyed, his message undelivered in either case.

He swerved his machine and climbed. If only he could get above the Sixth Division for an instant, he would throw over the message-bag, chance its being picked up. To do that it was necessary to get higher. On his present or a lower level he would be riddled with machine-gun bullets. His adversaries on either hand rose also, but he got the lead of them.

As they rose in circles he watched for his opportunity when both should be turned away from him. The moment came. He seized it and dived, with his engine running at full speed. The earth rushed upwards, its features enlarging themselves as though they swelled to burst. The brown mass of the Sixth Division spaced itself out into battalions, squadrons, below him, in front. They were exactly underneath. He flung out the message-bag, with something like a prayer in his heart. On either hand his adversaries were swooping down upon him. He thought he heard the rattle of their machine-guns, but in the roar of his own engine he could not be sure.

Down and still down the three machines rushed. Suddenly he noticed the slow biplane in front--on an even lower level than himself. It was very close. He saw the pale dot of the face of the man behind the gun. If he swerved he would be under its fire in a moment. If he kept on his course he must crash into it. His decision was instant, instinctive. He held on. One thought dominated him as he dived straight at it. Had his message been picked up? If not----? He saw the gleaming backs of the outstretched plane almost under him. He set his teeth for the impact. A second more--the wide stretch of yellow canvas suddenly jerked to the left and crumpled in a blinding flash. He had not touched. He swerved to the right with all his force in the tiniest fraction of a second and shot past something that fell, flaming.... A shell from below had hit the biplane at the moment almost of collision.

He had a confused sense of other shells exploding in the air. A battery was seizing its chance to get the enemy's aircraft in a cluster, regardless of the danger to him. He continued his rush downward, feeling rather than knowing that the other two machines were in close pursuit. If he could only be certain that his message had been picked up!

He flung a glance back over his shoulder. The powerful biplane that had risen from behind the wooded hill was close upon him. Why did they not fire? He felt himself a target, was surprised not to see the gash of bullets on his machine. The explanation flashed on him. The gun had jammed. The biplane came at him as though it were itself a projectile. Its crew had desperately resolved to ram him, to sacrifice themselves rather than to allow him to bring his precious information to the ground. They were almost upon him. He swerved and dodged. The biplane shot past.

Immediately he saw the other machine close upon him, saw a spurt of fire from the muzzle of its gun. He dived. A belt of trees rushed up at him, fearfully close. Their dark foliage seemed to break into puffs of black smoke over his eyes. He swerved instinctively, saw a meadow burst through the dark smoke, fly skyward in a mist of blood. With a last desperate effort he banked. His hands slid from the controls--everything swam. He was vaguely conscious of a heavy impact from underneath----

Something was burning his throat--he opened his eyes, gazed into a man's face close to his. Consciousness came back in a rush. He pushed away the brandy flask that was being pressed against his teeth and struggled to his feet. Strong arms supported him. Several men were round him, looking at him. He was close to a road, and along that road he thought he saw batteries of artillery galloping at full speed. He was not certain of their reality. They passed like phantoms in his vision, wavering up and down. He wanted to do something--to ask something--what was it? He all but fixed the elusive thought--and lost it. His hand felt for the duplicate report-book in his pocket--his desire was connected with that. The report-book had gone. Then a fragment of his intangible preoccupation floated, visible as it were, in his brain. He clutched at it.

"What--what guns are those?" he asked thickly.

"Divisional artillery--Sixth Division," came the reply. "All right. We got your message."

The scout put his hand to his brow and then, dropping it, stared at it stupidly. It was red.

"All right," said the voice. "You're hit--but not seriously. Lie down."

The scout collected all his faculties in an attempt to bring out one more thought from the obscurity which filled his brain.

"What--what time--now?" he asked.

"Just one o'clock." The voice appeared to recede to an enormous distance, although he felt the speaker's face close to his. "They're in time--don't worry. Lie down. The ambulances are coming in a minute or two."

The scout stood obstinately.

"The--the other--machines?"

"Bagged 'em both. You came down beautifully--like a kite." The voice sounded from worlds away.

The aviator put his hand to his head.

"In time!" He breathed the words rather than spoke them. They came like the sigh of a man utterly spent.

The man who had been supporting him turned round with a jump and focussed his binoculars on the wooded hill. A crowd of white puffs was breaking out in the air above it.

The scout, left unattended, swayed with hands stretched out like a blind man. The field whirled round and round suddenly with a fearful rapidity and then rushed up and struck him.

The man with the binoculars ignored his prone body.

"Beat 'em on the post!" he shouted in joyous excitement. "By the Lord! Beat 'em on the post!"

KULTUR (1915)

The subaltern commanding this section of the trench sat in a hunched position in the narrow corridor of earth topped with sandbags. His knees drawn up to serve as a support for the writing-pad, he wrote quickly between long pauses when he bit the end of his pencil and stared reflectively at the brown clay wall some two feet in front of his nose. At his side a man stood, bent and motionless, peering into the lower end of a long box, very narrow in proportion to its length, which he held against the side of the trench so that the other end just rose above the wall of sandbags. Further view down the trench in that direction was barred by the traverse--the thick dividing-wall of earth that would localise the effect of a shell-burst or a bomb. All was quiet. The subaltern might have imagined that only he and the look-out at his side remained buried in this flat landscape where once two armies had flung fire and noise and steel at one another, hidden from the sight of those who should have come to tell him that the war was over and the armies stolen away. He did not so imagine. Ever present to his mind was the parallel line of sandbags, some fifty yards away, between him and which stretched a tangle of wire overgrown with rank grasses and tufts of corn. That parallel line was the great permanent fact in his existence. He knew it in its every aspect better than he had ever previously known anything on this earth. Not a spot on that apparently deserted wall might change without his being interested to the quick. Even as he wrote, the feeling and the knowledge of it were concrete in his brain, constraining him to this cramped attitude.

Since October this wall of his had fronted the other wall and now it was June. For nine long months, through snow and rain and sunshine, from the long nights to the long pitiless days, these two walls had remained the same, sheltering the same lurking enmities though the individuals who temporarily incarnated them came and went. Sometimes ablaze with stabs of darting flame, erupting bombs lobbed with a deceptive innocent slowness through the air, belching a mass of men who ran and stumbled and fell in an infinite variety of ways--men who shouted and who screamed so that their voices pierced the appalling uproar; sometimes stretching blank across the fields in a deathly stillness as to-day; their position had never altered. The quagmire between them, criss-crossed with barbed wire, had grown up into a waste of grass and nodding poppies that nearly hid what looked like bundles of weather-stained old clothes whence came a sickening, all-pervading smell. Behind each wall, hundreds of men had died or been carried away, maimed and broken, a lifelong burden for some human heart. Not a sandbag of those piled to make the parapet which sheltered the subaltern, but might have had a man's name written on it in memoriam of a life suddenly extinguished. The necrology of the opposing parapet would have been as full.

In the hush which brooded over so much death--past and to come--a pause, it would seem, where the overhanging invisible demon of war reflected on its work--a mood of questioning, of revolt, came over the subaltern as he scribbled his pencilled lines.

"On a quiet evening like this one cannot help moralising a little," he wrote, "wondering what it's all for and what we purchase with our death. This constant murdering of individuals on both sides who commit the crime of inadvertently showing an inch of head--how does this help matters?" The sharp crack of a rifle somewhere along the trench caused the officer to raise his head, listening with all his faculties at strain. The look-out at his side did not stir, no report followed the first, and he bent himself again to his letter. "I don't want to appear squeamish, fine-stomached in this rough game, but I don't think I shall ever be able to kill cold-bloodedly. I have been unfitted by long centuries of culture----"

He was interrupted by the appearance of another officer, who squirmed himself round the traverse with a pronounced stoop necessitated by his uncommon tallness. The fair-moustached, boyish face of the new-comer was radiant with glee.

"I say, Lennard!" he said impetuously. "Ripping luck! We've just bagged Fritz! You heard the shot just now? Folwell, my sergeant, got him. Been waiting for him for over an hour, without moving a muscle. Topping chap, Folwell. All he said was, 'Married life don't seem to 'ave spoilt my aim, sir.' You remember, he asked for leave to get married?"

Lennard abandoned his letter and lit a cigarette.

"I wonder whether Fritz was married," he said with a little malicious smile, the ideas recently in possession of him firing a final shot in a faint rearguard action with the returning everyday occupants.

"Well, that's one more nuisance abated."

"Rather!" said the other, seating himself and likewise lighting a cigarette. "Fritz must have bagged not less than a dozen of our chaps," he calculated, gazing reflectively at the thin spiral of tobacco smoke which ascended straight in the still evening air. "Well, he's gone, thank the Lord! and we got Hans yesterday and Karl the day before. I must have a pot at old Hermann. If we could bag him we might hope for a quiet life."

Lennard nodded. Each one of the German snipers--if sufficiently lucky to carry on his profession for a day or two--acquired an individuality and a name. Hermann was an especially dangerous neighbour who lurked somewhere in a ruined cottage that lay between the lines where they bent away slightly from each other. He rarely fired except to kill, and hid himself so well that not one of the numerous patrols sent out had succeeded in discovering his lair.

The two subalterns chatted awhile over their cigarettes, while the red gold of the western sky faded into rose. They talked of the little incidents of mess and trench, magnified by their isolation from the main stream of life, and then, harking back, of the things that once had been so important to them in London town, and were now so dwindled and remote. A year ago Lennard was a critic who was read, and Wilson, the tall subaltern, a painter whose first success was hanging on the line. Both were, or had been, highly polished products of what we called, proudly, civilisation. As they talked the old scenes came back to them, obliterating the present. At last Wilson rose, responsive to a subtle inner sense of time measured, independent of his consciousness.

"Well, so long, old thing," he said, standing up and straightening his tall form, fatigued with so much bending. The momentary forgetfulness was fatal. On the instant a rifle cracked and the lanky subaltern collapsed as though his knees had been knocked from under him.

"My God!" cried Lennard, limb-paralysed by this brutally tragic reassertion of his environment. Trembling, his heart seeming to stop and swell within him, he bent down to his friend. He touched mere clothed flesh, heavy and inert, on which the flies had already settled. They buzzed away, indignantly asserting their right of pasture. A madness of anger at this wanton annihilation of a life that was not just a dull living but an irradiation of the spirit, connoting civilisation, highly conscious, swept over him. He burst into a torrent of incoherent wrathful curses.

"That was 'Ermann, sir," said the observer at the periscope. "I spotted the flash, in among them bricks."

Lennard rose, fiercely vengeful.

"Let me look. Where did you see the flash?"

"Three o'clock from that bit of greenstuff in the middle, sir," replied the man, ceding his place at the periscope. "You'll see a dark spot--that's 'is loophole."

Lennard gazed down into the mirror of the instrument. There was just light enough for him to pick up the spot indicated.

"Very good." He strode, with bent back, down the trench, muttering to himself.

It was night when, rifle in hand, he swung himself nimbly over the parapet. For some minutes he lay flat on the ground at the other side, not moving an inch. Over his head the crack of rifles and the loud, rapid hammer taps of the Maxims recommenced their fusillade against the heap of bricks. From the first shade of dusk he had arranged that a constant enfilading fire be kept up on the sniper's lurking-place. He had no intention of letting Hermann slip away--yet.

He raised his head slightly, fixed his bearings in the gloom and then, still prone, began to nip a way through the wire entanglements. A German flare went up, dazzling with a ghastly light, too brilliant for distinct vision. He lay motionless. As it descended and fizzled out upon the ground he had a clear view of his course. He was aiming at a point in front of the German wire, whence he could enfilade the gap between the heap of bricks and the hostile parapet. Over his head the hard, sharp cracks of his own men's fire followed one another continuously. They would not cease for nearly fifteen minutes yet. Meanwhile Hermann would be lying close. He cut and wrenched at the wire and wriggled forward, grimly disdainful of the barbs that plucked and tore his clothes.

Again and again a soaring German flare stopped his progress. Clearly, this incessant fusillade was making the enemy nervous. At each illumination he lay as if he were one of the bundles of old clothes that occasionally he pushed against. The British parapet darted with fire--awoke a sympathetic crackling somewhere to the right.

At last. He settled himself in a comfortable firing position, couched in the long damp grass. An insect, unaware in its littleness of the large death that whistled above its world, quitted a pendent blade, explored his cheek.

Crack--crack--crack! the last British rifles ceased. There was an instant's stillness, and then yet another flare shot up from the suspicious German trench. It fell, sizzled--illuminating the ruins that he watched with all his faculties focussed, all his nerves coming to a point on his trigger finger--and then the world plunged into blackness. There was silence and impenetrable darkness.

Minute after minute dragged slowly past in a dead hush. Finger on trigger, every fibre tense, the prone figure waited. A primeval self awoke in him--a savage who stalked and could indefinitely maintain his ambush. His senses were as keen as though hyper-stimulated by some strange drug. A grim, patient lust to kill reigned in him.

The minutes passed slowly, slowly. He looked to one of them, not yet arrived, as to a term. When? He felt it approaching, concentrated to a still acuter degree his attention. The trigger seemed to be pressing against his finger. What was that? Surely something was moving there in the gloom--by the ruin. Why did not the flare he had ordered go up? His whole soul went out in a desperate prayer for it as he held his breath and strove with baffled eyes against the darkness.

Suddenly the craved-for light shot up. Perception and trigger-pressure were instantaneous with the flash of its discharge. A running, stooping figure pitched headforemost before the stab of flame from the rifle.

Immediately a vicious fire from the German parapet answered this impertinence. The slayer lay still as death, listening with painfully acute perception to the ugly _phat!_ of bullets in the earth around him. A bomb fell, burst with a deafening report and a blinding flash of flame so close that he marvelled at his escape. By an effort of will he choked down the cough that the fumes provoked.

Rifle-fire at night is infectious. A sporadic and probably harmless duel sputtered up and down the trenches. At last a gun, way back somewhere, sent over a shell, and, as though obedient to this protest from their big brother, the rifles were silenced, one by one. The opposing trenches again lay in darkness and quiet.

The subaltern, assuring himself that all was still, wriggled forward to the body of his victim, lay full-length beside it. Quickly he ran through the dead man's pockets, stuffed a bundle of papers into his own. Then, a rifle in each hand, he crawled back to his own parapet, climbed over and lay down. In an instant he was sound asleep.

It was bright morning when he awoke. High up a lark was pouring out its cheerful song. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, saw the two rifles, and remembered with a smile. Close by him a man was heating some coffee in a mess-tin over a methylated flame. He asked for some and drank it with a pleasant physical sense of his body that was still alive, and could drink. It warmed him. Then he remembered the papers he had taken from the unlucky Hermann. Sipping at the coffee, he read a letter that was among them.

"Dearest Wife and Sweetheart," it ran, "I don't altogether like the
hatred of these Englishmen that your letter expresses. They only do
their duty as we do ours, and they fight well. Would all this killing
were over and we were friends again! It is in a sacred cause, I
know--we could not let our culture be stifled--but the sacrifices are
heavy. I sometimes wonder whether the old days will ever return, and
I shall once more write songs for you to sing in London and in Paris.
I can faintly hear a nightingale somewhere, or is it you?--I must
close now, as I am just ordered off to a dangerous post, and the dawn
will soon be breaking.

"All the love of Karl."

Lennard, moved by a sudden curiosity, looked at the superscription of the envelope, ready addressed. Evidently the sniper had put it in his pocket and forgotten to give it to his comrades before setting out. The name was familiar. He coupled it, Karl ----. His victim was a writer of songs that his wife loved to sing and he to hear. He sat for a moment gazing thoughtfully at the letter, yet without definite thoughts. Then, with a sigh, he rose.

Instantly a bullet smacked against the sandbags, missing his head by a couple of inches.

"Bad shot, that," he murmured as he ducked. "Lucky thing I bagged old Hermann!"

THE MAGIC OF MUHAMMED DIN

The intense heat of the day was already a memory of uneasy sleep, and the distant hills seen across the plain of grey, sun-baked mud were soft in a soft sky. Right across the horizon, as seen from the Political Officer's bungalow, stretched the mountain range, rising from deep blue at the base through a gradation of fairy amethyst and turquoise to a delicate pink suffusing the summits. The Political Officer, his left elbow resting on his writing-table, his fingers caressing the bowl of the old briar whose stem was gripped between white teeth, tobacco-smoke wreathing away from him, contemplated it with bent brows and narrowed eyes. The gaze of that lean face, sallow with many Indian summers, roved not over the distant prospect, tempting though were the transitions and flaws of changing colour on crag and peak to left and right of the point on which his vision was fixed. His expression was stern, the thrust forward of his clean-cut jaw predominant. Æsthetic enjoyment of the aspect of the frontier hills thus perfidiously beautiful in the evening light had no part in his meditations.

The curtain of the door was plucked aside. A long-robed native, white-bearded, entered noiselessly, bowed, with arms outstretched from his sides, stood erect and waited for orders.

The Political Officer responded with a nod to the "_Salaam, Sahib_." His gaze detached itself from the distant view, ranged keenly over the tall figure in front of him. Under the swathes of the green _pagari_ that narrowed the brown forehead a pair of dark eyes of strange intensity met his own. The disturbing effect of their direct gaze was heightened by the bushy white brows under which they glowed. The big, beaked nose, thin-bridged, emphasized their power. The long, white beard spreading over the breast solemnified them with a hint of ancient wisdom. The eyes of the white sahib and the ascetic _Haj_ (as his green turban proclaimed him) met unflinchingly.

"The _Sahib_ asked for the fakir Muhammed Din--is it well, _Sahib_?"

"It is well, _Haj_," replied the Political Officer, a twinkle in his eye and a subtle emphasis on the title.

"Did not the Prophet throw his green mantle over Ali that he might himself escape from his enemies, O Protector of the Religion?" replied the fakir, a little piqued.

"_Maloom_" ("It is known"), said the Political Officer, curtly but with a tone of friendliness. "I called you not to discuss the religion, but to protect it. I have work for you, Muhammed Din--dangerous work."

"It is well, _Sahib_."

"An emissary of our foes is among the tribes, Muhammed Din, and is preaching a false gospel to them. War and the woes of war will surely follow if we do not still his tongue. Listen! You have heard that the infidel Caliph Willem of the West has falsely proclaimed himself a follower of the Prophet that he may use the power of true believers to further his own wicked ends?"

"It is known, _Sahib_."

"He has sent one of his tribe, dressed as a fakir, into the hills to preach a new Jehad. Already the _mullahs_ (priests) are gathering about him. This fakir calls himself Abd-ul-Islam, but he is a Feringhi, no true believer, and no true friend to the religion. Yet he is leading many astray, for he deludes them with a false magic. You will see for yourself. You remember the magic pictures you saw at Karachi?"

"I remember, _Sahib_."

"It is such magic as that. There is none but Muhammed Din I might safely trust to close the mouth of such a rogue; therefore, Muhammed Din"--the eyes of white _sahib_ and Moslem fakir again looked into each other--"I am sending you on the mission. I asked you to come as a fakir because I judged that to be your best disguise. You have come as a _Haj_, which is even better. I do not want this impostor killed, if it can be helped. I want him exposed, discredited. I send you, Muhammed Din." He looked at him with significance as he added:

"You may find an old acquaintance."

The fakir stroked his long beard.

"He shall be brought to you riding backwards upon an ass, and the women shall mock at him' _Sahib_. I swear it."

The Political Officer smiled.

"None can if you cannot, Muhammed Din. Now I will explain these things to you more fully."

The Political Officer spread a map across the table and pointed out the route of the German agent across the Persian frontier and among the hills. His present abiding-place was fairly accurately known. The pseudo-fakir attentively considered the ways to it. Then he drew himself erect.

"It is well, _Sahib_. I will now go."

"You have a plan, Muhammed?"

The fakir smiled grimly.

"This dog has his false magic, _Sahib_, but Muhammed Din knows many magics that are not false. I have sworn."

"Go, then. Allah be with you!"

"And with you, _Sahib_!"

Muhammed Din salaamed once more, lifted the curtain, and passed out. The Political Officer watched him go across the compound, and then bent down to his work again with a little outbreathing of satisfaction. The Secret Service had no more reliable man than Muhammed Din.

* * * * *

The squalid little village high up in a cleft of the brown and barren hills, that gleamed golden aloft where they cut sharply across the intense blue of the sky, was filled with an uncommon concourse of tribesmen. And yet more were arriving. Down the stony paths which led to the village from the heights, up the boulder-strewn, dried-up stream-bed which afforded the easiest passage from below, the hillmen hurried in little groups--a bearded _khan_, a modern rifle on his shoulder, his cummerbund stuck full of knives, followed by a ragged rabble of retainers, variously armed. Their weapons were mementoes of generations of rifle-stealing and gun-running. Lee-Enfields, Lee-Metfords, Martinis, Sniders--all were represented. Not a few carried the old-fashioned _jezail_, the long-barrelled gun with inlaid, curved stock. All had knives.

They swarmed on the rough roadway between the squat stone, windowless houses whose loopholes were eloquent of their owners' outlook on life. They clustered round the stone-parapeted well in the centre of the village, so that the women with the water-pots were richly provided with an excuse for loitering. The clamour of excited voices resounding from the walls was re-echoed at a fiercer shout from the steep, towering hill-sides, stone-terraced near the village into plots of cultivated land.