Chapter VII: Part 7

His ship was lying alongside the quay at X----, taking in some hundreds of tons of explosives. He himself, having nothing particular to do at the moment, was leaning over the bridge-rails looking thoughtfully out to sea. All of a sudden he noticed an aged waterman rowing towards the ship, with some odd-looking object towing astern of his bluff-bowed craft. The old man seemed to have difficulty in getting along, and the officer watched him curiously, speculating as to what he was hauling. At first sight it looked like a mooring-buoy, but as the boat came nearer the watcher got the shock of his life. The fisherman was towing a German mine of the very largest type!

There flashed through the officer's mind the thought of the latent power stored away in that wicked-looking sphere, only needing a slight shock to set it free; he thought, too, of the vast store of explosives under his feet and on the quay. If that mine exploded against the steamer's side there would not be one stone of X---- left upon another!

"Hi, you!" he shouted to the oncoming rower. "Sheer off with that thing! We've got explosive aboard!"

By way of answer the old man--now scarce a dozen yards away--cupped his hand behind his ear.

"What d'yer say, sir?" he called back, mildly. "I found this 'ere in the tideway, an' I knew there was a bit of a reward offered, an' so----"

The big mine was now bobbing dangerously close to the steamer's side, and the officer, frantic with anxiety, literally bellowed orders for the man to remove himself and his prize. In his excitement he suggested regions where it is possible the temperature might have had a disastrous effect.

The fisherman looked up at him with a smile. "That's all right, sir," he replied. "He 'on't do no harm. I knocked the horns off he with a boat-hook."

And so it proved. The old man, in his ignorance, had taken a million to one chance, and it had come off. They say there is a special Providence that looks after fools, but it must be peculiarly irritating to the apostle of "frightfulness" to know that an aged waterman, encountering a drifting mine, can lightheartedly knock off the detonator-equipped "horns" or projections and live to bring his prize into port and receive a reward. The chief officer aforesaid, however is not anxious for another experience of the kind; he says they are too trying to the nerves.

V--THE COCKNEY AND HIS "SOOVENEER"

Comedy, it has been observed, turns upon character, and many little comedies of the war hinge upon the mere personality of Thomas Atkins himself, and the somewhat difficult adjustment of that uniquely stubborn thing to a new environment. The resulting incidents derive a great part of their humor from Mr. Atkins's manner of narrating them--especially if he chance to be from London. There is no wittier or more tersely vivid _raconteur_ than the Cockney, and though one often hears the humor of the British soldier described as unconscious, it is really nothing of the kind. Spontaneous and unpremeditated it may be, but such penetrating acumen as his racy idiom reveals was never unconscious.

Half-a-dozen soldiers home from the Front on short leave found themselves in a railway carriage bound for Victoria. They were of different battalions, and fell naturally to the swapping of yarns. Soon the conversation drifted to "souvenirs," a topic of surpassing interest. Trophies were produced by each in turn, with the exception of one taciturn member of the party who sat in a corner seat morosely sucking at a short clay pipe.

"_I_ ain't brought nothin' 'ome wiv me," was the curt response to a suggestion that the silent one should produce his little lot. There ensued a dialogue.

"Wot, nothin' at all?"

"No!"

"Well, I'm blowed! Fancy a bloke comin' 'ome on leave and not bringin' nothin' wiv 'im! Ain't you got no sooverneer?"

"Sooveneer! No, I ain't got no sooveneer--not unless you call this 'ere a sooverneer."

The morose one fumbled in his haversack and pulled forth a brass door-knob, which he displayed upon an extended palm. Its appearance excited derision.

"That's a perishin' fine sooveneer, I _don't_ think! Why, it's only a ornery door-knob!"

"Well, wot abaht it? S'posin' it is only an ornery door-knob! Maybe you dunno 'ow I come by it!"

Pressed for the story, the owner of the unexpected article proceeded:--

"It was like this 'ere. I'd been two weeks on a stretch in the trenches, and never a drink--wot you might _call_ a drink--the 'ole blinkin' time. Goin' back through the billets after we was relieved I seed a place where they had liquor for sale, and I goes up to the door to get a drink. Well, I 'adn't no more than took 'old o' the knob when a blinkin' Jack Johnson come over and blew the 'ole blinkin' 'ouse out of my 'and!"

And with an evident sense of personal grievance not yet allayed the speaker pouched his "sooveneer" and relapsed into gloomy taciturnity.

VI--THE COOK AND THE BOMB IN GREECE

Of comedies arising out of Mr. Atkins's imperturbable phlegm there is no end. One will suffice here--a little incident which occurred at Salonica. At the Greek port some of our troops, it seems, are encamped upon the hills above the town. One morning a covey of six enemy aeroplanes flew overhead and dropped three bombs in passing. The first exploded harmlessly, but the second fell plumb on a cook's tent, and blew it sky-high. Shirts, coats, and trousers went hurtling up into the air with a grim resemblance to mutilated bodies. Fortunately no one was inside the tent. The cook was only five yards away, however, busily marshalling an array of "dixies" (military camp-kettles) which had been newly filled at the distant water-supply below. The force of the explosion blew him off his feet, and likewise overturned the row of dixies.

Those near at hand feared their comrade had been hit by a fragment of the bomb and ran to his assistance. But as they approached a dishevelled figure rose from amidst the _débris_ and wrathfully surveyed the wreckage of his "kitchen." At the spot where his tent had been two minutes previously he hardly glanced. "And now," was his indignant comment, "I serpose I'll 'ave to go down the ---- 'ill and fill up the ---- dixies again!"

VII--A SEA-TALE--THE LIEUTENANT'S STANCHIONS

By way of conclusion here is a little naval comedy. A minor unit of His Majesty's Navy was undergoing the process known as "fitting out." Her commander, one of the many good sportsmen who have placed their personal services and such seamanship as they have acquired as amateur yachtsmen and sailors at the disposal of the Admiralty, arrived one morning to find a score or two of dockyard workmen on board, all busy (in theory) with the multifarious tasks awaiting completion. In practice, something like half the number were, if not idle, at least less occupied than the immediate requirements of the vessel seemed to warrant.

The commander, being in private life a business man of considerable energy, with a habit of getting things done, regarded the scene with considerable disfavour, and set himself at once to remedy the state of affairs. But the dockyard workman is an individual with very definite ideas of his own as to how a job should be done, and a fixed determination to do it that way unless thwarted by an authority which he dare not evade.

Finding orders, though respectfully received, were inadequate to the occasion, the commander tried reason and persuasion. But though the latter was carried to the point of cajolery the result was the same. Baffled in the exercise of his own authority and a trifle nettled in consequence, the energetic lieutenant determined upon a desperate expedient. In his best sarcastic vein he wrote out a signal and requested its transmission to the flag-captain. The officer in whose discretion it lay to forward or suppress the message being likewise an amateur, not yet too deeply imbued with a respect for conventions, the signal was duly made. It was to the following effect:--

"SUBMITTED: That as there are at present forty workmen on No. 001, of which number half are seated permanently on the ship's rail, a further working party be at once sent down to strengthen the stanchions, which will otherwise collapse under the strain."

Within half an hour a party of workmen reported themselves at No. 001 and gravely proceeded to strengthen the stanchions! Protests were unavailing: the men had their orders, and with bolts, rivets, rods, and who shall say what other contraptions, they proceeded to carry them out with a thoroughness almost menacing.

The commanding officer of No. 001 delights to tell this story to his friends as a shining example of the crass ineptitude of which the official mind, even in the Navy, is sometimes capable. It may be so; but his friends, observing those admirably buttressed stanchions, and noting the considerable inconvenience to which their immovable presence permanently condemns the maker of that rash signal, sometimes wonder whether the laugh is altogether on the latter's side.

Lieutenant X---- looks forward to some future day when he may meet the flag-captain in person, and there is no doubt he already has a very good notion of what he then intends to say. But suppose he should be greeted, before ever he can introduce the topic himself, with the genial inquiry, "And how are your stanchions lasting?"

They have a way of their own in the Navy.

LITTLE STORIES OF THE BIG WAR

_Unusual Anecdotes at First Hand_

_Told by Karl K. Kitchen in Germany_

The four war stories which follow--stories of adventure, suffering
and daring--were heard by Karl K. Kitchen of the _New York World_
during his sojourn in Germany. Two of the stories he had at
first hand, and can vouch for. A third was related to him by His
Excellency Baron von Bissing, the Military Governor of Belgium. The
fourth--recounting the exploits of Capt. Peifer, perhaps the most
remarkable story of the war--was related to the writer by a naval
officer. Copyright, 1916, Press Publishing Company.

I--STORY OF A MOTHER'S TRAGEDY

One of my best friends in Vienna was Ernst Karczag. Shortly after the outbreak of the war I received a postal from him stating that he was about to rejoin his regiment--he was a lieutenant in a crack hussar regiment--and proceed to the Galician front. At Christmas I received a long letter from him and a photograph of himself in his hussar uniform. Then one morning in March I received a cablegram from a mutual friend in London, stating that Ernst had died of cholera in Poland.

Ernst was in his twenty-fifth year and was tenderly attached to his mother. Until the war broke out he had never been away from home except on a brief holiday, and his long absence at the front last winter brought his mother to the verge of a nervous collapse. It came to a point where it was absolutely necessary for her to see her son. Mr. Karczag, although a millionaire and a man of considerable influence, was unable to get a pass for his wife to visit the line near Lodz in Poland, where the son's regiment was stationed. She set out for Lodz alone.

After nearly a week of the hardest kind of travelling, much of it in troop trains, she reached Lodz, where she found every hotel occupied by German and Austrian officers. In desperation she decided to appeal to Gen. Mackensen, the famous German General, who was in supreme command.

"You shall see your son to-morrow morning," he told her when he learned that her boy was a lieutenant of a certain hussar regiment. "I am reviewing the Austrian troops at 6 o'clock to-morrow morning. If you will come to my headquarters at that time I shall permit you to witness the review."

The review of the Austrian troops lasted nearly five hours, and it was witnessed by Gen. Mackensen, his staff and the mother of my friend. Regiment after regiment passed by, but there was no sign of the young hussar officer. The anxious mother was almost ready to break down, when at the very end of the last regiment in the review she caught sight of her son. Forgetting her peculiar position she called to her boy. But he did not hear her, and a few moments later he galloped out of sight.

"I must have a few words with my boy," she pleaded with Gen. Mackensen; "I must talk with him."

Evidently she struck a sympathetic chord in his nature, for he told her he would send a motor car to the hotel to take her to her son's regiment. For two days she waited for the car, but as it did not arrive she again went to Gen. Mackensen's headquarters, only to learn that he had been called away to another position on the front. Apparently he had forgotten all about his promise. There was no one to help her, so she started out alone to reach the little Polish village where her son's regiment was stationed. No conveyance was obtainable for any sum, so for three days and three nights the poor mother walked the frozen roads to her son's side.

It was a wonderful meeting between mother and son, and when the Colonel of the regiment heard what she had gone through he placed his own quarters at her disposal. When the time came for her return he sent her back to Lodz in a military wagon. Three days later she was back in Vienna, rejoicing with her husband that their son was alive and well.

Imagine their great shock when two days after her return they received a telegram from the Colonel of the regiment stating that Ernst had died suddenly of cholera.

It is difficult to convey any idea of the grief of the parents of this young officer. The father has lost all interest in life--money means nothing to him. The mother is inconsolable and her mental condition is becoming critical.

II--HOW CAPT. PEIFER WON HIS "POUR LE MERITE"

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Capt. Peifer, a German naval officer in command of the cruiser _Yorke_, ran his ship on a mine and the cruiser sank with nearly all on board, but Capt. Peifer was saved. He was court-martialled and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment.

The Captain being an expert in high explosives, influential friends pleaded his cause with the Kaiser, who suspended the sentence. Capt. Peifer accordingly was released and offered his services to the commander of the German forces in Turkey. He was assigned to duties connected with the production of munitions when the Gallipoli campaign began. According to the story, the British forces might have succeeded in reaching Constantinople if it had not been for Major Peifer.

With characteristic energy and ingenuity he started several munition factories for the production of high explosive shells within a few miles of Constantinople. His knowledge, combined with German efficiency and tireless Turk labor, gave the defenders of the Dardanelles sufficient high explosive shells to check the invaders until munitions arrived from Germany.

Of course the Turkish and the German commanders-in-chief were highly pleased with Capt. Peifer's service, and the latter sent in his name to the Kaiser as an officer deserving the order of "Pour le Merite"--one of the most coveted honors of all Germany.

For once German thoroughness and efficiency were inoperative. Neither the Kaiser nor his closest advisers recognized in Major Peifer the former naval captain who had sent his ship on a mine in violation of proper warnings. The order of "Pour le Merite" was conferred on the new military officer, who naturally thought that his previous blunder had been forgiven.

Accordingly he applied to the naval ministry for permission to rejoin his old branch of the service. This let the cat out of the bag, and the entire matter was laid before the Kaiser. With true magnanimity he commuted the twenty years' sentence, but ordered the Major to remain in the army, promising him promotion in the very near future.

III--STORY OF AUTOMOBILE THAT CAPTURED AN AEROPLANE

The day Germany declared war on France, Gunther Hensel, the twenty-two-year-old son of Ernest Johannes Hensel, a wealthy real estate operator in Berlin, offered his services to his Fatherland. As he had been engaged in the automobile business in Berlin he was enlisted in a motor car battalion, where he became what is known in Germany as a "benzine lieutenant," with no immediate prospects of ever becoming anything else.

However, last October, after driving military motors at the front for more than a year, an opportunity presented itself which won Gunther Hensel his coveted promotion.

While driving behind the lines near Arras he caught sight of a French aeroplane which had landed because of motor trouble. Young Hensel's only companion at the time was an orderly, so it was a question of acting without orders.

Without hesitation he drove at full speed toward the aeroplane. The Frenchmen opened fire with their revolvers, but their shots went wild, and before they could prevent it the heavy motor car crossed the field and crashed into the flying machine, wrecking it beyond all hope of immediate repair.

Both Frenchmen were caught in the wreckage, and the orderly, who of course had a rifle, forced them to surrender. Thus in one fell swoop the young benzine lieutenant captured a valuable French aeroplane and two enemy soldiers. In all probability this was the first aeroplane ever captured by an automobile.

As a reward for this exploit he received an Iron Cross and was transferred to the officers' college, where he is now getting instruction in the duties of a full-fledged infantry officer.

IV--STORY OF THE "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD"

Ever since the Germans have been in Brussels there has existed an "underground railroad" to aid escaped French and Belgian prisoners of war in reaching the Holland border and thus regaining their lines. The German secret service tried in vain to discover how the prisoners got away, but without success--until last September. Then one of the "operatives," as Detective Burns would say, conceived the idea of donning part of a French uniform and appealing to Belgian farmers on the outskirts of Brussels to help him to get over the frontier.

When a train load of French prisoners was moved from Lille to Aix la Chapelle, this secret service man jumped from the train just before it reached Brussels, and, taking refuge in a barn until dusk, appealed to the farmer to let him remain there until he could obtain other clothes to effect his escape.

Impressed by the spy's French language and uniform, the unsuspecting farmer provided him with the desired garments. The spy then asked him for the name of some one in Brussels who would help him. The farmer directed him to a wealthy flour and feed dealer in the Belgian capital. This man in turn passed him on to another Belgian who was connected with the "underground railroad," and in less than two weeks the German spy found himself in Rotterdam.

Of course he had learned the identity of every Belgian who had befriended him, and on his return to Brussels he uncovered the entire "underground" system. The trail led right to the chief surgical hospital in the capital--the hospital in which Miss Edith Cavell was the head nurse.

POGROM--THE TRAGEDY OF THE JEWS AND THE ARMENIANS

_A Masterful Tale of the Eastern Front_

_Told by M. C. della Grazie of Vienna_

No result of the war has been more pitiable than the suffering
inflicted on the subject races caught in its grip. These submerged
peoples have had to submit helplessly to the brutalities of both
sets of combatants. The Poles, the Ruthenians, the Ukranians, the
Slavs of Bohemia and Moravia, have fought with little heart for
Russia, Austria or Prussia, as the case might be. But the Jews
of the Polish Pale and of Galicia have had an even harder fate;
for while the men of military age have followed the flags of
their masters, the women, the children and the old men have been
obliged to face at home all the evils which travel in the wake of
war--disorder, violence, disease, spoliation and semi-starvation.
The following story is by M. C. della Grazie, a well known Viennese
writer. It makes a masterly use of a single, simple incident to
bring home the meaning of one of the war's most hopeless and
poignant tragedies. It was written at the time when the Russians
still occupied the greater part of the Austrian province of
Galicia. This translation, with editorial comment, is by William L.
McPherson in the _New York Tribune_.

I--STORY OF GABRIEL GABRILOVITCH

The colonel sat on the edge of his rumpled-up peasant's bed and with an impatient movement knocked the ashes from his cigar. On the dirty table before him lay the last number of a Russian weekly, which had just arrived by field post in Galicia--a little crumpled, but otherwise fresh looking, and with pictures which made one's mouth water.

The devil! Was it still going so comfortably back in Petersburg (he stopped suddenly and substituted Petrograd) with those rascals of civilians and war cripples? Did such attractive girls still come in and sing and dance as those whose pictures stared at him out of the pages of the last number of the _Nida_? They must be damnably well off, those dogs, able to frequent the Varieties, where people sit in cozy warmth about the tables and worry about nothing more serious than the genuineness of the labels on the wine bottles.

And he, Gabriel Gabrilovitch! He had lain with his regiment for nearly two weeks in this miserable Galician hole and was forced to congratulate himself that a single windproof hut remained in which to stop for breath after all those futile attacks--that he was able at night to throw himself on a bundle of straw under this foul roof and drink punch brewed from whiskey stolen from the Jews.

For this time no headway was to be made against the devils opposite. Not even once as far as their barbed wire defences! So well was their artillery posted. To such a raking fire was every moving object exposed which came in sight within an area several hundred meters wide!

A tiresome game that--an accursedly tiresome game--and if Gabriel Gabrilovitch himself should be one of the victims! He sprang up and began to pace with heavy steps the uneven clay floor. He knew of better things than that!

Those Petrogradians--look, look!

The slender, willowy, singing girl there in the _Nida_, with that smile which was in itself a seduction! She evoked another image in his excited fancy. It was his last evening of pleasure in golden Petrograd. In a variety cabaret, too.

The stage is already empty, the programme finished. But in a room off the stage reserved for the performers and their guests he sees just such a piquant little creature take form in the thin smoke clouds of his cigarette. Exactly the same smile--acquired in Paris, and then carried triumphantly from stage to stage, from banquet to banquet.

The imitation diamonds glitter in the deep corsage of her dress. The coquettish curls hang like golden orchids over her ears. The atrophied stare of the wide pupils has the fascination of a serpent's eye. Before her stands a tall, narrow glass vase, out of which nod the blood-red, long-stemmed pinks which he had brought her. He, Gabriel Gabrilovitch!

It is a picture imprinted so vividly on his senses by the warm rush of recollection that he thinks he really sees it--not least of all the purplish red of the vase of flowers.

They take it easy, those Nevsky Prospekt loungers--they take it easy!

He reaches for the glass--already cold, curse it! Not very long now and it will be day again and a new assault, as vain as the others, will bring them face to face with death.

A cold draft strikes his neck. He turns around, half angry, to see who has entered.

II--THE COSSACK LIEUTENANT'S HATRED

"Ah, so!"

It is the sotnik (lieutenant) of a Cossack detachment which has received the order to drive the last Jews out of the surrounding villages, so that the army can have a free field. The snow, which has frozen finger thick on his green overcoat, begins to melt in the close, hot air of the room. The small, hard Asiatic eyes shine. The red, frosted fists are still clenched, as if they had just beaten somebody.

"One can't be really angry with these fellows," says the colonel to himself, with a feeling of soldierly satisfaction.

"They are such splendid beasts."

But he asks aloud:

"Finished?"

The Cossack's laugh is quick and harsh.

"All herded together, Colonel. Nothing is lacking but the Red Sea."

"How many?"

"Several hundred."

"And where are you going to drive them?"

The young lieutenant raises his shoulders slowly, so that the snow on them touches and cools his red cheeks.

"I'll have to get an order from you as to that!"

"An order!" cries the colonel. "An order! Now, by all three metropolitans! The devil take me if I know!"

The sotnik raises his shoulder again.

"While they're here they will be in our way."

"The vermin," growls the colonel, "always pestering us like----"

"Like others we are on intimate terms with," laughs the Cossack.

"Look there, if you please!" And half jokingly, half disgustedly, he points to a black swarm of roaches hurrying like a wagon train from behind the stove and making for a crack in the floor near the open door.

"They are emigrating, the vermin," exclaims the colonel; "upon my soul, they are."

"Because they are hungry," says the Cossack, with a grin.

"But the Jews. The Jews, those----" curses the colonel.

"Just as black and just as hungry--but good patriots."

The colonel lifts his head, gazes thoughtfully for a while into the flickering flame of the slowly melting candle. Then he begins to laugh.

"Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't I think of it before? Ah, Little Brother, what asses we have been!"

The Cossack's eyes snap. He, too, has a plan which in all this orgy of bloodthirstiness appeals to him with an even bloodier zest.

"Do you know what we shall do with them--with all these patriots?"

"Drive them together somewhere and sabre them," suggests the sotnik.

"So that they can fill the newspapers again with their tale of martyrdom," laughs Gabriel Gabrilovitch, scornfully. "Beware, Little Brother, beware! We shall leave that to their countrymen this time."

The blank eyes of the Cossack follow the colonel questioningly--like the eyes of a hunting dog.

"So," laughs the latter, softly stroking his cheek. "We'll drive these patriots to the Austrian wire entanglements. What do you think? Will those people over there shoot down their own subjects?"

"But they are non-combatants, Gabriel Gabrilovitch----"

The young man suppressed the thought before he had put it into words. There was something in the voice of his superior which cowered him. And, like a hunting dog, he merely listened.

"Don't you see, Little Brother?" continues Gabriel Gabrilovitch, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "And just because in that case they will not fire, we shall rush in on the enemy. We shall have cover and can excuse ourselves for using it."

"It would take the devil himself to think of that!" exclaims the sotnik, full of submissiveness and admiration.

"I am a good Christian," declares Gabriel Gabrilovitch with bitter humor. "And now I must have an intermediary; for, naturally, I must inform the enemy so that they will not shoot down so many patriots."

The young Cossack rocked his body as if already in the saddle.

"Won't you permit me to go?"

"Muttonhead! Shall I send one on whose face are the imprints of all the Devil's ten fingers? Pick out the youngest, the handsomest and the stupidist of the sotnia and send him over. The kind that believes anything anybody tells him. Then they over there will believe him. And what we are going to do nobody but you and I will know. Well, have you any such 'steed of God?'"

The sotnik strikes his body with both hands, smiles and nods. "There is a Raskolnik here."

"Is that so, Little Brother?"

Both burst into violent peals of laughter as if overcome by the humor of the situation.

III--THE PLOT THAT FAILED

They would send the Raskolnik--the sectarian who was prepared to die at any moment rather than sin in any particular against the teachings of Jesus, who even in war abhorred attacking the enemy and wanted only to defend himself--one of these religious enthusiasts who had to be driven into military service with a whip. What a joke for these two orthodox Slavs to load upon this "steed of God" the bloodguilt of their stratagem!

They laugh--laugh till their eyes fill with water.

Half an hour later a young cavalryman trots away into the murky dawn.

The fresh wind of the steppe whistles about his ears. Over his head flutters the little white flag, which they have fastened to the top of his lance.

"How is it that he has found so much favor in the eyes of his commander as to be sent as a parlamentaire to the enemy?"

But he puzzles little about that. He is glad that the poor creatures of God who have been driven like mice out of their holes will be allowed to go to-morrow over into the camp of their friends. He must be a real man, the colonel, even if so far the soldiers have found little good in him.

In the east it is getting lighter. Already a silvery wave spreads over the plain from the edge of the horizon. By the time he arrives at the first entrenchment it will be so light that the enemy can easily see the flag on his lance.

"It is cold," he muses. "But yet it is already spring, and where my horse steps the snow gives way. Soon the steppe will be green again, just as it will be back in Russia."

And in the midst of the deep silence which surrounds him, in sight of all the horrible traces which war and death have left upon his pathway, there blossoms out of his innocent soul a pure, sweet memory--of home. He recalls the straw-covered hut, the calm and mighty waves of the distant Don, the peace of the steppe purling like a breath from heaven through the tall grasses.

He was only a pious peasant's son--not a Cossack. But now they have put him as a supernumerary in a Cossack regiment, and he must go along, through all the blood, through all the horror.

With a slight shudder he puts his hand upon the crucifix beneath his soldier's coat and crosses himself.

"God grant me His grace!"

On the other side they had caught sight of him. A sentinel advanced to meet him. Soon he stands before the Austrian officer.

The latter is a handsome, sturdy man. Everything neat about him, although he has lain so long with his men in the trenches. Close up to him the soldier stands, so that he can feel the other's breath--but it doesn't smell of brandy. The gray eyes hold him fast while he speaks. Not a muscle moves. But suddenly he laughs in the messenger's face.

"Good. Now ride back. And say to your colonel that he has miscalculated if he believes that I shall not open fire if you try to sneak in behind those unfortunates. I know my duty, and should innocent blood be shed the blame will rest on you."

He speaks and turns upon his heel. The sentinel leads the dejected messenger back to his horse and calls scornfully after him: "Are you really so stupid or did you think that we were so stupid?"

The latter makes no answer. But a few steps further on he strips the white flag from his lance and throws it in the muck. Then that was the colonel's idea. And he will stick to it. At his command they are to hide like cowards behind the victims who are to be pushed--as a living wall--up to the enemy's trenches!

"They are, of course, only Jews," he says to himself. "But yet--but yet----"

Why does he feel that way about it?

Suddenly he realizes.

Like a picture it stands before him.

The sputtering fire about which the half-frozen Jews are huddled together--women, children, grizzled old men. Here and there a sentinel to guard them. He, too, one of the guards.

IV--IN HIS BREAST HIS OWN BULLET

Like shadows they crouch about the fire, rub the freezing hands of the children between their own, weep, groan, pray softly. One has prayer boxes bound on his brow and on his arms and nods and bows unceasingly, so that his shadow dances like a curious grotesque against the light of the fire. The Cossacks laugh. He, too, has laughed, carelessly, unconcerned.

Laughed until he has suddenly noticed the woman at the side of the bearded Jew--with the slumbering child at her breast. Something in that sight appealed to him strangely. But then they had summoned him before the sotnik. And he had thought of it no more.

How sharply that whole picture stands before him now--and among the other details especially these three: The man in prayer, the shivering mother bent toward the fire, her head cloth like a veil drawn deep over the unconscious, slumbering child.

"Bethlehem," he murmurs reverently, and crosses himself.

And he is going to take part to-day in this infamy--he, a Christian!

Then it must be true what they believe back home. That the Pravoslavine is Anti-Christ. And he fights with him--for him--is part of his army. Have they then altered the text of the Holy Books? So that some day God's word of love will no longer be found in it--the Holy Word spoken by Him who lay in the womb of a daughter of the House of David?

It must be so! It must be so! And if till to-day he has doubted it, now all is clear. Only Anti-Christ can give such orders.

Shall he return to the camp? Stain his hands, too, with the blood of these innocents?

"When the master speaks the servant must hearken," they say back home.

He must obey.

Something flashes in front of him like the flash of a gun.

"A bullet," he thinks.

"Would it were one!" he exclaims in the torment of his soul.

It is only a sun ray which suddenly shoots through the mist. But it has shown a poor mortal the right way.

They found the Raskolnik just outside the village--in his breast his own bullet, in his right hand the cross. On his lips the smile of peace that passeth understanding.

TALE OF THE SAVING OF PARIS

_How a Woman's Wit Averted a Great Disaster_

Little by little the "inner history" of the Great War is coming to
light. This remarkable story shows how the presence of mind of a
humble woodman's widow, in the early days of hostilities, led to
the preservation of the Western Railway of France, on which at that
time Paris depended for its supplies and the transport of troops.
Told in the _Wide World_.

I--IN NORMANDY--STORY OF OCTAVIE DELACOURT

In a clearing of the Forêt de Lyons, near Martagny, in Normandy, and by the side of a barely distinguishable road, stands the rustic half-timbered cottage of Octavie Delacourt. A solitary habitation indeed, but one well fitted to the mental outlook of a lonely woman--no fair young heroine of romance, as some readers may hastily conclude, but a widow of over fifty with hair turning a silvery grey. Her husband--a forester, and the builder of the little home--had died from a fever a year before the war. Childless, she had elected to live on there alone, partly through necessity, partly because of the memories which the surroundings stirred in her mind whenever she went forth to collect sticks for her fire, or when, lying in bed at night, she heard the wind in the trees. Twenty years with "her man," twenty years of labour in common, had made her a fervent lover of the forest. It had become, as it were, her domain. Certainly no one knew better its confusing tangle of roads and pathways.

The outbreak of the war naturally had an effect on the mind and habits of Octavie Delacourt, but, alone in the world as she was, it affected her much less than it had done her friends and acquaintances in the neighbouring villages. In her case the war fever took the form of restlessness--an eager, insatiable desire to learn the truth about the danger which was threatening her dear France.

As the cloud darkened over the country her anxiety for news grew keener and keener. It seemed as though her sub-conscious self was aware that the tide of invasion was drawing nearer and nearer to the fair fields and orchards of Normandy, and that one morning she would wake up to find Martagny, Gournay, and Les Andelys in the hands of the Boches. So every day, in those early weeks of the war, she was up betimes and, having carefully done up her grey tresses and put on a newly-ironed blue apron, set forth to one or other of the neighbouring villages, where she would be able to read the latest "communiqué" and pick up any stray item of news that might filter through from Paris.

About eight o'clock on the morning of September 16th, 1914, Octavie Delacourt set out in this way, her destination on this occasion being Gournay and the house of an old friend of her husband, a small landowner named Rismude. It is a good distance by road from Martagny to Gournay, so she decided to take a short cut through the Forêt de Lyons. Setting her best foot foremost, she struck off through the trees with the swinging stride of a hardy countrywoman, and soon picked up a little pathway amidst the undergrowth which she knew would lead her in the right direction. After walking for some ten minutes at full speed, she came to a part of the forest known as "La Molière," the site of a disused chalk quarry, the gasping white mouth of which is partly hidden by dense foliage. It was here that her eye--long experienced in woodcraft--noticed something unusual near the path she was following: a number of green branches, freshly cut from the trees, which someone--apparently in vain--had been trying to make into a fire. Stopping in front of the charred remains, she could not suppress the utterance of the reflection which sprang to her mind:--

"How stupid to cut green branches for a fire!"

Hardly had the words passed her lips than Octavie felt a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. With thumping heart and suddenly blanched face she spun half round and beheld her aggressor--a heavy-featured man in a strange dress who, with a cynical smile on his thick lips and a hard look in his little grey eyes, had noiselessly appeared from behind a tree.

"How you frightened me!" exclaimed Octavie, retaining her self-possession, in spite of her fright, and endeavouring to shake off the leaden fingers which weighed on her slender frame.

But not a word in reply came from the mysterious man, who might have been made of cast-iron, so motionless did he stand. Gradually, as Octavie Delacourt fell to examining him, the hideous truth began to dawn upon her, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had never set eyes before on a German soldier; she had never even seen a picture of one. But she had heard tell of their uniform, in a vague sort of way, and suddenly, one might say instinctively, she recognized the ash-grey dress and the round cap of the same colour. How came the wearer of these tell-tale clothes to be in her forest, not fifteen miles from Les Andelys, and within rifle-shot of her native village of Martagny?

II--WAS HE GOING TO BAYONET HER?

The mystery terrified her. However, no trace of fear or the tumult in her breast appeared on her face. Her simple peasant logic told her that would have been fatal. In the presence of the hidden and perhaps imminent danger into which she divined she had stumbled, she told herself, with feminine shrewdness, that at all costs she must preserve a brave countenance and combat the enemy by craft.

"What do you want with me? Can I be of any service to you? If you have lost your way I can set you right. No one knows the forest better than I."

She paused and smiled.

The German soldier's only reply was a sort of grunt and a slightly relaxed hold on her shoulder. At the same time he led her in the direction of a deep excavation, formerly used as a wolf-trap. What was he going to do to her? She now noticed that he carried in his right hand a bayonet, with which he swished, as they walked along, at the tall grass and weeds. Was he going to kill her? She would have turned and fled like a hare but for the grip in which she was held. Perhaps, after all, she thought, there was greater safety in non-resistance than in attempted flight. So she allowed herself to be led to the very edge of the excavation before saying to her captor, in a pleading voice:--

"You are not going to do me any harm, are you? I'm only a poor, inoffensive woman."

Whilst making this appeal, standing on the edge of what she imagined might be her grave, she noticed that the greater part of the hole was skilfully hidden by a roof of branches. The next moment she heard the man with the bayonet whistle, whereupon the head of a blond, blue-eyed giant, also dressed in grey, but with the rank marks of an officer, suddenly appeared through the aperture. Words in a gutteral tongue passed between the two soldiers. Then the fair-complexioned Boche, eyeing her critically, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, uttered an order, and disappeared.

The leaden hand immediately fell from Octavie Delacourt's shoulder and she was once more free. Now, however, all her strength seemed to have gone from her. The feeling that she had just escaped a very real danger robbed her of her desire to flee. Slowly, timidly, like a frightened animal, she moved away, with her head slightly turned towards her captor, who stood watching her, as a cat will a mouse, his bayonet still in his hand and a look of mingled cruelty and regret on his coarse, heavy features. A few steps more and he called to her to halt.

"Has he changed his mind?" thought Octavie, seeing him walk towards her. No; he intended to do her no harm; all he wanted to do was to take her by the hand and lead her in an entirely opposite direction to the one she was heading in. This done, he released her.

Once through the trees, and hidden from view, Octavie Delacourt made a _détour_ and ran as fast as her legs would carry her to Neuf-Marché. At first she thought of returning to Martagny, but the fear of being recaptured restrained her. Moreover, she felt that she had now an urgent duty to perform--to inform the nearest authorities of her discovery. That it foreboded something extremely serious for the country she could now no longer doubt for a moment. In her flight she had caught sight through an opening in the trees, of a third grey-clad soldier, lying flat on his stomach at the edge of the forest and, with his rifle close to hand, watching the movements of a peasant guiding his plough.

Dupont, the _aubergiste_ of Neuf-Marché, listened to her story with a puzzled face. But, though his scepticism was great, he did not allow it to get the better of his judgment. "Nothing would astonish him in these times," he declared; so off he went in search of the _garde champêtre_, one of the keepers of the forest. He was lucky in catching him before he went for his leisurely morning round, and brought him to the inn, ready to explode with hilarity.

"My poor woman, you must be suffering from illusions," he exclaimed, bursting into a roar of laughter. "Prussians in the Forêt de Lyons? No more than there are cockchafers on a switch!"

Whilst he hastened to turn to his wine and touch glasses with the innkeeper, Octavie, seeing that it would be useless to discuss the matter, slipped out without a word and hurried off to the _gendarmerie_. Here Quartermaster Crosnier was almost as difficult to convince as the _garde champêtre_.

"Prussians at Martagny?" he said, with wrinkled brow and a look of doubt in his eyes, as he twisted his moustache. "Are you quite sure? You astonish me."

"Yes, I'm quite sure," affirmed Octavie, in an almost supplicating voice. "Quite, _quite_ sure. And if you go after them, take care you go in force, otherwise they will kill you. There is one Boche, as I've told you, at the edge of the wood, ready to fire, and I've no doubt there are others also lying in waiting."

"Certainly we shall go and see if there's anything in what you say, my good woman," replied the Quartermaster, in a condescending tone, which proved to her that he was still undecided whether to accept her story for gospel.

However, there was no knowing. So he promised he would see to the matter at once. Fraets and Lebas, his _gendarmes_, should accompany him into the wood. They would look into the mystery as a matter of duty.

III--"BUT FOR A CURSED COUNTRY WOMAN!"

On leaving the constabulary Octavie Delacourt, not wholly satisfied that she had set the administrative machinery sufficiently in motion, asked herself what more she could do. All at once she thought of the post-mistress she knew at Mainneville, a village some three miles off. Excellent idea! A post-mistress had both the telegraph and telephone at her disposal, and she knew that this official, at any rate, would not laugh at her. Pulling herself together once more, she set off at a brisk walk--almost a run--in the direction of Mainneville.

There, as she had foreseen, she met with the most sympathetic of receptions. Mme. B----, the post-mistress, lost not a moment in telephoning to M. Armand Bernard, the Prefect of the Eure, who immediately passed on the news to his colleagues of the adjoining departments. Within half an hour not a prefect, not a commissary of police, not a _gendarme_ with a radius of a hundred miles was uninformed. The Germans in the Forêt de Lyons and their accomplices were entrapped, as it were, within the meshes of a net.

Octavie Delacourt went to sleep that night content indeed. But she little knew what a service she had rendered to France--nothing less, in fact, than the saving of the Western Railway line, on which Paris depended at that time for its supplies and the transport of troops.

The facts relating to the capture of the Huns in the Forêt de Lyons, and those working in conjunction with them, were briefly recorded at the time, but, overshadowed by the greater events of those early days of the war, their true significance was lost sight of. A Prussian captain, a non-commissioned officer, and eleven engineers were arrested at Oissel, thanks to the good marksmanship of Sergeant Leroy, of the G.V.C. Service, who punctured with rifle-bullets the tyres of the motor-cars in which they were fleeing. One of the cars bore the plate and number of the prefect of police of Aix-la-Chapelle. In a motor-lorry which formed part of the convoy was half a ton of explosives.

In the course of his examination the German officer declared that he had crossed the departments of the Somme and the Oise without being troubled, and that he had come into the Eure with the intention of blowing up the Oissel bridge, or, failing this, that of Manoir. He added that "but for a cursed countrywoman" whom one of his men had caught in the forest, and whom he ought to have "suppressed," he would certainly have succeeded.

This happened about three o'clock in the afternoon. Less than an hour later it was discovered that the capture had not been made without bloodshed. Between the "Molière" quarry and the excavation where the blond Hun had appeared to Octavie Delacourt three bodies were found stretched on the ground--those of the luckless Quartermaster Crosnier and his _gendarmes_, who had been shot almost point-blank when calling on the automobilists to surrender.

Octavie Delacourt's presence of mind, bravery, and persistence were recognized by the French Government. But the service she rendered was infinitely greater than either the praise or the monetary reward--one hundred francs!--which she received for having been instrumental in preventing the perpetration of an act which might have resulted in grave disaster to the capital of France.

HOW IT FEELS TO A CLERGYMAN TO BE TORPEDOED ON A MAN-OF-WAR

_Told by the Rev. G. H. Collier, Chaplain on Board the British Cruiser "Cressy"_

I--"MY LIFE SPARED IN MIRACULOUS WAY"

As you know, I was on the cruiser _Cressy_ on September 22, 1914, when in company with the cruisers _Aboukir_ and _Hogue_ she was torpedoed by a German submarine. My life has been spared in a most miraculous way.

About 6:15 a.m. I was awakened by some marines waking their comrades. "Get up quick, the _Aboukir_ is sinking."

I tumbled out of my bunk, put on my shoes and slipping my big coat over my pajamas I hastened up to the sheltered deck. I should tell you that we were proceeding in line formation, the _Hogue_ leading, our ship, the _Cressy_, bringing up the rear. We were steaming between six to nine knots, and at a distance of about a mile or so apart. When I got on deck the _Hogue_ had fallen back on the starboard side of the _Aboukir_, while we stood by on the port side, both of us a good distance off.

The _Aboukir_ had signalled asking for boats, which, of course, were sent off to them. Their ship gradually began to turn turtle, and it was an inspiring sight to see the ship's company lined up on the side of the ship awaiting the order, "Every man for himself." After a while I went down to the quarter deck and began with the others to throw planks of wood, etc., overboard.

While doing this the Hogue was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine and very quickly settled down. Indeed, no sooner was she hit than her quarter deck was below water. She then listed, turned turtle, and in about ten minutes had disappeared.

Our captain sent me word to take photographs, and I had taken five when I saw the white line of a torpedo approaching us in the starboard side, in line with the aft-bridge.

A few shouts heralded her approach, but nothing could be done, as our engines were not going, and she bored her hole in our side.

The impact was not so great or so terrible as I should have thought, indeed it was a dull thud, and did not even throw me off my feet. Previous to this the order to close watertight doors had been given, an order which prevented this torpedo doing so much serious damage.

We listed to starboard about 40 degrees, and after a time the ship righted herself to about 30 degrees. Everyone was on the look-out for submarines, and guns were fired at every suspicious-looking object that looked like like a periscope. I am not going to make any assertions, as I am much too inexperienced. I was standing by when three guns were fired.

The first was fired at what I thought to be a man's head. At any rate the shell hit something, for it exploded.

Unfortunately, I was called down from the boat deck then, so did not see what ensued, but the gunner says he saw two men pop up from the spot after he fired a second shot, and the torpedo lieutenant supports his assertion of having hit the submarine.

The second shot I saw (of course, other guns were fired) was at what I feel sure was a submarine. She came up, and it was a plucky thing to do, amid a mass of struggling men. I do not know if she was hit, but I admit I felt a spasm of horror at the damage to our own men in the water.

The third shot went right home, and did its work, and I cheered heartily with the rest. The Germans evidently attacked us under cover of a sailing trawler carrying the Dutch flag. This trawler, after we had all been hit, made no attempt at rescue work, a heartless act that roused our anger, and the captain of the after 9.2 gun trained his gun on her and fired. The shell hit her in the stern and she at once took fire.

II--"I SAW THE TORPEDO APPROACH"