Chapter VIII: An Eye for an Eye

Captain Kettle stepped out from the little knoll that sheltered him, and ran rapidly across the open. The German bullets hummed near his ears, sang by his ribs, hissed past his legs, and spat up fountains of dust from the ground below, but he went steadfastly on to where the man was writhing and squirming in the barbed wire, and with brisk, capable fingers disentangled him.

The man said, "Go away, you damned fool. I'm done for."

"If you speak to me like that, you son of a brick," returned the little sailor, "I will stamp the tripes out of you. Say 'Sir' when you address me. And lift up your starboard elbow. I've got all the rest clear now. Will it hurt you if I lift you by your left arm?"

"I'd rather you left me alone. I'm done in. I'm shot through the backbone. Thanks all the same."

"H'up you go now," said Kettle, "and mind don't knock off my hat, because it's the only one I've got out here, and I have them built at Scott's, and can't buy another nearer. Anyway, I can't in decency leave you out there hung up in that fencing wire for those Dutch swine to plug at. It gives them ideas above their station."

"It's jolly decent of you," said the soldier faintly as Kettle lowered him gently down on the short turf behind the knoll, "but you've wasted your wind. I'm a goner."

"If I'd a bottle of Horner's Perfect Cure with me, I'd make you as fit as French. Horner's has cured worse cases than yours. As it is, I'm afraid, my lad, you'll have to wait till I can get one of those regulation doctors to come and patch you up."

"If you could fix me a drink I'd remember you later on. It's the very devil this thirst."

"I know the feeling," said Kettle. "I've been hit myself. You shall have something wet if it can be got. I'll just put this other fellow's coat under your head--so. He's got no further use for it. Now take a grip on your nerves and expect me back here in twenty-eight minutes. I've got another man to see. But when I get back you can build on my having some liquor of sorts in my pocket, if it's only cold tea. Apologize in advance, my lad, if I can't bring you anything better than cold tea."

"You're a good sort," said the soldier faintly, "I won't forget, now--or later. So long. Keep away from these pellets."

Captain Kettle rose up from the man's side, brushed the mud from his knees, made himself as spruce as the occasion would allow, and worked his way rearwards to the ruined brewery where Monsieur Joseph Mumm had arranged to meet him with the cinematograph camera.

There was, however, no Monsieur Joseph, and in his place lolled an extremely dirty British officer in khaki, with red tabs on his collar. The officer was smoking a pipe that gurgled, and was adding artistic touches to a map of his own production.

"Hullo," said the officer, "who the devil are you? How's the pig trade?"

The sailor introduced himself formally and produced papers.

"Come to take photographs of Belgium to annoy William with, have you? Well, so far as I am concerned, and especially if you can give me a box of matches, you may go along and prosper. I'm only a gilded subaltern of the staff and I am too busy with my own job here to find time to run you in. But if you go on long enough you'll come across some officer who'll either hang you out of hand or pack you off home again, papers or no papers. You look too much the British farmer to be quite unnoticeable in this dear country. Isn't there a grand smell of beer in this ruin? There's not a drop left though. I've looked."

"I came to meet a party here, sir, a Belgian named Mumm. Have you seen him by any chance?"

"If he was a littlish fellow with a pale face, and hump shoulders, and a club foot, who carried an infernal machine with a handle to it, I did. Lord, I do itch. Haven't got any insect powder by any chance, have you?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm travelling light at present. It was Mumm you saw. Did he leave any message?"

"Well, as you seem to be the nobleman he expected, you may as well have it. He returns anon. I'm not much good at Chochtaw, but as far as I could gather from his rapid conversation, he's gone to fetch his wife and bring her back here."

"James!" said Kettle nervously. "His wife! I didn't know he had one. I don't like this."

"Cheer up," said the subaltern, cocking his head and admiring his map work, "and don't fear the worst. You haven't seen the lady yet. She may even be good-looking. You can never tell what will marry which. During your recent stroll through that barbed wire in front, did you happen to notice what gauge it was, or must I go out and see?"

"I'm afraid I don't carry an accurate wire gauge in my eye, sir. But I've got an errand out there as soon as I've found something to drink, and I'll bring you back a sample."

"If you don't look out," said the staff officer thoughtfully, "your promising young career will be cut short if you go gadding about in this health resort. Have you been hit already by any chance? I noticed you limped when you came in."

"That was on account of my wooden leg, sir."

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know I was dipping into domestic secrets. If you want a drink, there's my flask. It's filthy, but it's wet. It's made of some patent tabloids that my favourite aunt sends me, and is guaranteed, I believe, to keep off malarial fever, ingrowing toe-nails, and that tired feeling. Here, I say, I offered you a swig. I didn't ask you to walk off with the bally flask."

Captain Kettle worked his way back to the wounded man with so much care that he was only shot at once. Night was closing down, lurid with afterglow, icy with wind from the North and East.

Guns growled in a distant ring. Bullets from nowhere spat and whinnied, and occasionally one which had achieved a ricochet went past with a _whoop, whoop, whishy_! Into the No-man's-land where the morning's action had taken place, two armies shot with indiscriminate hate.

The sailor found his man, and handed the flask. He had to put his arm behind the man's shoulder and lift him before he could drink.

"I say, squire, that's awfully good of you. Rum tipple, too, but I suppose my taste's out of order. I've had a pretty thick day ... and now I'm going to see the chap who does sentry-go ... in the Place Beyond. And that isn't a joke, because ... there ... He is."

He pulled himself half erect with a grinding jerk, and brought his hand up to the salute, and answered an unseen inquisitor.

"One of the English, Sir.... A bad record perhaps.... But--I tried to do my job."

Then he dropped back and slowly stiffened, and Captain Kettle took off his hat.

In the meanwhile Monsieur Joseph Mumm of Louvain was having trouble with his wife. Madame Joseph, who always prided herself on being _bien chaussée_, flatly declined to run. Indeed in her absurd high-heeled shoes running was an impossibility, but she had not the honesty to admit this. She said running was undignified, and Joseph should have told her earlier that the unspeakable Bosches were so near, and that he had mismanaged things as usual, and how she could have brought herself to marry such a man was more than she could then imagine.

Joseph, however, loved her, and refused to be ruffled.

They came at last to the battered brewery, and were welcomed by the war-worn subaltern.

"Hullo, Joseph," said the subaltern in his best English, "so here you are again as bright and bonny as ever, and no holes in you? And this is Madame? I told our friend, the agriculturist, she'd turn out to be a beauty."

"No spik Englisch."

"I know you don't, my tulip, or I wouldn't be so free with my compliments. Curse this pipe! Now I wish you'd either skin out of here or get to cover. Savvy? _Lyo doggo_! Or else some energetic Bosch gunner will spot us, and turn on the frightfulness, and that always makes me nervous. Madame, I'm sure you have your reasons for strafering Joseph, and giving me the glad eye. But I've a girl of my own at home, and another out here, and I can't be true to a third. It's beginning to look as if our friend the nobleman who stole my flask isn't coming back. You never can bet on your life insurance in these stirring times. But if he does, you turn your eyes on to him. He's the little man for the ladies, I bet a pot of jam. And by the Lord, here he is, and none the worse."

Captain Kettle took off his hat with stiffness and looked annoyed.

"Cheer up, Sir Owen," said the subaltern pleasantly. "Belgium mourns, but Madame's got a smile left, and I told her not to waste them on me. She was to save all up for you."

"I'd wring your neck for twopence," Kettle snapped.

"I don't think you could," said the subaltern with a sigh. "Many heroes have tried--and alas, failed. It was owing to their failures that the Cambridge Rugger Captain, a man I disliked, was compelled to give me my blue as a forward. Here! Get to ground quick. Shell coming."

Thereafter for the space of forty-five minutes high explosive shells sang through the night and smashed the remains of the brewery to dust, and exploding shrapnel spat over it spitefully. Captain Kettle coughed when lyddite vapour mixed itself with his cigar smoke, and talked rabbit shooting with the subaltern. Madame Joseph ogled Kettle. And poor Joseph winced at each shock of the exploding shells, and screamed at the louder ones. He was not cast in a heroic mould. And he loathed himself for appearing as a poltroon under the eyes of his wife, whom he loved.

"I suppose by the way," said the subaltern, "you didn't come out here for the mere sport of the thing and to take photographs?"

"No, sir," said the little sailor. "I've a contract on to find Belgian mechanics, and ship them out of the country, to make shells in a works at home. The men I was after lived in that little town where you were scrapping this morning and I couldn't find any of them left. Mr. Mumm's cinematographing scheme was, so to say, a by-product. I've always had my knife into the German Emperor ever since that telegram he sent about Dr. Jameson, the interfering swine. And I'd a notion Mr. Mumm could find me mechanics, though I had only his word for it. Hullo the shelling's stopped."

"Then I'll give up whistling, 'Wait till the clouds roll by, mother,' and toddle off home. I'd ask you to our mess, Sir Owen, but if our Old Man spotted you it would be home, sweet home, for yours by the next train. However, I dare say we shall meet in England sometime. So long."

"A pleasant young man that," mused the sailor. "I wonder what his name was." And then he turned to disentangle the hands of Madame Joseph, which had clasped themselves affectionately on his shoulder.

"It makes dark, now," she whispered, "and Joseph does not count. You will protect me? You are a man."

"A married man, Madame, and don't you ever forget it. Take Joseph's arm, please, and we will go to the village over to the sou' west there, and see if we can't find a _café_ that serves dinner. Joseph, I want you to remember that I give you twenty-five francs a head for all Belgian fitters and turners you introduce me to that will come over to England and earn big wages making shells."

"I know twenty," said Joseph eagerly. "Give me twenty francs each, and they are yours."

"Twenty-five I said, and I pay when the goods are delivered--and shipped--and not before. But if a twenty-franc note on account will ease the situation, it is yours."

"Monsieur," said Joseph Mumm ecstatically, and Captain Kettle, very much to his disgust, found himself kissed. "Monsieur, till now I have never met you. I salute you as the saviour of Madame."

"Better take two twenties whilst you are about it," said Kettle, edging away. "No, Madame, Madame, I say no. You need not thank me in the least. It is an entirely business proposition, as you will understand when I tell you there is an English M.P. at the back of it."

Madame replied with a gesture. "You give money to that? _Pzzt!_ He will merely spend it on drugs, and me, I shall trudge as usual. For me is there now ever a taxi-automobile? _Pas!_"

Later in the evening, in a dishevelled town just outside the German lines, Kettle saw the truth of this charge. Joseph bought drugs, small white tabloids of unknown composition, made solution, inhaled this into a tarnished syringe, and made injection into a lean and spotted forearm. Till then he had been a worm, though always (be it understood) the devout lover of Madame. But with the drug in his veins he was the hero of chivalric times, Madame's adorer, and her very sure guard. And the odd thing (to Kettle's mind) was that Madame seemed to prefer him in this exalted state.

But all this, as Captain Kettle kept on reminding himself, was not business. He had come out to Belgium for skilled mechanics, having promised Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., that if such still remained alive he would bring them back with him to England, if necessary by the hair of their heads, and in spite of the Kaiser William's teeth. And so far he had shipped but three, and doubted if they would arrive.

"Munitions," Carnforth, M.P., had said, "munitions, chiefly in the way of shells, are what we want, and when you hear my fellow-politicians bellowing that we have plenty, don't you believe them. They are merely trying to hide their own inefficiency and keep their own salaries going. I've got an empty bay at my Works, and a lot of lathes, but the British mechanic is either not to be got or too big for his boots when you've found him. The decent ones are all gone to the war, and I've no use for the wasters who might offer. But if you can find me Belgians who both can work and will work, I will put them in the way of earning five pounds a week per head."

Captain Kettle carried with him as personal luggage a parcel of circulars setting forth in two foreign tongues the more attractive of these points, and had distributed them lavishly under the muzzles of German rifles, but so far mainly with poor results. The Belgian mechanic was not at the moment receptive of new ideas, as was perhaps natural. Conceive the British mechanic, with Germans in Britain, asked by some alien whom he understood imperfectly, to go overseas to a land where the working man eats horse for preference. One can understand the Belgian reluctance.

But with a brain brightened by his drug, Monsieur Joseph Mumm developed unexpected powers. He teemed with suggestions, and as they sat at dinner hissed them out in true conspirator's style. Most of them were unpractical, many were fantastic, but some had glimmerings of sense.

"Do not heed him," said Madame. "He does not know about these mechanics. He is a professional man, my husband, though for the moment he has a pretty wit. _Pas?_"

"Don't run him down, ma'am. He's some remarkable sound ideas, but I wish he'd speak French or English or one of God's languages instead of switching off into Walloon, or Flemish, or German, or whatever it is. Look here, Joseph, you say these engineers have their Lodge. What do you mean? Masonic?"

Again came the whirl of words.

"Well, call it Guild, or Trades Union, or something like that. Where is it, and have you the pass-word? Be quick. By the sound of the firing the Germans will be here by morning."

Joseph at that moment of exaltation had everything--certainly such a trifle as entrance to a guild of base mechanics. When could they go? This moment or sooner. He leaped up and fled into the night, and Kettle, after bows to Madame, limped after him.

In due time they came to the secret place of assembly, which, after all, had little of secrecy about it. The mechanics of the little business town met in a cellar amongst wine casks. They stood about on a blue floor, and gesticulated in an atmosphere rich with tannins and ethers. It was rather a jarring change from the mingled smell of wood-smoke and garlic Captain Kettle had left at the restaurant, and he lit a damp, black Canary cigar to counter-balance it, whilst Joseph Mumm with much florid phrase explained him.

And then came interruptions. From the street above and without there came the clattering of iron-shod hoofs, the crackle of shots, the shrill screams of hurt men, and now and again the more dreadful shriek from a woman or child.

One of the men peeped from the head of the stairway and came back with a scared face. "Uhlans!" said he. "The rest of the Bosches will follow. Our troops must have fallen back. They always do fall back."

"If you ducks had accepted my offer to go to England," Captain Kettle told them, "instead of wearing yourselves out with oratory, we might have been well on the way out of this by now. As it is, the best thing to do for the moment is to shut that door and sit tight. Those parties on horse-back are out to murder somebody, and with them it's first come first killed. I don't want you to be too pushing. You can be useful."

The men listened and shivered. They were mechanics, not fighters, and this truculent little Islander evidently knew what he was talking about. He looked a fighter, every inch of him, and if he advised caution there was evidently some reason for it.

"But you," said Kettle, turning to Joseph, "you had better slip out and look after your wife."

Joseph shivered. The drug had died out in him and he was no longer the hero. He had a headache, he was shaken, he was unashamedly afraid.

"Oh, well, just as you like," said the sailor with contempt. "I'd go myself if I was free. But I'm under orders now, and my owner comes first. I've got to get these mechanics shipped across to a town in the Midlands, and with the beastly Germans buzzing about one's ears it's going to be a tougher job than I reckoned on. Your friends here have the nerves of sheep."

The mechanics, with the horrors of the neighbouring Belgian towns fresh upon them, were hard to move. Their country had been crushed with Satanic efficiency. Terror stalked through it raw-headed. They had not read the details in the columns of a censored newspaper. The full beastly story had been chattered out to them by wild-eyed, shivering survivors. Small wonder they were cowed.

Most had others besides themselves to think about--wives, mothers, daughters--and the Huns were raging through the town and carrying out their full programme of frightfulness whilst they, able-bodied men though they were, cowered in the wine merchant's cellar, impotent to help or resist.

"To hear you ducks talk," said Captain Kettle disgustedly, "one would believe you don't want to do anything, or say anything, or think anything that'll hurt the Emperor of Germany's feelings. Now, I'd cheerfully give my wooden leg just for the luxury of having him here in this room for two minutes so that I might pull his nose. And it is an American limb that cost, with spares, £30. Great James! Have none of you got a tail to wag? The Germans are playing Hell's delight with your women and kids this minute, and the most you can say is 'So mote it be.' Can't some of you do a bit of killing in your turn? Get out of here. Be dangerous. Go for every German you see with your finger-nails and your teeth if you've nothing better, and you'll find the German will run. Then gather your women and come back here. I'll do the rest."

"What, you'll take our wives too? You never said that before."

"Then, by James! I say it now. Now then, out with you! All that are back here with their women in two hours' time I will take out of this filthy Belgium to a place where the Huns can't get."

The mechanics sullenly shouldered their way out through the cellar door with Kettle's tongue lashing them from behind, and then from the darkness of a distant corner came the frightened moan of M. Joseph Mumm.

The little mariner stalked across, put fingers on the humpback's collar, and shook him. "If you think a kicking will do you good, just mention it."

"Give me a little money. I must have money. It is to buy film with. You said you wanted cinematograph pictures and I cannot take them without film, negative film, you understand, and that will cost money. Please----"

"Shut up! You're after drugs again, and you've a skinful of those already. Now clear out of this one-time, and go and hunt up your wife. I'll come with you till you find her, in case you forget between now and then what your errand is--you miserable bag of shivers!"

Out into the street they went, lit now by burning houses, and horrid with the noises of a sack.

"My God! we shall be seen in all this glare," said poor Joseph.

"Then put back your shoulders and walk as if you owned the town. These devils won't touch a man with a stiff upper lip if they can find another with his knees twittering."

"_Dieu de Dieu!_ but hear the screams!"

"There are too many screams for my taste," said the sailor acidly. "Your friends are dying like sheep, Joseph, when if they'd the sense they might die like dogs, and pull some of these other dogs down with them. If you'll take the tip from me, you'll get your teeth picked clean and ready for biting. Where did you say Mrs. Joseph was?"

"At the _café_ where we dined."

"Then go along and collect her, and bring her to the Lodge. I'd better not come with you as I expect I look a bit English, and might bring down attention. But I will hang about, board and board, in the offing, and bear a hand if you look like needing one. Mind your head!"

A German soldier, red with recent murder, and with blood-lust glaring from his eyes, ran at them from a doorway. Joseph Mumm covered his face, moaned, and cowered up against the wall. Captain Kettle attracted the man's charge with a yell, then dodged, and tripped him as he passed. Thereafter he jumped upon the man's back, and dirked him heartily with his own bayonet....

Joseph Mumm found himself shaken viciously by a fierce-faced man with a red torpedo beard, in pickle-haube and long grey-green overcoat. "By James! Do you dare to make me give an order twice? I told you to be off and collect your wife. Go! D'ye hear me! Go, you swine!"

The humpback hobbled off, and Kettle with Mauser at the trail, followed at a discreet distance. Around them the sack continued, and horror abounded. Another soldier danced up drunk, with rifle slung over his shoulder, and cigar boxes in his arms. All the boxes except two he dropped to the cobbles, and then opening those he had left, he solemnly emptied the tobacco rolls over Captain Kettle's helmet.

Now the little sailor, as has been shown in these memoirs, was the last person in the world to take liberties with, and that German soldier had a narrower escape from being smitten violently with a Mauser butt than he probably suspects to this day. But it flashed upon Captain Kettle that here was a certificate for his disguise; the German had taken him for another German; and, in view of what was to come, this perfect make-up was necessary. But at the same time, as head of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists, he felt very keenly the degradation of being an actor. He followed after M. Mumm, telling himself that bundle of terror little knew what insults his protector was forced to put up with.

Joseph Mumm tottered in between the gaily lit green-painted tubs of shrubs which advertised the front of the _café_, at a point where two streams of German officers made ingress and egress. Captain Sir Owen Kettle, with a start, remembered that a German private should never breathe the air hallowed by his officer, and (using his new-found caution) cut into a side street, and worked his way round to the back of the _café_, where he remembered a side window.

But when he put his face to the pane and peered round the side of the blind, the scene dished up through that narrow slit staggered even his steel nerve. The place was full of German officers, many of them roaring with drink. One, in a chair, struck with spurred heels at a piano's keyboard; two for a bet were shooting at the bottles in the bar with other bottles; Belgian corpses lay on the floor, and the men of Kultur kicked them as they passed; Belgian women were there being vilely ill-treated; a stout, struggling priest, held between four officers, was having his bare feet grilled at a stove.

At one side of the ruined _café_ lay Madame Mumm, dead.... There was no doubt as to how she had died.... Facing a group of three of the soberer officers, Joseph, who had loved her, with light laugh and humorous gesture, was giving information about the little town. He was making no attempt to avenge his wife. He was merely being a traitor.

Captain Kettle was a man with a strong stomach, but he was nearly sick then. "My Great James!" he muttered. "And they hate the English a thousand times worse than they hate these poor ducks. I suppose we've Josephs at home, too. What would the swine do if they got to England? There's only one way of taming them now, and that's by killing them off. Well, I have no time for frills like cleaning up Germany just now. I must get back to my job."

Now, Kettle was under no illusions about the capabilities of the members of the Mechanics' Lodge. Turners and fitters they might be; fighting men they were not; and he had a shrewd idea that truth and faith were not in them. When he made his offer to transport them and their women to British soil, he had a plan already matured in his mind, but did not tell it, because of a very reasonable fear of informers.

There was a chemical works near the Lodge-room, and alongside in the road, awaiting erection, was a large iron vat, made from a Lancashire boiler with its flues and tubes removed. The vat was perched on a broad-wheeled trolley, and had a manhole at its top, and another, with door lying near, at its lower edge. Coupled to the fore-end of the trolley was a lusty traction engine, deserted certainly, but trickling steam. Here was a car in which, packed close, he reckoned he could transport fifty people to the Belgian frontier.

The question of a driver worried him. Amongst the members of the Mechanics' Lodge the odds were heavy on finding at least one man who could handle a road locomotive. But would that man have nerve? This was an essential qualification. The drive from the sacked town to the Dutch frontier was not going to be, he plainly foresaw, a simple trip to suit a nervous man. At a pinch he could drive himself, but another man as guard would be desperately needed, and he had a profound distrust for these Belgians. The lamentable example of Joseph Mumm was still hot within him.

At this stage of doubt then he ran into another German soldier round the corner of a block, who cursed him in a language which was not German, and presented a prompt bayonet to hamper his further advance.

"If it wasn't for that spiked hat," said Kettle warily, "I should say you were a gentleman I met not very long ago near a beer-mill."

"By Gad! It's my pal the pig-dealer! D'ye happen to have matches on you? I found a feather to clean out my pipe, and now I haven't a light. I say, worthy knight, do you know you are on the wrong side of the fence, and are liable to be hung on sight if the Bosches clap eyes on you? You really shouldn't do these sort of things at your time of life."

"Can you drive a traction engine?"

"It's rather changing the subject, but I can. It happens I'm a sapper, and that was part of my ABC. Nobody ever recognizes my true worth. Even the girls I'm engaged to don't appreciate the treasure they've snapped up. And nobody ever supplies me with matches. But why a traction engine, noble stranger? You may want to pull a travelling circus round this benighted country, with brass band attachment, but my humble ambition is to sneak away to my nice wet dug-out as quietly as possible."

Captain Kettle's fingers itched. He had a thousand wishes to catch this big casual youngster by the collar and shake the foolishness out of him. But by an effort he restrained himself, and spoke instead. His tone was acidulated, but his explanations were clear.

The staff subaltern scratched his head. "Seems to me, Sir Owen, that if I don't get scuppered over this little entertainment of yours, it's likely to cost me my commission. My immediate boss is very keen on his young men attending to their own particular jobs, and not getting switched off on to side tracks. He broke a man only last week for slipping off for a day's snipe-shooting. What he'd say if he caught me philandering after the beauty and fashion of Belgium doesn't bear even thinking about. Is Madame Joseph one of this troupe, by any chance, that you're personally conducting?"

In ten words the sailor told of Madame Joseph's fate and Joseph's treachery.

The tall subaltern blew through his bubbling pipe and put it in his pocket. "That puts the hat on it. That decent little woman! I always said those chaps weren't fit to have commissions. They aren't gentlemen. They don't know how to behave like gentlemen, and will never learn. Well, I'll come in. And is that your traction-engine? She's number-one top-size. Well, the Lord grant there are plenty of horse-troughs on the way. With that grate-area she'll hanker after liquor like the Bishop of Sodor and Man."

The subaltern tried his water, peered into the firebox, raked and coaled. Captain Kettle watched him with an approving eye.

"You seem to know your job."

"I can't help it. They turn us out so perfect from Woolwich we're almost inhuman. H'm! This caravan compounds when she gets going, but starts out on full steam for both cylinders. I wonder which gadgett.... Yes, sir, I beg pardon?"

"I said how long before you will have enough head of steam to pull out of here?"

"I must fill my water-tank first at the hydrant there. Call that eight minutes. You can up-anchor and off in half-an-hour, if that will do?"

"Right. Don't get killed whilst I'm away."

Now the members of the Mechanics' Lodge were desperate enough, and had terror put into them, heart and soul, by the sack of their town, as the invaders intended. But they nearly drove Captain Kettle desperate before they could be brought to see the feasibleness of his plan. They talked, and they screeched, and they supplicated; they appealed to heaven, and they openly wept; and their women did all these things, and more.

At last Kettle got to the far end of both his politeness and his patience. If he could not quell their oratory with his tongue, he must try more primitive means.

"Yes," he said, when at last he had got them quiet and had put his crude argument back into his pocket, "the beginning of discipline is learning to wait till your betters speak first. I'm sorry to have to pull a gun before you ladies, but if you'd known my shooting, you need not have been scared of being hit. I should have bagged a husband every shot, and there's none of them would have been much loss. Now then, stand fast where you are those that are coming to Holland with me, and fall out there between those two casks those who funk it."

Again there was the buzz of talk, and the whirl of gesticulation; but the compelling voice once more brought silence: "I give you thirty seconds to decide."

That seemed to crisp the argument. Four men--smallish, white-faced men they were--and no women, separated themselves from the main group, and stood between the casks.

"Ah!" said Kettle, "and as soon as we have got nicely under way you'll go and try to curry favour by telling. That right, you others?"

They sent up a yell of assent.

"Well, don't shout it. You're so boisterous. You must tone down before you get to England, or people will stare at you. I commend to you your four friends between the claret casks. Take them with you, and keep them quiet. If they won't keep quiet, wring their necks. If you fail in that, remember it is your necks that will pay. Now then, move ahead to the chemical works, and if any one makes so much as a whimper, recollect I will deal with him."

The loading took time. There was only the one manhole available as entrance-way to the boiler's dismantled interior, and for some of the ladies it was a tight fit. However, pressure, moral and physical, helped things along, and when all were inboard, Captain Kettle and the staff subaltern left them to sort themselves, and lifted the heavy iron manhole door into place and nutted it home.

"That," said Kettle, "will keep the Bosches out and our beauties in."

"Lord! won't they be fruity inside? May I go ahead now? By the way my boiler's blowing off, I'm afraid she's getting so full of steam she may want to leave us for a home in the sky. The old bird's got a whacking big grate-area."

The traction-engine tugged at its spring draw-bar, and, with the big boiler on its broad-wheeled trolley rattling behind, roared out northwards over the cobbles.

Uhlans galloped past them with questing lances; a burning house dropped flakes of fire on them as they lumbered past; and cordon after cordon of blood-lusting soldiery, driving the people of the suburbs into the central slaughter-ground of the market-place, opened out and let them pass.

A motor-car would have been stopped, a horsed vehicle would have had no chance of passage, but who was going to interfere with a traction-engine driven by two German soldiers, with a huge, empty boiler clamouring behind its noisy heels at exorbitant speed?

There were no instructions for such an apparition as this, and, anyway, it was making such an infernal din that no one could make its custodians hear.

Captain Kettle reached over and bawled in his companion's ear: "You'll have the whole concern tumbling to bits if you push on at this pace."

"Probably. But Lord, man, can't I drive?"

The German Army is organized down to the last decimal. The German troops they met solemnly goose-stepping towards France would have known how to deal with foot, horse, or guns, with spies in every shape, with an invasion of aeroplanes, howitzer shells, or Senegambian sharpshooters. But Potsdam had not contemplated Belgian civilians leaving their country in a boiler, and had made no provision for the case. To the troops no Belgians showed through the boiler's skin, and the traction engine drivers (in German uniform) were evidently and unashamedly in a desperate hurry. Here, the troops thought, was obviously a sudden order of the Most Highest.

Only one attempt was made to stop its triumphant retreat, and that was on the Belgian side of the Dutch border. Men spread out, calling and bellowing. A gate was slammed and shut. A trumpet squealed, and a troop of horse answered it. But the car of Juggernaut was not a thing to stop. Juggernaut splashed aside the horse, and sailed through the gate, and chain, and men, and everything else that stood in its clanking path, and from its head there gushed a sudden efflorescence of gesticulating Belgian men and shrilling Belgian dames, who called down curses on the invaders of the land they had left behind.

"Well, I wish you joy of your pals," said the subaltern, slowing up by the Dutch Customs House. "I bet I've burned out this boiler. The old dear hasn't shown water in her gauge for a good half-hour.... Yes? Oh, no, Mr. Douanier, I am not the skipper, nor, thank the Lord, am I German. My friend here is in command, and will pay your import duty. He isn't a German either, although he looks it. He's a Britisher, too, and he's a pig-dealer of high descent when he's at home."

But here, of all ludicrous places, a hitch occurred. Certainly there was a tariff for importing "one traction engine (damaged) and one Lancashire boiler (dismantled)" into Holland, but the goods were so unusual that the official in charge regretted that he would have to apply to headquarters for instructions. Presumably, he did so apply, but the Dutchman is not swift to move, especially if there is no money to give him impetus. So Kettle by means of a shipping agent got his Belgian mechanics and their womenkind started off _en route_ for Mr. Carnforth's Works in the Midlands, and smoked Dutch cigars to the accompaniment of the subaltern's unclean pipe at a spruce little tavern just inside the border. Between whiles they passed the time of day with the Germans, who were mending the smashed Belgian gate on the other side of the frontier line beside their white-walled Custom House.

Then came the film. It was handed in mysteriously, and Kettle often wondered afterwards whether Joseph was not his own messenger. But the little humpback never appeared. The subaltern with the unclean pipe--whose name he never learned--was the man who found out its points.

Captain Kettle, as became the founder of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists, made a point of never entering a theatre, and included picture halls under this ban. The subaltern was an expert in both. The subaltern also, as became a British officer and a sapper, knew how to procure a cinematograph projector, with narrow-angle lens for a long throw, and how to secure light, and how to work it. He did all these things that same night after dinner, setting up his machine on the Dutch side of the border, wiring his arc-lamp from the tavern, and using the white-plastered wall of the Belgian Customs House over the frontier as screen. Dutchmen and Germans formed the audience.

The film sounds flat in scenario form after the real thing. You must go and see it for yourself.

It starts with the exterior of the _café_ before and after the sack. (Joseph must have cut out the first of these from an old negative taken in happier days.) Then an interior (badly lit) showing German officers prone in all directions. A title explains that they were "_Drugged ready to receive punishment._"

Then there is a pretty forest glade into which Madame Mumm presently "fades in." She is dead, and laid out reverently. Then by a simple "stop-film" trick, German officers appear one by one against each of the trees that surround the little clearing.

They are all free of their drug now, and very much alive, but their feet are tied together and their hands are tied behind them. Then nooses are placed round their necks and over boughs of the overhanging trees, and one by one they are hauled up.

The film gives the fullest details, as you will agree when you see it. There are twenty-three German officers, and they all hang and kick their last on twenty-three trees, with the body of poor Madame lying peacefully in the middle of them. Then by another simple camera trick the woman's body fades out, and the men's are left hanging. That is the end.

"My Great James!" said Kettle when the white wall of the Belgian Customs House flicked back into darkness, "do you suppose Joseph did all that?"

"I'm afraid he did. The camera can lie to a certain extent, but not about all those essentials. How did he get those chaps unconscious? Was he a bit of a chemist by any chance? Oh, of course, I remember. He drugged himself, didn't he, poor little chap?"

"He did."

"Well, that film's too melodramatic for our taste, of course, but we must carry in mind he was awfully fond of that pretty wife of his."

"Yes, sir, he was. And he was not the coward I thought him. I apologize to Joseph. He was not a fighting man, and he had to take the only course that was open. The beasts had got his girl, and he had to get level, as any man that was worth calling a man would do. I don't like his method--it's too Belgian for me--but he got level all right, and that was the main thing so far as Joseph was concerned."