Chapter LXIII: Eager on the Scent

Eager's lean and lively face became well known in the camps and trenches. He was keen to see all he could, and was everywhere welcomed with acclaim, but perhaps the greetings he most enjoyed were the rough grateful words of men whom he had helped and heartened in the field hospitals, and who had recovered sufficiently to get back to their work. These would do anything for him, and from morning till night he was all over the place, seeing everything, mightily interested in it all, and leaving, wherever he went, a trail of uplifting cheerfulness which was a moral tonic.

He watched the perpetual fierce little fights over the rifle-pits, and went down into them and tended the wounded when chance offered. He mingled with the frequenters of the Picket House, and watched the effect of the somewhat desultory pounding of the batteries by the big guns. He crept cautiously through untold miles of muddy trenches, both French and British, and viewed with wonder the gigantic tasks which prepared the way for the second bombardment. And in the hospitals he soothed many a sufferer's passage to more peaceful quarters, and put fresh heart into those whose lot it was to go back to the front.

In the officers' tents and huts he was hail-fellow-well-met everywhere, and the only fault found with him was that he could not be in many places at the same time.

He heard matters discussed there with an outspoken freedom which would have set ears tingling at home; and when he asked how soon it was going to end, was told, "Never, my boy. It's going on for ever and ever." And an irreverent one added, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen!"

"End, my dear fellow? Why should it end?" said still another, waving an old briar at him, with the smoke curling like a flag of truce from the stem. "They've got unlimited supplies to draw upon, and an open road to get 'em in. As fast as we kill 'em they bring in fresh ones. As fast as we knock down their earthworks they build 'em up again----"

"Faster!" growled another.

"Yes, faster. I don't see why it should not go on till the year 2000--going on as we are. It's not a siege; it's a discipline--a chastisement for our sins: I only wish----"

"Hear, hear!" grunted another, who had heard that wish many times before.

"What do you wish?" asked Eager.

"I wish all the Red-tape and Routine people at home could be driven into the trenches here and kept there for a month. They'd learn a thing or two."

"Die . . . never learn," growled the other.

"If we'd gone right in when first we got here, it would have been a most enormous saving, even if the cost had been heavy. For some reason we lost the chance, and it's never going to come back. We're like a prize-fighter pummelling away at the other fellow's leg and hoping to break him in time that way. We may tire him out, of course, but its a deuced slow business."

"Do they never exchange prisoners?" asked Eager.

"We never take any worth exchanging. It's only the ruck we get, and they're mostly dead."

"Their boots are the best part of 'em," said the other. "Our men are always better shod after a sortie. Gad! sir, it would have made you blaze to see our fellows--Guardsmen and all--tramping about in mud and snow with no soles to their rotten boots! I hope the man who made 'em will spend his eternity in a snowy hell with raw bare feet!"

But one night they were all out in haste, at the sound of heavy and continuous musketry down in the trenches on the left attack; and Eager, tumbling out and rushing on with the rest, found himself where a noncombatant had no right to be.

He had gone plunging downwards with the others, in order to see all he could, till he fell bodily into a trench. He picked himself up and joined the stream of men hastening towards the firing, and found himself suddenly in the thick of things--bullets humming venomously past his head, men falling with groans and curses by his side, and a big man, standing just above him on the rough parapet of the trench, shouting to his men to "give it 'em hot with the steel," and meanwhile picking up the biggest stones he could find and hurling them at the oncoming Russians in front.

The men clambered up and swept away into the darkness with shouts and cheers and clash of steel, and Eager was left alone in the trench with the fallen ones. Up from below rose an awful turmoil, lit now and again by receding flashes, then a final British cheer, and one more sortie was repulsed.

It was only next morning that he learned the size of it.

"They say there were about fifteen thousand of them out last night," said one of his friends. "One lot went for the French over by the Mamelon, and the rest came up here."

"Gordon's men say he was on top of the trench chucking stones at the beggars as they came up----"

"I saw him," said Eager. "He was standing just above me, shouting to his men and flinging stones as hard as he could. Then they fixed bayonets and went downhill like an avalanche."

"You'd no right to be there, my boy."

"I suppose not. I went to see what was up, and fell into a trench, and ran on with the rest. Was the Colonel hit?"

"Couple of bullets in him, but not deadly."

"It's amazing to me that any one comes through alive."

"Yes, it feels like that at first, but you get used to it."

"Did we lose many?"

"Pretty heavy; but there are four or five Russkis to each of ours. Ground's thick with 'em. They'll want an armistice to clean up, I expect--generally do."

And, sure enough, the Russians presently requested a truce to pick up their men; and before long the white flags were flying on the batteries, and the men of both sides streamed out into the open, picked up their dead and wounded, and took stock of one another.

This was the chance Eager had been waiting for, and he went down to the debatable ground between the lines with the rest.

It was a horrible enough sight--a couple of thousand dead and wounded men strewn thick in that narrow space; but the stretchers were busily at work, and he had his own inquiries to make.

A number of Russian officers were strolling about, dressed in their best and smoking their best cigars, and quite ready for a talk.

He approached one, lifted his hat, and asked in French:

"I wonder if monsieur could afford me some information?"

At which the Russian smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled.

"With pleasure, monsieur. We have at this moment one hundred thousand men in there and five thousand guns, and provisions for fifteen years, and when they are used up we have five times as many more to come."

"If you could give me a satisfactory word about two young officers, prisoners in your hands, you would ease some very sore hearts at home, monsieur. That is all I ask. I have come all the way from England to get news of them."

"If I can, monsieur. What are their names?"

"Carron; two brothers--one in the Engineers, the other in the Hussars."

"_Tiens!_ Yes--Carron! I know them. Some of our guns have the same name. They are well, monsieur. I saw them only yesterday."

"Thank God for that! And I thank you, monsieur, most gratefully."

"It is nothing. One of them was sorely wounded, but the Grand Duke sent his own doctor, and he is recovered. They were walking together yesterday, and we spoke. I shall tell them of your inquiry. What name, monsieur?"

"Eager--Charles Eager. Will you tell them all are well at home and very desirous of seeing them. If only this terrible war would come to an end!"

"Yes, indeed; _le Malheur!_ But I assure you, monsieur, we will stop fighting at once if only you will all go home."

"I wish I could make them," said Eager. "It is terrible work." And he looked round at the broken men lying so thickly all about.

"It is rough play. Whether the omelets are worth all the broken eggs, I cannot say. Have you any idea what we're fighting about, monsieur?"

"General principles, I suppose."

"Ah, he is a costly leader, this General Principles," said the other, with a twinkle. "Permit me to offer you a cigar."

"We will exchange," said Eager, producing some of Sir George's extra specials. "Let us smoke to a speedy peace."

"With all my heart." And they parted friends, and both went their ways wondering why such things must be. And if the Russian never delivered Eager's message it was not his fault, for he was killed by a shell that same afternoon in Bastion No. 4.

The ground was cleared at last. There was a moment's pause. Then the white flags came fluttering down, and a gun from the Redan sent a shot hurling up the trenches, to show that playtime was over.

Eager was much comforted in mind by his interview with the Russian. He had seemed a good fellow, and could have no object in deceiving him. He wrote long letters home, and resolved to wait on and see if the great bombardment, to which all efforts were now directed, would bring the end any nearer.

And so it came about that he stood with the rest on Cathcart's Hill, in the misty drizzle of that bleak Easter Monday morning, and watched the opening of the second bombardment of Sebastopol.

They could hear enough up there. All round the vast semicircle more guns were crashing than had ever roared in concert before. But they could see very little. The gunners themselves could not see. They knew Sebastopol lay over there and they were bound to hit something.

And Eager strained his eyes into the chill white mist to see all he could, and felt sick at heart at thought of the destruction any one of those wildly flying shot and shell might wreak.