Chapter XI: Part 11

Our commander breathes freely. Now we know where we are. We shall soon settle accounts with that pack.

The attack on the wood begins. It is not prepared for by fire, since it is desirable to lose no time. We must strike as quickly as possible, keeping in contact with the neighboring division. And it is marching forward abreast of ours.

With long, hard strides we approach the black fir trees at the forest's edge. A sign from the commandant and the naked bayonets are adjusted to the gun barrels. Many of them have cast for a moment a reflected ray of sunlight into the darkened wood.

The soil clings thicker to our shoes and our pace gets hotter. The faces of the men redden. They know what that means--wood fighting. Either victory at the first dash or a long hand-to-hand struggle--work for clubbed muskets and fists. But the wood lies still before us, as if it is asleep. Only in the tree tops there is a slight rustling.

Our captain goes on ahead. Now the shadow falls like a curtain drawn behind him. The first company after him. The second in echelon. And still not a shot. My men rush, with necks bent forward, among the first trees. Their countenances are hard and merciless and drawn about the nostrils. Here and there a sharp red spot shows on either cheek.

Suddenly a shot cracks out, and then a volley. And there--opposite the first company--a second, a third volley.

A few soldiers fall groaning against the trees. Here and there one hears the last shriek of a dying man. We sink flat on the soft ground and arrange our front. Before us and both to the right and left of us is the enemy.

But is it the enemy? There some Cossacks shoot singly or in little groups behind the tree trunks and stumps. We see a flat, dirty, green cap appear and vanish again, aimlessly and at random--now very near us and now deep in the wood or sidewards in the thicket.

Our captain gives the order: "Both wings bend backward. Fire at will!" And from our skirmish line comes the smothered beating of the Mannlichers--single and separate at first, then more and more concerted, and finally becoming one big volume, with a roaring echo, which envelops the trunks and the tree tops and floats out behind our back into the open.

The shots of our opponents sing over our heads and strike sharply into the timber. The enemy is now here, now there.

Our captain lies on the skirmish line. He has taken the gun of a wounded man and aims long and carefully before he pulls the trigger. Suddenly he springs up. For a moment we see his square, wrinkled face, stiff and impassive as ever; then he swings the rifle butt over his head and shouts: "Forward!"

The companies are in a narrow, closely concentrated line behind him. An iron rain greets us.

We dash over the first corpses of the enemy. From the soft bed of the fir needles long, blood-stained arms stretch after us--arms of men with yellowish, distorted faces.

Again we are forced to seek cover on the ground. Too many of our people have already fallen. And the enemy, whose front is not yet uncovered, bends around on both sides of us. We must have regard for the safety of our rear. Our first skirmish line takes the form of a shallow, wide-spread curve.

III--"WE DO NOT SURRENDER!"

On the wings the tumult breaks out anew. The captain crawls on his stomach along the front. His people must know that he is with them.

All at once he receives a start. There lies a Russian officer, among our soldiers. His youthful, handsome face is as white as the snow on the branches. His eyes roll and the pale lips try to form a word. The captain bends over him. A file leader says: "Breast and upper leg." They bandage the badly wounded man and give him something to drink.

Our captain wants to go ahead. Then the Russian says to him softly and in correct German, "Don't shoot!"

The captain pushes his cap back on his neck and lifts his eyebrows.

"How so? Will you surrender?"

The other tries to smile. His big, fine teeth gleam white.

"We are Don Cossacks. We do not surrender. But we have had nothing to eat. It is four days already. The horses are dead. And the Russians are already far away."

"How many are you?" asks the commandant.

"We were strong, six sontnias, perhaps. But the woods, the woods! There we stick day and night. And fight and fight. Each for himself, each alone, each without hope."

Our captain presses the wounded man, who seeks to raise his upper body, softly back on the ground.

And while the wood right and left rings with the echoes of musketry he kneels hesitatingly beside the Cossack officer. For the first time something of a soft expression steals over his impassive countenance. There is a slight quiver about the curves of his mouth.

"You must surrender," he says, after a pause, curtly and decisively. "It is an unequal combat."

The Russian shakes his head.

"They will not; we will not. We are Don Cossacks."

"But you must."

The captain springs up and gives the battalion bugler the order, "Cease firing."

The signal is heard with the greatest difficulty amid the thousand-voiced tumult. But slowly it gets the upper hand.

Suddenly the fire ceases along the entire line. Only in the depths of the wood a few single shots still ring out.

Again the captain bends over the injured man.

"We will tell them, you and I. You will give the command to your people. You must give it. And I shall honor your heroes; for they are heroes."

Four men improvise a litter. The Russian is placed on it. He groans at every step of the bearers and his eyes wander from one of them to the other. Our captain goes, head erect, into the darkness of the wood. Behind him go the two bearers with the officer. We wait and wait, clinging breathlessly to the ground.

The sun creeps through the branches and spreads its soft, grateful warmth over us. And of a sudden we are strangely softened, overcome by the light of the day and by the gleam of humanity which, as from another world, for once falls into our hard, hard life.

The minutes pass, slow and noiseless, coming and going without fighting, without bloodshed, without horror.

As the sun mounts higher and higher, the Cossacks gradually gather in our neighborhood. They stream toward us from all directions. The first of them are distrustful and sullen, the last of them storming and hungry.

We are horrified at the nameless suffering in their lean, misery-smitten faces. Then we turn our bread sacks over--and we shudder at the bestial ravenousness with which men can eat.

Our captain and the wounded Russian come with the last group. Both smile a smile such as I have never seen before.

At midday we get in touch with the neighboring division. We bring in 540 Don Cossacks, prisoners.

A BOMBING EXPEDITION WITH THE BRITISH AIR SERVICE

_Daring Adventures of the Royal Fliers_

_Told by First Lieutenant J. Errol D. Boyd, of the British Air Service_

The feats of the British fliers form a thrilling chapter of modern
heroism. Their exploits are innumerable. In the defense of London
from Zeppelin raids, on the Western and Eastern battle-front,
in the Dardanelles, over the deserts of Africa, and along the
valleys of the Nile--they are not unlike the crusaders of old in
their heroism. We here present one typical narrative--it is the
story of a Canadian, from Toronto, who relates his own thrilling
experience to a war correspondent of the _New York World_ at The
Hague. "Boydie," as his friends call him, was shot down by a
German anti-aircraft gun from the almost unbelievable height of
12,000 feet. Three cylinders were torn away from his engine. The
wings were pierced in five places. His machine dropped two miles,
twisting and turning, looping the loop ten times on his way down.
It finally landed, right-side up, with the young Canadian safe and
sound, just fifty yards inside of Dutch territory. He sprang from
his seat and gave brisk battle to the soldiers of Queen Wilhelmina.
They overpowered him, and interned him, but not until there'd
been a considerable mix-up, in which fists and noses figured
prominently--Boydie's fists and some Dutch noses.

I--"BOYDIE'S" OWN STORY OF ADVENTURE

It's the greatest game, the greatest thrill in the world! I used to think that driving a motor car 100 miles an hour was fun. I was in that game in Canada for a while. Then I thought that just riding in a slow old biplane 'bus was a pretty keen proposition. But a chap never knows what real sport is until he's driving his own fast machine, with a pal working a machine gun, and going after the other fellow hell-bent for election. That's the life!

It makes me laugh now to think of the old biplane "pushers"--with the propellers at the rear--that I used to fool with. Old Farnams and Curtises and Wrights. Why, a chap was lucky to get 65 or 70 miles an hour out of some of them.

It was the proudest day of my life when they gave me my flying ticket and a speedy little Nieuport biplane and said: "Here she is, Boydie. Take her over the Channel. Beat it for Dunkirk. Some of the others are going across this afternoon, so you won't get lost if you follow them. Top o' the luck to you, old Toronto." Half a dozen other machines went sailing over the water, 5,000 feet high, that spring morning doing a leisurely eighty miles an hour and spaced as evenly as a squadron of battleships in parade formation. The leaders were circling about and descending toward an immense open space in front of a long row of hangars at Dunkirk.

It wasn't long after that before I got into my first scrap. I never will forget that, for I made a bally fool out of myself and was mighty glad to get back alive to the station. I had a pretty good machine, a Moran monoplane equipped with a machine gun, and an old chap called Gott, a sergeant, went up with me and sat in the gun seat. I was wild to see the German lines.

"Go and take a look at them," the C. O. said, "but don't cross or you'll probably get jolly well peppered. Those 'Archies' [anti-aircraft guns] can shoot pretty far and pretty straight, you know."

II--"WE FIGHT 8,000 FEET IN AIR"

I promised to be careful and up we went. At about 8,000 feet I headed her for the German trenches, and in a few minutes we were right over them. Old Gott gave me a nudge then, and right ahead of us, a few miles off, I saw two German Albatross machines coming right for us. Old Gott and I had our telephones on and he said: "What about it, Lieutenant?"

"What do you say if we let 'em have a bit?" I asked him.

"Right-o, sir," said Gott. He was a game chap, that old fellow, and he'd been in many a scrap. I often wonder whether he's still all right. Well, he had a belt of cartridges on the gun, and he got ready to spin 'em out. I stuck the nose of the old bus up in the air and tried to get on top of the Germans. My machine was a better climber than theirs, and so when we passed I was a couple of hundred feet higher. Old Gott pointed the gun at 'em and kept working the trigger. I could see the flames shooting out of the muzzle. But the Boches were pretty busy too. I caught sight of their gunmen working away with their quick-firers as we passed. With the rush of air it was impossible to feel the whiz of any of their bullets; but I knew jolly well that they were pretty close to us, and we found later a lot of holes in our wings.

Well, all of us wheeled, and at it we went again. Gott put on another belt of cartridges and let 'em have it. As we passed the second time one of the Albatrosses dropped a couple of hundred feet. I thought that Gott had winged the pilot, but it must have been only an airhole they struck, for they straightened out and went on.

They're speedy beggars, those Albatrosses. By the time I got turned again and straightened out they were half a mile or so off and driving like the devil over their own country--running away from us.

"Let's go after them and give 'em what-for, Gott!" I said. "Very good, sir," he answered. So after them we went. I gave the old bus all she had, but I couldn't overtake the Albatrosses, nor even get near enough to have another shot at them. Mile after mile we drove until, finally, we came to a town--Ghent it must have been--and I thought it was about time to start back. We were only about 6,000 feet high.

All of a sudden there was a little white cloud directly in front of us, a few hundred yards off. We plunged right through it, and I got a sniff of some strong acid-like odor. Then little white clouds began to appear at our sides, and below us and above us. Gott pointed upward and I made the machine climb as hard as she could without standing right on our tail.

I realized then that the Albatrosses had purposely run away from us to lead us into a trap. They had led us right over a long line of "Archies."

There we were, twenty miles or so from home, with every anti-aircraft gun the Germans had peppering away at us. We certainly made a race for it. There was no use circling around and climbing. The only thing to do was to go up as best we could while driving, straight ahead, and trust to luck. To get home was the one thing we wanted.

It took us perhaps fourteen or fifteen minutes to do the twenty-odd miles. And in every mile of that distance there were at least two or three Archies letting drive at us. A couple of minor wires were struck, and old Gott had his clothes torn by a bit of shell. I didn't get hit. But it sure was a hot dash for home, and we were a couple of lucky chaps to get there. I got an awful ragging from the C. O. for being such a fool. Never again did I drive over the German territory so close to the earth as 8,000 feet!

III--"MY BOMBING EXPEDITION"

I did week after week of scout work, driving over Belgium with observers who noted the movement of German troops from place to place, or took photographs of the trenches and the fortifications back of them, or plotted out the exact location of supply stations and the like, for the purpose of bombing them later.

That's a snappy sport--bombing--but you've got to watch your step, as you say in the States. You mustn't forget to let go all of your bombs before you come down, or you'll be smashed up yourself. I knew one poor chap who made a landing with two bombs he'd forgotten to drop. That was the end of him and his machine. There wasn't much left of either.

It was on a bombing expedition that I met my big adventure--the one that landed me in this country, technically a prisoner.

It was on Oct. 3. Three of us set out with orders to let go a few T-N-T's on some hangars and supply sheds the Germans had at Zeebrugge, some forty odd miles up the coast from our station at Dunkirk. Each of us had six 75-pound bombs under the body of our machine. Pretty deadly things those 75-pounders. They'll make quite a smash. Then I had a dozen or more little hand-bombs, five or six pounders. They're nasty beggars, too. You don't want to be too close to the spot where they land.

We got away in the dark, about 4 o'clock, and, back of our own lines, climbed till we were about 10,000 feet up. Then we headed up the coast and got over the town of Zeebrugge just as daylight was appearing. We located the sheds we wanted, and one after the other of us let go at them. It's a great thing to pull your lever, let the old bomb go whizzing down for nearly two miles, and then wheel around and wait to see what she'll do when she hits. Of course, you can't hear anything, but you see a puff, a burst of earth, and, if you're lucky, maybe you'll see a building go to smash.

Well, it didn't take long for them to know that we were over them, and they began to let drive with their Archies. The shells began to burst pretty close to my old R. E. P.--a fast, single-passenger monoplane I was driving that day--but I stuck around and let drop all six T-N-T's and hand-bombs. I was separated from the other chaps by this time, and didn't see them, in fact.

I heard in a roundabout way afterward that one of my bombs killed fourteen men and four horses. I don't know whether that's true or not. The story had it that several of the men killed were Belgians. I hope that part of it's wrong. But that's the luck of the game.

Pretty soon a bomb bullet burst only a couple of hundred feet away from me, and right on my level, although my gauge showed me that I was pretty close to 11,000 feet. I said to myself: "You'd best stick her nose up, Boydie, or they'll get you. These Archies must be new ones, for they're throwing steel higher than any I ever saw before." So I climbed and climbed, circling around, until I was a few hundred feet over 12,000. There I felt absolutely safe, and began to look around to see where I was. I had passed completely over Zeebrugge and was pretty well up the coast toward a sort of a strait. I thought I'd best turn around and make back for home while the making was good. So I wheeled and began to think about breakfast. The only thing in my mind at the moment was that I was hungry.

The next thing I knew there was a blinding smash right in front of me. I realized two things--that my propeller was gone and that I was falling like a stone. They'd got me at last. I didn't know whether I'd been hit anywhere or not. I just gave everything up and began to see pretty little pictures of Toronto and New York and my girl in Cleveland, and all that sort of thing. Believe me, I was a scared Canadian. It looked like curtains for J. Errol Dunston Boyd.

But--you know how it is: if a fellow falls into the water he tries to swim anyhow, even if he can't. He does something instinctively to help himself. So I kept on trying, working my levers without half knowing what I was doing.

You've seen that "falling leaf" stunt that the trick fliers do, haven't you--where the machine just flops from side to side as it comes down, swinging this way and then the other way? Well, that's what my old R. E. P. was doing. Then she'd loop. Some chaps who saw me coming down said she looped nine or ten times. I'd looped before, but never involuntarily. I was strapped in of course, or I'd have beaten the old bus down to the ground.

IV--"I DROPPED 12,000 FEET FROM CLOUDS"

I don't know how long it takes to drop 12,000 feet. The scientists can figure it out. But, believe me, it doesn't take very long. I was in a sort of a daze from the time I was struck, but it seemed only a couple of seconds before I saw the ground right under me, and--I couldn't believe it then--I was right side up and on a decent angle for landing. I lifted her nose a little bit just before striking, and, so help me, Bob, I got her on the ground with scarcely a bump.

About a quarter of a mile off were a lot of soldiers in gray uniforms. They began to run toward me. "Well, I'll give you German beggars a little row before you stick me in one of your filthy prison camps," I said to myself. As soon as I got the old bus to a standstill I unstrapped myself and jumped out. When the gray-backs got within a hundred yards of me I let drive at them with my service revolver. I slammed all seven shots at 'em, but missed.

I must have been a bit balmy in the bean, for I didn't notice that they weren't firing at me. Then I did a nutty stunt. You know we carry "light pistols." They're things that you use to shoot colored balls of fire with at night, for signalling purposes, when you're going to land, and all that. It happened that I grabbed my light pistol as I jumped out of the seat, so I thought, "I'll give you this, too, you dirty Boches!" And I shot half a dozen beautiful balls of fire at them. I was raging mad.

Then they surrounded me. I'm pretty husky, you see. I've got 180 pounds, and at that time I was hard as nails; so a couple of them, you can bet, took some good wallops before a dozen or so piled on top of me and pinned me down. They began shouting things at me in some language that I didn't understand.

Finally one of them said in English: "We're not your enemies. We're not Germans. This is Holland and we're Dutchmen."

Only then did I stop scrapping with them. They let me up and stood around me with their bayonets ready to give me a jab in case I started anything more. It was some little time before I was able to stop puffing and give a look around at the scenery. Only fifty yards away was the border line between Belgium and Holland, marked by a heavy barbed-wired entanglement and two or three cables through which ran high powered electric currents.

On the other side of the fence were a hundred or more Boches--patrols who had hoped to capture me if I alighted on their side of the barbed wire. But I just beat them to it by a few measly feet. A close shave, what? And weren't they sore. They yelled over the fence at me, and shook their fists and guns; but I swore back at them just as hard as they cussed me.

The Dutch were pretty good to me when I quieted down. They were decent fellows and were only doing their duty in grabbing me for internment. They took me up to a fort in Groningen, and there I stuck from Oct. 3 until the first of this year, when I was instructed by the British Government to give my parole. That meant that I must promise on my word of honor as an officer and gentleman not to try to escape.

I could have got away, I think. I had all arrangements made to make a dash from the fort one dark night, have an automobile waiting outside to rush me to the coast, and I even had a trawler ready to take me and some other chaps back to England. But before we were quite ready to make our dash the word came to give our parole, and we had to abandon the plan.

HINDENBURG'S DEATH TRAP

_Story from Lips of a Young Cossack_

_Told by Lady Glover_

The authoress heard this remarkable story from the lips of
the young Cossack concerned. It deals with the terrible tragedy
that befell the Russian armies in the early days of the war,
amid that treacherous labyrinth of lakes, rivers, and morasses
known as the Masurian Lakes. This is as she tells it in the
_Wide World Magazine_.

I--THE AGED MOTHER WHO REFUSED TO FLEE

"Here I was born, and here I am going to die. It is no use, my son; I am now in the eighty-second year of my age, and I am too old to be transported to a strange place. What is to be will be."

Mooska Zarden took his mother's frail hand in his.

"But I entreat you," he said; "the whole of the Russian population is leaving Dvinsk. There is no time to be lost; even now the German guns are at the door, and the Governor's order is that the whole of the civilian population must be out of the town within twenty-four hours to seek refuge in a safer place, because the Russian army is about to take up the line and make a stand of Dvinsk."

"You are a Cossack," she replied, "and must go wherever you are sent to serve your country; but here I was born, and here I am going to die."

Dvinsk was a fortified town, or "Kerpost," as it is called in Russia, but of late years it has been turned into an arsenal of munitions and material of war, all ready for the appointed day should the enemy try to cross the fair River Dvina. The stream at this point is beautiful and wide; very few bridges span its flowing waters, and these few were now securely held by the Russians. On the southern side of the river the country is flat and low-lying, the land rolling away to the horizon. The approach of an enemy, therefore, would be distinctly visible, while the northern banks are well timbered, and higher than on the southern side, so that an army concealed in the woods, if well supplied with ammunition, could play havoc with the enemy when they tried to cross the river from the opposite bank.

The Germans have by this time learned the reason why they suffered such an important check at Dvinsk, and therefore I shall not be giving away any military secrets by describing the Dvinsk sector of the Dvina line, which the Russians took up after their retreat from Poland. It was an excellent one from the strategical point of view, and one which they have held ever since.

There are three railway lines available, of great importance for the army--one from Riga to Oriol, which follows the line of the Dvina as nearly as possible; the main line from Petrograd to Warsaw; and a branch line of the Lembo-Rommy railway, with a junction connecting the three together. When the Russian army was about to make a stand at Dvinsk, at the beginning of the war, the civil population of the town received orders to leave, and men, women, and children were sent to seek refuge at a sufficient distance for their safety, out of reach of Prussian guns.

The terror-stricken people had no time to take their household goods or the treasures they so much prized; they simply had to flee, they knew not whither. Vanda Zarden, however, was not among that stricken crowd. With bowed head and prostrate form, she was kneeling before an _ikon_ in the home that had been hers for so many years, the home she had been brought up in and where her children were born. Her husband had long been dead, and her sons were all married except Mooska the Cossack, the pride of her life and the comfort of her old age.

The Cossacks of the Don, the distant Carpathian mountains, and other remote regions are among the most famous cavalry in the world, and it is the ambition of many a Russian mother that her boy will obtain a commission in a Cossack regiment or even a place in its ranks.

Thus it was that Mooska Zarden was only a few hours old when his father registered his name in Dvinsk as a trooper. He was determined that one of his sons should have the distinction of serving the Czar as a mounted soldier; so Mooska was trained for this branch of the service, and learned all about horses. When he joined the regiment it was soon discovered how quickly he could tame the wildest steeds and teach them many things beside their drill. His own horse followed him about like a dog, and would lie down at the word of command. Mooska also taught him to lift a man in his teeth by the belt of his uniform and carry him, which was not a part of the regulation army drill.

And now the hour had come when Mooska must leave Dvinsk, his native town, and the aged mother who refused to flee. His heart was heavy within him at the thought of deserting her in the time of peril; but his regiment was ordered to join the army that was marching towards the Masurian Lake district to oppose the advance of the Huns. This was during the earlier days of the war, when there was not much known about these wilds nor about the lake district that proved so full of surprises for the great Russian armies that were rolling westwards.

There was only one German who knew how to deal with the invasion of East Prussia, and he was soon busily occupied. General Hindenburg had a very intimate knowledge of that particular region, founded upon great experience, and had studied in detail the strategic and tactical bearings of this highly restricted field of operations.

He had bought large properties in the district, and knew every inch of the ground. He had secretly deepened fords that were marked on the maps and made new ones that were not marked; he had tested the bearing powers of the quagmires and guns and wagons, and he knew just where men and horses might venture and where they would be swallowed up. Some time before the war, when it was suggested that a big land company should be formed to drain the bogs and lakes and turn them into arable farm land, Hindenburg advised the Supreme War Lord not to let the project be carried out.

"Those lakes," he said, "are more valuable to us than two army corps. No guns will be needed if the enemy advances. You will see when the day comes."

II--HINDENBURG SAT SMILING IN HIS HOUSE

And now Hindenburg's army was on one side of these marshes and the Russians were advancing on the other, and Hindenburg sat smiling in his house, like a spider in its web, stroking his moustache self-complacently. The Huns did not trouble much about the advancing troops, for Hindenburg merely said, "Let them come," and smiled again.

The events that followed were some of the most tragic of the war. Hindenburg watched the results of his calculations surrounded by the _Hochgeboren_--the princes and generals of the army of the Huns. Can it be wondered that the Duke of Brunswick, who witnessed the tragedy, has since been reported as hopelessly insane? At the age of nine-and twenty he was in command of the German troops at the Russian frontier, and saw the terrible fate of the men who were swallowed up bodily in the treacherous marshes. The cries of the victims and his own helplessness haunted him to such an extent that it is said he lost his reason and, from extreme violence, drifted into a deep stupor of melancholy.

Mooska Zarden was among those who witnessed the terrors of that awful day. Finding the ground soft and muddy, the Russian engineers were sent forward with long planks to make a roadway for the troops to pass over the marshes, little thinking that, owing to the treacherous nature of the ground, the black slime and ooze would soon suck down into the bottomless mire the flower of Russian manhood, and that even the roadway itself would be swallowed up.

The summer sun had dried the surface crust, and reeds and sedge and aquatic plants grew and flourished exceedingly. The Russian army spread out and entered this treacherous zone at different points, according to the disposition of the troops and the branches of the service to which they belonged. Mooska Zarden was riding on the flank of his troop. The sun beat down fiercely, and it grew hazy in the distance as the heat drew up the moisture from the marshes.

Very soon the young Cossack's horse showed signs of uneasiness and alarm. It is wonderful how the human voice can restore confidence and courage in an animal and allay apprehension; but self-preservation is the strongest primitive instinct, and nothing the Cossack could do would soothe the terror of his mount. The horses in front of them were already snorting and whinnying their fears to each other as the trembling brutes felt the marshy land quaking under them.

Suddenly Mooska's horse took the bit in his teeth and bolted back out of the ranks, and bit and spur were of no avail to make him turn and advance again. The panic-terror had come; he was fighting for his life, for now the swamp was giving way and he was sinking at every footstep. Behind them there was being enacted a scene that baffles description as the treacherous quagmire began to claim its toll. The cries and shrieks of men and beasts as they were engulfed added horror to the dreadful situation.

Presently, realizing what was amiss, Mooska dismounted to take the weight off his floundering horse. A discarded plank that he came across enabled him to struggle on by pushing it in front of them, and yard by yard man and beast fought their way to firmer ground, not daring to stop to rest for a moment lest the delay should be fatal. By this time the Cossack was almost exhausted, yet he floundered on with the desperation of despair, for within view was higher ground which he believed to be the edge of the marsh. Could he hold out till then? His panting steed, dripping with sweat and covered with mud, was--like himself--nearly spent, but side by side they stumbled on, with eyes fixed in that goal which was their only hope of preservation. At last the earth felt firmer; they were no longer sinking ankle-deep at every step. Then the Cossack, taxed beyond his strength, fell forward on his face, and everything became a blank to him.

III--THE YOUNG COSSACK IN THE MARSHES

That bit of dry land, as it happened, was the commencement of a low ridge of hard ground on the border of the morass. The exhausted horse stood beside his master, with legs extended and heaving flanks, turning his nose to the wind as he panted for breath. The treacherous marshes stretched away for miles on every side, and the panic-terror ran through the animal like an electric shock. Behind him in the bogs the tragedy wore on to its climax. Maddened horses broke away, men were knocked down and rendered helpless, and animals and humans were sucked down to a dreadful death. The columns in the rear had hardly left the firm road before the darkness of night hid the inferno in front, and only a few stragglers escaped to tell the tale of what befell that day. When the sun was once more high in the heavens, the survivors marched back from that dreadful place with leaden feet, shoulders huddled forward, and red-rimmed eyes; they were thinking of the fearful fate of their comrades.

As they trudged along the dusty road, the weary men stepping slowly under the weight of their packs, they saw a little Cossack horse a short distance from the highway, with drooping head and tired eyes, standing under the shade of an overhanging tree beside a motionless bundle covered with caked mud. The horse whinnied as they drew near, and lifted his odd-shaped burden with his teeth. For a few yards he struggled on with it; then he laid it down from sheer exhaustion.

"It looks like a man; see if he lives," ordered an officer. A sergeant came forward and found that the helpless Cossack was still breathing. How long he had lain there he never knew, for his faithful horse had carried him by his belt little by little, yard by yard, from the place where he had fallen--five weary versts away, they told him--till he reached the shelter of those trees by the roadside. He had never left his master save for a short time to crop the herbage or drink from a pool during that long night and the day that followed. And now, when he could do no more, help had come.

When Mooska Zarden's senses returned to him he seemed to remember lying in the moonlight during that long night, with nothing but the stars above him, and feeling the soft nose of the faithful animal touch his hand; and he would feebly move it to show that he was alive. Then his belt would tighten and he would be dragged on gently for a few yards and laid down again, still only semi-conscious. Now the soldiers were giving him restoratives, but he felt little except the throbbing of his head. He opened his eyes feebly at last, but could not speak or think. When he was placed on a stretcher the horse broke away from the man who was leading him and took his place beside the bearers, every now and then putting his nose against the shoulder of the prostrate figure.

"Let him be till we fall in with a Cossack regiment or some stragglers of his own corps," said the colonel. "He saved the trooper's life."

When Zarden regained his senses he was in hospital, weak and spent by fever; his brain had hardly as yet recovered from the shock. "Have I been ill?" he inquired, but the nurse told him to lie still and ask no questions. As yet he could remember nothing. The sun glinted in through the windows and flecked the white-washed walls here and there with gleams of golden light. There were rows and rows of beds in the long ward, placed side by side, and Red Cross nurses were flitting about among them. It was all very strange to him. After a while his eyes rested upon the _ikon_ hanging on the wall. This was the first time he had noticed it, and his memory brought him fitful shadows of the last occasion on which he had seen one. An aged woman, of whom he had but a hazy remembrance, was kneeling before it.

While he was trying to straighten out the tangle of mixed-up ideas in his mind, a cry from one of the beds in the ward held his attention. "Save me; I am sinking!" cried an agonized voice. Then, in a flash, he remembered those pitiful shrieks of despair, and he covered his face with his hands. Memory, that fickle jade, had come back at the point where she had deserted him, and he lay back with closed eyes while pictures floated through his brain of what he had passed through that dreadful day, followed by the starlit night when he could hear the troop-horse cropping the herbage at his side and the strike of the animal's iron-shod hoofs as he slipped over stones, weighted with his burden. Soon it all came back to him. "Bring me a mirror, nurse," he said. It was the first thing he had asked for. He looked at it; then, with a wild shriek, he flung it away.

"It is another--not me! Who am I?" he cried. "My hair and beard are as white as snow! It is not me, Mooska Zarden, any more."

The nurse picked up the fragments of the broken glass hastily, and he lay back raving as he had done in his fever.

"You must dye his hair and beard at once," the doctor ordered, "otherwise he will lose his reason. With care, however, he will recover; it is a nervous breakdown."

IV--AT THE DOOR OF HIS MOTHER'S HOME

Slowly the Cossack pulled round, as the doctor thought he would, and ere long he was sent home to recuperate. The smiling Dvina spread out before him in the early dawn, with the blue, cloudless sky above and the golden sun shining on its shimmering water. On the banks green trees waved in the breeze, and away in the distance the blurred outline of a town was visible in the purple morning haze. As he came nearer to the city, however, and the buildings took distinctive objects of Dvinsk, some of the familiar houses and churches and towers that he knew so well. It was a city shorn of its beauty, a ghost of what it had once been. He thought that his recent illness must have impaired his eyesight, but when he neared the town and beheld great heaps of stones, roofless houses, and walls crumbled to dust a great panic seized his heart. Where was the mother whom he had left there in the house they called their own? Was it, too, a mass of dust and stones? With trembling knees he turned to find the well-known street. A few stray dogs, thin and hungry, wandered about among the rubbish in search of food. A strange silence seemed everywhere.

At last he reached his mother's house. Yes, the roof was still intact; a little broken glass lay about, and there were marks of shrapnel on the wall, but the house stood firm and unharmed. This would be about the hour, he remembered, that his mother would be rising to prepare the morning meal. He put his hand on the latch of the door, and his heart was thumping with emotion. Slowly he pushed it open and entered the little kitchen. Everything was spotlessly clean and neat, and everything stood just where he had seen it last. The kettle was hissing with a welcome sound, and the old black cat was asleep on the hearth, but the bench beside it was empty. He looked round, and the morning sun shone on the polished brasses and lit them up like burnished gold. The pendulum of the big clock was swaying monotonously as of old, and pointing to the hour when the household used to assemble round the oaken table for their morning meal. As the last stroke of the hour ceased to vibrate, a bent figure kneeling in front of the _ikon_ raised her trembling hands to it, clasped in an agony of prayer. "Send him home to me, good Lord, that I may see his face once more," she cried.

Mooska Zarden stooped and lifted the prostrate form and folded his mother closely to his heart. Then he told her the strange story of his miraculous escape, and showed her the well-worn leather belt, with the marks of the teeth of the faithful horse that had saved his life, and recounted to her again and again the tale of the brave animal's pluck and endurance during that long night and those dreadful days of suffering.

"It was the will of God, my son," she said, earnestly. "What is to be, now and for evermore."

ON THE GREAT WHITE HOSPITAL TRAIN--GOING HOME TO DIE

_An American Girl with a Red Cross Train_

_Told by Jane Anderson, through Courtesy of British War Office_

This is a glimpse of a great organization which brings disabled
British soldiers from the first line trenches to London. She tells
how the wounded who are coming back to England to die--come back
smiling. "It's 'eaven, I call it," said a bandaged Tommy of the
Great White Train. The story is retold by permission of the _New
York Tribune_.

I--"MY CARGO OF WOUNDED MEN"

From a closed British port to London I made a journey in a Red Cross train which, with great scarlet crosses marked on each blind compartment, carried a cargo of ninety-five wounded men--a precious cargo of war that I had seen transferred from the finest of his majesty's hospital ships to the cots of the ambulance train drawn up under the roof of the Admiralty pier.

It was through the courtesy of the War Office that I was permitted to board the hospital ship, to watch the unloading of it, to see each detail of a very complex and splendid organization, and to journey to London in one of the white ambulance trains created and set apart for the grave and pitiful purposes of war. I am grateful for these privileges.

I have come closer to the actualities of this war as it stands--have penetrated the surface of it. For these men who by thousands are returning to England bring with them, each and all of them, the stamp of it. It is in their eyes, the horror of it; it is in their words, in their gestures, the misery and the pain of it; it is written in their faces, borne witness to by every fold of their stained and shabby garments. It is France they are bringing home with them, France and the memory of all the gray and wretched splendor of war. This is in their faces; this and courage.

At first, when I walked down the concrete pavement at one side of the pier, with its railway lines and great, spreading gray roof, I thought that the hundred men or more whom I saw sitting on benches in a square, inclosed place were but one more unit of the soldiers which throughout England bear testimony to the new army of the King. But as I came nearer to them, saw them sitting there, with on one side of them the white coaches of the ambulance train and on the other, anchored close in, the great white hospital ship with its broad band of green, I knew these were wounded men sent home from France. The slightly wounded men, they call them.

"These are not serious cases," the captain who was in charge told men. "Shrapnel, mostly."

I looked at the long rows of men in khaki sitting on the wooden benches, with their coats drawn loosely over their shoulders, with their bandaged heads and arms and feet showing a very clear white against the dim and gray light of the pier. How patient they were, and how tired they looked! Slightly wounded; shrapnel, mostly. One of them with his arm bandaged from the elbow to the wrist and supported in a wide sling; one of them with his feet wrapped thickly in layers of dressings and covered over with heavy woollen socks; one of them with his left hand in a splint and his right arm wrapped in gauze the full length of it; another man, leaning against the man next to him, with his thin hands folded across his knees, and his head and his face almost covered with fold upon fold of white linen. On his forehead a little round dark stain widened on the clean cloth. Slightly wounded; shrapnel, mostly. Such are the terms of war.

Then I went with the captain, who was also the disembarkation officer, to stand beside the gangway and see the stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded from the ship. It was such a fine, spotless ship, with her broad band of emerald like a big girdle around her. Her great red cross amidships, that clear and gracious emblem of service, proclaimed her inviolate, symbolized her, transfigured and illumined her; she rested, white, splendid, immobile, the rich sunlight streaming down on her decks.

II--PALLID FACES ON THE STRETCHERS

On the pier the orderlies were waiting.

Sometimes two of the wounded men would come fumbling and staggering down the gangway together, holding to each other. With intense concentration, without any knowledge of what was taking place around them, looking neither to the right nor the left, they progressed step by step, infinitely cautious. They advised each other, admonished each other, argued in an absorbed, gentle monotone, wholly engrossed, set apart, dedicated to this mysterious and immediate moment which lay between them and the harbor of the benches. With each uncertain step, with each circumspect, tentative advance, I think that a new cycle of destiny was spun for them, such was their earnestness and the simplicity of their world.

Thus, slowly, by open magic, the benches steadily filled. I don't know how many men were sitting there, nor how many more men were in the adjoining inclosure. But while I had been watching the unloading of the ship one ambulance train had been filled and had moved out, slowly, silently, toward her nameless destination. For each day, as the new offensive on the Western front fulfills the tragic bartering of men for land, the hospitals of England register toll for victory.

And this offensive, which has reclaimed territory valuable beyond estimation, was conceived with accuracy and true vision. Men were neither squandered nor offered up in sacrifice. Yet day by day the white ships put into harbor and the white trains come and go, weaving back and forth, fulfilling the purposes of war.

And I was watching one infinitesimal part of this.... It was moving very surely and precisely, the grave business of transference. I saw with astonishment that the deck was cleared. A little procession of orderlies, bringing empty stretchers, was marching down the pier. I had thought that the ship was emptied, so many men in khaki had passed down the gangway. But I saw, instead, that the work had but commenced.

For from below they were carrying up other men. And these men lay quite still on the stretchers, with their gray blankets drawn close around them. Their faces were very white, that extraordinary clear white of pain. But sometimes when they were carried by they smiled. I think that there were men among these soldiers who had measured the hours of their journey by their own agony. Only suffering could have drawn such deep and searching lines, could have brought such shadings and such contours into men's faces. There was one boy who lay with his hands folded on his chest; his eyes were closed, and the shadow of his black lashes was no darker than the deep circles which furrowed his cheeks. There was neither life nor color in his flesh; his hands had the fine and delicate transparency of a child's hands. Yet, just as he was being carried by, he opened his eyes, made an inscrutable, almost imperceptible, movement with his fingers as if some impulse had impelled him to a gesture which must be unrealized. There was, for one swift instant, the illusion that he smiled.

Yes, there was courage enough among them, these men who were coming home. I marveled at them; I had never thought of that particular degree of courage which lies in the one very simple fact that men--even those men who are coming back to England to die--come back home smiling.

And I marveled more and more at these miracles of war when I went abroad the white ship and saw just what it meant, this long journey of the wounded. I saw all of the splendor of that big ship only as a background for the men who had returned in her. Yet certainly she was both beautiful and splendid. I was told that once in her history she had come into royal favor; be that as it may, whatever the purport of her destiny, she had been fashioned with true understanding. In the wide sweep of her decks, in the very lines and gradations of her, there was that character, that abiding character and personality, which is the inheritance of all good ships of the sea.

It may be that she suffered a little from a certain lavishness, not wholly judicious. For her cabins and her saloons were panelled in woods of many colors and many grains, inlaid according to the obscure ethics of such matters. Not that her fine frescos were not decorative, with their bright cubes and squares and quaint juxtapositions. They shone like satin; in the borders, golden and black, the green, brilliant hangings were mirrored, extraordinarily luminous and rich in texture.

But I liked best her big wards below. I liked their generous proportions and the clean, wide cots, row upon row of them. There was, too, that faint, pleasant odor of antiseptics and new linen. The copper sterilizers, set on shining tables, were resplendent in that cool and colorless interior. The enamelled basins and portable dressing stands were a brilliant and stainless white.