COPYRIGHT INFO

The Military Megapack is copyright © 2011 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved.

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“Captains Venomous,” by Arthur J. Burks, originally appeared in Army-Navy Flying Stories, Winter 1943.

“Whirlwind Squadron,” by Robert W. Nealey, originally appeared in Short Stories, July 25, 1943.

“They Died in Vain,” by George Bruce, originally appeared in Sky Fighters, January 1937.

“When a Yank Gets Fighting Mad,” by Lieut. Jay D. Blaufox , originally appeared in Complete War Novels, January 1943.

“Without the Blue,” by Johnston McCulley, originally appeared in Argosy, February 9, 1918.

“Private War,” by Norman A. Daniels, originally appeared in Army-Navy Flying Stories, Summer 1943.

“The Cloud Wizard,” by David Goodis originally appeared in Sky Raiders, February, 1943

“Killer Ace,” by David Goodis, originally appeared in Lone Eagle, February 1941.

“Navy Day,” by Harry Harrison, originally appeared in If Worlds of Science Fiction, January 1954.

“Victory,” by Lester del Rey, originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1955.

“The Defenders,” by Philip K. Dick, originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction January 1953.

“The Destroyers,” by Randall Garrett, originally appeared in Astounding, Dec. 1959.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, by Stephen Crane

Chapter 1

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold.

“We’re goin’ t’ move t’morrah—sure,” he said pompously to a group in the company street. “We’re goin’ ’way up the river, cut across, an’ come around in behint ’em.”

To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys.

“It’s a lie! that’s all it is—a thunderin’ lie!” said another private loudly. His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were thrust sulkily into his trouser’s pockets. He took the matter as an affront to him. “I don’t believe the derned old army’s ever going to move. We’re set. I’ve got ready to move eight times in the last two weeks, and we ain’t moved yet.”

The tall soldier felt called upon to defend the truth of a rumor he himself had introduced. He and the loud one came near to fighting over it.

A corporal began to swear before the assemblage. He had just put a costly board floor in his house, he said. During the early spring he had refrained from adding extensively to the comfort of his environment because he had felt that the army might start on the march at any moment. Of late, however, he had been impressed that they were in a sort of eternal camp.

Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One outlined in a peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding general. He was opposed by men who advocated that there were other plans of campaign. They clamored at each other, numbers making futile bids for the popular attention. Meanwhile, the soldier who had fetched the rumor bustled about with much importance. He was continually assailed by questions.

“What’s up, Jim?”

“Th’army’s goin’ t’ move.”

“Ah, what yeh talkin’ about? How yeh know it is?”

“Well, yeh kin b’lieve me er not, jest as yeh like. I don’t care a hang.”

There was much food for thought in the manner in which he replied. He came near to convincing them by disdaining to produce proofs. They grew much excited over it.

There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a door. He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately come to him.

He lay down on a wide bunk that stretched across the end of the room. In the other end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture. They were grouped about the fireplace. A picture from an illustrated weekly was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs. Equipments hung on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of firewood. A folded tent was serving as a roof. The sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.

The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it. For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself believe. He could not accept with assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those great affairs of the earth.

He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life—of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of the world’s history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.

From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more, he had said. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.

He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.

But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to look with some contempt upon the quality of his war ardor and patriotism. She could calmly seat herself and with no apparent difficulty give him many hundreds of reasons why he was of vastly more importance on the farm than on the field of battle. She had had certain ways of expression that told him that her statements on the subject came from a deep conviction. Moreover, on her side, was his belief that her ethical motive in the argument was impregnable.

At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers, the gossip of the village, his own picturings, had aroused him to an uncheckable degree. They were in truth fighting finely down there. Almost every day the newspaper printed accounts of a decisive victory.

One night, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell the twisted news of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Later, he had gone down to his mother’s room and had spoken thus: “Ma, I’m going to enlist.”

“Henry, don’t you be a fool,” his mother had replied. She had then covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to the matter for that night.

Nevertheless, the next morning he had gone to a town that was near his mother’s farm and had enlisted in a company that was forming there. When he had returned home his mother was milking the brindle cow. Four others stood waiting. “Ma, I’ve enlisted,” he had said to her diffidently. There was a short silence. “The Lord’s will be done, Henry,” she had finally replied, and had then continued to milk the brindle cow.

When he had stood in the doorway with his soldier’s clothes on his back, and with the light of excitement and expectancy in his eyes almost defeating the glow of regret for the home bonds, he had seen two tears leaving their trails on his mother’s scarred cheeks.

Still, she had disappointed him by saying nothing whatever about returning with his shield or on it. He had privately primed himself for a beautiful scene. He had prepared certain sentences which he thought could be used with touching effect. But her words destroyed his plans. She had doggedly peeled potatoes and addressed him as follows: “You watch out, Henry, an’ take good care of yerself in this here fighting business—you watch, an’ take good care of yerself. Don’t go a-thinkin’ you can lick the hull rebel army at the start, because yeh can’t. Yer jest one little feller amongst a hull lot of others, and yeh’ve got to keep quiet an’ do what they tell yeh. I know how you are, Henry.

“I’ve knet yeh eight pair of socks, Henry, and I’ve put in all yer best shirts, because I want my boy to be jest as warm and comf’able as anybody in the army. Whenever they get holes in ’em, I want yeh to send ’em right-away back to me, so’s I kin dern ’em.

“An’ allus be careful an’ choose yer comp’ny. There’s lots of bad men in the army, Henry. The army makes ’em wild, and they like nothing better than the job of leading off a young feller like you, as ain’t never been away from home much and has allus had a mother, an’ a-learning ’em to drink and swear. Keep clear of them folks, Henry. I don’t want yeh to ever do anything, Henry, that yeh would be ’shamed to let me know about. Jest think as if I was a-watchin’ yeh. If yeh keep that in yer mind allus, I guess yeh’ll come out about right.

“Yeh must allus remember yer father, too, child, an’ remember he never drunk a drop of licker in his life, and seldom swore a cross oath.

“I don’t know what else to tell yeh, Henry, excepting that yeh must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh have to be kilt of do a mean thing, why, Henry, don’t think of anything ’cept what’s right, because there’s many a woman has to bear up ’ginst sech things these times, and the Lord’ll take keer of us all.

“Don’t forgit about the socks and the shirts, child; and I’ve put a cup of blackberry jam with yer bundle, because I know yeh like it above all things. Good-by, Henry. Watch out, and be a good boy.”

He had, of course, been impatient under the ordeal of this speech. It had not been quite what he expected, and he had borne it with an air of irritation. He departed feeling vague relief.

Still, when he had looked back from the gate, he had seen his mother kneeling among the potato parings. Her brown face, upraised, was stained with tears, and her spare form was quivering. He bowed his head and went on, feeling suddenly ashamed of his purposes.

From his home he had gone to the seminary to bid adieu to many schoolmates. They had thronged about him with wonder and admiration. He had felt the gulf now between them and had swelled with calm pride. He and some of his fellows who had donned blue were quite overwhelmed with privileges for all of one afternoon, and it had been a very delicious thing. They had strutted.

A certain light-haired girl had made vivacious fun at his martial spirit, but there was another and darker girl whom he had gazed at steadfastly, and he thought she grew demure and sad at sight of his blue and brass. As he had walked down the path between the rows of oaks, he had turned his head and detected her at a window watching his departure. As he perceived her, she had immediately begun to stare up through the high tree branches at the sky. He had seen a good deal of flurry and haste in her movement as she changed her attitude. He often thought of it.

On the way to Washington his spirit had soared. The regiment was fed and caressed at station after station until the youth had believed that he must be a hero. There was a lavish expenditure of bread and cold meats, coffee, and pickles and cheese. As he basked in the smiles of the girls and was patted and complimented by the old men, he had felt growing within him the strength to do mighty deeds of arms.

After complicated journeyings with many pauses, there had come months of monotonous life in a camp. He had had the belief that real war was a series of death struggles with small time in between for sleep and meals; but since his regiment had come to the field the army had done little but sit still and try to keep warm.

He was brought then gradually back to his old ideas. Greeklike struggles would be no more. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.

He had grown to regard himself merely as a part of a vast blue demonstration. His province was to look out, as far as he could, for his personal comfort. For recreation he could twiddle his thumbs and speculate on the thoughts which must agitate the minds of the generals. Also, he was drilled and drilled and reviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed.

The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river bank. They were a sun-tanned, philosophical lot, who sometimes shot reflectively at the blue pickets. When reproached for this afterward, they usually expressed sorrow, and swore by their gods that the guns had exploded without their permission. The youth, on guard duty one night, conversed across the stream with one of them. He was a slightly ragged man, who spat skillfully between his shoes and possessed a great fund of bland and infantile assurance. The youth liked him personally.

“Yank,” the other had informed him, “yer a right dum good feller.” This sentiment, floating to him upon the still air, had made him temporarily regret war.

Various veterans had told him tales. Some talked of gray, bewhiskered hordes who were advancing with relentless curses and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor; tremendous bodies of fierce soldiery who were sweeping along like the Huns. Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men who fired despondent powders. “They’ll charge through hell’s fire an’ brimstone t’ git a holt on a haversack, an’ sech stomachs ain’t a’lastin’ long,” he was told. From the stories, the youth imagined the red, live bones sticking out through slits in the faded uniforms.

Still, he could not put a whole faith in veteran’s tales, for recruits were their prey. They talked much of smoke, fire, and blood, but he could not tell how much might be lies. They persistently yelled “Fresh fish!” at him, and were in no wise to be trusted.

However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what kind of soldiers he was going to fight, so long as they fought, which fact no one disputed. There was a more serious problem. He lay in his bunk pondering upon it. He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.

Previously he had never felt obliged to wrestle too seriously with this question. In his life he had taken certain things for granted, never challenging his belief in ultimate success, and bothering little about means and roads. But here he was confronted with a thing of moment. It had suddenly appeared to him that perhaps in a battle he might run. He was forced to admit that as far as war was concerned he knew nothing of himself.

A sufficient time before he would have allowed the problem to kick its heels at the outer portals of his mind, but now he felt compelled to give serious attention to it.

A little panic-fear grew in his mind. As his imagination went forward to a fight, he saw hideous possibilities. He contemplated the lurking menaces of the future, and failed in an effort to see himself standing stoutly in the midst of them. He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures.

He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to and fro. “Good Lord, what’s th’ matter with me?” he said aloud.

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him. “Good Lord!” he repeated in dismay.

After a time the tall soldier slid dexterously through the hole. The loud private followed. They were wrangling.

“That’s all right,” said the tall soldier as he entered. He waved his hand expressively. “You can believe me or not, jest as you like. All you got to do is sit down and wait as quiet as you can. Then pretty soon you’ll find out I was right.”

His comrade grunted stubbornly. For a moment he seemed to be searching for a formidable reply. Finally he said: “Well, you don’t know everything in the world, do you?”

“Didn’t say I knew everything in the world,” retorted the other sharply. He began to stow various articles snugly into his knapsack.

The youth, pausing in his nervous walk, looked down at the busy figure. “Going to be a battle, sure, is there, Jim?” he asked.

“Of course there is,” replied the tall soldier. “Of course there is. You jest wait ’til to-morrow, and you’ll see one of the biggest battles ever was. You jest wait.”

“Thunder!” said the youth.

“Oh, you’ll see fighting this time, my boy, what’ll be regular out-and-out fighting,” added the tall soldier, with the air of a man who is about to exhibit a battle for the benefit of his friends.

“Huh!” said the loud one from a corner.

“Well,” remarked the youth, “like as not this story’ll turn out jest like them others did.”

“Not much it won’t,” replied the tall soldier, exasperated. “Not much it won’t. Didn’t the cavalry all start this morning?” He glared about him. No one denied his statement. “The cavalry started this morning,” he continued. “They say there ain’t hardly any cavalry left in camp. They’re going to Richmond, or some place, while we fight all the Johnnies. It’s some dodge like that. The regiment’s got orders, too. A feller what seen ’em go to headquarters told me a little while ago. And they’re raising blazes all over camp—anybody can see that.”

“Shucks!” said the loud one.

The youth remained silent for a time. At last he spoke to the tall soldier. “Jim!”

“What?”

“How do you think the reg’ment’ll do?”

“Oh, they’ll fight all right, I guess, after they once get into it,” said the other with cold judgment. He made a fine use of the third person. “There’s been heaps of fun poked at ’em because they’re new, of course, and all that; but they’ll fight all right, I guess.”

“Think any of the boys’ll run?” persisted the youth.

“Oh, there may be a few of ’em run, but there’s them kind in every regiment, ’specially when they first goes under fire,” said the other in a tolerant way. “Of course it might happen that the hull kit-and-boodle might start and run, if some big fighting came first-off, and then again they might stay and fight like fun. But you can’t bet on nothing. Of course they ain’t never been under fire yet, and it ain’t likely they’ll lick the hull rebel army all-to-oncet the first time; but I think they’ll fight better than some, if worse than others. That’s the way I figger. They call the reg’ment ‘Fresh fish’ and everything; but the boys come of good stock, and most of ’em’ll fight like sin after they oncet git shootin’,” he added, with a mighty emphasis on the last four words.

“Oh, you think you know—” began the loud soldier with scorn.

The other turned savagely upon him. They had a rapid altercation, in which they fastened upon each other various strange epithets.

The youth at last interrupted them. “Did you ever think you might run yourself, Jim?” he asked. On concluding the sentence he laughed as if he had meant to aim a joke. The loud soldier also giggled.

The tall private waved his hand. “Well,” said he profoundly, “I’ve thought it might get too hot for Jim Conklin in some of them scrimmages, and if a whole lot of boys started and run, why, I s’pose I’d start and run. And if I once started to run, I’d run like the devil, and no mistake. But if everybody was a-standing and a-fighting, why, I’d stand and fight. Be jiminey, I would. I’ll bet on it.”

“Huh!” said the loud one.

The youth of this tale felt gratitude for these words of his comrade. He had feared that all of the untried men possessed great and correct confidence. He now was in a measure reassured.

Chapter 2

The next morning the youth discovered that his tall comrade had been the fast-flying messenger of a mistake. There was much scoffing at the latter by those who had yesterday been firm adherents of his views, and there was even a little sneering by men who had never believed the rumor. The tall one fought with a man from Chatfield Corners and beat him severely.

The youth felt, however, that his problem was in no wise lifted from him. There was, on the contrary, an irritating prolongation. The tale had created in him a great concern for himself. Now, with the newborn question in his mind, he was compelled to sink back into his old place as part of a blue demonstration.

For days he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing. He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly admitted that he could not sit still and with a mental slate and pencil derive an answer. To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other. So he fretted for an opportunity.

Meanwhile, he continually tried to measure himself by his comrades. The tall soldier, for one, gave him some assurance. This man’s serene unconcern dealt him a measure of confidence, for he had known him since childhood, and from his intimate knowledge he did not see how he could be capable of anything that was beyond him, the youth. Still, he thought that his comrade might be mistaken about himself. Or, on the other hand, he might be a man heretofore doomed to peace and obscurity, but, in reality, made to shine in war.

The youth would have liked to have discovered another who suspected himself. A sympathetic comparison of mental notes would have been a joy to him.

He occasionally tried to fathom a comrade with seductive sentences. He looked about to find men in the proper mood. All attempts failed to bring forth any statement which looked in any way like a confession to those doubts which he privately acknowledged in himself. He was afraid to make an open declaration of his concern, because he dreaded to place some unscrupulous confidant upon the high plane of the unconfessed from which elevation he could be derided.

In regard to his companions his mind wavered between two opinions, according to his mood. Sometimes he inclined to believing them all heroes. In fact, he usually admired in secret the superior development of the higher qualities in others. He could conceive of men going very insignificantly about the world bearing a load of courage unseen, and although he had known many of his comrades through boyhood, he began to fear that his judgment of them had been blind. Then, in other moments, he flouted these theories, and assured him that his fellows were all privately wondering and quaking.

His emotions made him feel strange in the presence of men who talked excitedly of a prospective battle as of a drama they were about to witness, with nothing but eagerness and curiosity apparent in their faces. It was often that he suspected them to be liars.

He did not pass such thoughts without severe condemnation of himself. He dinned reproaches at times. He was convicted by himself of many shameful crimes against the gods of traditions.

In his great anxiety his heart was continually clamoring at what he considered the intolerable slowness of the generals. They seemed content to perch tranquilly on the river bank, and leave him bowed down by the weight of a great problem. He wanted it settled forthwith. He could not long bear such a load, he said. Sometimes his anger at the commanders reached an acute stage, and he grumbled about the camp like a veteran.

One morning, however, he found himself in the ranks of his prepared regiment. The men were whispering speculations and recounting the old rumors. In the gloom before the break of the day their uniforms glowed a deep purple hue. From across the river the red eyes were still peering. In the eastern sky there was a yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun; and against it, black and patternlike, loomed the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse.

From off in the darkness came the trampling of feet. The youth could occasionally see dark shadows that moved like monsters. The regiment stood at rest for what seemed a long time. The youth grew impatient. It was unendurable the way these affairs were managed. He wondered how long they were to be kept waiting.

As he looked all about him and pondered upon the mystic gloom, he began to believe that at any moment the ominous distance might be aflare, and the rolling crashes of an engagement come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyes across the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a row of dragons advancing. He turned toward the colonel and saw him lift his gigantic arm and calmly stroke his mustache.

At last he heard from along the road at the foot of the hill the clatter of a horse’s galloping hoofs. It must be the coming of orders. He bent forward, scarce breathing. The exciting clickety-click, as it grew louder and louder, seemed to be beating upon his soul. Presently a horseman with jangling equipment drew rein before the colonel of the regiment. The two held a short, sharp-worded conversation. The men in the foremost ranks craned their necks.

As the horseman wheeled his animal and galloped away he turned to shout over his shoulder, “Don’t forget that box of cigars!” The colonel mumbled in reply. The youth wondered what a box of cigars had to do with war.

A moment later the regiment went swinging off into the darkness. It was now like one of those moving monsters wending with many feet. The air was heavy, and cold with dew. A mass of wet grass, marched upon, rustled like silk.

There was an occasional flash and glimmer of steel from the backs of all these huge crawling reptiles. From the road came creakings and grumblings as some surly guns were dragged away.

The men stumbled along still muttering speculations. There was a subdued debate. Once a man fell down, and as he reached for his rifle a comrade, unseeing, trod upon his hand. He of the injured fingers swore bitterly, and aloud. A low, tittering laugh went among his fellows.

Presently they passed into a roadway and marched forward with easy strides. A dark regiment moved before them, and from behind also came the tinkle of equipments on the bodies of marching men.

The rushing yellow of the developing day went on behind their backs. When the sunrays at last struck full and mellowingly upon the earth, the youth saw that the landscape was streaked with two long, thin, black columns which disappeared on the brow of a hill in front and rearward vanished in a wood. They were like two serpents crawling from the cavern of the night.

The river was not in view. The tall soldier burst into praises of what he thought to be his powers of perception.

Some of the tall one’s companions cried with emphasis that they, too, had evolved the same thing, and they congratulated themselves upon it. But there were others who said that the tall one’s plan was not the true one at all. They persisted with other theories. There was a vigorous discussion.

The youth took no part in them. As he walked along in careless line he was engaged with his own eternal debate. He could not hinder himself from dwelling upon it. He was despondent and sullen, and threw shifting glances about him. He looked ahead, often expecting to hear from the advance the rattle of firing.

But the long serpents crawled slowly from hill to hill without bluster of smoke. A dun-colored cloud of dust floated away to the right. The sky overhead was of a fairy blue.

The youth studied the faces of his companions, ever on the watch to detect kindred emotions. He suffered disappointment. Some ardor of the air which was causing the veteran commands to move with glee—almost with song—had infected the new regiment. The men began to speak of victory as of a thing they knew. Also, the tall soldier received his vindication. They were certainly going to come around in behind the enemy. They expressed commiseration for that part of the army which had been left upon the river bank, felicitating themselves upon being a part of a blasting host.

The youth, considering himself as separated from the others, was saddened by the blithe and merry speeches that went from rank to rank. The company wags all made their best endeavors. The regiment tramped to the tune of laughter.

The blatant soldier often convulsed whole files by his biting sarcasms aimed at the tall one.

And it was not long before all the men seemed to forget their mission. Whole brigades grinned in unison, and regiments laughed.

A rather fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a dooryard. He planned to load his knapsack upon it. He was escaping with his prize when a young girl rushed from the house and grabbed the animal’s mane. There followed a wrangle. The young girl, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, stood like a dauntless statue.

The observant regiment, standing at rest in the roadway, whooped at once, and entered whole-souled upon the side of the maiden. The men became so engrossed in this affair that they entirely ceased to remember their own large war. They jeered the piratical private, and called attention to various defects in his personal appearance; and they were wildly enthusiastic in support of the young girl.

To her, from some distance, came bold advice. “Hit him with a stick.”

There were crows and catcalls showered upon him when he retreated without the horse. The regiment rejoiced at his downfall. Loud and vociferous congratulations were showered upon the maiden, who stood panting and regarding the troops with defiance.

At nightfall the column broke into regimental pieces, and the fragments went into the fields to camp. Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.

The youth kept from intercourse with his companions as much as circumstances would allow him. In the evening he wandered a few paces into the gloom. From this little distance the many fires, with the black forms of men passing to and fro before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects.

He lay down in the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against his cheek. The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop. The liquid stillness of the night enveloping him made him feel vast pity for himself. There was a caress in the soft winds; and the whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one of sympathy for himself in his distress.

He wished, without reserve, that he was at home again making the endless rounds from the house to the barn, from the barn to the fields, from the fields to the barn, from the barn to the house. He remembered he had so often cursed the brindle cow and her mates, and had sometimes flung milking stools. But, from his present point of view, there was a halo of happiness about each of their heads, and he would have sacrificed all the brass buttons on the continent to have been enabled to return to them. He told himself that he was not formed for a soldier. And he mused seriously upon the radical differences between himself and those men who were dodging implike around the fires.

As he mused thus he heard the rustle of grass, and, upon turning his head, discovered the loud soldier. He called out, “Oh, Wilson!”

The latter approached and looked down. “Why, hello, Henry; is it you? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, thinking,” said the youth.

The other sat down and carefully lighted his pipe. “You’re getting blue my boy. You’re looking thundering peek-ed. What the dickens is wrong with you?”

“Oh, nothing,” said the youth.

The loud soldier launched then into the subject of the anticipated fight. “Oh, we’ve got ’em now!” As he spoke his boyish face was wreathed in a gleeful smile, and his voice had an exultant ring. “We’ve got ’em now. At last, by the eternal thunders, we’ll like ’em good!”

“If the truth was known,” he added, more soberly, “they’ve licked US about every clip up to now; but this time—this time—we’ll lick ’em good!”

“I thought you was objecting to this march a little while ago,” said the youth coldly.

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” explained the other. “I don’t mind marching, if there’s going to be fighting at the end of it. What I hate is this getting moved here and moved there, with no good coming of it, as far as I can see, excepting sore feet and damned short rations.”

“Well, Jim Conklin says we’ll get plenty of fighting this time.”

“He’s right for once, I guess, though I can’t see how it come. This time we’re in for a big battle, and we’ve got the best end of it, certain sure. Gee rod! how we will thump ’em!”

He arose and began to pace to and fro excitedly. The thrill of his enthusiasm made him walk with an elastic step. He was sprightly, vigorous, fiery in his belief in success. He looked into the future with clear proud eye, and he swore with the air of an old soldier.

The youth watched him for a moment in silence. When he finally spoke his voice was as bitter as dregs. “Oh, you’re going to do great things, I s’pose!”

The loud soldier blew a thoughtful cloud of smoke from his pipe. “Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked with dignity; “I don’t know. I s’pose I’ll do as well as the rest. I’m going to try like thunder.” He evidently complimented himself upon the modesty of this statement.

“How do you know you won’t run when the time comes?” asked the youth.

“Run?” said the loud one; “run?—of course not!” He laughed.

“Well,” continued the youth, “lots of good-a-’nough men have thought they was going to do great things before the fight, but when the time come they skedaddled.”

“Oh, that’s all true, I s’pose,” replied the other; “but I’m not going to skedaddle. The man that bets on my running will lose his money, that’s all.” He nodded confidently.

“Oh, shucks!” said the youth. “You ain’t the bravest man in the world, are you?”

“No, I ain’t,” exclaimed the loud soldier indignantly; “and I didn’t say I was the bravest man in the world, neither. I said I was going to do my share of fighting—that’s what I said. And I am, too. Who are you, anyhow? You talk as if you thought you was Napoleon Bonaparte.” He glared at the youth for a moment, and then strode away.

The youth called in a savage voice after his comrade: “Well, you needn’t git mad about it!” But the other continued on his way and made no reply.

He felt alone in space when his injured comrade had disappeared. His failure to discover any mite of resemblance in their viewpoints made him more miserable than before. No one seemed to be wrestling with such a terrific personal problem. He was a mental outcast.

He went slowly to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country’s business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid and deaf.

And as he sweated with the pain of these thoughts, he could hear low, serene sentences. “I’ll bid five.” “Make it six.” “Seven.” “Seven goes.”

He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the white wall of his tent until, exhausted and ill from the monotony of his suffering, he fell asleep.

Chapter 3

When another night came, the columns, changed to purple streaks, filed across two pontoon bridges. A glaring fire wine-tinted the waters of the river. Its rays, shining upon the moving masses of troops, brought forth here and there sudden gleams of silver or gold. Upon the other shore a dark and mysterious range of hills was curved against the sky. The insect voices of the night sang solemnly.

After this crossing the youth assured himself that at any moment they might be suddenly and fearfully assaulted from the caves of the lowering woods. He kept his eyes watchfully upon the darkness.

But his regiment went unmolested to a camping place, and its soldiers slept the brave sleep of wearied men. In the morning they were routed out with early energy, and hustled along a narrow road that led deep into the forest.

It was during this rapid march that the regiment lost many of the marks of a new command.

The men had begun to count the miles upon their fingers, and they grew tired. “Sore feet an’ damned short rations, that’s all,” said the loud soldier. There was perspiration and grumblings. After a time they began to shed their knapsacks. Some tossed them unconcernedly down; others hid them carefully, asserting their plans to return for them at some convenient time. Men extricated themselves from thick shirts. Presently few carried anything but their necessary clothing, blankets, haversacks, canteens, and arms and ammunition. “You can now eat and shoot,” said the tall soldier to the youth. “That’s all you want to do.”

There was sudden change from the ponderous infantry of theory to the light and speedy infantry of practice. The regiment, relieved of a burden, received a new impetus. But there was much loss of valuable knapsacks, and, on the whole, very good shirts.

But the regiment was not yet veteranlike in appearance. Veteran regiments in the army were likely to be very small aggregations of men. Once, when the command had first come to the field, some perambulating veterans, noting the length of their column, had accosted them thus: “Hey, fellers, what brigade is that?” And when the men had replied that they formed a regiment and not a brigade, the older soldiers had laughed, and said, “O Gawd!”

Also, there was too great a similarity in the hats. The hats of a regiment should properly represent the history of headgear for a period of years. And, moreover, there were no letters of faded gold speaking from the colors. They were new and beautiful, and the color bearer habitually oiled the pole.

Presently the army again sat down to think. The odor of the peaceful pines was in the men’s nostrils. The sound of monotonous axe blows rang through the forest, and the insects, nodding upon their perches, crooned like old women. The youth returned to his theory of a blue demonstration.

One gray dawn, however, he was kicked in the leg by the tall soldier, and then, before he was entirely awake, he found himself running down a wood road in the midst of men who were panting from the first effects of speed. His canteen banged rythmically upon his thigh, and his haversack bobbed softly. His musket bounced a trifle from his shoulder at each stride and made his cap feel uncertain upon his head.

He could hear the men whisper jerky sentences: “Say—what’s all this—about?” “What th’ thunder—we—skedaddlin’ this way fer?” “Billie—keep off m’ feet. Yeh run—like a cow.” And the loud soldier’s shrill voice could be heard: “What th’devil they in sich a hurry for?”

The youth thought the damp fog of early morning moved from the rush of a great body of troops. From the distance came a sudden spatter of firing.

He was bewildered. As he ran with his comrades he strenuously tried to think, but all he knew was that if he fell down those coming behind would tread upon him. All his faculties seemed to be needed to guide him over and past obstructions. He felt carried along by a mob.

The sun spread disclosing rays, and, one by one, regiments burst into view like armed men just born of the earth. The youth perceived that the time had come. He was about to be measured. For a moment he felt in the face of his great trial like a babe, and the flesh over his heart seemed very thin. He seized time to look about him calculatingly.

But he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law on four sides. He was in a moving box.

As he perceived this fact it occurred to him that he had never wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by the merciless government. And now they were taking him out to be slaughtered.

The regiment slid down a bank and wallowed across a little stream. The mournful current moved slowly on, and from the water, shaded black, some white bubble eyes looked at the men.

As they climbed the hill on the farther side artillery began to boom. Here the youth forgot many things as he felt a sudden impulse of curiosity. He scrambled up the bank with a speed that could not be exceeded by a bloodthirsty man.

He expected a battle scene.

There were some little fields girted and squeezed by a forest. Spread over the grass and in among the tree trunks, he could see knots and waving lines of skirmishers who were running hither and thither and firing at the landscape. A dark battle line lay upon a sunstruck clearing that gleamed orange color. A flag fluttered.

Other regiments floundered up the bank. The brigade was formed in line of battle, and after a pause started slowly through the woods in the rear of the receding skirmishers, who were continually melting into the scene to appear again farther on. They were always busy as bees, deeply absorbed in their little combats.

The youth tried to observe everything. He did not use care to avoid trees and branches, and his forgotten feet were constantly knocking against stones or getting entangled in briers. He was aware that these battalions with their commotions were woven red and startling into the gentle fabric of softened greens and browns. It looked to be a wrong place for a battle field.

The skirmishers in advance fascinated him. Their shots into thickets and at distant and prominent trees spoke to him of tragedies—hidden, mysterious, solemn.

Once the line encountered the body of a dead soldier. He lay upon his back staring at the sky. He was dressed in an awkward suit of yellowish brown. The youth could see that the soles of his shoes had been worn to the thinness of writing paper, and from a great rent in one the dead foot projected piteously. And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.

The ranks opened covertly to avoid the corpse. The invulnerable dead man forced a way for himself. The youth looked keenly at the ashen face. The wind raised the tawny beard. It moved as if a hand were stroking it. He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.

During the march the ardor which the youth had acquired when out of view of the field rapidly faded to nothing. His curiosity was quite easily satisfied. If an intense scene had caught him with its wild swing as he came to the top of the bank, he might have gone gone roaring on. This advance upon Nature was too calm. He had opportunity to reflect. He had time in which to wonder about himself and to attempt to probe his sensations.

Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept over his back, and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs at all.

A house standing placidly in distant fields had to him an ominous look. The shadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts. The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close forests would bristle with rifle barrels. Ironlike brigades would appear in the rear. They were all going to be sacrificed. The generals were stupids. The enemy would presently swallow the whole command. He glared about him, expecting to see the stealthy approach of his death.

He thought that he must break from the ranks and harangue his comrades. They must not all be killed like pigs; and he was sure it would come to pass unless they were informed of these dangers. The generals were idiots to send them marching into a regular pen. There was but one pair of eyes in the corps. He would step forth and make a speech. Shrill and passionate words came to his lips.

The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went calmly on through fields and woods. The youth looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of deep interest, as if they were investigating something that had fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs as if they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon thin ice. The greater part of the untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were going to look at war, the red animal—war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.

As he looked the youth gripped his outcry at his throat. He saw that even if the men were tottering with fear they would laugh at his warning. They would jeer him, and, if practicable, pelt him with missiles. Admitting that he might be wrong, a frenzied declamation of the kind would turn him into a worm.

He assumed, then, the demeanor of one who knows that he is doomed alone to unwritten responsibilities. He lagged, with tragic glances at the sky.

He was surprised presently by the young lieutenant of his company, who began heartily to beat him with a sword, calling out in a loud and insolent voice: “Come, young man, get up into ranks there. No skulking’ll do here.” He mended his pace with suitable haste. And he hated the lieutenant, who had no appreciation of fine minds. He was a mere brute.

After a time the brigade was halted in the cathedral light of a forest. The busy skirmishers were still popping. Through the aisles of the wood could be seen the floating smoke from their rifles. Sometimes it went up in little balls, white and compact.

During this halt many men in the regiment began erecting tiny hills in front of them. They used stones sticks, earth, and anything they thought might turn a bullet. Some built comparatively large ones, while others seems content with little ones.

This procedure caused a discussion among the men. Some wished to fight like duelists, believing it to be correct to stand erect and be, from their feet to their foreheads, a mark. They said they scorned the devices of the cautious. But the others scoffed in reply, and pointed to the veterans on the flanks who were digging at the ground like terriers. In a short time there was quite a barricade along the regimental fronts. Directly, however, they were ordered to withdraw from that place.

This astounded the youth. He forgot his stewing over the advance movement. “Well, then, what did they march us out here for?” he demanded of the tall soldier. The latter with calm faith began a heavy explanation, although he had been compelled to leave a little protection of stones and dirt to which he had devoted much care and skill.

When the regiment was aligned in another position each man’s regard for his safety caused another line of small intrenchments. They ate their noon meal behind a third one. They were moved from this one also. They were marched from place to place with apparent aimlessness.

The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in battle. He saw his salvation in such a change. Hence this waiting was an ordeal to him. He was in a fever of impatience. He considered that there was denoted a lack of purpose on the part of the generals. He began to complain to the tall soldier. “I can’t stand this much longer,” he cried. “I don’t see what good it does to make us wear out our legs for nothin’.” He wished to return to camp, knowing that this affair was a blue demonstration; or else to go into a battle and discover that he had been a fool in his doubts, and was, in truth, a man of traditional courage. The strain of present circumstances he felt to be intolerable.

The philosophical tall soldier measured a sandwich of cracker and pork and swallowed it in a nonchalant manner. “Oh, I suppose we must go reconnoitering around the country jest to keep ’em from getting too close, or to develop ’em, or something.”

“Huh!” said the loud soldier.

“Well,” cried the youth, still fidgeting, “I’d rather do anything ’most than go tramping ’round the country all day doing no good to nobody and jest tiring ourselves out.”

“So would I,” said the loud soldier. “It ain’t right. I tell you if anybody with any sense was a-runnin’ this army it—”

“Oh, shut up!” roared the tall private. “You little fool. You little damn’ cuss. You ain’t had that there coat and them pants on for six months, and yet you talk as if—”

“Well, I wanta do some fighting anyway,” interrupted the other. “I didn’t come here to walk. I could ’ave walked to home—’round an’ ’round the barn, if I jest wanted to walk.”

The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if taking poison in despair.

But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and contented. He could not rage in fierce argument in the presence of such sandwiches. During his meals he always wore an air of blissful contemplation of the food he had swallowed. His spirit seemed then to be communing with the viands.

He accepted new environment and circumstance with great coolness, eating from his haversack at every opportunity. On the march he went along with the stride of a hunter, objecting to neither gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when he had been ordered away from three little protective piles of earth and stone, each of which had been an engineering feat worthy of being made sacred to the name of his grandmother.

In the afternoon, the regiment went out over the same ground it had taken in the morning. The landscape then ceased to threaten the youth. He had been close to it and become familiar with it.

When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his old fears of stupidity and incompetence reassailed him, but this time he doggedly let them babble. He was occupied with his problem, and in his desperation he concluded that the stupidity did not greatly matter.

Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest, and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed. He would die; he would go to some place where he would be understood. It was useless to expect appreciation of his profound and fine sense from such men as the lieutenant. He must look to the grave for comprehension.

The skirmish fire increased to a long clattering sound. With it was mingled far-away cheering. A battery spoke.

Directly the youth could see the skirmishers running. They were pursued by the sound of musketry fire. After a time the hot, dangerous flashes of the rifles were visible. Smoke clouds went slowly and insolently across the fields like observant phantoms. The din became crescendo, like the roar of an oncoming train.

A brigade ahead of them and on the right went into action with a rending roar. It was as if it had exploded. And thereafter it lay stretched in the distance behind a long gray wall, that one was obliged to look twice at to make sure that it was smoke.

The youth, forgetting his neat plan of getting killed, gazed spell bound. His eyes grew wide and busy with the action of the scene. His mouth was a little ways open.

Of a sudden he felt a heavy and sad hand laid upon his shoulder. Awakening from his trance of observation he turned and beheld the loud soldier.

“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” said the latter, with intense gloom. He was quite pale and his girlish lip was trembling.

“Eh?” murmured the youth in great astonishment.

“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” continued the loud soldier. “Something tells me—”

“What?”

“I’m a gone coon this first time and—and I w-want you to take these here things—to—my—folks.” He ended in a quavering sob of pity for himself. He handed the youth a little packet done up in a yellow envelope.

“Why, what the devil—” began the youth again.

But the other gave him a glance as from the depths of a tomb, and raised his limp hand in a prophetic manner and turned away.

Chapter 4

The brigade was halted in the fringe of a grove. The men crouched among the trees and pointed their restless guns out at the fields. They tried to look beyond the smoke.

Out of this haze they could see running men. Some shouted information and gestured as the hurried.

The men of the new regiment watched and listened eagerly, while their tongues ran on in gossip of the battle. They mouthed rumors that had flown like birds out of the unknown.

“They say Perry has been driven in with big loss.”

“Yes, Carrott went t’ th’ hospital. He said he was sick. That smart lieutenant is commanding ‘G’ Company. Th’ boys say they won’t be under Carrott no more if they all have t’ desert. They allus knew he was a—”

“Hannises’ batt’ry is took.”

“It ain’t either. I saw Hannises’ batt’ry off on th’ left not more’n fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well—”

“Th’ general, he ses he is goin’ t’ take th’ hull command of th’ 304th when we go inteh action, an’ then he ses we’ll do sech fightin’ as never another one reg’ment done.”

“They say we’re catchin’ it over on th’ left. They say th’ enemy driv’ our line inteh a devil of a swamp an’ took Hannises’ batt’ry.”

“No sech thing. Hannises’ batt’ry was ’long here ’bout a minute ago.”

“That young Hasbrouck, he makes a good off’cer. He ain’t afraid ’a nothin’.”

“I met one of th’ 148th Maine boys an’ he ses his brigade fit th’ hull rebel army fer four hours over on th’ turnpike road an’ killed about five thousand of ’em. He ses one more sech fight as that an’ th’ war’ll be over.”

“Bill wasn’t scared either. No, sir! It wasn’t that. Bill ain’t a-gittin’ scared easy. He was jest mad, that’s what he was. When that feller trod on his hand, he up an’ sed that he was willin’ t’ give his hand t’ his country, but he be dumbed if he was goin’ t’ have every dumb bushwhacker in th’ kentry walkin’ ’round on it. So he went t’ th’ hospital disregardless of th’ fight. Three fingers was crunched. Th’ dern doctor wanted t’ amputate ’m, an’ Bill, he raised a heluva row, I hear. He’s a funny feller.”

The din in front swelled to a tremendous chorus. The youth and his fellows were frozen to silence. They could see a flag that tossed in the smoke angrily. Near it were the blurred and agitated forms of troops. There came a turbulent stream of men across the fields. A battery changing position at a frantic gallop scattered the stragglers right and left.

A shell screaming like a storm banshee went over the huddled heads of the reserves. It landed in the grove, and exploding redly flung the brown earth. There was a little shower of pine needles.

Bullets began to whistle among the branches and nip at the trees. Twigs and leaves came sailing down. It was as if a thousand axes, wee and invisible, were being wielded. Many of the men were constantly dodging and ducking their heads.

The lieutenant of the youth’s company was shot in the hand. He began to swear so wondrously that a nervous laugh went along the regimental line. The officer’s profanity sounded conventional. It relieved the tightened senses of the new men. It was as if he had hit his fingers with a tack hammer at home.

He held the wounded member carefully away from his side so that the blood would not drip upon his trousers.

The captain of the company, tucking his sword under his arm, produced a handkerchief and began to bind with it the lieutenant’s wound. And they disputed as to how the binding should be done.

The battle flag in the distance jerked about madly. It seemed to be struggling to free itself from an agony. The billowing smoke was filled with horizontal flashes.

Men rushing swiftly emerged from it. They grew in numbers until it was seen that the whole command was fleeing. The flag suddenly sank down as if dying. Its motion as it fell was a gesture of despair.

Wild yells came from behind the walls of smoke. A sketch in gray and red dissolved into a moblike body of men who galloped like wild horses. The veteran regiments on the right and left of the 304th immediately began to jeer. With the passionate song of the bullets and the banshee shrieks of shells were mingled loud catcalls and bits of facetious advice concerning places of safety.

But the new regiment was breathless with horror. “Gawd! Saunders’s got crushed!” whispered the man at the youth’s elbow. They shrank back and crouched as if compelled to await a flood.

The youth shot a swift glance along the blue ranks of the regiment. The profiles were motionless, carven; and afterward he remembered that the color sergeant was standing with his legs apart, as if he expected to be pushed to the ground.

The following throng went whirling around the flank. Here and there were officers carried along on the stream like exasperated chips. They were striking about them with their swords and with their left fists, punching every head they could reach. They cursed like highwaymen.

A mounted officer displayed the furious anger of a spoiled child. He raged with his head, his arms, and his legs.

Another, the commander of the brigade, was galloping about bawling. His hat was gone and his clothes were awry. He resembled a man who has come from bed to go to a fire. The hoofs of his horse often threatened the heads of the running men, but they scampered with singular fortune. In this rush they were apparently all deaf and blind. They heeded not the largest and longest of the oaths that were thrown at them from all directions.

Frequently over this tumult could be heard the grim jokes of the critical veterans; but the retreating men apparently were not even conscious of the presence of an audience.

The battle reflection that shone for an instant in the faces on the mad current made the youth feel that forceful hands from heaven would not have been able to have held him in place if he could have got intelligent control of his legs.

There was an appalling imprint upon these faces. The struggle in the smoke had pictured an exaggeration of itself on the bleached cheeks and in the eyes wild with one desire.

The sight of this stampede exerted a floodlike force that seemed able to drag sticks and stones and men from the ground. They of the reserves had to hold on. They grew pale and firm, and red and quaking.

The youth achieved one little thought in the midst of this chaos. The composite monster which had caused the other troops to flee had not then appeared. He resolved to get a view of it, and then, he thought he might very likely run better than the best of them.

Chapter 5

There were moments of waiting. The youth thought of the village street at home before the arrival of the circus parade on a day in the spring. He remembered how he had stood, a small, thrillful boy, prepared to follow the dingy lady upon the white horse, or the band in its faded chariot. He saw the yellow road, the lines of expectant people, and the sober houses. He particularly remembered an old fellow who used to sit upon a cracker box in front of the store and feign to despise such exhibitions. A thousand details of color and form surged in his mind. The old fellow upon the cracker box appeared in middle prominence.

Some one cried, “Here they come!”

There was rustling and muttering among the men. They displayed a feverish desire to have every possible cartridge ready to their hands. The boxes were pulled around into various positions, and adjusted with great care. It was as if seven hundred new bonnets were being tried on.

The tall soldier, having prepared his rifle, produced a red handkerchief of some kind. He was engaged in knotting it about his throat with exquisite attention to its position, when the cry was repeated up and down the line in a muffled roar of sound.

“Here they come! Here they come!” Gun locks clicked.

Across the smoke-infested fields came a brown swarm of running men who were giving shrill yells. They came on, stooping and swinging their rifles at all angles. A flag, tilted forward, sped near the front.

As he caught sight of them the youth was momentarily startled by a thought that perhaps his gun was not loaded. He stood trying to rally his faltering intellect so that he might recollect the moment when he had loaded, but he could not.

A hatless general pulled his dripping horse to a stand near the colonel of the 304th. He shook his fist in the other’s face. “You’ve got to hold ’em back!” he shouted, savagely; “you’ve got to hold ’em back!”

In his agitation the colonel began to stammer. “A-all r-right, General, all right, by Gawd! We-we’ll do our—we-we’ll d-d-do-do our best, General.” The general made a passionate gesture and galloped away. The colonel, perchance to relieve his feelings, began to scold like a wet parrot. The youth, turning swiftly to make sure that the rear was unmolested, saw the commander regarding his men in a highly resentful manner, as if he regretted above everything his association with them.

The man at the youth’s elbow was mumbling, as if to himself: “Oh, we’re in for it now! oh, we’re in for it now!”

The captain of the company had been pacing excitedly to and fro in the rear. He coaxed in schoolmistress fashion, as to a congregation of boys with primers. His talk was an endless repetition. “Reserve your fire, boys—don’t shoot till I tell you—save your fire—wait till they get close up—don’t be damned fools—”

Perspiration streamed down the youth’s face, which was soiled like that of a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. His mouth was still a little ways ope.

He got the one glance at the foe-swarming field in front of him, and instantly ceased to debate the question of his piece being loaded. Before he was ready to begin—before he had announced to himself that he was about to fight—he threw the obedient well-balanced rifle into position and fired a first wild shot. Directly he was working at his weapon like an automatic affair.

He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part—a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country—was in crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could not flee no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand.

If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated perhaps he could have amputated himself from it. But its noise gave him assurance. The regiment was like a firework that, once ignited, proceeds superior to circumstances until its blazing vitality fades. It wheezed and banged with a mighty power. He pictured the ground before it as strewn with the discomfited.

There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about him. He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and danger of death.

He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in his thoughts, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.

Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere—a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his ears.

Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage into that of a driven beast.

Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly blankets.

There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of intentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The man at the youth’s elbow was babbling. In it there was something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe. The tall soldier was swearing in a loud voice. From his lips came a black procession of curious oaths. Of a sudden another broke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat. “Well, why don’t they support us? Why don’t they send supports? Do they think—”

The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.

There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending and surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible attitude. The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels. The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment had been growing larger and larger like puppets under a magician’s hand.

The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in picturesque attitudes. They were bobbing to and fro roaring directions and encouragements. The dimensions of their howls were extraordinary. They expended their lungs with prodigal wills. And often they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.

The lieutenant of the youth’s company had encountered a soldier who had fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades. Behind the lines these two were acting a little isolated scene. The man was blubbering and staring with sheeplike eyes at the lieutenant, who had seized him by the collar and was pommeling him. He drove him back into the ranks with many blows. The soldier went mechanically, dully, with his animal-like eyes upon the officer. Perhaps there was to him a divinity expressed in the voice of the other—stern, hard, with no reflection of fear in it. He tried to reload his gun, but his shaking hands prevented. The lieutenant was obliged to assist him.

The men dropped here and there like bundles. The captain of the youth’s company had been killed in an early part of the action. His body lay stretched out in the position of a tired man resting, but upon his face there was an astonished and sorrowful look, as if he thought some friend had done him an ill turn. The babbling man was grazed by a shot that made the blood stream widely down his face. He clapped both hand to his head. “Oh!” he said, and ran. Another grunted suddenly as if he had been struck by a club in the stomach. He sat down and gazed ruefully. In his eyes there was mute, indefinite reproach. Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his knee joint splintered by a ball. Immediately he had dropped his rifle and gripped the tree with both arms. And there he remained, clinging desperately and crying for assistance that he might withdraw his hold upon the tree.

At last an exultant yell went along the quivering line. The firing dwindled from an uproar to a last vindictive popping. As the smoke slowly eddied away, the youth saw that the charge had been repulsed. The enemy were scattered into reluctant groups. He saw a man climb to the top of the fence, straddle the rail, and fire a parting shot. The waves had receded, leaving bits of dark “debris” upon the ground.

Some in the regiment began to whoop frenziedly. Many were silent. Apparently they were trying to contemplate themselves.

After the fever had left his veins, the youth thought that at last he was going to suffocate. He became aware of the foul atmosphere in which he had been struggling. He was grimy and dripping like a laborer in a foundry. He grasped his canteen and took a long swallow of the warmed water.

A sentence with variations went up and down the line. “Well, we’ve helt ’em back. We’ve helt ’em back; derned if we haven’t.” The men said it blissfully, leering at each other with dirty smiles.

The youth turned to look behind him and off to the right and off to the left. He experienced the joy of a man who at last finds leisure in which to look about him.

Under foot there were a few ghastly forms motionless. They lay twisted in fantastic contortions. Arms were bent and heads were turned in incredible ways. It seemed that the dead men must have fallen from some great height to get into such positions. They looked to be dumped out upon the ground from the sky.

From a position in the rear of the grove a battery was throwing shells over it. The flash of the guns startled the youth at first. He thought they were aimed directly at him. Through the trees he watched the black figures of the gunners as they worked swiftly and intently. Their labor seemed a complicated thing. He wondered how they could remember its formula in the midst of confusion.

The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs. They argued with abrupt violence. It was a grim pow-wow. Their busy servants ran hither and thither.

A small procession of wounded men were going drearily toward the rear. It was a flow of blood from the torn body of the brigade.

To the right and to the left were the dark lines of other troops. Far in front he thought he could see lighter masses protruding in points from the forest. They were suggestive of unnumbered thousands.

Once he saw a tiny battery go dashing along the line of the horizon. The tiny riders were beating the tiny horses.

From a sloping hill came the sound of cheerings and clashes. Smoke welled slowly through the leaves.

Batteries were speaking with thunderous oratorical effort. Here and there were flags, the red in the stripes dominating. They splashed bits of warm color upon the dark lines of troops.

The youth felt the old thrill at the sight of the emblems. They were like beautiful birds strangely undaunted in a storm.

As he listened to the din from the hillside, to a deep pulsating thunder that came from afar to the left, and to the lesser clamors which came from many directions, it occurred to him that they were fighting, too, over there, and over there, and over there. Heretofore he had supposed that all the battle was directly under his nose.

As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the blue, pure sky and the sun gleamings on the trees and fields. It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment.

Chapter 6

The youth awakened slowly. He came gradually back to a position from which he could regard himself. For moments he had been scrutinizing his person in a dazed way as if he had never before seen himself. Then he picked up his cap from the ground. He wriggled in his jacket to make a more comfortable fit, and kneeling relaced his shoe. He thoughtfully mopped his reeking features.

So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed. The red, formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished.

He went into an ecstasy of self-satisfaction. He had the most delightful sensations of his life. Standing as if apart from himself, he viewed that last scene. He perceived that the man who had fought thus was magnificent.

He felt that he was a fine fellow. He saw himself even with those ideals which he had considered as far beyond him. He smiled in deep gratification.

Upon his fellows he beamed tenderness and good will. “Gee! ain’t it hot, hey?” he said affably to a man who was polishing his streaming face with his coat sleeves.

“You bet!” said the other, grinning sociably. “I never seen sech dumb hotness.” He sprawled out luxuriously on the ground. “Gee, yes! An’ I hope we don’t have no more fightin’ till a week from Monday.”

There were some handshakings and deep speeches with men whose features were familiar, but with whom the youth now felt the bonds of tied hearts. He helped a cursing comrade to bind up a wound of the shin.

But, of a sudden, cries of amazement broke out along the ranks of the new regiment. “Here they come ag’in! Here they come ag’in!” The man who had sprawled upon the ground started up and said, “Gosh!”

The youth turned quick eyes upon the field. He discerned forms begin to swell in masses out of a distant wood. He again saw the tilted flag speeding forward.

The shells, which had ceased to trouble the regiment for a time, came swirling again, and exploded in the grass or among the leaves of the trees. They looked to be strange war flowers bursting into fierce bloom.

The men groaned. The luster faded from their eyes. Their smudged countenances now expressed a profound dejection. They moved their stiffened bodies slowly, and watched in sullen mood the frantic approach of the enemy. The slaves toiling in the temple of this god began to feel rebellion at his harsh tasks.

They fretted and complained each to each. “Oh, say, this is too much of a good thing! Why can’t somebody send us supports?”

“We ain’t never goin’ to stand this second banging. I didn’t come here to fight the hull damn’ rebel army.”

There was one who raised a doleful cry. “I wish Bill Smithers had trod on my hand, insteader me treddin’ on his’n.” The sore joints of the regiment creaked as it painfully floundered into position to repulse.

The youth stared. Surely, he thought, this impossible thing was not about to happen. He waited as if he expected the enemy to suddenly stop, apologize, and retire bowing. It was all a mistake.

But the firing began somewhere on the regimental line and ripped along in both directions. The level sheets of flame developed great clouds of smoke that tumbled and tossed in the mild wind near the ground for a moment, and then rolled through the ranks as through a gate. The clouds were tinged an earthlike yellow in the sunrays and in the shadow were a sorry blue. The flag was sometimes eaten and lost in this mass of vapor, but more often it projected, sun-touched, resplendent.

Into the youth’s eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of a jaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous weakness and the muscles of his arms felt numb and bloodless. His hands, too, seemed large and awkward as if he was wearing invisible mittens. And there was a great uncertainty about his knee joints.

The words that comrades had uttered previous to the firing began to recur to him. “Oh, say, this is too much of a good thing! What do they take us for—why don’t they send supports? I didn’t come here to fight the hull damned rebel army.”

He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those who were coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion, he was astonished beyond measure at such persistency. They must be machines of steel. It was very gloomy struggling against such affairs, wound up perhaps to fight until sundown.

He slowly lifted his rifle and catching a glimpse of the thickspread field he blazed at a cantering cluster. He stopped then and began to peer as best as he could through the smoke. He caught changing views of the ground covered with men who were all running like pursued imps, and yelling.

To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubtable dragons. He became like the man who lost his legs at the approach of the red and green monster. He waited in a sort of a horrified, listening attitude. He seemed to shut his eyes and wait to be gobbled.

A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has come to the edge of a cliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware. There was a revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.

Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his head, shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was leaving him behind. He saw the few fleeting forms.

He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.

Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. On his face was all the horror of those things which he imagined.

The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought of the incident was that the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel interested in such matters upon this occasion.

He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed.

As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the regiment was fleeing, pursued by those ominous crashes.

In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of the men who were nearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be then those who were following him. So he displayed the zeal of an insane sprinter in his purpose to keep them in the rear. There was a race.

As he, leading, went across a little field, he found himself in a region of shells. They hurtled over his head with long wild screams. As he listened he imagined them to have rows of cruel teeth that grinned at him. Once one lit before him and the livid lightning of the explosion effectually barred the way in his chosen direction. He groveled on the ground and then springing up went careering off through some bushes.

He experienced a thrill of amazement when he came within view of a battery in action. The men there seemed to be in conventional moods, altogether unaware of the impending annihilation. The battery was disputing with a distant antagonist and the gunners were wrapped in admiration of their shooting. They were continually bending in coaxing postures over the guns. They seemed to be patting them on the back and encouraging them with words. The guns, stolid and undaunted, spoke with dogged valor.

The precise gunners were coolly enthusiastic. They lifted their eyes every chance to the smoke-wreathed hillock from whence the hostile battery addressed them. The youth pitied them as he ran. Methodical idiots! Machine-like fools! The refined joy of planting shells in the midst of the other battery’s formation would appear a little thing when the infantry came swooping out of the woods.

The face of a youthful rider, who was jerking his frantic horse with an abandon of temper he might display in a placid barnyard, was impressed deeply upon his mind. He knew that he looked upon a man who would presently be dead.

Too, he felt a pity for the guns, standing, six good comrades, in a bold row.

He saw a brigade going to the relief of its pestered fellows. He scrambled upon a wee hill and watched it sweeping finely, keeping formation in difficult places. The blue of the line was crusted with steel color, and the brilliant flags projected. Officers were shouting.

This sight also filled him with wonder. The brigade was hurrying briskly to be gulped into the infernal mouths of the war god. What manner of men were they, anyhow? Ah, it was some wondrous breed! Or else they didn’t comprehend—the fools.

A furious order caused commotion in the artillery. An officer on a bounding horse made maniacal motions with his arms. The teams went swinging up from the rear, the guns were whirled about, and the battery scampered away. The cannon with their noses poked slantingly at the ground grunted and grumbled like stout men, brave but with objections to hurry.

The youth went on, moderating his pace since he had left the place of noises.

Later he came upon a general of division seated upon a horse that pricked its ears in an interested way at the battle. There was a great gleaming of yellow and patent leather about the saddle and bridle. The quiet man astride looked mouse-colored upon such a splendid charger.

A jingling staff was galloping hither and thither. Sometimes the general was surrounded by horsemen and at other times he was quite alone. He looked to be much harassed. He had the appearance of a business man whose market is swinging up and down.

The youth went slinking around this spot. He went as near as he dared trying to overhear words. Perhaps the general, unable to comprehend chaos, might call upon him for information. And he could tell him. He knew all concerning it. Of a surety the force was in a fix, and any fool could see that if they did not retreat while they had opportunity—why—

He felt that he would like to thrash the general, or at least approach and tell him in plain words exactly what he thought him to be. It was criminal to stay calmly in one spot and make no effort to stay destruction. He loitered in a fever of eagerness for the division commander to apply to him.

As he warily moved about, he heard the general call out irritably: “Tompkins, go over an’ see Taylor, an’ tell him not t’ be in such an all-fired hurry; tell him t’ halt his brigade in th’ edge of th’ woods; tell him t’ detach a reg’ment—say I think th’ center’ll break if we don’t help it out some; tell him t’ hurry up.”

A slim youth on a fine chestnut horse caught these swift words from the mouth of his superior. He made his horse bound into a gallop almost from a walk in his haste to go upon his mission. There was a cloud of dust.

A moment later the youth saw the general bounce excitedly in his saddle.

“Yes, by heavens, they have!” The officer leaned forward. His face was aflame with excitement. “Yes, by heavens, they’ve held ’im! They’ve held ’im!”

He began to blithely roar at his staff: “We’ll wallop ’im now. We’ll wallop ’im now. We’ve got ’em sure.” He turned suddenly upon an aide: “Here—you—Jons—quick—ride after Tompkins—see Taylor—tell him t’ go in—everlastingly—like blazes—anything.”

As another officer sped his horse after the first messenger, the general beamed upon the earth like a sun. In his eyes was a desire to chant a paean. He kept repeating, “They’ve held ’em, by heavens!”

His excitement made his horse plunge, and he merrily kicked and swore at it. He held a little carnival of joy on horseback.

Chapter 7

The youth cringed as if discovered in a crime. By heavens, they had won after all! The imbecile line had remained and become victors. He could hear cheering.

He lifted himself upon his toes and looked in the direction of the fight. A yellow fog lay wallowing on the treetops. From beneath it came the clatter of musketry. Hoarse cries told of an advance.

He turned away amazed and angry. He felt that he had been wronged.

He had fled, he told himself, because annihilation approached. He had done a good part in saving himself, who was a little piece of the army. He had considered the time, he said, to be one in which it was the duty of every little piece to rescue itself if possible. Later the officers could fit the little pieces together again, and make a battle front. If none of the little pieces were wise enough to save themselves from the flurry of death at such a time, why, then, where would be the army? It was all plain that he had proceeded according to very correct and commendable rules. His actions had been sagacious things. They had been full of strategy. They were the work of a master’s legs.

Thoughts of his comrades came to him. The brittle blue line had withstood the blows and won. He grew bitter over it. It seemed that the blind ignorance and stupidity of those little pieces had betrayed him. He had been overturned and crushed by their lack of sense in holding the position, when intelligent deliberation would have convinced them that it was impossible. He, the enlightened man who looks afar in the dark, had fled because of his superior perceptions and knowledge. He felt a great anger against his comrades. He knew it could be proved that they had been fools.

He wondered what they would remark when later he appeared in camp. His mind heard howls of derision. Their density would not enable them to understand his sharper point of view.

He began to pity himself acutely. He was ill used. He was trodden beneath the feet of an iron injustice. He had proceeded with wisdom and from the most righteous motives under heaven’s blue only to be frustrated by hateful circumstances.

A dull, animal-like rebellion against his fellows, war in the abstract, and fate grew within him. He shambled along with bowed head, his brain in a tumult of agony and despair. When he looked loweringly up, quivering at each sound, his eyes had the expression of those of a criminal who thinks his guilt little and his punishment great, and knows that he can find no words.

He went from the fields into a thick woods, as if resolved to bury himself. He wished to get out of hearing of the crackling shots which were to him like voices.

The ground was cluttered with vines and bushes, and the trees grew close and spread out like bouquets. He was obliged to force his way with much noise. The creepers, catching against his legs, cried out harshly as their sprays were torn from the barks of trees. The swishing saplings tried to make known his presence to the world. He could not conciliate the forest. As he made his way, it was always calling out protestations. When he separated embraces of trees and vines the disturbed foliages waved their arms and turned their face leaves toward him. He dreaded lest these noisy motions and cries should bring men to look at him. So he went far, seeking dark and intricate places.

After a time the sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon boomed in the distance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed among the trees. The insects were making rhythmical noises. They seemed to be grinding their teeth in unison. A woodpecker stuck his impudent head around the side of a tree. A bird flew on lighthearted wing.

Off was the rumble of death. It seemed now that Nature had no ears.

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy.

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air of trepidation.

The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel, too—doubtless no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argument with proofs that lived where the sun shone.

Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bog tufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time to look about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal pounce in and emerge directly with a gleaming fish.

The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity.

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Chapter 8

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save for the chanted chorus of the trees.

Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance.

The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry and the breaking crash of the artillery.

His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at each other panther fashion. He listened for a time. Then he began to run in the direction of the battle. He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign sounds. The trees hushed and stood motionless. Everything seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter and earthshaking thunder. The chorus peaked over the still earth.

It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he had been was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar explained a celestial battle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the air.

Reflecting, he saw a sort of a humor in the point of view of himself and his fellows during the late encounter. They had taken themselves and the enemy very seriously and had imagined that they were deciding the war. Individuals must have supposed that they were cutting the letters of their names deep into everlasting tablets of brass, or enshrining their reputations forever in the hearts of their countrymen, while, as to fact, the affair would appear in printed reports under a meek and immaterial title. But he saw that it was good, else, he said, in battle every one would surely run save forlorn hopes and their ilk.

He went rapidly on. He wished to come to the edge of the forest that he might peer out.

As he hastened, there passed through his mind pictures of stupendous conflicts. His accumulated thought upon such subjects was used to form scenes. The noise was as the voice of an eloquent being, describing.

Sometimes the brambles formed chains and tried to hold him back. Trees, confronting him, stretched out their arms and forbade him to pass. After its previous hostility this new resistance of the forest filled him with a fine bitterness. It seemed that Nature could not be quite ready to kill him.

But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he was where he could see long gray walls of vapor where lay battle lines. The voices of cannon shook him. The musketry sounded in long irregular surges that played havoc with his ears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck expression. He gawked in the direction of th fight.

Presently he proceeded again on his forward way. The battle was like the grinding of an immense and terrible machine to him. Its complexities and powers, its grim processes, fascinated him. He must go close and see it produce corpses.

He came to a fence and clambered over it. On the far side, the ground was littered with clothes and guns. A newspaper, folded up, lay in the dirt. A dead soldier was stretched with his face hidden in his arm. Farther off there was a group of four or five corpses keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazed upon this spot.

In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This forgotten part of the battle ground was owned by the dead men, and he hurried, in the vague apprehension that one of the swollen forms would rise and tell him to begone.

He came finally to a road from which he could see in the distance dark and agitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed. In the lane was a blood-stained crowd streaming to the rear. The wounded men were cursing, groaning, and wailing. In the air, always, was a mighty swell of sound that it seemed could sway the earth. With the courageous words of the artillery and the spiteful sentences of the musketry mingled red cheers. And from this region of noises came the steady current of the maimed.

One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped like a schoolboy in a game. He was laughing hysterically.

One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through the commanding general’s mismanagement of the army. One was marching with an air imitative of some sublime drum major. Upon his features was an unholy mixture of merriment and agony. As he marched he sang a bit of doggerel in a high and quavering voice:

“Sing a song ’a vic’try,

A pocketful ’a bullets,

Five an’ twenty dead men

Baked in a—pie.”

Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.

Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face. His lips were curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched. His hands were bloody from where he had pressed them upon his wound. He seemed to be awaiting the moment when he should pitch headlong. He stalked like the specter of a soldier, his eyes burning with the power of a stare into the unknown.

There were some who proceeded sullenly, full of anger at their wounds, and ready to turn upon anything as an obscure cause.

An officer was carried along by two privates. He was peevish. “Don’t joggle so, Johnson, yeh fool,” he cried. “Think m’ leg is made of iron? If yeh can’t carry me decent, put me down an’ let some one else do it.”

He bellowed at the tottering crowd who blocked the quick march of his bearers. “Say, make way there, can’t yeh? Make way, dickens take it all.”

They sulkily parted and went to the roadsides. As he was carried past they made pert remarks to him. When he raged in reply and threatened them, they told him to be damned.

The shoulder of one of the tramping bearers knocked heavily against the spectral soldier who was staring into the unknown.

The youth joined this crowd and marched along with it. The torn bodies expressed the awful machinery in which the men had been entangled.

Orderlies and couriers occasionally broke through the throng in the roadway, scattering wounded men right and left, galloping on followed by howls. The melancholy march was continually disturbed by the messengers, and sometimes by bustling batteries that came swinging and thumping down upon them, the officers shouting orders to clear the way.

There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder stain from hair to shoes, who trudged quietly at the youth’s side. He was listening with eagerness and much humility to the lurid descriptions of a bearded sergeant. His lean features wore an expression of awe and admiration. He was like a listener in a country store to wondrous tales told among the sugar barrels. He eyed the story-teller with unspeakable wonder. His mouth was agape in yokel fashion.

The sergeant, taking note of this, gave pause to his elaborate history while he administered a sardonic comment. “Be keerful, honey, you’ll be a-ketchin’ flies,” he said.

The tattered man shrank back abashed.

After a time he began to sidle near to the youth, and in a diffident way try to make him a friend. His voice was gentle as a girl’s voice and his eyes were pleading. The youth saw with surprise that the soldier had two wounds, one in the head, bound with a blood-soaked rag, and the other in the arm, making that member dangle like a broken bough.

After they had walked together for some time the tattered man mustered sufficient courage to speak. “Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he timidly said. The youth, deep in thought, glanced up at the bloody and grim figure with its lamblike eyes. “What?”

“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?”

“Yes,” said the youth shortly. He quickened his pace.

But the other hobbled industriously after him. There was an air of apology in his manner, but he evidently thought that he needed only to talk for a time, and the youth would perceive that he was a good fellow.

“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he began in a small voice, and the he achieved the fortitude to continue. “Dern me if I ever see fellers fight so. Laws, how they did fight! I knowed th’ boys’d like it when they onct got square at it. Th’ boys ain’t had no fair chanct up t’ now, but this time they showed what they was. I knowed it’d turn out this way. Yeh can’t lick them boys. No, sir! They’re fighters, they be.”

He breathed a deep breath of humble admiration. He had looked at the youth for encouragement several times. He received none, but gradually he seemed to get absorbed in his subject.

“I was talkin’ ’cross pickets with a boy from Georgie, onct, an’ that boy, he ses, ‘Your fellers’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,’ he ses. ‘Mebbe they will,’ I ses, ‘but I don’t b’lieve none of it,’ I ses; ‘an’ b’jiminey,’ I ses back t’ ’um, ‘mebbe your fellers’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,’ I ses. He larfed. Well, they didn’t run t’ day, did they, hey? No, sir! They fit, an’ fit, an’ fit.”

His homely face was suffused with a light of love for the army which was to him all things beautiful and powerful.

After a time he turned to the youth. “Where yeh hit, ol’ boy?” he asked in a brotherly tone.

The youth felt instant panic at this question, although at first its full import was not borne in upon him.

“What?” he asked.

“Where yeh hit?” repeated the tattered man.

“Why,” began the youth, “I—I—that is—why—I—”

He turned away suddenly and slid through the crowd. His brow was heavily flushed, and his fingers were picking nervously at one of his buttons. He bent his head and fastened his eyes studiously upon the button as if it were a little problem.

The tattered man looked after him in astonishment.

Chapter 9

The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier was not in sight. Then he started to walk on with the others.

But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding. Because of the tattered soldier’s question he now felt that his shame could be viewed. He was continually casting sidelong glances to see if the men were contemplating the letters of guilt he felt burned into his brow.

At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

The spectral soldier was at his side like a stalking reproach. The man’s eyes were still fixed in a stare into the unknown. His gray, appalling face had attracted attention in the crowd, and men, slowing to his dreary pace, were walking with him. They were discussing his plight, questioning him and giving him advice. In a dogged way he repelled them, signing to them to go on and leave him alone. The shadows of his face were deepening and his tight lips seemed holding in check the moan of great despair. There could be seen a certain stiffness in the movements of his body, as if he were taking infinite care not to arouse the passion of his wounds. As he went on, he seemed always looking for a place, like one who goes to choose a grave.

Something in the gesture of the man as he waved the bloody and pitying soldiers away made the youth start as if bitten. He yelled in horror. Tottering forward he laid a quivering hand upon the man’s arm. As the latter slowly turned his waxlike features toward him the youth screamed:

“Gawd! Jim Conklin!”

The tall soldier made a little commonplace smile. “Hello, Henry,” he said.

The youth swayed on his legs and glared strangely. He stuttered and stammered. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”

The tall soldier held out his gory hand. There was a curious red and black combination of new blood and old blood upon it. “Where yeh been, Henry?” he asked. He continued in a monotonous voice, “I thought mebbe yeh got keeled over. There’s been thunder t’ pay t’-day. I was worryin’ about it a good deal.”

The youth still lamented. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”

“Yeh know,” said the tall soldier, “I was out there.” He made a careful gesture. “An’, Lord, what a circus! An’, b’jiminey, I got shot—I got shot. Yes, b’jiminey, I got shot.” He reiterated this fact in a bewildered way, as if he did not know how it came about.

The youth put forth anxious arms to assist him, but the tall soldier went firmly as if propelled. Since the youth’s arrival as a guardian for his friend, the other wounded men had ceased to display much interest. They occupied themselves again in dragging their own tragedies toward the rear.

Suddenly, as the two friends marched on, the tall soldier seemed to be overcome by a tremor. His face turned to a semblance of gray paste. He clutched the youth’s arm and looked all about him, as if dreading to be overheard. Then he began to speak in a shaking whisper:

“I tell yeh what I’m ’fraid of, Henry—I’ll tell yeh what I’m ’fraid of. I’m ’fraid I’ll fall down—an’ them yeh know—them damned artillery wagons—they like as not’ll run over me. That’s what I’m ’fraid of—”

The youth cried out to him hysterically: “I’ll take care of yeh, Jim! I’ll take care of yeh! I swear t’ Gawd I will!”

“Sure—will yeh, Henry?” the tall soldier beseeched.

“Yes—yes—I tell yeh—I’ll take care of yeh, Jim!” protested the youth. He could not speak accurately because of the gulpings in his throat.

But the tall soldier continued to beg in a lowly way. He now hung babelike to the youth’s arm. His eyes rolled in the wildness of his terror. “I was allus a good friend t’ yeh, wa’n’t I, Henry? I’ve allus been a pretty good feller, ain’t I? An’ it ain’t much t’ ask, is it? Jest t’ pull me along outer th’ road? I’d do it fer you, wouldn’t I, Henry?”

He paused in piteous anxiety to await his friend’s reply.

The youth had reached an anguish where the sobs scorched him. He strove to express his loyalty, but he could only make fantastic gestures.

However, the tall soldier seemed suddenly to forget all those fears. He became again the grim, stalking specter of a soldier. He went stonily forward. The youth wished his friend to lean upon him, but the other always shook his head and strangely protested. “No—no—no—leave me be—leave me be—”

His look was fixed again upon the unknown. He moved with mysterious purpose, and all of the youth’s offers he brushed aside. “No—no—leave me be—leave me be—”

The youth had to follow.

Presently the latter heard a voice talking softly near his shoulder. Turning he saw that it belonged to the tattered soldier. “Ye’d better take ’im outa th’ road, pardner. There’s a batt’ry comin’ helitywhoop down th’ road an’ he’ll git runned over. He’s a goner anyhow in about five minutes—yeh kin see that. Ye’d better take ’im outa th’ road. Where th’ blazes does hi git his stren’th from?”

“Lord knows!” cried the youth. He was shaking his hands helplessly.

He ran forward presently and grasped the tall soldier by the arm. “Jim! Jim!” he coaxed, “come with me.”

The tall soldier weakly tried to wrench himself free. “Huh,” he said vacantly. He stared at the youth for a moment. At last he spoke as if dimly comprehending. “Oh! Inteh th’ fields? Oh!”

He started blindly through the grass.

The youth turned once to look at the lashing riders and jouncing guns of the battery. He was startled from this view by a shrill outcry from the tattered man.

“Gawd! He’s runnin’!”

Turning his head swiftly, the youth saw his friend running in a staggering and stumbling way toward a little clump of bushes. His heart seemed to wrench itself almost free from his body at this sight. He made a noise of pain. He and the tattered man began a pursuit. There was a singular race.

When he overtook the tall soldier he began to plead with all the words he could find. “Jim—Jim—what are you doing—what makes you do this way—you’ll hurt yerself.”

The same purpose was in the tall soldier’s face. He protested in a dulled way, keeping his eyes fastened on the mystic place of his intentions. “No—no—don’t tech me—leave me be—leave me be—”

The youth, aghast and filled with wonder at the tall soldier, began quaveringly to question him. “Where yeh goin’, Jim? What you thinking about? Where you going? Tell me, won’t you, Jim?”

The tall soldier faced about as upon relentless pursuers. In his eyes there was a great appeal. “Leave me be, can’t yeh? Leave me be for a minnit.”

The youth recoiled. “Why, Jim,” he said, in a dazed way, “what’s the matter with you?”

The tall soldier turned and, lurching dangerously, went on. The youth and the tattered soldier followed, sneaking as if whipped, feeling unable to face the stricken man if he should again confront them. They began to have thoughts of a solemn ceremony. There was something rite-like in these movements of the doomed soldier. And there was a resemblance in him to a devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, muscle-wrenching, bone-crushing. They were awed and afraid. They hung back lest he have at command a dreadful weapon.

At last, they saw him stop and stand motionless. Hastening up, they perceived that his face wore an expression telling that he had at last found the place for which he had struggled. His spare figure was erect; his bloody hands were quietly at his side. He was waiting with patience for something that he had come to meet. He was at the rendezvous. They paused and stood, expectant.

There was a silence.

Finally, the chest of the doomed soldier began to heave with a strained motion. It increased in violence until it was as if an animal was within and was kicking and tumbling furiously to be free.

This spectacle of gradual strangulation made the youth writhe, and once as his friend rolled his eyes, he saw something in them that made him sink wailing to the ground. He raised his voice in a last supreme call.

“Jim—Jim—Jim—”

The tall soldier opened his lips and spoke. He made a gesture. “Leave me be—don’t tech me—leave me be—”

There was another silence while he waited.

Suddenly his form stiffened and straightened. Then it was shaken by a prolonged ague. He stared into space. To the two watchers there was a curious and profound dignity in the firm lines of his awful face.

He was invaded by a creeping strangeness that slowly enveloped him. For a moment the tremor of his legs caused him to dance a sort of hideous hornpipe. His arms beat wildly about his head in expression of implike enthusiasm.

His tall figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a slight rending sound. Then it began to swing forward, slow and straight, in the manner of a falling tree. A swift muscular contortion made the left shoulder strike the ground first.

The body seemed to bounce a little way from the earth. “God!” said the tattered soldier.

The youth had watched, spellbound, this ceremony at the place of meeting. His face had been twisted into an expression of every agony he had imagined for his friend.

He now sprang to his feet and, going closer, gazed upon the pastelike face. The mouth was open and the teeth showed in a laugh.

As the flap of the blue jacket fell away from the body, he could see that the side looked as if it had been chewed by wolves.

The youth turned, with sudden, livid rage, toward the battlefield. He shook his fist. He seemed about to deliver a philippic.

“Hell—”

The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.

Chapter 10

The tattered man stood musing.

“Well, he was a reg’lar jim-dandy fer nerve, wa’n’t he,” said he finally in a little awestruck voice. “A reg’lar jim-dandy.” He thoughtfully poked one of the docile hands with his foot. “I wonner where he got ’is stren’th from? I never seen a man do like that before. It was a funny thing. Well, he was a reg’lar jim-dandy.”

The youth desired to screech out his grief. He was stabbed, but his tongue lay dead in the tomb of his mouth. He threw himself again upon the ground and began to brood.

The tattered man stood musing.

“Look-a-here, pardner,” he said, after a time. He regarded the corpse as he spoke. “He’s up an’ gone, ain’t ’e, an’ we might as well begin t’ look out fer ol’ number one. This here thing is all over. He’s up an’ gone, ain’t ’e? An’ he’s all right here. Nobody won’t bother ’im. An’ I must say I ain’t enjoying any great health m’self these days.”

The youth, awakened by the tattered soldier’s tone, looked quickly up. He saw that he was swinging uncertainly on his legs and that his face had turned to a shade of blue.

“Good Lord!” he cried, “you ain’t goin’ t’—not you, too.”

The tattered man waved his hand. “Nary die,” he said. “All I want is some pea soup an’ a good bed. Some pea soup,” he repeated dreamfully.

The youth arose from the ground. “I wonder where he came from. I left him over there.” He pointed. “And now I find ’im here. And he was coming from over there, too.” He indicated a new direction. They both turned toward the body as if to ask of it a question.

“Well,” at length spoke the tattered man, “there ain’t no use in our stayin’ here an’ tryin’ t’ ask him anything.”

The youth nodded an assent wearily. They both turned to gaze for a moment at the corpse.

The youth murmured something.

“Well, he was a jim-dandy, wa’n’t ’e?” said the tattered man as if in response.

They turned their backs upon it and started away. For a time they stole softly, treading with their toes. It remained laughing there in the grass.

“I’m commencin’ t’ feel pretty bad,” said the tattered man, suddenly breaking one of his little silences. “I’m commencin’ t’ feel pretty damn’ bad.”

The youth groaned. “Oh Lord!” He wondered if he was to be the tortured witness of another grim encounter.

But his companion waved his hand reassuringly. “Oh, I’m not goin’ t’ die yit! There too much dependin’ on me fer me t’ die yit. No, sir! Nary die! I CAN’T! Ye’d oughta see th’ swad a’ chil’ren I’ve got, an’ all like that.”

The youth glancing at his companion could see by the shadow of a smile that he was making some kind of fun.

As the plodded on the tattered soldier continued to talk. “Besides, if I died, I wouldn’t die th’ way that feller did. That was th’ funniest thing. I’d jest flop down, I would. I never seen a feller die th’ way that feller did.

“Yeh know Tom Jamison, he lives next door t’ me up home. He’s a nice feller, he is, an’ we was allus good friends. Smart, too. Smart as a steel trap. Well, when we was a-fightin’ this atternoon, all-of-a-sudden he begin t’ rip up an’ cuss an’ beller at me. ‘Yer shot, yeh blamed infernal!’—he swear horrible—he ses t’ me. I put up m’ hand t’ m’ head an’ when I looked at m’ fingers, I seen, sure ’nough, I was shot. I give a holler an’ begin t’ run, but b’fore I could git away another one hit me in th’ arm an’ whirl’ me clean ’round. I got skeared when they was all a-shootin’ b’hind me an’ I run t’ beat all, but I cotch it pretty bad. I’ve an idee I’d a been fightin’ yit, if t’was n’t fer Tom Jamison.”

Then he made a calm announcement: “There’s two of ’em—little ones—but they’re beginnin’ t’ have fun with me now. I don’t b’lieve I kin walk much furder.”

They went slowly on in silence. “Yeh look pretty peek’ed yerself,” said the tattered man at last. “I bet yeh’ve got a worser one than yeh think. Ye’d better take keer of yer hurt. It don’t do t’ let sech things go. It might be inside mostly, an’ them plays thunder. Where is it located?” But he continued his harangue without waiting for a reply. “I see a feller git hit plum in th’ head when my reg’ment was a-standin’ at ease onct. An’ everybody yelled to ’im: ‘Hurt, John? Are yeh hurt much?’ ‘No,’ ses he. He looked kinder surprised, an’ he went on tellin’ ’em how he felt. He sed he didn’t feel nothin’. But, by dad, th’ first thing that feller knowed he was dead. Yes, he was dead—stone dead. So, yeh wanta watch out. Yeh might have some queer kind ’a hurt yerself. Yeh can’t never tell. Where is your’n located?”

The youth had been wriggling since the introduction of this topic. He now gave a cry of exasperation and made a furious motion with his hand. “Oh, don’t bother me!” he said. He was enraged against the tattered man, and could have strangled him. His companions seemed ever to play intolerable parts. They were ever upraising the ghost of shame on the stick of their curiosity. He turned toward the tattered man as one at bay. “Now, don’t bother me,” he repeated with desperate menace.

“Well, Lord knows I don’t wanta bother anybody,” said the other. There was a little accent of despair in his voice as he replied, “Lord knows I’ve gota ’nough m’ own t’ tend to.”

The youth, who had been holding a bitter debate with himself and casting glances of hatred and contempt at the tattered man, here spoke in a hard voice. “Good-by,” he said.

The tattered man looked at him in gaping amazement. “Why—why, pardner, where yeh goin’?” he asked unsteadily. The youth looking at him, could see that he, too, like that other one, was beginning to act dumb and animal-like. His thoughts seemed to be floundering about in his head. “Now—now—look—a—here, you Tom Jamison—now—I won’t have this—this here won’t do. Where—where yeh goin’?”

The youth pointed vaguely. “Over there,” he replied.

“Well, now look—a—here—now,” said the tattered man, rambling on in idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward and his words were slurred. “This thing won’t do, now, Tom Jamison. It won’t do. I know yeh, yeh pig-headed devil. Yeh wanta go trompin’ off with a bad hurt. It ain’t right—now—Tom Jamison—it ain’t. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh, Tom Jamison. It ain’t—right—it ain’t—fer yeh t’ go—trompin’ off—with a bad hurt—it ain’t—ain’t—ain’t right—it ain’t.”

In reply the youth climbed a fence and started away. He could hear the tattered man bleating plaintively.

Once he faced about angrily. “What?”

“Look—a—here, now, Tom Jamison—now—it ain’t—”

The youth went on. Turning at a distance he saw the tattered man wandering about helplessly in the field.

He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed he envied those men whose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the fallen leaves of the forest.

The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife thrusts to him. They asserted a society that probes pitilessly at secrets until all is apparent. His late companion’s chance persistency made him feel that he could not keep his crime concealed in his bosom. It was sure to be brought plain by one of those arrows which cloud the air and are constantly pricking, discovering, proclaiming those things which are willed to be forever hidden. He admitted that he could not defend himself against this agency. It was not within the power of vigilance.

Chapter 11

He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder. Great blown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him. The noise, too, was approaching. The woods filtered men and the fields became dotted.

As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.

The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all retreating. Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all. He seated himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons. They fled like soft, ungainly animals. All the roarers and lashers served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount of pleasure to him in watching the wild march of this vindication.

Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared in the road. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent. The men at the head butted mules with their musket stocks. They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls. The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength. The blunt head of the column pushed. The raving teamsters swore many strange oaths.

The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them. The men were going forward to the heart of the din. They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road. They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time. This importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the officers were very rigid.

As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them. He could have wept in his longings.

He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he said. There lay the fault.

The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man to be something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.

He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them. He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself, came to him—a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high—a blue, determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.

These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid successful charge. The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices, the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings of war. For a few moments he was sublime.

He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of calamity.

Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated, balancing awkwardly on one foot.

He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully to his plan. Well, rifles could be had for the picking. They were extraordinarily profuse.

Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment. Well, he could fight with any regiment.

He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon some explosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.

He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him returning thus, the marks of his flight upon him. There was a reply that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving that no hostile bayonets appeared there. In the battle-blur his face would, in a way, be hidden, like the face of a cowled man.

But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the strife lulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation. In imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully labored through some lies.

Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The debates drained him of his fire.

He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the affair carefully, he could not but admit that the objections were very formidable.

Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out. In their presence he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war; they rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light. He tumbled headlong.

He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle. Each bone of his body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each movement. His feet were like two sores. Also, his body was calling for food. It was more powerful than a direct hunger. There was a dull, weight-like feeling in his stomach, and, when he tried to walk, his head swayed and he tottered. He could not see with distinctness. Small patches of green mist floated before his vision.

While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of ailments. Now the beset him and made clamor. As he was at last compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity for self-hate was multiplied. In despair, he declared that he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off.

A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the battle. He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He wished to know who was winning.

He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he had never lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a half-apologetic manner to his conscience, he could not but know that a defeat for the army this time might mean many favorable things for him. The blows of the enemy would splinter regiments into fragments. Thus, many men of courage, he considered, would be obliged to desert the colors and scurry like chickens. He would appear as one of them. They would be sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easily believe he had not run any farther or faster than they. And if he himself could believe in his virtuous perfection, he conceived that there would be small trouble in convincing all others.

He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army had encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one; thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various general were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did not conceive public opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probable they would hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of his alleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.

In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself. He thought it would prove, in a manner, that he had fled early because of his superior powers of perception. A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.

A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important thing. Without salve, he could not, he though, were the sore badge of his dishonor through life. With his heart continually assuring him that he was despicable, he could not exist without making it, through his actions, apparent to all men.

If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the din meant that now his army’s flags were tilted forward he was a condemned wretch. He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the men were advancing, their indifferent feet were trampling upon his chances for a successful life.

As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them and tried to thrust them away. He denounced himself as a villain. He said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence. His mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before the spear of the yelling battle fiend, and as he saw their dripping corpses on an imagined field, he said that he was their murderer.

Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied a corpse. Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some of them, as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless. They might have been killed by lucky chances, he said, before they had had opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested. Yet they would receive laurels from tradition. He cried out bitterly that their crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams. However, he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.

A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape from the consequences of his fall. He considered, now, however, that it was useless to think of such a possibility. His education had been that success for that might blue machine was certain; that it would make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons. He presently discarded all his speculations in the other direction. He returned to the creed of soldiers.

When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be defeated, he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take back to his regiment, and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.

But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible for him to invent a tale he felt he could trust. He experimented with many schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy. He was quick to see vulnerable places in them all.

Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.

He imagined the whole regiment saying: “Where’s Henry Fleming? He run, didn’t ’e? Oh, my!” He recalled various persons who would be quite sure to leave him no peace about it. They would doubtless question him with sneers, and laugh at his stammering hesitation. In the next engagement they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.

Wherever he went in camp, he would encounter insolent and lingeringly cruel stares. As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades, he could hear one say, “There he goes!”

Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase.

Chapter 12

The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was barely out of the youth’s sight before he saw dark waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields. He knew at once that the steel fibers had been washed from their hearts. They were bursting from their coats and their equipments as from entanglements. They charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.

Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops, and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare. The voices of the cannon were clamoring in interminable chorus.

The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement. He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe. He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.

The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible strides. The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the overhanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.

Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to make a rallying speech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could only get his tongue to call into the air: “Why—why—what—what’s th’ matter?”

Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and scampering all about him. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the most part, to be very burly men. The youth turned from one to another of them as they galloped along. His incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless of his appeals. They did not seem to see him.

They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking of the sky: “Say, where de plank road? Where de plank road!” It was as if he had lost a child. He wept in his pain and dismay.

Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways. The artillery booming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks made jumble of ideas of direction. Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom. The youth began to imagine that he had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel, and he could perceive no way out of it. From the mouths of the fleeing men came a thousand wild questions, but no one made answers.

The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations at the heedless bands of retreating infantry, finally clutched a man by the arm. They swung around face to face.

“Why—why—” stammered the youth struggling with his balking tongue.

The man screamed: “Let go me! Let go me!” His face was livid and his eyes were rolling uncontrolled. He was heaving and panting. He still grasped his rifle, perhaps having forgotten to release his hold upon it. He tugged frantically, and the youth being compelled to lean forward was dragged several paces.

“Let go me! Let go me!”

“Why—why—” stuttered the youth.

“Well, then!” bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly and fiercely swung his rifle. It crushed upon the youth’s head. The man ran on.

The youth’s fingers had turned to paste upon the other’s arm. The energy was smitten from his muscles. He saw the flaming wings of lightning flash before his vision. There was a deafening rumble of thunder within his head.

Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the ground. He tried to arise. In his efforts against the numbing pain he was like a man wrestling with a creature of the air.

There was a sinister struggle.

Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle with the air for a moment, and then fall again, grabbing at the grass. His face was of a clammy pallor. Deep groans were wrenched from him.

At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and knees, and from thence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet. Pressing his hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.

He fought an intense battle with his body. His dulled senses wished him to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly, his mind portraying unknown dangers and mutilations if he should fall upon the field. He went tall soldier fashion. He imagined secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested. To search for one he strove against the tide of pain.

Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly touched the wound. The scratching pain of the contact made him draw a long breath through his clinched teeth. His fingers were dabbled with blood. He regarded them with a fixed stare.

Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying horses were lashed toward the front. Once, a young officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down. He turned and watched the mass of guns, men, and horses sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence. The officer was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand. The guns followed the teams with an air of unwillingness, of being dragged by the heels.

Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing like fishwives. Their scolding voices could be heard above the din. Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry. The faded yellow of their facings shone bravely. There was a mighty altercation.

The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.

The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.

As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving masses of men.

He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields.

The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned wagons like sun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.

It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He was afraid to move rapidly, however, for a dread of disturbing it. He held his head very still and took many precautions against stumbling. He was filled with anxiety, and his face was pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet in the gloom.

His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.

The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed he could measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.

Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past. He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions. He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of youthful summer.

He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His head hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.

He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep at some near spot, or force himself on until he reached a certain haven. He often tried to dismiss the question, but his body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like pampered babies.

At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem t’ be in a pretty bad way, boy?”

The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue. “Uh!”

The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm. “Well,” he said, with a round laugh, “I’m goin’ your way. Th’ hull gang is goin’ your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh a lift.” They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.

As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child. Sometimes he interjected anecdotes. “What reg’ment do yeh b’long teh? Eh? What’s that? Th’ 304th N’ York? Why, what corps is that in? Oh, it is? Why, I thought they wasn’t engaged t’-day-they’re ’way over in th’ center. Oh, they was, eh? Well pretty nearly everybody got their share ’a fightin’ t’-day. By dad, I give myself up fer dead any number ’a times. There was shootin’ here an’ shootin’ there, an’ hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’ there, in th’ damn’ darkness, until I couldn’t tell t’ save m’ soul which side I was on. Sometimes I thought I was sure ’nough from Ohier, an’ other times I could ’a swore I was from th’ bitter end of Florida. It was th’ most mixed up dern thing I ever see. An’ these here hull woods is a reg’lar mess. It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments t’-night. Pretty soon, though, we’ll meet a-plenty of guards an’ provost-guards, an’ one thing an’ another. Ho! there they go with an off’cer, I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He’s got all th’ war he wants, I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his reputation an’ all when they go t’ sawin’ off his leg. Poor feller! My brother’s got whiskers jest like that. How did yeh git ’way over here, anyhow? Your reg’ment is a long way from here, ain’t it? Well, I guess we can find it. Yeh know there was a boy killed in my comp’ny t’-day that I thought th’ world an’ all of. Jack was a nice feller. By ginger, it hurt like thunder t’ see ol’ Jack jest git knocked flat. We was a-standin’ purty peaceable fer a spell, ’though there was men runnin’ ev’ry way all ’round us, an’ while we was a-standin’ like that, ’long come a big fat feller. He began t’ peck at Jack’s elbow, an’ he ses: ‘Say, where’s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ An’ Jack, he never paid no attention, an’ th’ feller kept on a-peckin’ at his elbow an’ sayin’: ‘Say, where’s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ Jack was a-lookin’ ahead all th’ time tryin’ t’ see th’ Johnnies comin’ through th’ woods, an’ he never paid no attention t’ this big fat feller fer a long time, but at last he turned ’round an’ he ses: ‘Ah, go t’ hell an’ find th’ road t’ th’ river!’ An’ jest then a shot slapped him bang on th’ side th’ head. He was a sergeant, too. Them was his last words. Thunder, I wish we was sure ’a findin’ our reg’ments t’-night. It’s goin’ t’ be long huntin’. But I guess we kin do it.”

In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out of sullen things.

The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic circles, but the cheery man conducted the youth without mistakes, until at last he began to chuckle with glee and self-satisfaction. “Ah, there yeh are! See that fire?”

The youth nodded stupidly.

“Well, there’s where your reg’ment is. An’ now, good-by, ol’ boy, good luck t’ yeh.”

A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers for an instant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the man strode away. As he who had so befriended him was thus passing out of his life, it suddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once seen his face.

Chapter 13

The youth went slowly toward the fire indicated by his departed friend. As he reeled, he bethought him of the welcome his comrades would give him. He had a conviction that he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles of ridicule. He had no strength to invent a tale; he would be a soft target.

He made vague plans to go off into the deeper darkness and hide, but they were all destroyed by the voices of exhaustion and pain from his body. His ailments, clamoring, forced him to seek the place of food and rest, at whatever cost.

He swung unsteadily toward the fire. He could see the forms of men throwing black shadows in the red light, and as he went nearer it became known to him in some way that the ground was strewn with sleeping men.

Of a sudden he confronted a black and monstrous figure. A rifle barrel caught some glinting beams. “Halt! halt!” He was dismayed for a moment, but he presently thought that he recognized the nervous voice. As he stood tottering before the rifle barrel, he called out: “Why, hello, Wilson, you—you here?”

The rifle was lowered to a position of caution and the loud soldier came slowly forward. He peered into the youth’s face. “That you, Henry?”

“Yes, it’s—it’s me.”

“Well, well, ol’ boy,” said the other, “by ginger, I’m glad t’ see yeh! I give yeh up fer a goner. I thought yeh was dead sure enough.” There was husky emotion in his voice.

The youth found that now he could barely stand upon his feet. There was a sudden sinking of his forces. He thought he must hasten to produce his tale to protect him from the missiles already on the lips of his redoubtable comrades. So, staggering before the loud soldier, he began: “Yes, yes. I’ve—I’ve had an awful time. I’ve been all over. Way over on th’ right. Ter’ble fightin’ over there. I had an awful time. I got separated from the reg’ment. Over on th’ right, I got shot. In th’ head. I never see sech fightin’. Awful time. I don’t see how I could a’ got separated from th’ reg’ment. I got shot, too.”

His friend had stepped forward quickly. “What? Got shot? Why didn’t yeh say so first? Poor ol’ boy, we must—hol’ on a minnit; what am I doin’. I’ll call Simpson.”

Another figure at that moment loomed in the gloom. They could see that it was the corporal. “Who yeh talkin’ to, Wilson?” he demanded. His voice was anger-toned. “Who yeh talkin’ to? Yeh th’ derndest sentinel—why—hello, Henry, you here? Why, I thought you was dead four hours ago! Great Jerusalem, they keep turnin’ up every ten minutes or so! We thought we’d lost forty-two men by straight count, but if they keep on a-comin’ this way, we’ll git th’ comp’ny all back by mornin’ yit. Where was yeh?”

“Over on th’ right. I got separated”—began the youth with considerable glibness.

But his friend had interrupted hastily. “Yes, an’ he got shot in th’ head an’ he’s in a fix, an’ we must see t’ him right away.” He rested his rifle in the hollow of his left arm and his right around the youth’s shoulder.

“Gee, it must hurt like thunder!” he said.

The youth leaned heavily upon his friend. “Yes, it hurts—hurts a good deal,” he replied. There was a faltering in his voice.

“Oh,” said the corporal. He linked his arm in the youth’s and drew him forward. “Come on, Henry. I’ll take keer ’a yeh.”

As they went on together the loud private called out after them: “Put ’im t’ sleep in my blanket, Simpson. An’—hol’ on a minnit—here’s my canteen. It’s full ’a coffee. Look at his head by th’ fire an’ see how it looks. Maybe it’s a pretty bad un. When I git relieved in a couple ’a minnits, I’ll be over an’ see t’ him.”

The youth’s senses were so deadened that his friend’s voice sounded from afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of the corporal’s arm. He submitted passively to the latter’s directing strength. His head was in the old manner hanging forward upon his breast. His knees wobbled.

The corporal led him into the glare of the fire. “Now, Henry,” he said, “let’s have look at yer ol’ head.”

The youth sat obediently and the corporal, laying aside his rifle, began to fumble in the bushy hair of his comrade. He was obliged to turn the other’s head so that the full flush of the fire light would beam upon it. He puckered his mouth with a critical air. He drew back his lips and whistled through his teeth when his fingers came in contact with the splashed blood and the rare wound.

“Ah, here we are!” he said. He awkwardly made further investigations. “Jest as I thought,” he added, presently. “Yeh’ve been grazed by a ball. It’s raised a queer lump jest as if some feller had lammed yeh on th’ head with a club. It stopped a-bleedin’ long time ago. Th’ most about it is that in th’ mornin’ yeh’ll fell that a number ten hat wouldn’t fit yeh. An’ your head’ll be all het up an’ feel as dry as burnt pork. An’ yeh may git a lot ’a other sicknesses, too, by mornin’. Yeh can’t never tell. Still, I don’t much think so. It’s jest a damn’ good belt on th’ head, an’ nothin’ more. Now, you jest sit here an’ don’t move, while I go rout out th’ relief. Then I’ll send Wilson t’ take keer ’a yeh.”

The corporal went away. The youth remained on the ground like a parcel. He stared with a vacant look into the fire.

After a time he aroused, for some part, and the things about him began to take form. He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers. They made them appear like men drunk with wine. This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the result of some frightful debauch.

On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer asleep, seated bolt upright, with his back against a tree. There was something perilous in his position. Badgered by dreams, perhaps, he swayed with little bounces and starts, like an old, toddy-stricken grandfather in a chimney corner. Dust and stains were upon his face. His lower jaw hung down as if lacking strength to assume its normal position. He was the picture of an exhausted soldier after a feast of war.

He had evidently gone to sleep with his sword in his arms. These two had slumbered in an embrace, but the weapon had been allowed in time to fall unheeded to the ground. The brass-mounted hilt lay in contact with some parts of the fire.

Within the gleam of rose and orange light from the burning sticks were other soldiers, snoring and heaving, or lying deathlike in slumber. A few pairs of legs were stuck forth, rigid and straight. The shoes displayed the mud or dust of marches and bits of rounded trousers, protruding from the blankets, showed rents and tears from hurried pitchings through the dense brambles.

The fire cackled musically. From it swelled light smoke. Overhead the foliage moved softly. The leaves, with their faces turned toward the blaze, were colored shifting hues of silver, often edged with red. Far off to the right, through a window in the forest could be seen a handful of stars lying, like glittering pebbles, on the black level of the night.

Occasionally, in this low-arched hall, a soldier would arouse and turn his body to a new position, the experience of his sleep having taught him of uneven and objectionable places upon the ground under him. Or, perhaps, he would lift himself to a sitting posture, blink at the fire for an unintelligent moment, throw a swift glance at his prostrate companion, and then cuddle down again with a grunt of sleepy content.

The youth sat in a forlorn heap until his friend the loud young soldier came, swinging two canteens by their light strings. “Well, now, Henry, ol’ boy,” said the latter, “we’ll have yeh fixed up in jest about a minnit.”

He had the bustling ways of an amateur nurse. He fussed around the fire and stirred the sticks to brilliant exertions. He made his patient drink largely from the canteen that contained the coffee. It was to the youth a delicious draught. He tilted his head afar back and held the canteen long to his lips. The cool mixture went caressingly down his blistered throat. Having finished, he sighed with comfortable delight.

The loud young soldier watched his comrade with an air of satisfaction. He later produced an extensive handkerchief from his pocket. He folded it into a manner of bandage and soused water from the other canteen upon the middle of it. This crude arrangement he bound over the youth’s head, tying the ends in a queer knot at the back of the neck.

“There,” he said, moving off and surveying his deed, “yeh look like th’ devil, but I bet yeh feel better.”

The youth contemplated his friend with grateful eyes. Upon his aching and swelling head the cold cloth was like a tender woman’s hand.

“Yeh don’t holler ner say nothin’,” remarked his friend approvingly. “I know I’m a blacksmith at takin’ keer ’a sick folks, an’ yeh never squeaked. Yer a good un, Henry. Most ’a men would a’ been in th’ hospital long ago. A shot in th’ head ain’t foolin’ business.”

The youth made no reply, but began to fumble with the buttons of his jacket.

“Well, come, now,” continued his friend, “come on. I must put yeh t’ bed an’ see that yeh git a good night’s rest.”

The other got carefully erect, and the loud young soldier led him among the sleeping forms lying in groups and rows. Presently he stooped and picked up his blankets. He spread the rubber one upon the ground and placed the woolen one about the youth’s shoulders.

“There now,” he said, “lie down an’ git some sleep.”

The youth, with his manner of doglike obedience, got carefully down like a crone stooping. He stretched out with a murmur of relief and comfort. The ground felt like the softest couch.

But of a sudden he ejaculated: “Hol’ on a minnit! Where you goin’ t’ sleep?”

His friend waved his hand impatiently. “Right down there by yeh.”

“Well, but hol’ on a minnit,” continued the youth. “What yeh goin’ t’ sleep in? I’ve got your—”

The loud young soldier snarled: “Shet up an’ go on t’ sleep. Don’t be makin’ a damn’ fool ’a yerself,” he said severely.

After the reproof the youth said no more. An exquisite drowsiness had spread through him. The warm comfort of the blanket enveloped him and made a gentle langour. His head fell forward on his crooked arm and his weighted lids went softly down over his eyes. Hearing a splatter of musketry from the distance, he wondered indifferently if those men sometimes slept. He gave a long sigh, snuggled down into his blanket, and in a moment was like his comrades.

Chapter 14

When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep for a thousand years, and he felt sure that he opened his eyes upon an unexpected world. Gray mists were slowly shifting before the first efforts of the sun rays. An impending splendor could be seen in the eastern sky. An icy dew had chilled his face, and immediately upon arousing he curled farther down into his blanket. He stared for a while at the leaves overhead, moving in a heraldic wind of the day.

The distance was splintering and blaring with the noise of fighting. There was in the sound an expression of a deadly persistency, as if it had not began and was not to cease.

About him were the rows and groups of men that he had dimly seen the previous night. They were getting a last draught of sleep before the awakening. The gaunt, careworn features and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint light at the dawning, but it dressed the skin of the men in corpse-like hues and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead. The youth started up with a little cry when his eyes first swept over this motionless mass of men, thick-spread upon the ground, pallid, and in strange postures. His disordered mind interpreted the hall of the forest as a charnel place. He believed for an instant that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare to move lest these corpses start up, squalling and squawking. In a second, however, he achieved his proper mind. He swore a complicated oath at himself. He saw that this somber picture was not a fact of the present, but a mere prophecy.

He heard then the noise of a fire crackling briskly in the cold air, and, turning his head, he saw his friend pottering busily about a small blaze. A few other figures moved in the fog, and he heard the hard cracking of axe blows.

Suddenly there was a hollow rumble of drums. A distant bugle sang faintly. Similar sounds, varying in strength, came from near and far over the forest. The bugles called to each other like brazen gamecocks. The near thunder of the regimental drums rolled.

The body of men in the woods rustled. There was a general uplifting of heads. A murmuring of voices broke upon the air. In it there was much bass of grumbling oaths. Strange gods were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessary to correct war. An officer’s peremptory tenor rang out and quickened the stiffened movement of the men. The tangled limbs unraveled. The corpse-hued faces were hidden behind fists that twisted slowly in the eye sockets.

The youth sat up and gave vent to an enormous yawn. “Thunder!” he remarked petulantly. He rubbed his eyes, and then putting up his hand felt carefully the bandage over his wound. His friend, perceiving him to be awake, came from the fire. “Well, Henry, ol’ man, how do yeh feel this mornin’?” he demanded.

The youth yawned again. Then he puckered his mouth to a little pucker. His head, in truth, felt precisely like a melon, and there was an unpleasant sensation at his stomach.

“Oh, Lord, I feel pretty bad,” he said.

“Thunder!” exclaimed the other. “I hoped ye’d feel all right this mornin’. Let’s see th’ bandage—I guess it’s slipped.” He began to tinker at the wound in rather a clumsy way until the youth exploded.

“Gosh-dern it!” he said in sharp irritation; “you’re the hangdest man I ever saw! You wear muffs on your hands. Why in good thunderation can’t you be more easy? I’d rather you’d stand off an’ throw guns at it. Now, go slow, an’ don’t act as if you was nailing down carpet.”

He glared with insolent command at his friend, but the latter answered soothingly. “Well, well, come now, an’ git some grub,” he said. “Then, maybe, yeh’ll feel better.”

At the fireside the loud young soldier watched over his comrade’s wants with tenderness and care. He was very busy marshaling the little black vagabonds of tin cups and pouring into them the streaming iron colored mixture from a small and sooty tin pail. He had some fresh meat, which he roasted hurriedly on a stick. He sat down then and contemplated the youth’s appetite with glee.

The youth took note of a remarkable change in his comrade since those days of camp life upon the river bank. He seemed no more to be continually regarding the proportions of his personal prowess. He was not furious at small words that pricked his conceits. He was no more a loud young soldier. There was about him now a fine reliance. He showed a quiet belief in his purposes and his abilities. And this inward confidence evidently enabled him to be indifferent to little words of other men aimed at him.

The youth reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbed a peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing. And the youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his friend’s neighborhood.

His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee. “Well, Henry,” he said, “what d’yeh think th’ chances are? D’yeh think we’ll wallop ’em?”

The youth considered for a moment. “Day-b’fore-yesterday,” he finally replied, with boldness, “you would ’a’ bet you’d lick the hull kit-an’-boodle all by yourself.”

His friend looked a trifle amazed. “Would I?” he asked. He pondered. “Well, perhaps I would,” he decided at last. He stared humbly at the fire.

The youth was quite disconcerted at this surprising reception of his remarks. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t either,” he said, hastily trying to retrace.

But the other made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, yeh needn’t mind, Henry,” he said. “I believe I was a pretty big fool in those days.” He spoke as after a lapse of years.

There was a little pause.

“All th’ officers say we’ve got th’ rebs in a pretty tight box,” said the friend, clearing his throat in a commonplace way. “They all seem t’ think we’ve got ’em jest where we want ’em.”

“I don’t know about that,” the youth replied. “What I seen over on th’ right makes me think it was th’ other way about. From where I was, it looked as if we was gettin’ a good poundin’ yestirday.”

“D’yeh think so?” inquired the friend. “I thought we handled ’em pretty rough yestirday.”

“Not a bit,” said the youth. “Why, lord, man, you didn’t see nothing of the fight. Why!” Then a sudden thought came to him. “Oh! Jim Conklin’s dead.”

His friend started. “What? Is he? Jim Conklin?”

The youth spoke slowly. “Yes. He’s dead. Shot in th’ side.”

“Yeh don’t say so. Jim Conklin…poor cuss!”

All about them were other small fires surrounded by men with their little black utensils. From one of these near came sudden sharp voices in a row. It appeared that two light-footed soldiers had been teasing a huge, bearded man, causing him to spill coffee upon his blue knees. The man had gone into a rage and had sworn comprehensively. Stung by his language, his tormentors had immediately bristled at him with a great show of resenting unjust oaths. Possibly there was going to be a fight.

The friend arose and went over to them, making pacific motions with his arms. “Oh, here, now, boys, what’s th’ use?” he said. “We’ll be at th’ rebs in less’n an hour. What’s th’ good fightin’ ’mong ourselves?”

One of the light-footed soldiers turned upon him red-faced and violent. “Yeh needn’t come around here with yer preachin’. I s’pose yeh don’t approve ’a fightin’ since Charley Morgan licked yeh; but I don’t see what business this here is ’a yours or anybody else.”

“Well, it ain’t,” said the friend mildly. “Still I hate t’ see—”

There was a tangled argument.

“Well, he—,” said the two, indicating their opponent with accusative forefingers.

The huge soldier was quite purple with rage. He pointed at the two soldiers with his great hand, extended clawlike. “Well, they—”

But during this argumentative time the desire to deal blows seemed to pass, although they said much to each other. Finally the friend returned to his old seat. In a short while the three antagonists could be seen together in an amiable bunch.

“Jimmie Rogers ses I’ll have t’ fight him after th’ battle t’-day,” announced the friend as he again seated himself. “He ses he don’t allow no interferin’ in his business. I hate t’ see th’ boys fightin’ ’mong themselves.”

The youth laughed. “Yer changed a good bit. Yeh ain’t at all like yeh was. I remember when you an’ that Irish feller—” He stopped and laughed again.

“No, I didn’t use t’ be that way,” said his friend thoughtfully. “That’s true ’nough.”

“Well, I didn’t mean—” began the youth.

The friend made another deprecatory gesture. “Oh, yeh needn’t mind, Henry.”

There was another little pause.

“Th’ reg’ment lost over half th’ men yestirday,” remarked the friend eventually. “I thought ’a course they was all dead, but, laws, they kep’ a-comin’ back last night until it seems, after all, we didn’t lose but a few. They’d been scattered all over, wanderin’ around in th’ woods, fightin’ with other reg’ments, an’ everything. Jest like you done.”

“So?” said the youth.

Chapter 15

The regiment was standing at order arms at the side of a lane, waiting for the command to march, when suddenly the youth remembered the little packet enwrapped in a faded yellow envelope which the loud young soldier with lugubrious words had intrusted to him. It made him start. He uttered an exclamation and turned toward his comrade.

“Wilson!”

“What?”

His friend, at his side in the ranks, was thoughtfully staring down the road. From some cause his expression was at that moment very meek. The youth, regarding him with sidelong glances, felt impelled to change his purpose. “Oh, nothing,” he said.

His friend turned his head in some surprise, “Why, what was yeh goin’ t’ say?”

“Oh, nothing,” repeated the youth.

He resolved not to deal the little blow. It was sufficient that the fact made him glad. It was not necessary to knock his friend on the head with the misguided packet.

He had been possessed of much fear of his friend, for he saw how easily questionings could make holes in his feelings. Lately, he had assured himself that the altered comrade would not tantalize him with a persistent curiosity, but he felt certain that during the first period of leisure his friend would ask him to relate his adventures of the previous day.

He now rejoiced in the possession of a small weapon with which he could prostrate his comrade at the first signs of a cross-examination. He was master. It would now be he who could laugh and shoot the shafts of derision.

The friend had, in a weak hour, spoken with sobs of his own death. He had delivered a melancholy oration previous to his funeral, and had doubtless in the packet of letters, presented various keepsakes to relatives. But he had not died, and thus he had delivered himself into the hands of the youth.

The latter felt immensely superior to his friend, but he inclined to condescension. He adopted toward him an air of patronizing good humor.

His self-pride was now entirely restored. In the shade of its flourishing growth he stood with braced and self-confident legs, and since nothing could now be discovered he did not shrink from an encounter with the eyes of judges, and allowed no thoughts of his own to keep him from an attitude of manfulness. He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man.

Indeed, when he remembered his fortunes of yesterday, and looked at them from a distance he began to see something fine there. He had license to be pompous and veteranlike.

His panting agonies of the past he put out of his sight.

In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and the damned who roared with sincerity at circumstance. Few but they ever did it. A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates rail; the others may play marbles.

He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that lay directly before him. It was not essential that he should plan his ways in regard to them. He had been taught that many obligations of a life were easily avoided. The lessons of yesterday had been that retribution was a laggard and blind. With these facts before him he did not deem it necessary that he should become feverish over the possibilities of the ensuing twenty-four hours. He could leave much to chance. Besides, a faith in himself had secretly blossomed. There was a little flower of confidence growing within him. He was now a man of experience. He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also, they were inaccurate; they did not sting with precision. A stout heart often defied, and defying, escaped.

And, furthermore, how could they kill him who was the chosen of gods and doomed to greatness?

He remembered how some of the men had run from the battle. As he recalled their terror-struck faces he felt a scorn for them. They had surely been more fleet and more wild than was absolutely necessary. They were weak mortals. As for himself, he had fled with discretion and dignity.

He was aroused from this reverie by his friend, who, having hitched about nervously and blinked at the trees for a time, suddenly coughed in an introductory way, and spoke.

“Fleming!”

“What?”

The friend put his hand up to his mouth and coughed again. He fidgeted in his jacket.

“Well,” he gulped at last, “I guess yeh might as well give me back them letters.” Dark, prickling blood had flushed into his cheeks and brow.

“All right, Wilson,” said the youth. He loosened two buttons of his coat, thrust in his hand, and brought forth the packet. As he extended it to his friend the latter’s face was turned from him.

He had been slow in the act of producing the packet because during it he had been trying to invent a remarkable comment on the affair. He could conjure up nothing of sufficient point. He was compelled to allow his friend to escape unmolested with his packet. And for this he took unto himself considerable credit. It was a generous thing.

His friend at his side seemed suffering great shame. As he contemplated him, the youth felt his heart grow more strong and stout. He had never been compelled to blush in such manner for his acts; he was an individual of extraordinary virtues.

He reflected, with condescending pity: “Too bad! Too bad! The poor devil, it makes him feel tough!”

After this incident, and as he reviewed the battle pictures he had seen, he felt quite competent to return home and make the hearts of the people glow with stories of war. He could see himself in a room of warm tints telling tales to listener. He could exhibit laurels. They were insignificant; still, in a district where laurels were infrequent, they might shine.

He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure in blazing scenes. And he imagined the consternation and the ejaculations of his mother and the young lady at the seminary as they drank his recitals. Their vague feminine formula for beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of battle without risk of life would be destroyed.

Chapter 16

A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the cannon had entered the dispute. In the fog-filled air their voices made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continual. This part of the world led a strange, battleful existence.

The youth’s regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up, like a large furrow, along the line of woods. Before them was a level stretch, peopled with short, deformed stumps. From the woods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing in the fog. From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.

The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the firing. The youth’s friend lay down, buried his face in his arms, and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a deep sleep.

The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a few heads sticking curiously over the top.

Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left, and the din on the right had grown to frightful proportions. The guns were roaring without an instant’s pause for breath. It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossible to make a sentence heard.

The youth wished to launch a joke—a quotation from newspapers. He desired to say, “All quiet on the Rappahannock,” but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar. He never successfully concluded the sentence. But at last the guns stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew, like birds, but they were now for the most part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope. The men’s faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of those high in place and responsibility came to their ears. Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs. This din of musketry on the right, growing like a released genie of sound, expressed and emphasized the army’s plight.

The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made gestures expressive of the sentence: “Ah, what more can we do?” And it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fully comprehend a defeat.

Before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the sun rays, the regiment was marching in a spread column that was retiring carefully through the woods. The disordered, hurrying lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the groves and little fields. They were yelling, shrill and exultant.

At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became greatly enraged. He exploded in loud sentences. “B’jiminey, we’re generaled by a lot ’a lunkheads.”

“More than one feller has said that t’-day,” observed a man.

His friend, recently aroused, was still very drowsy. He looked behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement. Then he sighed. “Oh, well, I s’pose we got licked,” he remarked sadly.

The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him to freely condemn other men. He made an attempt to restrain himself, but the words upon his tongue were too bitter. He presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the commander of the forces.

“Mebbe, it wa’n’t all his fault—not all together. He did th’ best he knowed. It’s our luck t’ git licked often,” said his friend in a weary tone. He was trudging along with stooped shoulders and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked.

“Well, don’t we fight like the devil? Don’t we do all that men can?” demanded the youth loudly.

He was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came from his lips. For a moment his face lost its valor and he looked guiltily about him. But no one questioned his right to deal in such words, and presently he recovered his air of courage. He went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group to group at the camp that morning. “The brigadier said he never saw a new reg’ment fight the way we fought yestirday, didn’t he? And we didn’t do better than many another reg’ment, did we? Well, then, you can’t say it’s th’ army’s fault, can you?”

In his reply, the friend’s voice was stern. “’A course not,” he said. “No man dare say we don’t fight like th’ devil. No man will ever dare say it. Th’ boys fight like hell-roosters. But still—still, we don’t have no luck.”

“Well, then, if we fight like the devil an’ don’t ever whip, it must be the general’s fault,” said the youth grandly and decisively. “And I don’t see any sense in fighting and fighting and fighting, yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead of a general.”

A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth’s side, then spoke lazily. “Mebbe yeh think yeh fit th’ hull battle yestirday, Fleming,” he remarked.

The speech pierced the youth. Inwardly he was reduced to an abject pulp by these chance words. His legs quaked privately. He cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man.

“Why, no,” he hastened to say in a conciliating voice “I don’t think I fought the whole battle yesterday.”

But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning. Apparently, he had no information. It was merely his habit. “Oh!” he replied in the same tone of calm derision.

The youth, nevertheless, felt a threat. His mind shrank from going near to the danger, and thereafter he was silent. The significance of the sarcastic man’s words took from him all loud moods that would make him appear prominent. He became suddenly a modest person.

There was low-toned talk among the troops. The officers were impatient and snappy, their countenances clouded with the tales of misfortune. The troops, sifting through the forest, were sullen. In the youth’s company once a man’s laugh rang out. A dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly toward him and frowned with vague displeasure.

The noise of firing dogged their footsteps. Sometimes, it seemed to be driven a little way, but it always returned again with increased insolence. The men muttered and cursed, throwing black looks in its direction.

In a clear space the troops were at last halted. Regiments and brigades, broken and detached through their encounters with thickets, grew together again and lines were faced toward the pursuing bark of the enemy’s infantry.

This noise, following like the yelpings of eager, metallic hounds, increased to a loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun went serenely up the sky, throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy thickets, it broke forth into prolonged pealings. The woods began to crackle as if afire.

“Whoop-a-dadee,” said a man, “here we are! Everybody fightin’. Blood an’ destruction.”

“I was willin’ t’ bet they’d attack as soon as th’ sun got fairly up,” savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the youth’s company. He jerked without mercy at his little mustache. He strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his men, who were lying down behind whatever protection they had collected.

A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully shelling the distance. The regiment, unmolested as yet, awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods before them should be slashed by the lines of flame. There was much growling and swearing.

“Good Gawd,” the youth grumbled, “we’re always being chased around like rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to know where we go or why we go. We just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here and get licked there, and nobody knows what it’s done for. It makes a man feel like a damn’ kitten in a bag. Now, I’d like to know what the eternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow, unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us. We came in here and got our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers, and then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy time of it. Don’t tell me it’s just luck! I know better. It’s this derned old—”

The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of calm confidence. “It’ll turn out all right in th’ end,” he said.

“Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged parson. Don’t tell me! I know—”

At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded lieutenant, who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction upon his men. “You boys shut right up! There no need ’a your wastin’ your breath in long-winded arguments about this an’ that an’ th’ other. You’ve been jawin’ like a lot ’a old hens. All you’ve got t’ do is to fight, an’ you’ll get plenty ’a that t’ do in about ten minutes. Less talkin’ an’ more fightin’ is what’s best for you boys. I never saw sech gabbling jackasses.”

He paused, ready to pounce upon any man who might have the temerity to reply. No words being said, he resumed his dignified pacing.

“There’s too much chin music an’ too little fightin’ in this war, anyhow,” he said to them, turning his head for a final remark.

The day had grown more white, until the sun shed his full radiance upon the thronged forest. A sort of a gust of battle came sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth’s regiment. The front shifted a trifle to meet it squarely. There was a wait. In this part of the field there passed slowly the intense moments that precede the tempest.

A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. In an instant it was joined by many others. There was a mighty song of clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods. The guns in the rear, aroused and enraged by shells that had been thrown burr-like at them, suddenly involved themselves in a hideous altercation with another band of guns. The battle roar settled to a rolling thunder, which was a single, long explosion.

In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted, having slept but little and labored much. They rolled their eyes toward the advancing battle as they stood awaiting the shock. Some shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.

Chapter 17

This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a ruthless hunting. He began to fume with rage and exasperation. He beat his foot upon the ground, and scowled with hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantom flood. There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution of the foe to give him no rest, to give him no time to sit down and think. Yesterday he had fought and had fled rapidly. There had been many adventures. For to-day he felt that he had earned opportunities for contemplative repose. He could have enjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he had been a witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other proved men. Too it was important that he should have time for physical recuperation. He was sore and stiff from his experiences. He had received his fill of all exertions, and he wished to rest.

But those other men seemed never to grow weary; they were fighting with their old speed. He had a wild hate for the relentless foe. Yesterday, when he had imagined the universe to be against him, he had hated it, little gods and big gods; to-day he hated the army of the foe with the same great hatred. He was not going to be badgered of his life, like a kitten chased by boys, he said. It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

He leaned and spoke into his friend’s ear. He menaced the woods with a gesture. “If they keep on chasing us, by Gawd, they’d better watch out. Can’t stand TOO much.”

The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply. “If they keep on a-chasin’ us they’ll drive us all inteh th’ river.”

The youth cried out savagely at this statement. He crouched behind a little tree, with his eyes burning hatefully and his teeth set in a curlike snarl. The awkward bandage was still about his head, and upon it, over his wound, there was a spot of dry blood. His hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling, moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead. His jacket and shirt were open at the throat, and exposed his young bronzed neck. There could be seen spasmodic gulpings at his throat.

His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He wished that it was an engine of annihilating power. He felt that he and his companions were being taunted and derided from sincere convictions that they were poor and puny. His knowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark and stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominable cruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his blood, and he thought that he would have given his life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.

The winds of battle had swept all about the regiment, until the one rifle, instantly followed by others, flashed in its front. A moment later the regiment roared forth its sudden and valiant retort. A dense wall of smoke settled down. It was furiously slit and slashed by the knifelike fire from the rifles.

To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed for a death struggle into a dark pit. There was a sensation that he and his fellows, at bay, were pushing back, always pushing fierce onslaughts of creatures who were slippery. Their beams of crimson seemed to get no purchase upon the bodies of their foes; the latter seemed to evade them with ease, and come through, between, around, and about with unopposed skill.

When, in a dream, it occurred to the youth that his rifle was an impotent stick, he lost sense of everything but his hate, his desire to smash into pulp the glittering smile of victory which he could feel upon the faces of his enemies.

The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed like a snake stepped upon. It swung its ends to and fro in an agony of fear and rage.

The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon his feet. He did not know the direction of the ground. Indeed, once he even lost the habit of balance and fell heavily. He was up again immediately. One thought went through the chaos of his brain at the time. He wondered if he had fallen because he had been shot. But the suspicion flew away at once. He did not think more of it.

He had taken up a first position behind the little tree, with a direct determination to hold it against the world. He had not deemed it possible that his army could that day succeed, and from this he felt the ability to fight harder. But the throng had surged in all ways, until he lost directions and locations, save that he knew where lay the enemy.

The flames bit him, and the hot smoke broiled his skin. His rifle barrel grew so hot that ordinarily he could not have borne it upon his palms; but he kept on stuffing cartridges into it, and pounding them with his clanking, bending ramrod. If he aimed at some changing form through the smoke, he pulled the trigger with a fierce grunt, as if he were dealing a blow of the fist with all his strength.

When the enemy seemed falling back before him and his fellows, he went instantly forward, like a dog who, seeing his foes lagging, turns and insists upon being pursued. And when he was compelled to retire again, he did it slowly, sullenly, taking steps of wrathful despair.

Once he, in his intent hate, was almost alone, and was firing, when all those near him had ceased. He was so engrossed in his occupation that he was not aware of a lull.

He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sentence that came to his ears in a voice of contempt and amazement. “Yeh infernal fool, don’t yeh know enough t’ quit when there ain’t anything t’ shoot at? Good Gawd!”

He turned then and, pausing with his rifle thrown half into position, looked at the blue line of his comrades. During this moment of leisure they seemed all to be engaged in staring with astonishment at him. They had become spectators. Turning to the front again he saw, under the lifted smoke, a deserted ground.

He looked bewildered for a moment. Then there appeared upon the glazed vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of intelligence. “Oh,” he said, comprehending.

He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon the ground. He sprawled like a man who had been thrashed. His flesh seemed strangely on fire, and the sounds of the battle continued in his ears. He groped blindly for his canteen.

The lieutenant was crowing. He seemed drunk with fighting. He called out to the youth: “By heavens, if I had ten thousand wild cats like you I could tear th’ stomach outa this war in less’n a week!” He puffed out his chest with large dignity as he said it.

Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awestruck ways. It was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without proper intermission, they had found time to regard him. And they now looked upon him as a war devil.

The friend came staggering to him. There was some fright and dismay in his voice. “Are yeh all right, Fleming? Do yeh feel all right? There ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with yeh, Henry, is there?”

“No,” said the youth with difficulty. His throat seemed full of knobs and burrs.

These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a hero. And he had not been aware of the process. He had slept, and, awakening, found himself a knight.

He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades. Their faces were varied in degrees of blackness from the burned powder. Some were utterly smudged. They were reeking with perspiration, and their breaths came hard and wheezing. And from these soiled expanses they peered at him.

“Hot work! Hot work!” cried the lieutenant deliriously. He walked up and down, restless and eager. Sometimes his voice could be heard in a wild, incomprehensible laugh.

When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science of war he always unconsciously addressed himself to the youth.

There was some grim rejoicing by the men. “By thunder, I bet this army’ll never see another new reg’ment like us!”

“You bet!”

“A dog, a woman, an’ a walnut tree

Th’ more yeh beat ’em, th’ better they be!

That’s like us.”

“Lost a piler men, they did. If an ol’ woman swep’ up th’ woods she’d git a dustpanful.”

“Yes, an’ if she’ll come around ag’in in ’bout an hour she’ll get a pile more.”

The forest still bore its burden of clamor. From off under the trees came the rolling clatter of the musketry. Each distant thicket seemed a strange porcupine with quills of flame. A cloud of dark smoke, as from smoldering ruins, went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the blue, enameled sky.

Chapter 18

The ragged line had respite for some minutes, but during its pause the struggle in the forest became magnified until the trees seemed to quiver from the firing and the ground to shake from the rushing of men. The voices of the cannon were mingled in a long and interminable row. It seemed difficult to live in such an atmosphere. The chests of the men strained for a bit of freshness, and their throats craved water.

There was one shot through the body, who raised a cry of bitter lamentation when came this lull. Perhaps he had been calling out during the fighting also, but at that time no one had heard him. But now the men turned at the woeful complaints of him upon the ground.

“Who is it? Who is it?”

“Its Jimmie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers.”

When their eyes first encountered him there was a sudden halt, as if they feared to go near. He was thrashing about in the grass, twisting his shuddering body into many strange postures. He was screaming loudly. This instant’s hesitation seemed to fill him with a tremendous, fantastic contempt, and he damned them in shrieked sentences.

The youth’s friend had a geographical illusion concerning a stream, and he obtained permission to go for some water. Immediately canteens were showered upon him. “Fill mine, will yeh?” “Bring me some, too.” “And me, too.” He departed, ladened. The youth went with his friend, feeling a desire to throw his heated body into the stream and, soaking there, drink quarts.

They made a hurried search for the supposed stream, but did not find it. “No water here,” said the youth. They turned without delay and began to retrace their steps.

From their position as they again faced toward the place of the fighting, they could of comprehend a greater amount of the battle than when their visions had been blurred by the hurling smoke of the line. They could see dark stretches winding along the land, and on one cleared space there was a row of guns making gray clouds, which were filled with large flashes of orange-colored flame. Over some foliage they could see the roof of a house. One window, glowing a deep murder red, shone squarely through the leaves. From the edifice a tall leaning tower of smoke went far into the sky.

Looking over their own troops, they saw mixed masses slowly getting into regular form. The sunlight made twinkling points of the bright steel. To the rear there was a glimpse of a distant roadway as it curved over a slope. It was crowded with retreating infantry. From all the interwoven forest arose the smoke and bluster of the battle. The air was always occupied by a blaring.

Near where they stood shells were flip-flapping and hooting. Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks. Wounded men and other stragglers were slinking through the woods.

Looking down an aisle of the grove, the youth and his companion saw a jangling general and his staff almost ride upon a wounded man, who was crawling on his hands and knees. The general reined strongly at his charger’s opened and foamy mouth and guided it with dexterous horsemanship past the man. The latter scrambled in wild and torturing haste. His strength evidently failed him as he reached a place of safety. One of his arms suddenly weakened, and he fell, sliding over upon his back. He lay stretched out, breathing gently.

A moment later the small, creaking cavalcade was directly in front of the two soldiers. Another officer, riding with the skillful abandon of a cowboy, galloped his horse to a position directly before the general. The two unnoticed foot soldiers made a little show of going on, but they lingered near in the desire to overhear the conversation. Perhaps, they thought, some great inner historical things would be said.

The general, whom the boys knew as the commander of their division, looked at the other officer and spoke coolly, as if he were criticising his clothes. “Th’ enemy’s formin’ over there for another charge,” he said. “It’ll be directed against Whiterside, an’ I fear they’ll break through unless we work like thunder t’ stop them.”

The other swore at his restive horse, and then cleared his throat. He made a gesture toward his cap. “It’ll be hell t’ pay stoppin’ them,” he said shortly.

“I presume so,” remarked the general. Then he began to talk rapidly and in a lower tone. He frequently illustrated his words with a pointing finger. The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally he asked: “What troops can you spare?”

The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant. “Well,” he said, “I had to order in th’ 12th to help th’ 76th, an’ I haven’t really got any. But there’s th’ 304th. They fight like a lot ’a mule drivers. I can spare them best of any.”

The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment.

The general spoke sharply. “Get ’em ready, then. I’ll watch developments from here, an’ send you word when t’ start them. It’ll happen in five minutes.”

As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and wheeling his horse, started away, the general called out to him in a sober voice: “I don’t believe many of your mule drivers will get back.”

The other shouted something in reply. He smiled.

With scared faces, the youth and his companion hurried back to the line.

These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time, yet the youth felt that in them he had been made aged. New eyes were given to him. And the most startling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very insignificant. The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of the woods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate. It was war, no doubt, but it appeared strange.

As the two boys approached the line, the lieutenant perceived them and swelled with wrath. “Fleming—Wilson—how long does it take yeh to git water, anyhow—where yeh been to.”

But his oration ceased as he saw their eyes, which were large with great tales. “We’re goin’ t’ charge—we’re goin’ t’ charge!” cried the youth’s friend, hastening with his news.

“Charge?” said the lieutenant. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd! Now, this is real fightin’.” Over his soiled countenance there went a boastful smile. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd!”

A little group of soldiers surrounded the two youths. “Are we, sure ’nough? Well, I’ll be derned! Charge? What fer? What at? Wilson, you’re lyin’.”

“I hope to die,” said the youth, pitching his tones to the key of angry remonstrance. “Sure as shooting, I tell you.”

And his friend spoke in re-enforcement. “Not by a blame sight, he ain’t lyin’. We heard ’em talkin’.”

They caught sight of two mounted figures a short distance from them. One was the colonel of the regiment and the other was the officer who had received orders from the commander of the division. They were gesticulating at each other. The soldier, pointing at them, interpreted the scene.

One man had a final objection: “How could yeh hear ’em talkin’?” But the men, for a large part, nodded, admitting that previously the two friends had spoken truth.

They settled back into reposeful attitudes with airs of having accepted the matter. And they mused upon it, with a hundred varieties of expression. It was an engrossing thing to think about. Many tightened their belts carefully and hitched at their trousers.

A moment later the officers began to bustle among the men, pushing them into a more compact mass and into a better alignment. They chased those that straggled and fumed at a few men who seemed to show by their attitudes that they had decided to remain at that spot. They were like critical shepherds, struggling with sheep.

Presently, the regiment seemed to draw itself up and heave a deep breath. None of the men’s faces were mirrors of large thoughts. The soldiers were bended and stooped like sprinters before a signal. Many pairs of glinting eyes peered from the grimy faces toward the curtains of the deeper woods. They seemed to be engaged in deep calculations of time and distance.

They were surrounded by the noises of the monstrous altercation between the two armies. The world was fully interested in other matters. Apparently, the regiment had its small affair to itself.

The youth, turning, shot a quick, inquiring glance at his friend. The latter returned to him the same manner of look. They were the only ones who possessed an inner knowledge. “Mule drivers—hell t’ pay—don’t believe many will get back.” It was an ironical secret. Still, they saw no hesitation in each other’s faces, and they nodded a mute and unprotesting assent when a shaggy man near them said in a meek voice: “We’ll git swallowed.”

Chapter 19

The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages now seemed to veil powers and horrors. He was unaware of the machinery of orders that started the charge, although from the corners of his eyes he saw an officer, who looked like a boy a-horseback, come galloping, waving his hat. Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men. The line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive gasp that was intended for a cheer, the regiment began its journey. The youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.

He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he had concluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward a goal. He had believed throughout that it was a mere question of getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if pursued for a murder. His face was drawn hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare. And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle, and banging accouterments, he looked to be an insane soldier.

As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the woods and thickets before it awakened. Yellow flames leaped toward it from many directions. The forest made a tremendous objection.

The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing swung forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left. Afterward the center careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but an instant later the opposition of the bushes, trees, and uneven places on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.

The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance. His eyes still kept note of the clump of trees. From all places near it the clannish yell of the enemy could be heard. The little flames of rifles leaped from it. The song of the bullets was in the air and shells snarled among the treetops. One tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in crimson fury. There was an instant spectacle of a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.

Other men, punched by bullets, fell in grotesque agonies. The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.

They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape. Some men working madly at a battery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry’s lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.

It seemed to the youth that he saw everything. Each blade of the green grass was bold and clear. He thought that he was aware of every change in the thin, transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets. The brown or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their surfaces. And the men of the regiment, with their starting eyes and sweating faces, running madly, or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer, heaped-up corpses—all were comprehended. His mind took a mechanical but firm impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and explained to him, save why he himself was there.

But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men, pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic. It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass. There was the delirium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds. It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness. And because it was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered, afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.

Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men. As if by agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed. The volleys directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect. The regiment snorted and blew. Among some stolid trees it began to falter and hesitate. The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the distant walls to smoke to move and disclose to them the scene. Since much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they returned to caution. They were become men again.

The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in a way, that he was now in some new and unknown land.

The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of musketry became a steadied roar. Long and accurate fringes of smoke spread out. From the top of a small hill came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an inhuman whistling in the air.

The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and a strange silence.

Then, above the sounds of the outside commotion, arose the roar of the lieutenant. He strode suddenly forth, his infantile features black with rage.

“Come on, yeh fools!” he bellowed. “Come on! Yeh can’t stay here. Yeh must come on.” He said more, but much of it could not be understood.

He started rapidly forward, with his head turned toward the men, “Come on,” he was shouting. The men stared with blank and yokel-like eyes at him. He was obliged to halt and retrace his steps. He stood then with his back to the enemy and delivered gigantic curses into the faces of the men. His body vibrated from the weight and force of his imprecations. And he could string oaths with the facility of a maiden who strings beads.

The friend of the youth aroused. Lurching suddenly forward and dropping to his knees, he fired an angry shot at the persistent woods. This action awakened the men. They huddled no more like sheep. They seemed suddenly to bethink themselves of their weapons, and at once commenced firing. Belabored by their officers, they began to move forward. The regiment, involved like a cart involved in mud and muddle, started unevenly with many jolts and jerks. The men stopped now every few paces to fire and load, and in this manner moved slowly on from trees to trees.

The flaming opposition in their front grew with their advance until it seemed that all forward ways were barred by the thin leaping tongues, and off to the right an ominous demonstration could sometimes be dimly discerned. The smoke lately generated was in confusing clouds that made it difficult for the regiment to proceed with intelligence. As he passed through each curling mass the youth wondered what would confront him on the farther side.

The command went painfully forward until an open space interposed between them and the lurid lines. Here, crouching and cowering behind some trees, the men clung with desperation, as if threatened by a wave. They looked wild-eyed, and as if amazed at this furious disturbance they had stirred. In the storm there was an ironical expression of their importance. The faces of the men, too, showed a lack of a certain feeling of responsibility for being there. It was as if they had been driven. It was the dominant animal failing to remember in the supreme moments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities. The whole affair seemed incomprehensible to many of them.

As they halted thus the lieutenant again began to bellow profanely. Regardless of the vindictive threats of the bullets, he went about coaxing, berating, and bedamning. His lips, that were habitually in a soft and childlike curve, were now writhed into unholy contortions. He swore by all possible deities.

Once he grabbed the youth by the arm. “Come on, yeh lunkhead!” he roared. “Come one! We’ll all git killed if we stay here. We’ve on’y got t’ go across that lot. An’ then”—the remainder of his idea disappeared in a blue haze of curses.

The youth stretched forth his arm. “Cross there?” His mouth was puckered in doubt and awe.

“Certainly. Jest ’cross th’ lot! We can’t stay here,” screamed the lieutenant. He poked his face close to the youth and waved his bandaged hand. “Come on!” Presently he grappled with him as if for a wrestling bout. It was as if he planned to drag the youth by the ear on to the assault.

The private felt a sudden unspeakable indignation against his officer. He wrenched fiercely and shook him off.

“Come on yerself, then,” he yelled. There was a bitter challenge in his voice.

They galloped together down the regimental front. The friend scrambled after them. In front of the colors the three men began to bawl: “Come on! come on!” They danced and gyrated like tortured savages.

The flag, obedient to these appeals, bended its glittering form and swept toward them. The men wavered in indecision for a moment, and then with a long, wailful cry the dilapidated regiment surged forward and began its new journey.

Over the field went the scurrying mass. It was a handful of men splattered into the faces of the enemy. Toward it instantly sprang the yellow tongues. A vast quantity of blue smoke hung before them. A mighty banging made ears valueless.

The youth ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could discover him. He ducked his head low, like a football player. In his haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene was a wild blur. Pulsating saliva stood at the corners of his mouth.

Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it he endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind.

In the mad scramble he was aware that the color sergeant flinched suddenly, as if struck by a bludgeon. He faltered, and then became motionless, save for his quivering knees. He made a spring and a clutch at the pole. At the same instant his friend grabbed it from the other side. They jerked at it, stout and furious, but the color sergeant was dead, and the corpse would not relinquish its trust. For a moment there was a grim encounter. The dead man, swinging with bended back, seemed to be obstinately tugging, in ludicrous and awful ways, for the possession of the flag.

It was past in an instant of time. They wrenched the flag furiously from the dead man, and, as they turned again, the corpse swayed forward with bowed head. One arm swung high, and the curved hand fell with heavy protest on the friend’s unheeding shoulder.

Chapter 20

When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back. The men, having hurled themselves in projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces. They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the spluttering woods, and their hot rifles still replying to the din. Several officers were giving orders, their voices keyed to screams.

“Where in hell yeh goin’?” the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: “Shoot into ’em! Shoot into ’em, Gawd damn their souls!” There was a melee of screeches, in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.

The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag. “Give it t’ me!” “No, let me keep it!” Each felt satisfied with the other’s possession of it, but each felt bound to declare, by an offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself. The youth roughly pushed his friend away.

The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving among the tree trunks. By the time the depleted regiment had again reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them.

The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by the turmoil, acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting of the bullets with bowed and weary heads. It was of no purpose to strive against walls. It was of no use to batter themselves against granite. And from this consciousness that they had attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that they had been betrayed. They glowered with bent brows, but dangerously, upon some of the officers, more particularly upon the red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass.

However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes. They seemed resolved to make every trouble. The youthful lieutenant was perhaps the last man in the disordered mass. His forgotten back was toward the enemy. He had been shot in the arm. It hung straight and rigid. Occasionally he would cease to remember it, and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture. The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power.

The youth went along with slipping uncertain feet. He kept watchful eyes rearward. A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face. He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers. But he saw that it could not come to pass. His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hesitated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled. And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him.

A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver.

When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer.

He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. “We ARE mule drivers, are we?” And now he was compelled to throw them away.

He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the flag erect. He harangued his fellows, pushing against their chests with his free hand. To those he knew well he made frantic appeals, beseeching them by name. Between him and the lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality. They supported each other in all manner of hoarse, howling protests.

But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at a forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were slipping with speed back to the lines. It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking of skins. Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.

The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth, peering once through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.

Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling gray cloud again interposed as the regiment doggedly replied. The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry and yells.

The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became panic-stricken with the thought that the regiment had lost its path, and was proceeding in a perilous direction. Once the men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushing back against their comrades, screaming that they were being fired upon from points which they had considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry a hysterical fear and dismay beset the troops. A soldier, who heretofore had been ambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom. From another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to a general. Men ran hither and thither, seeking with their eyes roads of escape. With serene regularity, as if controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into men.

The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to the ground. He unconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer in the fight of the preceding day. He passed over his brow a hand that trembled. His breath did not come freely. He was choking during this small wait for the crisis.

His friend came to him. “Well, Henry, I guess this is good-by-John.”

“Oh, shut up, you damned fool!” replied the youth, and he would not look at the other.

The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a proper circle to face the menaces. The ground was uneven and torn. The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly behind whatever would frustrate a bullet. The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standing mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a cane. The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he no more cursed.

There was something curious in this little intent pause of the lieutenant. He was like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises its eyes and fixes upon a distant toy. He was engrossed in this contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from self-whispered words.

Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding from the bullets, waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the plight of the regiment.

The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the youthful lieutenant bawling out: “Here they come! Right onto us, b’Gawd!” His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunder from the men’s rifles.

The youth’s eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated by the awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen the haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy. They were so near that he could see their features. There was a recognition as he looked at the types of faces. Also he perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather gay in effect, being light gray, accented with a brilliant-hued facing. Too, the clothes seemed new.

These troops had apparently been going forward with caution, their rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had discovered them and their movement had been interrupted by the volley from the blue regiment. From the moment’s glimpse, it was derived that they had been unaware of the proximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction. Almost instantly they were shut utterly from the youth’s sight by the smoke from the energetic rifles of his companions. He strained his vision to learn the accomplishment of the volley, but the smoke hung before him.

The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair of boxers. The fast angry firings went back and forth. The men in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances and they seized upon the revenge to be had at close range. Their thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving front bristled with flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of their ramrods. The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a few unsatisfactory views of the enemy. There appeared to be many of them and they were replying swiftly. They seemed moving toward the blue regiment, step by step. He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.

As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he had a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the regimental broom as a large prisoner, it could at least have the consolation of going down with bristles forward.

But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak. Fewer bullets ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened to learn of the fight, they could see only dark, floating smoke. The regiment lay still and gazed. Presently some chance whim came to the pestering blur, and it began to coil heavily away. The men saw a ground vacant of fighters. It would have been an empty stage if it were not for a few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapes upon the sward.

At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their eyes burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips.

It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they were impotent. These little battles had evidently endeavored to demonstrate that the men could not fight well. When on the verge of submission to these opinions, the small duel had showed them that the proportions were not impossible, and by it they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings and upon the foe.

The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim, always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men.

Chapter 21

Presently they knew that no firing threatened them. All ways seemed once more opened to them. The dusty blue lines of their friends were disclosed a short distance away. In the distance there were many colossal noises, but in all this part of the field there was a sudden stillness.

They perceived that they were free. The depleted band drew a long breath of relief and gathered itself into a bunch to complete its trip.

In this last length of journey the men began to show strange emotions. They hurried with nervous fear. Some who had been dark and unfaltering in the grimmest moments now could not conceal an anxiety that made them frantic. It was perhaps that they dreaded to be killed in insignificant ways after the times for proper military deaths had passed. Or, perhaps, they thought it would be too ironical to get killed at the portals of safety. With backward looks of perturbation, they hastened.

As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm exhibited on the part of a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay resting in the shade of the trees. Questions were wafted to them.

“Where th’ hell yeh been?”

“What yeh comin’ back fer?”

“Why didn’t yeh stay there?”

“Was it warm out there, sonny?”

“Goin’ home now, boys?”

One shouted in taunting mimicry: “Oh, mother, come quick an’ look at th’ sojers!”

There was no reply from the bruised and battered regiment, save that one man made broadcast challenges to fist fights and the red-bearded officer walked rather near and glared in great swashbuckler style at a tall captain in the other regiment. But the lieutenant suppressed the man who wished to fist fight, and the tall captain, flushing at the little fanfare of the red-bearded one, was obliged to look intently at some trees.

The youth’s tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks. From under his creased brows he glowered with hate at the mockers. He meditated upon a few revenges. Still, many in the regiment hung their heads in criminal fashion, so that it came to pass that the men trudged with sudden heaviness, as if they bore upon their bended shoulders the coffin of their honor. And the youthful lieutenant, recollecting himself, began to mutter softly in black curses.

They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard the ground over which they had charged.

The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment. He discovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridiculous. The stolid trees, where much had taken place, seemed incredibly near. The time, too, now that he reflected, he saw to have been short. He wondered at the number of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces. Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and enlarged everything, he said.

It seemed, then, that there was bitter justice in the speeches of the gaunt and bronzed veterans. He veiled a glance of disdain at his fellows who strewed the ground, choking with dust, red from perspiration, misty-eyed, disheveled.

They were gulping at their canteens, fierce to wring every mite of water from them, and they polished at their swollen and watery features with coat sleeves and bunches of grass.

However, to the youth there was a considerable joy in musing upon his performances during the charge. He had had very little time previously in which to appreciate himself, so that there was now much satisfaction in quietly thinking of his actions. He recalled bits of color that in the flurry had stamped themselves unawares upon his engaged senses.

As the regiment lay heaving from its hot exertions the officer who had named them as mule drivers came galloping along the line. He had lost his cap. His tousled hair streamed wildly, and his face was dark with vexation and wrath. His temper was displayed with more clearness by the way in which he managed his horse. He jerked and wrenched savagely at his bridle, stopping the hard-breathing animal with a furious pull near the colonel of the regiment. He immediately exploded in reproaches which came unbidden to the ears of the men. They were suddenly alert, being always curious about black words between officers.

“Oh, thunder, MacChesnay, what an awful bull you made of this thing!” began the officer. He attempted low tones, but his indignation caused certain of the men to learn the sense of his words. “What an awful mess you made! Good Lord, man, you stopped about a hundred feet this side of a very pretty success! If your men had gone a hundred feet farther you would have made a great charge, but as it is—what a lot of mud diggers you’ve got anyway!”

The men, listening with bated breath, now turned their curious eyes upon the colonel. They had a ragamuffin interest in this affair.

The colonel was seen to straighten his form and put one hand forth in oratorical fashion. He wore an injured air; it was as if a deacon had been accused of stealing. The men were wiggling in an ecstasy of excitement.

But of a sudden the colonel’s manner changed from that of a deacon to that of a Frenchman. He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, general, we went as far as we could,” he said calmly.

“As far as you could? Did you, b’Gawd?” snorted the other. “Well, that wasn’t very far, was it?” he added, with a glance of cold contempt into the other’s eyes. “Not very far, I think. You were intended to make a diversion in favor of Whiterside. How well you succeeded your own ears can now tell you.” He wheeled his horse and rode stiffly away.

The colonel, bidden to hear the jarring noises of an engagement in the woods to the left, broke out in vague damnations.

The lieutenant, who had listened with an air of impotent rage to the interview, spoke suddenly in firm and undaunted tones. “I don’t care what a man is—whether he is a general or what—if he says th’ boys didn’t put up a good fight out there he’s a damned fool.”

“Lieutenant,” began the colonel, severely, “this is my own affair, and I’ll trouble you—”

The lieutenant made an obedient gesture. “All right, colonel, all right,” he said. He sat down with an air of being content with himself.

The news that the regiment had been reproached went along the line. For a time the men were bewildered by it. “Good thunder!” they ejaculated, staring at the vanishing form of the general. They conceived it to be a huge mistake.

Presently, however, they began to believe that in truth their efforts had been called light. The youth could see this conviction weight upon the entire regiment until the men were like cuffed and cursed animals, but withal rebellious.

The friend, with a grievance in his eye, went to the youth. “I wonder what he does want,” he said. “He must think we went out there an’ played marbles! I never see sech a man!”

The youth developed a tranquil philosophy for these moments of irritation. “Oh, well,” he rejoined, “he probably didn’t see nothing of it at all and god mad as blazes, and concluded we were a lot of sheep, just because we didn’t do what he wanted done. It’s a pity old Grandpa Henderson got killed yestirday—he’d have known that we did our best and fought good. It’s just our awful luck, that’s what.”

“I should say so,” replied the friend. He seemed to be deeply wounded at an injustice. “I should say we did have awful luck! There’s no fun in fightin’ fer people when everything yeh do—no matter what—ain’t done right. I have a notion t’ stay behind next time an’ let ’em take their ol’ charge an’ go t’ th’ devil with it.”

The youth spoke soothingly to his comrade. “Well, we both did good. I’d like to see the fool what’d say we both didn’t do as good as we could!”

“Of course we did,” declared the friend stoutly. “An’ I’d break th’ feller’s neck if he was as big as a church. But we’re all right, anyhow, for I heard one feller say that we two fit th’ best in th’ reg’ment, an’ they had a great argument ’bout it. Another feller, ’a course, he had t’ up an’ say it was a lie—he seen all what was goin’ on an’ he never seen us from th’ beginnin’ t’ th’ end. An’ a lot more stuck in an’ ses it wasn’t a lie—we did fight like thunder, an’ they give us quite a sendoff. But this is what I can’t stand—these everlastin’ ol’ soldiers, titterin’ an’ laughin’, an then that general, he’s crazy.”

The youth exclaimed with sudden exasperation: “He’s a lunkhead! He makes me mad. I wish he’d come along next time. We’d show ’im what—”

He ceased because several men had come hurrying up. Their faces expressed a bringing of great news.

“O Flem, yeh jest oughta heard!” cried one, eagerly.

“Heard what?” said the youth.

“Yeh jest oughta heard!” repeated the other, and he arranged himself to tell his tidings. The others made an excited circle. “Well, sir, th’ colonel met your lieutenant right by us—it was damnedest thing I ever heard—an’ he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem!’ he ses. ‘Mr. Hasbrouck!’ he ses, ‘by th’ way, who was that lad what carried th’ flag?’ he ses. There, Flemin’, what d’ yeh think ’a that? ‘Who was th’ lad what carried th’ flag?’ he ses, an’ th’ lieutenant, he speaks up right away: ‘That’s Flemin’, an’ he’s a jimhickey,’ he ses, right away. What? I say he did. ‘A jimhickey,’ he ses—those ’r his words. He did, too. I say he did. If you kin tell this story better than I kin, go ahead an’ tell it. Well, then, keep yer mouth shet. Th’ lieutenant, he ses: ‘He’s a jimhickey,’ and th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem! he is, indeed, a very good man t’ have, ahem! He kep’ th’ flag ’way t’ th’ front. I saw ’im. He’s a good un,’ ses th’ colonel. ‘You bet,’ ses th’ lieutenant, ‘he an’ a feller named Wilson was at th’ head ’a th’ charge, an’ howlin’ like Indians all th’ time,’ he ses. ‘Head ’a th’ charge all th’ time,’ he ses. ‘A feller named Wilson,’ he ses. There, Wilson, m’boy, put that in a letter an’ send it hum t’ yer mother, hay? ‘A feller named Wilson,’ he ses. An’ th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Were they, indeed? Ahem! ahem! My sakes!’ he ses. ‘At th’ head ’a th’ reg’ment?’ he ses. ‘They were,’ ses th’ lieutenant. ‘My sakes!’ ses th’ colonel. He ses: ‘Well, well, well,’ he ses. ‘They deserve t’ be major-generals.’”

The youth and his friend had said: “Huh!” “Yer lyin’ Thompson.” “Oh, go t’ blazes!” “He never sed it.” “Oh, what a lie!” “Huh!” But despite these youthful scoffings and embarrassments, they knew that their faces were deeply flushing from thrills of pleasure. They exchanged a secret glance of joy and congratulation.

They speedily forgot many things. The past held no pictures of error and disappointment. They were very happy, and their hearts swelled with grateful affection for the colonel and the youthful lieutenant.

Chapter 22

When the woods again began to pour forth the dark-hued masses of the enemy the youth felt serene self-confidence. He smiled briefly when he saw men dodge and duck at the long screechings of shells that were thrown in giant handfuls over them. He stood, erect and tranquil, watching the attack begin against apart of the line that made a blue curve along the side of an adjacent hill. His vision being unmolested by smoke from the rifles of his companions, he had opportunities to see parts of the hard fight. It was a relief to perceive at last from whence came some of these noises which had been roared into his ears.

Off a short way he saw two regiments fighting a little separate battle with two other regiments. It was in a cleared space, wearing a set-apart look. They were blazing as if upon a wager, giving and taking tremendous blows. The firings were incredibly fierce and rapid. These intent regiments apparently were oblivious of all larger purposes of war, and were slugging each other as if at a matched game.

In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with the evident intention of driving the enemy from a wood. They passed in out of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring racket in the wood. The noise was unspeakable. Having stirred this prodigious uproar, and, apparently, finding it too prodigious, the brigade, after a little time, came marching airily out again with its fine formation in nowise disturbed. There were no traces of speed in its movements. The brigade was jaunty and seemed to point a proud thumb at the yelling wood.

On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns, gruff and maddened, denouncing the enemy, who, down through the woods, were forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts. The round red discharges from the guns made a crimson flare and a high, thick smoke. Occasional glimpses could be caught of groups of the toiling artillerymen. In the rear of this row of guns stood a house, calm and white, amid bursting shells. A congregation of horses, tied to a long railing, were tugging frenziedly at their bridles. Men were running hither and thither.

The detached battle between the four regiments lasted for some time. There chanced to be no interference, and they settled their dispute by themselves. They struck savagely and powerfully at each other for a period of minutes, and then the lighter-hued regiments faltered and drew back, leaving the dark-blue lines shouting. The youth could see the two flags shaking with laughter amid the smoke remnants.

Presently there was a stillness, pregnant with meaning. The blue lines shifted and changed a trifle and stared expectantly at the silent woods and fields before them. The hush was solemn and churchlike, save for a distant battery that, evidently unable to remain quiet, sent a faint rolling thunder over the ground. It irritated, like the noises of unimpressed boys. The men imagined that it would prevent their perched ears from hearing the first words of the new battle.

Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of warning. A spluttering sound had begun in the woods. It swelled with amazing speed to a profound clamor that involved the earth in noises. The splitting crashes swept along the lines until an interminable roar was developed. To those in the midst of it it became a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring and thumping of gigantic machinery, complications among the smaller stars. The youth’s ears were filled cups. They were incapable of hearing more.

On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate rushes of men perpetually backward and forward in riotous surges. These parts of the opposing armies were two long waves that pitched upon each other madly at dictated points. To and fro they swelled. Sometimes, one side by its yells and cheers would proclaim decisive blows, but a moment later the other side would be all yells and cheers. Once the youth saw a spray of light forms go in houndlike leaps toward the waving blue lines. There was much howling, and presently it went away with a vast mouthful of prisoners. Again, he saw a blue wave dash with such thunderous force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to clear the earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod. And always in their swift and deadly rushes to and fro the men screamed and yelled like maniacs.

Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections of trees were wrangled over, as gold thrones or pearl bedsteads. There were desperate lunges at these chosen spots seemingly every instant, and most of them were bandied like light toys between the contending forces. The youth could not tell from the battle flags flying like crimson foam in many directions which color of cloth was winning.

His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness when its time came. When assaulted again by bullets, the men burst out in a barbaric cry of rage and pain. They bent their heads in aims of intent hatred behind the projected hammers of their guns. Their ramrods clanged loud with fury as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels. The front of the regiment was a smoke-wall penetrated by the flashing points of yellow and red.

Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short time resmudged. They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous appearances. Moving to and fro with strained exertion, jabbering all the while, they were, with their swaying bodies, black faces, and glowing eyes, like strange and ugly fiends jigging heavily in the smoke.

The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency. Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of his men, and it was evident that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources.

The youth, still the bearer of the colors, did not feel his idleness. He was deeply absorbed as a spectator. The crash and swing of the great drama made him lean forward, intent-eyed, his face working in small contortions. Sometimes he prattled, words coming unconsciously from him in grotesque exclamations. He did not know that he breathed; that the flag hung silently over him, so absorbed was he.

A formidable line of the enemy came within dangerous range. They could be seen plainly—tall, gaunt men with excited faces running with long strides toward a wandering fence.

At sight of this danger the men suddenly ceased their cursing monotone. There was an instant of strained silence before they threw up their rifles and fired a plumping volley at the foes. There had been no order given; the men, upon recognizing the menace, had immediately let drive their flock of bullets without waiting for word of command.

But the enemy were quick to gain the protection of the wandering line of fence. They slid down behind it with remarkable celerity, and from this position they began briskly to slice up the blue men.

These latter braced their energies for a great struggle. Often, white clinched teeth shone from the dusky faces. Many heads surged to and fro, floating upon a pale sea of smoke. Those behind the fence frequently shouted and yelped in taunts and gibelike cries, but the regiment maintained a stressed silence. Perhaps, at this new assault the men recalled the fact that they had been named mud diggers, and it made their situation thrice bitter. They were breathlessly intent upon keeping the ground and thrusting away the rejoicing body of the enemy. They fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in their expressions.

The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen. Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said “mule drivers,” and later “mud diggers,” for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea, vaguely formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach.

The regiment bled extravagantly. Grunting bundles of blue began to drop. The orderly sergeant of the youth’s company was shot through the cheeks. Its supports being injured, his jaw hung afar down, disclosing in the wide cavern of his mouth a pulsing mass of blood and teeth. And with it all he made attempts to cry out. In his endeavor there was a dreadful earnestness, as if he conceived that one great shriek would make him well.

The youth saw him presently go rearward. His strength seemed in nowise impaired. He ran swiftly, casting wild glances for succor.

Others fell down about the feet of their companions. Some of the wounded crawled out and away, but many lay still, their bodies twisted into impossible shapes.

The youth looked once for his friend. He saw a vehement young man, powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew to be him. The lieutenant, also, was unscathed in his position at the rear. He had continued to curse, but it was now with the air of a man who was using his last box of oaths.

For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip. The robust voice, that had come strangely from the thin ranks, was growing rapidly weak.

Chapter 23

The colonel came running along the back of the line. There were other officers following him. “We must charge’m!” they shouted. “We must charge’m!” they cried with resentful voices, as if anticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.

The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the distance between him and the enemy. He made vague calculations. He saw that to be firm soldiers they must go forward. It would be death to stay in the present place, and with all the circumstances to go backward would exalt too many others. Their hope was to push the galling foes away from the fence.

He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would have to be driven to this assault, but as he turned toward them he perceived with a certain surprise that they were giving quick and unqualified expressions of assent. There was an ominous, clanging overture to the charge when the shafts of the bayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels. At the yelled words of command the soldiers sprang forward in eager leaps. There was new and unexpected force in the movement of the regiment. A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge appear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes before a final feebleness. The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should leave them. It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which sputtered the fierce rifles of enemies.

The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving his free arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and appeals, urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it seemed that the mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm of unselfishness. From the many firings starting toward them, it looked as if they would merely succeed in making a great sprinkling of corpses on the grass between their former position and the fence. But they were in a state of frenzy, perhaps because of forgotten vanities, and it made an exhibition of sublime recklessness. There was no obvious questioning, nor figurings, nor diagrams. There was, apparently, no considered loopholes. It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.

He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage, religion-mad. He was capable of profound sacrifices, a tremendous death. He had no time for dissections, but he knew that he thought of the bullets only as things that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavor. There were subtle flashings of joy within him that thus should be his mind.

He strained all his strength. His eyesight was shaken and dazzled by the tension of thought and muscle. He did not see anything excepting the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives of fire, but he knew that in it lay the aged fence of a vanished farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.

As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his mind. He expected a great concussion when the two bodies of troops crashed together. This became a part of his wild battle madness. He could feel the onward swing of the regiment about him and he conceived of a thunderous, crushing blow that would prostrate the resistance and spread consternation and amazement for miles. The flying regiment was going to have a catapultian effect. This dream made him run faster among his comrades, who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic cheers.

But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did not intend to abide the blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed men who ran, their faces still turned. These grew to a crowd, who retired stubbornly. Individuals wheeled frequently to send a bullet at the blue wave.

But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate group that made no movement. They were settled firmly down behind posts and rails. A flag, ruffled and fierce, waved over them and their rifles dinned fiercely.

The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle. There was an expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group, that changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue. They became yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of the two parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.

They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white. They launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood resisting. The space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.

The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag. Its possession would be high pride. It would express bloody minglings, near blows. He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great difficulties and complications. They caused it to be as a craved treasure of mythology, hung amid tasks and contrivances of danger.

He plunged like a mad horse at it. He was resolved it should not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it. His own emblem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other. It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and claws, as of eagles.

The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and disastrous range and roared a swift volley. The group in gray was split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought. The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.

The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky. Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley. He perceived this man fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons. It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of desperate purpose. With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.

But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded, held, and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily upon his limbs. Those in advance of the scampering blue men, howling cheers, leaped at the fence. The despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.

The youth’s friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey. He pulled at it and, wrenching it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over in a final throe and, stiffening convulsively, turned his dead face to the ground. There was much blood upon the grass blades.

At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers. The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. When they spoke it was as if they considered their listener to be a mile away. What hats and caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.

At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious circle. The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an examination. A flurry of fast questions was in the air.

One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.

Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness and apparent good nature. He conversed with the men in blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes. They spoke of battles and conditions. There was an acute interest in all their faces during this exchange of view points. It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness and speculation.

The third captive sat with a morose countenance. He preserved a stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made one reply without variation, “Ah, go t’ hell!”

The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part, kept his face turned in unmolested directions. From the views the youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection. Shame was upon him, and with it profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows. The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutalities, liable to the imagination. All to be seen was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.

After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from which their foes had been driven. A few shot perfunctorily at distant marks.

There was some long grass. The youth nestled in it and rested, making a convenient rail support the flag. His friend, jubilant and glorified, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him there. They sat side by side and congratulated each other.

Chapter 24

The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker. The stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in some distant encounter, but the crashes of the musketry had almost ceased. The youth and his friend of a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened form of distress at the waning of these noises, which had become a part of life. They could see changes going on among the troops. There were marchings this way and that way. A battery wheeled leisurely. On the crest of a small hill was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.

The youth arose. “Well, what now, I wonder?” he said. By his tone he seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in the way of dins and smashes. He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand and gazed over the field.

His friend also arose and stared. “I bet we’re goin’ t’ git along out of this an’ back over th’ river,” said he.

“Well, I swan!” said the youth.

They waited, watching. Within a little while the regiment received orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting from the grass, regretting the soft repose. They jerked their stiffened legs, and stretched their arms over their heads. One man swore as he rubbed his eyes. They all groaned “O Lord!” They had as many objections to this change as they would have had to a proposal for a new battle.

They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had run in a mad scamper.

The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows. The reformed brigade, in column, aimed through a wood at the road. Directly they were in a mass of dust-covered troops, and were trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy’s lines as these had been defined by the previous turmoil.

They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in front of it groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork. A row of guns were booming at a distant enemy. Shells thrown in reply were raising clouds of dust and splinters. Horsemen dashed along the line of intrenchments.

At this point of its march the division curved away from the field and went winding off in the direction of the river. When the significance of this movement had impressed itself upon the youth he turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the trampled and debris-strewed ground. He breathed a breath of new satisfaction. He finally nudged his friend. “Well, it’s all over,” he said to him.

His friend gazed backward. “B’Gawd, it is,” he assented. They mused.

For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and uncertain way. His mind was undergoing a subtle change. It took moments for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume its accustomed course of thought. Gradually his brain emerged from the clogged clouds, and at last he was enabled to more closely comprehend himself and circumstance.

He understood then that the existence of shot and countershot was in the past. He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling upheavals and had come forth. He had been where there was red of blood and black of passion, and he was escaped. His first thoughts were given to rejoicings at this fact.

Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his achievements. Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual machines of reflection had been idle, from where he had proceeded sheeplike, he struggled to marshal all his acts.

At last they marched before him clearly. From this present view point he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and criticise them with some correctness, for his new condition had already defeated certain sympathies.

Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting, for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining prominence. Those performances which had been witnessed by his fellows marched now in wide purple and gold, having various deflections. They went gayly with music. It was pleasure to watch these things. He spent delightful minutes viewing the gilded images of memory.

He saw that he was good. He recalled with a thrill of joy the respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.

Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement appeared to him and danced. There were small shoutings in his brain about these matters. For a moment he blushed, and the light of his soul flickered with shame.

A specter of reproach came to him. There loomed the dogging memory of the tattered soldier—he who, gored by bullets and faint of blood, had fretted concerning an imagined wound in another; he who had loaned his last of strength and intellect for the tall soldier; he who, blind with weariness and pain, had been deserted in the field.

For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the thought that he might be detected in the thing. As he stood persistently before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp irritation and agony.

His friend turned. “What’s the matter, Henry?” he demanded. The youth’s reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.

As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his prattling companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him. It clung near him always and darkened his view of these deeds in purple and gold. Whichever way his thoughts turned they were followed by the somber phantom of the desertion in the fields. He looked stealthily at his companions, feeling sure that they must discern in his face evidences of this pursuit. But they were plodding in ragged array, discussing with quick tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.

“Oh, if a man should come up an’ ask me, I’d say we got a dum good lickin’.”

“Lickin’—in yer eye! We ain’t licked, sonny. We’re goin’ down here aways, swing aroun’, an’ come in behint ’em.”

“Oh, hush, with your comin’ in behint ’em. I’ve seen all ’a that I wanta. Don’t tell me about comin’ in behint—”

“Bill Smithers, he ses he’d rather been in ten hundred battles than been in that heluva hospital. He ses they got shootin’ in th’ nighttime, an’ shells dropped plum among ’em in th’ hospital. He ses sech hollerin’ he never see.”

“Hasbrouck? He’s th’ best off’cer in this here reg’ment. He’s a whale.”

“Didn’t I tell yeh we’d come aroun’ in behint ’em? Didn’t I tell yeh so? We—”

“Oh, shet yeh mouth!”

For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation from the youth’s veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier.

Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised them.

With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers.

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover’s thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

CAPTAINS VENOMOUS, by Arthur J. Burks

Captain Rogers Croft and Captain Lumford Zane, both of the United States Army Air Corps, were young to be captains. They were twenty-four. The War Department, however, had had to commission them in their rank. They were aces, and aces deserved recognition.

Their careers were curiously parallel. Both were out of West Point, though they had scarcely noticed each other there. Both had succeeded through sheer merit. Nobody had given either of them a lift. Nor would either have accepted help.

Any similarity after that, however, ended. Rogers Croft was a fiery, impulsive sort of fellow who hated his enemies so fervently that he had just one urge—to destroy them utterly. Then to kick the shards and remnants around, to get their blood on his otherwise stainless boots.

Every time he heard of a victory, large or small by the Germans or Japs, he took it as a personal affront, a deadly insult. And that’s what made him a terror, working out of certain secret bases in Dutch New Guinea.

He went berserk, but he went berserk with precision. He had knocked down twenty-four Japanese planes in six days of fighting through the islands. He cursed himself daily because he had bagged so few.

He behaved as if he could knock down the whole Japanese air force, all by himself. Given the time and opportunity, he might have done just that.

Lumford Zane, on the other hand, was not a man anyone, even Croft, would call “Lum” without a vague feeling of uneasiness. It was hard to put your finger on the reason.

It would have been thought that Croft would be the man who wouldn’t take anything from anybody, yet it was Croft who was called “Rog” by brother officers, even by juniors, and he was the man whom enlisted men, excited by his latest exploits, hammered on the back before they remembered that he was a superior officer.

That just was not done to Lumford Zane, for some reason, but nobody knew why. Zane had bagged seventeen Japanese planes. But his score was somewhat greater than that, for he had knocked off ten more while serving with the “Flying Tigers,” who were not supposed to be officers at all.

Zane was one number senior to Croft, and Croft never forgot it, or overlooked the seniority. Though Zane never by word, look or deed indicated that it mattered to him in the least. Men slouched, but efficiently, around Croft. They jumped and did things for Zane, and none could have told why.

There was a kind of race between the two at the moment, though neither would have said so. Each was trying to get in all the flying time he could, each was trying, all-out, to win his share of the war.

* * * *

An Orderly approached Croft, who walked back and forth under the camouflage which hid the field from any chance Japanese reconnaissance planes. Croft walked as if he were about to explode.

Sitting calmly under a tree, in a chair from somewhere, which he leaned back against the bole, Lumford Zane watched Croft stride back and forth.

“An awful lot of energy to use up,” he finally said. “You could down two Japs with it, Croft.”

“I’ll always have enough and to spare for the murdering Nips, Zane!” said Croft. “See what they did today? Shot down a passenger plane, filled with women and children, out of Australia. They knew it wasn’t armed, must have seen who the passengers were!”

Croft’s face was a thunder-cloud, and his eyes shot pencils of flame. A slow smile, a gentle smile, briefly touched the lips of Lumford Zane.

“Women and children, Croft,” he said, “are in this war, too. We must expect them to get hurt!”

Croft whirled on his superior, his fist coming up, clenched, as if he would strike the other man. His teeth showed in a snarl.

“Are you excusing the Japs for killing women and kids?”

Croft strode up until he was within ten paces, when Zane, his smile fading, stopped him.

“Stand still, Croft,” he said. “Here is a perfect example of what I mean! Don’t move! You see, you are angry, wasting energy, and your alertness has disappeared. You are at this moment standing within striking distance, less about a foot, of one of the seven most deadly cobras, in Dutch New Guinea. I’ve been watching the critter try to make up its mind to look me over. Stand still now, and learn a lesson. May you also, hereafter, remember that you should wear leather leggings on the ground, just in case other snakes get curious!”

Lumford Zane rose, with easy grace, seeming to flow from his chair. Croft stood like a statue, afraid even to look down, knowing just how lethally testy the cobras were, and wondering just how Zane, who didn’t have his gat on him at the moment, was going to dispose of the cobra.

Zane came close, within striking distance. Then he made a quick movement that attracted the snake’s attention, causing it to strike—with a blinding whir of speed. As its head hit the ground, at the end of its fast-as-lightning stab, just two inches from the foot of Lumford Zane, Zane put his heel on the head and brought his weight on it.

It was done casually. At least, Croft thought, having seen it all, Zane had made it look casual. But Croft knew how nearly perfect every move of Zane’s had been timed. A high-speed camera would have caught the striking of that reptile only as a blur. Yet Zane had been ready at the exact split second, before the snake could retract its head, to put his foot upon it.

And Croft had just a hint of why the man with the gentle smile was not a man one could, somehow, call “Lum.”

“Captains Zane and Croft,” said the orderly, “to scramble at once.”

It was a small field. Only Zane and Croft could have taken the Bell Airacobras off it. There were many other fields just like it, too small to be of much use, to be worth wasting men to capture, yet large enough to make possible the savage work of men like Zane and Croft.

* * * *

The two captains, pulling on their helmets, strode to their crates, which stood nose to tail. Zane’s was ahead, in the narrow runway that had to be narrow—narrow enough for tree limbs to meet over it to be invisible from the air.

Zane stepped into his fighter, not even looking back to check on Croft. Then, all at once, he lowered his foot from the step, called to the orderly.

“Watch for a cobra,” he said. “A snake, not a plane. I just killed one under the wishing tree. It’ll have a mate on the prowl wondering what happened to it. Watch, and keep the mate from making any mistakes, see?”

Gently Zane smiled at the orderly. There was something in the smile that made the orderly step back.

Now both captains were in their crates, their motors turning over. In a high tree, a high, thick, bushy tree, a lookout scanned the skies for Japanese planes. The Airacobras would not take off if there were any enemy planes visible anywhere. The secret fields must remain secret as long as possible. Zane’s own ground crew were doubling as sentries, to guard against Japanese foot-troops—Tatori’s, who were good in the jungle.

The orderly signaled, relaying a signal he took from the look-out. Lumford Zane, sure by the feel of his Bell Airacobra that she was perfect, gunned her. The toughest type fighter plane in the Far East began to roll, with another just behind it.

Behind Zane, and behind Croft, an Allison engine—ten hundred and forty horse power— roared savagely, pushing ’Cobra and pilot up into the air like a hand putting a shot. In a split second after the crate got into the air, it could be doing four hundred miles an hour, level flight. What it could do on a dive—well, the fact that Zane knew to a hair was what made a certain difference between him and Croft, between him and almost any other flyer in any of the United Nations’ services.

The leading Bell ’Cobra shot up through the trees, banked left, away from the vent from the field. The second came out, banked right. Then both screamed up for altitude, while Zane looked at the signal below. Both knew what the signal was, but it could not be mentioned, even between them. It indicated direction, however, and distance.

Northwest, fifty miles, Jap fighter planes. And off-shore, barges, transports, destroyers, light cruisers, bringing death and destruction to the East Indies.

The two Airacobras headed in that direction, Allisons full out. Zane watched other planes, seemingly rising from the green sea of the jungles, speed to the rendezvous. He signaled Croft to the left, and a bit below. Four planes swung in behind Croft, four behind Zane.

There was a gentle, almost wistful smile on the face of Lumford Zane. On the face of Rogers Croft, however, was an expression of demoniac hatred—for the enemy.

What did they expect to accomplish by attacking islands where only cannibals and headhunters lived? Though of course Croft knew. He knew all about tin, and rubber, and oil. But it seemed to him so horrible that people who had never even heard of the Japanese should be slaughtered by them. Naturally tribal wars had been their right from time immemorial. The Japs had no right to compel them to die in any other way.

* * * *

By the time the Japanese were sighted, Croft had worked himself into his usual berserker rage. Behind him his four wingmates seemed to throb with his own fury.

Away to the right, Zane sensed all this, and smiled. If his men echoed his smile, it was because they envied a man who could smile like that, and wreak such havoc, not because they understood what made him smile.

More fighter planes were converging on the Japanese concentration. The Dutch, as usual, were doing a gorgeous job of coordination. The fighters arrived at just the right time to give the Jap fighters all they were looking for. And when they were all engaged, the B-26s and the Douglas DB7s would swing into action, with a few TBD-1s, to give the transports and cruisers something to think about.

At Zane’s signal, the fighter formations separated, each into its own flight unit. They hurtled straight into the thick of the Jap fighters who were forming a kind of sky-wall to keep them back.

Lumford Zane was calm. He was a great believer in self-control. You could do so much more if you bossed yourself first.

Zane led his wingmates straight into the thick of the Japs. The Nips, suicidal in their zeal for the Son of Heaven—goggle-eyed, bespectacled Hirohito—were aching for fight. Zane signaled his men to get after their own targets, and then, while calmly speeding a burst into a Jap who poured lead past the nose of his ’Cobra, he estimated the situation.

Croft did nothing of the sort. He simply went raging in, and effectively—for four Nakajimas were already going down before the bullets of Croft and his fighters.

Zane smiled. He himself had got one plane. Now one of his wingmates exploded a Kawanishi. A burst into the middle of the fighter-bomber did the business.

On the face of things, Zane seemed to be behind in kills. He was undisturbed. First he must estimate, know, as surely as he had when he had put his foot on the head of the cobra. Though he never said it, every Jap was just such a cobra to him. You didn’t let them bite you.

“Like that for instance,” he told himself, as one of the pilots behind Croft, trying to get three Japs at once, got himself into a pocket and shot to pieces before he could pull out.

The American bailed out, his parachute flowering. A Jap started to follow him down, but thought better of it. The sharks in the blue waters below would take care of the American flyer, so the Jap saved his bullets.

Zane looked after that particular Jap with something like understanding. Then he dived on him and shot him down!

The skies above the Japanese naval armada were filled with planes—Japanese, British, Dutch, American—all mixed up together. The bombers and torpedo-carriers had not yet arrived. Zane looked around for them, somewhat concerned for a moment. The bombers and torpedo-carriers were necessary.

But he didn’t see them. He signaled his four flyers, spread them out, dived through the Japanese interceptors. But they leveled off above the blue water, and streaked away for the nearest Japanese barges which were bearing soldiers ashore.

Zane smiled gently. He would leave the transports and the cruisers and destroyers for the time being. No use getting in the way of their guns. The Jap soldiers were the important objectives!

A barge, right in line!

* * * *

Zane did not even stop to think whether to use his thirty or his fifty-caliber machine-guns, or his 36 mm. shell gun. Long ago he had figured out just what to use against an invasion barge. As a result, he nosed up before reaching the barge, brought his thirty-caliber machine-guns to bear on the crouched soldiers.

Then he nosed down. He was still smiling, though it was more of a mask-like grimace than a smile. The invasion barge changed direction crazily, continued to move erratically, as well it might. For after Zane had fired his brief burst, no Japanese soldier remained alive in that barge.

He zoomed, picking out another barge, glancing aloft to see whether he should get back into the sky-battle or whether Nakajimas were diving on him. Then he studied the work of his wingmates.

Two more invasion barges were erratic in movement and direction. A fourth barge had turned back. Fearful men, who had been sure they were willing to die for their emperor, frightened by these deadly Americans had dived into the sea. Too late they had forgotten that there were sharks in the sea that matched in ferocity the sharks in the sky.

On the crazily zigzagging destroyers antiaircraft guns were soaring steadily. Larger guns on the cruisers were laying down a barrage on the shore, covering the landing of the soldiers.

Zane signaled to his men. They swung in widely to follow his lead. Zane zoomed, far above the cruiser guns that were laying down the barrage on the beach.

Then, he nosed over. To his right two planes nosed down, to his left two more.

Now Zane set his 50-caliber machine-guns to chattering. He let his 36 mm. shell gun have her head. He had no hopes of sinking or damaging a cruiser of the Kako class with such weapons, but there were men on the cruiser’s decks, and in the rigging.

Harass the Japs! Irritate the Nips! And keep your self-control. That was the ticket.

The five ’Cobras gathered speed. Four hundred and fifty-miles an hour, diving straight for the smoke that made a pall about the ships. And Zane smiled again as he saw short men moving to take up positions behind machine-guns on the cruiser’s decks.

The five planes, with their guns raging full out, hurtled straight into the guns of the Japs. Men began to fall on the decks of the cruiser, dropping behind machine-guns and antiaircraft weapons.

And Lumford Zane smiled as his five ’Cobras flashed over the cruiser, knowing that a hundred dead, perhaps more, were the result of this battle. Moreover, rattled Jap gunners must have given Dutch defenders on shore a brief breathing space.

Zane had not lost a ship. His four flyers were still with him and he saw no bullet-holes in his own crate.

Zane led his men back into battle as the bombers and torpedo-carriers came out of the green jungle to help defend and protect the barges, transports, cruisers and destroyers of Dai Nippon dotting the blue sea. The bigger planes took over, the Nakajimas, roared out to clash in the sky with American, Dutch and British fighters.

Thirty American fighters, Zane estimated— and did not smile now. There had been fifty. But there was always the chance that the missing flyers were engaged elsewhere. It galled him to think that Japs could take any such toll of planes of the United Nations.

The pilots of the defenders’ torpedo-carriers swung into action. The Nakajimas converged on the bombers that were attacking transports and barges, and the torpedo-carriers that were after the cruisers and destroyers.

Half a dozen Nakajimas hurtled at one torpedo-carrier, a TBD-1, and Zane swept down on them. The nose of his crate covered the nearest Nakajima. His guns spoke—all of them, even the shell gun.

Then the nose of his ’Cobra shifted, and two Nakajimas jumped as if they had been winged deer. And the next instant, as Zane’s wingmates got into action the other four Nakajimas were cutting out of the fight, burning. Zane had taken two, his men one each—and the TBD-1 flew on, while the Kako class cruiser that Zane and his men had plastered, seemed to take a terrific blow in the port quarter. It began to list. It started down.

Zane saw Rogers Croft in action then. His ’Cobra was riddled, Zane gathered from its behavior. And only two other ’Cobras rode with Croft. But in his own way, Croft was performing Herculean labors in the battle, giving his fury free rein. Croft was everywhere. Even as Zane looked, Croft dived like a bullet on the back of a Kawanishi, smashed it out of the fight, nosed up and let go with all guns on a Nakajima, which also went down, trailing fans of smoke.

That was Croft, Zane thought. All out, everything—all guns working, going full force to his motor. Croft. The hammer-and-tongs fighter of the skies. His wing-mates were like him, for such men naturally gravitated to Croft as the steadier type of men gravitated to Zane.

There was an unspoken rivalry between the two top aces of the East Indies. Zane himself did not count the aircraft he had shot down. He mentioned them in his combat reports, officials added them up, he forgot the totals. His only interest was in whittling away at the Japanese who were whittling away at the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and at Australia. He didn’t care where he found them—on the beaches, anywhere, everywhere—

Croft was different, for he had to keep his own score. And always, as now, he was a viking of the sky, smashing, diving, his guns all going. While Zane used his guns sparingly, he made every shot count. Croft raged, Zane smiled.

The fight now was not a conclusive one, however terrific. But a lull finally came when planes needed gasoline and men had to rest. Bombers and torpedo-carriers pulled out first, while the ’Cobras fought back the surviving Jap flyers to keep them from tracing the bombers and torpedo-carriers to their secret bases. Zane and his men downed four more Nakajimas.

So far, the United Nations had made a grand bag. Twenty Jap planes, a Kako class cruiser, two transports, a destroyer, fourteen barges. And in the sea sharks held high, bloody revelry.

* * * *

Some Americans, British and Dutch were down there too, among the sharks, Zane thought sadly, as he led his wingmates back into the jungles, and watched them scatter to their secret fields. Those fields were connected by telephones, so that the commander could keep in touch with his command, one that covered a vast area, many flights and squadrons.

Zane landed, slicing down into the narrow field. Down after him came Rogers Croft. The two ’Cobras rolled to the end of the carefully camouflaged field. There, at the end of the field, the planes were faced about, ready for the next take-off, which Zane knew would be right away.

The two captains found the squadron commander waiting for them.

“How many losses from your flight, Captain?” Major Jackson asked Zane.

“None, sir,” said Zane.

“And you, Croft?”

“Two, sir.”

“What were you doing, Zane?” snapped the major. “Having a picnic? How could five planes mix into the thick of the fight like the one you’ve just been through, and come back unharmed?”

“They may have taken a few bullet-holes, sir,” said Zane, “but I saw no reason for risking their lives in wild—”

“Soldiers in wartime are supposed to risk their lives!” snapped the major. “I won’t have commanders who think more of their men than they do of destroying the enemy!”

Zane said nothing. He stood quietly while Jackson complimented Croft on his zeal, his courage.

Then he waved both men aside, to write their combat reports.

When Zane handed in his, Major Jackson looked up at him, his mouth hanging slightly open. For the first time since his return from battle Zane smiled. “I don’t believe you did as much damage as this report indicates?” snapped the major.

“I don’t believe, sir,” Zane said softly, “that regulations require that I permit my veracity to be questioned. Are you sure you doubt the truth of my report, which I have said is an estimate, only, of the damage?”

“I spoke hastily!” said Jackson, flustered. The orderly came bustling into the tent.

“A flight of enemy planes, flying low, sir,” he said to Jackson, “heading this way. Look-out thinks they’re practically on the air route taken home by Captain Croft and Captain Zane.”

Croft rose. Zane made no move. Jackson looked from one to the other.

“What do you make of it, Zane?” he asked.

“We may have been trailed, sir. Anyway, the Nips would like to rid themselves of certain pests—Croft and me, I imagine!”

“Well, why not get out and meet them?” snapped Jackson.

“Might I suggest, sir, that we wait for them to go past the field, or turn back? I like to hit Jap formations when they least expect it, when their backs are turned!”

* * * *

The formation, six strong, of Nipponese, fled across the secret field without slowing down, or circling, or noting anything unusual about the jungle where the field was hidden.

Then Zane led the way out. His face was unconcerned. Croft was again the raging fury. The two crates took off, as soon as the look-out signaled. They had been serviced, were again ready for all-out action.

They shot up to ten thousand feet. The Japs were heading away.

Croft waited, with such patience as he could manage, for Zane to take the offensive. Then, when Zane started his slash down the sky, Croft was right on his port side. And the Japs did not even see them until one of their number had been savagely blasted, and was falling into the jungles below. Nothing down there, Zane knew, but headhunters—and any Jap who bailed out over that jungle would have reason to be sorry.

Croft got another crate, diving down and coming up from below. Zane, so composed, he was hardly blinking, got his second crate on the way-down. He zoomed, banked, corkscrewing into place as the Japanese formation, attacked from below and above, broke apart.

Croft was again the slashing, swashbuckling savage of the skies. Zane was the cool, calm, sure—executioner!

Three Japs gone. Half the Jap force done for, two of whom had parachuted into the jungle to horrible death. But there was no mercy for them in the hearts of Zane and Croft.

Three planes left. They must not get back, to report about where they had encountered the two Airacobras. None must survive, to make trouble for the secret fields.

Savagely Croft slashed at the remaining planes, now swiftly and desperately scattering, as a convoy breaks up when attacked by sub-packs. Methodically, scientifically, Zane knocked down two more planes. Croft, the raging demon, accounted for the other. So fiercely swift had been the battle that parachutes were still visible above the green jungle when the two captains realized that the only ships aloft were their own.

They flew back to their secret field. Major Jackson told them that the Jap invasion force had been driven off temporarily. They could rest.

But again Jackson glared at Zane.

“What you could do,” he declared, “if you had some real fighting spirit! You’re a machine. If you had the heart to go with it you would be one of the greatest—”

The orderly came in to make a breathless report.

“Look-out reports capture of two Japanese pilots, sir. They’re being brought in now. Should be here in maybe an hour.”

“You got your first ones that close?” asked Jackson.

Zane shrugged. Croft’s face looked grim, black.

“How come the cannibals didn’t get them?” Croft said. “Major, there are other Japs close— jungle troops! These flyers know their way around these jungles. How do we know these men who have been captured are even flyers? They couldn’t be spotted this soon after we get back from miles away. It’s a trick!”

Zane smiled.

“Japs who know the jungles would naturally be chosen for the job those Nips were sent to do,” he said softly. “What’s remarkable about it?”

“I suppose you’ve the answer to everything!” said Jackson.

Two hours later Jackson sent for Croft and Zane. The Nip pilots had been brought in.

“Which one of you,” asked one of the Japs, before either captain could say a word, “flies the Airacobra with the slightly heavy left wing?”

Zane started. Nobody, he was sure, had ever noticed that his plane was slightly inclined to favor the left wing. This Jap hadn’t missed that. Why?

Jackson read the amazement in Zane’s face, the first real emotion he had ever seen there.

“I guess it can do no harm to tell, Nip,” Zane said. “I fly that crate!”

The Japs were covered carefully by men with bayoneted rifles. Their side-arms had been taken from them. They had been thoroughly searched. Yet when Zane answered, the Jap who had asked the question in perfect English, spoke one word in Japanese. Instantly both Japs hurled themselves at Zane—while in their hands were short-bladed knives that must have come out of their sleeves.

Zane sidestepped. Croft jumped and swung a savage right to the chin of one Jap. The man went over on his back, his neck broken by the blow. An automatic barked, and the English-speaking Jap dropped to his face, rolled onto his back. Sweat beaded his yellow face, but he forced himself to speak—to Lumford Zane.

“If you have the chance,” he said to Zane, “will you get word to any Jap commander that Matadori—that’s me—died trying to slay one of our greatest enemy airmen? You, sir! Your people call my people murderers, but you, you, with your precision, picking off soldiers—”

He writhed and died then, his eyes fixed on Zane to the last. And in those eyes was fear. Not fear of death, but of Lumford Zane and of what this American whom he had failed to kill could still do to his people.

“And I guess, Zane,” Jackson said soberly, “that leaves me nothing to complain about. The enemy risks—and loses—his life to get his most important antagonist. That is recognition.”

“Well,” Zane said calmly, “we don’t have to be bothered about prisoners. I really ought to have credit for that, since they died trying to get me.”

And Zane smiled with great gentleness. But nobody else smiled.

“And I thought I had venom in me!” Croft said wonderingly. “Thank heaven, Zane, that you’re not a Jap, heading this way, and me the only man to head you off!”

Zane smiled again, and went out to have a look at his Bell Airacobra.

A SAHIBS’ WAR, by Rudyard Kipling

Pass? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the rêl from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a—trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first Punjab Cavalry, Do not herd me with these black Kaffirs. I am a Sikh—a trooper of the State. The Lieutenant-Sahib does not understand my talk? Is there any Sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help?… God be thanked, here is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was servant to Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs!… Yes, I will sit by this truck till the Heaven-born has explained the matter to the young Lieutenant-Sahib who does not understand our tongue.

* * * *

What orders? The young Lieutenant-Sahib will not detain me? Good! I go down to Eshtellenbosch by the next terain? Good! I go with the Heaven- born? Good! Then for this day I am the Heaven-born’s servant. Will the Heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? Here is an empty truck; I will spread my blanket over one corner thus—for the sun is hot, though not so hot as our Punjab in May. I will prop it up thus, and I will arrange this hay thus, so the Presence can sit at ease till God sends us a terain for Eshtellenbosch….

The Presence knows the Punjab? Lahore? Amritzar? Attaree, belike? My village is north over the fields three miles from Attaree, near the big white house which was copied from a certain place of the Great Queen’s by —by—I have forgotten the name. Can the Presence recall it? Sirdar Dyal Singh Attareewalla! Yes, that is the very man; but how does the Presence know? Born and bred in Hind, was he? O-o-oh! This is quite a different matter. The Sahib’s nurse was a Surtee woman from the Bombay side? That was a pity. She should have been an up-country wench; for those make stout nurses. There is no land like the Punjab. There are no people like the Sikhs. Umr Singh is my name, yes. An old man? Yes. A trooper only after all these years? Ye-es. Look at my uniform, if the Sahib doubts. Nay—nay; the Sahib looks too closely. All marks of rank were picked off it long ago, but—but it is true—mine is not a common cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and—the Sahib has sharp eyes—that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long worn on the breast. The Sahib says that troopers do not wear silver chains? No-o. Troopers do not wear the Arder of Beritish India? No. The Sahib should have been in the Police of the Punjab. I am not a trooper, but I have been a Sahib’s servant for nearly a year—bearer, butler, sweeper, any and all three. The Sahib says that Sikhs do not take menial service? True; but it was for Kurban Sahib— my Kurban Sahib—dead these three months!

* * * *

Young—of a reddish face—with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. So did his father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my father’s time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. My father? Jwala Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs—he fought against the English at Sobraon and carried the mark to his death. So we were knit as it were by a blood-tie, I and my Kurban Sahib. Yes, I was a trooper first—nay, I had risen to a Lance-Duffadar, I remember—and my father gave me a dun stallion of his own breeding on that day; and he was a little baba, sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah—all in white, Sahib—laughing at the end of our drill. And his father and mine talked together, and mine beckoned to me, and I dismounted, and the baba put his hand into mine—eighteen—twenty-five— twenty-seven years gone now—Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib! Oh, we were great friends after that! He cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. He called me Big Umr Singh—Buwwa Umwa Singh, for he could not speak plain. He stood only this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our troopers by name—every one…. And he went to England, and he became a young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart, Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers, keen- eyed, jestful, and careless. I could tell tales about him in his first years. There was very little he hid from me. I was his Umr Singh, and when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him Son. Yes, that was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on everything—about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such all.

We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many box- wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness has created the dak (the post), and that for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. Wherefore, Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we talked together. He said, “There is no haste. Presently we shall fight, and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh. Here he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True—true— true!”

So did matters ripen—a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand times. We could have done it all so gently—so gently.

Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, “Ho, Dada, I am sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.” And he winked, and I said, “I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I bring my uniform?” He said, “Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis” (niggers). Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But he was clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am—I was—of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the Colonel) I said, “My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and sick also.”

And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue, said, “Yes, thou art truly Sikh”; and he called me an old devil— jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again—aie me!

So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, “What is one Mussulman pig more or less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white shirts for dinner.” Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib, that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war. He said, “They have taken men afoot to fight men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log because it is believed that they are white.” He said, “There is but one fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed us, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.” True talk—true talk! It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.

And we came to this country, even to Cape Town over yonder, and Kurban Sahib said, “Bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and I will look for employment fit for a sick man.” I put on the uniform of my rank and went to the big dak-bungalow, called Maun Nihâl Seyn, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] and I caused the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place—is it known to the Sahib?—which was already full of the swords and baggage of officers. It is fuller now—dead men’s kit all! I was careful to secure a receipt for all three pieces. I have it in my belt. They must go back to the Punjab.

Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I knew, and he said, “We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.” Remember, Kurban Sahib was squadron- leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and I was Umr Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, “Thou art a groom and I am a grass- cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?” At this he laughed, saying, “It is the way to better things. Have patience, Father.” (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) “This war ends not tomorrow nor the next day. I have seen the new Sahibs,” he said, “and they are fathers of owls—all— all—all!”

So we went to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; Kurban Sahib doing the service of servants in that business. And the whole business was managed without forethought by new Sahibs from God knows where, who had never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. They were full of zeal, but empty of all knowledge. Then came, little by little from Hind, those Pathans—they are just like those vultures up there, Sahib—they always follow slaughter. And there came to Eshtellenbosch some Sikhs—Muzbees, though—and some Madras monkey-men. They came with horses. Puttiala sent horses. Jhind and Nabha sent horses. All the nations of the Khalsa sent horses.

All the ends of the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses oil: with both hands. These needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones—Hubshis—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but they were all Kaffirs —filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a jemadar of mehtars (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and no vengeance was taken. It was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. Guns that slew at half a day’s march, and men who, being new, walked blind into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the Boer-log! As to the city of Eshtellenbosch, I am not a Sahib—only a Sikh. I would have quartered one troop only of the Gurgaon Rissala in that city—one little troop—and I would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss the shadow of a Government horse upon the ground. There are many mullahs (priests) in Eshtellenbosch. They preached the Jehad against us. This is true—all the camp knew it. And most of the houses were thatched! A war of fools indeed!

At the end of five months my Kurban Sahib, who had grown lean, said, “The reward has come. We go up towards the front with horses tomorrow, and, once away, I shall be too sick so return. Make ready the baggage.” Thus we got away, with some Kaffirs in charge of new horses for a certain new regiment that had come in a ship. The second day by terain, when we were watering at a desolate place without any sort of a bazaar to it, slipped out from the horse-boxes one Sikander Khan, that had been a jemadar of saises (head-groom) at Eshtellenbosch, and was by service a trooper in a Border regiment. Kurban Sahib gave him big abuse for his desertion; but the Pathan put up his hands as excusing himself, and Kurban Sahib relented and added him to our service. So there were three of us—Kurban Sahib, I, and Sikander Khan—Sahib, Sikh, and Sag (dog). But the man said truly, “We be far from our homes and both servants of the Raj. Make truce till we see the Indus again.” I have eaten from the same dish as Sikander Khan— beef, too, for aught I know! He said, on the night he stole some swine’s flesh in a tin from a mess-tent, that in his Book, the Koran, it is written that whoso engages in a holy war is freed from ceremonial obligations. Wah! He had no more religion than the sword-point picks up of sugar and water at baptism. He stole himself a horse at a place where there lay a new and very raw regiment. I also procured myself a grey gelding there. They let their horses stray too much, those new regiments.

Some shameless regiments would indeed have made away with our horses on the road! They exhibited indents and requisitions for horses, and once or twice would have uncoupled the trucks; but Kurban Sahib was wise, and I am not altogether a fool. There is not much honesty at the front. Notably, there was one congregation of hard-bitten horse-thieves; tall, light Sahibs, who spoke through their noses for the most part, and upon all occasions they said, “Oah Hell!” which, in our tongue, signifies Jehannum ko jao. They bore each man a vine-leaf upon their uniforms, and they rode like Rajputs. Nay, they rode like Sikhs. They rode like the Ustrelyahs! The Ustrelyahs, whom we met later, also spoke through their noses not little, and they were tall, dark men, with grey, clear eyes, heavily eyelashed like camel’s eyes—very proper men—a new brand of Sahib to me. They said on all occasions, “No fee-ah,” which in our tongue means Durro mut (“Do not be afraid”), so we called them the Durro Muts. Dark, tall men, most excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war as war, and drinking tea as a sandhill drinks water. Thieves? A little, Sahib. Sikander Khan swore to me; and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations; he swore a Pathan was a babe beside a Durro Mut in regard to horse-lifting. The Durro Muts cannot walk on their feet at all. They are like hens on the high road. Therefore they must have horses. Very proper men, with a just lust for the war. Aah—”No fee-ah,” say the Durro Muts. They saw the worth of Kurban Sahib. They did not ask him to sweep stables. They would by no means let him go. He did substitute for one of their troop-leaders who had a fever, one long day in a country full of little hills—like the mouth of the Khaibar; and when they returned in the evening, the Durro Muts said, “Wallah! This is a man. Steal him!” So they stole my Kurban Sahib as they would have stolen anything else that they needed, and they sent a sick officer back to Eshtellenbosch in his place.

Thus Kurban Sahib came to his own again, and I was his bearer, and Sikander Khan was his cook. The law was strict that this was a Sahibs’ war, but there was no order that a bearer and a cook should not ride with their Sahib—and we had naught to wear but our uniforms. We rode up and down this accursed country, where there is no bazaar, no pulse, no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, no firewood; nothing but raw corn and a little cattle. There were no great battles as I saw it, but a plenty of gun-firing. When we were many, the Boer-log came out with coffee to greet us, and to show us purwanas (permits) from foolish English Generals who had gone that way before, certifying they were peaceful and well-disposed. When we were few, they hid behind stones and shot us. Now the order was that they were Sahibs, and this was a Sahibs’ war. Good! But, as I understand it, when a Sahib goes to war, he puts on the cloth of war, and only those who wear that cloth may take part in the war. Good! That also I understand. But these people were as they were in Burma, or as the Afridis are. They shot at their pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited purwanas, or lay in a house and said they were farmers. Even such farmers as cut up the Madras troops at Hlinedatalone in Burma! Even such farmers as slew Cavagnari Sahib and the Guides at Kabul! We schooled those men, to be sure—fifteen, aye, twenty of a morning pushed off the verandah in front of the Bala Hissar. I looked that the Jung-i-lat Sahib (the Commander-in-Chief) would have remembered the old days; but—no. All the people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth, was all the Boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform to make a loincloth. A fool’s war from first to last; for it is manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in one hand and a purwana in the other, as did all these people. Yet we, when they had had their bellyful for the time, received them with honour, and gave them permits, and refreshed them and fed their wives and their babes, and severely punished our soldiers who took their fowls. So the work was to be done not once with a few dead, but thrice and four times over. I talked much with Kurban Sahib on this, and he said, “It is a Sahibs’ war. That is the order;” and one night, when Sikander Khan would have lain out beyond the pickets with his knife and shown them how it is worked on the Border, he hit Sikander Khan between the eyes and came near to breaking in his head. Then Sikander Khan, a bandage over his eyes, so that he looked like a sick camel, talked to him half one march, and he was more bewildered than I, and vowed he would return to Eshtellenbosch. But privately to me Kurban Sahib said we should have loosed the Sikhs and the Gurkhas on these people till they came in with their foreheads in the dust. For the war was not of that sort which they comprehended.

They shot us? Assuredly they shot us from houses adorned with a white flag; but when they came to know our custom, their widows sent word by Kaffir runners, and presently there was not quite so much firing. No fee- ah! All the Boer-log with whom we dealt had purwanas signed by mad Generals attesting that they were well-disposed to the State.

They had also rifles not a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the roof. The women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. The women of the Boer-log are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own honour’s sake the Sahibs must say that the Boer-log are clever; but it is the Sahibs’ wonderful folly that has made the Boer-log. The Sahibs should have sent us into the game.

But the Durro Muts did well. They dealt faithfully with all that country thereabouts—not in any way as we of Hind should have dealt, but they were not altogether fools. One night when we lay on the top of a ridge in the cold, I saw far away a light in a house that appeared for the sixth part of an hour and was obscured. Anon it appeared again thrice for the twelfth part of an hour. I showed this to Kurban Sahib, for it was a house that had been spared—the people having many permits and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. I said to Kurban Sahib, “Send half a troop, Child, and finish that house. They signal to their brethren.” And he laughed where he lay and said, “If I listened to my bearer Umr Singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land.” I said, “What need to leave one? This is as it was in Burma. They are farmers today and fighters tomorrow. Let us deal justly with them.” He laughed and curled himself up in his blanket, and I watched the far light in the house till day. I have been on the border in eight wars, not counting Burma. The first Afghan War; the second Afghan War; two Mahsud Waziri wars (that is four); two Black Mountain wars, if I remember right; the Malakand and Tirah. I do not count Burma, or some small things. I know when house signals to house!

I pushed Sikandar Khan with my foot, and he saw it too. He said, “One of the Boer-log who brought pumpkins for the mess, which I fried last night, lives in yonder house.” I said, “How dost thou know?” He said, “Because he rode out of the camp another way, but I marked how his horse fought with him at the turn of the road; and before the light fell I stole out of the camp for evening prayer with Kurban Sahib’s glasses, and from a little hill I saw the pied horse of that pumpkin-seller hurrying to that house.” I said naught, but took Kurban Sahib’s glasses from his greasy hands and cleaned them with a silk handkerchief and returned them to their case. Sikander Khan told me that he had been the first man in the Zenab valley to use glasses—whereby he finished two blood-feuds cleanly in the course of three months’ leave. But he was otherwise a liar.

That day Kurban Sahib, with some ten troopers, was sent on to spy the land for our camp. The Durro Muts moved slowly at that time. They were weighted with grain and forage and carts, and they greatly wished to leave these all in some town and go on light to other business which pressed. So Kurban Sahib sought a short cut for them, a little off the line of march. We were twelve miles before the main body, and we came to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a kraal, before it. Two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door, like babul bushes, covered with a golden coloured bloom, and the roof was all of thatch. Before the house was a valley of stones that rose to another bush-covered hill. There was an old man in the verandah—an old man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall young man deprived of understanding. His head was hairless, no larger than an orange, and the pits of his nostrils were eaten away by a disease. He laughed and slavered and he sported sportively before Kurban Sahib. The man brought coffee and the woman showed us purwanas from three General Sahibs, certifying that they were people of peace and goodwill. Here are the purwanas, Sahib. Does the Sahib know the Generals who signed them?

They swore the land was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the verandah with Sikander Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost scent. At last he took my arm and said, “See yonder! There is the sun on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can see that house from here,” and he looked at the hill behind him all hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. Then the idiot with the shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it were, to cover some noise. After this passed I to the back of the house on pretence to get water for tea, and I saw fresh fresh horse-dung on the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs; and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. Then Kurban Sahib called to me in our tongue, saying, “Is this a good place to make tea?” and I replied, knowing what he meant, “There are over many cooks in the cook-house. Mount and go, Child.” Then I returned, and he said, smiling to the woman, “Prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we will come in and eat;” but to his men he said in a whisper, “Ride away!” No. He did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his rifle. That was not his custom. Some fool of the Durro Muts, being hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we were in our saddles many shots came from the roof—from rifles thrust through the thatch. Upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house—so many shots that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. Then Sikandar Khan, riding low, said, “This play is not for us alone, but for the rest of the Durro Muts,” and I said, “Be quiet. Keep place!” for his place was behind me, and I rode behind Kurban Sahib. But these new bullets will pass through five men arow! We were not hit—not one of us—and we reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the stones, and Kurban Sahib turned in his saddle and said, “Look at the old man!” He stood in the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the idiot also—both with guns. Kurban Sahib laughed, and I caught him by the wrist, but—his fate was written at that hour. The bullet passed under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and I pulled him backward between two great rocks atilt —Kurban Sahib, my Kurban Sahib! From the nullah behind the house and from the hills came our Boer-log in number more than a hundred, and Sikandar Khan said, “Now we see the meaning of last night’s signal. Give me the rifle.” He took Kurban Sahib’s rifle—in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords—and lay belly-flat to the work, but Kurban Sahib turned where he lay and said, “Be still. It is a Sahibs’ war,” and Kurban Sahib put up his hand—thus; and then his eyes rolled on me, and I gave him water that he might pass the more quickly. And at the drinking his Spirit received permission….

Thus went our fight, Sahib. We Durro Muts were on a ridge working from the north to the south, where lay our main body, and the Boer-log lay in a valley working from east to west. There were more than a hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the Boer-log in the valley while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. I saw three Boers drop in the open. Then they all hid again and fired heavily at the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show, but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns. So it fell stark dark, and Sikandar Khan found a deep old jackal’s earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of Kurban Sahib upright. Sikandar Khan took his glasses, and I took his handkerchief and some letters and a certain thing which I knew hung round his neck, and Sikandar Khan is witness that I wrapped them all in the handkerchief. Then we took an oath together, and lay still and mourned for Kurban Sahib. Sikandar Khan wept till daybreak—even he, a Pathan, a Mohammedan! All that night we heard firing to the southward, and when the dawn broke the valley was full of Boer-log in carts and on horses. They gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib’s glasses, and the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them, and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought coffee; and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses. Presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright water. Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood, and he laughed, saying, “Wounded men lie there. We shall yet get vengeance.”

About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as a burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how to take a bearing across a hill, said, “At last we have burned the house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled.” And I said: “What need now that they have slain my child? Let me mourn.” It was a high smoke, and the old man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold it, and shook his clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight, foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor to drink till we had accomplished the matter. I had a little opium left, of which I gave Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban Sahib. When it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the windows very softly. The old man sat reading in a book, and the woman sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed again. So I knew they were mother and son, and I laughed, too, for I had suspected this when I claimed her life and her body from Sikandar Khan, in our discussion of the spoil. Then we entered with bare swords…. Indeed, these Boer-log do not understand the steel, for the old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but Sikandar Khan prevented him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held up his hands, and I put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be silent. But the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly fumbling with a gun. His whole head fell inside the door, and none followed him. It was a very pretty stroke—for a Pathan. They then were silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and I said to Sikandar Khan, “Fetch ropes! Not even for Kurban Sahib’s sake will I defile my sword.” So he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones, and said, “Four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit from a General,” and he stretched the ropes and laughed. Then I bound the old man’s hands behind his back, and unwillingly—for he laughed in my face, and would have fingered my beard—the idiot’s. At this the woman with the swine’s eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and Sikandar Khan said, “Shall I strike or bind? She was thy property on the division.” And I said, “Refrain! I have made a chain to hold her. Open the door.” I pushed out the two across the verandah into the darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. Then Sikandar Khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the table, and I looked for a branch that would bear fruit. But the woman hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, “I am childless tonight because of thy perfidy, and my child was praised among men and loved among women. He would have begotten men—not animals. Thou hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater.”

I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And I said, “Wait a while, Child, and thou shalt sleep.” But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my eyes, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And Sikandar Khan said, “Is it too heavy?” and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.

So we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while, for we could not shape any words. Then I heard Sikandar Khan open his water- bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me and said, “We are absolved from our vow.” So I drank, and together we waited for the dawn in that place where we stood—the ropes in our hand. A little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gun wheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched fell in and blazed before the windows. And I said, “What of the wounded Boer-log within?” And Sikandar Khan said, “We have heard the order. It is a Sahibs’ war. Stand still.” Then came a second shell—good line, but short—and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer—yes, pompom the Sahibs call it—and the face of the house folded down like the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the house lay down. Then Sikandar Khan said, “If it be the fate of the wounded to die in the fire, I shall not prevent it.” And he passed to the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded Boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. And I said, “What hast thou done?” And he said, “I have neither spoken to them nor laid hand on them. They follow in hope of mercy.” And I said, “It is a Sahibs’ war. Let them wait the Sahibs’ mercy.” So they lay still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. Then began the known sound of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at random. But I said, “Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs’ war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war.” They did not understand my words. Yet they abode and they lived.

Presently rode down five troopers of Kurban Sahib’s command, and one I knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to Calcutta often with horses. So I told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of Sahib would understand; and at the end I said, “An order has reached us here from the dead that this is a Sahibs’ war. I take the soul of my Kurban Sahib to witness that I give over to the justice of the Sahibs these Sahibs who have made me childless.” Then I gave him the ropes and fell down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty, except for the little opium.

They put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while I understood that they had fought against the Boer-log for two days and two nights. It was all one big trap, Sahib, of which we, with Kurban Sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. They were very angry, the Durro Muts— very angry indeed. I have never seen Sahibs so angry. They buried my Kurban Sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the ridge overlooking the house, and I said the proper prayers of the faith, and Sikandar Khan prayed in his fashion and stole five signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave as if it had been the grave of a saint on a Friday. He wept very bitterly all that night, and I wept with him, and he took hold of my feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from Kurban Sahib. So I divided equally with him one of Kurban Sahib’s handkerchiefs—not the silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and I also gave him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that Kurban Sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into his bosom. The rest I have here in that little bundle, and I must get the baggage from the hotel in Cape Town—some four shirts we sent to be washed, for which we could not wait when we went up-country—and I must give them all to my Colonel-Sahib at Sialkote in the Punjab. For my child is dead—my baba is dead!… I would have come away before; there was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the rail, and the Durro Muts were as brothers to me, and I had come to look upon Sikandar Khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse and I rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. God knows what they called me—orderly, chaprassi (messenger), cook, sweeper, I did not know nor care. But once I had pleasure. We came back in a month after wide circles to that very valley. I knew it every stone, and I went up to the grave, and a clever Sahib of the Durro Muts (we left a troop there for a week to school those people with purwanas) had cut an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and is was a jest such as Kurban Sahib himself would have loved. Oh! I have the inscription well copied here. Read it aloud, Sahib, and I will explain the jests. There are two very good ones. Begin, Sahib:—

*

In Memory of

WALTER DECIES CORBYN

Late Captain 141st Punjab Cavalry

*

The Gurgaon Rissala, that is. Go on, Sahib.

*

Treacherously shot near this place by

The connivance of the late

HENDRIK DIRK UYS

A Minister of God

Who thrice took the oath of neutrality

And Piet his son,

This little work

*

Aha! This is the first jest. The Sahib should see this little work!

*

Was accomplished in partial

And inadequate recognition of their loss

By some men who loved him

*

Si monumentum requiris circumspice

*

That is the second jest. It signifies that those who would desire to behold a proper memorial to Kurban Sahib must look out at the house. And, Sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank which they call dams, nor the little fruit-trees, nor the cattle. There is nothing at all, Sahib, except the e two trees withered by the fire. The rest is like the desert here—or my hand—or my heart. Empty, Sahib—all empty!

WHIRLWIND SQUADRON, by Robert W. Nealey

The lid was on. At 25,000 feet, the British Westland Whirlwinds of No. 43 were only shadowy rockets in the bleak November sky. In the big book there is not much information about these first two-engined pursuits, but the Whirlwind has four 20-mm. cannon in her nose and she can fly rings around a Spitfire.

Hymie Kaplin tugged at his chin strap and moodily wondered if he could cheat the Lord out of a life, and if so, for how long? He had always been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that opportunity existed throughout this great, spreading world for the fellow who played the lone-wolf with a little derring-do.

Confidentially, though, Hymie Kaplin was a great disappointment to his mother in Brooklyn, and he had to do something desperate, like joining the R.A.F. to save face. He cupped his headphones over his ears and listened to Squadron Leader Whiteley answer the Intelligence geezer at the advanced spotter station somewhere below.

“…Messerschmitts at twenty thousand plus,” the duty officer’s voice was casual. “Check over Number Nine Kite, due N. W.” These English guys were always too, too utterly casual to satisfy Hymie Kaplin. He wondered now if the D. O. knew No. 43 had been detailed to down a new ME-109-G, or how the task was to be accomplished?

“All right, Red Flight,” Whiteley’s tone was hardly less bored. “Section B line up for wedge-attack. No chasing Jerry across the gulley. I’ll concentrate on the one-oh-nine-Gee.

The lid was off!…Hymie was reminded that he had come out of the needled beer and wonderful nonsense era of American history, and in order to show that he did something partially legitimate for a living, he had stepped up in a direct and forthright manner and taken a welterweight named Al Winger from his manager.

He had simply leveled a pistol-like look at the manager, and told him, in the quaint verbiage of 1930, to ooscray umbay, and with this one laudable stroke of keen business he had become a full-fledged fight manager.

Thereupon Al Winger had knocked out Hammy Randell for the welterweight crown in the suspiciously swift time of 1m, 32s, and it had set the fight mob to debating the momentous question; “Did Randell fall or was he pushed?”

So Hymie had lost cast and standing with his adored mother, and nothing that he had done could regain for him that high place in her affections and esteem, until the war came along and he had joined the R.A.F. He loved his mother, but he had always made his own way, feeling he could get along better that way. That was what he liked about Whirlwinds.… You made your own way.…

Now Hymie gave a mild and plaintive moo and turned on his air. He used oxygen as he had once used the solace of beer after a particularly bitter defeat of the Dodgers by the Giants. Why was it Whiteley always refrained from chasing the Ratzi across the Channel? Whiteley, they said, had won the D.S.O. and D.F.C. at Dunkirk, and had been among those few—now mostly dead—to whom Mr. Churchill said so many owed so much.

A hero, and still only a squadron leader! Hymie reflected upon this for the steenth time and decided the guy just didn’t have any push.

* * * *

The steel cables coming up from the London streets below were invisible now and the fat, friendly barrage balloons floating at their spliced ends were behind. Whiteley turned and climbed fast, and Hymie decided that had he been boss here he would have headed straight out over the white cliffs of Dover and climbed from there.

The appearance of four new German high performance warplanes on the world’s battlefronts in the past few weeks indicated, the brass hats insisted, that Reichmarshal Goering had achieved a major retooling swap-over in the German aircraft industry.

There had appeared a Heinkel 177 four-motored, two-propellered heavy bomber; a pressure-cabined Junkers 86-P bomber-reconnaissance plane with a ceiling above forty thousand feet; a new Focke-Wulf 190—and the new Messerschmitt 109-G, described by the nervous brass hats as a high altitude, partly armored plane with a liquid-cooled 1,700 horsepower engine.

Whiteley had devised the wedge formation to assure their getting one of these new Messerschmitts that the ground men seemed so anxious to examine at close range. Whiteley led off because, as he explained, an experienced leader should recognize the 109-G more quickly than anyone else, and if he had to center downing one for the brass hats, he was entitled to a little personal protection. To Hymie it all seemed like a lot of foolish rah-rah stuff from the Rugby fields of dear old Oxford.

* * * *

They spotted the crooked black crosses winging in over Southend. Whitley swung south, still climbing, and the Whirlwind formation followed suit so that Hymie, in No. 2 slot, could see the Heinies better. There was a triple line of twin-engined ME-115’s behind which huddled a formation of Heinkels in what appeared to be a Lufberry defense circle.

Hymie’s headphones crackled. “In place astern, take the fighters first.” Whiteley’s voice was no longer suave. “Take one each, then double up, lads. You shadow me, Kaplin.”

That meant that if Whiteley was kayoed, Hymie was to take over and try to burst the liverwurst Whiteley had been kiting after.

Hymie frowned. Why had Whiteley selected him for his rudder-runner? Damn it, he’d put in three months outside of the reserve gang. He’d been blooded in a battered old Bristol Beaufighter almost six months ago. Now he was in No.2 slot in Section A, with his first full row of braid and commanded to tail the S. L.… This because the big shots wanted a 109-G.

Luzon in Section B was bragging about weightlifters again. Luzon was a burly French-Canadian who loved to flex his biceps. There was the solid squareness of a Quebec house about Luzon. He had a voice a like a bullfrog with a sore throat, and he was always telling the world how weightlifters could do everything else better than anyone else. He believed this of course.

“Sometime soon, Luzon,” Whiteley was saying, “the W. C will take you on a rhubarb raid over Abbeville!”

“I betcha John Davis, the American heavyweight weightlifting champion could outpress Herr Josef Manger, the German record holder.”

“Will you,” demanded Whiteley, “forget about weightlifters for fifteen minutes?”

“Fifteen minutes? Golly, he couldn’t forget ’em for—” began young Freddie Hayward, but Whiteley shook his fist and they went into the scrimmage.

The fighters looked like yellow hawks. There was a mad stew of struts, clouds, metal, and exhaust smoke as the Whirlwinds slammed after them.

Hymie brought his wing tip up close to Whiteley’s rudder and hung on. He watched the S. L. execute a perfect buzz saw against a monster Heinkel’s stabilizers. He could see the Squadron Leader’s propeller slice through startled fabric like an angry circular saw going through a board.

The 177 flopped like a stricken whale and sounded for the depths, twisting, and out of control.

“Watch that fighter coming down at you, Hastey!” Whiteley warned a Section C man.

Hymie’s eyes swiveled nervously. He wondered how Whiteley did so much and saw so much at the same time.

“Shadow me, Kaplin! Hang on, Yank! There’s one—see? That blighter with the shark’s nose! This way, Kaplin!”

Hymie kicked up his tail and followed. Followed through the Whirlwinds, jibed over hard and belted after the short-winged Mess-up that flaunted a swastika on its rudder. Hymie saw the quick bursts of a saffron flame coming from the two guns, and the belch of the 20-mm. cannon in the Boche’s nose.

Hymie blundered into a batch of slipstream from Whiteley’s prop. His red brows like miniature bushes over his pale blue eyes, he grinned happily, ruddered hard, overcontrolled and came up his guns full on a two-seater Jaguar’s snout. He pressed the button and his Whirly recoiled behind the ugly snarling of his eight-gun broadside. There was a dull explosion, a burst of liquid flame and the Jaguar threw away an engine, then swiftly began to chase it to the ground—spewing pilot and gear as it did so.

“It’s a long way down,” Hymie yelled. “It’s a very long way down, bums!”

He swung his ship around, his teeth square and white against the red of his face. A burning Whirlwind tumbled past his greenhouse and Hymie’s lips came down tight and thin over his grin.… It was Whitley’s Whirly!

That was the S. L. going down with the draft open wide.… The enemy had flamed Whiteley—Whiteley, the Squadron Leader!

The realization clouted Hymie like a fist to the mandible.

“I rode your rudder as long as I could, pal,” he mumbled. “It was damned tough luck all around—still, I got that Jaggy.”

He wandered through Whiteley’s smoke scarf, and with the others, popped away at Mess-ups and bombers, mainly to erase a persistent screen before his eyes that kept writing, “You burst a liverwurst, louse—but Whiteley went a flamer.”

The enemy ships suddenly turned tail and headed back over the Channel and Hymie felt something uncomfortable at the nape of his neck now, like unto prickly heat and the barber’s itch. He found himself leading the squadron back home and wondered how he got there. He reached up and dragged the hatch back and let the wind slap some of the guilt off his homely face.

He switched his flap-mike off and muttered, “In my league it’s always been every man for himself. Why was I made responsible for Whiteley? Him and his teamwork! They’ll tear a stripe off me for this. Well, I did the best I could.”

The Whirlies ran in and lined up along the patch worn out of the turf by the churning of heavy lorry wheels and the splash of lubricating oil. Cornish, the Senior Adjutant, came along in front of a hustling crew of aircraftsmen. Hymie tried to ignore the question marks on their upturned faces. He gathered up his gear and waddled, rubber-legged, past the crash-truck.

Cornish had been in the other war and didn’t have much to say. But he wanted his convictions confirmed. “What happened?”

Then Broadfoot, the sloppy tramp who acted as Intelligence, appeared. Broadfoot had once written a book—which accounted for his know-all air. He stood beside Cornish now, fat hands on his big, bouncy hips.

Hymie shrugged out of his Mae West. “Dunno what happened.” He strode into the briefing room. “I was shadowing him, then lost him and had a jab at a Jaguar.”

“All we got was the business of going after the One-oh-nine-G,” bayed Broadfoot. “Did Whiteley order you to follow him?”

“Whiteley was snapping all over the sky. I couldn’t follow him. I tell you I don’t know what happened. I don’t even know if he got the One-oh-nine-Gee.” The others circled him in the hut, peered at him out of puzzled orbs. His jaw dropped open like the tailboard of a G. S. wagon. He could just make them out in the dim light. There was Luzon, Freddie Hayward, Ingerowski, Stengel, Norton and Swifty Morris. All these guys had come up from gunnery school with him, yet they acted like strangers. There was Smith and Butler he had known in New York. Hastey and Doorn, the Hollander, who flew like something out of a Flash Gordon adventure. Now they were all ruthlessly trampling his finer feelings under foot. His sensitive nature was mortally wounded.

The little Dutchman tried to break it up, but his English failed him and Cornish began passing’ out combat reports. Life-loving fuzzy-cheeked kids, were sitting down before the Intelligence geezers, dutifully reporting what they had seen and tried to do—solemn with the realization that they had come through a scrimmage and were still here to answer questions. The loud speaker on the wall blurted with tired authority, “Yellow Flight airborne. Interception taking place over Bluesea (code name) at thirty-five thousand. Command advised—crackle—buzzzz—Enemy aircraft returning to French area seventy-nine-N-thirty-four.

Hymie leaned against the wooden bench bolted to the wall and stared up at the operations-area map and tried to remember where they had fought with the fruitcakes.

“Did you,” he asked Luzon, “see the Jaguar I jolted?”

“Sure! I saw her go down like a weightlifter under a missed two-hands snatch.”

‘“Thanks. I just wanted to make sure I did something right.”

“It came through on the teleprinter,” Cornish called. “They pulled your Jaguar out of the Thames, Kaplin!”

“And he was rowing on the Thames,” recited Swifty Morris in a canorous voice, “his—lights—burning—clear!”

“Put out that lantern!” squeaked Freddie Hayward, sticking out his chest like an air-raid warden. “Charge: Rowing on the Thames with a lantern in the stern.”

“Maybe this guy wants to build some muscles,” boomed Luzon. “Tell him to take up weightlifting!”

The fun was on again. They were trying to cast aside the gloom caused by the loss of Whiteley. Hymie tried to become part of it. He failed. He swung around and ran smack into Cornish.

“Relax, Kaplin.”

“I tried to stay with Whiteley,” snarled Hymie, waving his short arms. “It’s the truth. Take it or leave it!”

“Come on wit’ me, Hymie,” Luzon said. “We take a good workout wit’ the weights. I know a place.”

“Vot iss?” asked Doorn, perplexed.

“Why don’t the bums say what they think instead of punning about a dory. This frankfort slid into my sights and I splashed him with some mustard!”

All right,” said Cornish softly, “maybe it was a deflection shot that hit Whiteley.… By the way, the Wingco wants to see you.”

“Sure,” thundered Luzon, “she deflection shot. One fallow she let it go, other fallow he catch it. It is fate. Like the time I miss that bend-press in Toronto, by gar.”

“Why did he have to have me for his rudder runner?”

“Somebody has to do it,” Cornish reasoned, puzzled over what Hymie was beefing about. “How would you like to have been in his place with no backing up? A Leader’s responsible for the whole bloody squadron. The rear bloke is only responsible for one man.”

An orderly sifted through the mob with hot tea, and they peered at him over Gold Flake tins.

* * * *

Hymie waved the orderly away. “A deflection shot my eye. I went after that Jaggy. I didn’t obey Whiteley, that’s all!”

Luzon stepped back. “You mean it you let Whiteley go for a Nazzy?”

And because Hymie had always played the game his own way, he lied.

“So what?” he snapped. “And I’ll do it again. This is a war—not a game for dear old Rexford!”

“By damn,” Luzon roared, “worser weightlifter in world better man than you. If her team need a point, he do what she can to help win.”

“You musclebound clunk.”

A queer look of pride rolled across Luzon’s broad face. “Hokay, Kaplin. I’m musclebound, maybe, but no clunk. I exercise wit’ the weights wit’out you today. Adieu!”

* * * *

Hymie went outside. Snow was falling wetly on the clean tarmac and the wind was blowing a sprinkling of faded elm leaves over the black hangars. He walked past a green-gray Sterling protruding over the track, toward a long one-storied building, painted gray, with “Squadron Headquarters” in white letters on the door.

The office of the Wing Commander was at the end of a passage. Hymie wished he hadn’t lied to Luzon. But the talk of team work and that “all for one, one for all” stuff had made him feel cornered. To lie or fight or yell his way out of a tight place, was the only defense he had ever offered the world. “Hymie Kaplin, sir,” he reported.

“Oh, yes. Good afternoon,” the Wingco said. “Won’t you please sit down, Kaplin.” He pushed forward a chair and sat on the edge of his desk. The office was small and there was only the one chair. The tall man was young, but his eyes were glassy, gray, old, and they didn’t seem to see Hymie at all.

“I was told to report, sir.”

“Glad you came.”

“You sore about me reporting late, sir?”

“Not at all. The chappies often report late.”

“There’s just one thing I’d like to ask you.”

“Yes?”

Hymie moved his lips again, but the words did not come. His hands gripped hard on the arm of the chair, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, but still the words would not come, and at last it was the W. C. who spoke.

“You want to know if you are being held responsible for the mishap?”

Hymie looked surprised that the Wing Commander should know that. He nodded.

“You aren’t being held responsible.”

“I ain’t—”

“Whiteley cleared you before he died.”

Hymie suffered. Perhaps Whiteley hid coughed up those words along with his last pint of blood. Perhaps Whiteley had lain sprawled in some field beside his smashed plane and asked to have his tail man cleared of any blame—the tail man who had failed him. Hymie wished Luzon were here to make facing the W. C. less difficult. But Luzon was all hopped up about this “all for one, one for all” business. Besides, Luzon would be lifting barbells with the mechanics. They competed in five-man team matches among themselves. That was Luzon—always for team play. He’d return with a lame back from his all-out efforts to help his team win, and glory in it. The guys all loved Luzon.… Damn Luzon!

“Before he died?” Hymie said. “Hell, it’s always the good guys that go, sir. And it’s all my fault. You see, I tried to tail Whiteley, sir, but I got too close and hit his slipstream and was knocked away.”

“Whiteley said he could see you in his retrospect mirror. He said it was bloody nice tailing all the way.”

Hymie talked fast, unburdened his soul. “When I was blown off, I came up with my sights smack on a Jaguar. Honest, I just forgot Whiteley and went after that Ratzi.”

“That’s all right. The Jaguar came down after Whiteley. Whiteley’s hulk didn’t have a Jerry slug in it anywhere. It was his blasted supercharger, Kaplin. The impeller vane went out; ripped casing and tore fuel line away.”

“Supercharger?”

“Quite! You know what can happen, whanging around at four hundred miles per.”

Suddenly, before Hymie could speak, the engines of the Sterling outside were revved up to a roar that shook the walls of the room; and Hymie listened until the sharp rise and fall of sound seemed to startle him into speech.

“Those engines are working nice together,” he said.

“Yes, every man and machine on the United Nations side has got to work nicely together to win this war.” The Wing Commander, arms folded, walked over to the window and looked out. The airscrews of the Sterling were turning smoothly, shining like steel pinwheels in the wet snow. The room grew slowly silent, and finally the Wing Commander turned around and blocked the window from Hymie’s view. “You want to know what happened?”

“Yes, sir,” Hymie lifted his head slightly.

“He wanted to land his plane so that it could be used again, but everything was against him. It was a very wonderful landing.

“He came down in a field and hit a tree. But not badly, just enough to throw Whiteley out upon his neck. But he talked a lot before he died.”

“Yes, sir. And his Whirly?” Hymie asked.

“It is going to be all right. When the aircraftsmen get through with it. It will fly again.”

Hymie looked up at the Wingco for a moment or two, immobile, very steady, and then said, quite distinctly, “I want that ship. I want Whiteley’s Whirly, sir.”

“You will get it, Kaplin. The order has gone through. Whiteley must have known you would want his ship. Members of a squadron get like that—flying together gives them tremendous faith in each other. Whiteley left three words for you especially, Kaplin, ‘Carry on, Yank,’ he said. You understand?”

Hymie stood up. “Yes, sir,” he said, and saluted.

“Good.” The Wing Commander permitted a slight smile to cross his tired face. “You’ll report back to the Nissen huts as S.L.”

Hymie went out of the office, bent nearly double against the driving rain that had replaced the snow. He walked along the slushy perimeter, the gray-green Sterling no longer there to obstruct his passage. Suddenly he stood erect, walking with his face against the storm, and his shoulders became a little squarer than usual, his quick step, a little quicker.

* * * *

Hymie wondered how the rest of them would take the news of his being given Whiteley’s command?

“Well,” he mumbled, “I didn’t ask for it. I may not be worth a damn, but I’m going to do the best job I can.” He stopped on the path before the squadron orderly room as a batman came staggering from his cubicle door with Whiteley’s roll carefully packed and labeled.

Luzon was right behind the batman. “Hey, Yank,” he said, “come in outa the wet.”

All at once Hymie wanted this big lug of a French-Canuck to understand how it was. He opened his mouth to explain—and the alert speaker on the pole beside the door began to squawk into the late afternoon:

“Attention, please! Flight forty-three to readiness immediately! All reserves stand by. Flight forty-three to readiness. That is all!”

“That’s we.” The rain had stopped, but Hymie noticed only the change in Luzon’s voice. “Lead the way, Boss.”

“I’m up in orders,” Hymie said. “You know?”

“Sure, Cornish told it to us. Come oonnn, Yank!” Apparently Luzon hadn’t had time to do any weightlifting at all.

Alert cars began splashing about. An ambulance, with a pretty girl at the wheel, screamed around a corner. Armorers draped with Browning belts staggered across the patch.

“Frenchy,” Hymie grabbed Luzon’s shoulder, “I’m a dirty—”

“Come oonnn,” Luzon said, “their revving up. Forget the talk!”

Luzon raced for his hut. Cornish came out of the orderly room shouting.

Hymie wheeled. “You—Yank,” Cornish called, “the train is yours.… Take the throttle.” He held up his clenched fist—the Squadron Leader’s badge of authority— “show them that. They’ll follow you. They’ll follow you to Berlin!”

Hymie’s batman met him with his gear open and ready to jump into.

“Hime bloomin’ glad, sor. We’re hall with you, sor. ’Ow you feel, sor?”

“Tell the boys that I’ll have Whiteley’s,” Hymie bent over and snapped his crotch straps, “Squadron Leader Whiteley’s Whirlwind. Be sure and tell them that.”

“Aye, sor!”

The alert speaker was still squawking when a car came up and squealed to a partial stop and Hymie hopped aboard, his Irvin pack bumping against his thighs. Swifty Morris pounded him on the shoulder and grinned encouragement.

Doorn pointed to the double row of braid on Hymie’s shoulder straps, and saluted silently. The car pulled to a stop and Hymie jumped off, and did not stop running until he reached his plane. Whiteley’s plane.

A flight sergeant saluted and screamed into his ear. “Mass formation attack at twenty-two thousand up above. Best of luck in your scramble, sir.”

The Whirlwinds strained in their shelters like nervous runners on the starting line. Hymie liked the sounds in the nose of his baby. “Those greaseballs,” he mumbled, “they did a nice job on Whiteley’s Whirly. I only hope I can do a nice job with it.” He sat down comfortably and snapped on his set.

The speaker over the petrol lorry screeched above the bedlam, like a parrot shouting at a stalking cat, “Attack alarm! Attack alarm! Flight forty-three scramble immediately! Blue Squadron and reserves stand by!”

Hymie waved to his crew and ran Whiteley’s Whirlwind out into the open. He waited until the others lined up behind him, and then stud, his gloved fist out of his greenhouse.… In two minutes he reported to the Duty Officer, “Flight forty-three airborne. Please advise of action position.”

“Axis mass formation, fifty plus at thirty thousand. Plot over Number Nine Kite,” the earphones answered. “Take ’em, Whirlwind Squadron!”

“We’ll moider ’em,” Hymie thought. “Me anna team.”

* * * *

The Whirlwinds in Vee formations climbed toward the indicating Ack-Ack explosions that were bracketed on a diamond formation of Junkers Ju 88 bombers with an escort of Focke-Wulf 190s over the Thames. Hymie lifted his eyes to his retrospect mirror and saw that Luzon was tailing his port elevator. Luzon was supposed to be in Section B. Hymie wondered about that. He must have switched with Greddie Hayward.

He kept half an eye on the bombers. He gave the fighters all his attention. He caught himself reciting Whiteley’s words, “All right, Red Flight, line up for wedge attack. No chasing Jerry across the gulley. I’ll concentrate on the One-oh-nine-Gee—if I can find one.”

Then he bit his lip. There was another command to give, and he couldn’t issue it. This was what Luzon meant by his “one-for-all, all-for-one” bromide. Hymie took off his gloves and rubbed the hairy back of his right hand across his mouth. Then he stiffened.

“Go it ahead, Yank. I’ll tail ya, pal.” That was Luzon’s voice. “I wish it I had a barbell here. Verreee good theeng to drop on the Boche’s head.”

Hymie grinned and got out from under a Junker’s bomb door in a hurry and dodged tracers lining up before his nose.

The two Whirlies banged through and pounded after the box formation of fighters. Hymie sensed that if the 109-G was anywhere, it would be behind the F-W 190s. The slob would be protected from all sides.

“Stick with me, Frenchy,” he said. “I’ve got to get that leader slob out. That’s a Messerschmitt One-oh-nine-Gee. That’s the liverwurst Whiteley was after.”

“Lead it on, MacDuff. Frenchy, she right weeth you, chum!”

A Ju rolled round and round in the sky with both wings folded back over the chicken-coop. A Focke-Wulf raged after at them, but Hymie found himself sitting nice if not pretty in his little seat. He glanced up into his mirror and grinned. Not even a deflection shot would get him now.

The lightning fast F-W squirmed and tried to get out of the front line to a second rank man. Hymie pressed the button on a two-second burst, and it wobbled away and left the Messy in the open again. Luzon was skidding hither and yon over his rudder post and screening off the converging fire of two attackers. Hymie jibed carefully and tiptoed toward the 109-G again. His four-second burst tracered under the black cross on the left starboard wing, and the Heinie staggered out of position and reeled drunkenly outside the formation.

“Geeve it her hell, chum,” screamed Luzon.

“You ain’t kiddin’! Nice tailin’, Frenchy. Stick with me, you muscle-head, you.”

Three 190s were slugging the weightlifting wingman, but he just laughed and wobbled his rudder and stormed back and forth behind his Squadron Leader. Hymie put his hand on the button, drew another careful bead on the Mess-up and gave it five seconds. He held his sights hard on the black swastika painted on the rudder.

The 109-G wobbled and shook like a duck shot in its tail. The two Whirlies screamed over as it pulled up slowly out of a zig-zag fall. They saw the enemy turn over on his back, the two bug-eyes of the wheel wells opened in painful haste, and the unwritten law of surrender was hung up.

The Nazi had taken enough. He had decided not to risk his Nordic neck. He pulled down his wheels for a forced landing!

“Herd her down, Boss,” Luzon yelled. “Herd her right into the Wingco’s backyard!”

They held their position and shooed the wounded duck well out of the fight. Hymie looked into his mirror and saw the holes in Luzon’s wings. He realized suddenly what the guy had been taking to protect him. “Listen, musclebound,” he said. “There’s daylight showing through your buggy. You tail this Messy down. He’s yours. I’m going back upstairs and take my team back to the showers.”

“Yes, sir!” said Luzon, who knew that here was a new Squadron Leader whom he would follow anywhere. “He buggy she wobbly, but I get him down.”

“You run that One-oh-nine-Gee right into the hangar without a scratch. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nice tailing, Frenchy. Nice teamwork, musclebound.”

“Nice leading,” replied Luzon. But Hymie did not hear. Hymie was zooming topside, clenching the responsible fist of authority as he zoomed.

THEY DIED IN VAIN, by George Bruce

CHAPTER I

Preening for Flight

Juan Jimenez was born of peasant stock. He could still remember his childhood and the pinch of hunger in his belly. He could still remember the odor of sweat that came from the body of his father at the end of day. He could still remember the sweat-blackened shirt clinging to the muscle contours of his father’s stooped back and heavy chest, and the gnarled, twisted fingers of his calloused hands, and the vacuous expression of his toil-sodden face.

Until he was ten, Juan Jimenez believed that all mothers had eyes which seemed eaten by fatigue and dulled with the hopelessness of staggering labor in the fields and in the home. He thought it quite natural that ten members of a family should lie down to sleep together on the hard mud floor of a one-roomed house, the hardness of the earth broken by a tick stuffed with chaff. He thought it quite natural that there was never quite enough to eat, and that he must work from sunup to sundown over rocky, hilly land to coax meager existence from a soil long since spent of its energy to create life.

He thought it quite natural that Don Jaime de Cordova y Badajoz should come riding over the hill on his white horse, with his saddle heavily plated with silver and his bridle and bit set with sparkling stones. He thought it natural also that Don Jaime should dispense the justice of the land—should sit out in the open field, behind his great table, with two uniformed soldiers behind him, and should merely have to speak, for the lash to fall on a naked back, or the heavy doors of the jail to close upon an offender.

Don Jaime was omnipresent and omnipotent. One could not offend Don Jaime, nor shirk his service. The lash was there, coiled, ready to hiss, and the naked blades of sabers ready to leap from the sheaths to uphold the power of the Law.

* * * *

Until he was ten, Juan Jimenez knelt in the dust of the roadside—the crooked, dusty, rocky track that led over the hills to Badajoz—when Don Jaime came riding over his fields. Knelt, as did all others of the land over which Don Jaime was patron and which he held from the King himself. The dust curled up from under the hoofs of Don Jaime’s horse, and from under the feet of the horses of his escort and settled upon the head and wet face of the little boy in the road.

When Juan was ten the miracle occurred. Don Jaime came riding over the hill into the little village of mud huts. Sitting his horse proudly. An Arabian stallion which fretted and minced and spurned the earth with his feet and seemed to strike fire with his hoofs. A thoroughbred who carried his head high and pointed his delicate, small ears, and champed at the bit with his pink mouth.

He came galloping into the mean street. A girl child, an infant, screamed for some reason, rose up out of the street, fled, almost under the hoofs of the Arabian. And the hoarse, startled, reared violently, lunged sideward. The proud figure of Don Jaime slipped perilously from the saddle, fell with one foot trapped in the heavy, metal-covered stirrup. The stallion lashed out with sharp, fast hitting heels, and galloped crazily through the streets, with Don Jaime bumping against the earth, his fine uniform dragging in the dust.

There was a yell of alarm from the escort and a clatter of hoofs, but Juan Jimenez was quicker than the rest. At the first leap of that white horse he had thrown his body forward. His hands had seized the horse’s mane. His young legs drove his body up from the ground, and he came down astride the neck of the Arabian. He clutched the heavy curb bit, dragged back with all his strength.

And magically the white horse came to a stop, stood trembling, with rolling eyes. Stood, and the escort threw itself from saddles and helped Don Jaime extricate himself from the stirrup. For a long moment Don Jaime stood there, his face white, his head bleeding a little, staring at the stallion and at the boy who sat astride of his neck, gripping the reins, holding the horse in check.

Then Don Jaime walked forward slowly and looked up at Juan. “What is your name, boy?” he asked.

“Juan Jimenez, Excellency. I am the son of Jose Jimenez who is your tenant.”

“Where did you learn to ride?”

“I did not learn, Excellency.”

Don Jaime made a face for the benefit of an officer of his escort. “He did not learn!” he repeated.

The officer laughed. He was relieved that Don Jaime should take this so well. “All these little monkeys are born riders, Excellency,” he told Don Jaime.

“He has a straight back and a strong body and a quick eye,” remarked Don Jaime. He looked up at Juan again. “How did you think to do that?” he demanded.

“I did not think, Excellency. I—just—did it—because Your Excellency was being hurt.”

“You know you saved the life of your patron?” Don Jaime asked, almost fiercely. “What kind of a reward do you think you should have for such a service?”

Juan looked at the great man. “I did not act for reward, Excellency. Such a small thing—”

Don Jaime’s face blackened for an instant. “So, you think it a small thing to save the life of a Cordova?” he asked.

“No, Excellency, that is a great thing, but my part was so small. A Cordova would have saved himself without my aid.”

Don Jaime stared. Then he laughed. “By heaven—that does not sound like the utterance of a peasant! That was spoken like a diplomat. This boy has possibilities! What do you want to be, boy?” he asked.

Juan’s eyes glittered for an instant, looked at the uniform of Don Jaime and his officer, then he lifted his head.

“I would like to be a soldier—an officer,” he said firmly.

“Can you read?” asked Don Jaime.

Juan Jimenez stared. “Read?” he faltered. “No, Excellency.”

“You must read and write and count to be an officer.”

“Yes, Excellency.” There was a sudden collapse in the young voice. The knowledge of the impossible. That all things were always impossible.

“An officer, eh?” said Don Jaime ruminatively. “He would make a good officer—to think and act so rapidly. Yes—a good officer. Send me your father, boy,” he said suddenly.

Juan Jimenez watched his father push forward through the knot of villagers about Don Jaime. “I am the father, Excellency,” he said humbly.

“You have a good son there,” praised Don Jaime. “A fine son.”

“I have five more sons—and two daughters,” explained the father nervously.

“You will send me this son—to Badajoz—at once,” commanded the Don. “He wants to be an officer. He shall be an officer—you hear what I say?”

The father took a deep breath. His mouth opened for an instant, but it closed again. Finally he said: “Yes, Excellency.”

The patron turned to his steward. “See that Jose Jimenez is relieved of the necessity of paying taxes for three years. Give him one hundred pesetas in gold. This because his son saved the life of a Cordova.”

And Juan Jimenez saw his father’s knees sag until he was kneeling in the dust with his hard, toil-coarsened hands clasped in ecstasy, his face working, with wonder on it.

“A million thanks, Excellency. A million prayers for the health and life of Your Excellency. A million blessings upon the head and house of Your Excellency—”

Don Jaime lifted the boy down from the stallion.

“You heard?” he asked. “You will come to Badajoz tomorrow to begin being an officer.”

Juan Jimenez’ heart was thumping. “I hear, Excellency,” he said.

Don Jaime mounted the quieted white stallion. In the doorway of the hut, Juan Jimenez’ mother held her son in her arms and wept over him, and called upon God to witness the miracle of such a son.

And the next morning, with the sun, Juan Jimenez went over the hill, along the road, toward Badajoz and the house of Cordova.

CHAPTER II

Skies Stained Scarlet

Captain Juan Jimenez stood on the heights at Pamplona beside his tri-motored Caproni bomber. With the dawn, men had been loading the belly of the bomber with iron eggs. The great ship bulked hugely and dwarfed the men. A sergeant-mechanic in the cockpit started the motors one after the other. They coughed and spat or gushed blue smoke and flame before they settled into a steady, rhythmic beat.

Captain Jimenez was studying a map of the French-Spanish border around Irun. His flight commander, General Molo, placed his finger on the map.

“You understand, Jimenez?” he asked tersely. “The whole section between Irun-Behobia-Biriatou must be cleared. You must give special attention to the enemy machine-gun concentrations which are resisting troop advances. The main fighting centers about La Puntza hill on which the government troops are making a last stand. Comb the territory carefully, fly low, look for resistance, bomb it out of existence. La Puntza is the last town standing between us and Irun and we must have Irun tomorrow.”

Jimenez nodded and took the map in his hands. “I understand, Excellency,” he said alertly. “I shall do everything possible.”

The general put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you will, lad,” he told him with a paternal pat. “You will take your three machines again—and again—until we have won. Good luck, my son.”

And Captain Jimenez climbed up to his high perch in the forward cockpit of the Caproni. Behind him his gunners were in their seats, helmeted and goggled, guns unslung. The bomber was in his tiny booth, fussing with his sights. The motor ticked over. Further downfield stood two other Capronis readied for flight.

Jimenez moved the controls, tested his motors. After a moment he lifted his hand in the signal, and poured the throttle to the powerful monoplane. It roared forward, skimmed over the earth, grew lighter, lifted its tremendous bulk, lunged upward into space.

Juan Jimenez sat there, his hands handling the controls delicately. Except his helmet and goggles, he wore no flying equipment. His uniform was the uniform of the Spanish Foreign Legion. His face was black with the North African sun. His little black mustache was trim and crisp, his fierce black eyes looked over the horizon of the world. His mouth was hard and firm.

Many things had happened to Juan Jimenez since the day of the miracle. There had been the great house of Cordova, and the new clothes, and the interest of Don Jaime in the career and progress of his protégé. And there were times when Don Jaime had looked at this straight-backed, fiery-eyed lad with a soft light in his proud old eyes, for Don Jaime had no son of his own.

But Don Jaime had a daughter and her face was soft and dusky. Her body was like the white statues surrounding the fountain, and her voice was like the deep note of a bell. Don Jaime frowned at first when the two children played and laughed together, for it was not good that a daughter of the house of Cordova should be so intimate with the son of a serf-peasant. But when Juan Jimenez had blossomed into the appearance and mannerisms and speech of a gentleman, Don Jaime did not scowl. Instead he wondered what kind of children would be born to this daughter from a strong husband, like this boy, Juan.

The officers of Don Jaime’s staff instructed Juan as a soldier. He wore his uniform and he carried his sword and he commanded Don Jaime’s soldiers under the watchful eyes of the officers.

And when he was fifteen he went to military school, and spent four years—hard, grinding, toil-filled years. Then he graduated as an officer, and wore the uniform of his regiment. He came home after that schooling. His father and mother stared at him as he dismounted. And it seemed that his mother was on the verge of bowing her head. His brothers and sisters stood in silence and stared dumbly.

Somehow Juan Jimenez felt that he had come back to a place peopled with ghosts—had come back to the living dead. The house seemed more wretched, more mean, than ever. And Juan Jimenez heard the envying whispers of the villagers and they burned within him. He saw the bare feet and the lined, parched faces, and the red-rimmed eyes, and he saw how the shoulders of even the young women sagged, and how their bodies were old when they were yet young, and heard how the babies cried, and saw the faces of the men—the men who had never been over the hill—and who did not know that a world existed beyond Badajoz. Ragged, almost naked, clinging desperately to barren, worn-out land, hacking at it with poor tools, burning with the sun, shivering with the chill.

He looked at his own hands, soft, white, shapely. This mud hut seemed like a dream. He thought of Isabella de Cordova y Badajoz, her proud beauty, her sweet, trembling kiss. He had blushed even while his heart surged within him. Now he blushed, too; his loneliness was like a sickness deep in his heart.

And a voice whispered within him. “These are your people. These hills, these stony ridges—they are yours. This sun which beats down on their heads is the same sun which shines on your uniform. You are born of their toil.”

Then he rode back over the hill toward Badajoz with a strange unrest, a strange hunger and that strange pain in his heart. And it seemed that wraithlike invisible hands were trying to pull him down from the white horse—drag him back to the earth.

Then Juan Jimenez fixed his eyes on the heavens, and again went back to school. After a year he became an aviadore, a military pilot, with wings on his tunic. He flew. He drove planes into the far heights and looked down on the world, and sometimes he smiled as he flew, wondering what that mother and father would do and say if they could see him.

* * * *

When King Alfonso fled from his throne, Jimenez was in Africa, fighting against the wild tribes which were in constant revolt against Spain. He heard rumblings of “the people.” Government by the people. No more kings. No more dons. No more grandees. The land was to belong to the peasants.

In Africa there was no such talk about government. The Army was in Africa. The fierce, bustling Legion. And the Legion was recruited to greater and greater strength and greater and greater quantities of war material were dumped down in Spanish African ports and stored carefully.

The Moors were uniformed and trained, given new knives and new rifles and shoes. The Moors, for five centuries the blood foes of the Spaniards. Deadly, vicious fighters.

And Lieutenant Jimenez became Captain Jimenez and wore decorations on his tunic. His fellow officers said of him, enviously, half in admiration:

“He will be a major before he is thirty, that one, and a colonel before he is forty. And he will certainly be a general.”

Then the Foreign Legion started to move. The Capronis were landed on the African sands, twenty or more of them, and for days, Juan Jimenez and his fellow pilots shuttled back and forth across the sea, the ships laden with soldiers—the Foreign Legion and the Moors.

Trip after trip, putting the Foreign Legion ashore in Spain. Grim eyes, heavy-handed troops, merciless because the country in which they fought knew no mercy to victor or vanquished. Hardened to the sight of death and suffering because they had lived day by day with death, disease and destruction. Men who killed the wounded as a matter of course because it was more humane to kill them than to permit them to die, festering under a hot sun, when no medical or surgical attention was possible.

* * * *

Guns, tanks, artillery, moving across the sea, expertly, rapidly—to Spain. To fight against Spaniards. To fight against peasants and workers, those who dared to defy authority by right of birth.

Madrid, with the Capronis flying overhead, and the bombs crashing in the streets, and the fronts of whole houses blown to a shambles by the low flying, racing bombers. With blood spattering the paving stones and spurting into the air. With crowds of people cowering, running to cover—Spanish people. Day after day, night after night, dropping bombs on Madrid.

While on the ground, the Legion marched over Spain. And the Moors, grinning, those wicked knives unsheathed and those naked bayonets gleaming, stormed into village after village.

There were times when Juan Jimenez closed his eyes, and was sick. How the Moors loved those mass executions—lining fifty or a hundred people in a long line, and killing them all with one burst of machine-gun fire, laughing as they killed. Spaniards dying—at the hands of Spaniards. A war of extermination on both sides. When a position was taken, no defender remained alive.

Day after day, long lines of prisoners marching in the dust of the roads, herded along by the grinning Moors. Men, ragged, dull eyes, drooling at the mouth. Some of them dying as they marched, from shocking wounds which no one had time to bind. Women carrying infants, children, whimpering, clinging to the sodden skirts of mothers. All of them—going over a hill—and then the sound of machine-guns, and screams, and the smell of blood in the air.

All because they loved the land. All because they clung fiercely to the land. All because they would not give up the land. That poor, exhausted, barren soil of Spain.

Leathery-faced, bleary-eyed peasants, plodding with blank faces, knowing they were going to death, and going grimly, silently and stolidly. With Spaniards standing by, faces inflamed with hate and rage, and giving the orders which killed these peasants by the hundreds.

Sometimes Juan Jimenez closed his eyes after a sharp breath. A face—so like his father’s face it made him stare. A body like the worn, twisted body of his mother as he had last seen her—going along the road, eyes straight ahead.

And a shudder shook him, and he turned away sick. Why couldn’t they see as he saw—as Don Jaime had taught him to see? Why did they let themselves be mowed down like cattle, like dumb mindless cattle?

Along the roads, bodies—the dead—everywhere. Young men, dead, sprawled out in the grass, looking with dead eyes up at the sun, the blood still running from their wounds.

And more and more marching columns, going to the machine-guns. Until the whole land seemed filled with the sick-sweet smell of decaying bodies and festering blood.

A thousand feet over Irun, Captain Juan Jimenez looked down on the heights of La Puntza. There was a thin, ragged series of rifle pits on the top of the hill. The summit was wreathed by the flashing of exploding shells and drifting smoke. Crews crouched about machine-guns, and the gun spat and chattered at moving bodies going doggedly up the hill, rushing from rock to rock, bodies, with the sun glinting from steel helmets, men of the Legion, fearless, pushing on over the bodies of their dead, charging up into the face of those searing, deadly blasts from machine-gun muzzles.

On top of the hill a ragged army of workers—Loyalists. White shirts, ragged trousers, bare feet, clutching rifles, crouching down in the pits, with a withering rifle fire crashing out of the trenches. Women with them, understanding the great need of defense, firing beside the men.

And the shells from the batteries on the plane below bursting wickedly among them, catching them up, breaking them to bits, smashing them to quivering masses of bloody pulp. Shell bursts, racing along that line of entrenchment like a grass fire, scorching, burning, blasting. The dead tumbled about, arms flung out, mouths open.

For days this had been going on. The battle for Irun and the sea. Reckless, insane killing. No mercy on the top of that hill, no mercy on its flanks. Irun a blasted, ruined heap of wreckage, burning so fiercely that the glare of the flames could be seen from twenty miles away at night.

In the streets, gaunt-faced men and women, chained to the front of buildings like captured animals. They were the Rebel prisoners the Loyalists had threatened to chain in the line of artillery fire if the attack on Irun was not abandoned. Five or six hundred of them. Some half buried under fallen façades.

All of them Spaniards, being killed by Spaniards.

* * * *

The three Capronis droned in over the defenses on the top of La Puntza. The white-shirted fighters on the top of the hill shook fists and rifles in impotent rage. They fired at the bombers. Machine-guns were uplifted, made a foolish attempt to blast down the Capronis.

Three bombs fell out of the belly of Captain Jimenez’ ship. He watched them drop, slanting. There was a smear of flame from the top of the hill. Rock lifted a hundred feet in the air. The hilltop shook and shuddered with the violence of the explosion. Bodies whirled around crazily like scraps of paper in the wind.

Other bombs fell on top of the hill. The whole area was riven, broken, pulverized. Out of the hell, ragged men and women, with streaming hair and screaming voices, fled the destruction which murdered them. Fled down the hillside toward Irun.

The shining helmets of the Legion were dotting the hillside, going up with a rush, yelling, and the bayonets were at work among the defenders. They were like tigers. They fell among the shock-sodden defenders. The blades of the bayonets no longer glinted, but they were dulled with the red of Spanish blood. The remnant of the attacking battalion of the Legion stood and cheered, and then went on with the business of death.

From Irun the Loyalist guns opened on La Puntza. New shell concussions rocked the heights. Death struck among the victors. A ragged line of irregular troops swept up the hill.

Fear, panic swept through the town. The way to France was choked with refugees, swarming, carting impossible bits of personal property.

The Rebel guns opened on the road, blew great chunks out of that long line of slowly moving people.

The three Capronis came in over the town. The bombs fell. The houses were seized with convulsions. The men and women, chained in the streets were blown to bits. That was war, one could not hazard the victory for a few hostages.

Bombs in the road—blasting great craters in space which had a moment before been choked with fear-maddened people.

* * * *

One of the Capronis suddenly staggered, weaved about in space. There was a gash in its right wing. The wreckage of its right wing motor hung down grotesquely, seemed suspended on a string. It went down in ugly circles. The gunners were standing up in seats, staring over the side of the ship.

Suddenly one of them jumped. His parachute opened a hundred feet below the ship. He floated about.

And on the ground, the milling people forgot to run, forgot to be afraid. They circled around under that falling parachute, they chased it back and forth, their faces turned upward like a white blur. Trotted this way and that with the vagaries of the wind which moved the chute. Their arms were outstretched, hands like claws.

The gunner drew his pistol. He fired down at the faces under him. Then he touched earth—and the mob was upon him, hiding him from sight—working with hands and feet and teeth. Crushed and stamped and ripped at the body of that gunner. Tore the chute to shreds.

The big Caproni smeared into the earth, broke its back. The second machine-gunner did not jump. He stayed in his cockpit, held in by his belt. The fuselage of the ship slanted at a crazy angle. The mob charged the ship. He stood up in his seat, brought his gun to bear, fired, coldly, implacably, mowed them down, killed three and four at a time with the same bullet in that crazy press of human bodies.

Then the mob swept over the ship, rent it with their hands—and the pilot, the bomber and the machine-gunner disappeared in the swirl of hate and blood-lust.

The ship was reduced to splinters.

And Captain Jimenez turned his head away, a leaden weight of sickness in his belly. Spaniards rending Spaniards.

“That was a splendid piece of bombing,” a voice seemed to be whispering. “Just the lift we needed to clear La Puntza. Tonight our men will be in Irun—and then—we will teach them to chain men in the streets like dogs! Heaven help anyone the Legion finds in Irun this night. All day the Legion had been walking over the bodies of its own dead. The Legion will not leave a stone standing in the city—nor a Red alive.”

Then another voice cried out within him. “But Irun is Spanish! The Legion is Spanish. The people we are killing and who are killing us—are Spanish.”

Then he was down on the ground, legs dead and belly sick. His major was standing beside him, applauding what he had done, laughing jovially. “Tomorrow we leave this hell hole,” the major said. “We go to Badajoz—to another hell hole. They are fierce there—”

The word smashed upon Juan Jimenez’ brain like a shrapnel shell.

“Badajoz?” he asked strangely.

“Surely! Ah, I forgot. You are from Badajoz. A nest of traitors. The most stubborn, bloody-handed, murdering blackguards in the whole of Spain. We must crush them—wipe them out!”

CHAPTER III

End of Flight

There is was. The House of Cordova, like the bones of a cow that had died of starvation and been burned. Blackened embers, and a nasty hole in the ground. Down there somewhere was a bloodstain against the wall where the peasants of Badajoz had executed Don Jaime de Cordova y Badajoz.

There were the hills over which Juan Jimenez had trudged the miles between his father’s mud hut and Great House. Those rolling, rocky, plow-scarred hillsides, in ruins, without even the meager crops of yesterday. With the smoke rolling up from a dozen villages and with the bodies of the unburied dead lying in the streets.

The Capronis soared overhead, dropped the deadly bombs and the mud huts flew into spurts of dust. Along the road there were rifle pits, and craters formed by exploding shells. The bombs were raining down and the scream and blare of airplane engines filled the heights.

Gushing, flaming death, falling on the crooked backs of the peasants. Death which killed them in droves, and against which they could not fight.

The steel-helmeted troops, charging fiercely stormed into position after position. Stormed through the streets of that little village in which Juan Jimenez had been born. Rifles spat defiance, even as the bombs fell and blew the defenders into oblivion.

Smoke drifted and rolled, and the moving wall of flame consumed the village and behind the fire came the steel helmets of the Rebel troops. And the peasants fought from behind breastworks formed by piling up the bodies of their neighbors and children. The bodies of their own dead, and struck, and struck, and struggled until they were cut down, or pierced with bayonets.

All day the prisoners marched toward Badajoz. The dust in the road was churned by their bare feet. The sweat ran down their naked backs. They marched with vacant eyes and grey faces. Up the hill, down the hill, over the next hill.

Juan Jimenez in his new major’s uniform and his new decoration stood on the top of a little hill and stared. For La Puntza, Juan Jimenez had been decorated. For the reduction of the Loyalist lines north of Badajoz he had been made major.

Those dead eyes looking at him—eyes of the prisoners marching by. Now and then a man or a woman in that line turned face and spat at him. Now and then a wild-eyed, sobbing young girl would scream out curses at him.

All day long he stood there and watched them herded by like cattle. Once Juan Jimenez had stopped a Moorish non-com and had said: “Where are you taking these people?”

And the Moor had stared almost insolently, and he had answered: “To the bullring, Excellency—where else?”

“Bullring?” asked Major Jimenez.

“Ay—La Plaza del Toros,” grinned the Moor. “And it will take many monkeys to sand it after this day’s spectacle. Look at them!”

And he ran back to catch up with his fellows, leaving Juan Jimenez to stand and stare.

And then, somewhere in the dust which came up from the column, a voice cried: “Juan! Juan!”

An insane face broke from the grey of the procession and he felt iron hard hands around his neck and a fever burned, parched mouth was kissing him.

And he looked down at the face of his mother.

Her hair, like coiled snakes, fell in wild disorder over her head and shoulders, down upon her half naked body. There was dried, matted blood on her dress and her hands were burned from holding a rifle. And she kissed him, and crooned over him in a cracked, broken voice.

“Juan—Juan. My baby!”

And then, as if for the first time, she saw his uniform, and hate and rage filled her eyes and she pushed him away with the flat of her hands, recoiled from him.

Then he saw his father. Dragging feet, bowed head, making furrows in the dust, as if great weights were attached to his feet. Face too dead to be alive. Set in deep lines. A cruel gash across the flesh of his chest.

And Juan Jimenez in his major’s uniform walked along the line with the procession of prisoners, and he heard hoarse voices cursing him.

And the dust got into his nostrils and strangled him, and he marched up and down the hills.

“But why do you fight like this?” he demanded of his father. “What is there to dying that is so holy? What is this thing you fight for? Don’t you know—you are fighting against Spain—your own land?”

And the old man’s eyes glinted for a moment behind the grey mask of the dust, and he said: “You could not understand. We fight for the land. We are Spain. Our sweat, our blood, our bodies, are Spain. We toil—it is right that we live for our toil, that we own the land. It is ours. It was given to us. We will never give it back. There will be no Spain without us.”

Juan fell silent, groping to understand. But all he had been taught so painfully, by Don Jaime, was a wall which his groping mind could not pierce.

And the father said, dully, like a whisper: “Go back—you have nothing to do with us. You are a soldier—you are a ‘gentleman.’ You are a friend of the Foreign Legion criminals, of the Moors! You cannot feel the people and the land. The boots on your feet have drained the land out of your blood!”

“Faster! Faster!” barked the Moors. Here and there they prodded a stumbling figure with the bayonet.

They came over the last hill. Into Badajoz.

“Where are my brothers?” asked Juan Jimenez.

The croaking voice of the mother sounded. Her face was expressionless. “Dead,” she said. “All dead—fighting. Go look at them, Juan. They are lying in the field in back of the house where the rifle pits were dug—where the bombs were dropped.”

“And the girls—Dolores and Inez?”

“Dead. There is no difference between girls and boys now. They are the same—they die the same—they hate the same—they kill the same. You will find them—lying in the same place.”

There was a little shuddering sigh from the head of the column. Below at the foot of the hill, surrounded by its trees, rose the whitewashed wall of the bullring of Badajoz.

In other days during the fiesta, the bulls came by this road, the black, sharp-horned fighting bulls, with glossy coats beautifully groomed. Going down the little hill to the bullring, to make a holiday for the people of Badajoz.

And now the long line, shuffling in the dust, stood and looked down at the bullring, and a strange animal-like cry, almost like the lowing of the bulls broke from the men.

The Moors, the only men in uniform, moved along the line, prodded bodies with bayonets and rifle butts, grinned, forced the column to move. Until the head of the column went into the bullring. The hundreds of them. Until Juan Jimenez said goodbye to his parents, under the main arch of entrance, and saw them driven into the space.

An hour passed and he was in the field tent, standing stiff, white-faced.

General Molo said: “Major Jimenez, I cannot understand your interest in these people. It is dangerous, frankly. It does not become an officer of field rank to show such interest in a mob of ruffians and cutthroats.”

Juan Jimenez’ voice sounded in his ears as if it spoke from a great distance. “Perhaps, Excellency, it is because the two in whom I am most interested are my father and mother!”

General Molo stared. “Your father—and—” he said slowly. His face was suddenly dark. “Soldiers have no fathers and mothers at a time like this, Major Jimenez. Bloodlines have been wiped out. This is civil war—brother against brother if necessary—to the last man, to the bitter end.”

“Because we have guns and money and can kill—are we saving Spain—by murdering Spaniards?” Juan asked dully.

Molo’s face was suddenly black with anger. “You are overwrought, lad,” he said, with a forced kindness.

“So—” said Jimenez hesitantly.

“I ordered a full investigation, Major,” nodded the general. “What I learned—is better spared. It is a blessing that the sons and daughters of your family died fighting. Beyond question, they were the leaders here. They were the core of the whole resistance in this countryside. Your sister—the one called Inez—was the infamous ‘Red Flame.’ She fought and led more fiercely than any of the men. I am sorry—it has all been established—by the prisoners themselves. They are proud of your sisters and your brothers—proud of the part they had in murder and bloodshed. It grieves me that the father and mother of a brave officer, a comrade-in-arms must die, but there can be no exceptions—no favors.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Juan Jimenez in the same dull voice.

He saluted, turned like a soldier, marched out of the room. The general’s face twitched as he watched him go. Then he went back to work on the papers on his desk.

* * * *

Juan Jimenez walked down the hill, to Badajoz, and came to the barbed wire before the bullring. The Moor sentry saluted and looked at him curiously as he passed.

Inside, three or four hundred people crouched miserably in the dust, red-eyed, starving, dying of thirst. Here and there one of them lay on the ground—dead. Juan Jimenez searched for his father and mother until he found them.

They were gathered together by the side of the ring. They sat on the ground, side by side. Their dead eyes were staring at the tiers of seats and at the machine-guns which were set up on those banks of seats—muzzles pointing toward the arena.

And Juan’s voice said: “I am here.”

Suddenly there was a hunger in his heart. A hunger for that earthen floor and those rocky, rolling hills which were watered by the sweat of all the Jimenez who had labored over them. There was a hunger to feel the sun on his naked back.

And a voice said in his brain: “Why do you wear that fine coat? You are a part of the land. You were born to it. These are your people. This is your place! Can you walk out of here, and leave them—look on them and fight down the cry of the blood in your veins?”

And he stood staring at the seamed, pitted faces of his parents.

With a great sob ripping at his throat, he turned and fled. Ran, like a mad, tormented thing, until once more he stood outside the bullring, and his heart beat like the tumult of a gun within his chest, and the sweat of agony slid down his pale, dust-caked face.

And a hand touched his arm, and a voice said to him: “Juan—Juan Jimenez—you are here!”

And he whirled and his mouth fell open and he stared into the face of Isabella de Cordova y Badajoz.

Her face was soiled with grime, but her eyes were soft and wet with tears of gladness. She looked at his uniform and swallowed a lump in her throat. Her voice, like the deep note of a bell gone husky, said his name over and over again.

Silently he gathered her in his arms and crushed his mouth against her lips, and she closed her eyes and clung to him.

“You!” he marveled. “They told me—you had died—with your father!”

Her eyes flashed fire then, and bold defiance. “No. I fled from them—hid in the cellar—with the dogs, Juan! You hear—with the dogs—in terror—like an animal—while they hunted me—”

All the fierce pride of her flamed out in that moment, and he was touched with a deep pity that she had been so humbled. Her face was ravaged and torment was indelibly burned into the dark of her eyes.

She shuddered and buried her face against his breast, and her body trembled and shook with her sobs. “But you came, Juan—the Legion came—and saved me—and now—” Her eyes roved to the huddled, broken mob, crouched in the hot, dry sand of the arena. “And now—” she said, again. The spark of revenge lit her face with a flickering flame.

“Hush, Isabella,” he said in a voice that cracked. “They are my people—are you forgetting that?”

She shook her head. “No, Juan. They are your people no longer. You have come too far to retrace your steps. See, you are a major now, an officer—glory lies ahead of you—you have become my father’s son—everything he hoped and prayed that you would be. You can never stand by their side again, Juan—never in this world!”

And with those words—words that his mind, his ambition, his intellect, told him were sane and true—a deep knell of isolation tolled within him.

“Never stand by their side—never in this world—”

The words sounded in his head, again and over again. A chorus of voices took up the strain, sent it hurtling back and forth in his brain, vibrant and repetitious as a long-living echo.

There was a little moan from inside the building. People stirred, stared, up toward the seats. The machine-gun crews were crouching, white teeth showing through grin-split lips.

A young girl in the middle of the throng leaped upon the barricade, ripped a great swatch of tattered cloth from her dress, swung it over her head like a banner and like a flag of battle. Her mouth opened wide, she screamed:

“Viva Espana! Viva el libertad!” A cry of defiance, of unconquerable determination and courage.

And within Juan Jimenez the tormenting echo answered: “Never—never in this world.”

Juan seemed to wake from a dream—a dream that had begun on a morning when he was ten years old and a fierce proud gentleman on an Arab steed had looked down at him and promised him great things. The dream was fashioned of those great things, unfolding with wraithlike magnificence, clothing him with glory—a false glory that fit him ill, that wore thin like worthless cloth and fell from him now, leaving him naked. Juan Jimenez, the son of a peasant and the grandson of a peasant.

* * * *

The dream had passed—and Isabella was part of that dream. Gently he disengaged himself from her arms and slowly, like one who is learning to walk anew, he marched toward the entrance of the ring.

“Juan—where are you going?” Isabella’s voice cried after him.

He did not look back, but she ran to him and seized his arm, his sleeve, his hand, pressing it feverishly to her heart.

“Juan—answer me—where are you going?”

He looked down at her, almost pityingly. She would never understand—never in this world. “To them,” he said. “To be with them—by their side—in their midst—now.”

Her eyes stared at him as if he were mad. “You would leave me—leave this”—her fingers flicked the chevrons on his sleeve—“leave everything—for what? For nothing—for less than nothing?”

“Yes,” he said. His jaw set stubbornly. “I see what is right. I see what must be.”

“You are a fool, Juan Jimenez—a fool!” Her voice was shrill—the bell had cracked. Dark hair tumbled over her glaring eyes. Red lips parted in a sneer. “Peasant—clod—fool!” she shrieked.

Wearily, patiently, Juan pushed her away from him, sustained by the conviction within him. The end of doubting had come. The uncertainty was finished. The knowledge of what he was filled his heart, and steadied him.

The huddled people were standing now. He pressed through them, groping quickly toward his mother and father for there was so little time. Then he found them, standing, hand in hand, their eyes looking at him dully. For they could not understand, either. Over and over they shouted in cracked, hoarse, splintery voices:

“Viva Espana! Viva el libertad!”

And suddenly Juan Jimenez heard his own voice screaming with them—felt the muscles of his throat grow taut with the force of that anguished scream.

There was the sudden chattering of a machine-gun, and then a dozen machine-guns, and people on the floor of that arena quivered and shook as they stood and screamed, slumped to the ground, still screaming.

The girl who waved her skirt like a battle flag slumped and fell, and the machine-guns chattered on and on while blood spattered the barricade walls, and the little mounds of dead and dying piled up.

Something struck Juan Jimenez through the belt of his major’s uniform, and ripped through his stomach, and then a quick succession of sharp pains stabbed through his body and he felt his legs buckling under him. A queer, rioting glory filled him.

The last thing he saw was the face of a grinning Moor squinting over the sight of a machine-gun. The last thing he heard was the echoing cry:

“Viva el libertad!”

The sun glinted on his glazing eyes, and blazed down hotly on all the rocky hills of Badajoz.

THE BLOCKADE RUNNERS, by Jules Verne

Chapter I

THE DOLPHIN

The Clyde was the first river whose waters were lashed into foam by a steam-boat. It was in 1812 when the steamer called the Comet ran between Glasgow and Greenock, at the speed of six miles an hour. Since that time more than a million of steamers or packet-boats have plied this Scotch river, and the inhabitants of Glasgow must be as familiar as any people with the wonders of steam navigation.

However, on the 3rd of December, 1862, an immense crowd, composed of shipowners, merchants, manufacturers, workmen, sailors, women, and children, thronged the muddy streets of Glasgow, all going in the direction of Kelvin Dock, the large shipbuilding premises belonging to Messrs. Tod & MacGregor. This last name especially proves that the descendants of the famous Highlanders have become manufacturers, and that they have made workmen of all the vassals of the old clan chieftains.

Kelvin Dock is situated a few minutes’ walk from the town, on the right bank of the Clyde. Soon the immense timber-yards were thronged with spectators; not a part of the quay, not a wall of the wharf, not a factory roof showed an unoccupied place; the river itself was covered with craft of all descriptions, and the heights of Govan, on the left bank, swarmed with spectators.

There was, however, nothing extraordinary in the event about to take place; it was nothing but the launching of a ship, and this was an everyday affair with the people of Glasgow. Had the Dolphin, then — for that was the name of the ship built by Messrs. Tod & MacGregor — some special peculiarity? To tell the truth, it had none.

It was a large ship, about 1,500 tons, in which everything combined to obtain superior speed. Her engines, of 500 horse-power, were from the workshops of Lancefield Forge; they worked two screws, one on either side the stern-post, completely independent of each other. As for the depth of water the Dolphin would draw, it must be very inconsiderable; connoisseurs were not deceived, and they concluded rightly that this ship was destined for shallow straits. But all these particulars could not in any way justify the eagerness of the people: taken altogether, the Dolphin was nothing more or less than an ordinary ship. Would her launching present some mechanical difficulty to be overcome? Not any more than usual. The Clyde had received many a ship of heavier tonnage, and the launching of the Dolphin would take place in the usual manner.

In fact, when the water was calm, the moment the ebb-tide set in, the workmen began to operate. Their mallets kept perfect time falling on the wedges meant to raise the ship’s keel: soon a shudder ran through the whole of her massive structure; although she had only been slightly raised, one could see that she shook, and then gradually began to glide down the well greased wedges, and in a few moments she plunged into the Clyde. Her stern struck the muddy bed of the river, then she raised herself on the top of a gigantic wave, and, carried forward by her start, would have been dashed against the quay of the Govan timber-yards, if her anchors had not restrained her.

The launch had been perfectly successful, the Dolphin swayed quietly on the waters of the Clyde, all the spectators clapped their hands when she took possession of her natural element, and loud hurrahs arose from either bank.

But wherefore these cries and this applause? Undoubtedly the most eager of the spectators would have been at a loss to explain the reason of his enthusiasm. What was the cause, then, of the lively interest excited by this ship? Simply the mystery which shrouded her destination; it was not known to what kind of commerce she was to be appropriated, and in questioning different groups the diversity of opinion on this important subject was indeed astonishing.

However, the best informed, at least those who pretended to be so, agreed in saying that the steamer was going to take part in the terrible war which was then ravaging the United States of America, but more than this they did not know, and whether the Dolphin was a privateer, a transport ship, or an addition to the Federal marine was what no one could tell.

“Hurrah!” cried one, affirming that the Dolphin had been built for the Southern States.

“Hip! hip! hip!” cried another, swearing that never had a faster boat crossed to the American coasts.

Thus its destination was unknown, and in order to obtain any reliable information one must be an intimate friend, or, at any rate, an acquaintance of Vincent Playfair & Co., of Glasgow.

A rich, powerful, intelligent house of business was that of Vincent Playfair & Co., in a social sense, an old and honourable family, descended from those tobacco lords who built the finest quarters of the town. These clever merchants, by an act of the Union, had founded the first Glasgow warehouse for dealing in tobacco from Virginia and Maryland. Immense fortunes were realised; mills and foundries sprang up in all parts, and in a few years the prosperity of the city attained its height.

The house of Playfair remained faithful to the enterprising spirit of its ancestors, it entered into the most daring schemes, and maintained the honour of English commerce. The principal, Vincent Playfair, a man of fifty, with a temperament essentially practical and decided, although somewhat daring, was a genuine shipowner. Nothing affected him beyond commercial questions, not even the political side of the transactions, otherwise he was a perfectly loyal and honest man.

However, he could not lay claim to the idea of building and fitting up the Dolphin; she belonged to his nephew, James Playfair, a fine young man of thirty, the boldest skipper of the British merchant marine.

It was one day at the Tontine coffee-room under the arcades of the town hall, that James Playfair, after having impatiently scanned the American journal, disclosed to his uncle an adventurous scheme.

“Uncle Vincent,” said he, coming to the point at once, “there are two millions of pounds to be gained in less than a month.”

“And what to risk?” asked Uncle Vincent.

“A ship and a cargo.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing, except the crew and the captain, and that does not reckon for much.”

“Let us see,” said Uncle Vincent.

“It is all seen,” replied James Playfair. “You have read the Tribune, the New York Herald, The Times, the Richmond Inquirer, the American Review?”

“Scores of times, nephew.”

“You believe, like me, that the war of the United States will last a long time still?”

“A very long time.”

“You know how much this struggle will affect the interests of England, and especially those of Glasgow?”

“And more especially still the house of Playfair & Co.,” replied Uncle Vincent.

“Theirs especially,” added the young Captain.

“I worry myself about it every day, James, and I cannot think without terror of the commercial disasters which this war may produce; not but that the house of Playfair is firmly established, nephew; at the same time it has correspondents which may fail. Ah! those Americans, slave-holders or Abolitionists, I have no faith in them!”

If Vincent Playfair was wrong in thus speaking with respect to the great principles of humanity, always and everywhere superior to personal interests, he was, nevertheless, right from a commercial point of view. The most important material was failing at Glasgow, the cotton famine became every day more threatening, thousands of workmen were reduced to living upon public charity. Glasgow possessed 25,000 looms, by which 625,000 yards of cotton were spun daily; that is to say, fifty millions of pounds yearly. From these numbers it may be guessed what disturbances were caused in the commercial part of the town when the raw material failed altogether. Failures were hourly taking place, the manufactories were closed, and the workmen were dying of starvation.

It was the sight of this great misery which had put the idea of his bold enterprise into James Playfair’s head.

“I will go for cotton, and will get it, cost what it may.”

But, as he also was a merchant as well as his uncle Vincent, he resolved to carry out his plan by way of exchange, and to make his proposition under the guise of a commercial enterprise.

“Uncle Vincent,” said he, “this is my idea.”

“Well, James?”

“It is simply this: we will have a ship built of superior sailing qualities and great bulk.”

“That is quite possible.”

“We will load her with ammunition of war, provisions, and clothes.”

“Just so.”

“I will take the command of this steamer, I will defy all the ships of the Federal marine for speed, and I will run the blockade of one of the southern ports.”

“You must make a good bargain for your cargo with the Confederates, who will be in need of it,” said his uncle.

“And I shall return laden with cotton.”

“Which they will give you for nothing.”

“As you say, Uncle. Will it answer?”

“It will; but shall you be able to get there?”

“I shall, if I have a good ship.”

“One can be made on purpose. But the crew?”

“Oh, I will find them. I do not want many men; enough to work with, that is all. It is not a question of fighting with the Federals, but distancing them.”

“They shall be distanced,” said Uncle Vincent, in a peremptory tone; “but now, tell me, James, to what port of the American coast do you think of going?”

“Up to now, Uncle, ships have run the blockade of New Orleans, Wilmington, and Savannah, but I think of going straight to Charleston; no English boat has yet been able to penetrate into the harbour, except the Bermuda. I will do like her, and, if my ship draws but very little water, I shall be able to go where the Federalists will not be able to follow.”

“The fact is,” said Uncle Vincent, “Charleston is overwhelmed with cotton; they are even burning it to get rid of it.”

“Yes,” replied James; “besides, the town is almost invested; Beauregard is running short of provisions, and he will pay me a golden price for my cargo!”

“Well, nephew, and when will you start?”

“In six months; I must have the long winter nights to aid me.”

“It shall be as you wish, nephew.”

“It is settled, then, Uncle?”

“Settled!”

“Shall it be kept quiet?”

“Yes; better so.”

And this is how it was that five months later the steamer Dolphin was launched from the Kelvin Dock timber-yards, and no one knew her real destination.

CHAPTER II

GETTING UNDER SAIL

The Dolphin was rapidly equipped, her rigging was ready, and there was nothing to do but fit her up. She carried three schooner-masts, an almost useless luxury; in fact, the Dolphin did not rely on the wind to escape the Federalists, but rather on her powerful engines.

Towards the end of December a trial of the steamer was made in the gulf of the Clyde. Which was the more satisfied, builder or captain, it is impossible to say. The new steamer shot along wonderfully, and the patent log showed a speed of seventeen miles an hour, a speed which as yet no English, French, or American boat had ever obtained. The Dolphin would certainly have gained by several lengths in a sailing match with the fastest opponent.

The loading was begun on the 25th of December, the steamer having ranged along the steamboat-quay a little below Glasgow Bridge, the last which stretches across the Clyde before its mouth. Here the wharfs were heaped with a heavy cargo of clothes, ammunition, and provisions which were rapidly carried to the hold of the Dolphin. The nature of this cargo betrayed the mysterious destination of the ship, and the house of Playfair could no longer keep it secret; besides, the Dolphin must not be long before she started. No American cruiser had been signalled in English waters; and, then, when the question of getting the crew came, how was it possible to keep silent any longer? They could not embark them, even, without informing the men whither they were bound, for, after all, it was a matter of life and death, and when one risks one’s life, at least it is satisfactory to know how and wherefore.

However, this prospect hindered no one; the pay was good, and everyone had a share in the speculation, so that a great number of the finest sailors soon presented themselves. James Playfair was only embarrassed which to choose, but he chose well, and in twenty-four hours his muster-roll bore the names of thirty sailors who would have done honour to her Majesty“s yacht.

The departure was settled for the 3rd of January; on the 31st of December the Dolphin was ready, her hold full of ammunition and provisions, and nothing was keeping her now.

The skipper went on board on the 2nd of January, and was giving a last look round his ship with a captain’s eye, when a man presented himself at the fore part of the Dolphin, and asked to speak with the Captain. One of the sailors led him on to the poop.

He was a strong, hearty-looking fellow, with broad shoulders and ruddy face, the simple expression of which ill-concealed a depth of wit and mirth. He did not seem to be accustomed to a seafaring life, and looked about him with the air of a man little used to being on board a ship; however, he assumed the manner of a Jack-tar, looking up at the rigging of the Dolphin, and waddling in true sailor fashion.

When he had reached the Captain, he looked fixedly at him, and said, “Captain James Playfair?”

“The same,” replied the skipper. “What do you want with me?”

“To join your ship.”

“There is no room; the crew is already complete.”

“Oh, one man, more or less, will not be in the way; quite the contrary.”

“You think so?” said James Playfair, giving a sidelong glance at his questioner.

“I am sure of it,” replied the sailor.

“But who are you?” asked the Captain.

“A rough sailor, with two strong arms, which, I can tell you, are not to be despised on board a ship, and which I now have the honour of putting at your service.”

“But there are other ships besides the Dolphin, and other captains besides James Playfair. Why do you come here?”

“Because it is on board the Dolphin that I wish to serve, and under the orders of Captain James Playfair.”

“I do not want you.”

“There is always need of a strong man, and if to prove my strength you will try me with three or four of the strongest fellows of your crew, I am ready.”

“That will do,” replied James Playfair. “And what is your name?”

“Crockston, at your service.”

The Captain made a few steps backwards in order to get a better view of the giant who presented himself in this odd fashion. The height, the build, and the look of the sailor did not deny his pretensions to strength.

“Where have you sailed?” asked Playfair of him.

“A little everywhere.”

“And do you know where the Dolphin is bound for?”

“Yes; and that is what tempts me.”

“Ah, well! I have no mind to let a fellow of your stamp escape me. Go and find the first mate, and get him to enrol you.”

Having said this, the Captain expected to see the man turn on his heels and run to the bows, but he was mistaken. Crockston did not stir.

“Well! did you hear me?” asked the Captain.

“Yes, but it is not all,” replied the sailor. “I have something else to ask you.”

“Ah! You are wasting my time,” replied James, sharply; “I have not a moment to lose in talking.”

“I shall not keep you long,” replied Crockston; “two words more and that is all; I was going to tell you that I have a nephew.”

“He has a fine uncle, then,” interrupted James Playfair.

“Hah! Hah!” laughed Crockston.

“Have you finished?” asked the Captain, very impatiently.

“Well, this is what I have to say, when one takes the uncle, the nephew comes into the bargain.”

“Ah! indeed!”

“Yes, that is the custom, the one does not go without the other.”

“And what is this nephew of yours?”

“A lad of fifteen whom I am going to train to the sea; he is willing to learn, and will make a fine sailor some day.”

“How now, Master Crockston,” cried James Playfair; “do you think the Dolphin is a training-school for cabin-boys?”

“Don’t let us speak ill of cabin-boys: there was one of them who became Admiral Nelson, and another Admiral Franklin.”

“Upon my honour, friend,” replied James Playfair, “you have a way of speaking which I like; bring your nephew, but if I don’t find the uncle the hearty fellow he pretends to be, he will have some business with me. Go, and be back in an hour.”

Crockston did not want to be told twice; be bowed awkwardly to the Captain of the Dolphin, and went on to the quay. An hour afterwards he came on board with his nephew, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, rather delicate and weakly looking, with a timid and astonished air, which showed that he did not possess his uncle’s self-possession and vigorous corporeal qualities. Crockston was even obliged to encourage him by such words as these:

“Come,” said he, “don’t be frightened, they are not going to eat us, besides, there is yet time to return.”

“No, no,” replied the young man, “and may God protect us!”

The same day the sailor Crockston and his nephew were inscribed in the muster-roll of the Dolphin.

The next morning, at five o’clock, the fires of the steamer were well fed, the deck trembled under the vibrations of the boiler, and the steam rushed hissing through the escape-pipes. The hour of departure had arrived.

A considerable crowd, in spite of the early hour, flocked on the quays and on Glasgow Bridge; they had come to salute the bold steamer for the last time. Vincent Playfair was there to say good-bye to Captain James, but he conducted himself on this occasion like a Roman of the good old times. His was a heroic countenance, and the two loud kisses with which he gratified his nephew were the indication of a strong mind.

“Go, James,” said he to the young Captain, “go quickly, and come back quicker still; above all, don’t abuse your position. Sell at a good price, make a good bargain, and you will have your uncle’s esteem.”

On this recommendation, borrowed from the manual of the perfect merchant, the uncle and nephew separated, and all the visitors left the boat.

At this moment Crockston and John Stiggs stood together on the forecastle, while the former remarked to his nephew, “This is well, this is well; before two o’clock we shall be at sea, and I have a good opinion of a voyage which begins like this.”

For reply the novice pressed Crockston’s hand.

James Playfair then gave the orders for departure.

“Have we pressure on?” he asked of his mate.

“Yes, Captain,” replied Mr. Mathew.

“Well, then, weigh anchor.”

This was immediately done, and the screws began to move. The Dolphin trembled, passed between the ships in the port, and soon disappeared from the sight of the people, who shouted their last hurrahs.

The descent of the Clyde was easily accomplished, one might almost say that this river had been made by the hand of man, and even by the hand of a master. For sixty years, thanks to the dredges and constant dragging, it has gained fifteen feet in depth, and its breadth has been tripled between the quays and the town. Soon the forests of masts and chimneys were lost in the smoke and fog; the noise of the foundry hammers and the hatchets of the timber-yards grew fainter in the distance. After the village of Partick had been passed the factories gave way to country houses and villas. The Dolphin, slackening her speed, sailed between the dykes which carry the river above the shores, and often through a very narrow channel, which, however, is only a small inconvenience for a navigable river, for, after all, depth is of more importance than width. The steamer, guided by one of those excellent pilots from the Irish sea, passed without hesitation between floating buoys, stone columns, and biggings, surmounted with lighthouses, which mark the entrance to the channel. Beyond the town of Renfrew, at the foot of Kilpatrick hills, the Clyde grew wider. Then came Bouling Bay, at the end of which opens the mouth of the canal which joints Edinburgh to Glasgow. Lastly, at the height of four hundred feet from the ground, was seen the outline of Dumbarton Castle, almost indiscernible through the mists, and soon the harbour-boats of Glasgow were rocked on the waves which the Dolphin caused. Some miles farther on Greenock, the birthplace of James Watt, was passed: the Dolphin now found herself at the mouth of the Clyde, and at the entrance of the gulf by which it empties its waters into the Northern Ocean. Here the first undulations of the sea were felt, and the steamer ranged along the picturesque coast of the Isle of Arran. At last the promontory of Cantyre, which runs out into the channel, was doubled; the Isle of Rattelin was hailed, the pilot returned by a shore-boat to his cutter, which was cruising in the open sea; the Dolphin, returning to her Captain’s authority, took a less frequented route round the north of Ireland, and soon, having lost sight of the last European land, found herself in the open ocean.

CHAPTER III

THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM

The Dolphin had a good crew, not fighting men, or boarding sailors, but good working men, and that was all she wanted. These brave, determined fellows were all, more or less, merchants; they sought a fortune rather than glory; they had no flag to display, no colours to defend with cannon; in fact, all the artillery on board consisted of two small swivel signal-guns.

The Dolphin shot bravely across the water, and fulfilled the utmost expectations of both builder and captain. Soon she passed the limit of British seas; there was not a ship in sight; the great ocean route was free; besides, no ship of the Federal marine would have a right to attack her beneath the English flag. Followed she might be, and prevented from forcing the blockade, and precisely for this reason had James Playfair sacrificed everything to the speed of his ship, in order not to be pursued.

Howbeit a careful watch was kept on board, and, in spite of the extreme cold, a man was always in the rigging ready to signal the smallest sail that appeared on the horizon. When evening came, Captain James gave the most precise orders to Mr. Mathew.

“Don’t leave the man on watch too long in the rigging; the cold may seize him, and in that case it is impossible to keep a good look-out; change your men often.”

“I understand, Captain,” replied Mr. Mathew.

“Try Crockston for that work; the fellow pretends to have excellent sight; it must be put to trial; put him on the morning watch, he will have the morning mists to see through. If anything particular happens call me.”

This said, James Playfair went to his cabin. Mr. Mathew called Crockston, and told him the Captain’s orders.

“To-morrow, at six o’clock,” said he, “you are to relieve watch of the main masthead.”

For reply, Crockston gave a decided grunt, but Mr. Mathew had hardly turned his back when the sailor muttered some incomprehensible words, and then cried:

“What on earth did he say about the mainmast?”

At this moment his nephew, John Stiggs, joined him on the forecastle.

“Well, my good Crockston,” said he.

“It’s all right, all right,” said the seaman, with a forced smile; “there is only one thing, this wretched boat shakes herself like a dog coming out of the water, and it makes my head confused.”

“Dear Crockston, and it is for my sake.”

“For you and him,” replied Crockston, “but not a word about that, John. Trust in God, and He will not forsake you.”

So saying, John Stiggs and Crockston went to the sailor’s berth, but the sailor did not lie down before he had seen the young novice comfortably settled in the narrow cabin which he had got for him.

The next day, at six o’clock in the morning, Crockston got up to go to his place; he went on deck, where the first officer ordered him to go up into the rigging, and keep good watch.

At these words the sailor seemed undecided what to do; then, making up his mind, he went towards the bows of the Dolphin.

“Well, where are you off to now?” cried Mr. Mathew.

“Where you sent me,” answered Crockston.

“I told you to go to the mainmast.”

“And I am going there,” replied the sailor, in an ununconcerned tone, continuing his way to the poop.

“Are you a fool?” cried Mr. Mathew, impatiently; “you are looking for the bars of the main on the foremast. You are like a cockney, who doesn’t know how to twist a cat-o’-nine-tails, or make a splice. On board what ship can you have been, man? The mainmast, stupid, the mainmast!”

The sailors who had run up to hear what was going on burst out laughing when they saw Crockston’s disconcerted look, as he went back to the forecastle.

“So,” said he, looking up the mast, the top of which was quite invisible through the morning mists; “so, am I to climb up here?”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Mathew, “and hurry yourself! By St. Patrick, a Federal ship would have time to get her bowsprit fast in our rigging before that lazy fellow could get to his post. Will you go up?”

Without a word, Crockston got on the bulwarks with some difficulty; then he began to climb the rigging with most visible awkwardness, like a man who did not know how to make use of his hands or feet. When he had reached the topgallant, instead of springing lightly on to it, he remained motionless, clinging to the ropes, as if he had been seized with giddiness. Mr. Mathew, irritated by his stupidity, ordered him to come down immediately.

“That fellow there,” said he to the boatswain, “has never been a sailor in his life. Johnston, just go and see what he has in his bundle.”

The boatswain made haste to the sailor’s berth.

In the meantime Crockston was with difficulty coming down again, but, his foot having slipped, he slid down the rope he had hold of, and fell heavily on the deck.

“Clumsy blockhead! land-lubber!” cried Mr. Mathew, by way of consolation. “What did you come to do on board the Dolphin! Ah! you entered as an able seaman, and you cannot even distinguish the main from the foremast! I shall have a little talk with you.”

Crockston made no attempt to speak; he bent his back like a man resigned to anything he might have to bear; just then the boatswain returned.

“This,” said he to the first officer, “is all that I have found; a suspicious portfolio with letters.”

“Give them here,” said Mr. Mathew. “Letters with Federal stamps! Mr. Halliburtt, of Boston! An Abolitionist! a Federalist! Wretch! you are nothing but a traitor, and have sneaked on board to betray us! Never mind, you will be paid for your trouble with the cat-o’-nine-tails! Boatswain, call the Captain, and you others just keep an eye on that rogue there.”

Crockston received these compliments with a hideous grimace, but he did not open his lips. They had fastened him to the capstan, and he could move neither hand nor foot.

A few minutes later James Playfair came out of his cabin and went to the forecastle, where Mr. Mathew immediately acquainted him with the details of the case.

“What have you to say?” asked James Playfair, scarcely able to restrain his anger.

“Nothing,” replied Crockston.

“And what did you come on board my ship for?”

“Nothing.”

“And what do you expect from me now?”

“Nothing.”

“Who are you? An American, as letters seem to prove?” Crockston did not answer.

“Boatswain,” said James Playfair, “fifty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails to loosen his tongue. Will that be enough, Crockston?”

“It will remain to be seen,” replied John Stiggs’ uncle without moving a muscle.

“Now then, come along, men,” said the boatswain.

At this order, two strong sailors stripped Crockston of his woollen jersey; they had already seized the formidable weapon, and laid it across the prisoner’s shoulders, when the novice, John Stiggs, pale and agitated, hurried on deck.

“Captain!” exclaimed he.

“Ah! the nephew!” remarked James Playfair.

“Captain,” repeated the novice, with a violent effort to steady his voice, “I will tell you what Crockston does not want to say. I will hide it no longer; yes, he is American, and so am I; we are both enemies of the slave-holders, but not traitors come on board to betray the Dolphin into the hands of the Federalists.”

“What did you come to do, then?” asked the Captain, in a severe tone, examining the novice attentively. The latter hesitated a few seconds before replying, then he said, “Captain, I should like to speak to you in private.”

Whilst John Stiggs made this request, James Playfair did not cease to look carefully at him; the sweet young face of the novice, his peculiarly gentle voice, the delicacy and whiteness of his hands, hardly disguised by paint, the large eyes, the animation of which could not bide their tenderness — all this together gave rise to a certain suspicion in the Captain’s mind. When John Stiggs had made his request, Playfair glanced fixedly at Crockston, who shrugged his shoulders; then he fastened a questioning look on the novice, which the latter could not withstand, and said simply to him, “Come.”

John Stiggs followed the Captain on to the poop, and then James Playfair, opening the door of his cabin, said to the novice, whose cheeks were pale with emotion, “Be so kind as to walk in, miss.”

John, thus addressed, blushed violently, and two tears rolled involuntarily down his cheeks.

“Don’t be alarmed, miss,” said James Playfair, in a gentle voice, “but be so good as to tell me how I come to have the honour of having you on board?”

The young girl hesitated a moment, then, reassured by the Captain’s look, she made up her mind to speak.

“Sir,” said she, “I wanted to join my father at Charleston; the town is besieged by land and blockaded by sea. I knew not how to get there, when I heard that the Dolphin meant to force the blockade. I came on board your ship, and I beg you to forgive me if I acted without your consent, which you would have refused me.”

“Certainly,” said James Playfair.

“I did well, then, not to ask you,” resumed the young girl, with a firmer voice.

The Captain crossed his arms, walked round his cabin, and then came back.

“What is your name?” said he.

“Jenny Halliburtt.”

“Your father, if I remember rightly the address on the letters, is he not from Boston?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And a Northerner is thus in a southern town in the thickest of the war?”

“My father is a prisoner; he was at Charleston when the first shot of the Civil War was fired, and the troops of the Union driven from Fort Sumter by the Confederates. My father’s opinions exposed him to the hatred of the slavist part, and by the order of General Beauregard he was imprisoned. I was then in England, living with a relation who has just died, and left alone, with no help but that of Crockston, our faithful servant, I wished to go to my father and share his prison with him.”

“What was Mr. Halliburtt, then?” asked James Playfair.

“A loyal and brave journalist,” replied Jenny proudly, one of the noblest editors of the Tribune, and the one who was the boldest in defending the cause of the negroes.”

“An Abolitionist,” cried the Captain angrily; “one of those men who, under the vain pretence of abolishing slavery, have deluged their country with blood and ruin.”

“Sir!” replied Jenny Halliburtt, growing pale, “you are insulting my father; you must not forget that I stand alone to defend him.”

The young Captain blushed scarlet; anger mingled with shame struggled in his breast; perhaps he would have answered the young girl, but he succeeded in restraining himself, and, opening the door of the cabin, he called “Boatswain!”

The boatswain came to him directly.

“This cabin will henceforward belong to Miss Jenny Halliburtt. Have a cot made ready for me at the end of the poop; that’s all I want.”

The boatswain looked with a stupefied stare at the young novice addressed in a feminine name, but on a sign from James Playfair he went out.

“And now, miss, you are at home,” said the young Captain of the Dolphin. Then he retired.

CHAPTER IV

CROCKSTON’S TRICK

It was not long before the whole crew knew Miss Halliburtt’s story, which Crockston was no longer hindered from telling. By the Captain’s orders he was released from the capstan, and the cat-o’-nine-tails returned to its Place.

“A pretty animal,” said Crockston, “especially when it shows its velvety paws.”

As soon as he was free, he went down to the sailors’ berths, found a small portmanteau, and carried it to Miss Jenny; the young girl was now able to resume her feminine attire, but she remained in her cabin, and did not again appear on deck.

As for Crockston, it was well and duly agreed that, as he was no more a sailor than a horse-guard, he should be exempt from all duty on board.

In the meanwhile the Dolphin, with her twin screws cutting the waves, sped rapidly across the Atlantic, and there was nothing now to do but keep a strict look-out. The day following the discovery of Miss Jenny’s identity, James Playfair paced the deck at the poop with a rapid step; he had made no attempt to see the young girl and resume the conversation of the day before.

Whilst he was walking to and fro, Crockston passed him several times, looking at him askant with a satisfied grin. He evidently wanted to speak to the Captain, and at last his persistent manner attracted the attention of the latter, who said to him, somewhat impatiently:

“How now, what do you want? You are turning round me like a swimmer round a buoy: when are you going to leave off?”

“Excuse me, Captain,” answered Crockston, winking, “I wanted to speak to you.”

“Speak, then.”

“Oh, it is nothing very much. I only wanted to tell you frankly that you are a good fellow at bottom.”

“Why at bottom?”

“At bottom and surface also.”

“I don’t want your compliments.”

“I am not complimenting you. I shall wait to do that when you have gone to the end.”

“To what end?”

“To the end of your task.”

“Ah! I have a task to fulfil?”

“Decidedly, you have taken the young girl and myself on board; good! You have given up your cabin to Miss Halliburtt; good! You released me from the cat-o’-nine-tails; nothing could be better. You are going to take us straight to Charleston; that’s delightful, but it is not all.”

“How not all?” cried James Playfair, amazed at Crockston’s boldness.

“No, certainly not,” replied the latter, with a knowing look, “the father is prisoner there.”

“Well, what about that?”

“Well, the father must be rescued.”

“Rescue Miss Halliburtt’s father?”

“Most certainly, and it is worth risking something for such a noble man and courageous citizen as he.”

“Master Crockston,” said James Playfair, frowning, “I am not in the humour for your jokes, so have a care what you say.”

“You misunderstand me, Captain,” said the American. “I am not joking in the least, but speaking quite seriously. What I have proposed may at first seem very absurd to you; when you have thought it over, you will see that you cannot do otherwise.”

“What, do you mean that I must deliver Mr. Halliburtt?”

“Just so. You can demand his release of General Beauregard, who will not refuse you.”

“But if he does refuse me?”

“In that case,” replied Crockston, in a deliberate tone, “we must use stronger measures, and carry off the prisoner by force.”

“So,” cried James Playfair, who was beginning to get angry, “so, not content with passing through the Federal fleets and forcing the blockade of Charleston, I must run out to sea again from under the cannon of the forts, and this to deliver a gentleman I know nothing of, one of those Abolitionists whom I detest, one of those journalists who shed ink instead of their blood!”

“Oh, it is but a cannon-shot more or less!” added Crockston.

“Master Crockston,” said James Playfair, “mind what I say: if ever you mention this affair again to me, I will send you to the hold for the rest of the passage, to teach you manners.”

Thus saying, the Captain dismissed the American, who went off murmuring, “Ah, well, I am not altogether displeased with this conversation: at any rate, the affair is broached; it will do, it will do!”

James Playfair had hardly meant it when he said an Abolitionist whom I detest; he did not in the least side with the Federals, but he did not wish to admit that the question of slavery was the predominant reason for the civil war of the United States, in spite of President Lincoln’s formal declaration. Did he, then, think that the Southern States, eight out of thirty-six, were right in separating when they had been voluntarily united? Not so; he detested the Northerners, and that was all; he detested them as brothers separated from the common family — true Englishmen — who had thought it right to do what he, James Playfair, disapproved of with regard to the United States: these were the political opinions of the Captain of the Dolphin. But, more than this, the American war interfered with him personally, and he had a grudge against those who had caused this war; one can understand, then, how he would receive a proposition to deliver an Abolitionist, thus bringing down on him the Confederates, with whom he pretended to do business.

However, Crockston’s insinuation did not fail to disturb him; he cast the thought from him, but it returned unceasingly to his mind, and when Miss Jenny came on deck the next day for a few minutes, he dared not look her in the face.

And really it was a great pity, for this young girl, with the fair hair and sweet, intelligent face, deserved to be looked at by a young man of thirty. But James felt embarrassed in her presence; he felt that this charming creature who had been educated in the school of misfortune possessed a strong and generous soul; he understood that his silence towards her inferred a refusal to acquiesce in her dearest wishes; besides, Miss Jenny never looked out for James Playfair, neither did she avoid him. Thus for the first few days they spoke little or not at all to each other. Miss Halliburtt scarcely ever left her cabin, and it is certain she would never have addressed herself to the Captain of the Dolphin if it had not been for Crockston’s strategy, which brought both parties together.

The worthy American was a faithful servant of the Halliburtt family; he had been brought up in his master’s house, and his devotion knew no bounds. His good sense equalled his courage and energy, and, as has been seen, he had a way of looking things straight in the face. He was very seldom discouraged, and could generally find a way out of the most intricate dangers with a wonderful skill.

This honest fellow had taken it into his head to deliver Mr. Halliburtt, to employ the Captain’s ship, and the Captain himself for this purpose, and to return with him to England. Such was his intention, so long as the young girl had no other object than to rejoin her father and share his captivity. It was this Crockston tried to make the Captain understand, as we have seen, but the enemy had not yet surrendered; on the contrary.

“Now,” said he, “it is absolutely necessary that Miss Jenny and the Captain come to an understanding; if they are going to be sulky like this all the passage we shall get nothing done. They must speak, discuss; let them dispute even, so long as they talk, and I’ll be hanged if during their conversation James Playfair does not propose himself what he refused me today.”

But when Crockston saw that the young girl and the young man avoided each other, he began to be perplexed.

“We must look sharp,” said he to himself, and the morning of the fourth day he entered Miss Halliburtt’s cabin, rubbing his hands with an air of perfect satisfaction.

“Good news!” cried he, “good news! You will never guess what the Captain has proposed to me. A very noble young man he is. Now try.”

“Ah!” replied Jenny, whose heart beat violently, “has he proposed to — ”

“To deliver Mr. Halliburtt, to carry him off from the Confederates, and bring him to England.”

“Is it true?” cried Jenny.

“It is as I say, miss. What a good-hearted man this James Playfair is! These English are either all good or all bad. Ah! he may reckon on my gratitude, and I am ready to cut myself in pieces if it would please him.”

Jenny’s joy was profound on hearing Crockston’s words. Deliver her father! She had never dared to think of such a plan, and the Captain of the Dolphin was going to risk his ship and crew!

“That’s what he is,” added Crockston; “and this, Miss Jenny, is well worth an acknowledgment from you.”

“More than an acknowledgment,” cried the young girl; “a lasting friendship!”

And immediately she left the cabin to find James Playfair, and express to him the sentiments which flowed from her heart.

“Getting on by degrees,” muttered the American.

James Playfair was pacing to and fro on the poop, and, as may be thought, he was very much surprised, not to say amazed, to see the young girl come up to him, her eyes moist with grateful tears, and, holding out her hand to him, saying:

“Thank you, sir, thank you for your kindness, which I should never have dared to expect from a stranger.”

“Miss,” replied the Captain, as if he understood nothing of what she was talking, and could not understand, “I do not know — ”

“Nevertheless, sir, you are going to brave many dangers, perhaps compromise your interests for me, and you have done so much already in offering me on board an hospitality to which I have no right whatever — ”

“Pardon me, Miss Jenny,” interrupted James Playfair, “but I protest again I do not understand your words. I have acted towards you as any well-bred man would towards a lady, and my conduct deserves neither so many thanks nor so much gratitude.”

“Mr. Playfair,” said Jenny, “it is useless to pretend any longer; Crockston has told me all!”

“Ah!” said the Captain, “Crockston has told you all; then I understand less than ever the reason for your leaving your cabin, and saying these words which — ”

Whilst speaking the Captain felt very much embarrassed; he remembered the rough way in which he had received the American’s overtures, but Jenny, fortunately for him, did not give him time for further explanation; she interrupted him, holding out her hand and saying:

“Mr. James, I had no other object in coming on board your ship except to go to Charleston, and there, however cruel the slave-holders may be, they will not refuse to let a poor girl share her father’s prison; that was all. I had never thought of a return as possible; but, since you are so generous as to wish for my father’s deliverance, since you will attempt everything to save him, be assured you have my deepest gratitude.”

James did not know what to do or what part to assume; he bit his lip; he dared not take the hand offered him; he saw perfectly that Crockston had compromised him, so that escape was impossible. At the same time he had no thoughts of delivering Mr. Halliburtt, and getting complicated in a disagreeable business: but how dash to the ground the hope which had arisen in this poor girl’s heart? How refuse the hand which she held out to him with a feeling of such profound friendship? How change to tears of grief the tears of gratitude which filled her eyes?

So the young man tried to reply evasively, in a manner which would ensure his liberty of action for the future.

“Miss Jenny,” said he, “rest assured I will do everything in my power for — ”

And he took the little hand in both of his, but with the gentle pressure he felt his heart melt and his head grow confused: words to express his thoughts failed him. He stammered out some incoherent words:

“Miss — Miss Jenny — for you — ”

Crockston, who was watching him, rubbed his hands, grinning and repeating to himself:

“It will come! it will come! it has come!”

How James Playfair would have managed to extricate himself from his embarrassing position no one knows, but fortunately for him, if not for the Dolphin, the man on watch was heard crying:

“Ahoy, officer of the watch!”

“What now?” asked Mr. Mathew.

“A sail to windward!”

James Playfair, leaving the young girl, immediately sprang to the shrouds of the mainmast.

CHAPTER V

THE SHOT FROM THE IROQUOIS, AND MISS JENNY’S ARGUMENTS

Until now the navigation of the Dolphin had been very fortunate. Not one ship had been signalled before the sail hailed by the man on watch.

The Dolphin was then in 32° 51’ lat., and 57° 43’ W. longitude. For forty-eight hours a fog, which now began to rise, had covered the ocean. If this mist favoured the Dolphin by hiding her course, it also prevented any observations at a distance being made, and, without being aware of it, she might be sailing side by side, so to speak, with the ships she wished most to avoid.

Now this is just what had happened, and when the ship was signalled she was only three miles to windward.

When James Playfair had reached the cross-trees, he saw distinctly, through an opening in the mist, a large Federal corvette in full pursuit of the Dolphin.

After having carefully examined her, the Captain came down on deck again, and called to the first officer.

“Mr. Mathew,” said he, “what do you think of this ship?”

“I think, Captain, that it is a Federal cruiser, which suspects our intentions.”

“There is no possible doubt of her nationality,” said James Playfair. “Look!”

At this moment the starry flag of the North United States appeared on the gaff-yards of the corvette, and the latter asserted her colours with a cannon-shot.

“An invitation to show ours,” said Mr. Mathew. “Well, let us show them; there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“What’s the good?” replied James Playfair. “Our flag will hardly protect us, and it will not hinder those people from paying us a visit. No; let us go ahead.”

“And go quickly,” replied Mr. Mathew, “for, if my eyes do not deceive me, I have already seen that corvette lying off Liverpool, where she went to watch the ships in building: my name is not Mathew, if that is not the Iroquois on her taffrail.”

“And is she fast?”

“One of the fastest vessels of the Federal marine.”

“What guns does she carry?”

“Eight.”

“Pooh!”

“Oh, don’t shrug your shoulders, Captain,” said Mr. Mathew, in a serious tone; “two out of those eight guns are rifled, one is a sixty-pounder on the forecastle, and the other a hundred-pounder on deck.”

“Upon my soul!” exclaimed James Playfair, “they are Parrott’s, and will carry three miles.”

“Yes, and farther than that, Captain.”

“Ah, well! Mr. Mathew, let their guns be sixty or only four-pounders, and let them carry three miles or five hundred yards, it is all the same if we can go fast enough to avoid their shot. We will show this Iroquois how a ship can go when she is built on purpose to go. Have the fires drawn forward, Mr. Mathew.”

The first officer gave the Captain’s orders to the engineer, and soon volumes of black smoke curled from the steamer’s chimneys.

This proceeding did not seem to please the corvette, for she made the Dolphin the signal to lie to, but James Playfair paid no attention to this warning, and did not change his ship’s course.

“Now,” said he, “we shall see what the Iroquois will do; here is a fine opportunity for her to try her guns. Go ahead full speed!”

“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Mathew; “she will not be long in saluting us.”

Returning to the poop, the Captain saw Miss Halliburtt sitting quietly near the bulwarks.

“Miss Jenny,” said he, “we shall probably be chased by that corvette you see to windward, and as she will speak to us with shot, I beg to offer you my arm to take you to your cabin again.”

“Thank you, very much, Mr. Playfair,” replied the young girl, looking at him, “but I am not afraid of cannon-shots.”

“However, miss, in spite of the distance, there may be some danger.”

“Oh, I was not brought up to be fearful; they accustom us to everything in America, and I assure you that the shot from the Iroquois will not make me lower my head.”

“You are brave, Miss Jenny.”

“Let us admit, then, that I am brave, and allow me to stay by you.”

“I can refuse you nothing, Miss Halliburtt,” replied the Captain, looking at the young girl’s calm face.

These words were hardly uttered when they saw a line of white smoke issue from the bulwarks of the corvette; before the report had reached the Dolphin a projectile whizzed through the air in the direction of the steamer.

At about twenty fathoms from the Dolphin the shot, the speed of which had sensibly lessened, skimmed over the surface of the waves, marking its passage by a series of water-jets; then, with another burst, it rebounded to a certain height, passed over the Dolphin, grazing the mizzen-yards on the starboard side, fell at thirty fathoms beyond, and was buried in the waves.

“By Jove!” exclaimed James Playfair, “we must get along; another slap like that is not to be waited for.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Mathew, “they will take some time to reload such pieces.”

“Upon my honour, it is an interesting sight,” said Crockston, who, with arms crossed, stood perfectly at his ease looking at the scene.

“Ah! that’s you,” cried James Playfair, scanning the American from head to foot.

“It is me, Captain,” replied the American, undisturbed. “I have come to see how these brave Federals fire; not badly, in truth, not badly.”

The Captain was going to answer Crockston sharply, but at this moment a second shot struck the sea on the starboard side.

“Good!” cried James Playfair, “we have already gained two cables on this Iroquois. Your friends sail like a buoy; do you hear, Master Crockston?”

“I will not say they don’t,” replied the American, “and for the first time in my life it does not fail to please me.”

A third shot fell still farther astern, and in less than ten minutes the Dolphin was out of range of the corvette’s guns.

“So much for patent-logs, Mr. Mathew,” said James Playfair; “thanks to those shot we know how to rate our speed. Now have the fires lowered; it is not worth while to waste our coal uselessly.”

“It is a good ship that you command,” said Miss Halliburtt to the young Captain.

“Yes, Miss Jenny, my good Dolphin makes her seventeen knots, and before the day is over we shall have lost sight of that corvette.”

James Playfair did not exaggerate the sailing qualities of his ship, and the sun had not set before the masts of the American ship had disappeared below the horizon.

This incident allowed the Captain to see Miss Halliburtt’s character in a new light; besides, the ice was broken, henceforward, during the whole of the voyage; the interviews between the Captain and his passenger were frequent and prolonged; be found her to be a young girl, calm, strong, thoughtful, and intelligent, speaking with great ease, having her own ideas about everything, and expressing her thoughts with a conviction which unconsciously penetrated James Playfair’s heart.

She loved her country, she was zealous in the great cause of the Union, and expressed herself on the civil war in the United States with an enthusiasm of which no other woman would have been capable. Thus it happened, more than once, that James Playfair found it difficult to answer her, even when questions purely mercantile arose in connection with the war: Miss Jenny attacked them none the less vigorously, and would come to no other terms whatever. At first James argued a great deal, and tried to uphold the Confederates against the Federals, to prove that the Secessionists were in the right, and that if the people were united voluntarily they might separate in the same manner. But the young girl would not yield on this point; she demonstrated that the question of slavery was predominant in the struggle between the North and South Americans, that it was far more a war in the cause of morals and humanity than politics, and James could make no answer. Besides, during these discussions, which he listened to attentively, it is difficult to say whether he was more touched by Miss Halliburtt’s arguments or the charming manner in which she spoke; but at last he was obliged to acknowledge, among other things, that slavery was the principal feature in the war, that it must be put an end to decisively, and the last horrors of barbarous times abolished.

It has been said that the political opinions of the Captain did not trouble him much. He would have sacrificed his most serious opinion before such enticing arguments and under like circumstances; he made a good bargain of his ideas for the same reason, but at last he was attacked in his tenderest point; this was the question of the traffic in which the Dolphin was being employed, and, consequently, the ammunition which was being carried to the Confederates.

“Yes, Mr. James,” said Miss Halliburtt, “gratitude does not hinder me from speaking with perfect frankness; on the contrary, you are a brave seaman, a clever merchant, the house of Playfair is noted for its respectability; but in this case it fails in its principles, and follows a trade unworthy of it.”

“How!” cried James, “the house of Playfair ought not to attempt such a commercial enterprise?”

“No! it is taking ammunition to the unhappy creatures in revolt against the government of their country, and it is lending arms to a bad cause.”

“Upon my honour, Miss Jenny, I will not discuss the right of the Confederates with you; I will only answer you with one word: I am a merchant, and as such I only occupy myself with the interests of my house; I look for gain wherever there is an opportunity of getting it.”

“That is precisely what is to be blamed, Mr. James,” replied the young girl; “profit does not excuse it; thus, when you supply arms to the Southerners, with which to continue a criminal war, you are quite as guilty as when you sell opium to the Chinese, which stupefies them.”

“Oh, for once, Miss Jenny, this is too much, and I cannot admit — ”

“No; what I say is just, and when you consider it, when you understand the part you are playing, when you think of the results for which you are responsible, you will yield to me in this point, as in so many others.”

James Playfair was dumfounded at these words; he left the young girl, a prey to angry thoughts, for he felt his powerlessness to answer; then he sulked like a child for half an hour, and an hour later he returned to the singular young girl who could overwhelm him with convincing arguments with quite a pleasant smile.

In short, however it may have come about, and although he would not acknowledge it to himself, Captain James Playfair belonged to himself no longer; he was no longer commander-in-chief on board his own ship.

Thus, to Crockston’s great joy, Mr. Halliburtt’s affairs appeared to be in a good way; the Captain seemed to have decided to undertake everything in his power to deliver Miss Jenny’s father, and for this he would be obliged to compromise the Dolphin, his cargo, his crew, and incur the displeasure of his worthy Uncle Vincent.

CHAPTER VI

SULLIVAN ISLAND CHANNEL

Two days after the meeting with the Iroquois, the Dolphin found herself abreast of the Bermudas, where she was assailed by a violent squall. These isles are frequently visited by hurricanes, and are celebrated for shipwrecks. It is here that Shakespeare has placed the exciting scene of his drama, The Tempest, in which Ariel and Caliban dispute for the empire of the floods.

The squall was frightful; James Playfair thought once of running for one of the Bermudas, where the English had a military post: it would have been a sad waste of time, and therefore especially to be regretted; happily the Dolphin behaved herself wonderfully well in the storm, and, after flying a whole day before the tempest, she was able to resume her course towards the American coast.

But if James Playfair had been pleased with his ship, he had not been less delighted with the young girl’s bravery; Miss Halliburtt had passed the worst hours of the storm at his side, and James knew that a profound, imperious, irresistible love had taken possession of his whole being.

“Yes,” said he, “this brave girl is mistress on board; she turns me like the sea a ship in distress — I feel that I am foundering! What will Uncle Vincent say? Ah! poor nature, I am sure that if Jenny asked me to throw all this cursed cargo into the sea, I should do it without hesitating, for love of her.”

Happily for the firm of Playfair & Co., Miss Halliburtt did not demand this sacrifice; nevertheless, the poor Captain had been taken captive, and Crockston, who read his heart like an open book, rubbed his hands gleefully.

“We will hold him fast!” he muttered to himself, “and before a week has passed my master will be quietly installed in one of the best cabins of the Dolphin.”

As for Miss Jenny, did she perceive the feelings which she inspired? Did she allow herself to share them? No one could say, and James Playfair least of all; the young girl kept a perfect reserve, and her secret remained deeply buried in her heart.

But whilst love was making such progress in the heart of the young Captain, the Dolphin sped with no less rapidity towards Charleston.

On the 13th of January, the watch signalled land ten miles to the west. It was a low-lying coast, and almost blended with the line of the sea in the distance. Crockston was examining the horizon attentively, and about nine o’clock in the morning he cried:

“Charleston lighthouse!”

Now that the bearings of the Dolphin were set, James Playfair had but one thing to do, to decide by which channel he would run into Charleston Bay.

“If we meet with no obstacles,” said he, “before three o’clock we shall be in safety in the docks of the port.”

The town of Charleston is situated on the banks of an estuary seven miles long and two broad, called Charleston Harbour, the entrance to which is rather difficult. It is enclosed between Morris Island on the south and Sullivan Island on the north. At the time when the Dolphin attempted to force the blockade Morris Island already belonged to the Federal troops, and General Gillmore had caused batteries to be erected overlooking the harbour. Sullivan Island, on the contrary, was in the hands of the Confederates, who were also in possession of Moultrie Fort, situated at the extremity of the island; therefore it would be advantageous to the Dolphin to go as close as possible to the northern shores to avoid the firing from the forts on Morris Island.

Five channels led into the estuary, Sullivan Island Channel, the Northern Channel, the Overall Channel, the Principal Channel, and lastly, the Lawford Channel; but it was useless for strangers, unless they had skilful pilots on board, or ships drawing less than seven feet of water, to attempt this last; as for Northern and Overall Channels, they were in range of the Federalist batteries, so that it was no good thinking of them. If James Playfair could have had his choice, he would have taken his steamer through the Principal Channel, which was the best, and the bearings of which were easy to follow; but it was necessary to yield to circumstances, and to decide according to the event. Besides, the Captain of the Dolphin knew perfectly all the secrets of this bay, its dangers, the depths of its water at low tide, and its currents, so that he was able to steer his ship with the greatest safety as soon as he entered one of these narrow straits. The great question was to get there.

Now this work demanded an experienced seaman, and one who knew exactly the qualities of the Dolphin.

In fact, two Federal frigates were now cruising in the Charleston waters. Mr. Mathew soon drew James Playfair’s attention to them.

“They are preparing to ask us what we want on these shores,” said he.

“Ah, well! we won’t answer them,” replied the Captain, “and they will not get their curiosity satisfied.”

In the meanwhile the cruisers were coming on full steam towards the Dolphin, who continued her course, taking care to keep out of range of their guns. But in order to gain time James Playfair made for the south-west, wishing to put the enemies’ ships off their guard; the latter must have thought that the Dolphin intended to make for Morris Island Channel. Now there they had batteries and guns, a single shot from which would have been enough to sink the English ship; so the Federals allowed the Dolphin to run towards the south-west, contenting themselves by observing her without following closely.

Thus for an hour the respective situations of the ships did not change, for James Playfair, wishing to deceive the cruisers as to the course of the Dolphin, had caused the fires to be moderated, so that the speed was decreased. However, from the thick volumes of smoke which escaped from the chimneys, it might have been thought that he was trying to get his maximum pressure, and, consequently his maximum of rapidity.

“They will be slightly astonished presently,” said James Playfair, “when they see us slip through their fingers!”

In fact, when the Captain saw that he was near enough to Morris Island, and before a line of guns, the range of which he did not know, he turned his rudder quickly, and the ship resumed her northerly course, leaving the cruisers two miles to windward of her; the latter, seeing this manoeuvre, understood the steamer’s object, and began to pursue her in earnest, but it was too late. The Dolphin doubled her speed under the action of the screws, and distanced them rapidly. Going nearer to the coast, a few shell were sent after her as an acquittal of conscience, but the Federals were outdone, for their projectiles did not reach half-way. At eleven o’clock in the morning, the steamer ranging near Sullivan Island, thanks to her small draft, entered the narrow strait full steam; there she was in safety, for no Federalist cruiser dared follow her in this channel, the depth of which, on an average, was only eleven feet at low tide.

“How!” cried Crockston, “and is that the only difficulty?”

“Oh! oh! Master Crockston,” said James Playfair, “the difficulty is not in entering, but in getting out again.”

“Nonsense!” replied the American, “that does not make me at all uneasy; with a boat like the Dolphin and a Captain like Mr. James Playfair, one can go where one likes, and come out in the same manner.”

Nevertheless, James Playfair, with telescope in his hand, was attentively examining the route to be followed. He had before him excellent coasting guides, with which he could go ahead without any difficulty or hesitation.

Once his ship was safely in the narrow channel which runs the length of Sullivan Island, James steered bearing towards the middle of Fort Moultrie as far as the Pickney Castle, situated on the isolated island of Shute’s Folly; on the other side rose Fort Johnson, a little way to the north of Fort Sumter.

At this moment the steamer was saluted by some shot which did not reach her, from the batteries on Morris Island. She continued her course without any deviation, passed before Moultrieville, situated at the extremity of Sullivan Island, and entered the bay.

Soon Fort Sumter on the left protected her from the batteries of the Federalists.

This fort, so celebrated in the civil war, is situated three miles and a half from Charleston, and about a mile from each side of the bay: it is nearly pentagonal in form, built on an artificial island of Massachusetts granite; it took ten years to construct and cost more than 900,000 dollars.

It was from this fort, on the 13th of April, 1861, that Anderson and the Federal troops were driven, and it was against it that the first shot of the Confederates was fired. It is impossible to estimate the quantity of iron and lead which the Federals showered down upon it. However, it resisted for almost three years, but a few months after the passage of the Dolphin it fell beneath General Gillmore’s three hundred-pounders on Morris Island.

But at this time it was in all its strength, and the Confederate flag floated proudly above it.

Once past the fort, the town of Charleston appeared, lying between Ashley and Cooper Rivers.

James Playfair threaded his way through the buoys which mark the entrance of the channel, leaving behind the Charleston lighthouse, visible above Morris Island. He had hoisted the English flag, and made his way with wonderful rapidity through the narrow channels. When he had passed the quarantine buoy, he advanced freely into the centre of the bay. Miss Halliburtt was standing on the poop, looking at the town where her father was kept prisoner, and her eyes filled with tears.

At last the steamer’s speed was moderated by the Captain’s orders; the Dolphin ranged along the end of the south and east batteries, and was soon moored at the quay of the North Commercial Wharf.

CHAPTER VII

A SOUTHERN GENERAL

The Dolphin, on arriving at the Charleston quay, had been saluted by the cheers of a large crowd. The inhabitants of this town, strictly blockaded by sea, were not accustomed to visits from European ships. They asked each other, not without astonishment, what this great steamer, proudly bearing the English flag, had come to do in their waters; but when they learned the object of her voyage, and why she had just forced the passage Sullivan, when the report spread that she carried a cargo of smuggled ammunition, the cheers and joyful cries were redoubled.

James Playfair, without losing a moment, entered into negotiation with General Beauregard, the military commander of the town. The latter eagerly received the young Captain of the Dolphin, who had arrived in time to provide the soldiers with the clothes and ammunition they were so much in want of. It was agreed that the unloading of the ship should take place immediately, and numerous hands came to help the English sailors.

Before quitting his ship James Playfair had received from Miss Halliburtt the most pressing injunctions with regard to her father, and the Captain had placed himself entirely at the young girl’s service.

“Miss Jenny,” he had said, “you may rely on me; I will do the utmost in my power to save your father, but I hope this business will not present many difficulties. I shall go and see General Beauregard today, and, without asking him at once for Mr. Halliburtt’s liberty, I shall learn in what situation he is, whether he is on bail or a prisoner.”

“My poor father!” replied Jenny, sighing; “he little thinks his daughter is so near him. Oh that I could fly into his arms!”

“A little patience, Miss Jenny; you will soon embrace your father. Rely upon my acting with the most entire devotion, but also with prudence and consideration.”

This is why James Playfair, after having delivered the cargo of the Dolphin up to the General, and bargained for an immense stock of cotton, faithful to his promise, turned the conversation to the events of the day.

“So,” said he, “you believe in the triumph of the slave-holders?”

“I do not for a moment doubt of our final success, and, as regards Charleston, Lee’s army will soon relieve it: besides, what do you expect from the Abolitionists? Admitting that which will never be, that the commercial towns of Virginia, the two Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, fall under their power, what then? Will they be masters of a country they can never occupy? No, certainly not; and for my part, if they are ever victorious, they shall pay dearly for it.”

“And you are quite sure of your soldiers?” asked the Captain. “You are not afraid that Charleston will grow weary of a siege which is ruining her?”

“No, I do not fear treason; besides, the traitors would be punished remorselessly, and I would destroy the town itself by sword or fire if I discovered the least Unionist movement. Jefferson Davis confided Charleston to me, and you may be sure that Charleston is in safe hands.”

“Have you any Federal prisoners?” asked James Playfair, coming to the interesting object of the conversation.

“Yes, Captain,” replied the General, “it was at Charleston that the first shot of separation was fired. The Abolitionists who were here attempted to resist, and, after being defeated, they have been kept as prisoners of war.”

“And have you many?”

“About a hundred.”

“Free in the town?”

“They were until I discovered a plot formed by them: their chief succeeded in establishing a communication with the besiegers, who were thus informed of the situation of affairs in the town. I was then obliged to lock up these dangerous guests, and several of them will only leave their prison to ascend the slope of the citadel, where ten confederate balls will reward them for their federalism.”

“What! to be shot!” cried the young man, shuddering involuntarily.

“Yes, and their chief first of all. He is a very dangerous man to have in a besieged town. I have sent his letters to the President at Richmond, and before a week is passed his sentence will be irrevocably passed.”

“Who is this man you speak of?” asked James Playfair, with an assumed carelessness.

“A journalist from Boston, a violent Abolitionist with the confounded spirit of Lincoln.”

“And his name?”

“Jonathan Halliburtt.”

“Poor wretch!” exclaimed James, suppressing his emotion. “Whatever he may have done, one cannot help pitying him. And you think that he will be shot?”

“I am sure of it,” replied Beauregard. “What can you expect? War is war; one must defend oneself as best one can.”

“Well, it is nothing to me,” said the Captain. “I shall be far enough away when this execution takes place.”

“What! you are thinking of going away already.”

“Yes, General, business must be attended to; as soon as my cargo of cotton is on board I shall be out to sea again. I was fortunate enough to enter the bay, but the difficulty is in getting out again. The Dolphin is a good ship; she can beat any of the Federal vessels for speed, but she does not pretend to distance cannon-balls, and a shell in her hull or engine would seriously affect my enterprise.”

“As you please, Captain,” replied Beauregard; “I have no advice to give you under such circumstances. You are doing your business, and you are right. I should act in the same manner were I in your place; besides, a stay at Charleston is not very pleasant, and a harbour where shells are falling three days out of four is not a safe shelter for your ship; so you will set sail when you please; but can you tell me what is the number and the force of the Federal vessels cruising before Charleston?”

James Playfair did his best to answer the General, and took leave of him on the best of terms; then he returned to the Dolphin very thoughtful and very depressed from what he had just heard.

“What shall I say to Miss Jenny? Ought I to tell her of Mr. Halliburtt’s terrible situation? Or would it be better to keep her in ignorance of the trial which is awaiting her? Poor child!”

He had not gone fifty steps from the governor’s house when he ran against Crockston. The worthy American had been watching for him since his departure.

“Well, Captain?”

James Playfair looked steadily at Crockston, and the latter soon understood he had no favourable news to give him.

“Have you seen Beauregard?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied James Playfair.

“And have you spoken to him about Mr. Halliburtt?”

“No, it was he who spoke to me about him.”

“Well, Captain?”

“Well, I may as well tell you everything, Crockston.”

“Everything, Captain.”

“General Beauregard has told me that your master will be shot within a week.”

At this news anyone else but Crockston would have grown furious or given way to bursts of grief, but the American, who feared nothing, only said, with almost a smile on his lips:

“Pooh! what does it matter?”

“How! what does it matter?” cried James Playfair. “I tell you that Mr. Halliburtt will be shot within a week, and you answer, what does it matter?”

“And I mean it — if in six days he is on board the Dolphin, and if in seven days the Dolphin is on the open sea.”

“Right!” exclaimed the Captain, pressing Crockston’s hand. “I understand, my good fellow, you have got some pluck; and for myself, in spite of Uncle Vincent, I would throw myself overboard for Miss Jenny.”

“No one need be thrown overboard,” replied the American, “only the fish would gain by that: the most important business now is to deliver Mr. Halliburtt.”

“But you must know that it will be difficult to do so.”

“Pooh!” exclaimed Crockston.

“It is a question of communicating with a prisoner strictly guarded.”

“Certainly.”

“And to bring about an almost miraculous escape.”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Crockston; “a prisoner thinks more of escaping than his guardian thinks of keeping him; that’s why, thanks to our help, Mr. Halliburtt will be saved.”

“You are right, Crockston.”

“Always right.”

“But now what will you do? There must be some plan: and there are precautions to be taken.”

“I will think about it.”

“But when Miss Jenny learns that her father is condemned to death, and that the order for his execution may come any day — ”

“She will know nothing about it, that is all.”

“Yes, it will be better for her and for us to tell her nothing.”

“Where is Mr. Halliburtt imprisoned?” asked Crockston.

“In the citadel,” replied James Playfair.

“Just so!…On board now?”

“On board, Crockston!”

CHAPTER VIII

THE ESCAPE

Miss Jenny, sitting at the poop of the Dolphin, was anxiously waiting the Captain’s return; when the latter went up to her she could not utter a word, but her eyes questioned James Playfair more eagerly than her lips could have done. The latter, with Crockston’s help, informed the young girl of the facts relating to her father’s imprisonment. He said that he had carefully broached the subject of the prisoners of war to Beauregard, but, as the General did not seem disposed at all in their favour, he had thought it better to say no more about it, but think the matter over again.

“Since Mr. Halliburtt is not free in the town, his escape will be more difficult; but I will finish my task, and I promise you, Miss Jenny, that the Dolphin shall not leave Charleston without having your father on board.”

“Thank you, Mr. James; I thank you with my whole heart.”

At these words James Playfair felt a thrill of joy through his whole being.

He approached the young girl with moist eyes and quivering lips; perhaps he was going to make an avowal of the sentiments he could no longer repress, when Crockston interfered:

“This is no time for grieving,” said he; “we must go to work, and consider what to do.”

“Have you any plan, Crockston?” asked the young girl.

“I always have a plan,” replied the American: “it is my peculiarity.”

“But a good one?” said James Playfair.

“Excellent! and all the ministers in Washington could not devise a better; it is almost as good as if Mr. Halliburtt was already on board.”

Crockston spoke with such perfect assurance, at the same time with such simplicity, that it must have been the most incredulous person who could doubt his words.

“We are listening, Crockston,” said James Playfair.

“Good! You, Captain, will go to General Beauregard, and ask a favour of him which he will not refuse you.”

“And what is that?”

“You will tell him that you have on board a tiresome subject, a scamp who has been very troublesome during the voyage, and excited the crew to revolt. You will ask of him permission to shut him up in the citadel; at the same time, on the condition that he shall return to the ship on her departure, in order to be taken back to England, to be delivered over to the justice of his country.”

“Good!” said James Playfair, half smiling, “I will do all that, and Beauregard will grant my request very willingly.”

“I am perfectly sure of it,” replied the American.

“But,” resumed Playfair, “one thing is wanting.”

“What is that?”

“The scamp.”

“He is before you, Captain.”

“What, the rebellious subject?”

“Is myself; don’t trouble yourself about that.”

“Oh! you brave, generous heart,” cried Jenny, pressing the American’s rough hands between her small white palms.

“Go, Crockston,” said James Playfair; “I understand you, my friend; and I only regret one thing — that is, that I cannot take your place.”

“Everyone his part,” replied Crockston; “if you put yourself in my place you would be very much embarrassed, which I shall not be; you will have enough to do later on to get out of the harbour under the fire of the Feds and Rebs, which, for my part, I should manage very badly.”

“Well, Crockston, go on.”

“Once in the citadel — I know it — I shall see what to do, and rest assured I shall do my best; in the meanwhile, you will be getting your cargo on board.”

“Oh, business is now a very unimportant detail,” said the Captain.

“Not at all! And what would your Uncle Vincent say to that? We must join sentiment with work; it will prevent suspicion; but do it quickly. Can you be ready in six days?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let the Dolphin be ready to start on the 22nd.”

“She shall be ready.”

“On the evening of the 22nd of January, you understand, send a gig with your best men to White Point, at the end of the town; wait there till nine o’clock, and then you will see Mr. Halliburtt and your servant.”

“But how will you manage to effect Mr. Halliburtt’s deliverance, and also escape yourself?”

“That’s my look-out.”

“Dear Crockston, you are going to risk your life then, to save my father!”

“Don’t be uneasy, Miss Jenny, I shall risk absolutely nothing, you may believe me.”

“Well,” asked James Playfair, “when must I have you locked up?”

“To-day — you understand — I demoralise your crew; there is no time to be lost.”

“Would you like any money? It may be of use to you in the citadel.”

“Money to buy the gaoler! Oh, no, it would be a poor bargain; when one goes there the gaoler keeps the money and the prisoner! No, I have surer means than that; however, a few dollars may be useful; one must be able to drink, if needs be.”

“And intoxicate the gaoler.”

“No, an intoxicated gaoler would spoil everything. No, I tell you I have an idea; let me work it out.”

“Here, my good fellow, are ten dollars.”

“It is too much, but I will return what is over.”

“Well, then, are you ready?”

“Quite ready to be a downright rogue.”

“Let us go to work, then.”

“Crockston,” said the young girl, in a faltering voice, “you are the best man on earth.”

“I know it,” replied the American, laughing good-humouredly. “By the by, Captain, an important item.”

“What is that?”

“If the General proposes to hang your rebel — you know that military men like sharp work — ”

“Well, Crockston?”

“Well, you will say that you must think about it.”

“I promise you I will.”

The same day, to the great astonishment of the crew, who were not in the secret, Crockston, with his feet and hands in irons, was taken on shore by a dozen sailors, and half an hour after, by Captain James Playfair’s request, he was led through the streets of the town, and, in spite of his resistance, was imprisoned in the citadel.

During this and the following days the unloading of the Dolphin was rapidly accomplished; the steam cranes lifted out the European cargo to make room for the native goods. The people of Charleston, who were present at this interesting work, helped the sailors, whom they held in great respect, but the Captain did not leave the brave fellows much time for receiving compliments; he was constantly behind them, and urged them on with a feverish activity, the reason of which the sailors could not suspect.

Three days later, on the 18th of January, the first bales of cotton began to be packed in the hold: although James Playfair troubled himself no more about it, the firm of Playfair and Co. were making an excellent bargain, having obtained the cotton which encumbered the Charleston wharves at very far less than its value.

In the meantime no news had been heard of Crockston. Jenny, without saying anything about it, was a prey to incessant fears; her pale face spoke for her, and James Playfair endeavoured his utmost to ease her mind.

“I have all confidence in Crockston,” said he; “he is a devoted servant, as you must know better than I do, Miss Jenny. You must make yourself quite at ease; believe me, in three days you will be folded in your father’s arms.”

“Ah! Mr. James,” cried the young girl, “how can I ever repay you for such devotion? How shall we ever be able to thank you?”

“I will tell you when we are in English seas,” replied the young Captain.

Jenny raised her tearful face to him for a moment, then her eyelids drooped, and she went back to her cabin.

James Playfair hoped that the young girl would know nothing of her father’s terrible situation until he was in safety, but she was apprised of the truth by the involuntary indiscretion of a sailor.

The reply from the Richmond cabinet had arrived by a courier who had been able to pass the line of outposts; the reply contained Jonathan Halliburtt’s death-warrant. The news of the approaching execution was not long in spreading through the town, and it was brought on board by one of the sailors of the Dolphin; the man told the Captain, without thinking that Miss Halliburtt was within hearing; the young girl uttered a piercing cry, and fell unconscious on the deck. James Playfair carried her to her cabin, but the most assiduous care was necessary to restore her to life.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the young Captain, who, with a finger on his lips, enjoined absolute silence. With difficulty she repressed the outburst of her grief, and James Playfair, leaning towards her, said gently:

“Jenny, in two hours your father will be in safety near you, or I shall have perished in endeavouring to save him!”

Then he left the cabin, saying to himself, “And now he must be carried off at any price, since I must pay for his liberty with my own life and those of my crew.”

The hour for action had arrived, the loading of the cotton cargo had been finished since morning; in two hours the ship would be ready to start.

James Playfair had left the North Commercial Wharf and gone into the roadstead, so that he was ready to make use of the tide, which would be high at nine o’clock in the evening.

It was seven o’clock when James left the young girl, and began to make preparations for departure. Until the present time the secret had been strictly kept between himself, Crockston, and Jenny; but now he thought it wise to inform Mr. Mathew of the situation of affairs, and he did so immediately.

“Very well, sir,” replied Mr. Mathew, without making the least remark, “and nine o’clock is the time?”

“Nine o’clock, and have the fires lit immediately, and the steam got up.”

“It shall be done, Captain.”

“The Dolphin may remain at anchor; we will cut our moorings and sheer off, without losing a moment.”

“Just so.”

“Have a lantern placed at the mainmast-head; the night is dark, and will be foggy; we must not risk losing our way in returning. You had better have the bell for starting rung at nine o’clock.”

“Your orders shall be punctually attended to, Captain.”

“And now, Mr. Mathew, have a shore-boat manned with six of our best men. I am going to set out directly for White Point. I leave Miss Jenny in your charge, and may God protect us!”

“May God protect us!” repeated the first officer.

Then he immediately gave the necessary orders for the fires to be lighted, and the shore-boat provided with men. In a few minutes the boat was ready, and James Playfair, after bidding Jenny good-bye, stepped into it, whilst at the same time he saw volumes of black smoke issuing from the chimneys of the ship, and losing itself in the fog.

The darkness was profound; the wind had fallen, and in the perfect silence the waters seemed to slumber in the immense harbour, whilst a few uncertain lights glimmered through the mist. James Playfair had taken his place at the rudder, and with a steady hand he guided his boat towards White Point. It was a distance of about two miles; during the day James had taken his bearings perfectly, so that he was able to make direct for Charleston Point.

Eight o’clock struck from the church of St. Philip when the shore-boat ran aground at White Point.

There was an hour to wait before the exact time fixed by Crockston; the quay was deserted, with the exception of the sentinel pacing to and fro on the south and east batteries. James Playfair grew impatient, and the minutes seemed hours to him.

At half-past eight he heard the sound of approaching steps; he left his men with their oars clear and ready to start, and went himself to see who it was; but he had not gone ten feet when he met a band of coastguards, in all about twenty men. James drew his revolver from his waist, deciding to make use of it, if needs be; but what could he do against these soldiers, who were coming on to the quay?

The leader came up to him, and, seeing the boat, asked:

“Whose craft is that?”

“It is a gig belonging to the Dolphin,” replied the young man.

“And who are you?”

“Captain James Playfair.”

“I thought you had already started, and were now in the Charleston channels.”

“I am ready to start. I ought even now to be on my way but—”

“But —” persisted the coastguard.

A bright idea shot through James’s mind, and he answered:

“One of my sailors is locked up in the citadel, and, to tell the truth, I had almost forgotten him; fortunately I thought of him in time, and I have sent my men to bring him.”

“Ah! that troublesome fellow; you wish to take him back to England?”

“Yes.

“He might as well be hung here as there,” said the coast-guard, laughing at his joke.

“So I think,” said James Playfair, “but it is better to have the thing done in the regular way.”

“Not much chance of that, Captain, when you have to face the Morris Island batteries.”

“Don’t alarm yourself. I got in and I’ll get out again.”

“Prosperous voyage to you!”

“Thank you.”

With this the men went off, and the shore was left silent.

At this moment nine o’clock struck; it was the appointed moment. James felt his heart beat violently; a whistle was heard; he replied to it, then he waited, listening, with his hand up to enjoin perfect silence on the sailors. A man appeared enveloped in a large cloak, and looking from one side to another. James ran up to him.

“Mr. Halliburtt?”

“I am he,” replied the man with the cloak.

“God be praised!” cried James Playfair. “Embark without losing a minute. Where is Crockston?”

“Crockston!” exclaimed Mr. Halliburtt, amazed. “What do you mean?”

“The man who has saved you and brought you here was your servant Crockston.”

“The man who came with me was the gaoler from the citadel,” replied Mr. Halliburtt.

“The gaoler!” cried James Playfair.

Evidently he knew nothing about it, and a thousand fears crowded in his mind.

“Quite right, the gaoler,” cried a well-known voice. “The gaoler is sleeping like a top in my cell.”

“Crockston! you! Can it be you?” exclaimed Mr. Halliburtt.

“No time to talk now, master; we will explain everything to you afterwards. It is a question of life or death. Get in quick!”

The three men took their places in the boat.

“Push off!” cried the captain.

Immediately the six oars dipped into the water; the boat darted like a fish through the waters of Charleston Harbour.

CHAPTER IX

BETWEEN TWO FIRES

The boat, pulled by six robust oarsmen, flew over the water. The fog was growing dense, and it was with difficulty that James Playfair succeeded in keeping to the line of his bearings. Crockston sat at the bows, and Mr. Halliburtt at the stern, next the Captain. The prisoner, only now informed of the presence of his servant, wished to speak to him, but the latter enjoined silence.

However, a few minutes later, when they were in the middle of the harbour, Crockston determined to speak, knowing what thoughts were uppermost in Mr. Halliburtt’s mind.

“Yes, my dear master,” said he, “the gaoler is in my place in the cell, where I gave him two smart blows, one on the head and the other on the stomach, to act as a sleeping draught, and this when he was bringing me my supper; there is gratitude for you. I took his clothes and his keys, found you, and let you out of the citadel, under the soldiers’ noses. That is all I have done.”

“But my daughter — ?” asked Mr. Halliburtt.

“Is on board the ship which is going to take you to England.”

“My daughter there! there!” cried the American, springing from his seat.

“Silence!” replied Crockston, “a few minutes, and we shall be saved.”

The boat flew through the darkness, but James Playfair was obliged to steer rather by guess, as the lanterns of the Dolphin were no longer visible through the fog. He was undecided what direction to follow, and the darkness was so great that the rowers could not even see to the end of their oars.

“Well, Mr. James?” said Crockston.

“We must have made more than a mile and a half,” replied the Captain. “You don’t see anything, Crockston?”

“Nothing; nevertheless, I have good eyes; but we shall get there all right. They don’t suspect anything out there.”

These words were hardly finished when the flash of a gun gleamed for an instant through the darkness, and vanished in the mist.

“A signal!” cried James Playfair.

“Whew!” exclaimed Crockston. “It must have come from the citadel. Let us wait.”

A second, then a third shot was fired in the direction of the first, and almost the same signal was repeated a mile in front of the gig.

“That is from Fort Sumter,” cried Crockston, “and it is the signal of escape. Urge on the men; everything is discovered.”

“Pull for your lives, my men!” cried James Playfair, urging on the sailors, “those gun-shots cleared my route. The Dolphin is eight hundred yards ahead of us. Stop! I hear the bell on board. Hurrah, there it is again! Twenty pounds for you if we are back in five minutes!”

The boat skimmed over the waves under the sailors’ powerful oars. A cannon boomed in the direction of the town. Crockston heard a ball whiz past them.

The bell on the Dolphin was ringing loudly. A few more strokes and the boat was alongside. A few more seconds and Jenny fell into her father’s arms.

The gig was immediately raised, and James Playfair sprang on to the poop.

“Is the steam up, Mr. Mathew?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Have the moorings cut at once.”

A few minutes later the two screws carried the steamer towards the principal channel, away from Fort Sumter.

“Mr. Mathew,” said James, “we must not think of taking the Sullivan Island channel; we should run directly under the Confederate guns. Let us go as near as possible to the right side of the harbour out of range of the Federal batteries. Have you a safe man at the helm?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Have the lanterns and the fires on deck extinguished; there is a great deal too much light, but we cannot help the reflection from the engine-rooms.”

During this conversation the Dolphin was going at a great speed; but in altering her course to keep to the right side of the Charleston Harbour she was obliged to enter a channel which took her for a moment near Fort Sumter; and when scarcely half a mile off all the guns bearing on her were discharged at the same time, and a shower of shot and shell passed in front of the Dolphin with a thundering report.

“Too soon, stupids,” cried James Playfair, with a burst of laughter. “Make haste, make haste, Mr. Engineer! We shall get between two fires.”

The stokers fed the furnaces, and the Dolphin trembled all over with the effort of the engine as if she was on the point of exploding.

At this moment a second report was heard, and another shower of balls whizzed behind the Dolphin.

“Too late, stupids,” cried the young Captain, with a regular roar.

Then Crockston, who was standing on the poop, cried, “That’s one passed. A few minutes more, and we shall have done with the Rebs.”

“Then do you think we have nothing more to fear from Fort Sumter?” asked James.

“Nothing at all, but everything from Fort Moultrie, at the end of Sullivan Island; but they will only get a chance at us for half a minute, and then they must choose their time well, and shoot straight if they want to reach us. We are getting near.”

“Right; the position of Fort Moultrie will allow us to go straight for the principal channel. Fire away then, fire away!”

At the same moment, and as if in obedience to James Playfair, the fort was illuminated by a triple line of lightning. A frightful crash was heard; then a crackling sound on board the steamer.

“Touched this time!” exclaimed Crockston.

“Mr. Mathew!” cried the Captain to his second, who was stationed at the bows, “what has been damaged?”

“The bowsprit broken.”

“Any wounded?”

“No, Captain.”

“Well, then, the masts may go to Jericho. Straight into the pass! Straight! and steer towards the island.”

“We have passed the Rebs!” cried Crockston; “and, if we must have balls in our hull, I would much rather have the Northerners; they are more easily digested.”

In fact, the Dolphin could not yet consider herself out of danger; for, if Morris Island was not fortified with the formidable pieces of artillery which were placed there a few months later, nevertheless its guns and mortars could easily have sunk a ship like the Dolphin.

The alarm had been given to the Federals on the island, and to the blockading squadron, by the firing from Forts Sumter and Moultrie. The besiegers could not make out the reason of this night attack; it did not seem to be directed against them. However, they were obliged to consider it so, and were ready to reply.

It occupied James Playfair’s thoughts whilst making towards the passes of Morris Island; and he had reason to fear, for in a quarter of an hour’s time lights gleamed rapidly through the darkness. A shower of small shell fell round the steamer, scattering the water over her bulwarks; some of them even struck the deck of the Dolphin, but not on their points, which saved the ship from certain ruin. In fact, these shell, as it was afterwards discovered, could break into a hundred fragments, and each cover a superficial area of a hundred and twenty square feet with Greek fire, which would burn for twenty minutes, and nothing could extinguish it. One of these shell alone could set a ship on fire. Fortunately for the Dolphin, they were a new invention, and as yet far from perfect. Once thrown into the air, a false rotary movement kept them inclined, and, when falling, instead of striking on their points, where is the percussion apparatus, they fell flat. This defect in construction alone saved the Dolphin. The falling of these shells did her little harm, and under the pressure of her over-heated boilers she continued to advance into the pass.

At this moment, and in spite of his orders, Mr. Halliburtt and his daughter went to James Playfair on the poop; the latter urged them to return to their cabins, but Jenny declared that she would remain by the Captain. As for Mr. Halliburtt, who had just learnt all the noble conduct of his deliverer, he pressed his hand without being able to utter a word.

The Dolphin was speeding rapidly towards the open sea. There were only three miles more before she would be in the waters of the Atlantic; if the pass was free at its entrance, she was saved. James Playfair was wonderfully well acquainted with all the secrets of Charleston Bay, and he guided his ship through the darkness with an unerring hand. He was beginning to think his daring enterprise successful, when a sailor on the forecastle cried:

“A ship!”

“A ship?” cried James.

“Yes, on the larboard side.”

The fog had cleared off, and a large frigate was seen making towards the pass, in order to obstruct the passage of the Dolphin. It was necessary, cost what it might, to distance her, and urge the steam-engine to an increase of speed, or all was lost.

“Port the helm at once!” cried the Captain.

Then he sprang on to the bridge above the engine. By his orders one of the screws was stopped, and under the action of the other the Dolphin, veering with an extraordinary rapidity, avoided running foul of the frigate, and advanced like her to the entrance of the pass. It was now a question of speed.

James Playfair understood that in this lay his own safety, Miss Jenny’s, her father’s, and that of all his crew.

The frigate was considerably in advance of the Dolphin. It was evident from the volumes of black smoke issuing from her chimneys that she was getting up her steam. James Playfair was not the man to be left in the background.

“How are the engines?” cried he to the engineer.

“At the maximum speed,” replied the latter; “the steam is escaping by all the valves.”

“Fasten them down,” ordered the Captain.

And his orders were executed at the risk of blowing up the ship.

The Dolphin again increased her speed; the pistons worked with frightful rapidity; the metal plates on which the engine was placed trembled under the terrific force of their blows. It was a sight to make the boldest shudder.

“More pressure!” cried James Playfair; “put on more pressure!”

“Impossible!” replied the engineer. “The valves are tightly closed; our furnaces are full up to the mouths.”

“What difference! Fill them with cotton soaked in spirits; we must pass that frigate at any price.”

At these words the most daring of the sailors looked at each other, but did not hesitate. Some bales of cotton were thrown into the engine-room, a barrel of spirits broached over them, and this expensive fuel placed, not without danger, in the red-hot furnaces. The stokers could no longer hear each other speak for the roaring of the flames. Soon the metal plates of the furnaces became red-hot; the pistons worked like the pistons of a locomotive; the steamgauge showed a frightful tension; the steamer flew over the water; her boards creaked, and her chimneys threw out volumes of smoke mingled with flames. She was going at a headlong speed, but, nevertheless, she was gaining on the frigate — passed her, distanced her, and in ten minutes was out of the channel.

“Saved!” cried the Captain.

“Saved!” echoed the crew, clapping their hands.

Already the Charleston beacon was disappearing in the south-west; the sound of firing from the batteries grew fainter, and it might with reason be thought that the danger was all past, when a shell from a gun-boat cruising at large was hurled whizzing through the air. It was easy to trace its course, thanks to the line of fire which followed it.

Then was a moment of anxiety impossible to describe; every one was silent, and each watched fearfully the arch described by the projectile. Nothing could be done to escape it, and in a few seconds it fell with a frightful noise on the fore-deck of the Dolphin.

The terrified sailors crowded to the stern, and no one dared move a step, whilst the shell was burning with a brisk crackle.

But one brave man alone among them ran up to the formidable weapon of destruction. It was Crockston; he took the shell in his strong arms, whilst showers of sparks were falling from it; then, with a superhuman effort, he threw it overboard.

Hardly had the shell reached the surface of the water when it burst with a frightful report.

“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried the whole crew of the Dolphin unanimously, whilst Crockston rubbed his hands.

Some time later the steamer sped rapidly through the waters of the Atlantic; the American coast disappeared in the darkness, and the distant lights which shot across the horizon indicated that the attack was general between the batteries of Morris Island and the forts of Charleston Harbour.

CHAPTER X

ST. MUNGO

The next day at sunrise the American coast had disappeared; not a ship was visible on the horizon, and the Dolphin, moderating the frightful rapidity of her speed, made quietly towards the Bermudas.

It is useless to recount the passage across the Atlantic, which was marked by no accidents, and ten days after the departure from Queenstown the French coast was hailed.

What passed between the Captain and the young girl may be imagined, even by the least observant individuals. How could Mr. Halliburtt acknowledge the devotion and courage of his deliverer, if it was not by making him the happiest of men? James Playfair did not wait for English seas to declare to the father and daughter the sentiments which overflowed his heart, and, if Crockston is to be believed, Miss Jenny received his confession with a happiness she did not try to conceal.

Thus it happened that on the 14th of February, 18—, a numerous crowd was collected in the dim aisles of St. Mungo, the old cathedral of Glasgow. There were seamen, merchants, manufacturers, magistrates, and some of every denomination gathered here. There was Miss Jenny in bridal array and beside her the worthy Crockston, resplendent in apple-green clothes, with gold buttons, whilst Uncle Vincent stood proudly by his nephew.

In short, they were celebrating the marriage of James Playfair, of the firm of Vincent Playfair & Co., of Glasgow, with Miss Jenny Halliburtt, of Boston.

The ceremony was accomplished amidst great pomp. Everyone knew the history of the Dolphin, and everyone thought the young Captain well recompensed for his devotion. He alone said that his reward was greater than he deserved.

In the evening there was a grand ball and banquet at Uncle Vincent’s house, with a large distribution of shillings to the crowd collected in Gordon Street. Crockston did ample justice to this memorable feast, while keeping himself perfectly within bounds.

Everyone was happy at this wedding; some at their own happiness, and others at the happiness around them, which is not always the case at ceremonies of this kind.

Late in the evening, when the guests had retired, James Playfair took his uncle’s hand.

“Well, Uncle Vincent,” said he to him.

“Well, Nephew James?”

“Are you pleased with the charming cargo I brought you on board the Dolphin?” continued Captain Playfair, showing him his brave young wife.

“I am quite satisfied,” replied the worthy merchant; “I have sold my cotton at three hundred and seventy-five per cent. profit.”

IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TURK, by Benge Atlee

The Sirhan desert shimmered under the heat. The palms of Azrak moved listlessly in a wind so hot it seemed from hell. In the largest “house of hair” in the Arab encampment three men sat talking earnestly; Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the little Irish leader of the Arab Revolt; Lieutenant Gerald Burke, R.A.F., one and only aviator with the Arab forces; and Auda abu Tayi, fighting sheik of the Howeitat.

Auda, the old warrior, was breathing fire. Outside stood twenty of his men at whose head he had just ridden thirty miles through the genenna of that August day—twenty fagged men and twenty broken camels.

“By Allah and by my very Allah,” he cried, little white spots of froth spurting from his cracked lips, “the dog has deserted us! I was riding close by Minifer. And I saw him with his men—may pigs defile their mothers’ graves! And he had his face toward the Turks! It was too late then to head him off—though I tried, until the Turkish bullets were tossing up the sand in waves under my camel’s feet. He has gone over to them, may he perish! By the face of Allah, did I not say he was a traitor! Did I not warn you against that snake, Hussein ibn Zaid!”

“Aiee, O father of wisdom and strength,” replied the little man in the white kaftan, softly. “But that does not alter the fact that he is now on his way to Turkish headquarters at Deraa with his information. No use to cry over the dead camel. We must stop him.”

“Stop him!” almost shrieked the furious sheik. “As well stop the eagle! At this minute he must be beyond Nisib on his way to Deraa!”

Lawrence smiled quietly, and there was in that smile the confidence that had won his way for him with these turbulent tribes of Araby. “We can send the eagle to stop the eagle.” He jerked a thumb at the airman.

Old Auda’s face fell. In his rage he had forgotten that such things as airplanes existed. “Wellah,” he laughed sheepishly, “my mind is as a little child’s.” And then turning eagerly on Burke: “You will go and stop the dog—and save my honor, el Bourque?”

The airman grinned. “Always willing to do anything in reason, O sheik!”

Lawrence turned on him. “If he gets into Deraa with his information of our layout and plans we’re lost, Burke. Better get off at once. Take some bombs with you. May be able to stop him with them if no other way.”

Burke rose to his feet. “I’m off,” he said.

“May the world be wide to you!” cried old Auda, enthusiastically.

“Allah send it,” Burke replied, and hurried out of the tent.

* * * *

Ten minutes later he was aloft and headed westward toward the Damascus-Medina Railway fifty miles away. Hussein ibn Zaid, one of the minor sheiks of the Weled Ali, had come into Azrak a month before with soft words and promises. Although the rest of his tribe still adhered to their Turkish allegiance he, by Allah, had come to throw his lot into the keeping of el Auruns (Lawrence). So he said. But Auda had muttered darkly in his beard over the coffee, growling that the Weled Ali were the sons of liars and deceivers. It had taken the whole of Lawrence’s consummate tact to keep the peace, but he had insisted that a Weled Ali repentant was worthy of reception into the Arab cause. For four weeks Hussein had eaten the bread and salt of the Revolt at Azrak, and incidentally used his eyes and ears as only an Arab can. Having drunk to his fill at the well of information, he had slipped away silently in the night, and here was Auda to testify to his treachery. Burke knew full well that if the fellow got to Deraa and poured his story into the ear of Djevid Pasha, the Turkish general there, that not only the advanced Arab force at Azrak, but the whole Revolt itself would be put in jeopardy. For Lawrence, these last few weeks, had been organizing a bold plan of campaign that depended for its success on its secrecy, and which, if the Turks knew about it, they could meet with great peril to the Arab cause.

Burke’s old B.E. airplane winged steadily westward. Even at this altitude of five thousand feet the air was furnace-like in one’s face. Below, the bare, brown earth was an oven, and he marveled at the fortitude of Auda and his men who had ridden through that hell all day to bring their tidings. And presently, far ahead, the rails of the Damascus-Medina line glimmered through the ground haze. Alongside the railway, Burke knew, lay the camel route to Deraa. And northwards, between Nisib and Deraa, he would find his quarry.

He swung the plane’s nose slightly to the right, in a few moments was flying directly above the gleaming rails a thousand feet up. The Turkish garrison at Nisib gave him a nasty five minutes with their anti-aircraft gun, filling the air around him with the white puffs of shrapnel, but he knew that gun and its gunners. They had potted at him so many times without success that now they couldn’t raise his blood pressure one degree. But once out of its range he flew even lower, so that the low hills on each side of the track were level with his wings. Intently he scanned the road below. Odd groups passed—some going north—some south; a detail of Turkish sentries guarding the right of way and on the lookout for one of Lawrence’s devastating dynamiting parties; a few small groups of Bedouins. But so far no sight of the cavalcade of Weled Ali. And then, suddenly, rounding a bend in the hills, he saw them a mile ahead. He looked to his bomb release. It was correct. Rattled a few rounds through his Vickers. Shoved the throttle full on.

They heard him coming. He saw them stop to search the sky, saw the sudden confusion in their ranks as they spotted him so close. But before they could so much as make up their minds what to do he was on them.

He had no bomb sights. Such refinements were beyond the facilities of that old ship, and he had to judge by eye. So he let only one bomb go as a sort of feeler. Splashing the sand up within a dozen yards of the closely huddled camel riders, it sent them flying in all directions. He banked about sharply. He had spotted Hussein ibn Zaid’s flaming red kafieh, and he knew his quarry. He swept even lower, dragged on the makeshift bomb release again. But the wires did not respond quickly enough and the thing crumped at least a hundred feet beyond the flying rider. Cursing, he swung on one wing and came at it again. Hussein was urging his camel up a narrow, precipitously walled ravine in search of shelter. Burke put the plane toward it.

And suddenly, as he did so, he heard something—an ominous chattering noise that came insistently above the ship’s roaring engine. He glanced sharply about. For the moment the blinding light of the sun glared into his eyes so that he could not see. And then he did see! Two Turkish planes—Fokkers—from Deraa, five hundred feet above him and swooping down. Hurriedly he faced front. Below, and a hundred yards or more ahead, the flying, red-topped rider was lashing his hujun toward an overhanging ledge of rock at the head of the ravine. He realized that, come what may, he must drive that last bomb at its target. He must do that before he looked to his own skin.

Something splashed the rail of the cockpit— leaden rain—close. But still he held doggedly to his mark. Another half minute. Suddenly, he drew the release wire again.

“Damnation take the bloody thing!” he yelled.

For the second time the ratchet had failed to deliver on time, the bomb dropping impotently on the crest of hill above and beyond the flying Arab. He had shot his bolt and lost. These two Turkish planes, the nearest on his very tail, would drive him back irrevocably into the desert. Hussein ibn Zaid would take his news safe to Deraa.

* * * *

Grinding his teeth in annoyance, the airman jerked back the stick and sent the ship climbing. In the next few minutes he would have to fight for his life, for the Germans had not been so stingy with their Turkish allies in the way of airplanes as the British had with the Arabs. The B.E. was antiquated—slow. These planes that snapped at his tail were late model Fokkers.

But a supremacy in machines is not enough to win an aerial combat. Jerry Burke, through force of circumstances, had had to learn the last and utmost possibilities of that old B.E.—and its kind—by long, hard experience. He could, as a flying officer from Allenby’s force in Egypt who once watched him in an aerial combat declared, do more tricks with a dud ship than a monkey could on a yard of grapevine. For ten minutes he dodged those Fokkers, slipping from under their snouts when they seemed to have him cold, leading them into one another so that twice they nearly collided, but all the time climbing. He wanted height. When he had height enough he would give them fight!

But always he kept a weather eye below—saw the Arab cavalcade reassemble beside the railway—saw it move off in a cloud of dust northwards. Was it possible that he might yet slip away from his pursuers sufficiently to drop on Hussein’s gang again and give them the benefit of his Vickers? Not likely—but one never knew. Suddenly, at five thousand feet, he reversed sharply on the nearest Fokker which was trying to come up under his blind spot behind. For ten seconds the Vickers chattered madly.

Surprised at meeting fight at last, the Fokker wobbled out of it and banked. But Number Two was coming at him head-on. Bringing the B.E.’s nose around slightly to get her in his sights, Burke let the gun speak again. For a moment the other ship held its way—until the deadly fire sent her diving out of it.

But Number One was coming up again. Once more the intrepid airman threw the old ship about and let his gun sing. But Number Two had nosed around, was firing at him broadside. The bullets whapped against the fuselage so close that he could hear the sound of them. He held his course, his thumb on the stick trigger, pouring his lead into the plane ahead. Something seared past his shoulder, cutting the cloth of his tunic. The B.E. gave an odd coughing sound. He was about to put her down when suddenly the enemy plane in his path sideslipped dizzily and then went into a spin.

He had no time to watch what happened to her, had to zoom out of the hellish hail that was coming in from the side from the other enemy plane. But two hundred feet higher up, as he eased off the laboring B.E., he glanced down and saw a great streamer of smoke rising from a falling Fokker.

A laugh shot from his lips. He knew it was luck. And yet, if he could drive the surviving Fokker down, or scare her off, there was still a chance that he might get another crack at Hussein ibn Zaid. He banked and dived at her—just as she turned her nose up to meet him. But she had seen what happened to her sister and side-slipped out of it. He had her scared! Jamming on the juice, he swung after her, letting the gun sing as she came into his sights. She put her nose up. He started after her. He was laughing in wild triumph. Another few minutes and he would be—

And then suddenly the old B.E. coughed and went as dead as a brass bull. Some perverse bullet must have got the engine somewhere—the feed-pipe probably—during that last mix-up. A groan escaped him. Ahead, the surviving Fokker was winging swiftly back toward Deraa. Below, and a half mile off to the left, he could still see Hussein ibn Zaid’s cavalcade. It was the irony of fate. By Allah, it was worse than that, for out of the mirage Deraa gleamed scarcely half a dozen miles northward.

He put the plane’s nose down and let her ride earthward. And for the next minute he scanned with anxious eyes the terrain below. East of the railroad, low basalt hills cut the earth up into scarred, uneven surfaces on which no plane could land. It was too far to the level desert for the ship to glide before making ground. He must find a place somewhere in the tortured hills below.

Suddenly Burke caught a gleam of white in the broken black hills—a sandy valley—a tiny, narrow interval in the desolation. A perilous place to land a plane, but he must make the attempt. He spiraled slowly down toward it—couldn’t get into the wind, had to take it with the wind under his tail. God, it looked narrow! He held his breath as the precipitous walls swept up. It seemed his wings brushed them on each side. She bumped— bumped—

He let out a sharp cry. A jagged rock lay fair in the path of the wheels. He let his body go limp.

Crash!

The old B.E. leaped into the air like a startled hen—one of her wing tips struck the ravine wall. She turned about. And bang, she put her nose crashing into the basalt. For a matter of some minutes Burke sat in the cockpit seat trying to get his wind. He had put his weight against the safety belt to let it take the strain—a trick he had learned from previous crashes—but in spite of that the impetus had all but knocked him out.

Unfastening the belt, he climbed dazedly out of the plane, gazed at her ruefully. She was a hopeless wreck.

“And, by God,” he growled, “I’m in a hopeless mess.”

* * * *

From where he stood it was a matter of seventy miles to Azrak oasis, with the burning Sirhan between. To attempt that on foot was suicide. But Jerry Burke had long ago planned what he would do if he were ever brought down in these parts. In the fuselage behind the flying seat were stored certain articles after which he now went. Item, one cotton cloak; item, one camel-hair kaftan; item, one brown kafieh with agals.

Having dragged these out, he proceeded to divest himself of his uniform and array himself in them. Then he took off his shoes and stockings. His feet and legs were as brown as an Arab’s, for he had followed Lawrence in training to live exactly the Arab life. Having flung his uniform into the cockpit of the ship, he took his revolver, glasses, water bottle and iron rations from her, and having wet his tunic sleeve in gasoline, struck a match to it. Before he was clear of the valley the old B.E. was in flames.

He struck up over the hills in the direction of the railway, looking for all the world a son of Ishmael. His intention was to return to Minifer and, in the guise of a native, steal or purchase a camel on which to make Azrak. He had also the hopes of running into Colonel Oldfield, who, with Abdulla el Zaagi, the captain of Lawrence’s bodyguard, had gone off the night before on a raid against Amman, which town lay ten miles south of Minifer.

He was still a quarter of a mile from the line, and not yet in sight of it, when he heard far to the south the whistle of a locomotive. The daily train moving north. Evidently Oldfield’s party hadn’t been able to detain her. He pressed on. Finally, from the top of the hill overlooking the railway, he could see smoke some distance below. He clambered down the long, steep bank to the line, started southward along it. There was quite a stiff south to north grade here and he was not surprised when he finally caught sight of the oncoming train to see that she was laboring badly. He stood aside and watched her as she panted up and past. Two engines drew a long line of empty box and flat cars with three passenger cars away down at the end.

As the second engine passed the driver yelled something at him—the Turk’s insult to the Bedu. Burke grinned back at him. His disguise was evidently good. But suddenly, as car after empty car went crawling by a thought leaped full-born into his brain. This train was going to Deraa. Once clear of the rise ahead the line ran downhill all the way. She would get there before Hussein ibn Zaid!

He leaped suddenly forward, grabbed the iron handrail on the rear of a passing truck and swung himself aboard. A few minutes later, between two cars, he was hanging on for dear life as the long train rattled and clanged down the grade toward Deraa. There was a wide grin on his dust-grimed face. He knew Deraa. He’d been in Deraa more than once. Hussein ibn Zaid hadn’t got clear of him yet!

* * * *

But though the scene from Deraa Station had all the familiarity of an old haunt, Burke could feel his nerves tingling as he dropped from the now stationary train and started across the wide, munition-piled square to the town. In spite of the fact that he had done all this before and had passed many a time for a native because of his familiarity with the Arab speech, it remained in the back of his head that if he were recognized his fate would be swift and certain. Every sense wary, he entered the crowded streets of the busy Trans-Jordanian town and pressed through the mob of Turkish soldiers and bawling natives that surged in every direction. All the time he moved toward the southern suburbs of the town, and at last found himself in the long rue behind whose high stone walls lived the more prosperous merchants.

Finally he stopped in front of a gate and knocked. It swung open presently, and the gate man, recognizing him with a start, stepped back quickly and let him in. The door clanged to abruptly.

“Is Ali Bender within?”

“Yes, Sidi.”

Burke strode across the flagged court and into the house. In the makad he found the corn merchant seated on the floor smoking an afternoon pipe. Ali leaped to his feet and greeted the airman cordially, yet with an uneasiness, realizing that danger had come to roost on his hearth again. In brief, terse sentences Burke explained the reason for his coming, and said in the end:

“We must prevent Hussein ibn Zaid from getting to Djevid Pasha. Hussein and his followers will be close to Deraa by this time.”

Ali flung out his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. “Who am I, el Bourque, to cope with the jackals of the desert? I am a corn merchant—a man of peace.”

Burke repeated grimly: “He must not get to Djevid with his information.”

Suddenly the merchant’s face cleared: “Wellah, Djevid is in Damascus today and will not return until the train arrives at midnight.”

“That won’t present Hussein spilling his soul to the Turkish staff in the meantime,” growled Burke.

Ali Bender shrugged his shoulders again. If it was the will of Allah that the jackal was to talk he, Ali, could do nothing.

“Can’t you get a crowd of your friends together and go out armed to meet him? He has only twenty men. You could seize him and bring him here,” cried the airman.

But again Ali Bender shrugged. The peaceful citizens of Deraa were not of a kidney to go on such an expedition against lean Arab fighters from the desert.

From pacing the floor anxiously Burke let out an oath and said brusquely: “I will go up to the roof and watch for his coming.”

“Go with Allah,” said Ali piously.

Leaning against the parapet of the flat-topped roof the airman gazed southward along the road. But though he stayed there an hour there came no sign of the Weled Ali. Finally, realizing that they must already have gotten into the town, he went below, growled at the still smoking merchant:

“They have slipped in while we were talking. Go, Ali, and get the talk of the bazaars. Find out where the devils are.”

Not without reluctance the corn merchant rose and waddled away. Burke began to pace the makad again like a caged lion, fretting at the delay. From time to time he took a dried date from the bowl on the stand and munched it. Somehow, someway he must put a spoke in Hussein ibn Zaid’s wheels, but how he did not know. After an hour Ali Bender returned.

“The dog entered from the west, el Bourque,” he said, “and came alone, leaving his men encamped beyond the railway in the hills. Rahail, the contractor, was at headquarters when he arrived there and heard his encounter with the chief of staff. ‘Ho, fellow,’ the dog cried, ‘where is thy master, Djevid?’ And when the Turk answered, ‘In es Shem,’ Hussein cursed into his beard. ‘I have information from el Auruns,’ he bellowed, ‘all that is in el Auruns’ mind I know.’ The Turk said: ‘Speak, O sheik!’ But Hussein cried: ‘I speak only to Djevid. And I speak only when Djevid lays gold at my feet.’ They have given him lodging in the palace of Abd el Kader until Djevid returns. Verily, el Bourque, there remain four hours in which a man may work to stop his tongue.”

Burke’s eyes gleamed. Four hours! In that time he must find some way to stave off this disaster that faced the Arab Revolt. He swung sharply on Ali.

“Where is the palace of Abd el Kader?”

“Beyond the bazaars, to the north, el Bourque. A large house with lions at the gate.”

“Come,” said the airman, “show me the way.”

* * * *

They went out. Darkness had fallen by this time and with muffled heads they made their way through a maze of narrow, twisted lanes that were practically deserted save for mendicants already settling down for the night in the more sheltering doorways. At length they were through the bazaar, beyond which stretched an open square, and beyond this again a row of pretentious native mansions surrounded by the inevitable high walls.

Halfway across the open space Ali Bender stopped, pointed with his staff and said: “That is Abd el Kader’s palace.” It was plain that Ali considered he had now done his bit.

Burke turned on him. “If I do not come back by dawn make inquiries of me in the morning and send whatever tidings there are to el Auruns.”

“May Allah grant it that you return to el Auruns yourself with such tidings, el Bourque.”

They shook hands. Ali Bender slipped away, wraith-like, into the darkness. Burke moved on toward the wall of the house that had been pointed out to him. He had still no plan in his head, was simply moving on toward some crisis which he would have to meet as best he could when it arose. But in the grim set of his jaw was evidence that he had made up his mind to tie Hussein ibn Zaid’s tongue or perish in the attempt.

A Turkish sentry plodded along the wall that faced the row of mansions, for many of the Turkish staff had their quarters in this neighborhood. Burke waited until the fellow had got well down to the end of his beat and then, crouching low, dashed forward. With a leap that took him several feet into the air he got a grip on the top of the wall and quickly dragged himself over its parapet. Dropping into the garden beyond, he proceeded to push his way through palm trees, acacias and shrubbery toward the house.

A light shone from a window whose shutters had been thrown wide to let in the cool night breeze. Toward this he crept, but on reaching it found it some distance above his head. A vine climbed up the side of the house. He took hold of it, found it bore his weight, drew himself carefully up, peered in the corner of the window. On the floor within sat two men, a short, squat, evil-featured Arab, who would be el Kader, and Hussein ibn Zaid. They were smoking bubble-pipes and chatting. Burke caught odd words, but realized more from Abd el Kader’s manner than from what he said that he was trying to pump the Bedouin. Hussein wasn’t being pumped. That wily one trusted no man and knew that his host would doublecross him with the greatest of pleasure.

Suddenly Burke heard a sound behind him. Dropping from the vine, he flung himself on the ground close to the wall and lay there palpitating. The crunch-crunch on a stick on the gravel walk came ever nearer. The muttering of a voice in guttural Arabic. Scarcely daring to breathe, he turned his head slightly, saw approaching a native with a long staff, one of those night watchmen the wealthier Arabs keep to guard their inner approaches. The fellow stopped directly opposite him, scarcely two yards away, and looked up at the window. The faint sound of voices within stirred in him that curiosity that is the mark of your true easterner. He took a couple of steps nearer, put his hand to his ear.

Supposing he, too, decided to climb the vine and further satisfy his curiosity! Tense, breathless, Burke’s grip tightened on his revolver barrel. If need be that he had to come to grips with this fellow he must knock him out silently, and before he could make an outcry. There ensued a horrible two minutes of uncertainty. And then, still muttering under his breath, the fellow moved off.

Rising to his knees Burke wiped the cold sweat from his dripping face and let out a sigh of relief. Once more he climbed the vine. Abd el Kader and his guest had risen, the former was saying: “In the morning, O sheik, we will go to Djevid Pasha and you will tell him your story.”

“Aiee, by Allah, and he will spread gold before the Weled Ali!” answered Hussein, wetting his narrow lips.

Abd el Kader took up the lamp and the two men moved out of the room. Hardly had the heavy curtains fallen behind them than Burke had drawn himself half in the window. A moment later he was standing in the dark room, listening tensely. He slipped across the floor stealthily, put his ear to the curtains. Voices were sounding fainter up the stairs and along an upper hall. He pushed through the curtains, crept along with a hand against the wall, until he came to steps.

Above a door opened.

“The sleep of Allah, O sheik.”

“And the bounty of forgetfulness, O Abd el Kader.”

The door closed. The light moved further along—disappeared.

Suddenly Burke saw his problem unwinding itself. Presently he would ascend the stairs, enter Hussein ibn Zaid’s room, wake the fellow with his revolver to his head, bind and gag him and carry him back to Ali Bender’s place. Ali would produce camels. Then away out of Deraa. One snag, and one only, continued to trouble him. Hussein’s followers lay encamped beyond the railway. They, also, must know Lawrence’s plans. How could he deal with them single-handed?

It was a question he could not answer. He must go on with what lay at hand and let the more distant problem rest in the meantime.

* * * *

A quarter of an hour later he stood outside the door that he had heard open and close in the hall above. The house lay shrouded in silence. Guest and host slept.

The airman’s heart pounded against his breast. So much depended on the next few minutes. The slightest accident could spoil everything and put him into direst jeopardy. His hand went out stealthily toward the door, feeling for the handle. Suddenly he drew it back again, held his breath, listened intently. Had something moved behind him or was it his overstrained imagination? A minute passed. And slowly he got that ominous impression, that sensation that strikes some other than the ordinary senses, that he was not alone in that upper hall, that someone else in that upper hall knew he was there. He swung slowly around, his grip tight on his revolver.

Not a sound broke the silence. His straining eyes saw no movement. Minutes passed. Finally, he told himself that he was fancying things. And then the urgency of his business faced him toward the door again. This time his hand reached out, touched the handle—and then again he heard that faint flutter of movement. Too late he swung. A pair of iron arms went about him, pinioning his own arms to his side. A voice hissed:

“Yusef!”

Curtains parted up the hall. An Arab servant appeared carrying a lamp in one hand and a long-bladed knife in the other. At the same moment the door alongside opened and Hussein’s face appeared in it.

“By the life of Allah, what is this?”

Although Burke had exerted his strength to the fullest he had not been able to break the grip of those iron arms. Suddenly they loosed—a hand found his wrist, twisted it, his revolver clattered to the floor. To his astonishment he found himself staring down into the evil face of the squat Abd el Kader. This potbellied, middle-aged town Arab had handled him as though he had been a child!

The servant held the light into his face.

Suddenly Hussein yelped: “By Allah and the prophet of Allah, it is the Inglezi birdman, el Bourque!”

“What!” cried Abd el Kader. “That one?”

“No other, O father of miracles!”

“Then Allah be praised, the reward that Djevid has offered for his capture alive or dead is mine! Bind him, Yusef! And you, O sheik, watch the prowling Christian dog while I go to the headquarters of Djevid. By this time he has returned from Damascus. Wellah, I will not wait until morning lest he slip through my hands!”

Five minutes later Burke found himself standing in the makad below, his arms bound tightly to his side. In front of him on the divan sat the Arab sheik, and Hussein’s crafty eyes were etched in cruelty. Abd el Kader had gone some minutes since into the night to bring a squad of Turkish gendarmerie. Under his breath the airman cursed steadily the damnable luck that had gotten him into this hole. He had failed utterly and disastrously. Within an hour he would pay the penalty of that failure.

“Yah!” the Arab taunted him. “The Inglezi are fools and the sons of fools—may their plans come to destruction! I, Hussein, have made a laughing stock of that little cock of the dunghill, el Auruns. And now I will see you, the dropper of the eggs of death, hang on the gibbet.”

Burke forced a mirthless laugh. “The stupid talk in their pride, O sheik,” he said, grimly. “But one day el Auruns and his followers will requite you fully for your treachery, dog that you are.”

The Arab leaped to his feet, eyes blazing, the saliva slobbering from the corners of his thick-lipped, ugly mouth. In his hand he brandished his knife. “By Allah,” he bellowed, “I’ll cut your impudent tongue from your head!”

Suddenly his eye lighted on the lamp. A sinister grimace swept across his face. “Aiee!” he cried. “Aiee—I shall have amusement! I will teach you to talk in folly to Hussein ibn Zaid!”

Crossing to the lamp, he laid the blade of his knife across the top of the chimney and turned the wick up further. With a start of horror Burke realized what he was up to. Torture!

He said grimly: “By the head of thy father, Hussein ib Zaid, if this comes to el Auruns’ ear the terrors of gehenna will fall on you and your people!”

The Arab laughed, his lips twisting sinisterly over his dirty fangs of teeth. He lifted the knife from the chimney, tested its heat, put it back again. The watching airman knew what was in store for him. When that knife had taken on sufficient heat it would be used to mark him, and in the process he would suffer the tortures of hell. The Arabs were past masters in this sort of thing, had nothing to learn.

Finally, Hussein took the knife up again, held it near to his cheek—chuckled—turned. “Now,” he cried, “now I will leave the mark of the Weled Ali upon the Christian pig!”

* * * *

He came closer. Standing a yard away, he moved the blade slowly toward Burke’s eyes. He would move it closer and closer until the heat seared through even closed eyelids, scorched the cornea, brought blindness.

Burke stood his ground, realized that to struggle would be only to increase the agony. Nearer— nearer—already the pain was beginning to strike in toward his brain. Another minute or two and—

Something moved beyond the Arab. Because of the burning knife so close to his eyes Burke saw only a shadow against the ceiling. But suddenly the knife blade was swept away. He found himself staring wide-eyed at the scene being enacted before him. A muffled gasp had croaked from Hussein ibn Zaid’s throat. His eyes darted from their sockets. And then a long knife blade flashed beneath his chin, opening his neck from ear to ear.

As he plunged forward at Burke’s feet, a well-known voice cried:

“Wellah, I am become a deliverer, el Bourque!”

Beyond the fallen Arab stood Abdulla el Zaagi, the captain of Lawrence’s bodyguard and one of the wildest, quick-witted rascals in Arabia, showing his teeth in a wide grin.

“How did you get here?” the astonished airman gasped.

“Wellah, el Bourque, this afternoon when I was returning with el Ollafeel and his party from Amman we saw your bird fighting two Turkish birds. We were then on the other side of the hills to east of the railway and on our way back to Azrak. When your bird came down we hurried into the hills to succor you, but, wellah, you had vanished and there was nothing but that burning bird. Then I saw your footprints on the sand and I said to el Ollafeel: ‘El Bourque has gone in disguise to Minifer to get a camel!’ And then I mounted my hujun and set off after you. By Allah, I stood overlooking the railway shouting at the top of my voice when you leaped aboard the train. To el Ollafeel I said then: ‘He has gone to Deraa, on what business Allah knows, but I go after him!’ So I rode. And I rode straight to the house of Ali Bender, who told me you were here! But come, el Bourque, we must go!”

He stooped, picked the lifeless Weled Ali up and heaved him over his shoulder.

“What are you going to do with him?” Burke demanded.

“Bear him as a gift to el Auruns!” chuckled the grinning Arab. “To the end, wellah, that the Weled Ali hear of it!”

Out through the window. Through the garden. Over the wall. They were hurrying across the square when the sound of voices behind halted them. A group of shadows moved toward the house of Abd el Kader. Djevid and his staff! Before they reached the far side of the square the hue and cry rose behind them. The airman’s escape had been discovered. They hurried on to the house of Ali Bender.

A quarter of an hour later they started out of the corn merchant’s yard on foot, and leading the Zaagi’s camel, across whose back, trussed up in a large canvas bag, rode Hussein ibn Zaid. But they had hardly got their nose through the gate when the shouts of soldiers hurrying down the road toward them drove them back. Ali Bender shot the gate to nervously behind them, and the Zaagi, turning on Burke, hissed: “You shall have to ride, el Bourque, as Hussein rides. Go, my uncle”—he swung on Ali—“and fetch another bag.”

Burke had ridden in strange fashions, but never in one so strange as this. Tied up inside the big canvas bag and swaying against the hujun’s ribs, he was balanced on the other side by the Weled Ali sheik—the living and the dead—a grim cargo!

Up the street the Zaagi led his mount “Yakh, O my uncle!” he encouraged it.

Swaying with the camel’s movements and sweating from the close confinement, Burke kept wondering if after all he should have allowed the Zaagi to tie him up this way. He felt absolutely helpless—was absolutely helpless—could do nothing. A sense of apprehension—of dread—took possession of him. Through the night he could hear in various parts of the town the cries of the Turkish soldiers who were searching for him. The approaches to the town would be guarded. Could they get through?

The Zaagi, under the guise of talking to his mount, cried out: “A stout heart, O my uncle! We are close to the square by the railway station. A little further now and there will be rest for tired bones.”

And then suddenly the rattle of a gun and a voice: “Who goes?”

“Bedu!” the Zaagi replied.

“Halt!”

The camel jerked to a stop.

“Who are you?”

“I,” replied the quick-witted Zaagi impudently, “am of the Weled Ali and return to my encampment beyond the railway.” Burke had told him about the Arab encampment and the clever fellow was using it after his own fashion to their advantage.

“What have you got in those bags?”

“Forage! Men must eat, O soldier!”

Suddenly Burke got an awful prod in the stomach—a prod that almost knocked his wind out. The sentry had banged the butt of his rifle against the bag in which he was trussed.

“You are Weled Ali, eh?” exclaimed the Turk. “By Allah, your sheik has disappeared with a captured Inglezi birdman—and there has been blood spilt.”

“What!” yelped the Zaagi. “By the truth of Allah, I go to the encampment to rouse the tribe. They shall know whose blood it is that has been spilt. Yakh, O my uncle!” He gave the camel a thump on the rump, and the beast lurched forward, the soldier’s derisive laugh following.

“Aiee, O my uncle,” said the Zaagi softly a little further on, “for stupidity, the Turk!”

Presently the beast lumbered up and over the railway embankment, and Abdulla jerked her to a stop. A minute later Burke was free, wiping the sweat from his face. With a gasp of relief he said: “Thank God, that’s over!”

* * * *

They were at the foot of the hills beyond the railway. Suddenly he said: “We must find the Weled Ali, Abdulla! You say el Ollafeel and his men are on the other side of the hills. Let us hurry on and join them. They will help us search.”

Abdulla shook his head. “It is too late for that, el Bourque. We cannot come by them short of another hour. By that time it will be dawn. Let us leave these Weled Ali to their dreams! Have we not got their sheik?”

But Burke said grimly: “We can’t leave them while they have tongues in their head. If we do not take them with us all my work has been in vain.”

The Zaagi shrugged impatiently. Arab-like, now that the excitement of the escape was over, he was all for the easiest way out. Burke stood there for a moment with his chin in his hand. And then he said: “Give me your rifle. We go to find the Weled Ali. Come softly after me.”

There were three likely places on the western slopes of these hills where the Arab tribesmen might be encamped—three sets of wells. Burke led the way to the nearest, left the Zaagi a quarter of a mile short of it, and crept on his hands and knees. No houses of hair encircled the hard-baked hollow. Returning to the Arab, he ordered him to follow and made his way up the jagged basalt rocks towards the higher well. But it, too, was vacant. By this time a full half hour had passed and the sky above them was taking on the faint transparency of the dawn.

Time was pressing. A little while now and the Arabs would waken—when that happened it would be too late to carry out the plan he had in mind. He hurried on up the hill to the third well—the Zaagi coming up well in the rear with the camel. And suddenly, topping a slight rise, he saw what he wanted. Tents in the shallow valley below. Camels tethered off to one side. He hurried back to the Zaagi, told him to leave his hujun there and led the way up again.

“We’ll creep in on them while they sleep and put the gun to their heads. But first, before we waken them, we must snaffle their rifles. Come!”

On hands and knees they made their way slowly towards the tents below. Every minute the sky was getting lighter. A slip now—a prematurely wakened Weled Ali—and the game would be up with success a hair’s breadth away. At the opening of the first tent Burke turned, pointed on to the next one, and, when the Zaagi slipped past him, stuck his head gingerly inside. Three shadowy figures slept side by side. He crawled further. The air was fetid from sleeping breath.

He could hear his heart hammering again, could feel his body trembling. One thought kept ringing through his brain: “You mustn’t fumble now!” On he moved. At the sleeper’s heads he found what he sought—three rifles—Lee Enfield’s supplied by Lawrence to these treacherous devils. With infinite caution he took hold of them, started dragging them towards the entrance. He was almost out when one of the sleepers grunted—turned uneasily on his side. He flattened out—waited with taut breath. Would the fellow wake?

With a gorgeous sensation of relief he heard the fellow’s breathing become regular again—crept outside. Ten minutes later they had a pile of rifles in the open ground between the tents—nineteen of them.

“What now—into the well?” The Zaagi pointed towards the three holes a dozen yards further on. But Burke shook his head. These Lee Infield’s were too valuable to throw away. He said: “Come on—we’ll waken them now!”

The Zaagi leapt with a laugh to his feet. “Ayah ho, ya Weled Ali!” he cried.

Commotion within the tents. A voice: “It is Hussein returned!” Men with sleep in their eyes tumbled out—let out sudden squawks of amazement at the sight of Burke and the Zaagi— and came to a halt.

Burke said grimly, his rifle pointed at them: “We march, O Weled Ali, back to Azrak! And you go on foot!”

In the rapidly increasing light the cornered tribesmen glanced furtively from side to side for some avenue of escape. The presence of the Zaagi told them plainly that they were in for trouble, but, used to trouble, these sons of the desert were ready to seize any loophole.

“Go and lose the camels,” Burke said to Abdulla, “We will drive them before us.”

While he kept the tribesmen covered with his rifle the Zaagi moved towards the camels. Suddenly, the latter let out an exclamation of alarm. He got close to the edge of the plateau in which the wells lay and could look over it down the narrow ravine that led towards Deraa, a hundred feet down which his own camel stood browsing at the dead shrubs of acacia. Up that ravine, and less than a quarter of a mile away, came a company of Turkish cavalry that had evidently been sent from the town to search the hills for Burke. He rushed back and told the airman. A tremor of excitement passed through the listening Weled Ali—and their dark eyes gleamed at the thought of approaching revenge.

“Come,” cried Abdulla, “we must seize two of their camels and fly!”

Burke backed away from the watching Arabs and glanced over the edge. At the first sight of the approaching Turks it seemed that there was nothing else to do but follow the Zaagis’ advice. They certainly couldn’t get away with the Weled Ali, who would have to travel on foot, since to allow them to mount their camels would be folly. He turned and said to Abdulla: “If we run away now we have failed. These fellows will tell the Turks of el Auruns plans. By Allah, if we didn’t have the treacherous devils at our backs we might hold those Turks for a while!”

* * * *

The Zaagis’ face screwed itself into thought. He turned—measured the waiting tribesmen with a fierce glance— and then suddenly he dashed towards the wells, and glanced over the rim of the nearest. It was the dry season and not more than a few feet of water remained in their bottoms fifteen feet down.

Suddenly he turned with a laugh. “Come, Weled Ali!” he yelled.

The Weled Ali glanced at one another doubtfully, held their place. Abdulla rushed at them furiously with clubbed rifle. “Wellah, have I not spoken!”

While the bewildered Burke watched, the Zaagi drove the tribesmen to the edge of the nearest well. “Jump!” he cried.

Suddenly Burke knew—and a chuckle rumbled from him. Within the next minute there was not a sign of Hussein ibn Zaid’s followers. They stood to their knees in water cursing at the bottom of the three wells.

In the meantime Burke had dragged the seized rifles to the edge of the plateau. By the time the Zaagi reached his side he was leaning over the edge. As the quick-witted Arab dropped beside him his gun spoke down the defile. By this time the Turks were little over a hundred yards below, and coming single file up the narrow high-walled path that was the only approach to the wells. As Burke’s shot splashed against the rocky wall beside him the officer at their head halted, holding up the line. As the Zaagi’s rifle spat his horse crumpled under him.

Burke turned to the Zaagi grinning: “With a dozen like you, Abdulla, I’d guarantee to outwit the whole Turkish army.”

“Verily, there was a wise midwife with my mother when I was born,” retorted the Zaagi with a laugh.

The Turks began to spread out, clambering up the walls of the ravine. It was quite obviously their idea to creep up in a wide semicircle, finding what shelter they could. For the next ten minutes the two rifles at the edge of the plateau barked steadily— and more than one still figure on that scarred hillside attested to the soundness of their aim. Yet all the time the Turks came steadily nearer. Outnumbered forty to one, Burke realized at the end of the half hour that sooner or later the enemy would get close enough to rush, knew that the weight of numbers would inevitably tell. And yet he kept there firing, hoping against hope.

Another quarter of an hour. Six more Turks lay stiff under the risen sun, but that semicircle of doom came steadily closer—was now at the nearest point, little more than a hundred feet away. He cursed the scattered boulders that hid them, behind which they were able to make their approach. Suddenly, a shout rose—a cry of command. The Turks rose to a man, started forward on the dash up the remainder of the steep slope.

The two defenders poured a steady volley of lead into them. The sweat rolled down their faces. They had no time to reload now and as soon as the magazine of one rifle was emptied they threw it aside and snatched up another from the pile beside them. For another minute it was desperate fighting, but finally the attackers, unable to stand longer under the murderous fire, dropped to what shelter they could get fifty feet below. Another rush and they would reach their objective.

And then suddenly, out of the hills behind him, rose a wild Arab yell.

“Beni Sakr…Beni Sakr!”

The battle cry of Lawrence’s Arab allies. Down the hill they rushed with an English Colonel at their head—Oldfield ! It was the party the Zaagi had left last night on the other side of the hills, and who had come this way in the hopes of picking him up on his way out of Deraa. A moment later they swept on to the succor of the two defenders just as the nearest Turk was within a yard of the swinging butt of Burke’s rifle. Presently, the remnants of a company of Turkish cavalry was on its way pellmell towards Deraa. And then the long cavalcade of victorious Arabs rose eastward, with nineteen bound Weled Ali and a dead sheik riding before them—and the wild song of the warrior on their lips.

THE CRIME OF THE BRIGADIER, by Arthur Conan Doyle

In all the great hosts of France there was only one officer towards whom the English of Wellington’s Army retained a deep, steady, and unchangeable hatred. There were plunderers among the French, and men of violence, gamblers, duellists, and rouÃ©s. All these could be forgiven, for others of their kidney were to be found among the ranks of the English. But one officer of Massena’s force had committed a crime which was unspeakable, unheard of, abominable; only to be alluded to with curses late in the evening, when a second bottle had loosened the tongues of men. The news of it was carried back to England, and country gentlemen who knew little of the details of the war grew crimson with passion when they heard of it, and yeomen of the shires raised freckled fists to Heaven and swore. And yet who should be the doer of this dreadful deed but our friend the Brigadier, Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans, gay-riding, plume-tossing, dÃ©bonnaire, the darling of the ladies and of the six brigades of light cavalry.

But the strange part of it is that this gallant gentleman did this hateful thing, and made himself the most unpopular man in the Peninsula, without ever knowing that he had done a crime for which there is hardly a name amid all the resources of our language. He died of old age, and never once in that imperturbable self-confidence which adorned or disfigured his character knew that so many thousand Englishmen would gladly have hanged him with their own hands. On the contrary, he numbered this adventure among those other exploits which he has given to the world, and many a time he chuckled and hugged himself as he narrated it to the eager circle who gathered round him in that humble cafÃ© where, between his dinner and his dominoes, he would tell, amid tears and laughter, of that inconceivable Napoleonic past when France, like an angel of wrath, rose up, splendid and terrible, before a cowering continent. Let us listen to him as he tells the story in his own way and from his own point of view.

You must know, my friends, said he, that it was towards the end of the year eighteen hundred and ten that I and Massena and others pushed Wellington backwards until we had hoped to drive him and his army into the Tagus. But when we were still twenty-five miles from Lisbon we found that we were betrayed, for what had this Englishman done but build an enormous line of works and forts at a place called Torres Vedras, so that even we were unable to get through them! They lay across the whole Peninsula, and our army was so far from home that we did not dare to risk a reverse, and we had already learned at Busaco that it was no child’s play to fight against these people. What could we do, then, but sit down in front of these lines and blockade them to the best of our power? There we remained for six months, amid such anxieties that Massena said afterwards that he had not one hair which was not white upon his body. For my own part, I did not worry much about our situation, but I looked after our horses, who were in great need of rest and green fodder. For the rest, we drank the wine of the country and passed the time as best we might. There was a lady at Santarem—but my lips are sealed. It is the part of a gallant man to say nothing, though he may indicate that he could say a great deal.

One day Massena sent for me, and I found him in his tent with a great plan pinned upon the table. He looked at me in silence with that single piercing eye of his, and I felt by his expression that the matter was serious. He was nervous and ill at ease, but my bearing seemed to reassure him. It is good to be in contact with brave men.

“Colonel Etienne Gerard,” said he, “I have always heard that you are a very gallant and enterprising officer.”

It was not for me to confirm such a report, and yet it would be folly to deny it, so I clinked my spurs together and saluted.

“You are also an excellent rider.”

I admitted it.

“And the best swordsman in the six brigades of light cavalry.”

Massena was famous for the accuracy of his information.

“Now,” said he, “if you will look at this plan you will have no difficulty in understanding what it is that I wish you to do. These are the lines of Torres Vedras. You will perceive that they cover a vast space, and you will realize that the English can only hold a position here and there. Once through the lines you have twenty-five miles of open country which lie between them and Lisbon. It is very important to me to learn how Wellington’s troops are distributed throughout that space, and it is my wish that you should go and ascertain.”

His words turned me cold.

“Sir,” said I, “it is impossible that a colonel of light cavalry should condescend to act as a spy.”

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You would not be a Hussar if you were not a hot-head,” said he. “If you will listen you will understand that I have not asked you to act as a spy. What do you think of that horse?”

He had conducted me to the opening of his tent, and there was a Chasseur who led up and down a most admirable creature. He was a dapple grey, not very tall—a little over fifteen hands perhaps—but with the short head and splendid arch of the neck which comes with the Arab blood. His shoulders and haunches were so muscular, and yet his legs so fine, that it thrilled me with joy just to gaze upon him. A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood. You can think how it was in the year ‘10.

“This,” said Massena, “is Voltigeur, the swiftest horse in our army. What I desire is that you should start to-night, ride round the lines upon the flank, make your way across the enemy’s rear, and return upon the other flank, bringing me news of his dispositions. You will wear a uniform, and will, therefore, if captured, be safe from the death of a spy. It is probable that you will get through the lines unchallenged, for the posts are very scattered. Once through, in daylight you can outride anything which you meet, and if you keep off the roads you may escape entirely unnoticed. If you have not reported yourself by to-morrow night, I will understand that you are taken, and I will offer them Colonel Petrie in exchange.”

Ah, how my heart swelled with pride and joy as I sprang into the saddle and galloped this grand horse up and down to show the Marshal the mastery which I had of him! He was magnificent—we were both magnificent, for Massena clapped his hands and cried out in his delight. It was not I, but he, who said that a gallant beast deserves a gallant rider. Then, when for the third time, with my panache flying and my dolman streaming behind me, I thundered past him, I saw upon his hard old face that he had no longer any doubt that he had chosen the man for his purpose. I drew my sabre, raised the hilt to my lips in salute, and galloped on to my own quarters. Already the news had spread that I had been chosen for a mission, and my little rascals came swarming out of their tents to cheer me. Ah! it brings the tears to my old eyes when I think how proud they were of their Colonel. And I was proud of them also. They deserved a dashing leader.

The night promised to be a stormy one, which was very much to my liking. It was my desire to keep my departure most secret, for it was evident that if the English heard that I had been detached from the army they would naturally conclude that something important was about to happen. My horse was taken, therefore, beyond the picket line, as if for watering, and I followed and mounted him there. I had a map, a compass, and a paper of instructions from the Marshal, and with these in the bosom of my tunic and my sabre at my side, I set out upon my adventure.

A thin rain was falling and there was no moon, so you may imagine that it was not very cheerful. But my heart was light at the thought of the honour which had been done me and the glory which awaited me. This exploit should be one more in that brilliant series which was to change my sabre into a bÃ¢ton. Ah, how we dreamed, we foolish fellows, young, and drunk with success! Could I have foreseen that night as I rode, the chosen man of sixty thousand, that I should spend my life planting cabbages on a hundred francs a month! Oh, my youth, my hopes, my comrades! But the wheel turns and never stops. Forgive me, my friends, for an old man has his weakness.

My route, then, lay across the face of the high ground of Torres Vedras, then over a streamlet, past a farmhouse which had been burned down and was now only a landmark, then through a forest of young cork oaks, and so to the monastery of San Antonio, which marked the left of the English position. Here I turned south and rode quietly over the downs, for it was at this point that Massena thought that it would be most easy for me to find my way unobserved through the position. I went very slowly, for it was so dark that I could not see my hand in front of me. In such cases I leave my bridle loose and let my horse pick its own way. Voltigeur went confidently forward, and I was very content to sit upon his back and to peer about me, avoiding every light. For three hours we advanced in this cautious way, until it seemed to me that I must have left all danger behind me. I then pushed on more briskly, for I wished to be in the rear of the whole army by daybreak. There are many vineyards in these parts which in winter become open plains, and a horseman finds few difficulties in his way.

But Massena had underrated the cunning of these English, for it appears that there was not one line of defence, but it was three, and it was the third, which was the most formidable, through which I was at that instant passing. As I rode, elated at my own success, a lantern flashed suddenly before me, and I saw the glint of polished gun-barrels and the gleam of a red coat.

“Who goes there?” cried a voice—such a voice! I swerved to the right and rode like a madman, but a dozen squirts of fire came out of the darkness, and the bullets whizzed all round my ears. That was no new sound to me, my friends, though I will not talk like a foolish conscript and say that I have ever liked it. But at least it had never kept me from thinking clearly, and so I knew that there was nothing for it but to gallop hard, and try my luck elsewhere. I rode round the English picket, and then, as I heard nothing more of them, I concluded rightly that I had at last come through their defences. For five miles I rode south, striking a tinder from time to time to look at my pocket compass. And then in an instant—I feel the pang once more as my memory brings back the moment—my horse, without a sob or stagger, fell stone dead beneath me!

I had not known it, but one of the bullets from that infernal picket had passed through his body. The gallant creature had never winced or weakened, but had gone while life was in him. One instant I was secure on the swiftest, most graceful horse in Massena’s army. The next he lay upon his side, worth only the price of his hide, and I stood there that most helpless, most ungainly of creatures, a dismounted Hussar. What could I do with my boots, my spurs, my trailing sabre? I was far inside the enemy’s lines. How could I hope to get back again? I am not ashamed to say that I, Etienne Gerard, sat upon my dead horse and sank my face in my hands in my despair. Already the first streaks were whitening the east. In half an hour it would be light. That I should have won my way past every obstacle and then at this last instant be left at the mercy of my enemies, my mission ruined, and myself a prisoner—was it not enough to break a soldier’s heart?

But courage, my friends! We have these moments of weakness, the bravest of us; but I have a spirit like a slip of steel, for the more you bend it the higher it springs. One spasm of despair, and then a brain of ice and a heart of fire. All was not yet lost. I who had come through so many hazards would come through this one also. I rose from my horse and considered what had best be done.

And first of all it was certain that I could not get back. Long before I could pass the lines it would be broad daylight. I must hide myself for the day, and then devote the next night to my escape. I took the saddle, holsters, and bridle from poor Voltigeur, and I concealed them among some bushes, so that no one finding him could know that he was a French horse. Then, leaving him lying there, I wandered on in search of some place where I might be safe for the day. In every direction I could see camp-fires upon the sides of the hills, and already figures had begun to move around them. I must hide quickly, or I was lost.

But where was I to hide? It was a vineyard in which I found myself, the poles of the vines still standing, but the plants gone. There was no cover there. Besides, I should want some food and water before another night had come. I hurried wildly onwards through the waning darkness, trusting that chance would be my friend. And I was not disappointed. Chance is a woman, my friends, and she has her eye always upon a gallant Hussar.

Well, then, as I stumbled through the vineyard, something loomed in front of me, and I came upon a great square house with another long, low building upon one side of it. Three roads met there, and it was easy to see that this was the posada, or wine-shop. There was no light in the windows, and everything was dark and silent, but, of course, I knew that such comfortable quarters were certainly occupied, and probably by someone of importance. I have learned, however, that the nearer the danger may really be the safer the place, and so I was by no means inclined to trust myself away from this shelter. The low building was evidently the stable, and into this I crept, for the door was unlatched. The place was full of bullocks and sheep, gathered there, no doubt, to be out of the clutches of marauders. A ladder led to a loft, and up this I climbed, and concealed myself very snugly among some bales of hay upon the top. This loft had a small open window, and I was able to look down upon the front of the inn and also up the road. There I crouched and waited to see what would happen.

It was soon evident that I had not been mistaken when I had thought that this might be the quarters of some person of importance. Shortly after daybreak an English light dragoon arrived with a despatch, and from then onwards the place was in a turmoil, officers continually riding up and away. Always the same name was upon their lips: “Sir Stapleton—Sir Stapleton.” It was hard for me to lie there with a dry moustache and watch the great flagons which were brought out by the landlord to these English officers. But it amused me to look at their fresh-coloured, clean-shaven, careless faces, and to wonder what they would think if they knew that so celebrated a person was lying so near to them. And then, as I lay and watched, I saw a sight which filled me with surprise.

It is incredible the insolence of these English! What do you suppose Milord Wellington had done when he found that Massena had blockaded him and that he could not move his army? I might give you many guesses. You might say that he had raged, that he had despaired, that he had brought his troops together and spoken to them about glory and the fatherland before leading them to one last battle. No, Milord did none of these things. But he sent a fleet ship to England to bring him a number of fox-dogs, and he with his officers settled himself down to chase the fox. It is true what I tell you. Behind the lines of Torres Vedras these mad Englishmen made the fox-chase three days in the week. We had heard of it in the camp, and now I was myself to see that it was true.

For, along the road which I have described, there came these very dogs, thirty or forty of them, white and brown, each with its tail at the same angle, like the bayonets of the Old Guard. My faith, but it was a pretty sight! And behind and amidst them there rode three men with peaked caps and red coats, whom I understood to be the hunters. After them came many horsemen with uniforms of various kinds, stringing along the roads in twos and threes, talking together and laughing. They did not seem to be going above a trot, and it appeared to me that it must indeed be a slow fox which they hoped to catch. However, it was their affair, not mine, and soon they had all passed my window and were out of sight. I waited and I watched, ready for any chance which might offer.

Presently an officer, in a blue uniform not unlike that of our flying artillery, came cantering down the road—an elderly, stout man he was, with grey side-whiskers. He stopped and began to talk with an orderly officer of dragoons, who waited outside the inn, and it was then that I learned the advantage of the English which had been taught me. I could hear and understand all that was said.

“Where is the meet?” said the officer, and I thought that he was hungering for his bifstek. But the other answered him that it was near Altara, so I saw that it was a place of which he spoke.

“You are late, Sir George,” said the orderly.

“Yes, I had a court-martial. Has Sir Stapleton Cotton gone?”

At this moment a window opened, and a handsome young man in a very splendid uniform looked out of it.

“Holloa, Murray!” said he. “These cursed papers keep me, but I will be at your heels.”

“Very good, Cotton. I am late already, so I will ride on.”

“You might order my groom to bring round my horse,” said the young general at the window to the orderly below, while the other went on down the road.

The orderly rode away to some outlying stable, and then in a few minutes there came a smart English groom with a cockade in his hat, leading by the bridle a horse—and, oh, my friends, you have never known the perfection to which a horse can attain until you have seen a first-class English hunter. He was superb: tall, broad, strong, and yet as graceful and agile as a deer. Coal black he was in colour, and his neck, and his shoulder, and his quarters, and his fetlocks—how can I describe him all to you? The sun shone upon him as on polished ebony, and he raised his hoofs in a little, playful dance so lightly and prettily, while he tossed his mane and whinnied with impatience. Never have I seen such a mixture of strength and beauty and grace. I had often wondered how the English Hussars had managed to ride over the Chasseurs of the Guards in the affair at Astorga, but I wondered no longer when I saw the English horses.

There was a ring for fastening bridles at the door of the inn, and the groom tied the horse there while he entered the house. In an instant I had seen the chance which Fate had brought to me. Were I in that saddle I should be better off than when I started. Even Voltigeur could not compare with this magnificent creature. To think is to act with me. In one instant I was down the ladder and at the door of the stable. The next I was out and the bridle was in my hand. I bounded into the saddle. Somebody, the master or the man, shouted wildly behind me. What cared I for his shouts! I touched the horse with my spurs, and he bounded forward with such a spring that only a rider like myself could have sat him. I gave him his head and let him go—it did not matter to me where, so long as we left this inn far behind us. He thundered away across the vineyards, and in a very few minutes I had placed miles between myself and my pursuers. They could no longer tell, in that wild country, in which direction I had gone. I knew that I was safe, and so, riding to the top of a small hill, I drew my pencil and note-book from my pocket and proceeded to make plans of those camps which I could see, and to draw the outline of the country.

He was a dear creature upon whom I sat, but it was not easy to draw upon his back, for every now and then his two ears would cock, and he would start and quiver with impatience. At first I could not understand this trick of his, but soon I observed that he only did it when a peculiar noise—”yoy, yoy, yoy”—came from somewhere among the oak woods beneath us. And then suddenly this strange cry changed into a most terrible screaming, with the frantic blowing of a horn. Instantly he went mad—this horse. His eyes blazed. His mane bristled. He bounded from the earth and bounded again, twisting and turning in a frenzy. My pencil flew one way and my note-book another. And then, as I looked down into the valley, an extraordinary sight met my eyes. The hunt was streaming down it. The fox I could not see, but the dogs were in full cry, their noses down, their tails up, so close together that they might have been one great yellow and white moving carpet. And behind them rode the horsemen—my faith, what a sight! Consider every type which a great army could show: some in hunting dress, but the most in uniforms; blue dragoons, red dragoons, red-trousered hussars, green riflemen, artillery men, gold-slashed lancers, and most of all red, red, red, for the infantry officers ride as hard as the cavalry. Such a crowd, some well mounted, some ill, but all flying along as best they might, the subaltern as good as the general, jostling and pushing, spurring and driving, with every thought thrown to the winds save that they should have the blood of this absurd fox! Truly, they are an extraordinary people, the English!

But I had little time to watch the hunt or to marvel at these islanders, for of all the mad creatures the very horse upon which I sat was the maddest. You understand that he himself was a hunter, and that the crying of these dogs was to him what the call of a cavalry trumpet in the street yonder would be to me. It thrilled him. It drove him wild. Again and again he bounded into the air, and then, seizing the bit between his teeth, he plunged down the slope and galloped after the dogs. I swore and tugged, and pulled, but I was powerless. The English General rode his horse with a snaffle only, and the beast had a mouth of iron. It was useless to pull him back. One might as well try to keep a Grenadier from a wine bottle. I gave it up in despair, and, settling down in the saddle, I prepared for the worst which could befall.

What a creature he was! Never have I felt such a horse between my knees. His great haunches gathered under him with every stride, and he shot forward ever faster and faster, stretched like a greyhound, while the wind beat in my face and whistled past my ears. I was wearing our undress jacket, a uniform simple and dark in itself—though some figures give distinction to any uniform—and I had taken the precaution to remove the long panache from my busby. The result was that, amidst the mixture of costumes in the hunt, there was no reason why mine should attract attention, or why these men, whose thoughts were all with the chase, should give any heed to me. The idea that a French officer might be riding with them was too absurd to enter their minds. I laughed as I rode, for, indeed, amid all the danger, there was something of comic in the situation.

I have said that the hunters were very unequally mounted, and so, at the end of a few miles, instead of being one body of men, like a charging regiment, they were scattered over a considerable space, the better riders well up to the dogs and the others trailing away behind. Now, I was as good a rider as any, and my horse was the best of them all, and so you can imagine that it was not long before he carried me to the front. And when I saw the dogs streaming over the open, and the red-coated huntsman behind them, and only seven or eight horsemen between us, then it was that the strangest thing of all happened, for I, too, went mad—I, Etienne Gerard! In a moment it came upon me, this spirit of sport, this desire to excel, this hatred of the fox. Accursed animal, should he then defy us? Vile robber, his hour was come! Ah, it is a great feeling, this feeling of sport, my friends, this desire to trample the fox under the hoofs of your horse. I have made the fox-chase with the English. I have also, as I may tell you some day, fought the box-fight with the Bustler, of Bristol. And I say to you that this sport is a wonderful thing—full of interest as well as madness.

The farther we went the faster galloped my horse, and soon there were but three men as near the dogs as I was. All thought of fear of discovery had vanished. My brain throbbed, my blood ran hot—only one thing upon earth seemed worth living for, and that was to overtake this infernal fox. I passed one of the horsemen—a Hussar like myself. There were only two in front of me now: the one in a black coat, the other the blue artilleryman whom I had seen at the inn. His grey whiskers streamed in the wind, but he rode magnificently. For a mile or more we kept in this order, and then, as we galloped up a steep slope, my lighter weight brought me to the front. I passed them both, and when I reached the crown I was riding level with the little, hard-faced English huntsman. In front of us were the dogs, and then, a hundred paces beyond them, was a brown wisp of a thing, the fox itself, stretched to the uttermost. The sight of him fired my blood. “Aha, we have you, then, assassin!” I cried, and shouted my encouragement to the huntsman. I waved my hand to show him that there was one upon whom he could rely.

And now there were only dogs between me and my prey. These dogs, whose duty it is to point out the game, were now rather a hindrance than a help to us, for it was hard to know how to pass them. The huntsman felt the difficulty as much as I, for he rode behind them, and could make no progress towards the fox. He was a swift rider, but wanting in enterprise. For my part, I felt that it would be unworthy of the Hussars of Conflans if I could not overcome such a difficulty as this. Was Etienne Gerard to be stopped by a herd of fox-dogs? It was absurd. I gave a shout and spurred my horse.

“Hold hard, sir! Hold hard!” cried the huntsman.

He was uneasy for me, this good old man, but I reassured him by a wave and a smile. The dogs opened in front of me. One or two may have been hurt, but what would you have? The egg must be broken for the omelette. I could hear the huntsman shouting his congratulations behind me. One more effort, and the dogs were all behind me. Only the fox was in front.

Ah, the joy and pride of that moment. To know that I had beaten the English at their own sport. Here were three hundred all thirsting for the life of this animal, and yet it was I who was about to take it. I thought of my comrades of the light cavalry brigade, of my mother, of the Emperor, of France. I had brought honour to all. Every instant brought me nearer to the fox. The moment for action had arrived, so I unsheathed my sabre. I waved it in the air, and the brave English all shouted behind me.

Only then did I understand how difficult is this fox-chase, for one may cut again and again at the creature and never strike him once. He is small, and turns quickly from a blow. At every cut I heard those shouts of encouragement from behind me, and they spurred me to yet another effort. And then, at last the supreme moment of my triumph arrived. In the very act of turning I caught him fair with such another back-handed cut as that with which I killed the aide-de-camp of the Emperor of Russia. He flew into two pieces, his head one way and his tail another. I looked back and waved the blood-stained sabre in the air. For the moment I was exalted—superb!

Ah! how I should have loved to have waited to have received the congratulations of these generous enemies. There were fifty of them in sight, and not one who was not waving his hand and shouting. They are not really such a phlegmatic race, the English. A gallant deed in war or in sport will always warm their hearts. As to the old huntsman, he was the nearest to me, and I could see with my own eyes how overcome he was by what he had seen. He was like a man paralysed—his mouth open, his hand, with outspread fingers, raised in the air. For a moment my inclination was to return and to embrace him. But already the call of duty was sounding in my ears, and these English, in spite of all the fraternity which exists among sportsmen, would certainly have made me prisoner. There was no hope for my mission now, and I had done all that I could do. I could see the lines of Massena’s camp no very great distance off, for, by a lucky chance, the chase had taken us in that direction. I turned from the dead fox, saluted with my sabre, and galloped away.

But they would not leave me so easily, these gallant huntsmen. I was the fox now, and the chase swept bravely over the plain. It was only at the moment when I started for the camp that they could have known that I was a Frenchman, and now the whole swarm of them were at my heels. We were within gunshot of our pickets before they would halt, and then they stood in knots and would not go away, but shouted and waved their hands at me. No, I will not think that it was in enmity. Rather would I fancy that a glow of admiration filled their breasts, and that their one desire was to embrace the stranger who had carried himself so gallantly and well.

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, by Ambrose Bierce

CHAPTER 1

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by— it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

CHAPTER II.

Peyton Farquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”

“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked.

“About thirty miles.”

“Is there no force on this side of the creek?”

“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.”

“Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smiling, “what could he accomplish?”

The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tinder.”

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

CHAPTER III.

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned,” he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men—with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

“Company!… Attention!… Shoulder arms!… Ready!… Aim!… Fire!”

Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

“The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

WHISPERING DEATH, by Laurence Donovan

We’re down on our bellies in the whisperin’ grass, “Plug Ugly” and me and the looie.

How come that bunch of stalks had survived down there in the narrow bottom of that ravine, I don’t pretend to know. But it had kept on growing until it seeded and dried right in the nose of a three-months rain of hell.

Every time the grass tops, no more than a foot over our heads, sh-sh-sh-ed and whispered like, I scrooched my face into the dirt.

I was scared. So was the looie. And Plug Ugly? He was, too, but you couldn’t pick out a smooth spot in his miscellaneous assortment of features to discover if he was pale.

Beside that, Plug Ugly’s mug was all mud-caked where he’d been chewin’ wire. And he had a lot of blood dried in his beard from where he’d left a sizable chunk of one cauliflower ear hangin’ on that last bunch of inch-long barbs.

Whisper! Whisper! Whisper!

Until I felt like screaming, what with the swooshing death callin’ from the big ones rushing by high up and the tops of the grass bendin’ and swayin’ under the clip of that machine-gun barrage from the Heinies’ double nest up there in the cottonwood stumps.

Slap that rim of machine-gun fire down on a hard road and it would sound like men walking. But there in the grass tops it only swished and whispered like.

Talkin’ to us and hissing, “Come up! Come up! Come up!”

What with the numbness passin’ and the fire risin’ up from the hole in my right knee, where it had been drilled by a piece of shrapnel or a bullet—they were comin’ so thick back there I couldn’t tell which—I was afraid I might listen too long to that whisper and, “come up.”

Just stick my old bean up once. That’d be all. No more pain, no more ice on my chest, chillin’ and chokin’ me.

Maybe the Heinies knew we were there. Maybe they didn’t. But they’d spotted us, eighteen of us, Plug Ugly and me, and Rafferty and Spink, chewin’ their wire and lettin’ the looie and the other thirteen through the gap.

Before we got onto our bellies down in the grass, they had the thirteen piled up. Whether the looie was behind them, or where, or how, I don’t know, but he come crawlin’ back to the gap in the wire.

By that time there were only Plug Ugly and me; and Plug Ugly had been all for going ahead after the others. I admit I hadn’t any enthusiasm for it.

But Rafferty and Spink were gone. Rafferty lookin’ at me like I’d know what to tell his girl back in Beloit where we’d both come from. He couldn’t speak, and his face turned green in the flare of a star shell that come floatin’ down just then.

It was that star shell that played hell with the looie and his bunch. I still don’t know how the looie missed out on the show and come wormin’ back to us like a snake on his stomach.

I got it in the old prayer bone about that time, and for a minute or two I was so sick that all I knew was that Plug Ugly was draggin’ me. And the looie was coming along, kind of whimpering. Guess Plug Ugly thought the looie was mournin’ for the boys he’d led, or pushed, into that slaughter ring under the gun nest. Plug Ugly was sold on the looie. I never saw the like of it before, and I don’t suppose I ever will again.

The pain reached a jumpin’ off place at the end of my toes. I got sick at my stomach for a minute. Then that passed and I could look at Plug Ugly and the looie and think.

Nothing to do but wait. Probably the Heinies would ease up pretty soon, and we could sneak back over the ridge and through the wire. That would be the only chance. F company was down to its last thinnin’.

We’d known, when we started on that raid that we had to roust that machine-gun nest or Captain Jack would have to slack off on the point of his push. There’d be no more men to spare for a rescue. The thirteen that went with the looie and us four wire chewers had understood that.

* * * *

I looked at Plug Ugly and he was looking at the looie. The smoke was getting gray in the east, and light was coming. We knew what that meant. If we didn’t shimmy out of there before daylight, it was going to be just too bad.

I said Plug Ugly was looking at the looie. I was trying to puzzle out why Plug Ugly’s face had seemed to become different from what it was when what was left of F company a month back had first greeted it.

Except for this Lieutenant Simms, F company was long or short on looks, according to the way you took it. I remember old Colonel Bowling, the first time he reviewed the F outfit, tried to look like he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. But he shook his head several times, and put on his glasses, and took them off and wiped them. Sergeant Jock was a fair sample. He had a broken nose and was cross-eyed.

It sure looked like F company had been made up of left-over parts after God got through creatin’ all the rest of the homely guys in the world. It was lucky for the colonel’s peace of mind that Plug Ugly wasn’t there then.

“Pug” Hogan was his name. He was among the replacements after our first jam when we got back to the rest billet with forty-two men and a few pans salvaged out of the remnants of the field kitchen. Seems Pug had been a punching bag for years around New York’s lower East Side, and what nature hadn’t done to him, a bunch of second and third-rate pugilists had added.

The first crack Lieutenant Simms made was “For Pete’s sake, let th’ Heinies capture ’im, have a look and end this war.”

And Sergeant Jock, of whom there was no one more profanely qualified in the A. E. F.—all he could think of when he looked at Pug was, “My gosh—it ain’t possible!”

Lieutenant Simms rechristened him “Plug Ugly.”

I hadn’t explained about this boy Simms. He was F’s only misfit. He had curly black hair and big brown eyes a la Hollywood, a nice straight nose and even teeth.

Right from the first Simms froze onto Plug Ugly. Seemed to like to have him around. Guess it helped set off more than ever what a grand gift to women the looie believed himself to be.

And “Plug Ugly”?

Would you believe it? That cross-section of everything that human facial architecture hadn’t ought to be, he falls for the looie like he was the world’s last kind word. He fetches and carries for him, and is always right in between the looie and trouble, whether it’s a jam in an estaminet or a pushover through the stinkin’ mud and wire.

Pretty soon they began to make this Damon and Pythias affair look like those old days were a couple of hostiles. Seeing that I was messin’ with Plug Ugly, and had got so I didn’t mind his face much, I saw a lot of what was going on.

* * * *

Well, it went along like that and then the looie happens onto Jeanne. Knowing the looie, any one could see that Jeanne was just one of a whole series. The looie must have kept a card index on his sweeties back in Paris.

But Jeanne wasn’t the soft sort. Haughtytotty, Jeanne was, and I found out it was on account of old Broullier, her dad. He’d come home, feeling his way with his hands.

For all that they had only the loft of a stable that wasn’t anyways sanitary underneath, this Broullier had the makings of an aristocrat. And the girl had been taught.

She didn’t savvy English, but the looie had a good smattering of French and they got along. Plug Ugly, you would have thought, would have been discarded, but he wasn’t.

Seemed like the looie wanted him around. You’d have thought Uncle Sam had drafted him to play bodyguard and valet to the looie.

It set the looie off, having Plug Ugly around.

And Plug Ugly would sit by the hour and listen to old Broullier talking with his hands, while the looie played the white-haired boy to Miss Jeanne.

Along about this time I noticed that Plug Ugly, for all of his scattered countenance, didn’t have such bad eyes. Sometimes I’d catch him staring at nothing in particular, and his eyes would get blue and misty and wishful. I couldn’t figure it out.

After a while, all of F company was wise. Plug Ugly had divided his hero worshipping of the looie. Not that it lessened his devotion to Simms, but he had added the girl Jeanne to his dreams.

Oh, we all had them then, even that horse-faced Sergeant Jock. It’s something that comes along of listening to the damned guns and the whirring and the whispering, and wondering which whisper is packin’ your ticket.

You betchu, it wasn’t long until I could see Plug Ugly was up to the eyebrows in love with Jeanne. But that didn’t make any difference. Guess he figured that the looie was the world’s prize draw for any dame, and he wanted Jeanne to have him. That’s the kind of love you read about in fiction, but you don’t stumble over it so often in real life—and not once in a million times in war where anything goes double.

Just before this last push and this raid, the looie had given out that he was ticketed for a leave and he had let it be known around that maybe, if he went to Paris, Jeanne might not be seen around, either, for a few days.

Not that the looie had any idea of making a double hitch—not him. And Jeanne wasn’t saying anything. But you could tell that Plug Ugly thought they intended to be married, and he looked sad and pleased all at once.

Just before we went in this last time, Jeanne came running out with a lacy affair wound around her head, her face dark and mysterious in the rain. She talked a little to the looie.

Then, as we was pushing off, Jeanne ran over to Plug Ugly, and said something that I know Plug Ugly took to mean that she wanted him to be extra careful of the looie, for he said, “Sure t’ing. Youse’ll git ’im back all K. O.”

And Jeanne said something more and waited. And of course Plug Ugly only guessed at what she was trying to say, and I could see his twisted ears go fiery red in the rain when Jeanne reached up suddenly and kissed him on the cheek.

“Sure t’ing. Youse’ll git ’im back,” he muttered again.

* * * *

As I said, I was lying there, listening to the whisperin’ in the grass, puzzling over what it might be in Plug Ugly’s face that made it seem different. And Plug Ugly was looking at the looie lying there.

The looie must have raised his shoulder a little too high, trying to ease himself over. I saw his face go white through the mud and his eyes go suddenly wide.

Next he slumps down and groans, and a little river of red runs along the back of his hand. Plug Ugly saw it, too. He got to the looie and tries to lift him up a little, but the looie only moans and sinks his face between his arms.

It was getting lighter now, and only about fifty yards away I could begin to make out a grotesque hump above the ravine, between us and the tree stumps where the machine guns were. It made me sick all over. That was what was left of the thirteen that had been with the looie.

Further along the sector the dawn barrage of the heavies opens up. Plug Ugly rolls the looie over and looks at his white face. The looie’s lips were twitching.

Plug Ugly must have thought he was out for keeps. He turned to me. His whole face had changed. He looked at me lying there, but I don’t think he saw me. His blue eyes glinted and set on something it wasn’t for me to see.

I heard his teeth grit out the words, “Sure t’ing. Youse’ll git ’im back.”

The Heinies’ were quiet now in the machine-gun nest. I guess, giving it the once-over, they didn’t figure any one was left alive out there. They’d sowed the grass over our head so full of whispers that it looked like a mowing scythe had passed over.

I didn’t quite get what Plug Ugly intended to do, until I saw him take a couple of grenades from the looie’s shirt.

Then he rolled over to me.

“Gimme them apples,” he muttered, reaching his hand.

“You damn fool, you can’t go out—”

“Gimme them apples,” he repeated, pushing my hands away and grabbing at my shirt front.

He didn’t bother dragging his rifle. All he had was his pistol and a shirt full of bombs. I wanted to keep him from going, but the Heinies have long ears and I couldn’t argue.

Last thing Plug Ugly did was ease the looie over.

He started out, snaking through the grass to the left. I saw his idea, and it was crazy.

Up to the left of the stumps where the machine guns were planted, was a little hummock. Even if he got up there, I knew there would be at least a dozen Dutchies in the emplacements.

Maybe it was only a few minutes, but it seemed like I had been laying there for hours. One of the Heinies must have seen Plug Ugly crawling before he got to the top of the hummock back of the stumps. Pistols began cracking in the gun emplacement. Still there wasn’t a sound from Plug Ugly. I got weak all over. I thought sure they’d got him.

I saw a Heinie sneak out from the stumps and up toward the hummock. Then—that damned fool! The ugliest face in the A. E. F. came leaping from the ground. That Heinie must have thought he had met the devil in person.

I saw Plug Ugly pull the pin of an apple. The Heinie’s pistol cracked, and Plug Ugly went down on one knee. But he drew back and he didn’t deviate an inch from the regulations in throwing that bomb.

I drove my face into the ground and covered up with my arms. Dirt and rocks and pieces of tree stumps showered down. When I looked up, something had cut the looie across the forehead, and his cheek was streaked with blood. He groaned, and I knew he was still alive.

But Plug Ugly?

God, he waited until that Heinie had drawn back his bayonet and was coming down. Plug Ugly ducked and his pistol spat a red streak into the Heinie’s stomach. The Heinie pitched forward and his bayonet went into the ground.

I could hear men groaning and yelling where the gun nest had been, and a half dozen of the Heinies started up out of the ground at once. Maybe it was luck, and maybe it wasn’t. It may be that Plug Ugly, looking death in the teeth, deliberately timed that second pineapple.

Fragments of Heinies was mixed with the flowerpot of dirt that went up. And then, with an apple in each hand, Plug Ugly came yelling down that hummock, straight for the stumps.

Three, four Heinies were falling over each other running away. I got one straight look at Plug Ugly’s face. Say, at that minute, I haven’t seen a handsomer map in the world.

Plug Ugly? Hell!

Then it got so quiet, except for a booming far away, that I could hear the looie breathing heavy. He was getting up. He looked across and saw there was no one by the machine-gun nest alive but Plug Ugly.

“By God! By God! He got ’em—huh? He got ’em?”

And what do you think? The next thing the looie did was to begin brushing the mud off his clothes. He’d only been nicked a little on one shoulder.

“Sure t’ing,” I said. “Youse’ll git ’im back.”

I couldn’t think of anything nastier than that. I guess it hit the looie between the eyes. I think he would have kicked me, except for my busted prayer bone.

Yellow? Sure as hell, he was yellow. We know now he wasn’t with the lost thirteen when they got theirs. He’d crawled off to one side somewhere.

That Jeanne. I don’t see why I hadn’t guessed it. Didn’t I say she was a haughty-totty. She’d been taught, Jeanne had. She could read men, that Frenchie, and she had had the looie ticketed long before we guessed him out.

They had me stretched out across from Plug Ugly in the base hospital when Jeanne came in. She went straight to him.

Plug Ugly had been drilled three times, but I tell you, he was tough. He’d been a punching bag a long time.

He opened his eyes and saw Jeanne.

“Sure t’ing,” I heard him murmur. “Youse’ll git ’im—”

And that was as far as he got, for Jeanne’s lips were on his mouth and both her arms were cuddling his ugly cauliflower ears.

That’s one language that never has to be translated.

A ONE-MAN NAVY, by Eugene Cunningham

“I’m fit to be tied!” said “Wolver” Dean, late pointer of the forecastle three-inch, S. S. Cohoxon, and a member of the armed guard detail, as he leaned upon the forecastle of the lean gray little Shenandoah. Over the life lines he could see the convoy forming. There were miscellaneous merchantmen, large and small, fast and slow; for in these early months of the war, little attention was paid to assorting merchant vessels according to their speed.

Yesterday Wolver had been a member of the armed guard and perfectly happy, while today he was one of the cruiser’s first division and entirely miserable.

“Every time you try to figure out a commonsense way of doin’ somethin’ in this man’s navy, you run your head into the loop of some 22-caliber regulation, and down you come on your ear, like a piled steer.”

He was justifiably peevish. Transferred in early April from the big cruiser Wilmerton to the armed guard, he had drawn the Cohoxon, an ancient freighter. But it was duty that suited his solitary and independent nature perfectly. Down in Texas, this lank, angular, steel-muscled young man had been a wolver. Every lobo he had trapped or shot represented a particular problem. He had had to outguess the wolf. All this discipline that the outfit set so much store by seemed foolish to Wolver Dean.

“Listen, country!” an angry voice snarled in his ear. “Y’ done not a solitary thing since y’ come aboard this mornin’ but mull around and moon overside. Now, y’ happen to be on the Shenandoah, see? Happen to be in my section, see? An’ if y’ was to be Josephus Daniels’ old-maid sister, y’d turn to with y’ ears snappin’ back, when I spoke to y’, see? Now—”

Deftly, the big cox’n named Purdy caught Wolver’s lean shoulder. He half-twisted, half-pushed, and finally applied the toe of a number-ten shoe to the seat of Wolver’s blue regulation trousers.

Nobody had ever kicked any of the Deans around and walked off the scene without contusions to report—not any of the Deans Wolver had ever heard of. He was hardly conscious of what he did, so automatic and instinctive was his reaction to this insult from the hulking red-headed cox’n.

He wrenched his left shoulder from Purdy’s grasp and whirled. The cox’n, not expecting any activity of this precise sort, took a fist in the midriff. He doubled up like a jackknife; for the right hook, driven with all the force of Wolver’s powerful shoulders and the momentum of his pivoting body, had caught the old sailor with muscles relaxed.

Wolver hooked a hard left to the jaw, as Purdy sagged; smacked him on the ear with a vicious glancing right upper-cut; and saw Purdy drop to his knees on the deck.

“You two men!” a voice bellowed overhead. “Lay up to the bridge, here, both of you. On the double!”

Wolver looked thoughtfully that way. It was the executive officer, red and angry. But, another officer appeared at this moment, to whisper in the executive’s ear. The executive officer shrugged impatiently. But when Wolver and Purdy—the cox’n still panting for breath—came up to the bridge, the exec hummed and hawed.

“What was the trouble down there?” he asked with a sort of forced mildness.

“Trouble, sir?” Wolver’s eyes opened widely, innocently.

“No trouble at all, sir,” Purdy managed to mumble, between great inhalations. “We—we was kind of scuffling y’ see, sir. That’s all!”

“Hmm,” said the executive officer. “Dean, something tells me that your career on the Shenandoah is apt to be hectic. Perhaps you may come to regret reporting aboard.”

“Yes, sir,” Wolver nodded earnestly. “You’re absotively correct, sir. I already am. I never wanted to come a-tall. All I was wantin’ was to stick in the armed guard, sir. An’—an’ I certainly would take it as a mighty big favor, sir, if you’d fix it up to le’ me go back, right now.”

“Why, then, did you tear yourself from the bosom, as it were, of the armed guard?” This was a new voice to Wolver. He turned slowly, and saw a brisk little man with sharp black eyes, a big nose, and an immaculate uniform with four gleaming gold stripes on the cuffs. Wolver saluted respectfully and stood at attention.

“Why, if you so loved and cherished the armed guard,” Captain Banning continued, “did you arrange for transfer?”

“I never, sir!” Wolver replied sadly. “‘Twas a young ensign, let out a year ahead of time, that arranged ever’thing. He was assistant personnel officer, cap’n. An’ he come up as I was helpin’ out some of the boys with their splash practice, and he never liked what I was sayin’. I tried to explain to him, cap’n, that I was just figurin’ a short cut, like. But he says I was insolent, and I never was meanin’ to be, a-tall. But he shanghaied me out of the armed guard pronto.”

“Dear, dear!” sighed the captain. “But in spite of that, you want to go back and fight the battles of democracy upon the fo’c’s’le of a cargo boat; protect with the faithful three-inch the supplies intended for our gallant boys over there and so on.”

“If I could be sent over to one of them—” Wolver suggested, nodding toward the merchantmen. “I certainly do want to git back onto the armed guard, sir. It’s the only duty in the navy that lets a man use the inside of his head, Texas style.”

“No, I fear me not. You’ll have to stay with us. We can’t transfer you here. But—you’ll have to go on to Queenstown. Perhaps a way will open for you, to return some day.”

“Oh, I’ll git back, a’ right, sir,” Wolver said calmly.

“In the meanwhile, lay below and turn to! And make up your mind that the war isn’t to be finished in a day, You’ll have a chance to smell powder yet—this very trip, it may be. So make yourself one of us—and move on the double!”

Wolver recognized the new note in Captain Banning’s voice that now replaced his bantering manner. But as Wolver saluted and turned toward the port ladder, with Purdy following, he sniffed. He would smell powder, would he? That was a good one, when on his first and only trip across with the Cohoxon, they had fought and sunk a sub. He and the trainer had sunk it, after he had killed the German skipper and a lieutenant with an automatic, pulling the battle out of the bag when it was lost.

* * * *

That night, he stood his gun watches and his lookout with the rest of Purdy’s section of the starboard watch. And he admitted that Purdy was all right; the cox’n made no distinction between Wolver and any other of his section. He was square, if he did get hard-boiled. But that eased Wolver’s homesickness none at all, as he looked across the moonlit water and saw the black hulls of the merchantmen in their columns. That was where he fitted—out there on one of them, standing watch at the guns, with no formalities if a sub heaved in sight.

The days slid by evenly, as they do at sea. Five of them—six. The seventh day out of New York drew to a hazy twilight. Wolver looked out at the moonless, cloud-obscured sky and shook his head. Mechanically—as if all this were his private responsibility—he looked at the Shenandoah’s decks, from which the deckload of coal was vanishing, looked at the shells and powder bags under the tarpaulin by number nine, the fo’c’s’le gun. Have to watch out, tonight!

The convoy was shifting formation, as all early convoys did. Ships which had been file leaders had dropped back until they lagged in the rear of columns they had led. One twin-screw, shining Philadelphia freighter, apparently the best ship in the seventeen the Shenandoah was escorting, had dropped out of the convoy entirely, her starboard engine out of commission.

Wolver had drawn pointer of the forecastle gun. On the mid-watch, shortly after midnight, there was an odd phosphorescent-like glitter to the sea. There was a glimpse of the hull of a freighter, as the Shenandoah turned from her post in the van, to go back around the convoy’s rear and up through the files, to see how everything was going with the ships. You could see a hull for a split second, quite clearly, but the eye was tricked so that details evaded you.

They were not zigzagging; Captain Banning had decided to make as much speed and as many sea miles as possible, while there was no actual sign of danger.

As the Shenandoah came around the rear of the convoy, Wolver and the trainer were muttering to each other. Wolver, staring with those plainsman’s eyes of his out at the sea, thought he saw something low down on the water, perhaps a hundred yards astern of the nearest cargo boat. He stiffened, with tawny head thrust out and his mouth drawing to a thin line. He grunted to the trainer and without thought, the trainer spun his wheel; number nine came around to starboard and Wolver hunted that half-seen shape through the telescope sight, as he depressed the muzzle out of horizontal.

“What the hell y’ guys doin’?” snarled Purdy, who was gun captain.

But Wolver, concentrating rigidly on his hunt for that half-seen, half imagined shape out there, heard Purdy’s voice if at all, only as an angry and far-away murmuring. It looked like a sub, but might be only a blackfish or a porpoise. Still—

“Steady on it!” he muttered, to himself rather than to the others of the crew.

His thumb tensed on the firing button. But at that moment the helmsman, in obedience to an order of the officer of the deck, who chanced to be Ensign Robards, the first division officer, twirled his wheel to starboard. The fo’c’s’le five-inch roared, but Wolver had seen the grayish shape vanish, sliding out of the cross wires of the sight, even as he fired. The shell skipped across the gleaming water perilously close to that ancient tramp so magnificently named The Burmese Rajah.

Wolver tore off his blue knitted watch-cap and hurled it to the deck. Furiously he stamped upon it, all the while glaring at the bridge.

“Oh, what’s the use?” he snarled, “Spoiled as purty a shot as ever I see! Yanked me right off—”

“Who fired that shot?” came Ensign Robards’ voice shrilly from the bridge. “Who gave orders to fire that shot?”

“This bright and shinin’ light out of the armed guard, sir!” Purdy answered angrily. “Nobody give him orders. He was just runnin’ things to suit hisself, sir!”

“Relieve him! Send him up here instantly!”

When Wolver got to the bridge, he faced not only the ensign, but all the senior officers of the cruiser, who had arrived at the run, wakened by the roar of the five-inch.

“Who told you to fire that shot?” Captain Banning demanded grimly. “Don’t you know that we’ve been trying to move through this zone with the absolute minimum of noise? And you nearly sank the Burmese Rajah! Answer up! What have you to say for yourself?”

Wolver sagged wearily before them. Regulations! Formalities! Orders! Everything on the earth and the sea but some common sense. And how could he say anything that would explain his point of view.

“Nobody told me, sir,” he said slowly. “I just let go on my own hook.”

“Oh, you did! Well, well, well,” the captain said unpleasantly. “And I presume it was merely to relieve the tedium of your watch? You wearied of monotony, perhaps?”

“I figured, sir, that sinkin’ subs was what I was supposed to be there for. Hadn’t been for the helmsman changin’ course just as I whanged away, there’d have been a right sick tin fish out there now. I was steady on it, and as I pressed the button, the ship heeled over to sta’b’d, and my shot went wild. Two seconds more and I would have gethered him in.”

“Utter nonsense, sir!” Mr. Robards said disgustedly. “I was scanning the water all around the ship with my glasses. There wasn’t a sign of anything there, except the Burmese Rajah’s wake.”

“It looked like it was just comin’ up,” Wolver said without interest. “Just barely awash. I got a glimpse of the connin’ tower, seemed like, with a double bow wave a-runnin’ aft along the sides.”

“But nobody else could see it, of course,” Mr. Robards said ironically. “We have only one pair of eyes on the ship—yours. Very peculiar. Very!”

* * * *

Wolver waited with weary patience. He was headed for grief, as usual. But three years of the navy had taught him to expect it. Every time he tried to stand on his two feet and use his own judgment in some matter which didn’t permit a long wrangling over the best procedure, he got it.

“Why didn’t you report what you saw?” the captain inquired. Wolver was surprised; the Old Man seemed merely curious; his first anger had slipped out of his voice.

“If it was a sub, it was cruisin’ awash, sir,” Wolver explained. “That’d mean the connin’ tower could be open. If I was to have yelled out, why couldn’t that German hear me? Well, sir! Wouldn’t he’ve acted like any sensible man? Slammed his hatch to, and dived and got off, anyhow? Mebbe have let go a torpedo at us, or at the Burmese Rajah? If you go out wolf hunting sir, and you catch a wolf over the front sight by havin’ luck, you don’t howl and raise the neighborhood, just to let ever’body know you found a lobo. You crack down on him, while you got a chance. Or, anyway, you do down in Texas.”

“Probably a blackfish,” suggested Captain Banning, his black eyes steady on Wolver. The other officers—the exec, the navigator, the engineer officer and Ensign Robards—all stared curiously at the skipper. They seemed puzzled at the delay in disciplinary action.

“Might’ve been, sir,” Wolver nodded. “But when a blackfish looks so blame’ much like a tin fish—well, if he monkeys around me when I got somethin’ to shoot and he’s goin’ to be hash! I did what seemed best, sir.”

“Lay down to your watch again,” Captain Banning grunted abruptly. “I think you saw a blackfish.”

“But, captain,” the exec began as Wolver saluted and went down the ladder, “the orders—”

Wolver did not hear what they said. But what Purdy said a moment after was quite clear and pointed. “An’ y’ll stay on life-buoy watch the rest of the time y’re in my section, too!” Purdy finished his statement of opinion.

Wolver spent the rest of his watch pacing a beat between the two copper Franklin buoys that hung in racks on each side of the cruiser’s stern. It was a dark and lonely watch, on the poop. For number ten, the poop gun, was not manned. He saw nobody but the quartermaster coming aft to read the patent log at hourly intervals.

He had turned in at eight bells—four a.m.— and had just fallen asleep when the general alarm gong roused the ship. He came out of his blankets in a wild leap and glared around him. The insistent, spine-crinkling clamor of the big brass gong vibrated up and down the decks. Wolver was topside in leaps. On the fo’c’s’le he found the gun crew tense at the gun. And the Shenandoah was racing down between two files of merchantmen.

It was the dark hour preceding dawn—but not dark enough to hide that grim spectacle at the tail of the file on their right. A ship had lifted her nose in air like a stricken live thing. She was poop under, already; the lighter underwater section of her bow giving the appearance of a gasping mouth. But of the sub which had torpedoed her, there was no trace.

The Shenandoah circled like a fierce eager dog, hunting something at which to snap. But quickly she gave over this futile hunt and returned to lower boats, throw lines overside and rescue the freighter’s crew from the water. She had barely got the last survivor up and darted away, when the ship sank.

Grim-faced, Wolver Dean stared at the spot where the ship had gone under. There was no doubt in his mind that he had seen a sub; that if the Shenandoah had not changed course as he fired, the freighter and her cargo would have been safe this minute.

He stood his life-buoy watch though. Neither Mr. Robards nor Purdy had said anything to him, directly, about his shot of the night before, or the torpedoing of the merchantman.

During his watch, he saw one ship frequently, as the Shenandoah circled from front to rear of the convoy. It was an old, well-decked seven-knotter, without a gun crew that Wolver could make out. There were what seemed to be oil drums, stowed on her well deck, clear to the bulwarks.

He was standing on the forecastle near twilight when the Shenandoah, making one of her circuits, alert against that sub which had shown itself like a wolf following a cattle-herd, came up to this old ship and ran alongside it.

“Willamette, ahoy!” Captain Banning hailed her.

On her bridge a man moved, coming at the born sailor’s rolling gait with a sort of contemptuous deliberateness to lean upon the port wing rail. He was a short man, but tremendously wide. He wore an old blue knitted jersey, and above his square, changeless red face was—of all headgear at sea—a greenish-black old derby hat. His eyes were pale blue and very steady, squinting under yellow-white brows.

“Yeah?” he answered the navy skipper’s hail, with a rising inflection. Somehow, it gave the impression of a disgusted, belligerent accent.

“You’re steadily dropping behind,” Captain Banning said briskly. “And with that submarine about, it isn’t safe. Can you keep up tonight? Seven knots?”

“Dunno,” the Willamette’s skipper said indifferently, spitting over the side, “Jedgin’ from what happened last night, I’m as well off by myself. Reckon ’twasn’t no blackfish, after all, your gunner was a-firin’ at. Too bad he never connected!”

“Never mind all that!” Captain Banning snapped. “The point is, will you be able to maintain the standard speed of the convoy? You’ve a valuable cargo there—and a dangerous cargo. I don’t want you dropping out of convoy if its avoidable. But on the other hand, we’re well below a safe speed as it is, thanks to your boat and a couple of others.”

“Then what the devil did they load me with depth bombs and Y-guns for? An’ all in such an all-fired hurry I never even got a navy gun crew? I dunno what my engines’ll do. If we can stick at seven knots, we’ll stay with you. If we can’t, go on ahead without us! We’ll come as nigh collectin’ that tin fish a-heavin’ spuds as anybody’s done with gunfire this fur!”

With which Parthian shot, he turned his back upon the United States navy, as represented by the Shenandoah’s skipper.

* * * *

Wolver was on life-buoy watch from ten to twelve that night. There were scattered shafts of moonlight, showing briefly through scudding clouds. Captain Banning himself was on the bridge. He made a circuit of the convoy. Wolver, listening in that quiet, heard him hail the Willamette again—the Willamette that was steadily lagging behind.

“You can’t be doing over five knots,” Banning told the freighter’s skipper. “We can’t wait for you. I’ve all the others to think of. I’m sorry to see you go it alone, but there’s nothing else for it, if that’s the best you can do.”

“Don’t bother about me!” the Willamette’s skipper returned calmly. “I’ll come in, or I won’t come in—dependin’. An’ it’s nothin’ to you, either way.”

Wolver grinned. He liked that bird sitting on top of a deckload of T.N.T., without a thing bigger than a rifle, with which to protect himself, and due to go sky-high if a shell from a sub landed in those ash cans that were consigned to the American destroyers at Queenstown. Yes, he was pretty thoroughly a man, that hairpin in the derby roof!

“I’d like to be sailin’ with him,” Wolver told himself.

Then he stiffened. His eyes narrowed, then widened. He grinned. The Shenandoah had come about and was rounding the Willamette’s stern, passing within thirty yards of its side. It was a moment without moonlight. Wolver looked for’ard. He saw nobody. He bent under the life line and his body described a clean arc, parting the sea without a splash.

He swam furiously under water, thinking of the Shenandoah’s twin screws. When he came to the surface, she was increasing her speed and vanishing in the murk ahead of him. And straight at him came the dark bulk of the Willamette.

“I’m mebbe a damn fool,” Wolver said calmly to himself. “But nobody can ever prove I never fell overboard as I was regulation-like inspectin’ them Franklin buoys. An’ once I land in Queenstown, it’ll be hard luck if I can’t scrabble around and hook up wi’ some gun crew. That damn—baby battlewagon makes me tireder ’n a whole winter’s work!”

He swam with powerful strokes toward the freighter, until her bow wave rocked him. He went drifting along her rusty side, until he came to a dangling line that tailed from a slovenly sea ladder. He clung here for a moment; then painfully he went up it, hand over hand. He tumbled over the low well-deck bulwark and found himself lying on those tarpaulined depth bombs. He crawled under the ancient and shabby canvas, out of the faint breeze, to warm himself a little and think and grin.

He would not announce himself to the derby-hatted skipper too quickly. For if his scheme was to work, he must not sight the Shenandoah again this cruise! He thought that his absence would not be discovered for an hour, or nearly that. Not until the quartermaster came aft for log reading. And when they found that he was lost overboard, they would never turn back to search for him. Not with fifteen ships to escort.

He considered the ash cans on which he lay—destined to smash tin fish in the Irish Sea. Depth bombs were strange things to him; the Wilmerton had received none, prior to his transfer off that cruiser. Nor had he encountered any in Brooklyn Navy Yard. There had been some aboard the Shenandoah, but they were in a track on the poop and “Hands off” had been the order concerning them. Wolver had been too much occupied with his troubles to worry about them.

“Kind of creepy business—hunkerin’ on this many of the blame’ things,” he pondered. “Wonder how much splash one’d make, if it’d drop overboard? But I reckon the fuses are out of these. Still—what was that chief gunner a-sayin’ about ’em. The big uns had a kind of automatic detonator; drop to a set depth and the pressure of the water sets off the charge. So, mebbe these have got fuses. I ain’t monekyin’ with ’em a bit— to see!”

He judged that a couple of hours had dragged by. He was fairly comfortable, despite his wet clothing, under the tarpaulin. He looked out at the moonlit sky, where the clouds were disappearing. By turning a little, he could see the sea. The old Willamette was creeping along; not zigzagging either. It was all very peaceful and pleasant. You wouldn’t have thought that anybody, anywhere, was fighting a war.

Then suddenly there was a loud report, from somewhere out on the starboard beam. As Wolver started to sit up, mouth dropping wide open, a terrific splintering crash sounded, from the freighter’s fo’ca’s’le.

Men cried out shrilly. There was a roaring as of an enraged bull from the bridge. Wolver came out from under the tarpaulin and went on all fours across the depth bombs and miscellaneous cargo in the well deck; he found the little passageway left amidships and crossed it and continued to the starboard side. He looked out tensely over the moonlit water.

At first he could see nothing, rake the half-circle of the horizon as he might. That shot began to seem unreal, in the quiet of the night, under that pallid moonshine. He looked forward and saw a dark cluster of figures in the starboard bridge wing. Quiet, now. And no shot came from the sea.

Then he saw it—a mastlike thing above a thicker uprearing column. Moving steadily and with some rapidity, for the freighter. Closer and closer. He could make out figures forward of the conning tower, clustered about a deck gun. Fascinated, he watched it overhaul the Willamette. Then as he stared at the German gun crew, it came to him that it was standing nearer for a better shot. And he was squatting on a deckload of T.N.T.!

“God!” he whispered. “There won’t be enough left of us to make a pair of mitts for a chee-chee bird! Doll rags is what we’ll be! Doll rags! We’ll have to be toted up the golden stairs— the bunch of us together—in a hand-basket! My stars! An’ not a show to fight back!”

Now only a hundred yards separated the lumpy old freighter and the lean, wolfish U-boat. A man appeared in the moonlight, coming from the conning-tower hatch. His squat silhouette showed an officer’s cap. He lifted a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

“Willamette, ahoy!” he hailed the freighter, in very good English, that seemed queer, coming from a German craft.

“What d’ you want?” the Willamette’s skipper demanded grimly, with an evenness that barely hid his rage.

“I’m going to sink you. That shot was a mere indicator of my intention. I’ve been watching you for two days, now. I intended to sink you last night, but that other fool was nearer. And that damned cruiser all but sank me. I don’t know how he missed me, even now.”

“I could tell you—plenty!” Wolver gritted.

“What’m I s’posed to do?” the Willamette skipper growled.

“Well, you can, of course, use your own judgment, as to whether you’ll remain on board while we blow up your ship! But if you move very quickly, I give you permission to take to the boats. But, understand, it is quite immaterial to me! You may be blown up and be damned to you!”

“How you figurin’ to blow her up?” One might have thought the derbied skipper was discussing an impersonal point of seamanship, to hear his level voice.

“What concern is that of yours?” the German officer roared, with an oath. “Ask me more silly questions, and I will put a shell through you, here and now! Where are your papers? Leave them on the bridge when you abandon your ship. I will have my men take them when they come aboard with bombs. And, captain, try no tricks! Else you may find yourself in the water, trying to row a sunken boat! Hurry to get those papers!”

Wolver scowled. Not much of an ending to his scheme. Then the derby-hatted skipper appeared in the passage left between the deckload. He was swearing furiously, in a cold even tone, as he came. Wolver stood up in front of him and the skipper stopped, leaning forward a trifle to stare.

“Goin’ to abandon ship, sir?” Wolver inquired. “Nothin’ else we can do? Oh, I’m a passenger you don’t know. I fell overboard off the Shenandoah a couple hours ago, and clumb onto you. I used to be in the armed guard, and I was figurin’ you would tote me to Queenstown and I’d git back to the guard.”

“Abandon ship!” the skipper snarled. “What the hell else can I do? I’d give a year’s pay for a gun and a few of your boys to send me a three-inch shell into that sarcastic sucker out there. But we got no gun. An’ if I don’t shake a leg with my piapers, that Heinie’ll be puttin’ a shell into us. You better go for’ard and stand by a boat.”

“No, by God,” Wolver grated, for a great and wonderful inspiration had come to him. It set him shaking at first, then he steadied to a tenseness like a violin’s string. If only it would work—if only it could—

“Gi’ me a hand, cap’n! Quick! I betcha these ash cans, here, they got the detonatin’ fuses in! If me and you, cap’n, we could git one unlashed and tumble her overside—could do it before that Fritz could slam a shell into us!”

“Huh?” the skipper grunted explosively. He whirled and stared out at the sub and shook his head. “He’d be onto us! He’d have a shell through our side before we could do it.”

“It’s a chance!” Wolver urged him fiercely. “What kind of sailor are you, anyhow! Looky! He’s got that gun of his trained to the bow. You got nothin’ explosive there! He ain’t really skeered? He knows you got no guns. If he should see us wrestlin’ with the ash can and they try to bring that gun around to bear on this well deck— hell, we will have it up before he can turn the trick. You game?”

“I never see a navy man that ud do what I wouldn’t!” the skipper gritted. “Let’s cast loose one close to the side.”

“Uh-uh! One of these, here! Then we can roll her over the others, right fast, and hoist her over the bulwark.”

* * * *

His jackknife appeared twinklingly. He slashed wildly at securing lines. Now, from the German, came a sudden angry and impatient hail. He wanted to know what the devil was keeping the Willamette’s skipper.

“Two minutes I give him!” he finished. “Two minutes! Then I will sink you with shell fire, and you can swim!”

“Up she goes!” Wolver grunted. “Heave and bust her! Good and heavy! There she is. Now, if we can kind of keep down and roll her—”

“Lord!” the skipper breathed suddenly. “Boy, you ever see one of these things go off? She’ll strain our seams! We ought to be goin’ like hell away when we drop her. Hold ever’thing a minute. I got an engine room voice-tube back here. Le’ me warn Mac.”

He vanished. From the sub came the German officer’s voice again—angrier, grimmer. One minute left—forty-five seconds—The skipper reappeared, and with his hands on the big can, there came a trembling from the engine room to the deck. The Willamette was going ahead.

“Now, if we can make it before he decides to turn loose!”

They rolled the depth bomb across the tarpaulined tops of its mates; paused a moment at the bulwark.

“I will fire—” the German began.

“Up she goes! Over—she—goes!”

They strained their muscles in that last great heave. Up to the bulwark. And Wolver dropped flat upon his back, catching hold of projections, drawing back his feet. They pushed out upon the poised bomb with all the force of his wiry body— pushed it out in an arc that cleared the low side. It struck with a splash. They peered fearfully overside. The Germans had whirled to gape.

The German bellowed something in his native tongue. No need of translation. The bellow of the sub’s gun and the crash as the shell, fired at fifty yards, plowed through the old vessel under the bridge, told what his command had been.

There came an echo to that roar, an indescribable explosion under water. The Willamette, forging ahead under cranky old engines, was barely out from above the bomb. A geyser of water rose high and the stern of the freighter lifted, lifted, lifted, with agonized groan of ancient plates. Wolver found himself hanging half over the bulwark, with the skipper tumbled across his legs. His head had struck something with a resounding crack, and he saw whole constellations of stars. He was out for a fleeting period.

“Gone!” the skipper croaked in his ear, dragging him inboard. “My Lord! Never see anything like that! Just lifted her up and swamped her. Likely opened every seam in that sardine can, an’—an’—I bet it did almost as much on this’n’!”

He scrambled up and fled. Wolver followed him toward the collapsed bridge. The freighter’s deck force and all of the engineer’s force who were off-watch, were clustered here. They had been standing by boat falls, ready to abandon the ship. They stared incredulously, even yet, out to where the sub had vanished.

Wolver stood with them. The skipper appeared presently. To the mate he said that she was leaking, but the well showed nothing alarming. The pumps were taking care of it.

An hour passed. Then a lean gray shape materialized like a greyhound, and came alongside. Captain Banning’s voice sounded anxiously. The derbied skipper of the Willamette thrust his head over the port bridge rail and jerked the rim of his derby a bit to starboard, over a cold blue eye. Very briefly he told his tale.

“A navy man?” Banning shouted. “Why—a seaman named Dean, who fell overboard? Where is he?”

“Here, sir,” Wolver answered drearily. “I reckon there ain’t a chance of stayin’ aboard, sir?”

“No, you’ll have to come back. But—well, I’ll lower a boat for you.”

Not on the bridge did Captain Banning interview him. It was in the privacy of the cabin, with only the exec by to hear. And at Wolver’s account, interlarded with his burning desire to return to the armed guard, Captain Banning stiffened.

“Cohoxon?” he snapped. “You were on the Cohoxon? Are you, by any chance, the pointer who sank that sub? Why—why didn’t you tell me that?”

“You never ask me, sir.”

“Well, I think you can help me win a bet with the executive officer. If you can—and you can tell me the truth without any worries concerning results—I’ll promise you a transfer back to the armed guard. Now, did you, or did you not, actually fall overboard?”

Wolver stared at his feet, then looked up. “How was you a-bettin’, sir?” he asked.

“That you jumped! For I never saw a man more set on any duty than you seemed to be set on that detail.”

“Well, sir, I just don’t know whether you won that bet, or not. I never fell overboard— exactly. Nor yet I never jumped. I was right skeered of the propellers, so I dived! An’ swum like ever’thing. It looked like a chance to git back to wolvin’, sir, sea-wolvin’.”

“I win, and you win!” said Captain Banning, with a faint note of helplessness. “Wolving is certainly your line!”

WHEN A YANK GETS FIGHTING MAD, by Lieut. Jay D. Blaufox

I.

Doctor Mikhail Tchekov, American military surgeon attached to the Russian Army and stationed in Amavir in the Caucasus, waited in front of the camp where the Soviets kept their German prisoners on the outside of the town.

As he stood before the gates of the barbed wire entanglements waiting to be admitted, he remembered to keep well back from the gate. One touch of the wire before the electric switches were pulled which charged them, and he—or anyone— would need a doctor. That is, if he survived the terrific electric shock.

A guard strode to the gate. He swung it wide and saluted.

“Thank you, Pavrovitch,” said Mickey nodding at the Russian. “I hear we have a new batch of prisoners today.”

“Da,” replied the guard Pavrovitch. “General Timoshenko has added another five hundred to his collection of Nazi dogs for his great kennel.”

Mickey laughed. He entered the enclosure.

The gang at the hospital called him Mickey. Mickey Checkoff and even the nurses dared call him that—though they did it quietly, respectfully, and even affectionately, for everyone in the hospital situated on the left bank of the Kuban River liked the tall, handsome, dark-eyed American. They liked his jokes, his broad smile, and the noise he made with his tongue—a sort of clucking noise—twice. When he said anything that tickled his hearer, a broad wink always accompanied it from one of his laughing eyes.

“Do I have to examine the whole five hundred, Pavrovitch?” he asked smilingly.

“Only fifty, doctor,” replied Pavrovitch. “The others have been examined.”

Mickey strode on to a low, rambling pinewood building, at one end of the camp.

He walked past dozens of small groups of half-starved, weary Nazis in ragged grey-green uniforms. He saw the toes of many of them sticking through rotten, worn-out boots. Their coats and britches were torn, badly patched, or pinned together.

As he passed one man separated from the rest, the German stopped him.

“Herr doktor.”

Mickey stopped.

“Oh! Hello Heinsel,” he greeted in perfect German.

Heinsel was a small man, of the type which might have been obese if he had been well fed enough.

“Wie gehts?” asked Mickey.

“Sehr gut!” smiled Heinsel. The man never complained; at least, not to the American. It was odd seeing an American uniform among the German and Russians in camp.

* * * *

Mickey and Heinsel were old friends. They had known each other when Mickey was taking a postgraduate course in medicine at the Breslau University. Heinsel gave up surgery when he lost an arm in the attack on Moscow.

“I just wanted to let you know that one of your new prisoners is Von Starheim,” Heinsel warned him. “You’ll meet him in the examining hut.”

Mickey’s face was not a poker face. He showed his surprise plainly. Then he smiled.

“Really,” he grinned. “We meet even here.”

“Hitler may yearn to rule the world,” Heinsel added. “But one thing is certain; if he wins, he won’t be able to make it any larger—or any smaller.”

“So my old sword-swinging Von Starheim is a guest of ours,” mused Mickey.

“I shall always remember how you used to beat him to a pulp with your fists in the good old American fashion while he would insist on using broadswords in your duels,” recalled Heinsel as if it were something pleasant to remember.

“So will he, I’ll bet,” smiled Mickey. “He swore to kill me for it someday. Said I was responsible for disgracing him at the University; making a laughing stock of him for refusing to fight in the prescribed German fashion; making him resign from the College of Medicine, he said.” Mickey looked away from Heinsel as he reminisced. He turned back to the smaller, bespectacled man. “Do you think he meant what he said,” he grinned. “Do you really think he’ll try to kill me?”

Heinsel was not smiling. His undernourished face was serious. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mickey,” he urged. “I’ve seen Von Starheim in action. He is capable of anything.”

Mickey smiled at the German.

“Thank you for the tip, Heinsel,” he said reassuringly. “I’ll be careful.”

As Mickey entered the low building, a Russian orderly who could speak German cried: “All right you men, line up for examination.”

The Nazi prisoners complied.

“I’ll take the officers first,” ordered Mickey.

“Officers fall in up front,” shouted the orderly again.

Mickey placed his kitbag in one of the pine compartments on the long examining table of bare pine. He removed his blouse and hung it up on a hook and put on the long, white coat that it replaced.

The first ten men Mickey examined were officers; the eleventh was Von Starheim.

“Well,” said Mickey by way of greeting. “Fancy meeting you here, Von Starheim.”

The German’s eyes glowed with the hate that was born in a University classroom in Germany, and the kind of hate Mickey knew would be carried into eternity.

“I won’t stay here very long, Tchekov,” replied the man bitterly. “I don’t like the place; and I don’t like the people.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to us,” encouraged Mickey. “We’re not like the Nazis at all. We treat our prisoners with kindness and medicine. Not with bullets and bayonets.”

“I’ll stake my life that I’m not in this prison camp twenty-four hours,” boasted the German.

“Come now,” said Mickey. “You should be a good guest if you want your host to treat you with affability. If you have any information that would be helpful to him, as long as you accept his hospitality and his food, you should reciprocate in kind.”

* * * *

Mickey looked at Von Starheim. He could see fires of intense passion burning in the man’s soul; the passion to kill. Mickey became serious as he applied the stethoscope to the Nazi’s broad chest. Why couldn’t Americans be like that? This man represented the most hateful thing on earth; the domination of races and peoples so far superior to the Nazi stupidmen that it was a pleasure to kill for the ambition. Yet great nations went down in the mad onrush of Heinie brutality only because they were not trained as the Nazis were; to destroy everything opposing them in their insane path; to kill everything that lived whether it was a simple flower, or an innocent child that chanced to be under its stiff, unrelenting, goose-stepping, hobnailed boots.

Mickey examined Von Starheim from head to feet.

“Your luck seems to be with you, Von Starheim,” he said. “You’re in pretty good shape.”

“I intend to continue to be,” replied the man, his chest expanding with arrogant Nazi pride.

“You look a lot better fed than most of the officers I’ve just examined,” remarked the American.

“And why not?” asked Von Starheim. “I am a Staff officer.”

“Well,” Mickey observed, “you always did take good care of that body of yours. Even at Breslau.”

Von Starheim’s face darkened.

“I haven’t forgotten Breslau,” said Von Starheim bitterly. “I swore to kill you then for disgracing me at the University, and now that we are at war, my job will be a lot easier.”

“You disgraced yourself, my friend,” reminded Mickey. “Your arrogance got you into trouble not only with me, but with the faculty as well. If you were asked to resign, the fault lay with you, not with me.”

“I would not have suffered the ridicule from the other students if you had fought honorably,” replied Von Starheim.

“Fighting honorably, as you put it,” said Mickey, “is not in the Nazi category. It is also a matter of geography. In my country we fight with our fists; not with broadswords. If I were a German—which, thank God, I am not—I might have fought you that way—and killed you.”

The Nazi stiffened.

“You would never have killed me,” he snapped.

Mickey looked down and smiled.

“You forget my strength,” he grinned.

Von Starheim had not forgotten. He remembered the terrific pummeling from Mickey’s big fists. He remembered the unconcealed amusement on the faces of the other medical students when he appeared with his eyes blackened; a gaping hole in the middle of an otherwise perfect row of teeth where Mickey had knocked a tooth or two off its foundation. But the American had taken the German’s taunts at the University, his bragging arrogance of his Aryan superiority over the American Indian as he had called him, until even a patient Yankee must defend his good name. So Mickey slapped Von Starheim’s face.

* * * *

Von Starheim’s seconds called on the American. He had the choice of weapons. He chose to use his fists. Von Starheim had no alternative. He had to fight with his fists. The count reached almost a thousand—or it could have— before he could mutter: “Where am I?” Even his seconds laughed at that. And so did the whole medical studentry. It made the proud Von Starheim forget his medical career; but not the students who laughed; nor Mickey Tchekov. When the Nazi Party came into power, six of the students died in concentration camps for their laughter. Von Starheim became a respected member of the Nazi party, gained power, and began seeking typical Nazi revenge. He had one more to go; that was Doctor Mikhail Tchekov, the American “Indian.”

But there was nothing Indian about Mickey, except his fine body; his enduring strength. Though these were not inherited from any Indian ancestry but from a father and mother of Kuban Cossack descendancy. Mickey’s father was a Caucasian who, with his wife, had migrated to New York City where, in the lower East Side, Mickey was born to them.

Mickey’s father prospered and his son enjoyed all the fruits of a free American education even to the scholarship which sent him to Breslau University for postgraduate medical work.

When the war broke out, Mickey enlisted in the United States Army and because he spoke Russian and German fluently, was sent to Iran with the first American contingent to await further orders.

The Soviet Union declined the use of American soldiers to protect Russian soil, but they did accept many American medical officers when the German 1942 summer offensive started and medical men were at a premium in the Soviet.

With a number of other Americans who could speak Russian and German, Mickey was shipped up the Caspian Sea to Mackhack in the Caucasus. There he entrained on the Transcaucasian Railway and later disentrained at Amavir where one of the largest of the Caucasian Hospital units was based. It was there many of Russia’s captured Germans were imprisoned in a camp on the outskirts of the town.

No. Von Starheim had not forgotten Mickey’s strength. Nor the disgrace that strength had caused.

“How can I forget your strength,” the Nazi replied, “when it caused me the loss of my career? Do you think I shall ever forget that?”

“Probably not,” agreed Mickey. “You’re not the type. You lost your career not through any beating I might have given you, but through your foolish Nazi pride.” He looked down at Von Starheim significantly. “I’d advise you to forget that around here.”

“I won’t have time to forget it here,” smirked the Nazi. “I won’t be here long enough. My army is driving South. They’ve smashed Krasnodar. They are not far from the Maikop oil fields. Once in Maikop, this place will crumble like an egg crate.” The man could not help licking his chops at the prospect. “Then, my friend, you will not be too far away for me to get satisfaction.”

* * * *

The news was bad from the direction of Maikop. The German Army was pushing down on it and driving the dauntless Russians back deeper into the Caucasus. Amavir was less than seventy-five miles from Maikop to the southwest of it.

Back at the hospital, Mickey sat with his superior officer.

“I’m not an alarmist, sir,” he said, “but in the face of the information we are getting from Maikop—and that from our bragging Nazi friend, it would seem to me that evacuating our wounded up the Kuban River to Batalpashinsk where they will be a lot safer—at least for a while—is the pressing thing to do.”

“That will be difficult, Captain Tchekov,” replied the Chief Surgeon. “You must remember that the Kuban flows down from the Elbrus Mountain. To embark for Batalpashinsk will be driving against the strong current. Our boats are small and too few.”

“I think we still have time to get more boats, sir,” replied Mickey. “I know where there are at least a dozen of them; motorized.”

The telephone jangled on the Chief Surgeon’s desk. He answered it. Mickey watched him. The man’s face grew serious, as he listened to the squeaking voice which came through to the American. The conversation was short and snappy. When the Hospital Commandant turned to Mickey, his eyes were aglow with an anxious light.

“You were right, Captain,” he said. “Orders have just come in. We must evacuate at once. Do you think you can get those boats?”

Less than one hour later, with the help of a dozen Russian guards, Mickey had the motorboats tied to the hospital dock. The whole place had suddenly come alive. Stretcher bearers, nurses, doctors, assistants, orderlies and hospital attendants were bringing out the wounded and laying them on the ground to wait their turn to be put aboard the boats.

Von Starheim had not lied. Maikop had fallen to the Germans. Gunfire, light and heavy, could be heard not more than twenty miles away. The vanguard of the retreating Russians appeared less than five miles to the West across the Kuban Steppes. Motorboats of all sizes lined the docks and part of the shoreline. Soon one of the motors roared over the noise of distant gunfire and the boat moved out with the wounded and nurses packed as tightly as they dared.

Mickey Tchekov, his kitbag in hand, rushed from one stretcher to another, and helped the wounded men where he was needed. One by one the boats were filled. But the job was a slow one. The gunfire drew closer to the little town at the river’s edge; and the hospital that nestled at the base of the foothills of the Caucasus Range.

As Mickey looked toward the South, he saw Mount Elbrus towering toward the sky, over eighteen thousand feet above them. Not much higher than the mountain, he caught a glimpse of smaller objects. Their noses were pointed in his direction. Suddenly the noses dipped. The objects started a mad dive earthward. The sound of Jumo engines ripped the atmosphere over the hills. Mickey shouted:

“Hurry! Hurry! Stuka dive bombers are tearing at the hospital!”

It was true. Those Nazi messengers of death were aiming their beaks for the Amavir Hospital roof and as they roared down in screaming fury, they unloosed their cargo of burning destruction upon the red cross that marked the roof of the building using it as a guide to place their bombs.

* * * *

One by one they roared over. One by one they sent their black missiles of oblivion into the unprotected building. Blast after blast rocked the earth about it; geysers of white cots, hospital equipment, men and women, were blown through the roof to fall back to earth, lifeless, useless, twisted things. Fire rose through the roof and the flames licked at the side walls. Men were still bringing the wounded out in spite of the roaring inferno that soon made it impossible to return for more. Most of the wounded men and women were brought out. In the face of devastating fire from the Nazi machine guns, the boats were being loaded rapidly now, and moved up the river with their cargo of pain as rapidly as they could get away.

The five miles that separated the motorized Russian columns that were marching and riding in the direction of Amavir were soon obliterated and the light gun carriers blasted into action. They poured their anti-aircraft shells at the roaring, diving Huns and caught two of them in their engines driving them into the earth where they burned as they had caused the hospital to burn.

Men shouted orders across the open fields. Only one boat remained to be filled. The Chief Surgeon, the remaining nurses, and a small number of men who did not require stretchers boarded it. Several of the younger men gave up their places to the older doctors, and the nurses. Among them was Mickey Tchekov. He remained on the beach, to whatever fate destiny had in store for him.

Guns blasted all around him as the Russian antiaircraft gun carriers rolled up to the field where a few minutes before the wounded men waited to embark. One of the boats seemed to be having motor trouble. It was filled with men and women attendants, nurses and doctors who attempted to protect the wounded men from the devastating machine gunfire. The motor on the boat finally coughed and gave up.

One of the Nazi pilots must have seen the boat in trouble. It made an excellent target for his front machine guns. He dived down on the boat from a height of five hundred feet firing all the way down, and racked and rocked it with burning tracer fire, felling the men and women who were still standing up. The small boat floundered a moment, and with the loss of buoyancy of live men and women and wounded soldiers, the small craft turned on its side flinging its stricken cargo into the Kuban River as it started to burn.

Three of the ack-ack guns concentrated their fire on the Nazi dive bomber and the pilot had not time to pull out of the dive. As he attempted to pull the nose of the heavy ship up, his tail section struck the water and the impact twisted it beyond further use. With full engine on, throttle wide-open and Jumo screaming, the plane pancaked as the pilot’s cubicle was ripped apart with the exploding ack-ack. The Stuka dived into the Kuban and sank, submersing the already dead pilot, leaving the battered, twisted tail sticking up out of the water like a camouflaged cross.

Mickey turned to one of the other doctors who had stayed behind with him: “That couldn’t have happened before that rat sank the hospital boat.”

“Now we see why we must not lose this war,” remarked the man. “That is only a sample of what the Nazis will do to us if we do.”

II

The fires in the hospital building continued to rage. Walls collapsed and sent great geysers of burning embers showering over the guns still active on the grounds.

Mickey called his colleagues together under the protective shadow of a huge Soviet tank which stood by near the main road.

“I told Commandant Kousoff that we would try to join the unit at Batalpashinsk. If we stick to our forces, I think we’ll have no difficulty making it. What do you gentlemen think?”

“I think if we’re to try joining our hospital unit,” suggested one of the doctors, “we’d best start now. I see the infantry is moving off.”

Stormovik fighters took up where the ack-acks left off and were smashing at the remaining Stukas high overhead. The Russian Infantry unit continued on in its retreat recognizing now how little they could do to save the hospital. With pressure being brought upon them by advancing Nazi tanks and men, they started to gather their forces and move out of Amavir in orderly fashion, putting the torch to anything that still stood intact and maintaining their policy of leaving nothing but scorched earth behind them.

With Amavir in flames, the only thing the Russians left standing was the prison camp. So fast was the onrush of the Nazis that the men of the Soviet had no time to put the torch to the buildings, or take the prisoners with them.

As Mickey drove on with his other officers in a small, light truck, he saw Von Starheim on a box in the middle of the prison yard haranguing the Nazi prisoners to take possession of the camp. He saw them break for the switches, cut off the current as they ran screaming about the yards at their liberation, and threw the unelectrified gates wide-open.

That was the last thing he saw of Heinsel too. For the little German stood off from the mob; he let them run amok and stood calmly by watching them.

As the little car which carried Mickey and his medical colleagues drove into the green of the Caucasus hills, tanks clashed with tanks on the outskirts of Amavir. Shells dropped around them and blew dirt up on both sides of them. It fell back and smeared their uniforms. Some of the dirt blew into the driver’s eyes and blinded him. The car veered off the road and drove up a small mound. An 88-millimeter shell from a Nazi tank dropped just behind the veering truck and drove its nose into the ground just beneath it. It blew up and carried the rear of the small car with it. The occupants were blown over the greenery of the Caucasian countryside. The driver was killed instantly. Two of the other doctors lay quite still where they fell. Three of them came through; one of the three was Mickey Tchekov.

When he regained consciousness, and opened his eyes, he was still in the hills. A familiar face looked down upon him. Gradually it fell into focus. A familiar voice spoke as if it were relieved.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” it said. “I hated the thought of anything or anyone else killing you. I wanted that distinctive pleasure for myself.”

* * * *

It was Von Starheim. And he held a Luger in his hand. The man had spoken truthfully. He did not stay a prisoner in the Russian camp twenty-four hours. In fact, he had not been a prisoner half that time.

“Hello, Von Starheim,” muttered the still-dazed Mickey. “I’m surprised you didn’t put a bullet into me while I couldn’t fight back. That is typically Nazi, isn’t it?”

The Nazi’s eyes narrowed venomously.

“I wanted you to know that it was I who did the job,” replied Von Starheim. “Now that you are conscious, I would do it but I have too many of my men around me to see it. It might shock their sensitive souls to see me put a bullet through you here.”

“I’m sure it would,” replied Mickey. “They’re so unused to it.”

Von Starheim ordered the men to cover Mickey and take him back to the prison camp which had temporarily held him a prisoner.

As Mickey rose to his feet, he found his kitbag lay a mass of debris not far away.

“That’s no good anymore,” he remarked dully.

He looked about him at the other unconscious and dead men.

“What are you going to do with these men?” he asked.

“Oh, they’ll be taken care of,” said Von Starheim.

“Why don’t you let me see if they’re alive?”

“No need for that,” replied the Nazi. “They’re all dead. All but you.” He smiled, as if in gratitude to a good Nazi Rosenberg-created God.

One of the other doctors stirred. Mickey dropped to his knees and turned him over.

“Get up!” ordered Von Starheim threateningly.

Mickey looked up and saw the man aiming a Luger at him. “But you can’t let this man lie here and die,” he remonstrated.

“I said he’ll be taken care of!” shouted Von Starheim furiously. “Now get on with you.”

As Mickey entered the gates of the prison camp he could hardly help smiling woefully. The uniforms of the men now walking the yard were changed from German grey-green to Russian mud-brown. The Heinies were out; the Vodkas were in.

It was a strange metamorphosis; but that was the fortune of war.

Mickey wondered how the boats with the wounded men, the doctors and nurses who escaped with them fared; and if they succeeded in reaching Batalpashinsk and safety. He hoped so, though he doubted it because of the rapidity of the German onslaught.

His uniform was a bit battered with the recent explosive experience; but he himself was none the worse for it though he was a bit shaken up. The Nazi Commandant of the prison camp sent for him.

“I understand you are a good doctor,” he began.

“I have a fair reputation,” replied Mickey. “I finished my studies in Breslau.”

“Oh,” said the man perking up. “Breslau. Then you must be good.”

“Not necessarily,” explained Mickey with meaning. “Not everything that comes out of Germany is good.” Then he added significantly. “Lately, in fact, not anything.”

The Commandant eyed Mickey a few minutes with eyes that were not unkindly. In fact, he half-smiled good-naturedly at the American’s attitude. He might have taken offense but he did not. He dropped the German language and to Mickey’s amazement spoke a perfect American English.

“I can understand how you feel, Captain,” he smiled. “There are still a few of us left with some human instincts.”

Mickey eyed the man with surprise.

“I see you’ve been to the States,” he said quietly.

“I had a large family in Berlin,” explained the Nazi Colonel. “I had a lot of money; large business interests in Philadelphia and in Berlin and Hamburg. It was suggested I cooperate with the Party. I saw Dachau for my relatives if I didn’t. So here we are.”

Mickey didn’t know why but he liked the man and his frankness. He apologized for his seeming brusqueness.

“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the Commandant. He seemed a little weary. He looked at Mickey’s uniform. “It seems strange seeing that uniform here in Russia.” Then he added quietly, quoting a famous American patriot: “If this be treason, they can make the most of it; but I like seeing it over here.”

Mickey smiled.

“I think we understand each other, sir,” he said. “Now how can I serve you?”

The man took his tunic off.

“First you can relieve me of this boil under my arm,” he said. He pointed to a table. “That medical kit will be yours.”

While Mickey operated the man talked.

“There is a shortage of medical officers with my unit,” he said. “I’ll have to ask you to take care of the Russian prisoners. My own men will take care of our soldiers. However; if we need your services there, you will be called upon.”

Mickey concentrated on the wound and nodded his head in understanding. A low clucking sound dropped from his mouth. The Nazi looked at him in wonder as he winced with a momentary shock of pain.

“What was that?” asked the German.

“I always do that when I’ve done a job satisfactory to myself,” Mickey replied. “I’ve just removed the core. You’ll be all right now.”

“Of course,” went on the Nazi Commandant, “you’ll still be a prisoner and have the status of prisoner in spite of the freedom you will have in making the rounds of the camp.”

He looked at Mickey thoughtfully as the young American applied a compress to the wound and placed a roll of bandage to it clamping it in place. He watched Mickey as he rolled the bandage about his arm, and added: “With all that freedom, you will naturally think of escaping.…”

“Naturally,” agreed Mickey.

The Nazi smiled.

“You will be pursued,” he warned.

“Those are the chances I’ll have to take, sir,” Mickey grinned. He finished his job. The medical kit the Commandant had given him was complete. It was assembled with typical German precision for every field emergency.

“There you are, sir,” Mickey said. “What next?”

“Report to my Chief Surgeon,” he said. “He will assign you to your job.”

The Chief Surgeon was unlike the Colonel. He was brusque, almost to offensiveness. But Mickey did not mind the man. He was used to Nazi arrogance. When the man learned that Mickey had studied in Breslau, he softened a little. But not much.

* * * *

The American was assigned to the Russian prisoners. The men liked that. They had heard of the American doctors who had come up from Iran and were doing a fine job. They had heard of Mikhail Tchekov, the American born of Russian parents, and heard that he was an excellent man.

He looked about him for Von Starheim, but the man was nowhere to be seen. He asked the German Sergeant of the Guard about him. The man knew Mickey and liked him. He had treated him for a swollen gland and reduced the pain and size so quickly, that the man asked him if he could do anything for him.

“Yes,” replied the American. “I haven’t seen Captain Von Starheim all day. Has he been transferred?”

“Oh, yes,” the Nazi Sergeant replied. “He was given a company of two hundred men with machine guns to go out and find the guerrilla Koslovitch. They say he and his band have been picking off our men like flies. I suppose he’s somewhere up in the mountains looking for him.”

Mickey had examined all the Russian prisoners; had talked to them of Koslovitch, and one by one they stuck their tongue in their cheeks and smiled knowingly.

No. They had not seen Koslovitch. But they had heard of the exploits he and his little band of fifty had perpetrated. They had sniped at Nazis for months and sent more than their quota back to Germany in pine boxes, when their bodies were found or, with transportation from the Caucasus difficult, saw them laid to rest under Russian soil. They believed that all good Germans were those laid to rest under any soil.

The Russians told him of many things Koslovitch had done; destroyed an airdrome; smashed a hundred Stuka dive bombers on the ground; blew up an ammunition dump; and many other equally dangerous and courageous pieces of destruction.

In making the rounds two days later, he found a new man—or rather, a boy—in one of the prison tents. No one knew how he got in—not even his tent mates, and they didn’t ask questions. He was there—and he was wounded.

Mickey examined the boy.

“Where did you get this?” he asked in Russian.

The boy did not answer. He merely scrutinized Mickey’s face in an effort to discover what he wanted to find there.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked the American.

“You are Mikhail Tchekov,” asked the youngster. His dark Caucasian eyes continued to gaze piercingly at the American.

“Yes,” replied Mickey quietly. The other prisoners had stepped out of the tent. He saw their shadows plastered against the canvas, as if standing guard over it. “Yes, I am Mikhail Tchekov. Why do you ask?”

“You will come with me tonight,” the boy replied. It was the tone of authority. It was not a request but an order.

* * * *

Mickey looked at the youth. He was ragged. Not in uniform; slightly dirty with the mud of the Caucasus caked on his leather boots split at the vamp. As Mickey dressed the flesh wound on the boy’s arm, he said:

“That sounds like an order.”

“It is an order, Comrade,” said the boy. He could not have been more than fifteen; in years, that is, but in attitude, experience, the boy seemed a hundred. Mickey had never met anyone quite like him before and he studied the bronzed, serious face that bore the marks of great responsibility.

“If I should refuse to go with you?” asked Mickey.

“You cannot refuse,” the boy told him firmly. “We are comrades with one aim; to destroy the Nazi lice and everything they stand for if we are ever to have peace in this world again.” His eyes narrowed a little as if he was determined to have his way no matter what it cost. “You will not refuse.”

Mickey smiled at the boy’s confidence; his self-assurance.

“How do you know we can get out of here?” he asked.

A wise smile crept over the small face; his lips became compressed with a tinge of contempt. “I got in,” he boasted. “We’ll get out. You leave that to me.”

“Who sent you to me?” asked Mickey.

“Koslovitch, the guerrilla,” replied the boy suddenly. “His band needs a doctor. You are the only one we know of here we can trust. Besides,” he added, “you are an American. You represent everything all free men admire, and respect and love and die for.” The boy’s eyes shone with an almost holy light. “Koslovitch loves his country and is ready to give his life for it. Just as your countrymen did in 1776. You can’t refuse to help him or his wounded men.”

Mickey knew right then and there that he couldn’t.

“What time shall I meet you and where?” he asked putting the finishing touches to the job of patching up the boy.

“Here, at this tent,” he said. The tent stood on the end of the line near the barbed wire enclosure.

“What time?”

“At twelve o’clock,” replied the boy. “They change the guard then and for five minutes there is no one near this tent.”

“The barbed wire is electrified,” warned Mickey.

“I know. I have a pair of insulated wire cutters. We’ll cut our way through.”

“I don’t need to do that,” explained Mickey. “I have the freedom of the camp. I’ll meet you on the other side.”

“That won’t do,” replied the boy. “You will be followed. Do it my way and we’ll have no trouble.”

Mickey had never met so positive a person before. The kid certainly had what it takes to lead men, he thought. Someday this youngster would be a figure in Russian politics, he expected. Mickey agreed. He would meet the boy at the appointed place and hour.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“You can call me Feodor,” the boy replied. “And—oh, yes. Fill your bag with plenty of bandages and other medical supplies we’ll need for our men.”

“That’s the simplest part of the job,” replied Mickey.

* * * *

At five minutes to twelve that night, Mickey approached the tent at the end of the line. As he reached the middle of the tent street, he was halted by a sentry. He moved closer to the man so that he could be recognized in the dark. His bag hung heavy in his hand.

“I’ve a patient with a high fever in the last tent,” he explained. “I’m just going to look in on him.”

“Very well, Herr doktor,” replied the sentry. “I’m sorry I stopped you. Pass.”

“Thank you,” said Mickey. “Can’t be too careful these dark nights.”

“Quite right, sir,” agreed the man.

As Mickey entered the tent, the four men lay on their straw-filled mattresses on the tent floor.

“Feodor,” whispered Mickey.

“Ready,” replied the boy in a whisper. “Is the coast clear?”

“I’ll see,” answered the American. He pushed the tent flap cautiously aside and peered out. He turned around and whispered, “All clear.”

Feodor dropped to his knees; looked out and crawled to the barbed wire fence. He hesitated in some tall grass near one of the fence posts as the guards changed places. He waited a few breathless moments and with thickly rubber-gloved hands he grasped the electrically charged wire near the ground and lifted it high enough to allow his body to pass silently through. Mickey followed after passing his bag through the large opening Feodor made for him. Carefully, the young Russian replaced the wire against the post. So skillfully did he do the job that even in broad daylight, it would not be discovered.

“So that’s how you got in,” whispered Mickey.

“Come,” whispered Feodor, “and keep well down to the ground.” The noise of boots on gravel reached them. “Down!” commanded the boy and automatically, as though he were accustomed to complying with the other’s orders, Mickey dropped to his knees and hid in some underbrush.

The black shadow of the sentry retracing his path outside the enclosure passed not more than five feet away. They waited with bated breath until the man was out of earshot.

“Come!” whispered Feodor, and grabbing Mickey by the arm led him on the double to a clump of maple trees about a hundred yards away and to a small thicket of willows that lined the Kuban River about a half-mile from the camp.

They reached one large tree set back from the river. Its foliage was denser than the others. Like a monkey, agile, strong, Feodor disappeared into the branches above and soon descended with a large bundle.

“Help me with this,” he commanded.

Mickey smiled at the boy’s tone, but took his orders good-naturedly. He helped him open up what proved to be a rubber boat. In the dark the youngster found the valve. A second later, there was a sharp hissing noise as the boat took shape. This boy had evidently prepared for all emergencies.

“So this is how you got down here from the hills,” said Mickey.

“I came down with the current from the Elbrus,” explained Feodor. “I brought a gas bottle with me and hid it with the boat after I had deflated it.” He finished the job of inflation. He looked toward the river. “It will be harder going back,” he said. “We will have to row against the current.”

“Where are your oars?” asked Mickey.

“I hid them in that farthermost tree,” he indicated, pointing to a willow on the edge of the river whose branches and leaves were kept wet as they dripped into the Kuban.

* * * *

They carried the rubber boat and set it down under the deep shadow of this willow. Feodor climbed into the tree and returned with two small paddles and another object.

“What else have you got there?” asked Mickey curiously.

“A submachine gun,” explained Feodor.

“You thought to bring everything, didn’t you?”

“I have to get you back to the men,” explained Feodor.

“And to Koslovitch,” added Mickey.

“And to Koslovitch,” agreed Feodor.

It was more difficult to paddle up the fast-running current of the restless Kuban that even Feodor had anticipated. Both men paddled desperately against the rapidly-moving waters that roared down from the great mountain. They kept inshore for the resistance was lessened there by its close proximity to the banks. The paddling was less difficult.

Dawn broke over them as they continued to paddle up the stream that was less than a half-mile wide. It was broad daylight when they rounded the bend in the river and came upon the railroad bridge that crossed it while they were still several miles from Batalpashinsk.

Mickey remembered that his hospital unit had escaped to there. At least, he thought they were still there but Feodor told him:

“They were driven out again and have gone on to Pyatigorsk where our Kuban Cossacks are holding the Germans back,” he told Mickey. “Just how long they can hold out there, I don’t know. But they are determined not to let the Nazi rats infest more of the valley than they can help.”

As the boat reached the trestle that held the railroad tracks above the Kuban, Feodor ordered: “Stop paddling,” and grabbed for one of the piles on the south bank of the river.

“This is as far as we dare go now on the river in broad daylight,” he said. “We’ll hide the boat under the bridge and go to one of the collective farms nearby where many of the farmers are getting ready to evacuate their farms for places out of the battle areas. We may be able to get a lift from there to the foothills around Elbrus.”

He drew the boat up the bank under the trestle and deflated it. Feodor rolled it up and hid it under a depression that was hardly observable even when one stood near it.

“You seem to know this country pretty well, Feodor,” remarked Mickey.

Feodor was not a braggart. He spoke as one having authority; but there was no arrogance in his replies. He was a strange youth, Mickey observed. All the boy said was:

“Pretty well.”

They walked up to a woman collectivist farmer who was loading a wagon with her furniture, bedding, and what food she had left. With her was her son of ten. Her head was wrapped in her shawl of wool; the youngster’s close cropped head was covered with a homemade cap.

Feodor strode officiously over to the woman. He was not much more than a child himself in years. Mickey saw him whisper something in the woman’s ear. She clapped her hand to her mouth as if to suppress a scream of delight and prevent her shouting the thing he had whispered to her. She looked toward the young American doctor in a now water-stained, mud-spattered American uniform and grinned happily. He heard her say in her native Russian:

“Of course, I’ll help. With all my heart—with all my life if necessary.”

* * * *

That was the Soviet man or woman’s cry. It rose in every corner, light or dark, in the nation. It was the cry that would one day send the Nazi hordes reeling back to the rat holes in Germany from whence they had come.

“She will take us right to our destination,” Feodor told him. “Isn’t that nice?”

They helped the woman load her wagon, leaving a space in the center of the cart for themselves to step into. She put the finishing touches to the job by throwing her bedding in over them as they crouched, completely hidden even from possible searchers.

The woman gave them a whole loaf of black bread and some milk, and as the wagon dragged along the stretch of road winding through the foothills of the Caucasus, the mountain undulated for miles ahead of them, their tips snow-crested and white; their bases green-carpeted, and brown.

Across the Kuban Steppes they rode; the two chestnut-colored horses drawing the cart behind them; and behind the cart two cows and several sheep and pigs followed in their wake.

“Her husband is a member of Koslovitch’s guerrillas,” explained Feodor. “He is lying wounded in the cave and she was going to him to help nurse him. When I told her who you were, Comrade, it made her very happy.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Mickey.

Through a very tiny crack in the piled up goods over his head and on all sides of him, Mickey could see the winding mountain pass over which the cart was plodding several hours later stretch far to the west. Beyond that, he caught a glimpse of the glacial peak of Mount Elbrus.

“You came a long way to get a doctor,” remarked Mickey to his young companion.

“I tried two other places first,” explained Feodor. “One was Pyatigorsk, the other Batalpashinsk. I was told they could spare none, but that you and four other doctors were taken prisoner and would probably be available if I could get you out.” He smiled a boyish smile; the first Mickey had seen on the youngster’s serious face. “Well,” he added, “here you are.”

Mickey laughed.

But the laugh was cut short. Automobile engines suddenly snorted in upon them. The sound of them drove down from the hills. With a roar they were upon the little wagon and seemed to be coming upon them from all sides. A man shouted in Russian at the woman.

“Stop!” he cried. “Stop your wagon!”

The cart was pulled up short. The furniture and bedding and other of the woman’s belongings shifted but not sufficiently to expose the hidden men. Feodor reached for the machine gun at his feet. His grip fastened upon the stock. Mickey could see a peculiar light creep into the boy’s eyes; his bronzed face darkened; his jaw tightened with grim determination. The Russian had a tinge of German as it drifted through to them.

“Where are you going?” the voice said.

“I am going to join my husband who is wounded,” replied the woman truthfully.

“What have you got there on your cart?” demanded the voice.

“Just my furniture, my bedding, a few pots and pans,” she said calmly. “Nothing else.”

* * * *

Mickey admired the woman’s courage. She knew that if he and Feodor were uncovered by the Nazis, not only would they be shot on the spot, but the woman and her son would die with them. Yet her voice was steady, calm, emotionless.

“Search the wagon,” cried the voice.

Mickey went hot and cold all over. They were sunk now, he thought. He and Feodor sank to the floor of the cart as pieces of furniture were yanked off the wagon and thrown to the ground.

Feodor raised the muzzle of his machine gun, readying it into position for attack. He might die, but he would not die alone.

“We are looking for guerrillas,” went on the voice. “Have you seen any on your way up here?”

“Oh, no,” replied the woman.

“If you had you would tell us, wouldn’t you, my good woman?” went on the man.

“Of course,” she replied, “if you insisted on it.”

“You’re a filthy Russian liar,” cried the man.

The unloading continued. Mickey and Feodor were perspiring in their anxiety. They did not want to be caught. They did not fear for themselves, but for the brave woman and the child with her. The Germans ripped off a bundle of bedding that roofed in the hidden men. They were getting closer to the men. For some unknown reason they stopped with the first bundle of bedding. Had they lifted the second, they would have uncovered the two men.

The Heinie above stopped searching. The furniture and bedding were scattered about the road surrounding the wagon. Some of the lighter pieces were broken.

“Herr Oberst,” he called down, “there is nothing but this filthy peasant stuff on this cart. The woman spoke the truth.”

“Very well,” cried the man. “Come down and let’s get on.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man. He jumped to the ground. “Shall we put the stuff back?”

“Put the stuff back!” shouted the man. “What do you mean, you swine! Let the filthy peasant put it back herself!” He turned about and gave the command: “Forvarts!”

The motors in the German truck snarled into life; shifting gears ground raucously. One by one the trucks roared by and the noise of their guttural steely throats dimmed with the distance.

Mickey wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was too weak to reach for his kerchief behind him. He had recognized the man’s voice.

It was Von Starheim.

III.

“That was a narrow squeak,” said Mickey rising from his cramped position on the floor of the cart.

Young Feodor too rose and stretched himself when the Nazis were out of sight. “You’ll get used to them,” he remarked philosophically.

“We’d better get down and help the woman re-pile her wagon,” suggested Mickey.

“Not while the Nazis have powerful field glasses to pick us up with,” said the masterful youth. “She will have to do the job herself—to save us from a firing squad. We’re not yet out of danger, you know,” he reminded Mickey, “even if those Nazi roaches are out of sight.”

Mickey eyed the boy with unconcealed admiration. This youngster thought of everything.

The woman started putting back her furniture and other belongings. Thirty minutes later, the strange caravan was on its way. Mickey and Feodor were not as cramped this time for they had placed two small wooden chairs in the middle of the pile and they sat on them.

“How far is the camp from here?” asked Mickey.

“We should reach the place sometime tonight at the speed we are going,” said Feodor. “In about an hour or two she will turn off the road and take a route into the hills.”

“She knows where the place is, I suppose,” said Mickey anxiously.

“As well as I do,” replied Feodor. “She could find it in the dark.”

“I’d like to get out of this and stretch my long legs,” said the American.

“When the woman turns into the hills,” assured Feodor, “you will be able to.”

But it took the slowed-up horses two hours to cross that part of the Steppes which lay south of the Kuban River and stretched like an endless green carpet to the base of the towering ranges. Off the mountain pass and in between two high precipitous hills the little caravan halted. They were well out of possible enemy territory now, and in deep enough for them to be sufficiently safe to start a small fire on which to cook a meal.

The woman removed the bedding and some of the other pieces of furniture and let Feodor and the American Army doctor whose legs were so cramped he could hardly stand on them drop to the ground.

As Mickey looked off toward the undulating range of mountains, he drew in a deep breath of the crystal clear air. He pounded himself on the chest Tarzan fashion.

“It’s good to get out of the hemmed in position we were in,” he said stretching himself to his full height and yawning widely. The altitude, and the thinner, colder air made him feel a little drowsy.

Even the little youngster, who had been riding outside all the time, yawned as he watched Mickey. Feodor and the woman took some of the broken furniture and started a small fire. The cattle were released and permitted to graze. Mickey took the youngster’s hand and they walked a short distance from the wagon. As the American gazed off at the gentle mist that hung over the mauve, green, gold, and white of the distant hills, he turned to the child beside him and said: “Now I know why the Don and Kuban Cossacks fight the way they do to save these mountains from the Nazi swine.”

* * * *

His eyes fairly glowed with the beauty of the scene. For a moment he thought he was home; back in the States where other and equally beautiful mountains rose in great golden-white peaks that looked out upon a blue Pacific.

They ate the heavy black bread and pot cheese the woman had made herself the day before, with a gusto that amazed even Mickey. He didn’t realize he was that hungry. Water was boiled on the small fire and the cold chill was tempered in their bodies with hot Russian tea.

Late that night, the groaning vehicle with Mickey and Feodor riding on the tail board now, reached a cave in the hills near the village of Kislovodsk, to the West of Pyatigorsk where the Kuban Cossacks held the Nazi lines whose eyes were turned toward the golden flow of the Grozny oil fields.

As the wagon approached it from a trackless field, it was stopped by a guerrilla guard of three men. When they saw who the woman was and whom she had with her, the men were elated. One of the men took the horses’ heads and led them to a narrow pass cut in two thousands of years before by descending glacial currents. In the dark, the narrow pass was completely obscured and would not possibly have been found even by the woman who had been there before. If the guard had not taken them in, Feodor would have led them. But the guard simplified the job. Feodor could remain with Mickey to identify him.

A few more winding turns in the dark and the wagon was halted. Mickey and Feodor dropped off the tail and Feodor preceded the American into the great, natural cavern that was recessed almost a hundred yards into the base of the hill. It was large and high-vaulted; wide and rambling.

The place was fitted out like a dormitory, but not with modern fixtures. Not even the farms themselves could boast much of modern improvements; but there were beds of straw on both sides of the forward part of the cave; two or three roughhewn tables, and a dozen or more chairs brought up from the abandoned farms.

As Mickey entered with Feodor, a loud shout of welcome greeted them. Several wounded men lay in the beds on the floor of the cave; others were seated on them or on chairs cleaning their “little rifles”—as they called them, by flickering candlelight. Although the cave was well set back in the hill, Koslovitch did not permit much light to be used in the hideout.

The woman and the small boy hurried to the side of one of the wounded men. She dropped down beside him and threw her arms about his neck. So did the youngster. The man was glad to see them.

“We have a doctor now,” the woman said. “You’ll be made well again, my husband.”

“That is good,” replied the man. “Then I can take up the work of killing more Nazis.”

Mickey came over to the man and brought his kitbag with him. Feodor joined him.

“So this is the place?” said Mickey.

“This is the place,” replied Feodor, “and these are the men.” He made a sweep with his hand that took in all the wounded men on the floor.

* * * *

Feodor introduced Mickey to the men. There were about twenty-five of them. The others were out on a mission. “I suppose Koslovitch, your leader, is with the others,” Mickey said turning to one of the men.

“Koslovitch?” said the man puzzled.

“Yes,” replied Mickey. “I understand he is quite a great guerrilla. One of the men at the prisoner’s camp mentioned the fact that he had killed no less than two hundred and fifty Nazis alone by his magnificent sniping.” Then he added quickly, “Of course, that doesn’t include a few hundred others who died in train wrecks or explosions.”

“You do not know Koslovitch?” asked the still puzzled Russian.

Mickey shook his head.

The man on the straw bed laid down the rifle he was cleaning, put his head back and laughed uproariously. The other men, hearing the conversation, also joined in the fun much to the chagrin which showed plainly on the American’s face.

“Well,” asked Mickey, “what’s so funny about that?”

“He doesn’t know Koslovitch,” shouted the man in a deep basso profundo that echoed to the ceiling above. A roar of laughter rose again.

Mickey turned appealingly to Feodor.

“They do not know,” said the boy smilingly. “I must apologize for not telling you before, but—I am Koslovitch.”

Mickey’s eyes almost popped.

“You!” he almost yelled.

“Yes,” said the fifteen-year-old leader of the most hated and feared guerrilla band in that part of the Caucasus. “I am Feodor Koslovitch.” He said it quietly; modestly.

Mickey eyed the boy a moment. Then he shook his head. “Now I’ve seen everything,” he muttered.

He understood now what he couldn’t understand before; the tone of authority in the boy’s voice; never requesting a thing to be done, but ordering it; and getting it done without question or protest.

His reputation as a guerrilla fighter had given him a national reputation. He was known wherever a Russian defended a foot of his native soil against the Nazi invaders.

It was odd that a boy should lead men. But this was no ordinary boy. He was a born general; a splendid, natural strategist. There were geniuses or prodigies in other fields; why not in the art of war?

“Well,” thought Mickey, “why not?”

He glanced back toward the rear of the cave. In the dim candlelight he made out over a hundred small wooden boxes. They contained dynamite and ammunition.

“That’s dynamite, isn’t it?” he asked.

Feodor nodded.

“If that stuff should suddenly decide to go up, some night,” Mickey said, “there would be no further need here for a doctor.” Then he added smilingly: “In fact, there would be no doctor. No. And no guerrillas and no Koslovitch.”

“You’ll get used to sleeping with it,” grinned the boy.

Mickey removed his coat.

“Well,” he said in a most professional and doctor-like manner, “if we’re going to put these men back on their feet, I think we’d better start now.”

He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and went to work on the husband of the woman who drove them to the hideout. He had one of the tables cleared and the man placed on it. The woman provided clean sheets from her furnishings. Hot water was given him by one of the men young Koslovitch ordered to put on a fire. The man would need an operation. The right leg had received a nasty bullet wound; had turned gangrenous and would have to be removed.

The man screamed he’d die first; Mickey told him he would die if he didn’t permit the operation. Koslovitch ordered it. The man quietly obeyed the young guerrilla. His eyes filled with tears; he agreed. He did not weep for the loss of the limb. He wept because he knew his days of defending his homeland were over.

Koslovitch was right. There would be a need for brave men who survived the holocaust to revivify Russia. Even if they had only one leg, they would still prove of inestimable value in the process of reconstruction that would follow.

The woman proved a good and able nurse. Although Mickey worked under a handicap; bad light; inadequate tools and supplies, the job was skillfully done.

The other men were not so seriously hurt. But they needed attention and lots of it. Mickey taught the woman how to care for them. She was a most apt pupil; and an efficient worker.

Koslovitch’s guerrillas now had a guerrilla nurse—and a guerrilla doctor.

IV

Mickey worked through the night on the wounded men. Dawn crept into the cave as it slipped down the pass from the opening in the hills above. As he stepped out for a brief smoke, through the gap he could see the peak of Mount Elbrus, eighteen thousand feet above him, and about five or six miles to the south.

The other twenty-five of Koslovitch’s men trailed in during the night and dropped onto their beds of straw, tired, slightly disgruntled, for they could not find any Nazis to maraud. But their boy leader encouraged them. He would find something to do. Something important; vitally important.

It happened sooner than he dreamed. As Mickey stood in the pass and admired Mount Elbrus, one of the men who acted as lookout brushed past him and dashed breathlessly into the cave shouting for Koslovitch.

Mickey, sensing some exciting event impending, followed on the man’s heels. Out of breath from his mad dash down the mountain from his lookout post, he gasped:

“Fifteen Nazi tanks. Stalled. They’re fifteen miles north of Kislovodsk. They’re headed south for Pyatigorsk and the German lines.” He paused for breath. In his hand he held a pair of fifty-seven power German binoculars taken from a dead Nazi. These binoculars could make plain almost anything within fifty miles or more.

The man continued: “They seem to be out of fuel. They were draining the fuel tanks of those Mark III’s which had more gas than the others, and filling the empty tanks of those which had not enough.”

“Let’s see them,” said Koslovitch.

He grabbed the binoculars from the hand of the watch, and together they started for the entrance to the cave.

“Do you mind if I go along, Feodor?” asked Mickey.

“Not at all,” the boy said. “But keep low as we climb the hill. I don’t want you to be seen.”

The three men crouched low as they climbed the side of the mountain through the brush and tall grass that grew upon it. They climbed for about two hundred feet and stopped by a tall pine whose branches were thick with needles and hid a small platform large enough for a man to sit on.

Because they were three, they did not climb to the seat but observed the distant steppes from where they crouched. The guerrilla watch located the tanks and turned the binoculars over to the boy. He watched the spot a few minutes before he spoke.

“They’re still dividing their fuel,” he said as he pressed the glasses closer to his eyes.

He was much older than his years, Mickey observed. He did not look like a boy at all but a little man. A sort of Napoleon without inhibitions or complexes.

Feodor swung the glasses over the panorama that unfolded in the lenses.

“They are the only Nazis for miles,” he said. “The way they are dividing their fuel I don’t think they will go far.” He turned the glasses over to Mickey. “Take a look.”

Mickey glanced through the binoculars.

* * * *

Fifteen Mark III’s, several on the road, others in the field at the side of the highway, were stalled and men in dirty, oily coveralls were handing each other small cans of gasoline drained from the tanks.

The American medical officer turned the binoculars back to the guerrilla leader.

“They look vulnerable to me,” he ventured.

“They are vulnerable,” said Feodor.

Back in the cave, the young fighter called his men together.

“Pavlovnik! Stavan! Volkov! Pushkin! Shostakovitch! Kudashkin!”

One by one the men fell into line and waited. They might have been guerrillas, but they were disciplined. The boy had insisted on military precision—and got it.

Feodor ordered the men to get shovels, picks, and other digging tools. He ordered others to take dynamite; others detonators; still others hand grenades. He turned to Mickey.

“You will join us, doctor,” he said.

Mickey found he had another surprise in store for himself. Feodor led the men to another hill a short distance up the pass. He had walked so fast that he was about twenty yards in advance of the men when he suddenly disappeared. As the men approached the spot, the American saw another hole in the side of the hill.

Mickey waited outside as the men entered. Their guns were slung over their shoulders; their cargo held carefully in their hands. He stepped inside as the last of almost thirty men disappeared within. About fifty yards back, he heard stomping of heavy feet on the soft dirt floor. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light within, he saw two long lines of horses. These horses were the individual property—or had been before the war— of the Cossacks who made up Koslovitch’s band.

Mickey stepped out into daylight again as Feodor Koslovitch walked two horses out into the pass. The horses blinked as they emerged into the sunshine.

“Can you ride?” he asked Mickey.

“Not like a Cossack,” said Mickey. “But I did play polo back in the States and I stayed in the seat.”

Feodor smiled. “That is recommendation enough.” He turned the reins of one of the saddled horses over to the American. “Here.” Feodor was a boy of few words.

Mickey examined the girdle; mounted the horse and adjusted the stirrups to fit his long legs and walked the horse a little way down the pass to make room for the others to emerge from, and line up in front of, the cave for their orders.

“We will go to the outskirts of Kislodovsk,” Feodor began. “Proceed five miles to the north of the village to the mountain pass those tanks will have to ride over if they ever hope to join their units.” He turned to the men with the picks and shovels. “We’ll dig traps for the tanks.” He turned to the men with the dynamite and the grenades. “You will plant your dynamite and grenades carefully.” He swung his horse in the direction opposite to that of the main cave and started a winding course in and out of depressions which hid the descending group from any possible observer.

* * * *

Feodor knew that country with the same expertise that Mickey knew the tracing of a nerve in the human body. He knew every knoll; every depression; every plain; every hill and mountain. He knew every cave; every farmhouse; every pass and road, open or closed. This knowledge helped more than once to save the lives of his men. They knew this and trusted him implicitly; and carried out his every order with an undeviating faithfulness that Mickey no longer marveled at. Because he now knew, understood and admired the young guerrilla leader.

The Kuban Cossacks rode their horses as though they were a part of the animals. They rode out slowly at first. When they reached a stretch of open plain, they rode across the green with a speed that warmed the cheeks of Mickey Tchekov as the friction of the wind that flowed swiftly past rubbed the warmth back into the capillaries.

One hour later they reached their objective. It lay at the foot of a hill—in fact, the narrow pass lay between two hills. They tied their horses to the south side of the first of the hills, hiding them among a cluster of trees and about a half mile back.

Feodor sent a lookout to the top of the hill from which they worked to keep an eye for the approach of the German tanks. The spot cut them off ten miles in advance of the place where they had stopped to divide their gas. The guerrillas went feverishly to work. First with the picks, then with the shovels.

Thirty sincere men can dig a lot of holes in thirty minutes and when the dirt was cleared, the place in the middle of the road looked as though a two-ton bomb had dug the crater. The huge Mark III would fit into the gap nicely—and would have a lot of difficulty getting out.

Mickey watched the men plant their dynamite and set the detonators. When that job was done, others brought long, thin branches they had cut from the trees and placed them across the holes. This they covered with leaves and other foliage and made it look as though the wind had strewn the brown dirt pass. It was a magnificent job of earthy camouflage. A light layer of brown earth was thrown over the whole.

The holes dug in the side of the roadway were similarly treated. Only an expert in camouflage might suspect anything wrong. Mickey could see that the tank drivers would not.

“That’s a magnificent job, Feodor,” he said admiring the handiwork of the men.

“It is if it does the work it is intended to do,” replied the boy.

With the job finished, Feodor ordered his men up to the top of the hill where they could observe without being seen themselves. As they were up the halfway mark, they saw the lookout coming down. He signaled to Feodor that the tanks were on the way.

It was about two hundred feet to the top and when they arrived there, the men flung themselves on the grass for a much needed rest—and waited. They saw the line of tanks lumbering slowly along, digging their steel caterpillar tracks in the soft Caucasian earth. They rode slowly on to conserve what little fuel they had.

* * * *

Mickey watched them from his place on the ground. Young Feodor seemed unconcerned. Soon the noise of the roaring diesels reached them on the west wind. They lowered their heads deeper into the grass. From where the tanks rolled unsuspectingly along the pass, the guerrillas could not be seen.

Slowly, slowly on came the rumbling juggernauts. In Mickey’s mind they seemed a lot of jugger that would soon be naughts. Mickey looked below to see if the wind had disturbed the camouflaging. From where he and the others lay hidden in the ground on the elevation, they could see up and down the road for miles. So perfectly had the job of laying the tank traps been done, that even he could not locate them. He smiled at the knowledge.

He turned to Feodor. “It looks as though they are right on top of the traps,” he whispered. The tension that he felt all around him made him lower his voice. He actually thrilled at the experience. He had some difficulty controlling his emotions. This being a guerrilla, he thought, was stimulatingly exciting.

All eyes were upon the steel caravan below. They watched the slow moving lead vehicle rumble and grumble on; its diesel engine objecting strenuously to insufficient and inadequate nutrition.

Eagerly, anxiously, hidden eyes watched the scene hungrily. The heavy vehicle approached the main trap. The smell of burning oil rose to the men strewn about the grass. As their eyes followed the movement of the tank, there was a crashing sound that reached their ears; the tail of the tank rose suddenly into the air as the nose dived into the tank trap. The caterpillar tracks churned the edge of the hole and blew the dirt into the air like a dog kicking up the dust behind him.

A terrific grating sound followed as the driver reversed the direction of the tracks in an effort to get out of the hole, but the more he ground, the deeper he buried himself and his tank.

Mickey and the others laughed silently as they watched the tank dig in.

It was only a matter of seconds for this to happen. So close rode the others behind the ill-fated Nazi landcraft, that the tank that followed it directly behind had not sufficient time to turn out and piled up on the tank in the hole with a crash that rang through the hills for miles. Its caterpillar track ground desperately on the roof of its fallen brother. The driver here too reversed his gear. The tracks in reverse rasped and screamed like a dull file on an iron casting. As the tank drew back off the other, it backed into another and oncoming rumbler behind it; the tracks of both tanks locked and the teeth were stripped from them like the teeth from an old comb. And just as the second tank rolled from the one in the trap, the stripping teeth robbed of power of grip and locomotion, the huge craft hung poised for a brief moment off balance, then toppled completely over on its side.

* * * *

The other tanks came on. The fourth tank, unable to pull up, crashed into the third tank which had just stripped it track teeth, and as the driver in the third tank again reversed his gear this time for forward motion, the impact of the fourth tank at his rear, and the propelling action of the track, drove him completely across the first and second tanks into another trap that lay buried just in front of the trap into which the lead tank had fallen.

General confusion, trapped Nazis shouting and screaming inside their tanks; steel crashing against steel, with the ringing noise mingling with the roar of racing diesels; all this reached the eyes and ears of the men above and they laughed uproariously at the mad scene below. Laughed again and again as others, turning out and away from the piled up wreck, themselves dropped into other holes in the sides of the road and sank up to the tops of their bogie wheels.

Feodor raised his hand to one man with a detonator. He dropped it again quickly. There was a terrific explosion below; a blast of yellow flame lit up the first of the stricken tanks, and its seam opened wide as the steel rivets blew off the tank like the buttons on the vest of an overfed fat man.

Feodor repeated the maneuver. One of the other guerrillas pressed the plunger on the detonator and another tank was blown apart.

The tanks in the sides of the roads, in holes that were not as deep as the first, reversed their tracks and drew out of the holes. But they did not go far. As they rode over hidden grenades that blasted the tracks off the bogie wheels and left the huge death-dealing steel elephants without a means of propulsion, the gas lines to the engines were also blown apart and the diesels coughed, gasped and, like many of the Nazi rats driving the craft, died a permanent death.

Of the fifteen tanks that rode casually on, only six managed to get into the fields and safety. But even they did not move beyond the stricken tanks. Their engines gasped for want of fuel, and the tanks stalled where they were.

Two more detonator plungers were driven home; two more deafening blasts followed; two more tanks were blown apart and fire began burning all around them. Men in the tanks who could escape ran to cover. Some ran up the hill toward the place where the Russian guerrillas were concealed.

Feodor Koslovitch swung his arm again and called unto himself the submachine gunners. They fell on their faces as they watched the men coming up. Their guns were poised and waiting for the Nazis to get within range.

Mickey followed them down; his kitbag in his hand. As he looked off in the direction of Pyatigorsk, toward the position in the Caucasus where the German lines were blasting at the Cossacks in an effort to bypass them to Grozny, Mickey saw two crawling objects about ten miles away. They were headed in the direction of the German tanks.

“Look, Feodor,” Mickey said.

* * * *

The young guerrilla leader put his binoculars to his eyes. “Tankers,” he said. “Nazi tanker cars with fuel for those crawling insects we’ve just blown apart.”

Feodor signaled the gunners to retire. They scurried back to the top of the hill, and down the other side.

“Come!” he cried. And ran down the hill followed by the men who had quickly gathered their detonators and other equipment and ran to where their horses were tethered.

Mickey and Feodor were the first to reach their horses. They mounted and waited for the others, and together they drove off at a gallop to a place about three miles below the shattered tanks.

Feverishly they went to work to fell a huge pine tree which stood by the side of the road. In fact, they felled two huge trees and cut them so that when they toppled to the ground, they lay across the road and completely cut off the passage of the gas tankers.

When the trees lay comfortably across the only road in the vicinity, Mickey, Koslovitch, and the rest of the band of Cossack guerrillas darted for cover about twenty yards off the side of the road and waited.

They had not long to wait. Up the winding dirt highway rode the two tank cars carrying their load of gasoline through the Caucasian hills to the stricken tanks. Their dull green, circular, elongated steel bodies appeared and disappeared. The Russians in ambush waited until the fallen trees would halt the Nazi tankers.

As the cars reached the spot, their brakes squealed, their tires skidded along the highway and the trucks came to a full stop just in front of the obstructions.

Arming themselves with rifles, the men dropped to the ground and tried to run for cover. They knew this was an ambush and were taking no chances. Previous experience with Russian guerrillas had taught them to get under cover and get cover fast.

But these men were not fast enough. Hand grenades came hurtling at them from the pines; two struck one of the gas tanks. They blew up tearing a rent in the tank out of whose big, oval belly gasoline poured over the ground. A second later an explosion rocked the world about the ears of the Nazis as well as the Russians. Mickey thought his eardrums had split. His head sang with the concussion.

Of the escaping tanker, the drivers were blown out of their cab; the tank rolled side over side down a small gully and finished up on its top. A half-dozen well-directed hand grenades spread the tankers’ seams and blasted the tank apart and left it a raging mass of flames in the depression.

“That places those Mark III’s just where they were when they were born,” said the grinning Koslovitch, “empty and at the mercy of our dive bombers. We’ll leave it to them to finish them off.”

The men left the trucks blazing where they blew apart and returned to their horses which they had hidden in a depression in the side of the mountain. Five minutes later their horses beat a muffled tattoo in the grass as they tore up the pathless heights to their cave.

V

When the horses were put up, young Koslovitch and Mickey returned to the main cave to find an oxcart heavily loaded with ammunition and other munitions expertly hidden under a false load of hay.

Kopelnikov, the driver of the cart, called Feodor aside. Mickey joined them at the boy’s request.

“You can speak in front of the doctor,” the boy said. “What is it?”

“Three things that you should know,” began the driver. “One: A Captain Von Starheim with a party of two hundred Nazi dogs are scouring these mountains in search of you and your men. Two: They are also looking for an escaped American doctor who was their prisoner. Three: Tomorrow night—or rather, about two o’clock tomorrow in the morning, an ammunition train will pass your allotment on the Rostov-Baku Railway from the direction of Rostov. It will be headed for the German lines near Pyatigorsk.”

“It will be headed for the lines, my friend,” replied the boy, “but I promise you it will never reach them.”

The other guerrillas in the meantime were unloading the cart.

“Is this the doctor the Nazis are looking for?” asked the oxcart driver.

“I’m the doctor,” replied Mickey.

“Be careful, my friend,” warned the man. “That man Von Starheim takes no prisoners. He’s dangerous—and what is more, he is elusive.”

“Have you tried to capture him?” asked Mickey.

“We have,” replied the driver, “but he seems to know these mountains as well as we do. And he always gets away. He spent several years in the Caucasus during his younger years on various missions for industrial firms during his college vacations, I am told,” explained the oxcart driver further. “That is why he is so successful in evading us.”

“I know the man well,” said Mickey. “We were at the Breslau University together when I was a medical student there.”

“He is said to have sworn to kill you with his own hands,” added the driver.

“He will have to catch me first,” smiled Mickey.

“In the meantime,” injected Feodor, “we’ll see what we can do to dispose of him.”

“I’m joining you on your job of train blasting, am I not?” asked Mickey.

“I insist on it,” smiled Feodor. “One never knows when our own men may need medical attention in the field.”

“That satisfies me,” replied Mickey. “If you hadn’t insisted on it, I should have. If I’m going to doctor guerrillas, I may as well be one.”

* * * *

This was not the first time the oxcart driver had brought the Koslovitch gang information of Nazi troop and supply movements. A member of the Soviet counterespionage system, it was his business to know many things and to convey what he learned to the men most closely involved in their execution. That is, if any particular job of destruction is to be performed as a result of what he has learned. And usually some job of Nazi baiting and blasting followed.

The woman who had brought Koslovitch and Mickey to the cave proved to be better than even Mickey had hoped. The men under her care were doing splendidly. Three of them had been put on their feet and were back in service. Her own husband was still confined. Their little son kept him entertained when she was attending the others, or assisting Mickey with his work of making repairs on the men.

It was midnight the next night when twenty of the men headed by young Feodor Koslovitch and with him in the lead, one Mikhail Tchekov— Mickey, for short—a guerrilla doctor—rode out of the pass down the side of the mountain in the direction of the Rostov-Baku Railway to a point midway between Pyatigorsk and Batalpashinsk. The ride took them almost an hour and a half. They would not need much time to set their time bombs. About fifteen minutes would be adequate.

A dense overcast obscured the light that might otherwise have come from the Caucasian moon. As the twenty rode on, those who did speak seemed affected by the stillness that hovered about them, above them and all around them.

Even the hoof beats of their horses were muffled on the soft, grass-covered earth.

There was no need for Feodor to ride back and warn his men carrying the bombs and dynamite they would lay waste the railway; with that they should be doubly careful with their horses. There was always the danger of their tripping on a stone concealed underfoot. But a single misstep might send the twenty of them where the Nazis would like to see them; and they had a job to do first. He warned them to keep a tight rein on the horses.

They had been out an hour when Mickey asked young Feodor: “How much farther?”

“Not much,” replied the young Russian. “About another half hour when we will come to a bend in the railway. This bend cuts through a natural pass in the hills.” He turned and smiled at the impatient American. “Be patient, my friend. Are all you Americans so eager to get at the enemy?”

“We are,” Mickey assured him. “A hundred and thirty million of us. And we’re eager to get it over with and go home.”

Feodor was careful to keep to the lower hills and passes so that his approach to the railway might not be seen. He avoided the peaks. One hour and a half later, the guerrillas dismounted and tethered their horses to a cluster of maples about a half-mile from the tracks. The young guerrilla leader sent one of his men on ahead to see if the road was clear. He returned and reported in the affirmative.

* * * *

Careful not to drop one of their bombs, they hurried on to the railway tracks, separated into small groups and began working feverishly among the ties. They did not—dared not, use lights. They worked as best they could. It was not more than a matter of ten minutes when they had buried their bombs after setting them to go off in twelve minutes.

For a distance of three hundred feet, bombs were laid alternately from one side of the tracks to the other. No train could escape destruction on a distribution of solid death such as that.

Feodor gave the signal for the men to beat a hasty retreat. They scrambled up the sides of the depression and together they ran rather than walked that half-mile that separated them from their horses and impending death.

They jumped into their saddles and whipping up the animals rode off without Feodor’s checking their number to see if they were all there. This was unusual. But with the bombs to go off in so short a time, they decided to count off in the cave.

They stampeded in the direction of the cave and were not gone out more than three or four miles when the sound of a locomotive reached them on the wind that drove across from the north.

They slowed their horses to a walk; turned about in their saddles and watched. The distant, darkened train’s black silhouette crawled through the night. The long shaft of steam which flowed behind it and trailed the long line of flat cars with its exposed cargo was the only thing visible when the fire door was thrown open and the fireman re-coaled. That was on only for a moment and was blotted out when the man had reclosed his fire door.

From where the little band stood now, they watched the slow train lumber into the pass and gradually disappear completely from view.

“Quick,” called Feodor to the others. “Dismount. Make your mounts lie down and flatten out near them yourself. When that train blows up, there won’t be a thing left standing within a radius of miles.” He looked at the luminous dial on his watch. “Hurry!” he ordered. “There is only two minutes left.”

As the men hurriedly dismounted and dropped to the ground with their mounts, Mickey counted nineteen men and nineteen horses. He turned and shouted over his horse’s flank to Feodor: “One of your men is missing.”

“Who is it?” called the boy. “Who’s missing?” His voice sounded anxious.

“I’d suggest the men here name themselves,” urged Mickey.

The men repeated their names one by one. The missing man was Pavlovitch.

Without a word, Mickey slapped his horse’s rump and the beast struggled to his feet. Mickey grabbed up his kitbag and jumping into his saddle shouted to Feodor: “I’m going back. He may be in trouble and need me.”

* * * *

Before he even realized his danger, and the certain death he was returning to to save a possibly stricken man, he kicked his horse below the girth-line and the animal darted off like a streak in the direction of the bomb planted railway to the shouts of “NO! NO! Stay here, don’t go!” from the prostrate men.

But Mickey had not heard. And if he did, he completely disregarded his danger and drove his horse on toward the pass four miles ahead.

The sound of the locomotive exhaust seemed dimmer now. Not so much with distance as the muffled effect that comes as the train passes through a tunnel or a depression between high hills.

This served to accentuate the sound of the horses’ hoofs beating echo-less on the padded grass under his feet.

The sound of the dull hoof beats; the muffled heartbeat of a laboring locomotive suddenly went out. The sky was ablaze with a blinding light; the earth fell about Mickey and his eardrums seemed to split in two as the world blasted apart.

His horse stopped with a suddenness that made him think the animal had blindly driven into a stone wall. It staggered back as though it had been struck by a giant hand. It rose on its hind legs a brief second, and tried desperately to maintain an equilibrium it no longer possessed. Its head wavered frantically from side to side. It was blown back on its two hind legs, throwing Mickey clear as both were blown up the hill they were descending a moment ago, in defiance of all natural physical laws.

Over and over they rolled as the first explosion was followed by others; many others.

Dirt and grass and the shattered bodies of German trainmen mingled with the peaks of the hills near the blast as they were blown off their centuries-old Caucasian bases. But Mickey did not see that. He felt it. He felt the earth suddenly drop away. He seemed suspended in the atmosphere. He saw the stars. Millions of them. Then he saw the overcast that was aflame with the fire on earth and he knew there could be no stars. Then came—utter darkness.

But the attack of unconsciousness was brief. The rumblings of more and smaller explosions vibrated through him as he lay on the soft earth and these had the effect on him that an alarm clock bell might have on a sleeper.

As he came to, he saw his horse struggling to rise. Someone was standing near it. He saw a hand stretch out and touch the animal in the middle of its forehead. There was a flash of fire; and the animal lay perfectly still.

* * * *

Feodor came up after seeing to it that the stricken animal would no longer suffer.

“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

“No,” replied Mickey pressing himself all over. “Just dazed.”

“You’re a very lucky man, Comrade,” said Feodor.

“I’d forgotten about the impending explosions,” said Mickey.

“That was because you thought more of the safety of one of our men, than of your own,” said the young guerrilla leader. “We shall remember that.” He took Mickey by the arm. “I think you will have to get up behind me. I just had to shoot your horse. His forelegs—both of them—were broken.”

Mickey lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Feodor,” he said. “Guess we have to think before we act.”

“We haven’t always time,” Feodor Koslovitch qualified for Mickey’s impetuosity. “Come,” he said with another one of his characteristic sweeps of the hand.

“Don’t you want to see what happened to Pavlovitch?” asked Mickey anxiously.

“I don’t think we need to,” Feodor reminded him. “If you were knocked off your horse and your horse’s legs broken four miles from the blast, you can imagine what must have happened to poor Pavlovitch who was a lot closer to it.”

“Yes,” said Mickey thoughtfully.

One hour later the nineteen men halted on the crest of a high hill and looked back to where the sky was still alight with the flames still consuming the ammunition train the Nazis would have no further need for.

Less than a half-hour later, the small band of Russian guerrillas trailed into the stable cave, stalled and covered their horses, and returned to their quarters in the main cave, still wondering what had happened to Pavlovitch.

The night had gone well but for that one thing. The destruction of the ammunition train would delay the Nazi timetable in the insane drive toward the Grozny oil fields.

The men lay on the beds of straw and looked up at the dirt ceiling above them. They didn’t know why but they could not sleep. Mickey had rested his daze off and was about to drop off when there was a slow, plodding noise outside the cave. This was followed by a shout from the sentry outside.

“Doktarah!” he cried in Russian, “Doktarah Tchekov! Pavlovitch comes! Pavlovitch comes!”

Mickey sat up on his bed on the floor. A candle was lit hurriedly. Other candles were lighted. Their yellow flickering lights cast weird shadow shapes on the walls of the cave as the still-awake men jumped to their feet. The light fell upon a strange pair. Pavlovitch, the guerrilla, hung to the mane of his horse which, though wounded seriously itself, had brought him safely back to the cave.

* * * *

As they stood in the doorway, a forlorn, desolate looking pair, they made a picture of utter despair and hopelessness. Mickey was the first to reach Pavlovitch’s side. The man was unconscious from loss of blood.

“Start a fire,” shouted Mickey. “I’ll need some hot water.”

Pavlovitch was removed to a long table in the rear of the cave. Mickey went to work on him. Examining him, he found the man’s body was filled with shrapnel.

Mickey gave the wounded man an injection of adrenaline, for his heart beats had slowed from loss of blood. An immediate operation was necessary; he would need help, help in addition to that he would receive from the woman. Feodor would help. The lad had had first aid training.

Mickey went to work on Pavlovitch with Feodor’s and the woman’s help. He removed most of the shrapnel; all but one piece in the region of the man’s heart. He did not dare touch that just then. The operation was performed by the light of many candles.

Pavlovitch regained consciousness two hours later. Dawn was breaking into the underground haven and gently lit up the front part of the cave.

He moved as the tired Mickey turned to him.

“Hello, Pavlovitch?” said Mickey.

Pavlovitch turned his dazed eyes toward the American.

“How do you feel?” asked Mickey.

A faint smile crept over the man’s face as he recognized the guerrilla doctor. Slowly, painfully he spoke.

“Kakvahshe Zdarovyeh?” he asked weakly in Russian repeating Mickey’s question a little dully. “How are you?”

* * * *

Feodor was standing by the man’s bed.

Neither he nor Mickey had slept that night.

“What happened?” asked Feodor of Pavlovitch.

“I wouldn’t tax him too much, Feodor,” warned Mickey. “At least, not just yet.”

“We must know,” insisted Feodor seriously. “I feel extremely uncomfortable about the whole business. Pavlovitch may know something.”

“I—do,” said the man slowly. Painfully he turned his head to Feodor. “I’m—sorry—this— happened, Comrade Koslovitch,” he said. “I— ran—after you. I slipped and fell back down the hill to the tracks.” He paused for breath. After a moment’s rest, he continued: “I—tried—to walk. My—ankle—was broken. When—I—managed to crawl—to the top—of the hill—you—were gone. My horse was at the foot of the hill—on—the other side. I was just about to crawl down when the explosion came.”

Pavlovitch had to pause again.

“Take your time Pavlovitch,” said Mickey gently.

The wounded man smiled gratefully at Mickey. “I have—not time,” he said prophetically.

“Nonsense,” encouraged the American. “You’ll outlive us.”

“No,” said Pavlovitch. “No. I know.” He turned to Feodor. “I don’t know how—I got—on my horse. Maybe—I think—my horse was blown down too. I—think—I—got on him while he was still on—the ground. When it was all over—we headed for—home.” He smiled weakly at the thought of home. “Home,” he murmured, as though it were a sacred word. He went on: “We were getting—along—all right—until we met Nazi guerrillas. They shot at us—at me. I heard their leader—tell the men—not to kill the horses. He didn’t care what—they did—to me. They called him—Captain Von Starheim.”

“Von Starheim!” gasped Mickey. Turning to Feodor he shouted: “Do you know what this means? It means that Von Starheim had followed that horse here . . .”

But Feodor was not listening to Mickey. He was listening to machine gun fire outside the cave. Mickey realized what was happening. Von Starheim and his gang of Nazi killers had found the hideout of the Russian guerrillas and they were attacking it.

“To arms! To arms!” shouted Feodor. But he could have saved his breath. His men were already blasting at the Nazi invaders and machine gun fire raked the pass from both ends.

Hand grenades blasted at the mouth of the cave.

Mickey drew deeper inside. Then he saw the hundred boxes of dynamite. One little stray bullet, and the mountain in which the cave lay, would blow apart.

Outnumbered four to one, the Russians had little hope of destroying this band in open combat. There was a small passage in one side of the cave which led to the other underground hideout in which the horses were kept. There was just room enough for a man to stand up stoop-shouldered.

“Help me get the wounded into the other cave, Tanya,” he said.

* * * *

Those wounded who could walk struggled through the passage. The others were carried on stretchers to the stables, tied to the back of some of the horses, and led out of another passage into the daylight at the rear of the mountain. He urged them to make their getaway.

“Come with us,” they insisted.

“No,” said Mickey. “My place is here with Feodor Koslovitch. You people cannot help us. Go down to the valley behind Pyatigorsk. Friendly hands will take care of you all there.”

“What about Pavlovitch?” the woman asked.

“He’s dead,” said Mickey. “Get going,” he ordered.

The woman mounted one of the horses and Mickey handed up her youngster. They whipped up the horses and disappeared into other passes which led them in a roundabout way toward the valley behind Pyatigorsk.

Mickey returned to the stable. About twenty of the guerrillas were mounting their horses for their getaway.

“Where are you going?” he asked of the mounted men.

“Koslovitch ordered us to evacuate while we still can,” one of the men replied. “We cannot win. We are outnumbered four to one. He is wounded: the others remaining with him are wounded and cannot escape. But you— Come with us, Comrade.”

“No, thank you,” replied Mickey. “My place is here. I have no orders yet to evacuate. But you go while you can. Take the back pass. Follow your wounded comrades and protect them.”

Mickey picked up two submachine guns lying on the stable floor. Those men were not running out, Mickey knew. If Feodor had insisted they save themselves while they could, the plight of the little guerrilla band must be hopeless. At least, he could get a shot or two in before they were all finished off; one good shot and that one in the rotten carcass that was Von Starheim.

The American doctor slouched through the passage that connected the stable cave to the cave used by the Russian guerrillas as quarters. As he neared the passage, he observed a sudden quiet. The deadly fire had ceased. The two machine guns he held in his hands were knocked out of his grasp as he emerged into the larger cave. A flashlight was thrown in his face and momentarily blinded him as he emerged from the dark of the subterranean passageway. When he could see clearly—he saw that he faced the grim, dark barrel of a Luger pistol. And it was held in the hand of the Nazi Oberst— Von Starheim.

VI.

“How nice, Doctor Tchekov,” smirked Von Starheim. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Not very original, are you, Von Starheim?” smiled Mickey. “I think I said that once before somewhere.”

“I don’t think I’ll have any occasion to use the phrase to you in the future, Doctor Tchekov,” scowled the Oberst. “For you—like your band of Russian guerrillas—there is no future.”

“What have you done with the boy, Feodor Koslovitch?” asked Mickey hurriedly fearing the worst.

“Shot him,” replied Von Starheim. “As he deserved for blowing up that ammunition train—he and his band—last night and with it five hundred of Germany’s finest infantrymen.”

“I can see where the ammunition would be a loss,” smiled Mickey with satisfaction at hearing that five hundred Nazi smudge pots went up in smoke with the ammunition. “But as for the men,” he added, “they can mean nothing to your inferior Fuhrer judging by the number he keeps sending into the muzzles of the Russian guns to be slaughtered like diseased cattle.”

“Silence!” shouted Von Starheim in a fury. “You will not long live to see much more of that Russian luck.” With a wave of the Luger in the direction of the mouth of the cave he motioned Mickey to get outside. As he started for the entrance, two or three shots outside made him halt. He turned to Von Starheim, enquiringly.

The man smiled fiendishly. “The coup de grace,” he explained, guessing what was on Mickey’s mind. “We don’t like to leave wounded Russians to suffer unnecessarily”—his eyes narrowed, his lips curled significantly as he added—“we don’t take prisoners.”

“Knowing you as well as I do, Von Starheim,” said Mickey bitingly, “I can understand that.”

“That applies to you too,” added the Nazi, smiling.

“I didn’t think I would be immune from your Nazi form of civilization,” retorted the American. “I wasn’t fooling myself for a single moment.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Von Starheim, “because I have saved you for myself. But first, I want you to witness a small ceremony.”

They emerged into the light of the pass. As Mickey looked about him for the body of young Feodor, his eyes fell upon eight of his guerrilla comrades lined up in front of the wall of the pass. Their hands were tied behind their backs; their machine guns lay at their feet temptingly, but they could not reach for them even if they were not tied for they were faced with a row of Nazi submachine guns in the hands of Von Starheim’s men.

Mickey’s eyes widened. He was about to turn to Von Starheim when he heard the man cry in German: “Take aim!”

“Von Starheim!” Mickey cried. “You can’t do that! You can’t kill men in cold blood like that! It’s murder!”

Von Starheim merely laughed.

“Blahadaryoo, Doktarah!” cried the doomed Russians to Mickey. “Praschaheeteh!” They were thanking Mickey for all he had done for them and their stricken comrades; and they said goodbye.

* * * *

Mickey’s eyes filled as he smiled and waved a trembling hand at the brave men who waited for death. They smiled back at him, grateful that there was one friend to see them make the last great sacrifice.

“Fire!” cried the Nazi Captain Von Starheim. The German machine guns raked the bodies of the Russians until the weight of the lead, added to the loss of life that made it possible for them to stand so courageously up to the Germans, brought them down and they fell across the guns with which they had laid so many of the Huns so low.

When the smoke from the guns cleared in the draft of the pass, Mickey saw the inert body of young Feodor lying about twenty feet above the opening to the cave. He turned to Von Starheim: “These people were my friends,” he began. “I don’t expect you to do favors for me; but like your own men, they still were soldiers and deserve, if not a soldier’s burial, then a spot where the carrion birds won’t thrive on the men who gave their lives to defend their homes and their land. Will you let me put their bodies inside the cave?”

Von Starheim grinned: “The indomitable Tchekov asks me for a favor,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, why not? We were classmates in Breslau. And this is a last request. Make it snappy and don’t keep me waiting too long.”

Mickey did not stop to thank his enemy. He stepped across the still bodies of his friends to where young Feodor lay. He stooped down and picked the boy up in his arms; gently he carried him inside the cave.

With his handkerchief, Mickey wiped the blood from the boy’s face. With a torn sheet taken from the bed on which he used to sleep, he covered the silent body as a tear fell from his cheek and baptized the little hero.

One by one Mickey brought the fallen Russians into the cave. Von Starheim accompanied him on several of his trips to see that he did nothing other than that which he had requested permission to do. The other Nazis climbed up the side of the hill in which the cave lay and threw themselves down to wait for Mickey to finish.

Mickey took another man into the cave and, as with the others, laid him on the bed he occupied in life. This man he carefully carried to one of the beds near the piled-up boxes of dynamite. Von Starheim, satisfied that Mickey was resigned to his fate, and that he would not attempt to escape, did not follow him into the cave. This was what Mickey wanted. As he laid the dead man on his bed near a box of time bombs, the Yankee guerrilla doctor grabbed one, set the fuse for five minutes, placed it in a box of dynamite the cover of which had been ripped open before, and stepped hurriedly out of the cave.

* * * *

There was one more man left to put in his bed. This took Mickey another minute for he laid the man on some straw near the cave opening.

Quite calmly Mickey stepped over to the waiting Von Starheim who smiled at him as he approached.

“I’m ready, Von Starheim,” Mickey said. “Let’s get it over with. Call your men.”

Mickey waited for Von Starheim to call his men.

“Oh, please don’t be silly, doctor,” said the man sarcastically. “That is my privilege. That is an honor I have looked forward to for many years. I want the pleasure of killing you myself—and alone. Only I shall enjoy your great death scene. I have earned it with patient waiting. It can mean nothing to the others.”

“Very well,” said Mickey. “You have your Luger ready. Why don’t you use it?”

“Not here,” said the man. “But down there.” He indicated a cluster of trees below in the valley about a thousand feet from the cave.

Mickey glanced slyly at his watch. There were still three minutes to go before hell would break loose under unsuspecting Heinies on the hill. Mickey smiled inwardly as he hurried down the hill toward the valley.

“You seem in a hurry,” noted Von Starheim.

“I don’t like prolonging anything good or bad,” Mickey replied. He turned back to Von Starheim, who was following close on his heels. “Don’t shoot me in the back, will you Von Starheim?”

“What!” replied the Nazi, “and lose the satisfaction of seeing the expression on your face when my bullets tear through you? Of course not! That would be foolish.”

Two minutes to go.

Mickey kept talking. “It’s a beautiful day for a murder, isn’t it rat?” he asked.

“What do you Americans say about sticks and stones?” asked Von Starheim sarcastically.

“You’d be surprised,” said Mickey.

They reached the cluster of trees Von Starheim had ordered Mickey to.

“Where do you want me to stand, you Nazi bootlicking killer?” asked Mickey. He knew the man couldn’t take much of that.

One minute to go before the blast.

* * * *

The taunt didn’t seem to move Von Starheim. He seemed so intent on the sadistic enjoyment that awaited him when he would behold his Luger steel lay low the American he hated most in the world. He ordered Mickey farther into the cluster of trees.

Thirty seconds to go.

“I wonder what all your schoolmates at Breslau University would think if they could see the disgraced and yellow classmate of theirs, Captain Von Starheim of Hitler’s Heinie Rats about to murder a man in cold blood,” asked Mickey.

“Donnerwetter!” cried the man as Mickey touched off the spark that made the Nazi storm. “This is it!” he screamed. Being reminded of his expulsion was more than even he could take under the circumstances. He raised the Luger muzzle to the line of Mickey’s heart. He could see the cold perspiration gather on the American’s forehead as he waited to receive the hot steel.

“This is it!” screamed the Nazi again. And as he was about to press the trigger, it was as though he himself had given the signal. Fire flashed from the muzzle of the Luger. But the detonating sound did not seem to come from the pistol but from the hill above.

The whole earth seemed to rise under their feet; a huge rent in the soil opened up a few feet away, as the sky suddenly blackened above them. The blackness was streaked with an orange flame. As the explosion reverberated through the valley, both men were lifted clear off their feet and thrown about twenty yards by the concussion.

Von Starheim’s bullet went wide. His gun flew out of his hand and drove for a cluster of brush where it disappeared. There were only two great blasts, but the concussion left both Von Starheim and Mickey limp for almost fifteen minutes.

When they both came out of the daze, they glanced off to the mountain and saw most of it blown away. The dirt and laughing Heinies that were blown skyward together, now lay quietly in each other’s bosoms.

Von Starheim and Mickey were not immune to the falling debris. They were covered with it and had to dig themselves out. The German looked for his gun but it was nowhere in sight.

Mickey was the first to speak.

“Looks like fists again, rat,” he said.

Von Starheim was pale from the blast; the threat of a physical beating made him take on a jaundiced appearance; his face turned yellow. His eyes took on a frightened expression.

“No,” he murmured. “No. You can’t do that to me.” He recalled other beatings administered by Mickey at Breslau. “You can’t do that to me,” he repeated.

Mickey rose to his feet. He painfully strode over to where Von Starheim was still sitting on the ground. The man tried to crawl back and away from the disaster he knew was about to befall him.

“Get up you filthy swine,” he gritted. “You’re a brave man facing an unarmed man with a gun in your hand. You’re a brave man when you’re with other dogs like you who you order to shoot men with their hands tied behind their backs. Get up! I’m going to polish you off and this time do a better job of it than I ever did at Breslau.”

He reached down and lifted the Nazi to his feet; then, in his best pile-driver fashion, sent his big fist crashing into the man’s mouth, driving the Nazi’s front teeth down the back of his throat.

Mickey followed this by a left to the man’s nose. He felt the bone crush under the impact and the wine flowed as it had never flowed in any wine cellar in Germany. The murderous Nazi face was crimson; the mouth that gaped black with a huge toothless cavity, screamed for mercy.

“What mercy did you give those Russians?” asked Mickey now in a red fury himself.

“Help! Help!” cried Von Starheim as Mickey pounded on the man’s chest and ribs until they cracked under the trip-hammer blows.

“Don’t call for help,” cried Mickey. “God himself wouldn’t listen to you—and right now there isn’t anyone else who could hear you.”

He continued to beat the man into insensibility. But before the Nazi passed out, Mickey, hysterical himself now, screamed at him in a frenzy: “I set off that explosion, you dog! I blew your Nazi band to pieces! I did it!”

He felt the German collapse under him as he shook the life out of the man to impress him with the fact that it was Mickey who destroyed his band of killers. He let him go and the man fell unconscious to the dirt-covered grass.

Mickey himself dropped to the ground, exhausted; weeping bitterly with anger, and at the loss of his young friend Feodor.

There was nothing weak in his tears. No stronger man could have helped cracking under the gigantic strain. Mickey Tchekov was an ordinary human, like any other ordinary human with an average human’s courage.

Calmed, his strength recovered, three hours later he walking into the camp of the escaped guerrillas carrying the badly mashed Von Starheim over his strong young shoulder. He dumped the man to the ground and turned him over to his comrades.

“There he is,” he said. “This is what is left of Von Starheim.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” asked one of the men.

“No,” replied Mickey. “I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to save lives; not destroy them. That’s your job.”

“But Feodor was your friend,” reminded one of the men significantly.

“He was your leader,” recalled Mickey.

“He is right,” said another of the Russian guerrillas, a giant of a Cossack. “The doctor is right.” He leaned down and lifted the now whimpering Von Starheim as though the one hundred and sixty pound German were just a child. He swung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and headed for the rear of the barn on the farm where the guerrillas had found haven. Other of the men followed him.

* * * *

Mickey walked off toward a small scrub pine that grew in front of a taller growth of pine trees. It was so symbolic of young Feodor and his guerrilla band of men, that Mickey felt it was a silent memorial to the boy and his faithful followers.

His hand caressed the pine needles and stopped suddenly as a number of shots rang out on the otherwise quiet air about the farm. There was no expression of joy on his face at the sound. He knew it was all over with his old enemy; but he knew, too, that it was all over with his young friend.

“It won’t be—it isn’t over,” he murmured. “I’ll always remember that kid as I knew him—not as I left him. He was brave, unselfish, and fine. I’m proud to have served under him—even if he was years younger than I. Boy though he was; he was every inch a man. I hope, when I go, my friends will be able to say as much for me.”

Mickey Tchekov gave the little pine a gentle, affectionate pat—and turned back to the farmhouse where the men had gathered.

A MYSTERY OF HEROISM, by Stephen Crane

The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the incessant wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a part of the clay bank which shielded them from the shells. On the top of the hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars with some other guns, and to the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the caissons, the horses, were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When a piece was fired, a red streak as round as a log flashed low in the heavens, like a monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the battery wore white duck trousers, which somehow emphasized their legs; and when they ran and crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting officers, it was more impressive than usual to the infantry.

Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: “Thunder! I wisht I had a drink. Ain’t there any water round here?” Then somebody yelled, “There goes th’ bugler!”

As the eyes of half the regiment swept in one machinelike movement there was an instant’s picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of a death wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread fingers before his face. On the ground was the crimson terror of an exploding shell, with fibres of flame that seemed like lances. A glittering bugle swung clear of the rider’s back as fell headlong the horse and the man. In the air was an odour as from a conflagration.

Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow which spread at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently in a breeze. Beyond it was the gray form of a house half torn to pieces by shells and by the busy axes of soldiers who had pursued firewood. The line of an old fence was now dimly marked by long weeds and by an occasional post. A shell had blown the well-house to fragments. Little lines of gray smoke ribboning upward from some embers indicated the place where had stood the barn.

From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of infantry volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the midst of it all Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were engaged in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of the national existence.

The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The white legs of the gunners scampered this way and that way, and the officers redoubled their shouts. The guns, with their demeanours of stolidity and courage, were typical of something infinitely self-possessed in this clamour of death that swirled around the hill.

One of a “swing” team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground, and his maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape from this turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one of the leaders swore and fumed in his saddle, and furiously jerked at the bridle. An officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice broke and ended the sentence in a falsetto shriek.

The leading company of the infantry regiment was somewhat exposed, and the colonel ordered it moved more fully under the shelter of the hill. There was the clank of steel against steel.

A lieutenant of the battery rode down and passed them, holding his right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and reflective charger went slowly. The officer’s face was grimy and perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He turned his horse toward the meadow.

Collins, of A Company, said: “I wisht I had a drink. I bet there’s water in that there ol’ well yonder!”

“Yes; but how you goin’ to git it?”

For the little meadow which intervened was now suffering a terrible onslaught of shells. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished utterly. Brown earth was being flung in monstrous handfuls. And there was a massacre of the young blades of grass. They were being torn, burned, obliterated. Some curious fortune of the battle had made this gentle little meadow the object of the red hate of the shells, and each one as it exploded seemed like an imprecation in the face of a maiden.

The wounded officer who was riding across this expanse said to himself, “Why, they couldn’t shoot any harder if the whole army was massed here!”

A shell struck the gray ruins of the house, and as, after the roar, the shattered wall fell in fragments, there was a noise which resembled the flapping of shutters during a wild gale of winter. Indeed, the infantry paused in the shelter of the bank appeared as men standing upon a shore contemplating a madness of the sea. The angel of calamity had under its glance the battery upon the hill. Fewer white-legged men laboured about the guns. A shell had smitten one of the pieces, and after the flare, the smoke, the dust, the wrath of this blow were gone, it was possible to see white legs stretched horizontally upon the ground. And at that interval to the rear, where it is the business of battery horses to stand with their noses to the fight awaiting the command to drag their guns out of the destruction or into it or wheresoever these incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man’s control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward the sky.

Some comrades joked Collins about his thirst. “Well, if yeh want a drink so bad, why don’t yeh go git it!”

“Well, I will in a minnet, if yeh don’t shut up!”

A lieutenant of artillery floundered his horse straight down the hill with as great concern as if it were level ground. As he galloped past the colonel of the infantry, he threw up his hand in swift salute. “We’ve got to get out of that,” he roared angrily. He was a black-bearded officer, and his eyes, which resembled beads, sparkled like those of an insane man. His jumping horse sped along the column of infantry.

The fat major, standing carelessly with his sword held horizontally behind him and with his legs far apart, looked after the receding horseman and laughed. “He wants to get back with orders pretty quick, or there’ll be no batt’ry left,” he observed.

The wise young captain of the second company hazarded to the lieutenant colonel that the enemy’s infantry would probably soon attack the hill, and the lieutenant colonel snubbed him.

A private in one of the rear companies looked out over the meadow, and then turned to a companion and said, “Look there, Jim!” It was the wounded officer from the battery, who some time before had started to ride across the meadow, supporting his right arm carefully with his left hand. This man had encountered a shell apparently at a time when no one perceived him, and he could now be seen lying face downward with a stirruped foot stretched across the body of his dead horse. A leg of the charger extended slantingly upward precisely as stiff as a stake. Around this motionless pair the shells still howled.

There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the faces of some laughing comrades. “Dern yeh! I ain’t afraid t’ go. If yeh say much, I will go!”

“Of course, yeh will! You’ll run through that there medder, won’t yeh?”

Collins said, in a terrible voice, “You see now!” At this ominous threat his comrades broke into renewed jeers.

Collins gave them a dark scowl and went to find his captain. The latter was conversing with the colonel of the regiment.

“Captain,” said Collins, saluting and standing at attention—in those days all trousers bagged at the knees—”captain, I want t’ get permission to go git some water from that there well over yonder!”

The colonel and the captain swung about simultaneously and stared across the meadow. The captain laughed. “You must be pretty thirsty, Collins?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well—ah,” said the captain. After a moment, he asked, “Can’t you wait?”

“No, sir.”

The colonel was watching Collins’s face. “Look here, my lad,” he said, in a pious sort of a voice—”look here, my lad”—Collins was not a lad—”don’t you think that’s taking pretty big risks for a little drink of water?”

“I dunno,” said Collins uncomfortably. Some of the resentment toward his companions, which perhaps had forced him into this affair, was beginning to fade. “I dunno wether ’tis.”

The colonel and the captain contemplated him for a time.

“Well,” said the captain finally.

“Well,” said the colonel, “if you want to go, why, go.”

Collins saluted. “Much obliged t’ yeh.”

As he moved away the colonel called after him. “Take some of the other boys’ canteens with you an’ hurry back now.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

The colonel and the captain looked at each other then, for it had suddenly occurred that they could not for the life of them tell whether Collins wanted to go or whether he did not.

They turned to regard Collins, and as they perceived him surrounded by gesticulating comrades, the colonel said: “Well, by thunder! I guess he’s going.”

Collins appeared as a man dreaming. In the midst of the questions, the advice, the warnings, all the excited talk of his company mates, he maintained a curious silence.

They were very busy in preparing him for his ordeal. When they inspected him carefully it was somewhat like the examination that grooms give a horse before a race; and they were amazed, staggered by the whole affair. Their astonishment found vent in strange repetitions.

“Are yeh sure a-goin’?” they demanded again and again.

“Certainly I am,” cried Collins, at last furiously.

He strode sullenly away from them. He was swinging five or six canteens by their cords. It seemed that his cap would not remain firmly on his head, and often he reached and pulled it down over his brow.

There was a general movement in the compact column. The long animal-like thing moved slightly. Its four hundred eyes were turned upon the figure of Collins.

“Well, sir, if that ain’t th’ derndest thing! I never thought Fred Collins had the blood in him for that kind of business.”

“What’s he goin’ to do, anyhow?”

“He’s goin’ to that well there after water.”

“We ain’t dyin’ of thirst, are we? That’s foolishness.”

“Well, somebody put him up to it, an’ he’s doin’ it.”

“Say, he must be a desperate cuss.”

When Collins faced the meadow and walked away from the regiment, he was vaguely conscious that a chasm, the deep valley of all prides, was suddenly between him and his comrades. It was provisional, but the provision was that he return as a victor. He had blindly been led by quaint emotions, and laid himself under an obligation to walk squarely up to the face of death.

But he was not sure that he wished to make a retraction, even if he could do so without shame. As a matter of truth, he was sure of very little. He was mainly surprised.

It seemed to him supernaturally strange that he had allowed his mind to man[oe]uvre his body into such a situation. He understood that it might be called dramatically great.

However, he had no full appreciation of anything, excepting that he was actually conscious of being dazed. He could feel his dulled mind groping after the form and colour of this incident. He wondered why he did not feel some keen agony of fear cutting his sense like a knife. He wondered at this, because human expression had said loudly for centuries that men should feel afraid of certain things, and that all men who did not feel this fear were phenomena—heroes.

He was, then, a hero. He suffered that disappointment which we would all have if we discovered that we were ourselves capable of those deeds which we most admire in history and legend. This, then, was a hero. After all, heroes were not much.

No, it could not be true. He was not a hero. Heroes had no shames in their lives, and, as for him, he remembered borrowing fifteen dollars from a friend and promising to pay it back the next day, and then avoiding that friend for ten months. When at home his mother had aroused him for the early labour of his life on the farm, it had often been his fashion to be irritable, childish, diabolical; and his mother had died since he had come to the war.

He saw that, in this matter of the well, the canteens, the shells, he was an intruder in the land of fine deeds.

He was now about thirty paces from his comrades. The regiment had just turned its many faces toward him.

From the forest of terrific noises there suddenly emerged a little uneven line of men. They fired fiercely and rapidly at distant foliage on which appeared little puffs of white smoke. The spatter of skirmish firing was added to the thunder of the guns on the hill. The little line of men ran forward. A colour sergeant fell flat with his flag as if he had slipped on ice. There was hoarse cheering from this distant field.

Collins suddenly felt that two demon fingers were pressed into his ears. He could see nothing but flying arrows, flaming red. He lurched from the shock of this explosion, but he made a mad rush for the house, which he viewed as a man submerged to the neck in a boiling surf might view the shore. In the air, little pieces of shell howled and the earthquake explosions drove him insane with the menace of their roar. As he ran the canteens knocked together with a rhythmical tinkling.

As he neared the house, each detail of the scene became vivid to him. He was aware of some bricks of the vanished chimney lying on the sod. There was a door which hung by one hinge.

Rifle bullets called forth by the insistent skirmishers came from the far-off bank of foliage. They mingled with the shells and the pieces of shells until the air was torn in all directions by hootings, yells, howls. The sky was full of fiends who directed all their wild rage at his head.

When he came to the well, he flung himself face downward and peered into its darkness. There were furtive silver glintings some feet from the surface. He grabbed one of the canteens and, unfastening its cap, swung it down by the cord. The water flowed slowly in with an indolent gurgle.

And now as he lay with his face turned away he was suddenly smitten with the terror. It came upon his heart like the grasp of claws. All the power faded from his muscles. For an instant he was no more than a dead man.

The canteen filled with a maddening slowness, in the manner of all bottles. Presently he recovered his strength and addressed a screaming oath to it. He leaned over until it seemed as if he intended to try to push water into it with his hands. His eyes as he gazed down into the well shone like two pieces of metal and in their expression was a great appeal and a great curse. The stupid water derided him.

There was the blaring thunder of a shell. Crimson light shone through the swift-boiling smoke and made a pink reflection on part of the wall of the well. Collins jerked out his arm and canteen with the same motion that a man would use in withdrawing his head from a furnace.

He scrambled erect and glared and hesitated. On the ground near him lay the old well bucket, with a length of rusty chain. He lowered it swiftly into the well. The bucket struck the water and then, turning lazily over, sank. When, with hand reaching tremblingly over hand, he hauled it out, it knocked often against the walls of the well and spilled some of its contents.

In running with a filled bucket, a man can adopt but one kind of gait. So through this terrible field over which screamed practical angels of death Collins ran in the manner of a farmer chased out of a dairy by a bull.

His face went staring white with anticipation—anticipation of a blow that would whirl him around and down. He would fall as he had seen other men fall, the life knocked out of them so suddenly that their knees were no more quick to touch the ground than their heads. He saw the long blue line of the regiment, but his comrades were standing looking at him from the edge of an impossible star. He was aware of some deep wheel ruts and hoofprints in the sod beneath his feet.

The artillery officer who had fallen in this meadow had been making groans in the teeth of the tempest of sound. These futile cries, wrenched from him by his agony, were heard only by shells, bullets. When wild-eyed Collins came running, this officer raised himself. His face contorted and blanched from pain, he was about to utter some great beseeching cry. But suddenly his face straightened and he called: “Say, young man, give me a drink of water, will you?”

Collins had no room amid his emotions for surprise. He was mad from the threats of destruction.

“I can’t!” he screamed, and in his reply was a full description of his quaking apprehension. His cap was gone and his hair was riotous. His clothes made it appear that he had been dragged over the ground by the heels. He ran on.

The officer’s head sank down and one elbow crooked. His foot in its brass-bound stirrup still stretched over the body of his horse and the other leg was under the steed.

But Collins turned. He came dashing back. His face had now turned gray and in his eyes was all terror. “Here it is! here it is!”

The officer was as a man gone in drink. His arm bent like a twig. His head drooped as if his neck were of willow. He was sinking to the ground, to lie face downward.

Collins grabbed him by the shoulder. “Here it is. Here’s your drink. Turn over. Turn over, man, for God’s sake!”

With Collins hauling at his shoulder, the officer twisted his body and fell with his face turned toward that region where lived the unspeakable noises of the swirling missiles. There was the faintest shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a sigh, a little primitive breath like that from a child.

Collins tried to hold the bucket steadily, but his shaking hands caused the water to splash all over the face of the dying man. Then he jerked it away and ran on.

The regiment gave him a welcoming roar. The grimed faces were wrinkled in laughter.

His captain waved the bucket away. “Give it to the men!”

The two genial, skylarking young lieutenants were the first to gain possession of it. They played over it in their fashion.

When one tried to drink the other teasingly knocked his elbow. “Don’t, Billie! You’ll make me spill it,” said the one. The other laughed.

Suddenly there was an oath, the thud of wood on the ground, and a swift murmur of astonishment among the ranks. The two lieutenants glared at each other. The bucket lay on the ground empty.

THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED, by Mark Twain

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently. These, by their very numbers, are respectable and therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a loud one, but a modest one, not a boastful one but an apologetic one. They ought not be allowed much space among better people, people who did something. I grant that, but they ought at least be allowed to state why they didn’t do anything and also to explain the process by which they didn’t do anything. Surely this kind of light must have some sort of value.

Out west there was a good deal of confusion in men’s minds during the first months of the great trouble, a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way then that, and then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an example of this. I was piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 20th of December, 1860. My pilot mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen to me with any patience, my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my father had owned slaves. I said in palliation of this dark fact that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong and he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing, anyone could pretend to a good impulse, and went on decrying my Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi and I became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his fair share of the rebel shouting but was opposed to letting me do mine. He said I came of bad stock, of a father who had been willing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was piloting a Union gunboat and shouting for the Union again and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew but he repudiated that note without hesitation because I was a rebel and the son of a man who owned slaves.

In that summer of 1861 the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the shores of Missouri. Our state was invaded by the Union forces. They took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. The governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty thousand militia to repel the invader.

I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent, Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant, I do not know why, it was so long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that anyone found fault with the name. I did not, I thought it sounded quite well. The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good natured, well meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric novels and singing forlorn love ditties. He had some pathetic little nickel plated aristocratic instincts and detested his name, which was Dunlap, detested it partly because it was nearly as common in that region as Smith but mainly because it had a plebian sound to his ears. So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way; d’Unlap. That contented his eye but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new name the same old pronunciation, emphasis on the front end of it. He then did the bravest thing that can be imagined, a thing to make one shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and affectations, he began to write his name so; d’Un’Lap. And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at his work of art and he had his reward at last, for he lived to see that name accepted and the emphasis put where he wanted it put by people who had known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found by consulting some ancient French chronicles that the name was rightly and originally written d’Un’Lap and said that if it were translated into English it would mean Peterson, Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock, same as the French pierre, that is to say, Peter, d’ of or from, un, a or one, hence d’Un’Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter, that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a peter, Peterson. Our militia company were not learned and the explanation confused them, so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way, he named our camps for us and generally struck a name that was “no slouch” as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweller, trim built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat, bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday. I should say about half of us looked upon it in much the same way, not consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not think, we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in the morning, for a while grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went. I did not go into the details, as a rule, one doesn’t at twenty four.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart. At one time he would knock a horse down fro some impropriety and at another he would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his account which some of us hadn’t. He stuck to the war and was killed in battle at last.

Joe Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good natured, flax headed lubber, lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature, an experience and industrious ambitious and often quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one for he had no intelligent training but was allowed to come up just anyways. This life was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow anyway and the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant, Stevens was made corporal.

These samples will answer and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did as well as they knew how, but really, what was justly expected of them? Nothing I should say. And that is what they did.

We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary, then toward midnight we stole in couples and from various directions to the Griggith place beyond town. From that place we set out together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south eastern corner of Marion County, on the Mississippi river. Our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away in Ralls County.

The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The steady drudging became like work, the play had somehow oozed out of it, the stillness of the woods and the sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the spirits of the boys and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word.

Now we approached a log farmhouse where, according to reports, there was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt, and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon the house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. We realized with a cold suddenness that here was no jest—we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision. We said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers he could go ahead and do it, but if he waited for us to follow him he would wait a long time.

Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us into it, but it had no effect. Our course was plain in our minds, our minds were made up. We would flank the farmhouse, go out around. And that was what we did.

We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region and we sat down, blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed but the rest of us were cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horse paly and laughing began again. The expedition had become a holiday frolic once more.

Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and depression. Then about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, heel blistered, fagged with out little march, and all of us, except Stevens, in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We stacked our shabby old shotguns in Colonel Ralls’s barn and then went in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the mexican war. Afterward he took us to a distant meadow, and there, in the shade of a tree, we listened to an old fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder and glory, full of that adjective piling, mixed metaphor and windy declamation which was regraded as eloquence in that ancient time and region and then he swore on a bible to be faithful to the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil no matter whence they may come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us considerably and we could not just make out what service we were involved in, but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and phrase juggler, was not similarly in doubt. He knew quite clearly he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, Colonel brown, had worn at Beuna Vista and Molino del Ray and he accompanied this act with another impressive blast.

Then we formed in line of battle and marched four hours to a shady and pleasant piece of woods on the border of a far reaching expanse of a flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war, our kind of war.

We pierced the forest about half a mile and took up a strong position with some low and rocky hills behind us, and a purling limpid creek in front. Straightaway half the command was in swimming and the other half fishing. The ass with the french name gave the position a romantic title but it was too long so the boys shortened and simplified it to Camp Ralls.

We occupied an old maple sugar camp whose half rotted troughs were still propped against the trees. A long corn crib served fro sleeping quarters fro the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, were Mason’s farm and house, and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers began to arrive from several different directions with mules and horses for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which, they judged, might be about three months. The animals were of all sizes all colours and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time, for we were town boys and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active he could throw me off without difficulty and it did this whenever I got on. Then it would bray, stretching its neck out, laying its ears back and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the grounds it would sit down and brace back and no one could ever budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources and I did presently manage to spoil this game, for I had seen many a steamboat aground in my time and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn crib so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle and fetched him home with the windlass.

I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride after some days’ practice, but never well. We could not learn to like our animals. They were not choice ones and most of them had annoying peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens’s horse would carry him, when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which for on the trunks of oak trees and wipe him out of the saddle this way. Stevens got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers’s horse was very large and tall, slim with long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to go, so he was always biting Bowers’s legs. On the march, in the sun, Bowers slept a good deal and as soon as the horse recognized he was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could make him swear, but this always did, whenever his horse bit him he swore, and of course, Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at this and would get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance and fall off his horse, and then Bowers, already irritated by the pain of the horse bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there would be a quarrel so that horse made no end of trouble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was, our first afternoon in the sugar camp. The sugar troughs came very handy as horse troughs and we had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed my mule, but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be a dry nurse to a mule it wouldn’t take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed that this was insubordination but I was full of uncertainties about everything military so I let the matter pass and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule, but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven year old horse gives you when you lift up his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain and asked if it were not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn’t serve on anyone’s staff and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try. So, of course, the matter had to be dropped, there was no other way.

Next, nobody would cook. It was considered a degradation so we had no dinner. We lazed the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing under trees, some smoking cob pipes and talking sweethearts and war, others playing games. By late supper time all hands were famished and to meet the difficulty, all hands turned to on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the evening meal. Afterward everything was smooth for a while then trouble broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the higher office so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with the song singing and yarn spinning around the campfire everything presently became serene again, and by and by we raked the corn down one level in one end of the crib and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to the door so he would neigh if anyone tried to get in. (it was always my impression that was always what the horse was there for and I know it was the impression of at least one other of the command, for we talked about it at the time and admired the military ingenuity of the device, but when I was out west three years ago, I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, that the tying him at the door was a mere matter of forgetfulness and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not thought of that before.)

We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon, then, afternoons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles and visited the farmer’s girls and had a youthful good time and got an honest dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our direction from over Hyde’s prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general consternation. Ir was a rude awakening from out pleasant trance. The rumour was but a rumour, nothing definite about it, so in the confusion we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was not for retreating at all in these uncertain circumstances but he found that if he tried to maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humour to put up with insubordination. SO he yielded the point and called a council of war, to consist of himself and three other officers, but the privates made such a fuss about being left out we had to allow them to remain, for they were already present and doing most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so flurried that nobody even seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were approaching from over Hyde’s prairie our course was simple. All we had to do was not retreat toward him, another direction would suit our purposes perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was and how wise, so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decide that we should fall back on Mason’s farm.

It was after dark by this time and as we could not know how soon the enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and things with us, so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the night grew very black and rain began to fall, so we had a troublesome time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark and soon some person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other, and then Bowers came along with the keg of powder in his arms, while the command were all mixed together, arms and legs on the muddy slope, and so he fell, of course, with the keg and this started the whole detachment down the hill in a body and they landed in a brook at the bottom in a pile and each that was undermost was pulling the hair, scratching and biting those that were on top of him and those that were being scratched and bitten scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this brook this time and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the country along with him, and all such talk as that which was dismal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy, maybe, coming along at any moment.

The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and complaining continued straight along while the brigade pawed around the pasty hill side and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things; consequently we lost considerable time at this, and then we heard a sound and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow, but we did not wait but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for Mason’s again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we got lost presently in among the rugged little ravines and wasted a deal of time finding the way again so it was after nine when we reached Mason’s stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the countersign several dogs came bounding over the fence with a great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to so we had to look on helpless at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the Civil War. There was light enough and to spare, for the Mason’s had now run out on the porch with candles in tier hands. The old man and his son came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his combination, he was of the bull kind and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock, but they got him loose at last with some scalding water, of which Boweres got his share and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this engagement and also for the night march which preceded it but both have long ago faded out of my memory.

We now went into the house and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made himself very frank and said we were a curious breed of soldiers and guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because the no governor could afford the expense of the shoe leather we should cost it trying to follow us around.

“Marion Rangers! Good name, b’gosh,” said he. And wanted to why we hadn’t had a picket guard at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn’t sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumour, and so on and so forth, till he made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not so half enthusiastically welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low spirited, except Stevens. Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to automatically display his battle scars to the grateful or conceal them from the envious, according to his occasions, but Bowers was in no humour for this, so there was a fight and when it was over Stevens had some battle scars of his own to think about.

Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our activities were not over for the night, for about two o’clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like our which it could find. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this time himself. He hurried us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide ourselves and our telltale guns among the ravines half a mile away,. It was raining heavily.

We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture land which offered good advantages fro stumbling; consequently we were down in the mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he black guarded the war and everybody connected with it, and gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we huddled ourselves under the streaming trees and sent the negro back home. It was a dismal and heart breaking time. We were like to e drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the campaign and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the Negro came to us with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one and that breakfast would soon be ready. Straightaway we were light-hearted again and the world was bright and full of life, as full of hope and promise as ever; for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night’s refuge Camp Devastation and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast in Missourian abundance, and we needed it. Hot biscuits, hot wheat bread, prettily crossed in a lattice pattern on top, hot corn pone, fried chicken, bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk etc. and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal of such a breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.

We stayed several days at Mason’s and after all these years the memory of the stillness and dullness and lifelessness of that slumberous farmhouse still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of death and mourning. There was nothing to do. Nothing to think about. There was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight, There was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning wheel forever moaning out from some distant room, the most lonesome sound in nature, a sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life. The family went to bed about dark every night and as we were not invited to intrude any new customs we naturally followed theirs. Those nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour ovariotomy and grew old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like joy that we received word that the enemy were on out track again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason’s talk, and he now gave orders that our camp should be guarded from surprise by the posting of pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in Hyde’s prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant Bowers to out to that place and stay till midnight, and, just as I was expecting, he said he wouldn’t do it. I tried to get others to go but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather, but the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn’t go in any kind of weather. This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there was no surprise in it at the time. On the contrary, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps scattered over missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy independence and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by Tom, Dick, and Harry, who they had known familiarly all their lives in the village or the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath recognized the justice of this assumption and furnished the following instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was in a citizen colonel’ s tent one day talking, when a big private appeared at the door and, without salute or other circumlocution, said to the colonel;

“Say, Jim, I’m a goin’ home for a few days.”

“What for?”

“Well, I hain’t b’en there for a right smart while and I’d like to see how things is comin’ on.”

“How long are you gonna be gone?”

“Bout two weeks.”

“Well, don’t be gone longer than that and get back sooner if you can.”

That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first rate fellow and well liked, but we had all familiarly known him as the soles and modest-salaried operator in the telegraph office, where he had to send about one despatch a week in ordinary times and two when there was a rush of business. Consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day on the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort in a large military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from the assembled soldiery.

“Oh, now what’ll you take to don’t, Tom Harris?”

It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were hopeless material for the war. And so we seemed in our ignorant state, but there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade, learned to obey like machines, became valuable soldiers, fought all through the war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night and called me an ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.

I did secure my picket that might, not by authority but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bower’s monotonous growling at the war and the weather, then we began to nod and presently found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle, so we gave up the tedious job and went back to the camp without interruption or objection from anybody and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. Everybody was asleep, at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn crib and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was full of rats and they would scramble over the boys’ bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody, and now and then they would bite someone’s toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his english and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck would respond and inside of five minutes everyman would be locked in a death grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn crib but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war. No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been all.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always turned out to be false, so at last we even began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn crib with the same old warning, the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins—for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horseplay and schoolboy hilarity, but that cooled down and presently the fast waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon uneasy—worried and apprehensive. We had said we would stay and we were committed. We could have been persuaded to go but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement began in the dark by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there, all there with our hearts in our throats and staring out towards the sugar-troughs where the forest footpath came through. It was late and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shapes of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears and we recognized the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away, a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had such little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback, and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got a hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said “Fire!” I pulled the trigger, I seemed to see a hundred flashes and a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an apprentice-sportsman’s impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, “Good, we’ve got him. Wait for the rest!” But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just the perfect stillness, an uncanny kind of stillness which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late night smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept out stealthily and approached the man. When we got to him, the moon revealed him distinctly. He was laying on his back with his arms abroad, his mouth was open and his chest was heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt front was splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought with a new despair, “This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.”

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half-hour sorrowing over him and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be and if he was a spy, and saying if they had it to do over again, they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon turned out that mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others, a division of the guilt which was a great relief to me since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at once but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The mans was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of hi got to preying on me every night, I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business, that war was intended for men and I for a child’s nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldier-ship while I could retain some remanent of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another and eating up the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary they were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an upper Mississippi pilot who afterwards became famous as a daredevil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desperate adventures. The loom and style of his comrades suggested that they had not come into the war to play and their deeds made good the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver shots, but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and could snatch a man out of his saddle with it ovariotomy, on a full gallop, at any reasonable distance.

In another camp, the chief was a fierce and profane old black-smith of sixty and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic, home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with two hands like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back on was in a hollow near the village of Florida where I was born, in Monroe County. Here we were warned one day that a Union Colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were getting ready themselves to fall back on some place or another, and we were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at any moment, so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back and didn’t need any of Harris’s help, we could get along perfectly without him and save time too. So, about half of our fifteen men, including myself, mounted, and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion, and stayed—stayed through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his company, his staff probably, but we could not tell; none of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back, but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a whole regiment in his wake and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance, so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little bit, but it was of no use, our minds were made up. We had done our share, killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the rest and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last year; he was wearing white hair and whiskers.

In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent; General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, “Grant—Ulysses S Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.” It seems difficult to realize there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made, but there was, I was within a few miles of the place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value; it is not an unfair picture of what went on in may a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence of trained leaders, when all their circumstances were new and strange and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then history has been, to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet, it learned it’s trade presently and helped to fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

WITHOUT THE BLUE, by Johnston McCulley

I.

Down on the street again, Jimmie Brooks stood for a few minutes at the curb and strove to control his emotions. Being a secret service operative, and a good one, he knew that anger netted a man nothing in the way of success; and just now Jimmie Brooks was angry.

He couldn’t blame the chief, he told himself. Washington was burning up the wires telling the chief just what it thought of him and the men who looked to him for orders. This branch of the secret service that had its headquarters in an unpretentious little office in an old office building in “a Pacific port” was failing to make the good record it should. More than that, it was fast gaining with the department heads a reputation that was far from enviable. A short distance from the city was a huge cantonment where the young men of America learned to be soldiers; and as their training was finished they were moved toward the Atlantic—and France. It was necessary, of course, to keep all troop movements secret. There lurked, here and there, alien fiends who resorted to dynamite and torn and twisted bridges and demolished tracks to prevent regiments being transported safely and with speed. That strong men died among twisted steel and splintered wood instead of dying from bullet wounds with their faces toward the enemy made small difference to the plotters. Three times within as many weeks troop trains had been wrecked within a few hours after leaving the cantonment. Information regarding the movements of the trains was being conveyed to the enemy. In the offices of the great railroad company that had charge of troop transportation every man was being watched. Men suspected of being enemy spies—and women, too—were shadowed constantly. Yet the knowledge got out with disastrous results.

Jimmie Brooks had just come from the dingy office where the division chief had his desk. He had been the recipient of a tirade. It was not the usual tirade of a disgusted man. The chief had a way of speaking in a low, even voice that could be scathingly sarcastic. His words seemed to burn into a man’s brain. And Jimmie Brooks, for once had lost control of himself, had become angry. Now he stood at the curb and fought for self-control. The chief had been no more than just, he knew. A dozen good men worked out of that office, specializing on the case, in addition to ordinary operatives who shadowed those under suspicion. And yet they had not found the slightest clue to the guilty persons.

“You’ve got to stop it!” the chief had said to Jimmie Brooks and some of the others. “Each of you work independently for a time. It’s up to you men. Your failure is causing good boys to go down to death in railroad wrecks, and it is delaying the government’s plans. Get out of here—and get results!”

Jimmie Brooks shrugged his shoulders and turned up the street. The factory whistles were screeching out the midday hour. Brooks turned into a side street and walked rapidly in the direction of a small café where he took his meals.

“Get results! Get results!” rang in his brain. He admitted to himself that he didn’t know which way to turn to get results. Every man who could know the orders for troop movements was being watched. The railroad men, even officers at the army post, were under suspicion. And there was not the slightest clue.

At the curb before the little café Brooks paused a moment to let the throng pass before he cut across the walk and entered. A small piece of cardboard fluttered lazily from a window above struck the brim of Brooks’s hat and dropped to his shoulder. Brooks caught it and favored it with a glance. It was a peculiar sort of thing—some advertising dodge, he supposed.

c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c

RED AND WHITE

c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c

Brooks tossed the bit of cardboard aside and went on into the little café. He nodded to the cashier, a young woman he admired in a way, and sat down at a table near the window. Having given his order he glanced out at the walk and the passing throng.

From the main entrance of the building adjoining the café there darted a hatless, breathless man, who looked to be about forty-five. He was short, heavily built, and gave a suggestion of great strength. He stood just in front of the café window and glanced about the walk; then suddenly darted forward, disregarding the rights of pedestrians, stooped and picked up the bit of cardboard Brooks had read and dropped. There was a look of keen satisfaction on the man’s face as he turned and hurried into the entrance again.

“Who is the excited gent?” Brooks asked the cashier carelessly, turning his head and looking up at her.

“Freak!” she explained, reaching for a fresh stick of chewing gum. “Name’s Professor Kenderdine. Eats here now and then. And he’s fussy about his grub. What he’s professor of I don’t know. Lives in a suite of rooms up-stairs. Looks like a clairvoyant, or some sort of crook. Professor of gettin’ the dough without workin’, I suppose. Funny what grafts get by in this burg!”

“It is at that,” Brooks assented, and gave his attention to his meal.

But he couldn’t forget the bit of cardboard and the fact that the “professor” had hurried out bareheaded to regain it.

“Red and white; eh?” he mused. “Tain’t right. Red and white without the blue isn’t exactly proper in this day and age. Like a man showing only half his colors! Huh!”

He didn’t enjoy that luncheon. The sarcastic words of the chief had disturbed him greatly, and he still was a bit angry. He paid his check, joked a moment with the pretty cashier, and went out upon the street.

He walked rapidly, his head bent slightly, intending to go to the offices of the railroad company and search for the elusive clue. At the first corner he collided with a young woman.

Brooks generally was a cool and calm man, but now he was the victim of confusion. Going carelessly around the city streets and bumping into young women—especially pretty young women—wasn’t exactly the proper thing. He felt sure it wasn’t being done this season.

He stammered his embarrassed apologies, and saw that the young woman was smiling.

“I—er—I was thinking,” he mentioned.

“I’m glad some men take time to think,” she replied, dimpling. “It is all right, I assure you.”

“But you must think me—confound it!— you must think I’m a sort of—er—”

“Roughneck?” she suggested.

“Er—yes!”

Brooks had regained his composure, only to have it shaken again. On the left lapel of her coat the young woman wore two carnations— one red and one white. Red and white again— without the blue!

“Er—you’ve lost one of your colors,” Brooks said, trying to be pleasant.

“I beg pardon?”

“Ought to have a blue carnation too—” he said.

“Oh! That isn’t possible, I’m afraid. But it is a good suggestion. After this I’ll put a tiny bow of blue ribbon with them.”

She smiled at Jimmie Brooks again and walked on down the street. Jimmie knew that young women usually did not wear flowers in just that manner. Why only two carnations, and why were they pinned to the lapel of her coat? Was there any connection between the red and white carnations and the card that had dropped on his hat and bore the words “Red and white”?

“I’ll be looking for a clue in the gutter next!” Brooks muttered to himself in huge disgust. “If we don’t solve this little mystery pretty soon I’ll be a candidate for a sanatorium!”

A hand fell upon his shoulder. He whirled around to face a city detective he knew.

“What’s the idea, Jimmie,” the detective asked, “going around assaulting young women these days? I saw you. Why didn’t you knock her down and walk over her—and be done with it? Or is it just a way you have of making an acquaintance?”

“Accident! Was thinking!” Jimmie explained.

“Don’t try to flirt with that young beauty, Jimmie. That girl hasn’t any time to waste. Some beauty, eh? And she’s a mighty good girl. Supports a mother and kid brother.”

“Works, eh?”

“You bet she does! Gets about a hundred and twenty-five a month at that. She is private secretary to Hamlin, traffic manager for the X.

Z. and Y.” “She—what?” Brooks asked. “Private secretary to Hamlin. Got more brains than he has, I guess. Plucky little girl! Sends her brother to school and keeps her mother in a dandy little flat.”

“Must be a good girl,” Brooks admitted. “See you again, Joe. I’m in a hurry now.”

“On your way?” the detective said, laughing; and they separated.

Jimmie Brooks was thinking in earnest now. Private secretary to Hamlin, traffic director of the railroad that moved the troops! And she wore red and white carnations!

II.

It was about seven o’clock that evening when Jimmie Brooks entered the little café again—this time for dinner.

He had spent an afternoon of futile endeavor. He had made a nuisance of himself around the railroad offices, and had discovered nothing worthy of notice. He had met the young woman again, had learned that her name was Betty Burns, and had apologized for about the tenth time for the collision of the noon hour.

Across the street from the little café was a drug store, and in its window an electric display sign alternately flashed a red and white light. Jimmie Brooks started when he saw it; and then told himself that he was all sorts of a fool. That sign had been there for a year, at least, and probably for longer than that. He had watched it scores of times while sitting in the little café and waiting for food to be carried to him. There was nothing particularly attractive about the sign, except perhaps to a stranger.

It appeared that the waiter was unusually slow to-night, and Brooks spent the time watching the street. He was sitting in his usual place, near the cashier’s cage, but she was busy checking up accounts and Brooks did not bother her with conversation.

And then he saw the professor again. Kenderdine passed before the window and turned in at the entrance of the building. And almost at the same moment Brooks saw Hamlin, traffic manager.

Brooks suddenly was alert. Hamlin was across the street. At this hour the man should have been in his pretentious home eating his dinner. The traffic manager stopped before the drug-store and inspected some Kodak supplies in the window. Presently he entered the store.

Brooks saw him engage the proprietor, Baker, in conversation. It appeared that the two men were well acquainted. Two or three customers who were in the store completed their purchases and left. Baker and Hamlin walked toward the rear end of the establishment, where the store owner took down something from a shelf, wrapped it up, handed it to the traffic manager and rang up the sale on the cash-register.

Nothing particularly suspicious in that, Brooks thought. Yet he continued to watch even after his dinner had been placed before him. And suddenly he saw Hamlin walk around behind the prescription-case.

Brooks ate dinner leisurely, yet watching the drug-store continually meanwhile. Half an hour passed and Hamlin did not emerge.

Something seemed to attract Brooks’s attention to the electric display light again. And then he forgot his dessert and bent forward in his chair, watching intently.

For the electric sign was not working in the usual manner. There came no longer alternate flashes of red and white. At times there would be several red flashes in succession, then several white ones, and now and then a pause when the sign flashed neither red nor white.

“Ah! A little more red and white—without the blue!” Brooks muttered. “I’ll just make little note of this!”

Pencil and note-book came from his pocket. The sign across the street was dark for a time, and then the flashes began again. If it was a message, Jimmie Brooks had lost a considerable part of it, but perhaps he could catch enough yet to give him an inkling of its import.

He wrote rapidly in the note-book, making a check for a red flash and a cross for a white one, in indicating the pauses. This is what he got:

Red, red, red. Red. Red, red, red, white. Red. White, red, white, white. Red, red. Red, white, red, red. Red. Red, red, red, red, red. Red, white, red, red. Red, white. White, red. White, red, red. White. Red, white, white. Red. Red, white, red. red. Red, red, red, white. Red. White. White, white, white. White, red. Red, red. White, white, red. Red, red, red, red. White.

Jimmie Brooks scarcely spoke to the cashier when he paid his check, which surprised that young woman considerably. He hurried up the street to his rooms, dashed to the desk, sat down before it, and contemplated the note¬book.

After a quarter of an hour of thought, Brooks reached for a United States Army signal-book. He turned to the Morse code. An attempt to make sense of the red and white syllables he had written failed. Here and there would be a letter that ruined what otherwise might have been a perfectly good word.

Then be turned to the Continental code. There is a small difference between the two codes, but Brooks found enough to make a message where there had been nonsense before. Three minutes later Brooks closed the signal-book and got up from the desk.

At last he had it. From those peculiar flashes of red and white in the window of the drug-store he had deciphered in the Continental code a message of five words. The red represented a dot and the white a dash. It read:

Seven Mile Island twelve to-night.

Jimmie Brooks felt a thrill as he read the message, and he fumed because of the part of it that he had lost. He knew Seven Mile Island well. It was down the river from the sea about the distance that gave it its name. There were only two ways of reaching it, by water direct and by taking a trolley-car to a way station and crossing from there in a rowboat.

The island itself was very small. Near the south end of it, about a hundred yards from the river and practically hidden from view by a thick growth of large trees, stood an old cabin. Formerly it had been occupied by an old fisherman. But it had been vacant now for several years, the doors and the windows had been removed, and the floor was rotten with age.

Brooks thought for a time of the island as he knew it, and then read the message again. A clock near by struck the hour of nine. On the street below newsboys were crying extras. He could hear the words:

“Another troop-train wrecked! Extra!”

Brooks set his lips in a thin, straight line, put the note-took and message in his pocket, and went out. Seven Mile Island at midnight, eh? Well, he’d be there! Possibly there was nothing to it, since he had not got the first part of the message, but he would have to find out.

Before a newspaper office he glanced at the bulletin-board. The troop-train had plunged through a bridge that had had a span blown out a few minutes before, a message stated. Young men in the khaki of their country had met death there, and others had suffered injuries.

“Like to get my hands on the throat of the fiend that did that!” an aged man near Jimmie was muttering. “They don’t give the boys a chance! It’s worse than shootin’ them from the dark! Why don’t the government do something?”

That was the key-note—the government should do something about it. The public trusted the government. No matter how difficult the task, the public expected the government to protect its soldiers from such fiendish work as this. And Jimmie Brooks was a part of the government!

He glanced over the other bulletins, and then went on down the street. He boarded a trolley-car and set on the rear end in the semidarkness and smoked. The car carried him through the retail district, through the residence section, and out along the broad river.

He could see lights twinkling on moored ships. He saw river packets going toward the city. Now and then, as the car stopped at way stations, he could hear the wash of the water upon the shore. And always he heard the old man’s question: “Why don’t the government do something?”

He left the car at the proper station and walked down toward the river. Heavy clouds obscured the moon and stars; and a drizzle of rain was falling. It was a perfect night, Brooks thought, for plots and plotters.

He used his electric torch when he reached the edge of the water, and presently discovered an old skiff pulled up on the ground. Two splintered oars were near it, wedged between two rocks. That suited Jimmie Brooks perfectly; he didn’t want to attract attention by communicating with some fisherman and renting a boat. Jimmie Brooks seized the craft.

Slowly and carefully he rowed across the turbulent river, flinching now and then because the rusty oar-locks squeaked, stopping now and then to listen. He reached the island, and landed a couple of hundred yards above the old cabin, pulled the boat out of the water, and hid it among the tall weeds that lined the shore. Then he crept through the weeds and thick brush, and made his way toward the distant shack.

III

In former days a path had run from the cabin to a tiny dock, but now the path was almost overgrown with weeds and brush. The dock was still there, but half the boards in its flooring had rotted away.

Brooks investigated the path carefully, and decided that it had been used recently. He listened for a time in the vicinity of the cabin, and, convinced that no one was there, entered and flashed the torch. The cabin had been swept and the walls partially cleaned. In one corner of it was an old table, and a couple of boxes that were used as chairs. The cabin, it was evident, had been used within the last few days.

Brooks was not certain that those who visited Seven Mile Island this night would go to the cabin. So he made his way down to the river again and prepared to hide in the brush near the dock in case any one came. It was only eleven o’clock; he had an hour to wait.

To his ears came the faint squeaking of oar-locks. Nearer came the sound, until Brooks was assured that a boat was approaching the island. Crouching in the brush, he waited, wishing that the moon would come from behind the clouds to shed some light on the river. He had only the sound of the squeaking oar-locks by which to tell in what direction the boat was being moved.

Across the river a trolley car rounded a curve. For an instant its headlight was reflected on the surface of the water, making a path of brilliance toward the island, cresting the tiny waves with golden light. In this glow, for just a moment, Brooks saw a rowboat. A girl was at the oars.

Then the light was whirled away, and the surface of the stream was in darkness again. The squeaking of the oar-locks had stopped. Brooks imagined that the girl at the oars had been frightened when the streak of light revealed her.

Presently he heard the squeaking again and he could make out that the boat was being rowed slowly toward the island. It did not approach the little dock. Thirty yards to one side it was landed and drawn up on the beach. Brooks was within twenty feet of the girl when she left the edge of the water and started through the weeds toward the cabin.

He had guessed that the girl was Betty Burns, Hamlin’s secretary. He wondered at her being mixed up in such a business, and told himself that promised reward supplied the answer. The girl had worked hard; she had a mother and brother to support. Perhaps Hamlin, or somebody else, had whispered that money could be obtained easily, and that it would purchase many things that had been denied her.

Brooks liked to think that the girl did not realize just what she was doing, or that she was an innocent girl in the hands of scoundrels. But she was there, at almost midnight, and alone. Brooks decided to watch, her for a time before making his presence known.

She made little noise as she walked slowly toward the cabin, and Jimmie Brooks made less. She found the path in time, and followed that, stopping now and then as though to listen. Once she flashed a pocket-torch, and Brooks was almost discovered.

He expected her to enter the cabin, and wait for the person who was to come at midnight, and he was somewhat surprised when she went to one side of it and crouched down in the brush. Her attitude told Jimmie Brooks that, like himself, she was there to watch and overhear—for what purpose, he could not guess.

She made not a particle of noise now, and Brooks was afraid to leave her then and return to the dock, afraid that his departure would not be silent, and that she would become aware of his presence. For almost half an hour they remained within thirty feet of each other, neither moving.

Then there came from the river the soft purring of a motor-boat. The purring stopped; and a little later a man slipped up the pathway. He went directly to the cabin, flashed a torch, and then lighted a candle.

“He’s got his nerve with him!” Brooks growled to himself. “I wish that girl would make a move. I want to get nearer and take a look at the latest arrival.”

His wish was granted immediately. The girl stole out to the path and hurried along it. Jimmie Brooks could not see her, but he could bear her light footsteps. He did not know just what to expect. Perhaps, after all, Miss Betty Burns had a rendezvous with the man in the cabin, and had been awaiting his arrival in the brush as a matter of precaution.

But the girl did not enter the cabin. Brooks saw her walk through the faint streak of light the candle made and approach one of the open windows. She peered inside, and Brooks got a fleeting view of her face. It was Betty Burns. And after she had glanced through the window, she stepped back to the brush and crouched at the edge of it again.

Brooks crept forward silently and attained a position where he could look through the doorway and into the cabin. The man sitting on one of the boxes beside the table was Hamlin, the traffic manager. One glance Brooks gave him and then slipped away again. Experience told him there would be no satisfactory result if he invaded that cabin now and demanded what Hamlin was doing there. He had no conclusive evidence, merely a mass of conjectures. And such an action would probably mean that the man for whom the flashing light message had been intended would scent trouble and fail to appear. It was Brooks’s part to wait and observe.

In the brush again he made his way silently, and foot by foot, toward Betty Burns. There was some wind now, and the brush and trees rattled considerably, enough to cover the sounds of his approach. When he was so close that he could hear her breathing, he stopped. He could see nothing, but he sensed that he could touch her by extending an arm at its full length.

He listened for the sound of another boat’s approach, but heard nothing. Over across the river, some clock struck the hour of twelve, and Jimmie Brooks counted the soft strokes. Then he heard a man’s steps on the twigs which covered the path.

The latest arrival went directly to the cabin and stopped at the door. Brooks saw him plainly; he was Professor Kenderdine, who had a suite of rooms above the little café.

“Fool!” he heard Kenderdine hiss, “Why the light?”

“Oh, I say, Kenderdine—”

“And no names! Must you always be a fool?”

“I’m new at this business,” Hamlin said.

“A baby could tell that, my friend.”

“And I don’t like it!”

“But you like the money, eh? You play at buying stock and being a lamb, and your wife goes into society, and your railroad salary will not stretch, eh? And so, when a certain old professor comes along and offers some easy money—”

“No need to go into details!” Hamlin snapped. “Let’s get down to business.”

“You must be careful how you flash word for me to meet you here,” Kenderdine said. “I was half-minded not to come tonight. We cannot risk a meeting every few minutes. It is money, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“You have it coming to you, of course, and I stand ready to pay it. But we must be careful, my friend. There is not a breath of suspicion now blowing upon either of us. If that breath comes—puff! Jail—or worse!”

“Well, don’t talk about it!”

“It is not a pleasant prospect, eh? Remember that—and use some precautions. Have you some more information for me this evening—some that you did not flash from the little drug-store window-lamp?”

“Yes. Three sections start Tuesday, the first at noon, one at one and one at two o’clock.”

“Um! Noon, eh? That will mean that we must do our work some miles from here.”

“I’ll let you know if the trains are to be held up during the afternoon. There may be some change in plans. The government men are frantic.”

“Do you dislike this work, my friend?” Kenderdine asked.

“Do you?” Hamlin countered.

“Ah! I am working for my country; you are working against yours! There is a world of difference.”

“In other words, you may buy me, but you do not respect me.”

“Can one respect a traitor?”

“You are but a spy!”

“Which is much better than being a traitor, though death is the lot of both—if caught. But such talk gets us nowhere, sir. Each of us has his aims and must deal with his own conscience. You want money? Very good! I have another five thousand with me to-night.”

“Can’t you make it ten?”

“I fancy not, my friend.”

“I have expenses, you know. A part of mine goes to—er—our friend who makes the flash-lamp possible.”

“That is your business,” Kenderdine said. “It was a part of our bargain that you find a safe way to convey the information to me.”

“And how do you pass it on?” Hamlin asked. “That is what surprises me. One of those trains started early in the morning and was wrecked at night five hundred miles away. And you don’t dare use the telegraph!”

“I have little ways of my own, and clever men to help me. It pays to be clever, my friend. And before we go further, I must be assured of your own cleverness. I cannot afford to have suspicion attach to me through some careless act of yours. This little matter is but one of many I have in hand for my country. I am too valuable to be—er—put out of the way by your government.”

“I guess I am clever enough.” Hamlin snarled. “I’m not liable to make a mistake, when it would mean disaster to me as well as to you. Give me the five thousand and let me get back to the city.”

“Very well!”

Kenderdine took a packet from his pocket and placed it in Hamlin’s hands.

“Try to think of some better way of getting the money,” Kenderdine said. “This is too risky. We might meet here two times with safely, and the third time might be disastrous.”

Brooks watched Hamlin put the packet of money into an inside pocket and button his coat. He knew that Betty Burns was still within a few feet of him, and wondered what her share in this was to be. And then he heard the brush crack and knew that she had moved.

Had he known the truth then he would have made an effort to stop her, but he did not know. The girl sprang to her feet before him and darted to the door of the cabin. Brooks, from the middle of the path, saw her stop in the doorway, and heard the exclamations of the men she faced.

“So this is the way of it!” Brooks heard her say.

IV

Kenderdine was the first of the men to speak. “Who is this girl?” he demanded of Hamlin.

“She—she is Miss Burns.”

“The one to whom the cards have been sent?”

“Yes.”

“And what does her presence here mean?”

“I—I do not know,” Hamlin gasped.

Kenderdine faced the girl.

“What are you doing here, young lady?” he demanded. “It is rather peculiar, is it not, for you to be in such a place after midnight?”

“Perhaps,” she assented. “And is not what you are doing peculiar?”

“I fail to understand this situation,” Kenderdine said, looking at Hamlin once more.

“The girl does not know,” the traffic manager said in a low tone.

“Ah! Is that so, or is it possible you two are attempting what you Americans call the double-cross? I presume the young lady is after money, too? You Americans appear to have an abnormal appetite for money.”

‘But I do know!” Betty Burns cried. “I know that I have been made a tool by scoundrels. I know the horrible things you have been doing.”

“Quiet, I beg of you!” Kenderdine commanded.

But his command fell upon deaf ears. Standing in the doorway, Betty Burns made a picture of defiance, with the candlelight playing over her pretty face, which now expressed anger and determination.

“I know you for spy and traitor!” she said. “I know that Mr. Hamlin has done the worst thing a man can do—he has been a foe to his own country, and has helped send brave men to death. Oh, I know it all now!”

“Do you, then, know so much?” Kenderdine sneered.

“It seemed very simple when Mr. Hamlin spoke to me about it first. I would be working for my country, he said. Because of enemy spies, the news regarding the movement of troop-trains had to be carried in unusual ways. Only a few persons knew the truth, he said. And because I was his trusted private secretary. I was to help.”

“And you did!” insinuated Kenderdine.

“I was merely to wear red and white carnations,” she went on. “On certain days I would receive a card through the mail. It would have the words ‘Red and White’ printed on it, and below and above them a row of letters. On some days the letters would be ‘C,’ and on others ‘M.’ If the letter was ‘C’ I was to wear the carnations on my left lapel, if ‘M,’ on the right. And I had merely to go into a certain drug-store just after the noon hour and make a purchase, being sure to remain in the store for five or ten minutes. That was all. In some mysterious way a certain message would be forwarded.”

“Very pretty!” Kenderdine commented.

“And I did it!” the girl went on. “I thought I was serving my country, helping protect our troops—and I was helping slay them! And my own big brother is in the army! He has been in the army for years—dear black sheep of the family that he is! He never sent us money, though I suppose he had little enough to spare. And we used to think he didn’t amount to much. But since the war came we have been proud of him. He is in the army, a regular.”

“Interesting!” Kenderdine sneered.

“How can you talk like that? Do you realize what you have been doing? A hundred men to-day, the papers say! And I have been helping!

“I began to grow suspicious. It seemed that every troop-train the road handled was wrecked. And Mr. Hamlin began acting peculiarly. I—I watched him. To-night I followed him. I saw him go to that drug-store. I waited for him to come out. And while I was waiting I noticed the red and white light in the window. I suppose I’d never have noticed it except for the red and white cards and carnations. I saw that it was flashing peculiarly. The rest was easy!”

“Easy?” Hamlin cried.

“My brother is in the signal corps— where my younger brother will be when he is old enough. I know both the Continental and Morse codes. I learned them from my brother once when he had a furlough and came home. And I kept brushed up on them after I began working for the railroad, Mr. Hamlin is responsible for that. When he engaged me be told me that I should interest myself in everything pertaining to railroading, if I wished to be advanced. So it didn’t take me long to guess that the ‘C’ on the card meant Continental, and ‘M’ meant Morse, and that sometimes one code would be used and sometimes the other, as a matter of precaution.”

“Ah!” said Kenderdine, and glanced at Hamlin.

“And I read the red and white dashes, and found that there was to be a meeting here to¬night I read, too, while information was sent, that a train would be moved early in the morning. I knew what that meant—another wreck, more soldiers maimed and killed. And so I came here—”

“To get money?” Kenderdine insinuated.

“Money? You think I would take money?” she cried. “I came to learn the truth. And I have heard some, and guessed some. You mailed cards to me, and I wore carnations accordingly. I went into that drug-store, and somebody watching for me there knew whether to use Continental or Morse that night. I knew Mr. Hamlin could use the code, of course—he was a telegrapher once. And there must be somebody else, for some of those messages were sent from the store window when Mr. Hamlin was not at the store. I can guess that he telephoned the information to somebody there. He didn’t dare go too often himself. You all were so very careful to protect yourselves. And you made me your tool!”

“Well, what is to be the outcome?” Kenderdine asked “Let us have done with heroics and get down to business.”

“She knows—she’ll tell!” Hamlin gasped. His face was ashen, his hands trembling. “We’ll go to jail!”

“To a firing squad, more than likely,” Kenderdine admitted. “That is—if the knowledge is allowed to get out.”

“You—what do you mean?” Hamlin asked.

“Dangerous persons should be removed. Who is this girl? Is she so important that we must go to death rather than send her there?”

“You would commit murder?” Hamlin cried.

“I am working for my country. Even if I escaped, my flight would ruin many well-laid plans and put government officials on guard. I am afraid that the young woman must not be allowed to tell her story.”

He got up from the box as he finished speaking, and Betty Burns recoiled a step. But Kenderdine caught her by an arm and whirled her inside the cabin.

“If you rebel at such a thing, Hamlin, you had better start for the city now,” he said. “I will not need any help.”

“I’ll not be a party to murder!”

“I fear that it is necessary. The young lady says she did not come here for money, and she appears sincere.”

“I’ll not have anything to do with it!”

“Do you wish to allow her to return to the city and tell what she knows? Do you want to be known as a traitor, to face a firing squad?”

“A traitor!” Betty Burns cried, her eyes flaming into Hamlin’s. “Traitor to your country, and to the railroad you serve! And you have preached to me of loyalty to the road. A traitor—you a railroad man! The first railroad man in the world, in my life, to play such a part!”

“Enough of this!” Kenderdine cried; and Brooks sensed the change in his mood. “Make up your mind, Hamlin! Either help me, or go back to the city and leave me to do this thing alone! We’ll be safe, man! A grave on this forsaken island never will be found, and, if it should be by accident, nobody ever will know the guilty man. It’ll be just another mysterious disappearance of a girl. You can sympathy with the family, help them financially—”

Hamlin got up from the box. Jimmie Brooks grasped an automatic pistol and crept nearer the door.

V

Listening to the girl’s recital, Jimmie Brooks had seen the plot instantly. These precious scoundrels, fearful of discovery, had been careful to remain away from each other. By means of the little cards Kenderdine had sent word from time to time to change from one code to another. Betty Burns, not realizing what she was doing, had received those cards and had worn red and white carnations accordingly.

She had walked into Baker’s drug-store. Some person there had noticed the carnations and had known what code to use. In some manner information about the troop-trains was conveyed to this person. At night he flashed the light in the store window—and Kenderdine, in his suite across the street, read the information conveyed.

Through prepared channels, Kenderdine passed the word on—and soldiers died in wreckage. Perhaps Hamlin had worked that flashlight at times, perhaps some other man. Baker, the druggist, must be an accomplice, Brooks thought. There was a gang, of course: such a big thing could not be handled by a couple of men. Brooks was eager to know certain things—how Baker was implicated, and how the information regarding the trains was sent from the railroad offices to the drug¬store. The latter may have been done over the telephone, of course. A few words would suffice.

Brooks admired the pluck and loyalty of Betty Burns, but he found himself wishing he could have stopped her before she confronted the men in the cabin. Not knowing they had been discovered, they might have led him to where the remainder of the gang was.

But now that she was in danger, Jimmie Brooks did not hesitate. He knew that Kenderdine was the sort of man who would not stop short of murder when not to slay meant the ruination of his plans and threatened his freedom.

Crouching just outside the doorway in the darkness, Brooks waited. He did not have long to wait. Hamlin walked to the door, and there stopped and turned.

“I—I wish there was some other way,” he stammered.

“Don’t be a fool!” Kenderdine exclaimed. “Either help me, or get away from here!”

Betty Burns jerked away, but Kenderdine had her in his grasp again instantly, and now he clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the cries she was about to voice. Jimmie Brooks grasped his automatic firmly, thumb on the safety catch, and stepped nearer the doorway.

“There must be some other way,” Hamlin said.

“Go, you fool! And forget the entire business!” Kenderdine commanded. “Keep your wits about you, and you’ll never come under suspicion.”

“You sha’n’t do it!” Hamlin cried.

He turned upon Kenderdine like an angry beast. Kenderdine hurled the girl to a corner of the cabin and sprang at Hamlin’s throat. Jimmie Brooks knew that Hamlin was no match for the other man, and he feared that Kenderdine might decide to do a couple of murders this night. He didn’t want Hamlin killed. He wanted him a prisoner, a frightened prisoner who might break down under the third degree and name his accomplices.

Jimmie Brooks stepped inside the door calmly and leveled his automatic.

“Hands up, gentlemen!” he requested, in a hard voice. “It isn’t necessary for you to murder each other. I’ll do all the violence that’s to be done here to-night!”

They whirled to face him, falling away from each other. In Hamlin’s face was a look of wonder, in Kenderdine’s an expression of cold rage. A squeal of thankfulness came from Betty Burns in the corner.

Ordinarily, an armed man can control two others upon whom he has the “drop,” but not always when the others face ignoble death for their crimes. Hamlin fell back a step, his hands high above his head, and made no other move.

“Who is this?” Kenderdine snarled.

“I happen to be connected with the United States government,” Jimmie explained. “I am here because you dropped a little card out of your window at noon. It struck my hat, and I read it. Afterward I saw your pleasure when you recovered it. That set me to thinking of ‘red and white’ with this result.”

“So! A Secret Service man?”

“Call me whatever you like,” Jimmie said. “I fancy you gentlemen are at the end of your ropes.”

“Not yet!” Kenderdine screamed, and sprang!

Jimmie Brooks was watching for that spring, and was ready to put a bullet where it would disable but not kill. And in the instant when his finger was ready to press the trigger, he saw that Betty Burns was in the line of fire. In that same instant Kenderdine was upon him.

Kenderdine was a powerful man. Jimmie Brooks knew that he would have no time to strike his antagonist a telling blow on the head with the butt of the automatic, and he feared that he might be overcome and Kenderdine get possession of the weapon. He tossed it quickly at the feet of Betty Burns as he clashed with the spy.

“Take it—watch Hamlin!” he cried.

The girl was quick to comply. She snatched the gun up from the floor and turned to cover the traffic manager with it. And Hamlin remained standing against the wall, his hands high above his head, taking no part in the fray. The girl’s flashing eyes warned him that a move would mean a shower of bullets.

Years before Jimmie Brooks had learned that, when it became necessary to fight, it behooved a man to fight with his whole will and power. He lashed into Kenderdine like a maniac, yet did not forget what science he knew in his display of brute force, He fought Kenderdine back to the wall of the cabin as a whirlwind tosses a tumbleweed. But, the first surprise of his vigorous onslaught over, he found that Kenderdine was something of a fighter himself. He, too, coupled brute strength with science. Foot by foot he fought Jimmie Brooks back to the center of the cabin again, trying to come into a clinch—the thing that Brooks was eager to avoid.

Neither made a sound; it was a battle of determined men. From the corners of his eyes, Brooks saw that Betty Burns was still holding Hamlin at bay, and Kenderdine, noticing the same thing, gave up all hope that the traffic manager would aid him.

Now he had Brooks at bay in a corner, but Jimmie eluded the strong arms that sought to clasp him, and whirled into the middle of the cabin again. Kenderdine charged—and slipped. Brooks planted two blows in the approved place, and Kenderdine measured his unconscious length on the floor.

Brooks reeled away from him, gasped for breath, and then stumbled forward again. He snapped handcuffs on the wrists of the prostrate man and glanced around for something with which to secure him better. There was an old fish-net in a corner; he used a part of that. It made clumsy bonds, but served. And then he whirled toward the traffic manager.

“I’ll just take that automatic, now. Miss Burns,” he said. “Thanks for holding him off while I attended to the other man. He’s a precious scoundrel, isn’t he? We’ll just tie his hands behind him and trot him down to the motor-boat he came here in. We’ll put Kenderdine in with him and run back to town, and hand them over. And I’ll see that you have your pretty picture in the newspapers, young lady.”

“Oh, it is so dreadful!” she said. “And I—I played a part in it, you know!”

“An innocent part! I heard your little recital. I’m quite sure your name need not be mentioned in connection with this case. The gentleman standing against the wall with his hands in the air probably will have the good sense to make a simple confession that will not involve you. If he does not, and we have to present evidence his sentence will be greater, naturally.”

Hamlin was wetting his lips with his tongue, and there was a peculiar expression on his face. Jimmie Brooks believed it as expression of bewilderment because he had been caught.

“Think of it! A railroad man a traitor to his country!” Betty Burns cried, “And think what he has done!”

“I fancy we’d better take our prisoners back to the city. It is rather late to be out,” Brooks said. “By the way, you must pardon me, Miss Burns. I suspected you for a time. I’ll explain all that later. Now we’ll—”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed a voice at the door.

VI

Jimmie Brooks had been in many a narrow place during his career. He had trained himself to think and act quickly. And he had been taught that one of the greatest crimes is to lose a prisoner after taking one.

So now he whirled around so that his back was against the wall, and he continued to cover Hamlin while he took in the scene in the doorway, ready to battle new foe if it proved necessary, wondering if accomplices had arrived at an inopportune time.

Just inside the door stood a railroad detective he knew. Framed in the doorway behind him were half a dozen faces—more railroad operatives. Jimmie Brooks gave a sigh of relief and allowed a slight smile to play about his lips.

“Just in time, boys,” he observed, “There is one scoundrel groaning on the floor, and another with his hands in the air. But you are a little late. This young lady and myself are entitled to all the honors.”

The man in the doorway threw back his head and laughed long and loudly, and Jimmie Brooks stared at him in astonishment.

“My hands are tired!” came the voice of Hamlin.

“Well, you’ll keep them up in the air, just the same!” Brooks told him. “A man who has done the things you have done—”

“It’s all right, Jimmie! Let him put his hands down,” said the detective at the door. “He’s as innocent as a new-born babe.”

“Oh, is he? I know it’s a facer to find a railroad man engaged in treason, but here is one.”

The men outside crowded into the room. Hamlin dropped his hands and sank on a box.

“Innocent as a lamb,” the detective went on. “It is all finished, Mr. Hamlin. Jimmie, I’m sorry, but you’re not wise to the whole thing. You certainly worked well, and swiftly, but you were off the track. And Miss Burns-”

“Miss Burns almost—er—spilled the beans,” Hamlin said.

“What’s the proper meaning of all this?” Brooks demanded.

“Let me explain,” said Hamlin. “Kenderdine approached me some time ago and tried to get me to play traitor. I took the railroad’s operatives into my confidence. They suggested that I ‘play’ him in order to discover his accomplices.

“So I pretended to fall in with Kenderdine’s plans. I arranged for the cards to be sent to Miss Burns, and I arranged for Baker’s lamp to flash the messages. Baker already was in Kenderdine’s pay. I was to telephone him information regarding the movement of troop-trains, and he was to flash the messages across to Kenderdine.

“The information I furnished was fake, of course—but the information flashed across the street was genuine! I would say that a train was to start Monday morning, but the lamp would flash Tuesday morning, the correct time of departure. That mystified us. We knew there was a real traitor somewhere. Kenderdine was getting genuine information. So we kept at work, trying to capture the guilty man. I got money from Kenderdine, acted the part well, met him here a couple of times. You see, we wanted to know the whole plot before we made a move. We wanted to get the entire gang.”

“And we’ve landed them,” said the chief of the railroad’s operatives. “The guilty man is the alien janitor in the railroad building. He had a dictaphone arrangement stretched from your private office to the boiler-room. He knew of your deal with Kenderdine, and he was in it with Baker, the druggist. We nabbed him to-night, and he confessed. He knew you were giving false information. He gave Baker the correct information to be flashed across the street, and Baker split with him. They were afraid to notify Kenderdine that you were fooling him, afraid he would grow alarmed and call off the whole plot— and then the money would stop. So Baker disregarded your information and sent what the janitor telephoned.

“We nabbed Baker, too, and got a confession out of him. Then we hurried here to catch Kenderdine—and found that Jimmie Brooks had been mussing around. We’ve found a small wireless outfit here on the island that Kenderdine used to convey his information to his confederates in other parts of the country, and there’ll be a lot of men in jail before another night. Sorry to spoil your triumph, Brooks.”

“How can you ever forgive me for doubting you?” Betty Burns asked her employer.

“It was natural for you to suspect me,” Hamlin replied. “I experienced several bad minutes when you made your appearance here. I feared Kenderdine would— And when Mr. Brooks appeared, I was about ready to collapse. I knew I would be cleared at once, of course, but we would lose our chances to take Kenderdine’s confederates and discover the real traitor.”

“Anyway, Brooks, you get credit for nabbing Kenderdine,” the railroad’s chief said. “That ought to help some. Let’s take him to the launch and go back to town.”

“Oh, I fancy I haven’t lost out entirely,” Jimmie Brooks answered.

He was looking at Betty Burns as he spoke. And later, when they sat in the stern of the launch, he said:

“Stupid of me not to have noticed it at noon when I bumped into you. I was thinking that red and white without the blue wasn’t proper at all. And you were showing your whole colors all the time. Blue? Huh!”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Your eyes,” he replied. “Blue as you can find ’em! I always did like blue eyes!”

PRIVATE WAR, by Norman A. Daniels

The Vultee V-12 was idling along at about two hundred miles an hour, high above the pacific. The nine-hundred-horsepower Roberts motor purred like a dream. Two heavy bombs were in the racks below. On each wing were two machine-guns of .30 and .50 calibers each. There was also a pair of flexible mounted .30s, the mechanism of which Second Lieutenant Mike O’Malley was fingering. At the controls First Lieutenant Bob kept a sharp eye over the spreading vastness of the Pacific. His fuel supply was getting low and the distance back to the secret base had to be calculated to a particular fineness. “All we do is ride around,” O’Malley complained. “The ocean is full of Brown-bellies, but they sure keep out of our way.”

Roberts grinned. “Maybe they know how you can handle those guns, Mike. Seriously though, we’ve got to turn back. Can’t afford to undershoot our base.”

O’Malley hunched forward a bit. “Look, Bob, I was transferred to this job only a couple of days ago. Since then, I’ve done nothing but fly. No chance to check up on what this is all about. Why the secret base and why this constant patrolling?”

“I figured you’d guess by now,” Roberts said. “We’ve a small force on that island. The Japs could take us for a terrific buggy ride if they could find us. Our job is to stay there and patrol this area which regular Army and Navy patrols can’t include. The reason? This is a nice direct route to Hawaii, Mike. The brown-bellies would love to take a hop across this spot, especially in a couple of plane carriers and launch their birds before dawn, just as they did at Pearl Harbor.”

“Oh!” O’Malley nodded. “I get it. So long as we keep the island base a secret, the Japs won’t have any idea we’re around. If they come, we just pile into ’em and hand ’em all we got.”

“The devil we will,” Roberts said. “We run for it, my friend. Run like old Nick was after us. Then we radio the news and keep running. The carrier will find itself trapped and our job is done. In this war, Mike, it isn’t all fighting. Not yet.”

O’Malley looked glum. “Say, those islands just below us. Must be a dozen of ’em. They’re even closer to Hawaii than the regular Jap bases. Why don’t the Japs grab themselves a few, rig ’em up and shoot from there?”

“Because you and I are up here,” Roberts declared. “That’s another of our jobs. Some of those islands were in the process of being fortified by our own forces before Hirohito yanked that knife out of China’s back and used it on us.… Well, looks like the end of the run for you and me. We’re going back, Mike, but keep your eyes open. It’s a long way to home.”

Mike O’Malley kept his eyes wide open. That was why he spotted the thin spiral of smoke miles to the west. He tapped Roberts on the shoulder and pointed. Roberts instantly nosed up, seeking all the altitude he could get.

“Might be a Jap destroyer or a merchant ship,” he said. “I can’t think of any reason why it should be prowling these waters unless it’s a raider. We’ll just run over there and find out. Use the glasses, Mike, and keep me advised.”

“I am using ’em.” O’Malley had a cheer in his voice. “Boy, oh boy, we’re going to have a party, Bob! Whatever that ship is, she’s escorted by two planes. Uh-huh—I can see the old Rising Sun. How about setting her, pal?”

Roberts glanced at the fuel gauge and groaned. Why hadn’t those rats turned up an hour sooner? If he battled it out now there wouldn’t be fuel enough for the flight home. If he tried to run, those faster fighting jobs were bound to catch up with him. He kept on climbing and cursed the fuel supply.

The outlines of the ship were becoming more visible with every passing minute. The Vultee was doing two hundred and fifty m.p.h. There was about thirty-seven m.p.h.s. felt in her.

O’Malley put down his glasses.

“I’m Tojo’s pet monkey if that isn’t a transport loaded to the gunwales, Bob!” he exclaimed. “And those two planes were catapulted. I saw the sling-shots just a minute ago. We’re going to have some action! I’ll take care of our rear with the two flexibles. You mow ’em down with the forward guns. And, Bob—if you cross me up and I don’t get a crack at those yellow bums, so help me, I’ll skin you alive!”

“You’ll get a shot at them all right.” Roberts was biting his lower lip. “They’re trying to climb above us, but we’ve got a ceiling range they can’t top. So they’ll wait for us to come down, separate and try to take us from two angles. That’s where you come in. Hang on, we’re going to see the sun!”

Roberts climbed rapidly. All idea of conserving fuel was gone now. Perhaps they would be lucky enough to make it short and be able to land on one of the numerous islands about two hundred miles south. They could radio the secret base and just wait for help—if they were lucky. Roberts kept repeating that phrase over and over.

He topped the two Jap fighters, but they waited for him, ready to pounce the moment he came down. They were able to outfly him because of their greater speed, but they were vulnerable, too.

Roberts felt reasonably secure. The Vultee V-12 was heavily armored, and the thick sheets of steel had never looked so good to him. He settled deeper in his chair, raised one hand and signaled O’Malley that he was going down to fight.

It was a tough break not having a navigator along. The middle seat was empty and another pair of hands to help with the guns would have been useful. But at the secret base there were none too many Army flyers, and navigators were at a premium.

The Vultee started to rip a hole in the atmosphere. Roberts’ idea was to sweep past those two fighters so fast they would miss with their guns. Then he could come out of that dive with the precision and speed the Vultee could stand, nose up and do some belly-shooting.

He did not forget that transport either. She was beginning to zigzag already and the smoke from her funnels was thicker than ever, indicating that she traveled under forced draft now.

* * * *

They flashed by the two fighters which banked and started to dive after them. Roberts gave a yelp of elation. That was just what he wanted. They could never come out of their dive as fast as he could—not if they wanted to still fly with wings.

A few bullets ripped through the plane somewhere aft. The young pilot could feel the ship shiver as they penetrated. Nothing seemed to be damaged. He slowly tugged at the wheel. The plane came out of its dive perfectly. Both enemy ships zoomed past, guns spitting.

Now Roberts was on top again and within the ceiling of the enemy craft. He plunged down again, this time with his finger at the firing buttons. One of the Jap planes veered off and started to fight for altitude. The other didn’t dare.

Roberts had a bead on him, but held his fire wisely. When he could actually see the shining helmet of the pilot, he cut loose. That shining helmet didn’t reflect the late afternoon sun any longer. The plane gave a lurch, like a wounded animal, coughed a stream of thick smoke, then burst into flame.

Something rattled like hail on the armored side of the Vultee. The second Jap was plunging down in a suicidal attempt either to shoot his prey out of the sky or ram him. These Jap pilots had nerve, and death seemed to mean nothing to them.

O’Malley gave a yelp of delight and cut loose then. His flexible guns created a dangerous arc of steel in the sky, but the Jap sideslipped through it, banked and came back for another try. This time he came head-on.

Roberts didn’t stop to wipe sweat off his face. The fighter craft was plenty faster than this Vultee, but she was not armored and she carried only half the guns of the bigger dive bomber. That gave him an edge, but a precious little one. Also, the fuel gauge was getting lower and lower. Any chance of reaching the secret island base was all gone now. This was a fight to the finish.

He aimed the ship, just as he would a gun. The Jap came into his sights. As he pressed the firing button, he felt the Vultee give a heavy lurch, but she came back on an even keel. The Jap didn’t. The cross-fire of those four guns caught him dead center.

The prop broke into a hundred pieces. One wing buckled. Her nose pointed toward the Pacific and oblivion. The pilot made a grim attempt to climb out and chute to safety, but he was trapped in the cockpit, probably by a jammed cowling. A thousand feet above the water, fire must have reached the fuel tanks. The plane exploded.

“Now for that transport!” Roberts shouted. “You okay, Mike?”

“Never felt better in my life,” O’Malley answered. “We did okay, too, eh, pal? You going to dive-bomb that ship?”

“I’m not going down and slap her commander’s wrist,” Roberts said grimly. “But I would like to know what in blazes a transport is doing here—unless they intended to take over one of those islands back there. Sure, that must be it. This is a full war party. Raiders must have captured one of the islands. Some have a lot of Yankee workers busy building fortifications. Get on that radio and call headquarters. Tell ’em to reconnoiter the island group carefully. And a couple of destroyers wouldn’t do us any harm either.”

* * * *

The transport was a tiny dot in the water, much smaller than the streams of smoke she was giving off. Roberts had two bombs, the heaviest a plane of this type could carry. One hit would sink that ship like a ton of bricks.

There were, perhaps, a thousand or more men aboard her, but war was not a matter of mercy. The Japs had shown none at Pearl Harbor. They were entitled to none here.

Roberts raised his hand and swept it down as he put the plane into her furious dive. He knew that unless he sank this ship quickly that he and O’Malley would get themselves buried at sea, in a watery shroud. The gas was being used up fast.

The air brakes were set this time, keeping the dive under four hundred m.p.h. Roberts saw his target grow larger and larger. Rifles and submachine-guns started throwing up a futile barrage. Forward, a single antiaircraft gun let loose shrapnel that burst high above them and far to one side.

He tripped a bomb, nosed up sharply and streaked to a safe distance. It was all O’Malley’s show now. He could watch the effects of the bomb from his berth aft.

O’Malley saw debris, flame and death burst loose amidships. The funnels were knocked half over. The sea was full of swimming Jap soldiers.

Roberts climbed again and surveyed the damage himself. It was bad—enough to sink the ship, but not fast enough. There might be more on the way and Robert’s job was to annihilate. Each one of those Japs who went down meant an American, Dutch, British or Chinese life saved.

The next attack was easy. The antiaircraft gun had been rendered useless. A few rifles spat, uselessly. Roberts dropped his second bomb and was no more than five hundred feet above his target when he let go.

This one burst in almost the same spot as the first. The ship was literally blown in half. Her stern sank in two minutes. The forward section held on a little longer. But Roberts didn’t know about that, because he was heading for that island group. Seconds were precious now for seconds ate up fuel.

“There goes the rest of her!” O’Malley shouted. “A few life-boats are scooting around. I guess we did that job right.”

“Yeah—now see about calling headquarters, will you?” Roberts asked.

“Sorry, pal. It can’t be done. One of those Jap slugs had the radio’s serial number on it. She’s busted, ruined, shot full of holes. How’s the fuel, chum?”

Instantly, Roberts throttled the plane down to its minimum speed to conserve fuel. Adding to his troubles, the sun was going down fast. They would be flying in total darkness within thirty minutes. That wasn’t so bad except that there was a chance they would overshoot the islands. And those tiny dots offered the only haven for eight hundred miles.

Roberts did not even speak as he nursed the ship along. O’Malley was whistling cheerfully. Even if they dived to the bottom of the sea, he was satisfied. They had cleaned out a potential rat’s nest before it was lined with yellow mice.

Suddenly Roberts killed his engine. O’Malley gave a nervous start of excitement.

“I just saw lights down there,” Roberts said. “We’re going in—silently. Mike, I think the Jap transport was headed this way. According to my map, the island where I saw those lights was being rigged as a plane base. The Japs must have been wise to it and captured the whole shebang. No telling how many of ’em are down there, but we’re going to find out.”

O’Malley got busy. He slipped one of those .30 caliber machine-guns loose and prepared all the ammunition he thought they could carry. If there were Japs below, he wanted to give them a taste of good old U.S. steel—and O’Malley didn’t mean bonds.

* * * *

Roberts maneuvered the silent ship for a landing that would beach the craft, with luck. He didn’t dare try to sit down on any of the landing fields. He didn’t know whether they had even been started, and what was more, it might be an open invitation for the Jap garrison to close in.

The plane splashed through shallow water, ground against sand and came to a shuddering halt within wading distance of the island. Roberts hoped she had dug a deep enough hole to keep her from going out with the tide.

He and O’Malley slid back the cowling. Roberts jumped into the water, shoulder high. He reached up and supported the heavy machine-gun while O’Malley held the ammunition above his head as he jumped.

They waded ashore, streaked for the thick brush, and dropped flat, breathing hard from their exertions. Not so far away they heard a tinny radio blaring forth Japanese. Roberts dug an elbow into O’Malley’s ribs.

“Hear that? They’re tuned to Tokyo! My hunch was right! They’ve captured this island and were waiting for that additional force to help ’em hold on when our men found out. How about sneaking up on ’em and having a look-see?”

“Sure,” O’Malley grunted. “Just so long as I can tote this two-ton tommy-gun along. I’m like the guys in the movies. I want to die behind a spitting rifle. You got a flag on you, partner?”

“They’ll put one around your body if you don’t pipe down,” Roberts grumbled.

He drew a heavy Army automatic from his holster. The gun was wet, but would work. Roberts knew his weapons.

For almost a third of a mile they crawled on all fours, then both flattened themselves against the earth. Four Jap soldiers were proceeding along a path in single file, their rifles held at ready. Roberts guessed that some outpost had heard the plane as she had slid along the beach. These men were to see what was going on.

Roberts put his lips against O’Malley’s ear.

“Okay, fighting Irish,” he whispered. “This is your chance to do some fancy work. We’ve got to take those four monkeys. If they report that plane, we’ll be in the soup. We slip through the jungle, get ahead of them and pick ’em off silently. No blasts with the tommy gun, you hear?”

O’Malley carefully laid the gun down and drew his own automatic. He gripped it by the muzzle and grinned. They separated then, each taking a side of the trail.

It was easy to outstrip the Japs. They were not moving fast and the insect night life made enough racket to hide the little noise which the two Yanks made.

Roberts crouched behind a bush at the edge of the trail. He saw the four Japs heave into view, and three of them filed past. Roberts jumped the fourth, wound an arm around his throat, and lifted him completely off his feet. The man’s kicks and struggles made no noise. Roberts gave the man a sudden push, then brought down the butt of his gun. The Jap’s skull crunched.

Roberts knelt over him, drew out the man’s bayonet and found four grenades in a sack. He slung this over one shoulder and set out for more prey. He stumbled on O’Malley a moment later. The Irishman was wiping blood off the butt of his gun, too.

But the remaining pair of Japs were suddenly aware that things were radically amiss. They jabbered to one another and tried to penetrate the darkness. Just about the time they decided to yell for help, two shadowy forms came catapulting out of the brush. Each had a bayonet. It was over in half a minute.

* * * *

O’Malley’s Jap was dead. Roberts held a squirming, mass of flesh and bones against the ground until O’Malley came up. The Irishman did not believe in elaborate measures. He just kicked the Jap’s jaw hard enough to break it and put him away.

“I wish we could get one of these apes who could speak English,” Roberts grunted. “I’d like to know how many of them are on the island.”

“Well, for the love of Mike, let’s go find out,” O’Malley suggested. “If they can’t speak English, we can count in good old American as we mow ’em down.”

“Park here a minute,” Roberts said. “It won’t be as easy as that. If we could locate their barracks and lob a couple of grenades through the window, that might be okay, but what if we toss those grapes into the shack where the Japs have the workers imprisoned? We’re pretty well alone out here. No chance to get help, so this becomes something of a private war for you and me. There’s only one thing to do, Mike.”

“Shoot,” O’Malley offered.

“I’m going to let them capture me,” Roberts said. “That will draw the whole garrison into the open. They wouldn’t miss grabbing a Yank in uniform. They’ll be plenty busy with me. Your job is to hide, keep that machine-gun ready and watch where they throw me. Then blast their barracks and officers’ quarters into a cocked hat. Turn loose the gun on what’s left and I’ll get the prisoners to bust out too.”

“Yeah,” O’Malley said slowly, “only it’s me who is going to surrender. You’re better at heaving grenades than me.”

“After all the bragging I heard you do?” Roberts scoffed. “Nix. I’m in command, and you take orders. Now let’s sneak up and get your gun into position to strafe the whole clearing.”

They worked furiously then. It would not be long before more patrols would be sent out to search for the first one and when the bodies of those Japs were discovered, Roberts’ whole plan would blow up.

They set the machine-gun into position at the end of a fairly long field. The field was clearly meant for planes but not yet fully completed. O’Malley nodded and disappeared into the darkness. He carried two grenade sacks over his shoulders and Roberts’ automatic was stuck in his belt. A Japanese bayonet was strapped around his middle. He looked like a walking arsenal.

Roberts ripped his uniform in a couple of places, rubbed dirt on his face then staggered boldly onto the clearing.

He yelled for help. The Japs would be sure to believe his prepared story about being wrecked close to the island and that he made for it as a haven because he thought it was in American hands.

Lights flashed on. Men poured out of one long, low building. If O’Malley was in position, he would know this was the barracks and get set. Bayonets jabbed Roberts as he stumbled along. Twice he fell and the bayonets prodded him painfully.

A dapper Jap lieutenant stood waiting. A smirk was on his yellow face and his buck teeth glistened as though he would like to take a bite out of this fair-skinned Yank.

“Well,” the Jap staid in good English, “what have we here?”

Roberts stared at him in open surprise.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought there were Americans on this island. My plane developed engine trouble. I came down about half a mile east of the island and swam the rest of the way. Now I find a lot of Japs—and you, who speak English as well as I do.”

The Jap stepped forward. His open hand hit Roberts across the mouth.

“I speak English better than you,” he hissed. “I was trained in an American university. It was a glorious four years. For me, Yank, not for you or your kind.”

Roberts caressed his bleeding lips.

“Nice way you have of returning our hospitality. Would you mind telling me what’s going on here?”

“No. Of course not. We simply took over the island a week ago. Some of the fools here tried to fight us with clubs. They are buried over there, in one grave. The others are my prisoners. They are kept busy finishing this flying field which we shall soon use. Tomorrow you will help them. I suppose you are hungry.”

“Starved,” Roberts said. “I’d appreciate—”

Another slap smacked him across the mouth. The officer gave a signal and his men pitched in with rifle butts. Roberts got in a few licks, but they were inconsequential, and he went down under the terrific barrage of blows. The Jap officer smirked and kicked him to his feet again.

“You will remain silent,” he snapped. “Oh, yes—I do thank your country for letting me study there. In fact, I liked the gesture so well that soon now, I shall return to the United States—at the head of an armed force. I’ll show you pigs a yellow man is as good, or better, than a white. Tomorrow you work, from dawn to darkness. If you do enough, there will be some rice. Otherwise—nothing. And, Lieutenant, I would very much enjoy shooting you for the sheer pleasure of it—so don’t cross me.”

He barked a command in Japanese. The bayonets started work again and Roberts was forced over to another long, low building at the opposite end of the field. Two sentries opened a door and Roberts was kicked through it. He fell heavily.

Wan, hungry-looking Americans eagerly helped him to his feet. They plied him with questions. Did the Army know the island had been lost? Was help coming?

“No,” Roberts said loudly, “There’s no chance of any help. I just happened to fall into the sea within swimming distance and I thought I was safe because you fellows had the island. Who is the boss here?”

A gray-haired man moved up. Roberts spoke to him in a low voice.

“All of you,” he said quickly, “start talking. Ask me questions and make so much noise nosey ears won’t hear me speak. The Jap lieutenant knows English.”

They jabbered at him. The gray-haired man spcke with his lips against Roberts’ ear.

“They just swarmed over us in the dead of night. We didn’t even know war was declared. For hours before it happened, our radio was jammed. They wrecked it. I’m the assistant super. The real boss showed some fight and they—they wrapped him in an American flag and—turned a machine-gun loose on him. We, all of us, had to stand there and watch it. I’m telling you, if I lay my hands on one of those Japs—”

Roberts’ face was grim. He gestured for silence, but first he had the word passed along to get ready for trouble. The bedlam died away just before a dozen Jap troops pushed their way into the barracks. They held the Americans back. The Jap lieutenant swaggered in.

“Very nice trick,” he hissed at Roberts. “Very good indeed, having the men talk all at once so you could pass propaganda among them. I suspected something was in the wind. Lieutenant, come with me. And you’re going to talk. Do you understand? You’ll talk!”

They herded Roberts to the Jap lieutenant’s quarters. All the lights had gone out. Sentries patrolled the field, but most of the troops were lounging in front of their barracks.

Roberts was pushed against a wall, a bayonet held at his throat. The Jap lieutenant eyed him malevolently.

“Well, have you made up your mind to talk yet? Or shall I have that bayonet thrust through your throat?”

“I’ll talk,” Roberts gasped. “But not under these conditions. Treat me as a prisoner of war, of a rank equal to your own. Then I’ll fill your ears full of things that will make you plenty sorry to be here.”

The lieutenant gestured and the guards withdrew. He motioned to a chair and handed Roberts a cigarette.

“Very well, you shall be fairly treated, but I know something is in the wind. You will keep your promise?”

“Sure.” Roberts blew smoke toward the low ceiling. “Why not? Listen, my buckoo, a destroyer is heading this way. When we couldn’t contact the island, we suspected something was afoot. When that destroyer arrives in the morning, what chance will you have? There are about forty men here. Do you think they could fight off United States Marines? According to the odds at Wake Island, three Marines should be able to take you over.”

The Jap flushed, but retained his temper.

“One destroyer?” he repeated. “That is bad. Very bad. What do they intend doing when they take over the island?”

Roberts shrugged. “What did you think?”

“Ah, yes. Very pleasant for you to contemplate, Lieutenant. So the destroyer will not arrive until morning? Fine! Excellent! Do you know why? Because at dawn I shall have enough heavy bombers coming this way to sink your precious destroyer. I shall radio at once.”

Roberts made a half-hearted move to leap out of the chair, but a gun menaced him. The Jap lieutenant walked over to a short-wave radio set, concealed beneath tarpaulin. He contacted one of their bases not too far away.

Roberts didn’t understand what he said, but it was clear that he meant to carry out his threat. He cut the connection finally and Roberts heaved a mental sigh of relief. He had been tense with fear that O’Malley would start the fireworks before the Jap finished.

“You will go back now—to the swine who live in the barracks and work for us,” said the Jap officer. “Beginning tomorrow, I shall have a good assignment for you, Lieutenant. You wish to be treated as a prisoner of war equal to my rank. Very well—you shall wait on me hand and foot. There are boots to be cleaned, laundry to be done. Food to be fed me. I shall grow fat and lazy while you become thin and puny. Then some day, when I am tired of seeing your face around, I shall treat your comrades to another spectacle of our contempt for the United States.”

“Don’t go into detail,” Roberts said quietly. “I know all about the murder of the superintendent of this island. Remember it was murder and there is a certain penalty—”

The Jap leaped to his feet and raised his gun to rake its muzzle across Roberts’ face. At that moment bedlam broke loose. The barracks where the troops were quartered went first, under half a dozen grenades lobbed through its windows by O’Malley.

The Jap lieutenant spun around. Roberts leaped. He got an arm around the Jap’s neck. Instantly, the Jap dropped his gun and reached up to secure a ju-jitsu grip. But Roberts let go of him suddenly and stepped back. The Jap, with a bellow for help, started slowly to circle Roberts, both arms outspread like a wrestler’s.

* * * *

Roberts watched him narrowly. He could hear running footsteps drawing closer. That would be part of the guard. If they arrived too soon, he would be shot in the back. Then O’Malley’s machine-gun, at the end of the field, let go. There were screams. Bullets plastered into the walls of the shack.

At that moment Roberts bored in. He evaded the Jap by ducking under his outthrust arms, came up within two inches of the yellow-skinned man and pumped a savage blow to his midriff. The Jap bleated in pain and doubled up. Roberts slammed one against his face and flattened his nose. Blood spurted. The Jap squealed in terror now. He dropped to the floor and started fumbling for his gun. Roberts pounced on it first.

As his fingers closed around the weapon, a Jap soldier appeared in the doorway with leveled rifle. Roberts shot him through the chest. The Jap lieutenant made a mad leap for the Yank. Roberts squeezed trigger again. The slug passed through the Jap’s forehead, squarely between the eyes.

Roberts was up in a flash. He picked up a submachine-gun from a dozen stacked in one corner. At the doorway, astride the body of the dead soldier, he saw O’Malley’s guns go into action. Half a dozen Japs were running like mad toward the barracks where the workers were imprisoned. Apparently they intended to take their vengeance there.

Roberts swept the group with fire. All but one dropped. The survivor threw away his rifle and reached for the stars.

Men swarmed out of the barracks. Weak and pale from the ordeal of capture and virtual torture, they nevertheless closed in on other Japs who surrendered. Roberts did not attempt to dissuade them. They had a certain amount of fun due them.

O’Malley came running down the field, carrying the heavy machine-gun. He dropped it and began thumping Roberts on the shoulders.

“Boy, I thought I’d missed the train! A couple of sentries came up behind me and we had a little scrap.”

“Are you hurt?” Roberts asked.

“Nope.” O’Malley shook his head. “That blood on my sleeve dripped off the bayonet. Say, those can be pretty darn good weapons—and do the Japs hate ’em! How’d I do?”

“Great,” Roberts said. “Now we’ve got to go to work.”

He raised his voice and called all the men around him.

“Listen, men, you want to get back to the United States. There’s no radio except the short¬wave set the Japs used, and it’s too weak to contact our forces. The only chance we have is getting the plane O’Malley and I came here in. There isn’t enough gas to fly back to our base, but I’ve taken steps to have some delivered.

“Six of you arm yourselves with tommy guns and patrol the beaches. If you see any more Japs, let ’em have it, and don’t stop to ask questions. The rest gather axes and knives. Shovels and picks. We’ve got to haul our plane to this field. It’s the only way O’Malley and I can take off.”

“But you said there wasn’t enough gas,” O’Malley protested. “Did you find a cache of it here?”

“There isn’t a drop,” the gray-haired strawboss said. “The Japs made sure of that. But didn’t I hear you say you’d sent for some?”

“Yep—it’s coming C.O.D. But O’Malley and I have to be in the air to pay off for the stuff. Let’s go.”

* * * *

For the rest of the night they worked furiously. A swathe was cut through the jungle. Ropes were arranged to haul the plane ashore, and a quick examination showed it was in excellent condition.

O’Malley put the machine-gun back into place. As the sun rose, the plane was poised at the end of the field. Men, posted on the highest portions of the island, fired a signal. The Jap bombers, sent to destroy the mythical warship, were coming in.

Roberts gave his plane the gun. He zoomed across the rough field, broke contact with it and soared into the sky. There were three Jap bombers, heavy, slow affairs and unaccompanied by fighters. Probably the distance was too great for smaller ships to negotiate.

“Here comes our gasoline!” Roberts yelled. “See what you can do with the gun, Mike.”

The bombers spotted them and wheeled frantically, but the Vultee could about double their speed and triple their maneuverability. O’Malley got the first one with a burst straight down on top of the pilots’ compartment. The big bomber dived into the sea.

The rear gunners in the blister of the second bomber started to throw up plenty of hardware. Roberts smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. He was remembering that island superintendent, shot to death for no reason at all. He streaked for altitude, then came down, a howling demon of revenge. All guns cut loose.

The heavy bomber broke in mid-air and the pieces darted toward the water. The third bomber was riding with wide-open throttle. Roberts went in pursuit, overtook it in ten minutes and sang out an order to O’Malley. The Irishman smashed the aft blister and its occupant and gun.

Roberts flew directly above the bomber and sent a burst of smoking white incendiaries just ahead of it. The bomber slowed up. Gradually Roberts herded the big plane around, keeping steel spraying near it every moment or two. O’Malley joined in the game.

The island was almost directly below them. Roberts dived toward the bomber, and its pilot dropped fast. He must have seen the open field and realized that surrender was his only salvation. The bomber came down, hit the rough field and buckled over.

The workers closed in on it. The Japs were hauled out and tied up. Roberts came in, too. He jumped out of the plane, ran up to the bomber and made sure no devices were in operation to destroy it.

They took the gas from its tank by bucket loads. The fuel gauge of the Vultee began to rise.

“We’ll be back,” Roberts promised the men. “This is our island and we’ll keep it! Within twenty-four hours destroyers and cruisers will put in. Interceptors will come to fight off any more Jap attacks. There’s gas enough in our tank now to reach the base. Thanks very much. Good-by, and good luck.”

The Vultee roared across the field, nosed up at a sharp angle, then circled the island. O’Malley pointed down.

“Hey, look at that! They’ve got the flag flying again! Say—I didn’t hear all that went on, but that flag looks as though it’s shot full of holes.”

“It is, and it’s bloody, too,” Roberts said quietly. “But before this is over, that flag will fly anywhere we wish and pretty soon the blood on that one will be washed out. Brave men are buried on that island. Not soldiers, but civilians who have proved themselves just as good soldiers as any men who ever flew or handled a gun.”

THE CLOUD WIZARD, by David Goodis

“That makes twenty-seven for Bersbee.”

“Tops for this outfit.”

“Tops for almost any outfit. He’s due for a promotion soon. They can’t decorate him any more, unless it’s to give him a V. C.”

And then they stopped talking, because Bersbee was entering the lounge of the Officers’ Mess. His hair was new-combed, wet, and his face glowed red from a rough towel. He wore a clean uniform and his shoes were well polished. There was something fresh and assured and bright about him. Whenever the other men in Squadron 19 looked at Bersbee, their own feelings were upped. Their own confidence was heightened.

Flying Officer Bersbee was the best man in the outfit. He had been in the thickest part of the business since the Battle of France. Only this morning, over the Channel, near Portsmouth, he had knocked down his twenty-seventh Nazi. And he had done it with the customary Bersbee finesse.

No madman stuff. No acrobatics. No suicide dives, hundred-to-one lunges, turns, swirls, roll-outs, loops. None of the wild flying that distinguished the work of other high-ranking men in the R. A. F.

With Bersbee it was cold and clean and very mathematical. Although he was just as fast as any of the others when it came to running from the Dispersal Hut, taking off, climbing, moving into combat stance, he always seemed to be taking his time. He always seemed to be moving with calculated deliberateness, as if he had drawn up blueprints for every move.

He rather looked the part. For his medium height he was overweight by about twenty pounds. But it was packed in hard, and he was built firmly, stocky in a square way. He had very black hair, severely tonicked, combed and brushed. He had eyes that were almost black. His features were well balanced, well lined, and his complexion was outdoors-and-flying red. But he was not handsome. There was something cold and rigid and somewhat artificial in his appearance, and it kept him from being handsome.

Bersbee was twenty-seven years old. Before the war he had been a statistician, working in the actuary division of a large London insurance firm.

Now he walked toward his chair. He always sat in the same soft-backed leather chair. No other chair would do. If someone was already sitting in his chair, he would stand, even though there were other chairs. But things were at a point where nobody, not eve the squadron leader, would take Bersbee’s chair. He didn’t demand anything like this. He didn’t ask for special privileges. But the others seemed to know what he wanted, and they rushed to cater to him. He was best man in the outfit. He had downed 27 enemy planes. A few days ago he had saved Luckerson. Last week he had pulled Flight Lieutenant Limm-Gawes from a tough spot. A short time before that he had saved Hackedorn. He had saved Bensing, and Illvers, and Litchington. He had pulled them out of it at a time when it seemed as though nothing could snatch them from Nazi bullets and a cold, deep Channel.

They adored Bersbee.

* * * *

He walked toward his chair and before he sat down he creased his trousers. Then, when he was settled comfortably in his chair, he looked up. And it was a signal for the white-coated waiter to come over with the silver tankard that held “half a can” of beer. Bersbee took it, raised it slowly to his lips. The waiter stood by. Sometime the beer was not cold enough. Sometime it was too cold.

“Cold enough, sir?”

“It’ll do.”

Bersbee slowly sipped his beer. The lounge of the Officers’ Mess was filling rapidly now, as those who had taken part in the full-day combat were concluding the hot-and-cold shower, the nap, and coming to the lounge for the remainder of their evening relaxation. There had been a buzz of casual conversation before Bersbee’s entrance, and then a lull during his walk toward the chair, and his receiving of the beer, and the ceremony of the first few sips. And then the conversation heightened again as more men entered the room.

Nobody spoke to Bersbee. They wanted to. They wanted to, very much. But it was gathered that he preferred to be let alone while he sipped his beer. Generally, he wanted to be let alone.

They all knew this, even the new men. It was immediately impressed upon the new men. Leave Bersbee alone. Don’t ask him a lot of foolish questions. Don’t try to engage him in conversation. Leave him alone. He has enough to do when he gets in the air. When he’s on the ground he must relax. He must fully relax. Leave Bersbee alone. There aren’t many like Bersbee. Indeed, there aren’t many like him. The 19th must take good care of Bersbee. Leave him alone. Stay out of his chair. Don’t talk to him when he enters the lounge. Let him relax. Leave him alone.

It had been duly impressed upon Meader, who was one of the new men. But Meader was forgetting about it now, as he entered the lounge. He was a tall, blond fellow, twenty-five, and this morning he had been saved by Bersbee. He had been attacking two Messerschmitts and had come out of a vertical right turn to find a third Nazi on his tail. As he manipulated out of the turn, he was brought into the bullet-line of the other Messerschmitts, and they were closing in, feeding upon him, when Bersbee entered the party. Bersbee entered cleanly from the side, like a surgeon’s blade. And cleanly he had flipped a three-second burst at the plane on Meader’s tail. The plane faded away from Meader’s tail and broke out in flames. Then Bersbee had edged up, feinted a loop, cleanly lunged at one of the other Messerschmitts. His Brownings found the enemy cockpit. Meader saw the Nazi die. He saw the other Nazi running away. He waved his thanks to Bersbee. But Bersbee was already hunting for more Nazis.

Meader was more than glowingly grateful. He was very excited. He was fascinated. He had never seen flying like that. He had never believed that it could be done like that. It was so precise, and so thorough, and it was timed magnificently. During the come-home, landing at a small emergency field, waiting at a Dispersal Hut for another call to action, all during the second phase of the big air battle, all during the short nap and the third phase and the nap and then the hot-and-cold shower, Meader had been thinking of Bersbee, and what the man had done, how he had gone about it. Meader was a very sincere student of air combat. He kept telling himself that he was going to approach Bersbee. At first he remembered what the other flying officers had told him. Then he was purposely forgetting it.

And now, as he entered the lounge of the Officers’ Mess, he walked directly to Bersbee’s chair. He stood in front of the chair. His mouth was open, and the first words were almost out. But not quite. Meader was much too awed.

Bersbee was taking a long swallow. Then he was looking up. He was looking at Meader’s face. He was blinking, slightly puzzled, and he couldn’t exactly be blamed. The tall blond fellow was standing there, bent forward, mouth open, no words coming out, dull doltish film in the eyes.

“I say — can I help you?” Bersbee murmured.

A few fliers, standing nearby, heard that, and turned, and saw the new man trying to talk to Bersbee. They gestured frantically to Meader. They tried hard to attract his attention, draw him away from Bersbee. They nudged others, and others nudged others, and the chain of chatting thinned out as the room looked at Bersbee, and the moron of a new man who was bothering him.

Meader blurted, “Thanks awfully!”

“What?”

“I said — thanks. I mean, for what you did this morning. You see, I was the one who —”

Bersbee shook his head. He did not smile. He said, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t remember.”

“Well, you see, I was the one who —”

Bersbee closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. When he opened his eyes again he smiled tiredly and said, “I still wouldn’t remember.”

“But I —”

Bersbee stood up quickly. He brought the silver tankard against the arm of the leather chair. A ribbon of foam sloshed up and glided over the dark green leather. Meader was groping for words to make a suitable apology. Bersbee was turning rigidly, walking from the room. Meader stood there, by the chair, head low, still groping for words, mumbling nothing.

The lounge was quiet for several seconds. Then a mob moved toward Meader. They tried at first to keep their voices kind and correcting.

“Rather thoughtless, Meader.”

“Poor stuff, old chap. We told you —”

“You should have known better, Meader. It was so tactless. Bersbee must be let alone. Can’t you understand that in a way he’s somewhat of a genius? Yea, he’s really that, old man, and he mustn’t be annoyed.”

Meader looked at a purple dragon woven into a dark orange background of carpet. He said, “I only wanted to — thank him.”

Flight Lieutenant Limm-Gawes said, “Blazes, man! What is this, a rugby match? We haven’t time for that sort of embroidery. If he pulled you out of a tough spot, it’s taken for granted that you’re thankful. You were told specifically to leave Bersbee alone.”

“But I didn’t think it would hurt to —”

Litchington said, “Look here, Meader. You’re new, very new, and you’ve got an awful lot to learn. Be good enough to —”

Hackedorn broke in with, “We can’t let Bersbee be annoyed. We simply can’t let that happen!”

“Can’t you understand?” Limm-Gawes said.

Meader frowned slightly, and looked at the faces that circled him. He was being censured, of course, but in a greater sense he was being begged to refrain from pestering, even talking to a certain fellow flyer. His frown was deepening and he was telling himself that it was absurd. Bersbee was a good man, indeed. He was better than that. He was really a marvelous warrior. The 19th was lucky to have him. But this idolatry, this downright fanatical attitude, placing the golden statue on an ivory pedestal and crawling before it on bellies — preserving the worshipful silence — was almost comical.

Reaching that conclusion, he forgot about what had happened earlier in the day, at 12,000 feet over Portsmouth. He was straightening his shoulders, and raising his head, and looking at the faces and saying, “I’m really awfully sorry, but I fail to understand.”

* * * *

Then he walked away from them, across the lounge, and toward the door. Behind him there was hollow quiet. Then it was sliced as an oath hissed from someone’s lips. Footsteps came toward Meader, and just as he reached the door, a hand tapped his shoulder.

When he turned, he saw Illvers, who was one of Bersbee’s most fervent worshippers. Illvers had been saved twice. Once, over Newhaven, he had started an argument with five Heinkels. Their guns found his glycol tank and the Spitfire was falling and flaming. It was necessary for Illvers to “jump out the window.” And so he jumped at 8000 feet, and a few seconds after his parachute opened, the Heinkels came down after him, trying to put bullets through the chute. Just about that time, Bersbee made an entrance. On his first dive he caught the nearest Heinkel. When he came up for his underside attack, he crippled another. Then the Germans ran away. Illvers still talked about that.

Now he looked steadily at Meader and said, “It’s unimportant whether or not you understand.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You will. You’re going to leave Bersbee alone.”

“That sounds as if I was a bill collector.”

“We’ll dispense with wit, if you don’t mind,” Illvers clipped. He was as tall as Meader, and much heavier. He had small eyes and a thick neck.

Meader was annoyed, partly because he didn’t like Illvers’ face, partly because he was really puzzled about the Bersbee matter, and partly because he was an individualist. This last trait had hitherto failed to assert itself in Meader’s military career. Perhaps this was because the trait was not grained deeply. But it was there, and it had been waiting for the occasion, just as it had waited on other occasions. Once at Harrow, having to do with a cricket match. Meader had been jumped on by the rest of the team and had fought them all. Once at Cambridge, having to do with a resolution drawn up by his philosophical society, Meader had punched someone in the eye. Once at the engineering school, Meader had his own ideas on a certain project. He had ended up by calling his instructor an idiot. He had been asked to leave the school. He had enrolled at another school. He had been in his final term at the other school when the call came. He was in infantry at first, and he was wounded in the fighting at Amiens. Released from hospital, he went into the engineer corps. He looked up and saw the Spitfires cutting into the massed formations of German planes. He enlisted in the R. A. F. At first he had believed that combat flying was a matter of science, of timing and mathematics. That appealed to him. It fascinated him. Later he found out that it was mostly a blend of reckless speed and laughing fatalism. It was lounging in a Dispersal Hut and playing dominoes, and getting a call from Fighter Command Headquarters to go out and argue with thirty-odd Messerschmitts moving toward the Channel coast. Running out, jumping in the Hurricane, listening to the frenzied screech of a variable-pitch propeller, lifting the ship to 10,000 feet within four minutes. And lunging madly at great numbers of Nazi planes. Punching the gun button that controlled eight Brownings. Watching the eight lines of orange tracers ripping into the rear turret of a big Junkers. Breaking through the Nazi formation. Running home to a small emergency field to reload, re-fuel, get up there again and argue with ’em some more. It was fast, reckless. It was frantic. He found out that there was little or no mathematics involved.

Until he had been sent to the 19th Fighter. Until this morning, when he had seen Bersbee.

* * * *

Now he smiled slightly at Illvers, and he said, “Are you giving me orders?”

“I’m giving you advice. It’s good advice. You’d better take it.”

Meader stopped smiling. He said, “Sorry, but I disagree with your line of thinking.” He turned again and he was through the doorway and already down the corridor. Illvers was coming after him. Illvers was putting the heavy hand on his shoulder.

“You’re going to leave Bersbee alone!” Illvers blurted.

Very quietly Meader said, “You’re going to leave me alone.”

“Now look here —”

“You look,” Mender said. He came just a bit closer to Illvers and his voice was almost a whisper. “This is rather annoying. I’m willing to listen to any suggestions regarding flight maneuver. But I’m perfectly capable of handling all my other problems without any advice — or warnings.”

Without hesitating, Illvers had an answer. He said, “That’s not the idea. we’re not specifically worried about you. Men like you, and me, and Litchington, and Hackedorn — we’re all average, and there’re others to take our places when we go. But it’s different with Bersbee. He’s outstanding. He’s almost — inhuman. He’s more valuable to the R. A. F. than a score of ordinary pilots. That’s why we’ve got to handle him like — like a — a —”

“Vase of delicate jade,” Meader said, and mockery came into his eyes.

But Illvers was nodding emphatically. “Yes, a vase of delicate jade, if you want to put it that way. We’ve got to take good care of Bersbee. We’ve got to cater to him just as we would cater to a highly sensitive machine. It’s plain enough, Meader, and I do wish you’d look at it the sensible way. We all realize that this sort of thing is somewhat out of bounds. It’s not contained in regulations, or orders of the day, or special duties. But it’s bloody well got to be followed out. Not one of us can break through. Bersbee must be left alone. Now, I do hope you’ll be decent about this, Meader. I think I’ve made it clear enough —”

“Oh, quite,” Meader said. The mockery was still in his eyes, and he was smiling again.

Illvers tightened his lips. He breathed deeply and said, “Well? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do as I damn please.”

Illvers exhaled fast, and his arms came down fast, and his body was taut. It was held back for slightly more than a second by steel springs. Then the springs were released, and he came forward. He was chopping with his right, and his head was thrust forward, lowered somewhat, and his eyes had an angry-bull light, and he threw the left, then the right again.

Against the wall went Meader. His upper lip was jammed against teeth. Blood was sliding from his torn upper lip and his torn gums. His mouth had a granite taste, and blood flowed over the gritty stuff. The side of his jaw was very loose.

He bounced away from the wall, and Illvers rushed him again. Illvers came in close and pushed a short right, then a left to the belly, and Meader doubled up. He knew that Illvers was going to uppercut him. He knew that he was going to be knocked unconscious, unless he quickly found a way to get the better of his man.

The uppercut came, and it straightened him, and once more he went back against the wall. He sagged, rolled down, and he was flat on the floor. He was hurt, and he was weak, but not as much as he pretended to be. He got up very slowly. Illvers walked in again, and the right fist was drawn back for the finishing punch. He knew then that Illvers didn’t really want to hurt him. This was Illvers’ way of impressing the idea into him. And he told himself that he really didn’t want to hurt Illvers. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He merely wanted to impress them with the idea that they couldn’t impress their ideas into him.

Illvers threw the right, and Meader was measuring it, fading away from it and sliding in fast. He hooked a left to Illvers’ belly, and then he was brilliant with a right to the eye and another right to the eye and then a left to the mouth and a right to the jaw.

And then he straightened Illvers with another right to the jaw, while he drew his left arm back, as if he was reaching for a sack of flour. And he brought the left around, somewhat in an overhand punch that crunched against Illvers’ chin and knocked him unconscious.

They were coming from the lounge. They were running toward Illvers. They were looking at Illvers and they were looking up at Meader, but they were not saying anything. Someone went to get water for Illvers.

Meader was wiping the side of his mouth and looking at the blood on his palm. He saw Flight Lieutenant Limm-Gawes moving toward him.

“Too bad,” Limm-Gawes said.

“Rather.” Meader pulled a hand across his mouth, looked again at the blood on his palm.

“Perhaps you ought to go to the infirmary.”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“I’m sorry, Meader,” the flight lieutenant said. He waited for a reply. When he didn’t get it, he said, “I hope you are, too.”

“Not entirely,” Meader said. He speared coldness from his eyes and turned and walked quickly down the corridor. He went up to his room and closed the door. He washed out his mouth with cold water. He put a few strips of tape across the knuckles of his right hand. He drank a glass of cold water and then he grabbed an engineering textbook and spent almost an hour reading and figuring out several problems. He stood up and took another drink of cold water. He lit a cigarette. He left his room and walked downstairs and down the corridor and saw the thin border of light around the door of Bersbee’s room. He knocked on the door. He waited, then knocked again. He waited. He knocked again and waited again and then he turned the knob and opened the door and walked in.

Bersbee was sitting at a table. His back was to the door. A light glowed over the table. One side of the table was stacked with papers. As Meader walked slowly toward the table he could see numbers and symbols and diagrams on the papers. Clustered about the table were drawing instruments, a slide rule, a textbook on higher mathematics, a work on logic, a pamphlet headed, “The Philosophy of Statistics.”

And coming closer, almost leaning over Bersbee’s shoulder, Meader could see that the man was working on a problem that started out with a trigonometric diagram but then veered into an involved progression of equations and formulas that he could not understand.

He said, “What do you call this?”

* * * *

Bersbee shuddered, then whirled. He saw Meader, standing there, and he backed away, as if he were shocked and frightened. Then he stood up, and his face was white. He said, “Get out of here.”

“I want to talk to you,” Meader said.

“I’m busy,” Bersbee said. He shook his head, and then put his head in his hands. He raised his head and said, “Get out, get out.”

“I want to talk to you,” Meader said.

“What do you want?” Bersbee was quivering. His face was now very white. He sat down and leaned an arm against the table and murmured, “What is it? What is it that you want?”

Meader nodded toward the table. “Explain that,” he said.

Bersbee looked at the table, then at Meader. His eyes bulged for an instant, as if a great rage was working upon him. Then he was weak, and his shoulders were slumped, and wearily he said, “I can’t explain it to you — nor to anyone else around here.”

“Just why?”

“You’d never be able to understand me. You don’t know enough mathematics. Look, I want you to get out of here — now.”

Meader said, “Your flight tactics — all of them — they’re based on these plans?” He pointed to the papers on the table.

“Get out of here.”

“Based on statistics,” Meader said. “And then you apply your conclusions to mathematical deduction. And somewhere along the line you manage to fit in a bit of psychology. Stimulus and reaction. You go into a vertical left turn. and you know just what the enemy will do. And therefore you immediately know your next offensive move.”

“Get out!”

“You do most of your fighting up in this room, with the slide rule and the books and your brain. The rest is easy. You don’t take any chances. You’ve got this thing figured out to a point where it’s almost impossible for Jerry to hit you. Do you realize what that means? Do you realize what a wonderful thing it would be if you could teach this stuff to the rest of us?”

“You’re talking like a fool.” Bersbee was quivering and trying to light a cigarette. “Why did you have to come in here? Why did you have to —”

“You can’t keep this to yourself any longer,” Meader said. “You’ve got to explain it to the rest of us.”

“No, I can’t do that. It gets more involved every day. If you know anything at all about statistics and higher mathematics you’ll realize that the deeper I get, the more difficult my problem becomes. As soon as I arrive at a solution, another one, twice as complex, comes up. It’s getting so that I can scarcely understand it myself. It’s getting so that the whole thing is becoming a carousel, going around faster, faster, too fast for me. I want to get out of this. I want to get out. Maybe if I’d stopped a month ago, or two, or three, it would have been all right, and I could have explained my findings to the rest of you chaps. But now it’s impossible. I don’t know what I discovered two months ago. I’m always going forward, getting deeper and deeper. That’s why I — I can’t sleep, I can’t even taste what I eat. I — I’m getting so that I —”

“Steady on,” Meader said. He quickly lit the cigarette that Bersbee was trying to light. He put it between Bersbee’s lips. Bersbee took a long drag and tried hard. But the cigarette was falling from his shivering lips and he looked at the cigarette on the floor and then he let his head fall into his arms. The slide rule and a lot of papers were falling to the floor. Bersbee was weeping convulsively.

“This is my fault,” Meader said. “They told me to leave you alone.” He turned and walked to the door. He looked at Bersbee, who was weeping, who pounded his fists against the table-top, who blindly reached for the papers and the books. And then Bersbee was crunching the papers and the books, tearing, ripping, throwing the scraps from him, bringing his head into his arms, weeping in long, hoarse gasps that became longer, hoarser, until he was like a child who purposely tries to cry so hard that he won’t be able to catch his breath. At the end of a choking gasp he raised his head and looked at Meader. But it was as if he was seeing nothing, and once again his head went down against the table-top and he was weeping.

“They told me to leave him alone,” Meader murmured. He started to open the door. He was telling himself that his stubbornness, his dogged individuality, had been to blame for all this. He was telling himself that he would have to make it up to Bersbee. He started to go out of the room. He turned, wondering why he turned, wondering why he was walking back toward the table, not listening to Bersbee, not looking at Bersbee, but looking at those papers not yet born. He was gathering them up. He was taking the books, the pamphlet. He was at the door again. Bersbee was weeping loudly. Meader didn’t hear him. Meader was thinking about the statistics and the higher mathematics and the application of certain formulas to aerial combat maneuvers. He was hurrying upstairs to his room.

* * * *

In the Dispersal Hut the adjutant answered the telephone call. It was from Fighter Command Headquarters. Luckerson was watching the frown on the adjutant’s face. Luckerson was flipping his cigarette to the floor and treading on it. Hackedorn was getting up from a soft chair and adjusting his lifebelt. Bersbee threw away an unlit cigarette. Bensing muttered a short prayer that he always muttered when he saw the frown come to the adjutant’s face. Illvers stood up. Litchington stood up. Meader stood up.

The adjutant put down the phone and said, “It’s a scramble.”

They were out of the Hut, running across the field. The signal had already reached the ground crews, and motors were whining. Meader was tightening the chin-strap of his helmet and as he climbed into the Hurricane he turned and looked toward his right, toward Bersbee’s plane. Bersbee was hesitating. He was slow in putting on his helmet. Meader was thinking of what had happened last night. He was telling himself not to think about it. He saw Bersbee climbing into the plane. He was telling himself that it would be all right. Everything would be all right.

He closed the glass cockpit roof, and then he was sending the Hurricane across grass, sliding into a crosswind take-off. As he pointed into steep climb, the earphones inside his helmet were buzzing, and he heard, “Eleven Heinkel mediums, escorted by twenty-plus Messerschmitts, approaching Portsmouth — height 16,000 feet — your vector 140 — bend it 30 right.”

And then Limm-Gawes’ voice was crackling the code words. The squadron widened out in echelon, reached 10,000 feet and kicked up past the 300 miles-per mark, continued to pick up. Meader was hunched, rigid for a minute, relaxed for a minute, rigid again, then completely relaxed as he remembered the first formula he had worked out from the papers.

The seven Hurricanes reached 20,000, closed into V formation, and then started to slant downward. They came up again, went over the 20,000 mark, and then Meader could see the enemy planes. In the grey blankness that was Portsmouth he could see smoke. He could see points of fire.

Limm-Gawes was flipping the final directions. Then he was saying, “Tallyho!” and it was every man for himself.

The Englishman went down in vicious, spearing dive, cutting through the Nazi formation, ignoring the frenzied underside bursts offered by the Messerschmitts that tried to form a protective sheet above the Heinkel bombers. The Hurricanes pulled out of the dive, broke through again, regained their altitude advantage, and repeated on the dive. A bomber was going down. A Messerschmitts was going down. A bomber was wallowing like a sick whale. It was in flames and it was going down. Another Messerschmitt was going down. A Hurricane was going down.

Meader peeled off from two Messerschmitts and fell on the tail of a Heinkel. He got swastika in his sights and he punched the gun-button, saw the eight lines of flame searing into the rudder, the tail assembly. He sneaked in closer, jumped slightly, and when he came down this time he found the cockpit of the Heinkel. The German plane went into a spin and Meader peeled off again from the two Messerschmitts, who were very hungry for him.

He feinted a dive, carved it into a loop, and as he came up, he saw the Messerschmitts change course and lunge for a Hurricane that was alone, over to the left.

It was Bersbee.

The Nazi planes spread wide.

Meader watched. He was telling himself that he wouldn’t have to go down there. Bersbee could handle this. He wouldn’t have to go down there, because Bersbee had a formula for this sort of thing, and interference would be a hindrance rather than an aid. Interference would spoil the beauty of the thing. He wanted to see how Bersbee was going to handle it. A triangle was in motion, with two points closing in upon the third. The situation was now in the stage of A, and rapidly advanced to the stage of D. Meader was remembering the formula, telling himself that now Bersbee would work it back to the stage of B, feint to the right, attack on the left, continue the attack to bring the situation to a stage of G.

But Bersbee wasn’t working it that way. He was making a mistake. Either that, or he had new ideas. He was in a dive, and his defensive tactics were frantic and poorly timed. Like a novice he was pulling out too soon — he was pulling out much too soon.

“Wait — wait —” Meader leaned forward, aimed his Hurricane toward the German planes that now lunged at Bersbee.

They had Bersbee. They were pitching bullets into him. He was crippled. He was twisting. He was smoking, and the Hurricane was whistling and trying to stay up there. Flames were crawling over it.

“Jump,” Meader said. “Why don’t you jump?”

Even as he said that, he knew that Bersbee would not jump. He watched the ignited plane sizzling toward earth, and then he saw that the two Messerschmitts had joined with a third, and were converging on Illvers, over to the right. He waited — waited until they were in the position that called for him to work the third formula he had learned from Bersbee’s papers.

The Germans had Illvers in a trap when Meader sliced through, placing the situation in the stage of E.

In the lounge of the Officers’ Mess, Bensing was placing a new needle in the phonograph.

Illvers and Litchington were talking to one of the new men. Illvers leaned forward earnestly, gestured with his silver tankard, still full, although the beer had been poured five minutes ago. The new man was nodding slowly as Illvers said, “You understand now? You understand why we want you to steer clear of him? You see, he’s got to be left alone. He’s just got to be left alone. Not a single question. Not even a hello, unless he says it first. He’s downed 31 planes. He’s saved Limm-Gawes. He’s saved Hackedorn, and Bensing. He’s saved me three times. Did you hear that? Three times. I’d die for him. Any of us would. And the least we can do is to see that he’s left alone. I realize that this sort of thing is somewhat out of bounds, but I do hope you’ll be decent about it and if —”

The phonograph whined once and was quiet. Hackedorn was quiet. Illvers was quiet, looking at his beer and then drinking it. Someone got out of a soft dark green leather chair, moved away quickly.

The room was very quiet as Meader walked toward the chair.

KILLER ACE, by David Goodis

The German plane came hurtling out of the sky like a pain-crazed eagle. Trigger fingers jabbed death-filled lead through the air four thousand feet up. Von Krim’s mouth twisted in a devilish grin. He looked like Satan himself as he dove for the Englishman’s tail, traced a pattern of dots up the fuselage, and then shrieked in eerie delight as that death-line reached the cockpit. The English pilot slumped down in his seat, his brain riddled by bullets.

But a moment later von Krim’s grin faded. There was a determined note in the whining, buzzing Spitfire behind him. He twisted uneasily in his cockpit, turned his head—and saw crimson flames spurt from the guns in the ship fifty yards away. He felt the slugs whistle by his cheek. He ducked low, and dove.

The Englishman dove also. Von Krim banked. The Englishman did likewise. Then the Hun went into another dive, twisted sharply and rolled out, zooming up and above the Englishman. Then he came down on him almost vertically, his guns barking.

Von Krim’s screech blended with the sound of his guns, as he saw the second English boy go down—dying a death of horror in a flame-filled plane.

Then the German waved his arm, and signaled the three remaining Boche to head for home. But the two Englishmen—the only two remaining out of the original seven who had started out that morning—had other ideas about the matter.

They were fighting like madmen. The tears in their eyes were not tears of fright or horror. They were tears of sorrow, tears of rage, tears of vengeance. But the English flyers needed more than sobs to combat the ruthless von Krim and his squadron of devils.

The English planes were fast, but they weren’t as fast as the Messerschmitts used by von Krim and his flying hellions.

That fact proved itself in the next few moments. One by one, in quick succession, the Boche took their chances on the two English flyers. It was four against two now. Grinning like a madman set for the kill, von Krim zoomed his ship to gain more altitude. Then he aimed his ship as if it was an arrow, and dove like a bullet at the first of the now faltering Spitfires. The outcome of the battle was decided.

For the Nazi now repeated what he had done exactly thirty-three times before. He sent snarling slugs of death into that ship, and then soared upward. His screech of triumph carried over and above the angry roar of the motor.

But there was one Englishman left—an Englishman only because of the outfit he flew for. Dane Kern was as American as ham and eggs. He had been studying at Oxford when the war broke out—had been there as a student of advanced physics. And because he was scientifically minded, planes fascinated him. He had joined the Royal Air Force not so much because of a love for the British, but because the war would give him a chance to play around with planes. He knew his ships, he knew his flight and attack methods—and most important of all—he had guts. And he was showing that now to the German pilots.

Kern acted the coward on purpose. He wanted them to think he was grounding the plane, giving up the fight. He kept on losing altitude. Then he looked up to see a Boche slowly gaining on him, saw the German signal him to ground. He pictured the Nazi’s face wreathed in smug triumph.

“Oh yeah?” he muttered grimly, and zoomed his ship up like a streak, made a complete loop and came down hard and fast on the German’s tail. Both his guns barked their message of death. The Boche never knew what happened. He dove a hundred feet to the ground, and when he spilled out of the cockpit he was a corpse.

That was all Kern wanted. That one last German. He knew he wouldn’t have a chance with the three others, particularly when von Krim was one of those three. So now he streaked for home, even as the Boche flyers started down after him.

They chased, grim determination in their eyes. Looking back, Kern figured that he was about done. They were gaining on him too fast. But suddenly the ground artillery began hurling shells at the Boche as they passed over the English coastline. Von Krim had a special dislike for Archies. He signaled his men home.…

The commander and the adjutant and the rest of the men were waiting for him on the home tarmac. Dane Kern couldn’t see their faces but he knew what expressions those faces held. He was coming back alone. Seven had gone out that morning and only one was coming back.

If this had been the first time, it wouldn’t have been so tragic. But this was just a repetition of what was happening to Commander Russell’s flyers day after day. It wasn’t even a fight anymore. It was a slaughter.

Kern taxied his ship across the field. For the first time he felt the groping weariness that first sets in the eyes then seems to work back to the brain, and finally fills the entire body. That dull, throbbing, ache of exhaustion that only men who live with death constantly can know.

He climbed out of the cockpit and shook his head as the other flyers and mechanics clustered about, eager to help. Russell put an arm around Kern as he wiped grease from around his eyes.

“What happened?” Russell asked wearily. He was a tall, spare figure in his late forties. He was a quiet man, respected because he never flaunted his authority.

“The old story,” Kern muttered. “It was von Krim again. He must have a special agreement with every cloud in the sky—that Hun. The clouds are always with him. They were with him today. He took us completely by surprise. He hid in the clouds and dove on us too fast. We didn’t have a chance.”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Russell said, dejected.

“Yes, there is,” Kern said angrily. He looked square at the commander and said, “Von Krim’s the brains of that outfit. They don’t make a single move without him. He’s about the smartest man in the air today. And the dirtiest fighter—”

“Well?” Russell demanded.

“There’s only one way to deal with him,” Kern said.

“And that is?”

“Kill him.” Kern said it slowly, almost casually.

Russell frowned. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “What have we been trying to do these past three months—play cricket with him?”

“You don’t understand, sir,” Kern said. “I don’t mean to kill him in the air. I mean, murder him. Send someone over there and do away with him. That’s the only way we’ll ever be able to meet those Boche on an equal basis, because—”

“You’re crazy, Kern!” Russell snapped. “And besides, I don’t believe in fighting that way. We have a certain code, you know.”

Kern’s eyes flashed angrily.

“Code be damned!” he yelled. “I went up there today with six of the finest boys I ever knew. Where are they now? You tell me! And why? Because that dirty Hun never comes out in the open. Because he has what I call uncanny luck in being ready for us. He hides behind clouds—big clouds—and dives on us before we know what’s happened! It’s either von Krim or us! That’s the set-up. And if we don’t get that German, he’ll get us!”

Russell’s face was emotionless. He barely moved his lips as he said:

“We’re not doing things that way, Kern.”

Kern’s lips tightened. For an instant his eyes narrowed and his fists clenched hard. Then he gained control over himself.

“Well, what are you going to do—stand by and let him erase us out of the air completely?” he asked.

Russell straightened.

“Perhaps you’re forgetting, Kern, that I’m your superior officer.”

That was too much. Kern was an American, and Americans have a habit of saying what’s on their minds, come what may.

“You’re not proving it!” Kern yelled, loud enough for other flyers to hear.

There was a silence that lasted only a moment, but it seemed like an eternity. And in that interval Kern was calling himself all kinds of names for not keeping his mouth shut. He knew what was coming. It came, all right.

“Go to your quarters, Lieutenant!” Russell shouted. “And consider yourself under arrest!”

Kern stiffened. In that moment he hated Russell. But there was nothing else for him to do. He saluted, walked away quickly.

In the quiet confines of his room Kern’s thoughts were filled with von Krim, about what happened every time he had engaged the wily German.…

We fly in V formation at 8,000 feet over the German positions. We fly over the blood and shambles that marks what is perhaps the bloodiest battle in the history of the world since Hannibal’s advance at Carthage.

And suddenly an avalanche of death drops on us in the form of seven Messerschmitts. Their noses are painted in the famous checkerboard design. At the head of the Hun’s squadron is von Krim. His mouth spreads in a grin that widens as his ears take in the maddening chorus of Boche machine guns pouring death into Englishmen.…

* * * *

Kern heard the men talking about the last flight in the corridor outside his room. What he heard made him clench his fists and bring them a slowly up at a level with his eyes. That scrap lasted only three minutes. And this time none came back! There is nothing so futile as the knowledge that something can be done, and yet someone is keeping you from doing it. Several times in the past day Kern had thought about leaving his room to see Russell again. But he had lost his nerve. It’s these quiet, subdued officers that are the hardest to deal with in the long run, he thought. Kern remembered that phrase, “a barking dog never bites.”

It would have been simple, though, to knock on Russell’s door, which was next to his, and to apologize, then plead for a chance to deal with von Krim. And yet—

Like lightning the thought struck him. And as if the souls of his dead comrades had caused a thing to happen, a strange coincidence occurred at that very moment—a grim but enlightening coincidence!

For as Kern frowned, and wondered just why Russell should have such a decided objection to his idea, there was a peculiar sound in the next room—Russell’s room. Kern barely caught it, it was so faint. Now he remembered having heard it before. He thought it was just another field insect in the grass outside.

He kept his ear to the wall, and listened, straining his sense of hearing. Suddenly, his eyes widened, then narrowed. He looked at his watch. It was only mid-afternoon. For what he wanted to do now he would have to wait until evening. And yet, evening would be too late, because tomorrow morning seven more men would go up. No—he had to do this now!

But as the thought became an icy determination in his mind, Kern heard a key click in the lock of his door. It opened, and an orderly came in.

“Commander Russell wants to see you,” the orderly said.

Kern smiled. And as if he were playing of game of chess he looked ahead a few moves. When you take advanced physics at Oxford you learn to use your head for something more than a hat rack. And that’s what Kern was doing now.

Russell was polite when he entered. He even smiled.

“I’ve given your idea some careful thought, Kern,” he said. “Discounting the fact that you were guilty of insubordination, I’ve decided to let you have a shot at the plan. In fact, I’ve thought out an ideal schedule for you to use.” And then he proceeded to outline his plan. He drew up a chair for Kern, then spread out a map on the table.

“That’s the only way you’ll be able to do it,” Russell was saying ten minutes later. “You’ll start at six o’clock this evening. Carry a green light so our artillery will know. It’ll be dark by then and you’ll have to be careful.”

“Yes, sir,” Kern said.

They looked into each other’s eyes. And it was Russell who blinked first.…

A few flyers and mechanics were standing around as Kern came out on the field. He lit a cigarette and walked past the group without saying a word. Usually early evening was a time for gabbing. The flyers stared at him.

“What’s the matter with Kern?” one asked.

“Had a run-in with the commander today,” another replied.

“What’s he all buttoned up for?”

“Night observation, probably, although I thought he was due for some real trouble. The squadron leader was jolly well angry.”

They weren’t supposed to know. Russell’s instructions had been specific on that point. It was to be a matter of confidence between Kern and himself. Russell was waiting there at the plane when Kern came over. Without a word he stationed himself at the prop. Kern climbed into the cockpit.

“Contact,” Kern said commandingly.

“Contact,” Russell replied.

The motor reared. Kern stared at Russell. He saw the commander standing there to one side looking straight back at him, his face expressionless. Russell grinned when Kern tooled the ship across the field. Kern caught only a glimpse of it—but there was something startlingly familiar about that grin.…

It was pitch black up there, although when Kern looked down he could see hundreds of thousands of lights brought out by the Very signal pistols. Sometimes there was a wide flash of lightning like blue light, and he could see the forms of men moving down there. The Nazis had to do little fighting since the French had given up.

* * * *

He was flying as per directions at 9,000 feet carrying that green light under his wings. He pulled a map from his inner pocket, and studied it a moment. Then he looked down to get his bearings and was guided by the various lights beneath. And then, he stopped following the appointed course!

He switched the green light off. The Spitfire veered sharply to the left. After gaining altitude, instead of pointing toward Germany, the Spitfire made a crazy zigzag course. The simple reason was that Kern had only a vague idea of where he was going. But he knew what he was trying to get away from. He knew that in spades!

Guided only by his wrist-watch now—for he was using time and time alone as the means by which he should reach a certain spot behind the German lines—Kern maneuvered his fast plane fully thirty miles along the Rhone, then turned again and started over the German lines. He kept a straight course for five miles, and then turned to the right again.

Finally, he started to lose altitude. And then, when he saw what he wanted to see, when his eyes lighted up and a Yankee grin came over his lips, he cut off his motor. Then he started to circle a dark area that seemed to be a patch of flat meadow. He couldn’t take a chance on throwing down a flare. He could only land and hope that he wouldn’t have to face a welcoming committee.

But his luck lost out.

The plane came to a stop. And when Kern started to climb out of the cockpit, a gruff voice sounded out of the darkness. The gleam of approaching helmets nearby caught Kern’s eye. He didn’t wait for a big hello. With a lightning quick movement he whipped out his gun. Then he kicked out viciously at the nearest German, and sent a bullet whistling at the oncoming soldiers. At the same time he sped up the idling motor and started to swing the ship around.

German soldiers were swarming around Kern’s plane now, their angry guttural voices giving way to shots. Three bullets whistled by Kern’s head. He discouraged them by dropping two German’s with his pistol—and then letting go full blast with the machine-gun.

They went down like tall grass before a scythe, those Nazis. But they weren’t giving up. They were still shooting at him. And just before he got into the air, Kern felt a sickening plop directly in front of him, as a bullet pierced the motor. The propeller stopped turning. The ship nosed over—and Kern was hurled into the air twenty feet above ground. And as he spun around like a doll thrown by a child from the second story window, he lost consciousness.…

It was a very angry German who flew back to his Jagstaffel that night. As von Krim brought his ship to a landing he spat disgustedly over the side of the cockpit. The other flyers came up as the Bache leader took off his helmet and goggles.

“Well, Captain, it was easy, ja?” one of his subordinates said, grinning.

Von Krim’s face was like stone.

“Something is wrong,” he said. “Something is very wrong.”

The other flyers did not question him further. They knew better than to annoy von Krim when his plans went wrong.

Cursing and muttering to himself, von Krim entered the low barracks at the side of the airdrome. But even as he set foot in the doorway he turned around, and stared curiously.

A group of soldiers were hurrying across the field toward the barracks. Two of them were carrying a still form, and they were yelling excitedly. Von Krim hurried over, and before he could ask any questions, a soldier supplied him with all necessary information.

“An American flyer,” the German said. “He just crashed in that field over there—”

Von Krim looked down at the still, pale face of the American flyer.

“Very unfortunate,” he murmured, grinning thinly. “Yes. It is very unfortunate.” Then the grin: faded, and a snarl burst from his lips. “Take him into the barracks,” he ordered. “Tie him up.”

“But Herr Captain,” one of the soldiers protested. “The American, he is injured.”

“Do as I say!” Von Krim yelled savagely.…

When Kern opened his eyes he was sitting upright. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that it was impossible. He was tied to the chair. His head felt like white hot lead had been poured into it. There was a sharp pain in his left leg. And as consciousness fully returned to him, it seemed that every inch of his body was filled with a dull, throbbing ache.

A guttural voice, speaking broken English, caused Kern to look up suddenly. He saw a heavy-set, brutal-looking man looking down at him. There was a grin on that man’s lips. His narrow eyes—his beak of a nose—Kern had seen that face before thousands of feet in the air. He had seen it framed behind the ring-sights of barking Spandaus. And he had seen it some place else, too—

“You’re Von Krim,” Kern said weakly.

“Correct,” snapped the Nazi. “Are you comfortable?” He grinned mockingly.

“When we capture a Boche flyer, we don’t tie him up like this,” Kern said angrily.

“You don’t capture any of my flyers,” von Krim said haughtily. He bared his teeth now in an ugly grimace.

Kern nodded slowly. His mind went back to the physics classroom at Oxford, where it was nothing more than a job of thinking things out slowly and using plain American horse-sense. That’s what Kern was doing now—using his brains, figuring things out, moving ahead. For the next few minutes, it was a matter of looking the situation over and coming to a few conclusions.

“You came here to kill me,” von Krim said, breaking into his thoughts.

Kern’s eyes widened.

“Kill you?” he muttered. “You’re crazy. I was on night observation and lost my way. Of course, if you put it that way, my job’s to kill every German I can.”

Von Krim shook his head in a taunting gesture.

“No,” he said. “You came here with one idea in mind—to kill me and me alone. Didn’t you?”

Kern started to deny it, but von Krim’s hard knuckles jammed the words back in his teeth. The German drew back his fist again, then let it lash out once more. Kern took it full in the jaw, then threw himself back hard against the chair. He made almost a complete somersault. When he landed he came down hard, breaking the chair. He got to his feet, and he was still tied—but not to the chair. His hands and feet were free, although splinters of wood still kept him from full liberty of movement.

He was able to act fast now, and the first thing he did was to leap at von Krim. The Boche wasn’t used to a square fight. He stepped back, opened his mouth to shout an alarm. But Kern silenced him with a smashing right to the jaw that nearly took his head off. The German crumbled in an inert heap. If he had wanted to, Kern could have killed the man then and there. But he didn’t want to kill him then and there. He wanted to kill von Krim at another time, another place.…

It was a queer hour for a ship to be leaving the airdrome, but the German flyers were too busy drinking beer in the canteen to even think twice about the matter. Besides, von Krim had a habit of going off on night flights alone at certain times, and that was the conclusion reached by most of the Nazi aviators as they sat at their drinks. But if they would have looked into the cockpit of that Messerschmitt, they would have seen a much different story.

Dane Kern was speeding back toward his home drome. He had an easy time of it as he flew over the German lines. But when he hit the English coast he was shot at by Archies. He had to leave the Messerschmitt out to the limit to get away from them.

But the worst trouble came when he reached home. And yet it started as trouble and ended as a joke.

As Kern circled the field, his fellow flyers, looking up, recognized von Krim’s plane. Kern saw them running for their ships. Here comes trouble, he thought. And then, as he stared down, he saw a figure running around excitedly. He needed only one guess. He knew who that was—what that figure was doing. Only one man down there wanted von Krim to be alive and safe—

The English flyers didn’t go up after him, for the simple reason that they were commanded to stay down. Kern’s lips tightened. He brought the ship down at the far end of the field. The flyers and mechanics were running toward him with drawn guns as he got out of the cockpit. One of the men was a little excited and took a shot at him. Kern grinned and put his hands up.

“Why—it’s Kern!” one of the men yelled.

Russell was bringing up the rear of the group running toward the plane. As the flyer yelled in recognition, Russell stopped short. He stiffened as if struck by lightning. Then Kern saw him raise his pistol, take aim—

Kern jumped to one side as Russell fired. The commander would have fired again had not an orderly grabbed his arm and yelled:

“It’s not von Krim, Commander! It’s Kern!”

Russell nodded shortly. He seemed to move in a daze. Then Kern brought him out of it. He ignored the excited queries of the other pilots, and stepped up to Russell.

“Surprised to see me, aren’t you?” he said with a noticeable lack of respect.

“I—” Russell stammered.

“Well, here’s another surprise—a pleasant surprise for you, Commander. Von Krim is still alive. I failed in my mission.”

Relief passed across Russell’s eyes. He couldn’t hold that expression back. He scarcely noticed that the other flyers were clustered about them now, questions in their eyes. He stared blankly at Kern. Then he found himself. He stiffened, and his eyes narrowed.

“Consider yourself under arrest!” he snapped. “Go to your quarters!”

Kern saluted, started to walk away, then came back.

“I have something important for you, sir,” he said.

“Well?” Russell murmured, sardonic triumph in his eyes.

“This!” Kern swung from the knee. His hard right fist smashed against Russell’s jaw. The commander went out cold. Then, as his buddies closed in on him, he shouted, “Okay, I’m under arrest. But before you guys jump me, here’s a funny story for you! This guy Russell is as English as Hitler! He’s a spy. And if you don’t believe me, take a good look at his room. You’ll find an interesting little toy there. They call it a telegraph! He’s been sending code messages to von Krim. He’s the guy that’s responsible for us losing five, six, seven men every time we fight the Boche!

“I thought something was wrong when I heard that thing buzzing away yesterday. No wonder von Krim’s been ready for us every time we’ve gone up against him. No wonder he’s known exactly where to surprise us! Russell sent me over last night with instructions to get that damned Nazi. That was the only convenient way to get rid of me. He wired the Hun, told him where to get me, and provided me with a green light so von Krim would have an easy job of it. But von Krim’s through with easy meat. From now on it’s our turn.…”

Seven English planes moved slowly across the Allied lines two days later. Flying above the others, Flight Leader Dane Kern scanned the skies around him. He fingered his Vickers with itching fingers. The urge to kill was burning high within him, although half of his job had been completed that same morning, when a certain “English” officer was shot at dawn for high treason. And as he died, there was this same smile on Russell’s lips—the smile that recalled a strangely similar smile on the face of another man—

Kern’s thoughts on the subject were blotted out as his eyes took in seven dots. Then they became larger, and were coming toward his flight at almost the same altitude. Kern looked closely at those oncoming ships—and gasped. It was von Krim’s squadron, and the murderous killer was leading the flight himself!

“You’ve had your last bite of easy meat, Boche,” Kern muttered. “Now we’ll take a chunk!” Grimly, he signaled his men into battle formation. The Englishmen dived, looped, came out above and behind the German planes. The Huns broke formation fast, streaked for low altitude. But this time the English flyers had the advantage of first attack. In two minutes three Germans went dawn.

From then on it was a field day for the Britons. They were victory-starved, and they made the most of their opportunity—if an even break could be called an opportunity. Their guns chattered away incessantly, their trigger fingers became part of those guns. They fought like madmen.

Away to one side—almost a full mile away now—two planes fought it out on an even basis. Von Krim wasn’t grinning now, he was fighting for his life. And he knew who he was fighting. He passed close enough to Kern to recognize that face—the face of the devil who had escaped him only two nights ago. And it was this burning rage that made the Hun fight with his old fury, that made him forget the fact that he wasn’t fighting a surprised, helpless Englishman. Any fear that might have tugged at von Krim was now blotted out by anger.

He slammed down at Kern, put lead through the side of the Hurricane’s fuselage. But Kern rolled out, slipped to one side, dived, and came up in a full loop that brought him on von Krim’s trail. But the Boche was smart. He knew how to fly, knew how to slip out when he was in trouble. They kept on this way—endless circles, whizzing streaks of machine and man fighting for that precious combination of space and time—occasionally getting on the other’s tail.

Finally, von Krim did it. He maneuvered himself only sixty feet away, followed Kern like a hawk, and the Yank heard the bark of a machine-gun, felt hot lead smack into his shoulder. He cursed, dove, and behind him a surprised Boche, thinking the Englishman would side-slip, was fooled into passing beyond Kern.

Kern cursed again. He felt that throb in his shoulder become a sickening dullness in his brain. But he told himself that in this one last minute he had a big job to do.

And he did it. He came up behind the German and his trigger fingers sent white-hot lead into a Messerschmitt motor. Von Krim plummeted to the earth. This time his screech was not one of victory.…

A white-coated hospital orderly stepped up beside his bed. Kern opened his eyes and grinned.

“Think I’ll pull out of it?” he asked.

The orderly grinned back.

“You jolly well better. They have a Victoria Cross all ready for you.” Then his grin faded. “Say, I have an odd story for you—”

“About what?” Kern asked.

The orderly bit his lip.

“That blighter you shot down this morning,” the orderly said. “We didn’t want to tell you up to now, because the shock might have proven dangerous. But you’re all right now.… Well, your friend von Krim died only a few hours ago. It’s amazing that he lived so long, after that burning crash. And before he died he whispered a last request. He begged us to bury him next to his brother, Otto von Krim, otherwise known as—Commander Russell!”

THE FLY, by Katherine Mansfield

“Y’are very snug in here,” piped old Mr. Woodifield, and he peered out of the great, green-leather armchair by his friend the boss’s desk as a baby peers out of its pram. His talk was over; it was time for him to be off. But he did not want to go. Since he had retired, since his…stroke, the wife and the girls kept him boxed up in the house every day of the week except Tuesday. On Tuesday he was dressed and brushed and allowed to cut back to the City for the day. Though what he did there the wife and girls couldn’t imagine. Made a nuisance of himself to his friends, they supposed.… Well, perhaps so. All the same, we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves. So there sat old Woodifield, smoking a cigar and staring almost greedily at the boss, who rolled in his office chair, stout, rosy, five years older than he, and still going strong, still at the helm. It did one good to see him.

Wistfully, admiringly, the old voice added, “It’s snug in here, upon my word!”

“Yes, it’s comfortable enough,” agreed the boss, and he flipped the Financial Times with a paper-knife. As a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to have it admired, especially by old Woodifield. It gave him a feeling of deep, solid satisfaction to be planted there in the midst of it in full view of that frail old figure in the muffler.

“I’ve had it done up lately,” he explained, as he had explained for the past—how many?—weeks. “New carpet,” and he pointed to the bright red carpet with a pattern of large white rings. “New furniture,” and he nodded towards the massive bookcase and the table with legs like twisted treacle. “Electric heating!” He waved almost exultantly towards the five transparent, pearly sausages glowing so softly in the tilted copper pan.

But he did not draw old Woodifield’s attention to the photograph over the table of a grave-looking boy in uniform standing in one of those spectral photographers’ parks with photographers’ storm-clouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there for over six years.

“There was something I wanted to tell you,” said old Woodifield, and his eyes grew dim remembering. “Now what was it? I had it in my mind when I started out this morning.” His hands began to tremble, and patches of red showed above his beard.

Poor old chap, he’s on his last pins, thought the boss. And, feeling kindly, he winked at the old man, and said jokingly, “I tell you what. I’ve got a little drop of something here that’ll do you good before you go out into the cold again. It’s beautiful stuff. It wouldn’t hurt a child.” He took a key off his watch-chain, unlocked a cupboard below his desk, and drew forth a dark, squat bottle. “That’s the medicine,” said he. “And the man from whom I got it told me on the strict Q.T. it came from the cellars at Windor Castle.”

Old Woodifield’s mouth fell open at the sight. He couldn’t have looked more surprised if the boss had produced a rabbit.

“It’s whisky, ain’t it?” he piped feebly.

The boss turned the bottle and lovingly showed him the label. Whisky it was.

“D’you know,” said he, peering up at the boss wonderingly, “they won’t let me touch it at home.” And he looked as though he was going to cry.

“Ah, that’s where we know a bit more than the ladies,” cried the boss, swooping across for two tumblers that stood on the table with the water-bottle, and pouring a generous finger into each. “Drink it down. It’ll do you good. And don’t put any water with it. It’s sacrilege to tamper with stuff like this. Ah!” He tossed off his, pulled out his handkerchief, hastily wiped his moustaches, and cocked an eye at old Woodifield, who was rolling his in his chaps.

The old man swallowed, was silent a moment, and then said faintly, “It’s nutty!”

But it warmed him; it crept into his chill old brain—he remembered.

“That was it,” he said, heaving himself out of his chair. “I thought you’d like to know. The girls were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie’s grave, and they happened to come across your boy’s. They’re quite near each other, it seems.”

Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply. Only a quiver in his eyelids showed that he heard.

“The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept,” piped the old voice. “Beautifully looked after. Couldn’t be better if they were at home. You’ve not been across, have yer?”

“No, no!” For various reasons the boss had not been across.

“There’s miles of it,” quavered old Woodifield, “and it’s all as neat as a garden. Flowers growing on all the graves. Nice broad paths.” It was plain from his voice how much he liked a nice broad path.

The pause came again. Then the old man brightened wonderfully.

“D’you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a pot of jam?” he piped. “Ten francs! Robbery, I call it. It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a half-crown. And she hadn’t taken more than a spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude brought the pot away with her to teach’ em a lesson. Quite right, too; it’s trading on our feelings. They think because we’re over there having a look round we’re ready to pay anything. That’s what it is.” And he turned towards the door.

“Quite right, quite right!” cried the boss, though what was quite right he hadn’t the least idea. He came round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to the door, and saw the old fellow out. Woodifield was gone.

For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then: “I’ll see nobody for half an hour, Macey,” said the boss. “Understand? Nobody at all.”

“Very good, sir.”

The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep.…

It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the boy’s grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with Woodifield’s girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. “My son!” groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first few months and even years after the boy’s death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference. Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How was it possible? His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years without the promise for ever before him of the boy’s stepping into his shoes and carrying on where he left off?

And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they had come back by the same train. And what congratulations he had received as the boy’s father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn’t make enough of the boy. And he wasn’t the least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with that boyish look and his habit of saying, “Simply splendid!”

But all that was over and done with as though it never had been. The day had come when Macey had handed him the telegram that brought the whole place crashing about his head. “Deeply regret to inform you…” And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins.

Six years ago, six years.… How quickly time passed! It might have happened yesterday. The boss took his hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn’t feeling as he wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look at the boy’s photograph. But it wasn’t a favourite photograph of his; the expression was unnatural. It was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never looked like that.

At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but deperately to clamber out again. Help! help! said those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out of the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper. For a fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch that oozed round it. Then the front legs waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing, as the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; 1t was ready for life again.

But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his pen back into the ink, leaned his thick wrist on the blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down came a great heavy blot. What would it make of that? What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught hold, and, more slowly this time, the task began from the beginning.

He’s a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly’s courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die; it was only a question of…But the fly had again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just time to refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What about it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed. But behold, the front legs were again waving; the boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and said to it tenderly, “You artful little b…” And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process. All the same, there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.

It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.

“Come on,” said the boss. “Look sharp!” And he stirred it with his pen—in vain. Nothing happened or was likely to happen. The fly was dead.

The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paper-knife and flung it into the waste-paper basket. But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened. He started forward and pressed the bell for Macey.

“Bring me some fresh blotting-paper,” he said sternly,”and look sharp about it.” And while the old dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he had been thinking about before. What was it? It was…He took out his handkerchief and passed it inside his collar. For the life of him he could not remember.

THE COLONEL’S IDEAS, by Guy de Maupassant

“Upon my word,” said Colonel Laporte, “although I am old and gouty, my legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to tell me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the blood. I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a woman, a pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of my toes. There!

“We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.

“When I am in the presence of a woman, of a pretty woman, I feel capable of anything. By Jove! when I feel her looks penetrating me, her confounded looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to do I don’t know what; to fight a duel, to have a row, to smash the furniture, in order to show that I am the strongest, the bravest, the most daring and the most devoted of men.

“But I am not the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like me, I swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all start out, from the van to the rear guard, when there is a woman in the case, a pretty woman. Do you remember what Joan of Arc made us do formerly? Come. I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we should have broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of their guns.

“It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve, who was needed in Paris; and I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are capable of everything in presence of a woman.

“I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command of a detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which swarmed with Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and half dead with fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain before the morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred. I do not know how we managed to escape so far. However, we had ten leagues to go during the night, ten leagues through the night, ten leagues through the snow, and with empty stomachs, and I thought to myself:

“‘It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.’

“We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and starts, as one does when worn out with fatigue.

“It was dark by five o’clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable of moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and hunger.

“Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed everything under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One might have thought that it was the end of the world.

“‘Come, my lads, let us start.’

“They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and they seemed to think: ‘We have had enough of this; we may just as well die here!’ Then I took out my revolver and said:

“‘I will shoot the first man who flinches.’ And so they set off, but very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent four of them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others followed pell-mell, walking at random and without any order. I put the strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of their bayonets in the back.

“The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of spectres of dead, weary soldiers. I said to myself: ‘We shall never get out of this except by a miracle.’

“Sometimes we had to stop for a few minutes, on account of those who could not follow us, and then we heard nothing except the falling snow, that vague, almost undiscernible sound made by the falling flakes. Some of the men shook themselves, others did not move, and so I gave the order to set off again. They shouldered their rifles, and with weary feet we resumed our march, when suddenly the scouts fell back. Something had alarmed them; they had heard voices in front of them. I sent forward six men and a sergeant and waited.

“All at once a shrill cry, a woman’s cry, pierced through the heavy silence of the snow, and in a few minutes they brought back two prisoners, an old man and a girl, whom I questioned in a low voice. They were escaping from the Prussians, who had occupied their house during the evening and had got drunk. The father was alarmed on his daughter’s account, and, without even telling their servants, they had made their escape in the darkness. I saw immediately that they belonged to the better class. I invited them to accompany us, and we started off again, the old man who knew the road acting as our guide.

“It had ceased snowing, the stars appeared and the cold became intense. The girl, who was leaning on her father’s arm, walked unsteadily as though in pain, and several times she murmured:

“‘I have no feeling at all in my feet’; and I suffered more than she did to see that poor little woman dragging herself like that through the snow. But suddenly she stopped and said:

“‘Father, I am so tired that I cannot go any further.’

“The old man wanted to carry her, but he could not even lift her up, and she sank to the ground with a deep sigh. We all gathered round her, and, as for me, I stamped my foot in perplexity, not knowing what to do, and being unwilling to abandon that man and girl like that, when suddenly one of the soldiers, a Parisian whom they had nicknamed Pratique, said:

“‘Come, comrades, we must carry the young lady, otherwise we shall not show ourselves Frenchmen, confound it!’

“I really believe that I swore with pleasure. ‘That is very good of you, my children,’ I said; ‘and I will take my share of the burden.’

“We could indistinctly see, through the darkness, the trees of a little wood on the left. Several of the men went into it, and soon came back with a bundle of branches made into a litter.

“‘Who will lend his cape? It is for a pretty girl, comrades,’ Pratique said, and ten cloaks were thrown to him. In a moment the girl was lying, warm and comfortable, among them, and was raised upon six shoulders. I placed myself at their head, on the right, well pleased with my position.

“We started off much more briskly, as if we had had a drink of wine, and I even heard some jokes. A woman is quite enough to electrify Frenchmen, you see. The soldiers, who had become cheerful and warm, had almost reformed their ranks, and an old ‘franc-tireur’ who was following the litter, waiting for his turn to replace the first of his comrades who might give out, said to one of his neighbors, loud enough for me to hear: “‘I am not a young man now, but by Hell, there is nothing like the women to put courage into you!’

“We went on, almost without stopping, until three o’clock in the morning, when suddenly our scouts fell back once more, and soon the whole detachment showed nothing but a vague shadow on the ground, as the men lay on the snow. I gave my orders in a low voice, and heard the harsh, metallic sound of the cocking, of rifles. For there, in the middle of the plain, some strange object was moving about. It looked like some enormous animal running about, now stretching out like a serpent, now coiling itself into a ball, darting to the right, then to the left, then stopping, and presently starting off again. But presently that wandering shape came nearer, and I saw a dozen lancers at full gallop, one behind the other. They had lost their way and were trying to find it.

“They were so near by that time that I could hear the loud breathing of their horses, the clinking of their swords and the creaking of their saddles, and cried: ‘Fire!’

“Fifty rifle shots broke the stillness of the night, then there were four or five reports, and at last one single shot was heard, and when the smoke had cleared away, we saw that twelve men and nine horses had fallen. Three of the animals were galloping away at a furious pace, and one of them was dragging the dead body of its rider, which rebounded violently from the ground; his foot had caught in the stirrup.

“One of the soldiers behind me gave a terrible laugh and said: ‘There will be some widows there!’

“‘Perhaps he was married.’

“A third added: ‘It did not take long!’

“A head emerged from the litter.

“‘What is the matter?’ she asked; ‘are you fighting?’

“‘It is nothing, mademoiselle,’ I replied; ‘we have got rid of a dozen Prussians!’

“‘Poor fellows!’ she said. But as she was cold, she quickly disappeared beneath the cloaks again, and we started off once more. We marched on for a long time, and at last the sky began to grow lighter. The snow became quite clear, luminous and glistening, and a rosy tint appeared in the east. Suddenly a voice in the distance cried:

“‘Who goes there?’

“The whole detachment halted, and I advanced to give the countersign. We had reached the French lines, and, as my men defiled before the outpost, a commandant on horseback, whom I had informed of what had taken place, asked in a sonorous voice, as he saw the litter pass him: ‘What have you in there?’

“And immediately a small head covered with light hair appeared, dishevelled and smiling, and replied:

“‘It is I, monsieur.’

“At this the men raised a hearty laugh, and we felt quite light-hearted, while Pratique, who was walking by the side of the litter, waved his kepi and shouted:

“‘Vive la France!’ And I felt really affected. I do not know why, except that I thought it a pretty and gallant thing to say.

“It seemed to me as if we had just saved the whole of France and had done something that other men could not have done, something simple and really patriotic. I shall never forget that little face, you may be sure; and if I had to give my opinion about abolishing drums, trumpets and bugles, I should propose to replace them in every regiment by a pretty girl, and that would be even better than playing the Marseillaise. By Jove! it would put some spirit into a trooper to have a Madonna like that, a live Madonna, by the colonel’s side.”

He was silent for a few moments and then continued, with an air of conviction, and nodding his head:

“All the same, we are very fond of women, we Frenchmen!”

THREE MIRACULOUS SOLDIERS, by Stephen Crane

I.

The girl was in the front room on the second floor, peering through the blinds. It was the “best room.” There was a very new rag carpet on the floor. The edges of it had been dyed with alternate stripes of red and green. Upon the wooden mantel there were two little puffy figures in clay—a shepherd and a shepherdess probably. A triangle of pink and white wool hung carefully over the edge of this shelf. Upon the bureau there was nothing at all save a spread newspaper, with edges folded to make it into a mat. The quilts and sheets had been removed from the bed and were stacked upon a chair. The pillows and the great feather mattress were muffled and tumbled until they resembled great dumplings. The picture of a man terribly leaden in complexion hung in an oval frame on one white wall and steadily confronted the bureau.

From between the slats of the blinds she had a view of the road as it wended across the meadow to the woods, and again where it reappeared crossing the hill, half a mile away. It lay yellow and warm in the summer sunshine. From the long grasses of the meadow came the rhythmic click of the insects. Occasional frogs in the hidden brook made a peculiar chug-chug sound, as if somebody throttled them. The leaves of the wood swung in gentle winds. Through the dark-green branches of the pines that grew in the front yard could be seen the mountains, far to the southeast, and inexpressibly blue.

Mary’s eyes were fastened upon the little streak of road that appeared on the distant hill. Her face was flushed with excitement, and the hand which stretched in a strained pose on the sill trembled because of the nervous shaking of the wrist. The pines whisked their green needles with a soft, hissing sound against the house.

At last the girl turned from the window and went to the head of the stairs. “Well, I just know they’re coming, anyhow,” she cried argumentatively to the depths.

A voice from below called to her angrily: “They ain’t. We’ve never seen one yet. They never come into this neighbourhood. You just come down here and ’tend to your work insteader watching for soldiers.”

“Well, ma, I just know they’re coming.”

A voice retorted with the shrillness and mechanical violence of occasional housewives. The girl swished her skirts defiantly and returned to the window.

Upon the yellow streak of road that lay across the hillside there now was a handful of black dots—horsemen. A cloud of dust floated away. The girl flew to the head of the stairs and whirled down into the kitchen.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!”

It was as if she had cried “Fire!” Her mother had been peeling potatoes while seated comfortably at the table. She sprang to her feet. “No—it can’t be—how you know it’s them—where?” The stubby knife fell from her hand, and two or three curls of potato skin dropped from her apron to the floor.

The girl turned and dashed upstairs. Her mother followed, gasping for breath, and yet contriving to fill the air with questions, reproach, and remonstrance. The girl was already at the window, eagerly pointing. “There! There! See ’em! See ’em!”

Rushing to the window, the mother scanned for an instant the road on the hill. She crouched back with a groan. “It’s them, sure as the world! It’s them!” She waved her hands in despairing gestures.

The black dots vanished into the wood. The girl at the window was quivering and her eyes were shining like water when the sun flashes. “Hush! They’re in the woods! They’ll be here directly.” She bent down and intently watched the green archway whence the road emerged. “Hush! I hear ’em coming,” she swiftly whispered to her mother, for the elder woman had dropped dolefully upon the mattress and was sobbing. And indeed the girl could hear the quick, dull trample of horses. She stepped aside with sudden apprehension, but she bent her head forward in order to still scan the road.

“Here they are!”

There was something very theatrical in the sudden appearance of these men to the eyes of the girl. It was as if a scene had been shifted. The forest suddenly disclosed them—a dozen brown-faced troopers in blue—galloping.

“Oh, look!” breathed the girl. Her mouth was puckered into an expression of strange fascination as if she had expected to see the troopers change into demons and gloat at her. She was at last looking upon those curious beings who rode down from the North—those men of legend and colossal tale—they who were possessed of such marvellous hallucinations.

The little troop rode in silence. At its head was a youthful fellow with some dim yellow stripes upon his arm. In his right hand he held his carbine, slanting upward, with the stock resting upon his knee. He was absorbed in a scrutiny of the country before him.

At the heels of the sergeant the rest of the squad rode in thin column, with creak of leather and tinkle of steel and tin. The girl scanned the faces of the horsemen, seeming astonished vaguely to find them of the type she knew.

The lad at the head of the troop comprehended the house and its environments in two glances. He did not check the long, swinging stride of his horse. The troopers glanced for a moment like casual tourists, and then returned to their study of the region in front. The heavy thudding of the hoofs became a small noise. The dust, hanging in sheets, slowly sank.

The sobs of the woman on the bed took form in words which, while strong in their note of calamity, yet expressed a querulous mental reaching for some near thing to blame. “And it’ll be lucky fer us if we ain’t both butchered in our sleep—plundering and running off horses—old Santo’s gone—you see if he ain’t—plundering—”

“But, ma,” said the girl, perplexed and terrified in the same moment, “they’ve gone.”

“Oh, but they’ll come back!” cried the mother, without pausing her wail. “They’ll come back—trust them for that—running off horses. O John, John! why did you, why did you?” She suddenly lifted herself and sat rigid, staring at her daughter. “Mary,” she said in tragic whisper, “the kitchen door isn’t locked!” Already she was bended forward to listen, her mouth agape, her eyes fixed upon her daughter.

“Mother,” faltered the girl.

Her mother again whispered, “The kitchen door isn’t locked.”

Motionless and mute they stared into each other’s eyes.

At last the girl quavered, “We better—we better go and lock it.” The mother nodded. Hanging arm in arm they stole across the floor toward the head of the stairs. A board of the floor creaked. They halted and exchanged a look of dumb agony.

At last they reached the head of the stairs. From the kitchen came the bass humming of the kettle and frequent sputterings and cracklings from the fire. These sounds were sinister. The mother and the girl stood incapable of movement. “There’s somebody down there!” whispered the elder woman.

Finally, the girl made a gesture of resolution. She twisted her arm from her mother’s hands and went two steps downward. She addressed the kitchen: “Who’s there?” Her tone was intended to be dauntless. It rang so dramatically in the silence that a sudden new panic seized them as if the suspected presence in the kitchen had cried out to them. But the girl ventured again: “Is there anybody there?” No reply was made save by the kettle and the fire.

With a stealthy tread the girl continued her journey. As she neared the last step the fire crackled explosively and the girl screamed. But the mystic presence had not swept around the corner to grab her, so she dropped to a seat on the step and laughed. “It was—was only the—the fire,” she said, stammering hysterically.

Then she arose with sudden fortitude and cried: “Why, there isn’t anybody there! I know there isn’t.” She marched down into the kitchen. In her face was dread, as if she half expected to confront something, but the room was empty. She cried joyously: “There’s nobody here! Come on down, ma.” She ran to the kitchen door and locked it.

The mother came down to the kitchen. “Oh, dear, what a fright I’ve had! It’s given me the sick headache. I know it has.”

“Oh, ma,” said the girl.

“I know it has—I know it. Oh, if your father was only here! He’d settle those Yankees mighty quick—he’d settle ’em! Two poor helpless women—”

“Why, ma, what makes you act so? The Yankees haven’t—”

“Oh, they’ll be back—they’ll be back. Two poor helpless women! Your father and your uncle Asa and Bill off galavanting around and fighting when they ought to be protecting their home! That’s the kind of men they are. Didn’t I say to your father just before he left—”

“Ma,” said the girl, coming suddenly from the window, “the barn door is open. I wonder if they took old Santo?”

“Oh, of course they have—of course—Mary, I don’t see what we are going to do—I don’t see what we are going to do.”

The girl said, “Ma, I’m going to see if they took old Santo.”

“Mary,” cried the mother, “don’t you dare!”

“But think of poor old Sant, ma.”

“Never you mind old Santo. We’re lucky to be safe ourselves, I tell you. Never mind old Santo. Don’t you dare to go out there, Mary—Mary!”

The girl had unlocked the door and stepped out upon the porch. The mother cried in despair, “Mary!”

“Why, there isn’t anybody out here,” the girl called in response. She stood for a moment with a curious smile upon her face as of gleeful satisfaction at her daring.

The breeze was waving the boughs of the apple trees. A rooster with an air importantly courteous was conducting three hens upon a foraging tour. On the hillside at the rear of the gray old barn the red leaves of a creeper flamed amid the summer foliage. High in the sky clouds rolled toward the north. The girl swung impulsively from the little stoop and ran toward the barn.

The great door was open, and the carved peg which usually performed the office of a catch lay on the ground. The girl could not see into the barn because of the heavy shadows. She paused in a listening attitude and heard a horse munching placidly. She gave a cry of delight and sprang across the threshold. Then she suddenly shrank back and gasped. She had confronted three men in gray seated upon the floor with their legs stretched out and their backs against Santo’s manger. Their dust-covered countenances were expanded in grins.

II.

As Mary sprang backward and screamed, one of the calm men in gray, still grinning, announced, “I knowed you’d holler.” Sitting there comfortably the three surveyed her with amusement.

Mary caught her breath, throwing her hand up to her throat. “Oh!” she said, “you—you frightened me!”

“We’re sorry, lady, but couldn’t help it no way,” cheerfully responded another. “I knowed you’d holler when I seen you coming yere, but I raikoned we couldn’t help it no way. We hain’t a-troubling this yere barn, I don’t guess. We been doing some mighty tall sleeping yere. We done woke when them Yanks loped past.”

“Where did you come from? Did—did you escape from the—the Yankees?” The girl still stammered and trembled. The three soldiers laughed. “No, m’m. No, m’m. They never cotch us. We was in a muss down the road yere about two mile. And Bill yere they gin it to him in the arm, kehplunk. And they pasted me thar, too. Curious. And Sim yere, he didn’t get nothing, but they chased us all quite a little piece, and we done lose track of our boys.”

“Was it—was it those who passed here just now? Did they chase you?”

The men in gray laughed again. “What—them? No, indeedee! There was a mighty big swarm of Yanks and a mighty big swarm of our boys, too. What—that little passel? No, m’m.”

She became calm enough to scan them more attentively. They were much begrimed and very dusty. Their gray clothes were tattered. Splashed mud had dried upon them in reddish spots. It appeared, too, that the men had not shaved in many days. In the hats there was a singular diversity. One soldier wore the little blue cap of the Northern infantry, with corps emblem and regimental number; one wore a great slouch hat with a wide hole in the crown; and the other wore no hat at all. The left sleeve of one man and the right sleeve of another had been slit and the arms were neatly bandaged with clean cloth. “These hain’t no more than two little cuts,” explained one. “We stopped up yere to Mis’ Leavitts—she said her name was—and she bind them for us. Bill yere, he had the thirst come on him. And the fever too. We—”

“Did you ever see my father in the army?” asked Mary. “John Hinckson—his name is.”

The three soldiers grinned again, but they replied kindly: “No, m’m. No, m’m, we hain’t never. What is he—in the cavalry?”

“No,” said the girl. “He and my uncle Asa and my cousin—his name is Bill Parker—they are all with Longstreet—they call him.”

“Oh,” said the soldiers. “Longstreet? Oh, they’re a good smart ways from yere. ’Way off up nawtheast. There hain’t nothing but cavalry down yere. They’re in the infantry, probably.”

“We haven’t heard anything from them for days and days,” said Mary.

“Oh, they’re all right in the infantry,” said one man, to be consoling. “The infantry don’t do much fighting. They go bellering out in a big swarm and only a few of ’em get hurt. But if they was in the cavalry—the cavalry—”

Mary interrupted him without intention. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

The soldiers looked at each other, struck by some sudden and singular shame. They hung their heads. “No, m’m,” replied one at last.

Santo, in his stall, was tranquilly chewing and chewing. Sometimes he looked benevolently over at them. He was an old horse and there was something about his eyes and his forelock which created the impression that he wore spectacles. Mary went and patted his nose. “Well, if you are hungry, I can get you something,” she told the men. “Or you might come to the house.”

“We wouldn’t dast go to the house,” said one. “That passel of Yanks was only a scouting crowd, most like. Just an advance. More coming, likely.”

“Well, I can bring you something,” cried the girl eagerly. “Won’t you let me bring you something?”

“Well,” said a soldier with embarrassment, “we hain’t had much. If you could bring us a little snack-like—just a snack—we’d—”

Without waiting for him to cease, the girl turned toward the door. But before she had reached it she stopped abruptly. “Listen!” she whispered. Her form was bent forward, her head turned and lowered, her hand extended toward the men in a command for silence.

They could faintly hear the thudding of many hoofs, the clank of arms, and frequent calling voices.

“By cracky, it’s the Yanks!” The soldiers scrambled to their feet and came toward the door. “I knowed that first crowd was only an advance.”

The girl and the three men peered from the shadows of the barn. The view of the road was intersected by tree trunks and a little henhouse. However, they could see many horsemen streaming down the road. The horsemen were in blue. “Oh, hide—hide—hide!” cried the girl, with a sob in her voice.

“Wait a minute,” whispered a gray soldier excitedly. “Maybe they’re going along by. No, by thunder, they hain’t! They’re halting. Scoot, boys!”

They made a noiseless dash into the dark end of the barn. The girl, standing by the door, heard them break forth an instant later in clamorous whispers. “Where’ll we hide? Where’ll we hide? There hain’t a place to hide!” The girl turned and glanced wildly about the barn. It seemed true. The stock of hay had grown low under Santo’s endless munching, and from occasional levyings by passing troopers in gray. The poles of the mow were barely covered, save in one corner where there was a little bunch.

The girl espied the great feed box. She ran to it and lifted the lid. “Here! here!” she called. “Get in here.”

They had been tearing noiselessly around the rear part of the barn. At her low call they came and plunged at the box. They did not all get in at the same moment without a good deal of a tangle. The wounded men gasped and muttered, but they at last were flopped down on the layer of feed which covered the bottom. Swiftly and softly the girl lowered the lid and then turned like a flash toward the door.

No one appeared there, so she went close to survey the situation. The troopers had dismounted and stood in silence by their horses. A gray-bearded man, whose red cheeks and nose shone vividly above the whiskers, was strolling about with two or three others. They wore double-breasted coats, and faded yellow sashes were wound under their black leather sword belts. The gray-bearded soldier was apparently giving orders, pointing here and there.

Mary tiptoed to the feed box. “They’ve all got off their horses,” she said to it. A finger projected from a knothole near the top and said to her very plainly, “Come closer.” She obeyed, and then a muffled voice could be heard: “Scoot for the house, lady, and if we don’t see you again, why, much obliged for what you done.”

“Good-bye,” she said to the feed box.

She made two attempts to walk dauntlessly from the barn, but each time she faltered and failed just before she reached the point where she could have been seen by the blue-coated troopers. At last, however, she made a sort of a rush forward and went out into the bright sunshine.

The group of men in double-breasted coats wheeled in her direction at the instant. The gray-bearded officer forgot to lower his arm which had been stretched forth in giving an order.

She felt that her feet were touching the ground in a most unnatural manner. Her bearing, she believed, was suddenly grown awkward and ungainly. Upon her face she thought that this sentence was plainly written: “There are three men hidden in the feed box.”

The gray-bearded soldier came toward her. She stopped; she seemed about to run away. But the soldier doffed his little blue cap and looked amiable. “You live here, I presume?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Well, we are obliged to camp here for the night, and as we’ve got two wounded men with us I don’t suppose you’d mind if we put them in the barn.”

“In—in the barn?”

He became aware that she was agitated. He smiled assuringly. “You needn’t be frightened. We won’t hurt anything around here. You’ll all be safe enough.”

The girl balanced on one foot and swung the other to and fro in the grass. She was looking down at it. “But—but I don’t think ma would like it if—if you took the barn.”

The old officer laughed. “Wouldn’t she?” said he. “That’s so. Maybe she wouldn’t.” He reflected for a time and then decided cheerfully: “Well, we will have to go ask her, anyhow. Where is she? In the house?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, “she’s in the house. She—she’ll be scared to death when she sees you!”

“Well, you go and ask her then,” said the soldier, always wearing a benign smile. “You go ask her and then come and tell me.”

When the girl pushed open the door and entered the kitchen, she found it empty. “Ma!” she called softly. There was no answer. The kettle still was humming its low song. The knife and the curl of potato skin lay on the floor.

She went to her mother’s room and entered timidly. The new, lonely aspect of the house shook her nerves. Upon the bed was a confusion of coverings. “Ma!” called the girl, quaking in fear that her mother was not there to reply. But there was a sudden turmoil of the quilts, and her mother’s head was thrust forth. “Mary!” she cried, in what seemed to be a supreme astonishment, “I thought—I thought—”

“Oh, ma,” blurted the girl, “there’s over a thousand Yankees in the yard, and I’ve hidden three of our men in the feed box!”

The elder woman, however, upon the appearance of her daughter had begun to thrash hysterically about on the bed and wail.

“Ma,” the girl exclaimed, “and now they want to use the barn—and our men in the feed box! What shall I do, ma? What shall I do?”

Her mother did not seem to hear, so absorbed was she in her grievous flounderings and tears. “Ma!” appealed the girl. “Ma!”

For a moment Mary stood silently debating, her lips apart, her eyes fixed. Then she went to the kitchen window and peeked.

The old officer and the others were staring up the road. She went to another window in order to get a proper view of the road, and saw that they were gazing at a small body of horsemen approaching at a trot and raising much dust. Presently she recognised them as the squad that had passed the house earlier, for the young man with the dim yellow chevron still rode at their head. An unarmed horseman in gray was receiving their close attention.

As they came very near to the house she darted to the first window again. The gray-bearded officer was smiling a fine broad smile of satisfaction. “So you got him?” he called out. The young sergeant sprang from his horse and his brown hand moved in a salute. The girl could not hear his reply. She saw the unarmed horseman in gray stroking a very black mustache and looking about him coolly and with an interested air. He appeared so indifferent that she did not understand he was a prisoner until she heard the graybeard call out: “Well, put him in the barn. He’ll be safe there, I guess.” A party of troopers moved with the prisoner toward the barn.

The girl made a sudden gesture of horror, remembering the three men in the feed box.

III.

The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long lines of stamping horses. Men crooked their backs and perspired in order to rub with cloths or bunches of grass these slim equine legs, upon whose splendid machinery they depended so greatly. The lips of the horses were still wet and frothy from the steel bars which had wrenched at their mouths all day. Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk of the men.

“Moind where yer plug is steppin’, Finerty! Keep ’im aff me!”

“An ould elephant! He shtrides like a schoolhouse.”

“Bill’s little mar—she was plum beat when she come in with Crawford’s crowd.”

“Crawford’s the hardest-ridin’ cavalryman in the army. An he don’t use up a horse, neither—much. They stay fresh when the others are most a-droppin’.”

“Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?”

Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air of solemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side and sometimes rubbing noses dreamfully.

Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking comfortably. Their carbines were leaned against the wall. At their side and outlined in the black of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting in the hollow of his arm. Four horses, saddled and accoutred, were conferring with their heads close together. The four bridle reins were flung over a post.

Upon the calm green of the land, typical in every way of peace, the hues of war brought thither by the troops shone strangely. Mary, gazing curiously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. It was no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellow thoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voices of the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there for years. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of the landscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange and formidable to the girl.

Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her mother did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the prisoner in gray into the barn, and for a long time she watched the three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed box.

It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding school in Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties, invariably did hair breadth things. True, they were usually bent upon rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in gray nor any of the three in the feed box was lover of hers, but then a real heroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroine would take measures to rescue the four men. If she did not at least make the attempt, she would be false to those carefully constructed ideals which were the accumulation of years of dreaming.

But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door, and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with his back to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfast contemplation of the calm man and, incidentally, of the feed box. She knew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three heads and perhaps four would turn casually in her direction. Their ears were real ears.

Heroines, she knew, conducted these matters with infinite precision and despatch. They severed the hero’s bonds, cried a dramatic sentence, and stood between him and his enemies until he had run far enough away. She saw well, however, that even should she achieve all things up to the point where she might take glorious stand between the escaping and the pursuers, those grim troopers in blue would not pause. They would run around her, make a circuit. One by one she saw the gorgeous contrivances and expedients of fiction fall before the plain, homely difficulties of this situation. They were of no service. Sadly, ruefully, she thought of the calm man and of the contents of the feed box.

The sum of her invention was that she could sally forth to the commander of the blue cavalry, and confessing to him that there were three of her friends and his enemies secreted in the feed box, pray him to let them depart unmolested. But she was beginning to believe the old graybeard to be a bear. It was hardly probable that he would give this plan his support. It was more probable that he and some of his men would at once descend upon the feed box and confiscate her three friends. The difficulty with her idea was that she could not learn its value without trying it, and then in case of failure it would be too late for remedies and other plans. She reflected that war made men very unreasonable.

All that she could do was to stand at the window and mournfully regard the barn. She admitted this to herself with a sense of deep humiliation. She was not, then, made of that fine stuff, that mental satin, which enabled some other beings to be of such mighty service to the distressed. She was defeated by a barn with one door, by four men with eight eyes and eight ears—trivialities that would not impede the real heroine.

The vivid white light of broad day began slowly to fade. Tones of gray came upon the fields, and the shadows were of lead. In this more sombre atmosphere the fires built by the troops down in the far end of the orchard grew more brilliant, becoming spots of crimson colour in the dark grove.

The girl heard a fretting voice from her mother’s room. “Mary!” She hastily obeyed the call. She perceived that she had quite forgotten her mother’s existence in this time of excitement.

The elder woman still lay upon the bed. Her face was flushed and perspiration stood amid new wrinkles upon her forehead. Weaving wild glances from side to side, she began to whimper. “Oh, I’m just sick—I’m just sick! Have those men gone yet? Have they gone?”

The girl smoothed a pillow carefully for her mother’s head. “No, ma. They’re here yet. But they haven’t hurt anything—it doesn’t seem. Will I get you something to eat?”

Her mother gestured her away with the impatience of the ill. “No—no—just don’t bother me. My head is splitting, and you know very well that nothing can be done for me when I get one of these spells. It’s trouble—that’s what makes them. When are those men going? Look here, don’t you go ’way. You stick close to the house now.”

“I’ll stay right here,” said the girl. She sat in the gloom and listened to her mother’s incessant moaning. When she attempted to move, her mother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try to alleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting in passive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute to her mother’s relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes her mother projected questions concerning the local condition, and although she laboured to be graphic and at the same time soothing, unalarming, her form of reply was always displeasing to the sick woman, and brought forth ejaculations of angry impatience.

Eventually the woman slept in the manner of one worn from terrible labour. The girl went slowly and softly to the kitchen. When she looked from the window, she saw the four soldiers still at the barn door. In the west, the sky was yellow. Some tree trunks intersecting it appeared black as streaks of ink. Soldiers hovered in blue clouds about the bright splendour of the fires in the orchard. There were glimmers of steel.

The girl sat in the new gloom of the kitchen and watched. The soldiers lit a lantern and hung it in the barn. Its rays made the form of the sentry seem gigantic. Horses whinnied from the orchard. There was a low hum of human voices. Sometimes small detachments of troopers rode past the front of the house. The girl heard the abrupt calls of sentries. She fetched some food and ate it from her hand, standing by the window. She was so afraid that something would occur that she barely left her post for an instant.

A picture of the interior of the barn hung vividly in her mind. She recalled the knot-holes in the boards at the rear, but she admitted that the prisoners could not escape through them. She remembered some inadequacies of the roof, but these also counted for nothing. When confronting the problem, she felt her ambitions, her ideals tumbling headlong like cottages of straw.

Once she felt that she had decided to reconnoitre at any rate. It was night; the lantern at the barn and the camp fires made everything without their circle into masses of heavy mystic blackness. She took two steps toward the door. But there she paused. Innumerable possibilities of danger had assailed her mind. She returned to the window and stood wavering. At last, she went swiftly to the door, opened it, and slid noiselessly into the darkness.

For a moment she regarded the shadows. Down in the orchard the camp fires of the troops appeared precisely like a great painting, all in reds upon a black cloth. The voices of the troopers still hummed. The girl started slowly off in the opposite direction. Her eyes were fixed in a stare; she studied the darkness in front for a moment, before she ventured upon a forward step. Unconsciously, her throat was arranged for a sudden shrill scream. High in the tree branches she could hear the voice of the wind, a melody of the night, low and sad, the plaint of an endless, incommunicable sorrow. Her own distress, the plight of the men in gray—these near matters as well as all she had known or imagined of grief—everything was expressed in this soft mourning of the wind in the trees. At first she felt like weeping. This sound told her of human impotency and doom. Then later the trees and the wind breathed strength to her, sang of sacrifice, of dauntless effort, of hard carven faces that did not blanch when Duty came at midnight or at noon.

She turned often to scan the shadowy figures that moved from time to time in the light at the barn door. Once she trod upon a stick, and it flopped, crackling in the intolerable manner of all sticks. At this noise, however, the guards at the barn made no sign. Finally, she was where she could see the knot-holes in the rear of the structure gleaming like pieces of metal from the effect of the light within. Scarcely breathing in her excitement she glided close and applied an eye to a knothole. She had barely achieved one glance at the interior before she sprang back shuddering.

For the unconscious and cheerful sentry at the door was swearing away in flaming sentences, heaping one gorgeous oath upon another, making a conflagration of his description of his troop horse.

“Why,” he was declaring to the calm prisoner in gray, “you ain’t got a horse in your hull — army that can run forty rod with that there little mar’!”

As in the outer darkness Mary cautiously returned to the knothole, the three guards in front suddenly called in low tones: “S-s-s-h!”

“Quit, Pete; here comes the lieutenant.” The sentry had apparently been about to resume his declamation, but at these warnings he suddenly posed in a soldierly manner.

A tall and lean officer with a smooth face entered the barn. The sentry saluted primly. The officer flashed a comprehensive glance about him. “Everything all right?”

“All right, sir.”

This officer had eyes like the points of stilettos. The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were deep and gave him a slightly disagreeable aspect, but somewhere in his face there was a quality of singular thoughtfulness, as of the absorbed student dealing in generalities, which was utterly in opposition to the rapacious keenness of the eyes which saw everything.

Suddenly he lifted a long finger and pointed. “What’s that?”

“That? That’s a feed box, I suppose.”

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“You ought to know,” said the officer sharply. He walked over to the feed box and flung up the lid. With a sweeping gesture, he reached down and scooped a handful of feed. “You ought to know what’s in everything when you have prisoners in your care,” he added, scowling.

During the time of this incident, the girl had nearly swooned. Her hands searched weakly over the boards for something to which to cling. With the pallor of the dying she had watched the downward sweep of the officer’s arm, which after all had only brought forth a handful of feed. The result was a stupefaction of her mind. She was astonished out of her senses at this spectacle of three large men metamorphosed into a handful of feed.

IV.

It is perhaps a singular thing that this absence of the three men from the feed box at the time of the sharp lieutenant’s investigation should terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion was fright. The feed box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some dark magician’s trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see the three weird men floating spectrally away through the air. She glanced with swift apprehension behind her, and when the dazzle from the lantern’s light had left her eyes, saw only the dim hillside stretched in solemn silence.

The interior of the barn possessed for her another fascination because it was now uncanny. It contained that extraordinary feed box. When she peeped again at the knothole, the calm, gray prisoner was seated upon the feed box, thumping it with his dangling, careless heels as if it were in nowise his conception of a remarkable feed-box. The sentry also stood facing it. His carbine he held in the hollow of his arm. His legs were spread apart, and he mused. From without came the low mumble of the three other troopers. The sharp lieutenant had vanished.

The trembling yellow light of the lantern caused the figures of the men to cast monstrous wavering shadows. There were spaces of gloom which shrouded ordinary things in impressive garb. The roof presented an inscrutable blackness, save where small rifts in the shingles glowed phosphorescently. Frequently old Santo put down a thunderous hoof. The heels of the prisoner made a sound like the booming of a wild kind of drum. When the men moved their heads, their eyes shone with ghoulish whiteness, and their complexions were always waxen and unreal. And there was that profoundly strange feed box, imperturbable with its burden of fantastic mystery.

Suddenly from down near her feet the girl heard a crunching sound, a sort of a nibbling, as if some silent and very discreet terrier was at work upon the turf. She faltered back; here was no doubt another grotesque detail of this most unnatural episode. She did not run, because physically she was in the power of these events. Her feet chained her to the ground in submission to this march of terror after terror. As she stared at the spot from which this sound seemed to come, there floated through her mind a vague, sweet vision—a vision of her safe little room, in which at this hour she usually was sleeping.

The scratching continued faintly and with frequent pauses, as if the terrier was then listening. When the girl first removed her eyes from the knothole the scene appeared of one velvet blackness; then gradually objects loomed with a dim lustre. She could see now where the tops of the trees joined the sky and the form of the barn was before her dyed in heavy purple. She was ever about to shriek, but no sound came from her constricted throat. She gazed at the ground with the expression of countenance of one who watches the sinister-moving grass where a serpent approaches.

Dimly she saw a piece of sod wrenched free and drawn under the great foundation beam of the barn. Once she imagined that she saw human hands, not outlined at all, but sufficient in colour, form, or movement to make subtle suggestion.

Then suddenly a thought that illuminated the entire situation flashed in her mind like a light. The three men, late of the feed box, were beneath the floor of the barn and were now scraping their way under this beam. She did not consider for a moment how they could come there. They were marvellous creatures. The supernatural was to be expected of them. She no longer trembled, for she was possessed upon this instant of the most unchangeable species of conviction. The evidence before her amounted to no evidence at all, but nevertheless her opinion grew in an instant from an irresponsible acorn to a rooted and immovable tree. It was as if she was on a jury.

She stooped down hastily and scanned the ground. There she indeed saw a pair of hands hauling at the dirt where the sod had been displaced. Softly, in a whisper like a breath, she said, “Hey!”

The dim hands were drawn hastily under the barn. The girl reflected for a moment. Then she stooped and whispered: “Hey! It’s me!”

After a time there was a resumption of the digging. The ghostly hands began once more their cautious mining. She waited. In hollow reverberations from the interior of the barn came the frequent sounds of old Santo’s lazy movements. The sentry conversed with the prisoner.

At last the girl saw a head thrust slowly from under the beam. She perceived the face of one of the miraculous soldiers from the feed box. A pair of eyes glintered and wavered, then finally settled upon her, a pale statue of a girl. The eyes became lit with a kind of humorous greeting. An arm gestured at her.

Stooping, she breathed, “All right.” The man drew himself silently back under the beam. A moment later the pair of hands resumed their cautious task. Ultimately the head and arms of the man were thrust strangely from the earth. He was lying on his back. The girl thought of the dirt in his hair. Wriggling slowly and pushing at the beam above him he forced his way out of the curious little passage. He twisted his body and raised himself upon his hands. He grinned at the girl and drew his feet carefully from under the beam. When he at last stood erect beside her, he at once began mechanically to brush the dirt from his clothes with his hands. In the barn the sentry and his prisoner were evidently engaged in an argument.

The girl and the first miraculous soldier signalled warily. It seemed that they feared that their arms would make noises in passing through the air. Their lips moved, conveying dim meanings.

In this sign language the girl described the situation in the barn. With guarded motions, she told him of the importance of absolute stillness. He nodded, and then in the same manner he told her of his two companions under the barn floor. He informed her again of their wounded state, and wagged his head to express his despair. He contorted his face, to tell how sore were their arms; and jabbed the air mournfully, to express their remote geographical position.

This signalling was interrupted by the sound of a body being dragged or dragging itself with slow, swishing sound under the barn. The sound was too loud for safety. They rushed to the hole and began to semaphore until a shaggy head appeared with rolling eyes and quick grin.

With frantic downward motions of their arms they suppressed this grin and with it the swishing noise. In dramatic pantomime they informed this head of the terrible consequences of so much noise. The head nodded, and painfully but with extreme care the second man pushed and pulled himself from the hole.

In a faint whisper the first man said, “Where’s Sim?”

The second man made low reply. “He’s right here.” He motioned reassuringly toward the hole.

When the third head appeared, a soft smile of glee came upon each face, and the mute group exchanged expressive glances.

When they all stood together, free from this tragic barn, they breathed a long sigh that was contemporaneous with another smile and another exchange of glances.

One of the men tiptoed to a knothole and peered into the barn. The sentry was at that moment speaking. “Yes, we know ’em all. There isn’t a house in this region that we don’t know who is in it most of the time. We collar ’em once in a while—like we did you. Now, that house out yonder, we—”

The man suddenly left the knothole and returned to the others. Upon his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but he simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot. He led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe distance from the barn he halted and as they grouped eagerly about him, he exploded in an intense undertone: “Why, that—that’s Cap’n Sawyer they got in yonder.”

“Cap’n Sawyer!” incredulously whispered the other men.

But the girl had something to ask. “How did you get out of that feed box?” He smiled. “Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a minute when we allowed it wasn’t a mighty safe place, and we allowed we’d get out. And we did. We skedaddled ’round and ’round until it ’peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves down in the cow stalls where it’s low-like—just dirt floor—and then we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come. And we didn’t know Cap’n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard ’im discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn’t know that it was him. No, m’m.”

These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown calamity.

“How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?” one whispered mournfully.

“I don’t know,” replied another, in the same tone.

Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the methods of Fate: “Oh, hell!”

The three men started then as if simultaneously stung and gazed at the young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to make agitated apology: “Pardon, miss! ’Pon my soul I clean forgot you was by. ’Deed, and I wouldn’t swear like that if I had knowed. ’Deed, I wouldn’t.”

The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn. Suddenly she turned and whispered, “Who is he?”

“He’s Cap’n Sawyer, m’m,” they told her sorrowfully. “He’s our own cap’n. He’s been in command of us yere since a long time. He’s got folks about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting.”

She was still for a time and then, awed, she said, “Will they—will they hang him?”

“No, m’m. Oh, no, m’m. Don’t raikon no such thing. No, m’m.”

The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped from the barn were now advancing toward it.

V.

The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash and uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach the barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to come away. The grass rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the barn.

When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing, but she could see nothing.

Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knothole. The sentry had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The prisoner still sat on the feed box, moodily staring at the floor. The girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax. She started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the men would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They might have been two dead men.

The girl felt impelled to look at the corner of the interior where were the cow stalls. There was no light there save the appearance of peculiar gray haze which marked the track of the dimming rays of the lantern. All else was sombre shadow. At last she saw something move there. It might have been as small as a rat, or it might have been a part of something as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that something in that spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly and at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon the sentry. The wandering rays caused the eyes to glitter like silver. The girl’s heart pounded so that she put her hand over it.

The sentry and the prisoner remained immovably waxen, and over in the gloom the head thrust from the floor watched them with its silver eyes.

Finally, the prisoner slipped from the feed box, and, raising his arms, yawned at great length. “Oh, well,” he remarked, “you boys will get a good licking if you fool around here much longer. That’s some satisfaction, anyhow, even if you did bag me. You’ll get a good walloping.” He reflected for a moment, and decided: “I’m sort of willing to be captured if you fellows only get a damned good licking for being so smart.”

The sentry looked up and smiled a superior smile. “Licking, hey? Nixey!” He winked exasperatingly at the prisoner. “You fellows are not fast enough, my boy. Why didn’t you lick us at —? and at —? and at ----?” He named some of the great battles.

To this the captive officer blurted in angry astonishment, “Why, we did!”

The sentry winked again in profound irony. “Yes—I know you did. Of course. You whipped us, didn’t you? Fine kind of whipping that was! Why, we—”

He suddenly ceased, smitten mute by a sound that broke the stillness of the night. It was the sharp crack of a distant shot that made wild echoes among the hills. It was instantly followed by the hoarse cry of a human voice, a far-away yell of warning, singing of surprise, peril, fear of death. A moment later there was a distant, fierce spattering of shots. The sentry and the prisoner stood facing each other, their lips apart, listening.

The orchard at that instant awoke to sudden tumult. There were the thud and scramble and scamper of feet, the mellow, swift clash of arms, men’s voices in question, oath, command, hurried and unhurried, resolute and frantic. A horse sped along the road at a raging gallop. A loud voice shouted, “What is it, Ferguson?” Another voice yelled something incoherent. There was a sharp, discordant chorus of command. An uproarious volley suddenly rang from the orchard. The prisoner in gray moved from his intent, listening attitude. Instantly the eyes of the sentry blazed, and he said with a new and terrible sternness, “Stand where you are!”

The prisoner trembled in his excitement. Expressions of delight and triumph bubbled to his lips. “A surprise, by Gawd! Now—now, you’ll see!”

The sentry stolidly swung his carbine to his shoulder. He sighted carefully along the barrel until it pointed at the prisoner’s head, about at his nose. “Well, I’ve got you, anyhow. Remember that! Don’t move!”

The prisoner could not keep his arms from nervously gesturing. “I won’t; but—”

“And shut your mouth!”

The three comrades of the sentry flung themselves into view. “Pete—devil of a row!—can you—”

“I’ve got him,” said the sentry calmly and without moving. It was as if the barrel of the carbine rested on piers of stone. The three comrades turned and plunged into the darkness.

In the orchard it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a mad, floundering encounter, snarling, howling in a whirling chaos of noise and motion. In the barn the prisoner and his guard faced each other in silence.

As for the girl at the knothole, the sky had fallen at the beginning of this clamour. She would not have been astonished to see the stars swinging from their abodes, and the vegetation, the barn, all blow away. It was the end of everything, the grand universal murder. When two of the three miraculous soldiers who formed the original feed-box corps emerged in detail from the hole under the beam and slid away into the darkness, she did no more than glance at them.

Suddenly she recollected the head with silver eyes. She started forward and again applied her eyes to the knothole. Even with the din resounding from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from the heavens and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this mystic head. There, to her, was the dark god of the tragedy.

The prisoner in gray at this moment burst into a laugh that was no more than a hysterical gurgle. “Well, you can’t hold that gun out forever! Pretty soon you’ll have to lower it.”

The sentry’s voice sounded slightly muffled, for his cheek was pressed against the weapon. “I won’t be tired for some time yet.”

The girl saw the head slowly rise, the eyes fixed upon the sentry’s face. A tall, black figure slunk across the cow stalls and vanished back of old Santo’s quarters. She knew what was to come to pass. She knew this grim thing was upon a terrible mission, and that it would reappear again at the head of the little passage between Santo’s stall and the wall, almost at the sentry’s elbow; and yet when she saw a faint indication as of a form crouching there, a scream from an utterly new alarm almost escaped her.

The sentry’s arms, after all, were not of granite. He moved restively. At last he spoke in his even, unchanging tone: “Well, I guess you’ll have to climb into that feed box. Step back and lift the lid.”

“Why, you don’t mean—”

“Step back!”

The girl felt a cry of warning arising to her lips as she gazed at this sentry. She noted every detail of his facial expression. She saw, moreover, his mass of brown hair bunching disgracefully about his ears, his clear eyes lit now with a hard, cold light, his forehead puckered in a mighty scowl, the ring upon the third finger of the left hand. “Oh, they won’t kill him! Surely they won’t kill him!” The noise of the fight in the orchard was the loud music, the thunder and lightning, the rioting of the tempest which people love during the critical scene of a tragedy.

When the prisoner moved back in reluctant obedience, he faced for an instant the entrance of the little passage, and what he saw there must have been written swiftly, graphically in his eyes. And the sentry read it and knew then that he was upon the threshold of his death. In a fraction of time, certain information went from the grim thing in the passage to the prisoner, and from the prisoner to the sentry. But at that instant the black formidable figure arose, towered, and made its leap. A new shadow flashed across the floor when the blow was struck.

As for the girl at the knothole, when she returned to sense she found herself standing with clinched hands and screaming with her might.

As if her reason had again departed from her, she ran around the barn, in at the door, and flung herself sobbing beside the body of the soldier in blue.

The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch as one party was giving shouts of supreme exultation. The firing no longer sounded in crashes; it was now expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words of the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.

Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A grimy panting, red-faced mob of troopers in blue plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen to attitudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in one great chorus, “He’s gone!”

The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor turned toward them her lamenting eyes and cried: “He’s not dead, is he? He can’t be dead?”

They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who had been so particular about the feed box knelt by the side of the girl and laid his head against the chest of the prostrate soldier. “Why, no,” he said, rising and looking at the man. “He’s all right. Some of you boys throw some water on him.”

“Are you sure?” demanded the girl, feverishly.

“Of course! He’ll be better after awhile.”

“Oh!” said she softly, and then looked down at the sentry. She started to arise, and the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly at her arm.

“Don’t you worry about him. He’s all right.”

She turned her face with its curving lips and shining eyes once more toward the unconscious soldier upon the floor. The troopers made a lane to the door, the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.

“Queer,” said a young officer. “Girl very clearly worst kind of rebel, and yet she falls to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her enemies. Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring—you see if she ain’t. Queer.”

The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. After reflection he shrugged his shoulders again. He said: “War changes many things; but it doesn’t change everything, thank God!”

NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison

General Wingrove looked at the rows of faces without seeing them. His vision went beyond the Congress of the United States, past the balmy June day to another day that was coming. A day when the Army would have its destined place of authority.

He drew a deep breath and delivered what was perhaps the shortest speech ever heard in the hallowed halls of Congress:

“The General Staff of the U.S. Army requests Congress to abolish the archaic branch of the armed forces known as the U.S. Navy.”

The aging Senator from Georgia checked his hearing aid to see if it was in operating order, while the press box emptied itself in one concerted rush and a clatter of running feet that died off in the direction of the telephone room. A buzz of excited comment ran through the giant chamber. One by one the heads turned to face the Naval section where rows of blue figures stirred and buzzed like smoked-out bees. The knot of men around a paunchy figure heavy with gold braid broke up and Admiral Fitzjames climbed slowly to his feet.

Lesser men have quailed before that piercing stare, but General Wingrove was never the lesser man. The admiral tossed his head with disgust, every line of his body denoting outraged dignity. He turned to his audience, a small pulse beating in his forehead.

“I cannot comprehend the general’s attitude, nor can I understand why he has attacked the Navy in this unwarranted fashion. The Navy has existed and will always exist as the first barrier of American defense. I ask you, gentlemen, to ignore this request as you would ignore the statements of any person … er, slightly demented. I should like to offer a recommendation that the general’s sanity be investigated, and an inquiry be made as to the mental health of anyone else connected with this preposterous proposal!”

The general smiled calmly. “I understand, Admiral, and really don’t blame you for being slightly annoyed. But, please let us not bring this issue of national importance down to a shallow personal level. The Army has facts to back up this request—facts that shall be demonstrated tomorrow morning.”

Turning his back on the raging admiral, General Wingrove included all the assembled solons in one sweeping gesture.

“Reserve your judgment until that time, gentlemen, make no hasty judgments until you have seen the force of argument with which we back up our request. It is the end of an era. In the morning the Navy joins its fellow fossils, the dodo and the brontosaurus.”

The admiral’s blood pressure mounted to a new record and the gentle thud of his unconscious body striking the floor was the only sound to break the shocked silence of the giant hall.

* * * *

The early morning sun warmed the white marble of the Jefferson Memorial and glinted from the soldiers’ helmets and the roofs of the packed cars that crowded forward in a slow-moving stream. All the gentlemen of Congress were there, the passage of their cars cleared by the screaming sirens of motorcycle policemen. Around and under the wheels of the official cars pressed a solid wave of government workers and common citizens of the capital city. The trucks of the radio and television services pressed close, microphones and cameras extended.

The stage was set for a great day. Neat rows of olive drab vehicles curved along the water’s edge. Jeeps and half-tracks shouldered close by weapons carriers and six-bys, all of them shrinking to insignificance beside the looming Patton tanks. A speakers’ platform was set up in the center of the line, near the audience.

At precisely 10 a.m., General Wingrove stepped forward and scowled at the crowd until they settled into an uncomfortable silence. His speech was short and consisted of nothing more than amplifications of his opening statement that actions speak louder than words. He pointed to the first truck in line, a 2½-ton filled with an infantry squad sitting stiffly at attention.

The driver caught the signal and kicked the engine into life; with a grind of gears it moved forward toward the river’s edge. There was an indrawn gasp from the crowd as the front wheels ground over the marble parapet—then the truck was plunging down toward the muddy waters of the Potomac.

The wheels touched the water and the surface seemed to sink while taking on a strange glassy character. The truck roared into high gear and rode forward on the surface of the water surrounded by a saucer-shaped depression. It parked two hundred yards off shore and the soldiers, goaded by the sergeant’s bark, leapt out and lined up with a showy present arms.

The general returned the salute and waved to the remaining vehicles. They moved forward in a series of maneuvers that indicated a great number of rehearsal hours on some hidden pond. The tanks rumbled slowly over the water while the jeeps cut back and forth through their lines in intricate patterns. The trucks backed and turned like puffing ballerinas.

The audience was rooted in a hushed silence, their eyeballs bulging. They continued to watch the amazing display as General Wingrove spoke again:

“You see before you a typical example of Army ingenuity, developed in Army laboratories. These motor units are supported on the surface of the water by an intensifying of the surface tension in their immediate area. Their weight is evenly distributed over the surface, causing the shallow depressions you see around them.

“This remarkable feat has been accomplished by the use of the Dornifier. A remarkable invention that is named after that brilliant scientist, Colonel Robert A. Dorn, Commander of the Brooke Point Experimental Laboratory. It was there that one of the civilian employees discovered the Dorn effect—under the Colonel’s constant guidance, of course.

“Utilizing this invention the Army now becomes master of the sea as well as the land. Army convoys of trucks and tanks can blanket the world. The surface of the water is our highway, our motor park, our battleground—the airfield and runway for our planes.”

Mechanics were pushing a Shooting Star onto the water. They stepped clear as flame gushed from the tail pipe; with the familiar whooshing rumble it sped down the Potomac and hurled itself into the air.

“When this cheap and simple method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, drydocks and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the taxpayer back his hard-earned dollar!”

Teeth grated in the Naval section as carriers and battleships were called “boats” and the rest of America’s sea might lumped under the casual heading of “things.” Lips were curled at the transparent appeal to the taxpayer’s pocketbook. But with leaden hearts they knew that all this justified wrath and contempt would avail them nothing. This was Army Day with a vengeance, and the doom of the Navy seemed inescapable.

The Army had made elaborate plans for what they called “Operation Sinker.” Even as the general spoke the publicity mills ground into high gear. From coast to coast the citizens absorbed the news with their morning nourishment.

“… Agnes, you hear what the radio said! The Army’s gonna give a trip around the world in a B-36 as first prize in this limerick contest. All you have to do is fill in the last line, and mail one copy to the Pentagon and the other to the Navy …”

The Naval mail room had standing orders to burn all the limericks when they came in, but some of the newer men seemed to think the entire thing was a big joke. Commander Bullman found one in the mess hall:

The Army will always be there,

On the land, on the sea, in the air.

So why should the Navy

Take all of the gravy …

to which a seagoing scribe had added:

And not give us ensigns our share?

The newspapers were filled daily with photographs of mighty B-36’s landing on Lake Erie, and grinning soldiers making mock beachhead attacks on Coney Island. Each man wore a buzzing black box at his waist and walked on the bosom of the now quiet Atlantic like a biblical prophet.

Radio and television also carried the thousands of news releases that poured in an unending flow from the Pentagon Building. Cards, letters, telegrams and packages descended on Washington in an overwhelming torrent. The Navy Department was the unhappy recipient of deprecatory letters and a vast quantity of little cardboard battleships.

The people spoke and their representatives listened closely. This was an election year. There didn’t seem to be much doubt as to the decision, particularly when the reduction in the budget was considered.

It took Congress only two months to make up its collective mind. The people were all pro-Army. The novelty of the idea had fired their imaginations.

They were about to take the final vote in the lower house. If the amendment passed it would go to the states for ratification, and their votes were certain to follow that of Congress. The Navy had fought a last-ditch battle to no avail. The balloting was going to be pretty much of a sure thing—the wet water Navy would soon become ancient history.

For some reason the admirals didn’t look as unhappy as they should.

* * * *

The Naval Department had requested one last opportunity to address the Congress. Congress had patronizingly granted permission, for even the doomed man is allowed one last speech. Admiral Fitzjames, who had recovered from his choleric attack, was the appointed speaker.

“Gentlemen of the Congress of the United States. We in the Navy have a fighting tradition. We ‘damn the torpedoes’ and sail straight ahead into the enemy’s fire if that is necessary. We have been stabbed in the back—we have suffered a second Pearl Harbor sneak attack! The Army relinquished its rights to fair treatment with this attack. Therefore we are counter-attacking!” Worn out by his attacking and mixed metaphors, the Admiral mopped his brow.

“Our laboratories have been working night and day on the perfection of a device we hoped we would never be forced to use. It is now in operation, having passed the final trials a few days ago.

“The significance of this device cannot be underestimated. We are so positive of its importance that—we are demanding that the Army be abolished!”

He waved his hand toward the window and bellowed one word.

“LOOK!”

Everyone looked. They blinked and looked again. They rubbed their eyes and kept looking.

Sailing majestically up the middle of Constitution Avenue was the battleship Missouri.

The Admiral’s voice rang through the room like a trumpet of victory.

“The Mark-1 Debinder, as you see, temporarily lessens the binding energies that hold molecules of solid matter together. Solids become liquids, and a ship equipped with this device can sail anywhere in the world—on sea or land. Take your vote, gentlemen; the world awaits your decision.”

VICTORY, by Lester del Rey

I.

From above came the sound of men singing. Captain Duke O’Neill stopped clipping his heavy black beard to listen. It had been a long time since he’d heard such a sound—longer than the time since he’d last had a bath or seen a woman. It had never been the singing type of war. Yet now even the high tenor of old Teroini, who lay on a pad with neither legs nor arms, was mixed into the chorus. It could mean only one thing!

As if to confirm his thoughts, Burke Thompson hobbled past the cabin, stopping just long enough to shout. “Duke, we’re home! They’ve sighted Meloa!”

“Thanks,” Duke called after him, but the man was hobbling out of sight, eager to carry the good news to others.

Fourteen years, Duke thought as he dragged out his hoarded bottle of water and began shaving. Five since he’d seen Ronda on his last leave. Now the battered old wreck that was left of the flagship was less than an hour from home base, and the two other survivors of the original fleet of eight hundred were limping along behind. Three out of eight hundred—but they’d won! Meloa had her victory.

And far away, Earth could rest in unearned safety for a while.

Duke grimaced bitterly. It was no time to think of Earth now. He shucked off his patched and filthy clothes and reached for the dress grays he had laid out in advance; at least they were still in good condition, almost unused. He dressed slowly, savoring the luxury of clean clothes. The buttons gave him trouble; his left hand looked and behaved almost like a real one, but in the three years since he got it, there had been no chance to handle buttons.

Then he mastered the trick and stepped back to study the final results. He didn’t look bad. Maybe a little gaunt and in need of a good haircut. But his face hadn’t aged as much as he had thought. The worst part was the pasty white where his beard had covered his face, but a few days under Meloa’s sun would fix that. Maybe he could spend a month with Ronda at a beach. He still had most of his share of his salary—nearly a quarter million Meloan credits; even if the rumors of inflation were true, that should be enough.

He stared at his few possessions, then shrugged and left them. He headed up the officers’ lift toward the control room, where he could see Meloa swim into view and later see the homeport of Kordule as they landed.

The pilot and navigator were replacements, sent out to bring the old ship home, and their faces showed none of the jubilation of the crew. They nodded at him as he entered, staring toward the screens without expression. Aside from the blueness of their skins and the complete absence of hair, they looked almost human, and Duke had long since stopped thinking of them as anything else.

“How long?” he asked.

The pilot shrugged. “Half an hour, captain. We’re too low on fuel to wait for clearance, even if control is working. Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time to catch the next ship to Earth.”

“Earth?” Duke glowered at him, suspecting a joke, but there was no humor on the blue face. “I’m not going back!” Then he frowned. “What’s an Earth ship doing on Meloa?”

The navigator exchanged a surprised look with the pilot, and nodded as if some signal had passed between them. His voice was as devoid of expression as his face. “Earth resumed communication with us the day the truce was signed,” he answered. He paused, studying Duke. “They’re giving free passage back to Earth to all terran veterans, captain.”

Nice of them, Duke thought. They were willing to let the men who’d survived come back, just as they hadn’t forbidden anyone to go. Very nice! They could keep their world—and all the other coward planets like them! When the humanoid world of Meloa had been attacked by the insectile monsters from Throm, Earth could have ended the invasion in a year, as those with eyes to see had urged her. But she hadn’t chosen to do so. Instead, she had stepped back on her high retreat of neutrality, and let the Throm aliens do as they liked. It wasn’t the first time she’d acted like that, either.

With more than half of the inhabited planets occupied by various monsters, it seemed obvious that the humanoid planets had to make a common stand. If Meloa fell, it would be an alien stepping stone that could lead back eventually to Earth itself. And once the monsters realized that Earth was unwilling to fight, her vast resources would no longer scare them—she’d be only a rich plum, ripe for the plucking.

When Duke had been one of the first to volunteer for Meloa, he had never realized his home world could refuse to join the battle. He’d believed in Earth and humanity then. He’d waited through all the grim days when it seemed Throm must win—when the absence of replacements proved the communiques from Meloa to be nothing but hopeful lies. But there had been no help. Earth’s neutrality remained unshaken.

And now, after fourteen years in battle hell, helping to fight off a three-planet system of monsters that might have swarmed against all the humanoid races, Earth was willing to forgive him and take him back to the shame of his birthright!

* * * *

“I’m staying,” he said flatly. “Unless you Meloans want to kick me out now?”

The pilot swung around, dropping a quick hand on his shoulder. “Captain,” he said, “that isn’t something to joke about. We won’t forget that there would be no Meloa today without men like you. But we can’t ask you to stay. Things have changed—insanely. The news we sent to the fleet was pure propaganda!”

“We guessed that,” Duke told him. “We knew the Throm ships. And when the dispatches reported all those raids without any getting through, we stopped reading them. How many did penetrate, anyhow?”

“Thirty-one full raids,” the navigator said woodenly. “Thirty-one in the last four months!”

“Thirty-one! What happened to the home fleet?”

“We broke it up and sent it out for your replacements,” the pilot answered dully. “It was the only chance we had to win.”

Duke swallowed the idea slowly. He couldn’t picture a planet giving up its last protection for a desperate effort to end the war on purely offensive drive. Three billion people watching the home fleet take off, knowing the skies were open for all the hell that a savage enemy could send! On Earth, the World Senate hadn’t permitted the building of one battleship, for fear of reprisal.

He swung to face the ports, avoiding the expression on the faces of the two Meloans. He’d felt something of the same on his own face when he’d first inspected Throm. But it couldn’t be that bad on Meloa; she’d won her hard-earned victory!

They were entering the atmosphere now, staggering down on misfiring jets. The whole planet seemed to be covered with a gray-yellow haze that spoke of countless tons of blast dust in the air. From below, Duke heard the men beginning to move toward the big entrance lock, unable to wait for the landing. But they were no longer his responsibility. He’d given up his command before embarking.

The ship came down, threatening to tilt every second, and the pilot was sweating and swearing. The haze began to clear as they neared the ground, but the ports were too high for Duke to see anything but the underside of the thick clouds. He stood up and headed for the lift, bracing himself as the ship pitched.

Suddenly there was a sickening jar and the blast cut off. The ship groaned and seemed to twist, then was still. It was the worst landing Duke had known, but they were obviously down. A second later he heard the port screech open and the thump of the landing ramp.

The singing of the men had picked up into a rough marching beat. Now abruptly it wavered. For a moment, a few voices continued, and then died away, like a record running down. There was a mutter of voices, followed by shouts that must have been the relief officers, taking over. Duke was nearly to the port before he heard the slow, doubtful sound of steps moving down the ramp. By the time he reached it, the last of the men was just leaving. He stopped, staring at the great port city of Kordule.

Most of the port was gone. Where the hangars and repair docks had been, a crater bored into the earth, still smoking faintly. A lone girder projected above it, to mark the former great control building, and a Meloan skeleton was transfixed on it near the top. It shattered to pieces as he looked and began dropping, probably from the delayed tremor of their landing.

Even the section their ship stood on was part of the crater, he saw, with an Earth bulldozer working on it. There was room for no more than ten ships now. Two of the berths were occupied by fat Earth ships, sleek and well kept. Three others held the pitted, warped hulks of Meloan battleships. There were no native freighters, and no sign of tending equipment or hangars.

The pilot had come up behind him, following his gaze. Now the man nodded. “That’s it, captain. Most cities are worse. Kordule escaped the blasts until our rocket cannon failed. Got any script on you?” At Duke’s nod, he pointed. “Better exchange it at the booth, before the rate gets worse. Take Earth dollars. Our silver’s no good.”

He held out a hand, and Duke shook it. “Good luck, captain,” he said, and swung back into the ship.

* * * *

Mercifully, most of Kordule was blanketed by the dust fog. There was the beginning of a series of monstrous craters where men had begun rebuilding underground, the ruined landing field, and a section of what had been the great business district. Now it was only a field of rubble, with bits of windowless walls leading up to a crazy tangle of twisted girders. Only memory could locate where the major streets had been. Over everything lay the green wash of incandite, and the wind carried the smell of a charnel house. There was no sign of the apartment where he and Ronda had lived.

He started down the ramp at last, seeing for the first time the motley crew that had come out to meet the heroes of the battle of Throm. They had spotted him already, however, and some were deserting the men at the sight of his officer’s uniform. Their cries mingled into an insane, whining babble in his ears.

“… Just a scrap for an old man, general … three children at home starving … fought under Jones, captain … cigarette?”

It was a sea of clutching hands, ragged bodies with scrawny arms and bloated stomachs, trembling and writhing in its eagerness to get to him first. Then as one of the temporary officers swung back with a couple of field attendants, it broke apart to let him pass, its gaze riveted on him as he stumbled between the lines.

He spotted a billboard one man was wearing, and his eyes focused sharply on it. “Honest Feroiya,” it announced. “Credit exchange. Best rates in all Kordule.” Below that, chalked into a black square, was the important part: “2,345 credits the dollar.”

Duke shook his head but the sign did not change. A quarter million credits for a hundred dollars. And he’d thought—

“Help a poor old widow.” A trembling hand plucked at his sleeve, and he swung to face a woman in worse rags than the others, her eyes dull and unfocused, her lips mouthing the words only by habit. “Help the widow of General Dayole!”

He gasped as he recognized her. Five years before, he’d danced with her at a party given by Dayole—danced and agreed that the war was ruining them and that it couldn’t get worse.

He reached into his pocket, before remembering the worthlessness of his bills. But there was half a pack of the wretched cigarettes issued the men. He tossed them to her and fled, while the other beggars scrambled toward her.

He walked woodenly across the leprous field, skirting away from the Earth ships, toward a collection of tents and tin huts that had swallowed the other veterans. Then he stopped and cursed to himself as a motorcycle sprang into life near the Earth freighters and came toward him. Naturally, they’d spotted his hair and skin color.

The well-fed, smooth-faced young man swung the machine beside him. “Captain O’Neill?” he asked, but his voice indicated that he was already certain. “Hop in, sir. Director Flannery has been looking forward to meeting you!”

Duke went steadily on, not varying his steps. The machine paced him uncertainly. “Director Flannery of Earth Foreign Office, Captain O’Neill. He requests your presence,” he shouted over the purr of his machine. He started to swing ahead of the marching man.

Duke kept his eyes on his goal. When his steady steps almost brought him against the cycle, it roared out of his way. He could hear it behind him as he walked, but it faded.

There was only the sight and smell of Kordule ahead of him.

II.

Senators were already filing through the Presidium as Edmonds of South Africa came out of his office with Daugherty of the Foreign Office. The youngest senator stopped beside the great bronze doors, studying the situation. Then he sighed in relief. “It’s all right,” he told Daugherty. “Premier Lesseur’s presiding.”

He hadn’t been sure the premier’s words were a full promise before. And while he hadn’t been too worried, it was good to see that the doubtful vice-premier wouldn’t be presiding.

“It better be all right,” the diplomat said. “Otherwise, it’s my neck. Cathay’s counting on Earth to help against the Kloomirians, and if Director Flannery ever finds I committed us—”

Edmonds studied the seats that were filling, and nodded with more confidence as he saw that most of the senators on whom he counted were there. “I’ve got enough votes, as I told you. And with Lesseur presiding, the opposition won’t get far with parliamentary tricks against me. This time, Earth’s going to act.”

Daugherty grunted, obviously still worried, and headed up the steps to the reserved Visitors’ Gallery, while Edmonds moved to his seat in the assembly room. Today he didn’t even mind the fact that it was back in the section reserved for the newest members—the unknowns and unimportants, from the way the press treated them. He would be neither unknown nor unimportant, once his bill was passed, and his brief experience would only add to the miracle he was working.

Looking back on his efforts, he found the results something of a miracle to himself. It had taken two years of vote-swapping, of careful propaganda, and of compromise with his principles. That business of voting for the combined Throm-Meloa Aid Bill had been a bitter thing; but old Harding was scared sick of antagonizing the aliens by seeming partiality, and Edmonds’ switch was the step needed to start the softening up.

At that, he’d been lucky. In spite of what he’d learned of the manipulation of sociological relationships, in spite of the long preparation in advertising dynamics and affective psychology, he couldn’t have made it if Cathay hadn’t been a human colony!

Now, though, Lesseur was calling the chamber to order. The senators quieted quickly, and there was almost complete silence as the old man picked up the paper before him.

“The Senate will consider Resolution 1843 today,” Lesseur said quietly. “A Resolution that Earth shall grant assistance to the Colony of Cathay in the event of any aggressive alien act, proposed by Sir Alfred Edmonds. Since the required time for deliberation has elapsed, the chair will admit discussion on this resolution. Senator Edmonds!”

Edmonds was on his feet, and every face turned to him. The spotlight came down on him, blinding him to the others. He picked up the microphone, polishing the words in his mind. The vote might already be decided, but the papers would still print what he said now! And those words could mean his chance to work his way up through the Committee of Foreign Affairs and perhaps on to becoming Earth’s youngest premier.

It might even mean more. Once Earth shook off her lethargy and moved to her rightful position of power and strength among the humanoid worlds, anything could happen. There was the Outer Federation being formed among the frontier worlds and the nucleus of close relations with hundreds of planets. Some day there might be the position of premier of a true Interstellar Congress!

* * * *

Edmonds began quietly, listening to his voice roll smoothly from the speakers, giving the long history of Earth and her rise to a position as the richest and most respected of planets. He retold the story of how she had been the first to discover the interstellar drive, and how it had inevitably spread. He touched on the envy of the alien worlds, and the friendship of the humanoid planets that had enabled Earth to found her dozen distant colonies. He couldn’t wisely discuss her cowardice and timidity in avoiding her responsibilities to help her friends; but there was another approach.

“In the forefront of every battle against alien aggression,” he declaimed proudly, “have been men from Earth. Millions of our young men have fought gloriously and died gladly to protect the human—and humanoid—civilizations from whatever forms of life have menaced them. Djamboula led the forces of Hera against Clovis, just as Captain O’Neill so recently directed the final battle that saved Meloa from the hordes of Throm. In our own ranks, we have a man who spent eight long and perilous years in such a gallant struggle to save a world for humanoid decency. Senator Harding—”

From the darkened sea of faces, a voice suddenly sounded. “Will the senator yield?” It was the deep baritone of Harding.

Edmonds frowned in irritation, but nodded. A few words of confirmation on his point from Harding couldn’t hurt. “I yield to the senator from Dixie,” he answered.

The spotlight shifted as Harding got slowly to his feet, making a white halo of his hair. He did not look at Edmonds, but turned to face Lesseur.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I move that Resolution 1843 be tabled!”

“Second!” The light shifted to another man, but Edmonds had no time to see who it was as he stood staring open-mouthed at Harding.

He shouted for the chair’s attention, but Lesseur brought the gavel down sharply once, and his voice rang over the speakers. “It has been moved and seconded that Resolution 1843 be tabled. The senators will now vote.”

Edmonds stood frozen as the voting began. Then he dropped back hastily to press the button that would turn the square bearing his number a negative red. He saw his light flash on, while other squares were lighting. When the voting was finished, there were three such red squares in a nearly solid panel of green.

“The resolution is tabled,” Lesseur announced needlessly.

Harding stood up and began moving towards the rear where Edmonds sat. The junior senator was too stunned for thought. Dimly he heard something about regrets and explanations, but the words had no meaning. He felt Harding help him to his feet and begin to guide him toward the door, where someone had already brought a shocked, white-faced Daugherty.

It was then he thought of Cathay, and what his ambition and Earth’s ultimate deceit and cowardice would mean to the millions there.

III

A week of the dust-filled air of Meloa had left its mark on Captain Duke O’Neill. It had spread filth over his uniform, added another year to his face, and made waking each morning a dry-throated torture. Now he stopped at the entrance to the ship where he had been reassigned a berth for the night shift. An attendant handed him a small bottle, three biscuits, and a magazine. He tasted the chemically purified water sickly, stuffed the three ersatz biscuits into his pocket, and moved down the ramp, staring at the magazine.

It was from Earth, of course, since no printing was being done yet on Meloa. It must have come in on one of the three big Earth freighters he’d heard land during the night. Tucked into it was another of the brief notes he’d been receiving: “Director Flannery will be pleased to call on Captain O’Neill at the captain’s convenience.”

He shredded the note as he went across the field; he started to do the same with the news magazine, until the headlines caught his attention.

Most of the news meant nothing to him. But he skimmed the article on the eleventh planet to join the Outer Federation; the writer was obviously biased against the organization, but Duke nodded approvingly. At least someone was doing something. He saw that Cathay was in for trouble. Earth was living up to her old form! Then he shoved the magazine into his pocket and trudged on toward the veteran’s reassignment headquarters.

Machinery was being moved from the Earth freighters, and Duke swore again. Five billion Earthmen would read of their “generosity” to Meloa, and any guilt they felt for their desertion would vanish in a smug satisfaction at their charity. Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or craters that had been factories.

There were only a few Meloans in the crude tent that served as their headquarters. Duke went back toward the cubbyhole where a thin, haggard man sat on a broken block behind a makeshift desk.

The hairless blue head shook slowly while the man’s eyes dropped hungrily to the paper in Duke’s pocket and away again guiltily. “No work, Captain O’Neill. Unless you can operate some of those Earth machines we’re getting?”

Duke grimaced, passing the magazine over to hands that trembled as they took it. His education was in ultra-literary creative writing, his experience in war. And here, where there was the whole task of rebuilding a planet to be done, the ruin of tools and power made what could be done too little for even the few who were left. There was no grain to reap or wood to cut after the killing gas from Throm had ruined vegetation; there were no workable mines where all had been blasted closed. Transportation was gone. And the economy had passed beyond hand tools, leaving too few of those. Even whole men were idle, and his artificial hand could never replace a real one for carrying rubble.

“Director Flannery has been asking for you again,” the man told him.

Duke ignored it. “What about my wife?”

The Meloan frowned, reaching for a soiled scrap of paper. “We may have something. One of her former friends thinks she was near this address. We’ll send someone out to investigate, if you wish, captain; but it’s still pretty uncertain.”

“I’ll go myself,” Duke said harshly. He picked up the paper, recognizing the location as one that had been in the outskirts.

The man behind the desk shook his head doubtfully. Then he shrugged, and reached behind him for a small automatic. “Better take this—and watch your step! There are two bullets left.”

Duke nodded his thanks and turned away, dropping the gun into his pocket. Behind him he heard a long sigh and the rustle of a magazine being opened quickly.

* * * *

It was a long walk. At first, he traced his way through streets that had been partially blasted clear. After the first mile, however, he was forced to hunt around or over the litter and wreckage, picking the way from high spot to high spot. There were people about, rooting through the debris, or patrolling in groups. He drew the automatic and carried it in his hand, in plain sight. Some stared at him and some ignored him, but none came too close.

Once he heard shouting and a group ran across his path, chasing a small rodent. He heard a wild tumult begin, minutes later. When he passed the spot where they had stopped, a fight was going on, apparently over the kill.

At noon he stopped to drink sparingly of his water and eat one of the incredibly bad biscuits. What food there was available or which could be received from the Earth freighters was being mixed into them, but it wasn’t enough. The workers got a little more, and occasionally someone found a few cans under the rubble. The penalty for not turning such food in was revocation of all food allotment, but there was a small black market where unidentified cans could be bought for five Earth dollars, and some found its way there. The same black market sold the few remaining cigarettes at twice that amount each.

It was beginning to thunder to the north as he stood up and went wearily on, and the haze was thickening. He tried to hurry, uncertain of how dark it would get. If he got caught now, he’d never be able to return before night. He stumbled on a broken street sign, decoding what was left of it, and considered. Then he sighed in relief. As he remembered it, he was almost there.

The buildings had been lower here, and the rubble was thinner. There seemed to be more people about, judging by the traces of smoke that drifted out of holes or through glassless windows. He saw none outside, however.

He was considering trying one of the places from which smoke was coming when he saw the little boy five hundred feet ahead. He started forward, but the kid popped into what must have been a cellar once. Duke stopped, calling quietly.

This time it was a girl of about sixteen who appeared. She sidled closer, her eyes fixed on his hair. Her voice piped out suddenly, scared and desperate. “You lonesome, Earthman?” Under the fright, it was a grotesque attempt at coquetry. She edged nearer, staring at him. “I won’t roll you, honest!”

“All I want is information,” he told her thickly. “I’m looking for a woman named Ronda—Ronda O’Neill. She was my wife.”

The girl considered, shaking her head. Her eyes grew wider as he pulled out a green Earth bill, but she didn’t move. Then, as he added the two remaining biscuits, she nodded quickly, motioning him forward. “Mom might know,” she said.

She ran ahead, and soon an older woman shuffled up the broken steps. In her arms was a baby, dead or in a coma, and she rocked it slowly, moaning softly as she listened to his questions. She grunted finally, and reached out for the reward. Shuffling ahead of him, she went up the rubble-littered street and around a corner, to point. “Go in,” she said. “Ronda’ll be back.”

Duke shoved the crude door back and stepped into what was left of a foyer in a cheap apartment house. The back had been blasted away, but the falling building had sealed over one corner, covering it from most of the weather. Light came from the shattered window, showing a scrap of blanket laid out on the floor near a few possessions. At first, nothing identified the resident in any way, and he wondered if it were a trap. Then he bent over a broken bracelet, and his breath caught sharply. The catch still worked, and a faded miniature of him was inside the little holder. Ronda’s!

Duke dropped onto the blanket, trying to imagine what Ronda would be like, and to picture the reunion. But the present circumstances wouldn’t fit into anything he could imagine. He could only remember the bravely smiling girl who had seen him off five years before.

He heard a babble of voices outside, but he didn’t look out. The walk had exhausted him. Hard as the bed was, it was better than standing up. Anyhow, if Ronda came back, he was pretty sure she would be warned of his presence.

He slept fitfully, awakened by the smells and sounds from outside. Once he thought someone looked in, but he couldn’t be sure. He turned over, almost decided to investigate, and dozed off again.

It was the hoarse sound of breathing and a soft shuffle that wakened him that time. His senses jarred out of slumber with a feeling of wrongness that reacted in instant caution. He let his eyes slit open, relieved to find there was still light.

Between him and the door, a figure was creeping up on hands and knees. The rags of clothes indicated it was a woman and the knife in one hand spelled murder!

Duke snapped himself upright to a sitting position, his hand darting for the gun in his pocket. A low shriek came from the woman, and she lunged forward, the knife rising. There was no time for the gun. He caught her wrist, twisting savagely. She scratched and writhed, but the knife spun from her grasp. With a moan, she collapsed across his knees.

He turned her face up, staring at it unbelievingly. “Ronda!”

Bloated and stained, lined with fear, it still bore a faint resemblance to the girl he had known. Now a fleeting look of cunning crossed her face briefly, to be replaced with an attempt at dawning recognition. “Duke!” She gasped it, then made a sound that might have been meant for joy. She stumbled to her knees, reaching out to him. But her eyes swiveled briefly toward the knife. “Duke, it’s you!”

He pushed her back and reached for the knife. He was sure she’d known who it was—had probably been the one who awakened him by looking in through the broken window. “Why’d you try to kill me, Ronda? You saw who it was. If you needed money, you know I’d give you anything I had. Why?”

“Not for money.” She twisted from him and slumped limply against a broken wall. Tears came into her eyes. This time the catch in her voice was real. “I know … I know, Duke. And I wanted to see you, to talk to you, too.” She shook her head slowly. “What can I do with money? I wanted to wake you up like old times. But Mrs. Kalaufa—she led you here—she said—”

He waited, but she didn’t finish. She traced a pattern on the dust of the floor, before looking up again. “You’ve never been really hungry! Not that hungry! You wouldn’t understand.”

“Even with the dole, you can’t starve that much in the time since Kordule was bombed,” he protested. He gagged as he thought of the meaning he’d guessed from her words, expecting her to deny it.

She shrugged. “In ten years, you can do anything. Oh, sure, you came back on leave and we lived high. Everything was fine here, wasn’t it? Sure it was, for you. They briefed me on where I should take you, so there’d be good food ready. They kept a few places going for the men who came back on leave. We couldn’t ruin your morale!”

She laughed weakly, and let the sound die away slowly. “How do you think we sent out the food and supplies for the fleet the last three years, after the blockade on our supplies from friendly worlds? Why do you think there was no more leave for you? Because they didn’t think you brave soldiers could stand just seeing how the rest of us lived! And you think you had it tough! Watch the sky for the enemy while your stomach hopes for the sound that might be a rat. Hide three cans of food you’ll be shot for hoarding—because there is nothing else important in the world. And then have a man steal them from you when the raids come! What does a soldier know of war?”

The sickness inside him grew into a knot, but he still couldn’t fully believe what she was saying. “But cannibalism—”

“No.” She shook her head with a faint trace of his own disgust. “No, Duke. Mrs. Kalaufa told me … you’re not really the same race—Not as close as you are to an Earth animal, and you don’t call that cannibalism. Nobody on Meloa has ever been a cannibal—yet! How much money do you have, Duke?”

He took it out and handed it to her. She counted it mechanically and handed it back. “Not enough. You can’t take me away when you leave here.”

“I’m not leaving,” he told her. He dropped the money back on the blanket beside her.

She stared at him for a moment and then pulled herself up to her feet, moving toward the door. “Good-by, Duke. And get off Meloa. You can’t help us any more. And I don’t want you here when I get desperate enough to remember you might take me back. I like you too much for that, even now.”

He took a step toward her, and she ducked.

“Get out!” She screamed it at him. “Do you think I can stand looking at you without drooling any longer? Do you want me to call Mrs. Kalaufa for help?”

Through the open door, he saw Mrs. Kalaufa across the street, still cradling the child. As the door slammed shut behind him, the woman screamed, either as a summons or from fear that he’d seek revenge on her. He saw other heads appear, with frantic eyes that stared sullenly at the gun he carried. He stumbled down the street, where rain was beginning to fall, conscious that it would be night before he got back to the port. He no longer cared.

There was no place for him here, he now saw. He was still an Earthman, and Earthmen were always treated as a race apart somehow. He didn’t belong. Nor could he go back to a life on Earth. But there were still the recruiting stations there; so long as war existed, there had to be such stations. He headed for the fat ships of Earth that squatted complacently on the wrecked port.

IV

Prince Queeth of Sugfarth had left the royal belt behind, and only a plain band encircled his round little body as he trotted along, his four legs making almost no sound. His double pair of thin arms and the bird-like head on his long neck bobbled excitedly in time to his steps. Once he stopped to glance across the black stone buildings of the city as they shone in the dull red of the sun, toward the hill where his father’s palace was lighted brightly for the benefit of his Earth guests. Queeth touched his ears together ceremoniously and then trotted on, until he came to the back door of his group’s gymnasium. He whistled the code word and the door opened automatically.

The whole group was assembled, though it was past sleep week for most of them. Their ears clicked together, but they waited silently as he curled himself up in the official box. Then Krhal, the merchant viscount, whistled questioningly. “This will have to be important, Queeth.”

The prince bobbed his ears emphatically. “It is. My father’s guests have all the news, and I learned everything. It won’t be as long as we thought.” He paused, before delivering the big news. “The bipeds of Kloomiria are going to attack Cathay. There’ll be official war there within two weeks!”

He saw them exchanging hasty signals, but again it was Krhal who voiced their question. “And you think that is important, Queeth? What does it offer us? Cathay is a human colony. Earth will have to declare war with her. And with Earth’s wealth, it will be over before we could arrive.”

“Earth has already passed a resolution that neutrality will apply to colonies as well as to other planets!”

This time the whistles were sharper. Krhal had difficulty believing it at first. “So Earth really is afraid to fight? That must mean those rumors that she has no fleet are true. Our ancestors thought so, and even planned to attack her, before the humanoids defeated us. The ancestor king believed that even a single ship fully armed might conquer her.”

“It could be,” Queeth admitted. “But do you agree that this is the news for which we’ve waited so long?”

There was a quick flutter of cars. “It’s our duty,” Krhal agreed. “In a war between Cathay and Kloomiria, we can’t remain neutral if we’re ever to serve our friends. Well, the ship is ready!”

That came as a surprise to Queeth. He knew the plans were well along, but not that they were completed. As merchant viscount, and second-degree adult, Krhal was entitled to a tenth of his father’s interests. He’d chosen the biggest freighter and the balance in fluid assets, to the pleasure of his father—who believed he was planning an honorable career of exploring.

“The conversion completed?” Queeth asked. “But the planet bombs—!”

“Earth supplied them on the last shipment. I explained on the order that I was going to search uninhabited planets for minerals.”

Queeth counted the group again, and was satisfied. There were enough. With a ship of that size, fully staffed and armed, they would be a welcome addition to any fleet. They might be enough to tip the balance for victory, in fact. And while Cathay and Kloomiria lay a long way on the other side of Earth’s system, the drives were fast enough to cover it in two weeks.

“Does your father know?” Krhal asked.

Queeth smirked. “Would you tell him? He still believes along with the Earth ambassador that the warrior strain was ruined among our people when we lost the war with the humanoids.”

“Maybe it was,” Krhal said doubtfully. “In four generations, it could evolve again. And there are the books and traditions from which we trained. If even a timid race such as those of Earth can produce warriors like O’Neill—a mere poet—why can’t the Sugfarth do better? Particularly when Earth rebuilt factories for us to start our shipbuilding anew.”

“Then we join the war,” the prince decided.

There was a series of assent signals from the group.

“Tonight,” he suggested, and again there was only assent.

Krhal stood up, setting the course for the others. When the last had risen, Queeth uncurled himself and rose from the box. “We’ll have to pass near Earth,” he suggested as they filed out toward the hangars where Krhal kept his ship. “Maybe we should show our intentions there!”

There was a sudden whistle of surprise. Then the assent was mounting wildly. Queeth trotted ahead toward the warship, making his attack plans over again as he realized he was a born leader who could command such enthusiasm. He had been doubtful before, in spite of his study of elementary statistical treatment of relationships.

The lights in the palace showed that the Earth guests were still celebrating as the great, heavily-laden warship blasted up and headed toward Earth.

V

Duke O’Neill found a corner of the lounge where no Earthman was near and dropped down with the magazine and papers, trying to catch up on the currents of the universe as they affected the six hundred connected worlds. Most of the articles related to Earth alone, and he skipped them. He found one on the set-up of the Outer Federation finally. The humanoid planets there were in a pocket of alien worlds, and union had been almost automatic. It was still loose, but it seemed to have sound enough a basis.

If Earth had been willing to come out of its shell and risk some of its fat trading profits, there could have been an even stronger union that would have driven war-like thoughts out of the minds of all the aliens.

Instead, she seemed to be equally interested in building up her potential enemies and ruining her friends. Duke had watched a showing of new films on the work being done on Throm the night before, and he was still sick from it. Throm had lost the war, but by a military defeat, not by thirty-one unprotected raids on all her surface. She still had landing fields equipped for Earth ships, and the big freighters were dropping down regularly, spewing out foods, equipment and even heavy machinery for her rebuilding. Throm was already on the road back. Meloa had to wait until she could pull herself up enough to build fields.

Duke turned his eyes to the port. The ship had stopped at Clovis on the way back to Earth. From where he sat, he could see almost Earth-like skyscrapers stretching up in a great city. The landing field was huge, and there were rows on rows of factories building more of the freighters that stubbed the field.

It seemed impossible, when he remembered that only forty years had passed since Djamboula’s suicide raid had finally defeated the fungoid creatures of the planet and since the survivors’ vows to repay all Earthmen for their defeat. They were a prolific race, of course—but without help from Earth, the factories would be shacks and the rockets and high-drive ships would be only memories.

He wondered how many were cursing their ancestors for making the mistake of attacking a neighboring humanoid planet instead of Earth, only two days away on high drive. By now, they knew that Earth was defenseless. And yet, they seemed content to go on with their vows forgotten. Duke couldn’t believe it. Down underground, beyond Earth inspection, they could have vast stockpiles of weapons, ready to install in their ships within days.

How could Earth risk it, unless she had her own stock of hidden ships and weapons? Yet if she did, he was sure that it would have been impossible not to use them in defense of the colony of Cathay.

He stared out, watching the crewmen mixing with the repulsive alien natives, laughing as they worked side by side. There must be some factor he didn’t understand, but he’d never found it—nor did he know anyone who had guessed it.

He stirred, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. But it wasn’t fear for Earth that bothered him. It was simply that sooner or later some alien race would risk whatever unknown power the others feared. If the aliens won, the vast potential power of Earth would then be turned against all the humanoid races of the universe. Humanity could be driven from the galaxy.

He turned the pages, idly glancing at the headlines. It was hard to realize that the paper wasn’t right off the presses of Earth; it must have been brought out to Clovis on the latest ship. He checked the date, and frowned in surprise. According to the rough calendar he’d kept, it was the current date. Somewhere he must have lost track of two days. How much else had he lost sight of during the long years of war?

A diagram caught his attention almost at once as he turned to another magazine. It was of a behemoth ship, bigger than any he had ever seen, and built like the dream of a battleship, though it was listed as a freighter. He scanned it, mentally converting it. With a few like that, Meloa could have won during the first year.

Then he swore as he saw it was part of an article on the progress of some alien world known as Sugfarth—by the article, a world of former warriors, once dedicated to the complete elimination of humanoids!

* * * *

He saw Flannery coming along the deck at that moment, and he picked up the magazine, heading for his cabin. He’d ignored previous summons on the thin excuse of not feeling well. He had no desire to talk with Earthmen. It was bad enough to take their charity back to Earth and to have to stay on the planet until he could sign on with the Outer Federation. His memories were ugly enough, without having them refreshed.

But Flannery caught him as he was opening the door to his cabin. The director was huge, with heavy, strong features and a body that looked too robust for the white hair and the age that showed around his eyes. His voice was tired, however, showing his years more plainly than his looks.

“Captain O’Neill,” he said quickly. “Stop jousting with windmills. It’s time you grew up. Besides, I’ve got a job for you.”

“Does my charity passage demand an interview, director?” Duke asked.

The other showed no offense, unfortunately. He smiled wryly. “If I choose, it does. I’m in command of this ship, as well as head of the Foreign Office. May I come in?”

“I can’t keep you out,” Duke admitted. He dropped onto the couch, sprawling out, while the other found the single chair.

Flannery picked up the magazine and glanced through it. “So you’re interested in the Outer Federation?” he asked. “Don’t be. It doesn’t have a chance. In a week or so, you’ll see it shot. And I don’t mean we’ll wreck it. They’ve picked their own doom, against all the advice we could give them. Care to have a drink sent down while we talk?”

Duke shook his head. “I’d rather cut it short.”

“Hotheads,” Flannery told the walls thoughtfully, “make the best men obtainable, once they’re tamed. Nothing beats an idealist who can face facts. And the intelligent ones usually grow up. Captain, I’ve studied your strategy against Throm on that last drive after Dayole was killed. Brilliant! I need a good man, and I can pay for one. If you give me a chance, I can also show you why you should take it. Know anything about how Earth got started on its present course?”

“Dumb luck and cowardice, as far as I can see,” Duke answered.

When Earth discovered the first inefficient version of the high drive, she had found herself in a deserted section of the universe, with the nearest inhabited star system months away. The secret of the drive couldn’t be kept, of course, but the races who used it to build war fleets found it easier to fight with each other than with distant Earth. Later, when faster drives were developed, Earth was protected by the buffer worlds she had rebuilt.

Flannery grinned. “Luck—and experience. We learned something from our early nuclear-technological wars. We learned more from the interstellar wars of others. We decided that any planet ruined by such war wouldn’t fight again—the women and children who lived through that hell would see to it—unless new hatreds grew up during the struggle back. So we practically pauperized ourselves at first to see that they recovered too quickly for hate and fear. We also began digging into the science of how to manipulate relationships—Earth’s greatest discovery—to set up a system that would work. It paid off for us in the long run.”

“So what’s all that got to do with me?” Duke asked. He’d heard of the great science of Earth and her ability to manipulate all kinds of relationships before, spoken of in hush-hush terms when he was still in college. But he’d quit believing in fairy tales even before then. Now he was even sicker of Earth’s self-justification.

Flannery frowned, and then shrugged. “It’s no secret I need a good man on Throm, and you’re the logical candidate, if I can pound some facts into your head. I’ve found that sending an Earthman they know as a competent enemy works wonders. Not at first—there’s hostility for a while—but in the long run it gives them a new slant on us.”

“Then you’d better get an Earthman,” Duke snapped. “You’re talking to a citizen of Meloa! By choice!”

“I hadn’t finished my explanation,” Flannery reminded.

Duke snorted. “I was brought up on explanations. I heard men spouting about taming the aliens when I first learned to talk—as if they were wild animals. I read articles on how the Clovisem and those things from Sugfarth needed kindness. It’s the same guff I heard about how to handle lions. But the men doing the talking weren’t in the ring; and I noticed the ringmaster carried a whip and gun. He knew the beasts. I know the aliens of Throm.”

“From fighting them? From hating them? Or from being more afraid of them than you think Earth is, captain? I’ve talked to more aliens than you’ve ever seen.”

“And the Roman diplomats laughed at the soldiers who told them the Goths were getting ready to sack Rome.”

Flannery stared at him in sudden amusement. “We aren’t in an Empire period, O’Neill. But you might look up what the Romans did to conquered people during the Republic, when Rome was still growing. Captain, I’m not underrating the aliens!”

“Tame aliens! Or ones faking tameness. You’ve seen them smiling, maybe. I saw the other side.”

The old man sighed heavily and reached for his shirt. He began unbuttoning it and pulling it over his head. “You’ve got a nice prosthetic hand,” he said. “Now take a look at some real handiwork!”

There was a strap affair around his shoulders, with a set of complicated electronic controls slipped into the muscle fibers. From them, both arms hung loose, unattached at the shoulder blades. Further down, another affair of webbing went around his waist.

“Only one leg is false,” he explained, “but the decorations are real. They came from a highly skilled torturer. I’ve had my experience with aliens. Clovisem, if you’re curious. I was the second in command on Djamboula’s volunteer raid, forty years ago.”

Duke dropped his eyes from the scars. For a second, he groped for words of apology. Then the cold, frozen section of his brain swallowed the emotions. “I’ve seen a woman with a prosthetic soul,” he said bitterly. “Only she didn’t turn yellow because of what the aliens did!”

Red spots shot onto Flannery’s cheeks and one of the artificial arms jerked back as savagely as a real one. He hesitated, then reached for his shirt. “O.K., squawman!”

The word had no meaning for Duke, though he knew it was an insult. But he couldn’t respond to it. He fumbled through his memories, trying to place it. Something about Indians—

Flannery began buttoning his pants over the shirt. “I’m out of bounds, captain,” he said more quietly. “I hope you don’t know the prejudices behind that crack. But you win. If you ever want the rest of the explanation, look me up.”

He closed the door behind him softly and went striding evenly up the passage.

Duke frowned after him. The talk had gotten under his skin. If there were things he didn’t know—

Then he swore at himself. There was plenty he didn’t know. But the carefully developed indoctrination propaganda of the top Earth psychologists wasn’t the answer he wanted.

He’d have to make his stay on Earth shorter than he’d planned. If they could get to a man who had served under Djamboula and convince him that Clovisem were nice house pets, it was little wonder they could wrap the rest of Earth around their psychological fingers.

Too bad their psychology wasn’t adjusted to aliens!

VI.

Barth Nevesh was nearly seven feet tall, and his cat-shaped ears stuck up another four inches above his head. Even among the people of Kel he was a big man, but to the representatives of the other humanoid worlds of the Federation, he seemed a giant. The thick furs he wore against the heavy chill of the room added to his apparent size, and the horns growing from his shoulders lifted his robes until he seemed to have no neck.

Now he stood up, driving his heavy fist down against the big wooden table. “The question is, do we have the answer or not?” he roared. “You say we do. Logic says we do. Then let’s act on it!”

The elfin figure of Lemillulot straightened up at the other end of the table. “Not so fast, commander. Nobody questions the power of your fleet. Nobody doubts that we have the only possible answer to the aliens that Earth is helping to take over our universe—strength through unity. But is it as good as it can be?”

“How better?” Barth roared again. “Every world in this alien pocket has been building its strength since the Earthmen’s ships first reached here and showed us space travel was possible. We’ve seen the stinking aliens get the same ships. But now we’ve got something they can’t resist—a Federation, in spite of all Earth could do to stop us. If all our fleets strike at once, no alien world can resist—and we can stop merely holding them back. Wipe them out, one by one, I say! The only good alien is a dead alien!”

There was a lot of talk—more than Barth usually heard or contributed in a month. Lemillulot was the focus of most of it. The little man would never be satisfied. He wanted all the humanoid worlds organized, and by now it was plain that Earth’s influence would be too strong outside of their own section.

Their accomplishments were already enough. United as they were, the Federation was clearly invincible. Their fleets were at full size and the crews were thoroughly trained. No other time would be better.

There had already been a stir of ship-building on the alien worlds, since the first word of the Federation had somehow leaked out. The Federation position was as good as it would ever be—and with eleven fleets working together, nothing better was needed.

“Knock them down with the long shells, haze them to base with interceptors, and then rip their worlds with planet bombs,” Barth repeated his plans. “We can do it in six hours for a planet—we can start at the strongest, Neflis, and work down through the weakest, to make up for our losses. And if the Earth forces start moving in to rebuild them—well, I’ve been thinking the Federation could use a little more wealth and power!”

“Humanoids don’t attack humanoids,” Lemillulot protested.

The snarling, dog face of Sra from Chumkt opened in a grin, and his sly voice held a hint of a chuckle. “Or so Earth keeps preaching. But Earthmen aren’t humanoids. They’re humans!”

He laughed softly at his own wit. There were rumbles of uncertainty, but Barth saw that the seed had taken root. If they kept working together, he and Sra could force it to ripen soon enough.

“That can wait,” Barth decided. “The question is, do we attack Neflis, and when? I say now!”

* * * *

It took an hour more for the decision. But there would be only one answer, and the final vote was unanimous. The fleets would take off from their home worlds and rendezvous near the barren sun; from there, they would proceed in a group, under the control of Barth, toward the alien world of Neflis.

The commander checked his chronometer as the delegates went to send their coded reports to their home worlds. He had the longest distance to lead his fleet, and there was no time for delay.

Outside, the harsh snow crackled under his feet, and a layer of storm clouds cut off the wan heat of Kel’s sun. He drew in a deep breath, watching the swirl of white as he exhaled. It was a good world—a world to build men. It was the world from which a leader should come.

The fleet would be all his within a day. And for a time, it would be busy at the work of wiping out the nearby aliens. After that—well, there were other aliens further out toward the last frontiers of exploration. With care, the fleet could be kept busy for years.

Barth was remembering his histories, and the armies that had been swept together. In a few years, fighting men began to think of themselves as a people apart, and loyalty to their birthplace gave way to loyalty to their leader. Five years should be enough. Then there could be more than a Federation; there could be the empire among the worlds that had been his lifelong dream.

But first, there was Earth. He snorted to himself as he reached the ships of his fleet. Missionaries! Spreading their soft fear through the universe. In five years, his fleet should be ready for ten times the power of any single planet—including Earth.

Sra would be the only problem in his way. But that could be met later. For the moment, the man from Chumkt was useful.

Barth strode up the ramp of his flagship, shouting out to his men as he went. There was no need of signals. They had been primed and waiting for days, ready to follow him up.

He dropped to the control seat, staring at the little lights that would tell him of their progress. “Up ship!” he shouted, and from the metal halls and caverns of the ship other voices echoed his cry.

The Wind Dragon leaped upwards sharply. Behind, as the red lights showed, four hundred others charged into the sky and the open space beyond. Barth sat at the great screen, watching as they drew on steadily toward the rendezvous, mulling over his plans.

They were three hours out from Kel when he turned the control over to his lieutenant and went below, where his table was laden with the smoking cheer of good green meat and ale. With a sigh of contentment, he threw back his outer robe and prepared to forget everything until he had dined.

He was humming hoarsely to himself as he cut a piece of the meat and stuck it on his left shoulder horn, within reach of his teeth. Maybe a little of the baked fish would blend well—

The emergency drum blasted through the ship as he lifted the knife. Swearing and tearing at the flesh near his mouth, he leaped up and forward toward the control room. He heard voices shouting, something about a fleet. Then he was at the screens where he could see for himself.

Five million miles ahead, another fleet was assembled, where none should be from any of the Federation worlds! His eyes swept sideways across the screen, estimating the number. It was impossible. There weren’t a quarter of that number in the fleet of any world, humanoid or alien!

Barth flipped on the microresolver, twisting the wheel that sent it racing across the path of the fleet ahead. His eyes confirmed what his mind had already recognized.

The aliens had their own federation. There were ships of every type there, grouped in units. Thirteen alien worlds were combined against the Outer Federation.

For a breath he hesitated, ready to turn back and defend Kel while there was time. But it would never work. One fleet would never be enough to defend the planet against the combined aliens.

“Cluster!” he barked into the communicator. “Out rams and up speed. Prepare for breakthrough!”

If they could hit the aliens at full drive and cut through the weaker center, they could still rendezvous with the other fleets. The combined strength might be enough. And the gods help Kel if the aliens refused to follow him!

Earth, he thought; Earth again, coddling and protecting aliens, forming them into a conspiracy against the humanoid worlds. If Kel or any part of the Federation survived, that debt would be paid!

VII.

Earth lay fat and smug under the sun, seemingly unchanged since Duke had left it. For generations the populace had complained that they were draining themselves dry to rebuild other worlds, but they had grown rich on the investment. It was the only planet where men worked shorter and shorter hours to give them more leisure in which to continue a frantic effort to escape boredom. It was also the only world where the mention of aliens made men think of their order books instead of their weapons.

Duke walked steadily away from the grotesquely elaborate landing field. He had less than thirty cents in his pocket, but his breakfast aboard had left him satisfied for the moment. He turned onto a wider street, heading the long distance across the city toward the most probable location of the recruiting stations.

The Outer Federation station would be off the main section, since the official line was disapproving of such a union. But he was sure there would be one. The system of recruiting was a tradition too hard to break. Earth used it as an escape valve for her troublemakers. And since such volunteers made some of the best of all fighters, they had already decided the outcome of more than one war. By carefully juggling the attention given the stations, Earth could influence the battles without seeming to do so.

The air was thick with the smell of late summer, and there was pleasure in that, until Duke remembered the odor of Meloa, and its cause. Later the cloying perfume of women mixed with the normal industrial odors of the city, until his nose was overdriven to the point of cutoff. He saw things in the shop windows that he had forgotten, but he had no desire for them. And over everything came the incessant yammer of voices saying nothing, radios blaring, television babbling, and vending machines shouting.

He gave up at last and invested half his small fund in a subway. It was equally noisy, but it took less time. Beside him, a fungoid creature from Clovis was busy practicing silently on its speaking machine, but nobody else seeemed to notice.

Duke’s head was spinning when he reached the surface again. He stopped to let it clear, wondering if he’d ever found this world home. It wouldn’t matter soon, though; once he was signed up at the recruiting station, there would be no time to think.

He saw the sign, only a few blocks from where the recruiting posters for Meloa had been so long ago. It was faded, but he could read the lettering, and he headed for it. As he had expected, it was on a dirty back street, where the buildings were a confusion of shipping concerns and cheaper apartment houses.

He knew something was wrong when he was a block away. There was no pitch being delivered by a barking machine, and no idle group watching the recruiting efforts on the street. In fact, nobody was in front of the vacant store that had been used, and the big posters were ripped down.

He reached the entrance and stopped. The door was half open, but it carried a notice that the place had been closed by order of the World Foreign Office. Through the dirty glass, Duke could see a young man of about twenty sitting slumped behind a battered desk.

He stepped in and the boy looked up apathetically. “You’re too late, captain. Neutrality went on hours ago when the first word came through. Caught me just ready to ship out—after two lousy months recruiting here, I have to be the one stranded.”

“You’re lucky,” Duke told him mechanically, not sure whether he meant it or not. Oddly, the idea of a kid like this mixed up in an interplanetary war bothered him. He turned to go, then hesitated. “Got a newspaper or a directory around that I could borrow?”

The boy fished a paper out of a wastebasket. “It’s all yours, captain. The whole place is yours. Slam the door when you go out. I’m going over to the Cathay office.”

“I’ll go along,” Duke offered. The address of that place was all he’d wanted from the paper. He’d have preferred the Federation to joining up with Earth colonists, but beggars never made good choosers.

The kid shook his head. He dragged open a drawer, found a slip of paper, and handed it over. It was a notice that the legal maximum age for recruiting had been reduced to thirty! “You’d never make it, captain,” he said.

Duke looked at the paper in his hands and at the dim reflection of his face in a window. “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t make it.”

He followed the boy to the door, staring out at the street, thick with its noises and smells. He dropped to the doorsill and looked briefly up at the sky where two ships were cutting out to space. Flannery had known the regulation and hadn’t told him. Yet it was his own fault; the age limit was lower now, but there had always been a limit. He had simply forgotten that he’d grown older.

He found it hard to realize he’d been no older than the kid when he’d signed up for the war with Throm.

* * * *

For a while he sat looking at the street, trying to realize what had happened to him. It took time to face the facts. He listened with half his attention as a small group of teen-age boys came from one of the buildings and began exchanging angry insults with another group apparently waiting for them on the corner. From their attitudes, some of them were carrying weapons and were half-eager, half-afraid to use them. It was hard to remember back to the time when such things had seemed important to him. He considered putting a stop to the argument, before it got out of hand, since no police were near; but adults had no business in kid fights. He watched them retreat slowly back to an alley, still shouting to work up their courage. Maybe he should be glad that there was even this much fire left under the smug placidity of Earth.

Finally, he picked up the newspaper from where he’d dropped it and began turning back to the want ads. His needs were few, and there should be dishwashing jobs, at least, somewhere in the city. He still had to eat and find some place to sleep.

A headline glared up at him, catching his attention. He started to skim the story, and then read it thoroughly. Things weren’t going at all as he’d expected in the Outer Worlds, if the account were true; and usually, such battle reports weren’t altered much.

The aliens had developed a union of their own—if anything, a stronger one than the humanoids had. Apparently they’d chased the Federation ships into some kind of a trap. Losses on both sides were huge. And raids had begun on all the alien and humanoid planets.

He scowled as he came to the latest developments. One section of the Federation fleet under Sra of Chumkt had pulled out, accusing the faction headed by Barth Nevesh of leading the aliens to the humanoid rendezvous. Kel’s leader had gone after the deserters, fought it out with them in the middle of the larger battle, killed Sra, and declared himself the head of the whole Federation. It was madness that should have led to complete annihilation; only the fumbling, uncoördinated leadership of the aliens had saved the humanoid fleets. And now the Federation was coming apart at the seams, with Barth Nevesh frantically scurrying around to catch up the pieces.

Duke read it through again, but with no added information. It was a shock to know that the aliens had combined against the humanoid Federation. Still, looking back on that, he could begin to see that they would have to, once they knew of the Federation. But the rest of the account—

Flannery’s words came back to him. The director had been right. His prediction was already coming true, after only three days—unless he had either had prior knowledge or juggled things to make it come true! Duke considered it, but he could see no way Flannery could either learn or act in advance of the arrival of the ship on Earth. The Federation was farther from Meloa than from this planet. He’d been forced to depend on the same accounts Duke had read in the papers on board the ship.

Then Duke glanced at the date on the current paper idly, and his thoughts jolted completely out of focus. It was dated only three days later than the paper he had seen when they were docked on Clovis! Without instantaneous communication, it was impossible. He might have been mistaken about the date before, but—

Nothing fitted. The feeling of uncertainty came back, crowding out the minor matter of his memory of the date. He stared at the richness of even this poor section of an Earth that huddled here as if afraid of its own shadows, yet reeked with self-satisfaction. He thought of Meloa and Throm, and the gallant try at Federation that had been made on the Outer Worlds. Strength had to lie in union and action; yet all the evidence seemed to say that it lay in timidity and sloth.

Reluctantly he turned the page away from the news, to seek for the job sections. From the alley, there came the sound of a police whistle, and shouts that faded into the distance. It was probably the breaking up of the teen-age argument. A few people ran by, heading for the excitement, but Duke had lost all interest. A taxi stopped nearby and he heard a patter that might have been that of children’s feet, but he didn’t look up.

Then a sharper whistle shrilled almost in his ear and he twisted around to stare at a creature who was gazing at him. Four spindly legs led up to a globular body encased in a harness-like contraption. Above the body, two pairs of thin arms were waving about, while a long neck ended in a bird-like head, topped by two large ears.

The ears suddenly seemed to shimmer in the air, and a surprisingly human voice sounded. “You’re Captain Duke O’Neill!”

Before Duke could answer, a small hand came out quickly to find his and begin shaking it, while the ears twittered on in excitement. “I’m honored to meet you, Captain O’Neill. I’ve been studying your work against Throm. Amazingly clever strategy! Permit me—I’m Queeth, lately a prince of Sugfarth. Perhaps you noticed our ship? No, of course not. You must have landed at the government field. My crew and I are on the way to the war about to begin between Kloomiria and Cathay.”

“Why tell me about it?” Duke asked roughly. Sugfarth—the ship he’d seen diagrammed had come from there. If one of those titans was to be used against Cathay, Earth’s colony was doomed. And the impertinent little monster—!

The creature tried to imitate a shrug with his upper set of arms. “Why not, captain? We’re registered here as a recruiting ship for Cathay, so it’s no secret. We thought we might as well carry along some of the men going out to help, since we had to pass near Earth anyhow. And I dropped by here in the hope that there might be a few who had failed to join the Federation and who would like to switch to Cathay.”

“Wait a minute,” Duke said. He studied the alien, trying to rake what he’d learned from the article out of his memory. But no record of subtlety or deceit had been listed there. The Sugfarth were supposed to be honest—in fact, they’d been one of the rare races to declare their war in advance. Somehow, too, the words had a ring of truth in them. “For Cathay?”

“Certainly, captain. For whom else? The civilized Earth races naturally have to stick together against the barbarians.”

Duke stared at the almost comic figure, juggling the words he had heard with the obvious facts. “What Earth races? Do you mean that Earth is now giving citizenship to your people?”

“Not on this planet, of course.” A pair of beady black eyes stared back, as if trying to understand a ridiculous question. “But we’re citizens of Earth’s economic-cultural-diplomatic system, naturally.”

* * * *

Duke felt something nibble at his mind, but he couldn’t grasp it. And he wasn’t accustomed to carrying on long chitchat with aliens. He shoved the thoughts away and reached for the paper again. “You won’t find recruits here, Queeth. Only me. And I’m too old for the recruiting law. Besides, I’ve got to find a job.”

He turned the pages, locating the column he wanted. What had Flannery meant about Republican Rome? Duke could remember dimly something about Rome’s granting citizenship to her conquered neighbors. It had been the basis of the city’s growth and later power. Now if Earth could inspire citizenship from conquered aliens—

Queeth made a sound like a sigh and shuffled his four feet on the sidewalk uncertainly. “If you came aboard on a visit, who could stop our taking off at once?” he suggested. “We have room for another officer, and we need men like you, Captain O’Neill, to help us against the aliens out there!”

Duke looked down at the small face, and even the alien features couldn’t disguise the obvious sincerity behind the words. It should have made his decision automatic. He’d come here to be recruited, and he was being accepted. There was a ship waiting for him, where his skills could be used. With such a ship, things would be different from the war he had known. He had a picture of Kloomiria under attack from it.

Abruptly, he was seeing again the exploding ships of Throm, and the charnel smell of Kordule on victorious Meloa was thick in his nose.

He stood up, shaking his head, and held out his hand, groping for the phrases that had been all-important once among the recruits he had joined. “Thanks, Queeth,” he said finally. “But I’ve got something to catch up on here. Good luck—on to victory—and give the aliens hell!”

He stood watching Queeth patter off toward the waiting cab and saw it drive away. Then he turned to the want ads in earnest.

Nothing was clear in his mind yet, but he’d need a job first, then a room near the library. He had a lot of current history to catch up on. Whatever Earth was up to had to be recorded somewhere, if he could find it.

VIII.

Through half his reign, Var of Kloomiria had nursed his hatred of the humans into a holy mission. It was eighty years since his visit to Cathay, when the colonists’ children had run screaming from him, shouting that he was a monster, but time had only sharpened the memory. He had covered his too-human body under a multitude of robes and had gloried in the alienness of his head, with its fringe of breathing tentacles and the two lobster-like claws that concealed his tiny mouth. Year after long year, he had built and prayed for the war of vengeance that must come.

Almost, it had passed him by. With the threat of help from Earth for Cathay, he had been forced to delay while larger fleets were built. His reign had been drawing to a close and he had almost resigned himself to the law that would turn the rulership over to his eldest son. Then the boy had died in an explosion less than a week from the change of rule, and almost simultaneously Earth’s timidity had won again, and the protection had been denied her colony.

Now Var’s waiting was finished. He stood in the cabin of his flagship, heading back to Kloomiria after the opening raid of the war, savoring the sweetness of the damage he had done Cathay. Life was sweet.

Behind him, the door dilated softly and his aide came in, carrying a roll of paper. “A message from Cathay, magnificence,” he announced.

Var opened the message and studied it. Then he read it again, uncertainly. He was sure of his knowledge of English, but the note was senseless gibberish. Again he read it, this time aloud:

“Yours of the fourteenth ultimo received and contents noted. We are pleased to inform you that we are in a position to fill your entire order and that shipment is going out at once by special messenger. We trust that you will find our products superior in every way. We believe that you will find our terms completely reasonable.”

It made no more sense aloud.

The aide sighed apologetically. “Deliberately misapplied archaicism is sometimes regarded as humorous by Earthmen, magnificence. I suspect this is a warning that they are retaliating.”

“Bluff!” Var read the words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. It must be an offer, though the wording seemed to indicate he should surrender!

He threw the message into a waste receptacle in disgust and went over to look at the screens where Kloomiria was showing. The humans of Cathay might try a return raid, but he was unworried. Cathay’s fleet was pitiful, and she had no heavy ships from which to launch planet bombs. Of course, there were spy reports of vast numbers of what seemed to be guided missiles, but they could never get through the confusion-signals that blanketed Kloomiria.

As he watched, a signal blinked. He opened the circuit and the face of his admiral looked out. “We’ve received indications of a swarm of small ships, magnificence,” the man reported. “High speed and piloted. It may be a suicide squadron.”

“Suicide!” Var spat the word out. “Whoever heard of the human cowards risking their necks?”

The aide touched his shoulder apologetically. “They are mentioned in Earth books, magnificence. And there was Djamboula.”

Var stared at the screen as the flight was relayed to him, snarling. Definitely, they were one-man ships, not guided missiles. His defenses had never been built to handle suicide squadrons.

“Up, surround them, blast them!” he ordered. A few might get through to the ships or to the planet below, but quick action would wreak havoc among them and discourage further attempts.

* * * *

The Kloomirian fleet opened into a circle and began rising. Now the swarm of little ships began breaking apart, fanning out and attempting to turn. Var hissed. Not even the courage to go through with it after they were discovered! They—

He leaped to the screen, cursing at what he saw.

Where the little ships had opened a hole, a monstrous bulk was hurtling through at fantastic speed. The tiny ships had screened it, but now it outran them, boring straight toward the opening in the Kloomirian fleet. Atomic cannon began running out of enormous hatches, like the bristles jutting from a tendril brush.

“Blast out!” Var screamed into his engine phone. His flagship leaped away at full drive, while the enemy seemed to grow on the screen. Then it diminished as they began drawing away from the fleet.

There was nothing Var could do about the horror that followed. The great vessel bored through the fleet with cannons spitting out hell. If countershots were fired, they had no effect.

“Sugfarth!” the aide screamed in his ears. “A ship from Sugfarth!”

Var remembered the pictures he had seen, and they matched, though none had suggested such a size. It was impossible. The race of Sugfarth were aliens—warriors who had fought humanoids as few races had done. They would have fought with him, not against him!

The ship drove down toward the planet, braking fiercely now. From it, two bulky objects fell. While the planet bombs dropped, the behemoth began to rise again. It came through the shattered ranks of Kloomiria’s fleet, blasting again, and headed toward the tiny ships that had screened it, new hatches opening to receive them.

Half of Var’s fleet was in total ruin. On the planet below, two horrible gouts of flame leaped up through the atmosphere and beyond it, while all of Kloomiria seemed to tremble as half a continent was ruined. Var stared down at the destruction, unmoving.

The aide coughed, holding out another roll of paper. “Cathay is broadcasting an appeal for us to surrender without reprisals, magnificence. And the Estate Governors are demanding fleet protection.”

Var crushed the paper in his hands without reading it.

It would take half the remaining part of the fleet to give even token protection to Kloomiria. His plans had never been based on holding back the seemingly weak forces of Cathay.

“No answer,” he said. His hand reached for the communicator switch and he began issuing orders. “The fleet will regroup and return to base for immediate repairs and rearming. Commanders of all ships will prepare to take off against Cathay within six hours!”

Somehow, the humans had to be crushed completely before they could destroy Kloomiria. After that, if any of his race survived, there would be a mission for all future generations.

Only the power of Earth could have sent the alien ship from Sugfarth, loaded with cannon and bombs, to fight against fellow aliens. Earth had declared neutrality, and then struck! For such a villainy, a million years was not too long to seek vengeance!

IX

Night had fallen in the park beyond the huge Foreign Office building and the air was damp and cool. Duke shivered in the shadows that covered his bench. He should head back to his room, but he had no desire to listen again to the meaningless chatter that came through the thin walls. Time didn’t matter to him now, anyhow.

He swore and reached for a cigarette, brushing the crumpled newspaper from his lap. He’d been a fool to think Flannery would bother with him, just as he’d been a fool to turn down Queeth’s offer. He’d wasted his day off from the messenger job.

Footsteps sounded down the walk that led past his bench, and he drew deeper into the shadows. The steps slowed and a man moved to the other end of the bench. Duke drew heavily on his cigarette, tossed it away, and started to get up.

“Drink?” There was a hand holding a flask in front of him. He hesitated, then took it, and let a long slug run down his throat. In the faint light he could make out the face of Director Flannery. The man nodded. “Sorry I was out when you came, O’Neill. One of the guards saw you out here, so I came over.”

“You should have been in,” Duke said, handing the flask back. “I’ve changed my mind since reading about some of your deals in the Journal. Well, thanks for the drink.”

One of Flannery’s prosthetic hands rested on Duke’s shoulder, and the pressure was surprisingly heavy. “When a man takes a drink with me, captain, he waits until I finish mine.” He tipped up the flask and drank slowly before putting it away. “I suppose you mean the Cathay-Kloomiria mess?”

“What else?” Mess was a mild word. The Sugfarth ship had seemed to make victory for Cathay certain the first few days, but the war had entered a new phase now. Cathay couldn’t maintain the big ship, and it was practically useless. It had simply served to reduce Kloomiria to a position where both sides were equal. The war showed signs of settling down to another prolonged, exhausting affair.

“Yeah, I read the editorial.” Flannery sighed. “We did let a couple of fools make Cathay think we’d bail her out. At the time, it seemed wise. The son of old Var was due to assume rule in a little while and he was strongly pro-human. We wanted to hold things off until he took over and scrapped the war plans. When he was killed—well, we pulled out before Var was any stronger.”

“And sent Queeth’s crowd in to do your blood-letting for you?” Duke sneered.

“That was their own idea,” Flannery denied. He lighted a cigarette and sat staring at the end of it, blowing out a slow stream of smoke. “All right, we made a mess of Cathay. We’ll know better next time. Care to walk back with me?”

“Why? So one of your trained psychopropagandists can indoctrinate me? Or to get drunk and cry over your confession?”

“To keep me from sinking to your level and pushing your nose down your throat!” Flannery told him, but there was no real anger in his voice. He stood up, shrugging. “Nobody’s forcing you, O’Neill. Say the word and I’ll drive you home. But if you want that explanation, my working office seems like a good place to talk.”

For a moment, Duke wavered. But he’d reached the end of his own research, and he’d come here to find the answers. Leaving now would only make him more of a fool. “O.K.,” he decided. “I’ll stay for the big unveiling.”

Flannery grimaced. “There’s no great secret, though we don’t broadcast the facts for people and races not ready for them. We figure those who finish growing up here will soak up most of it automatically. Did you get around to the film file on interstellar wars at the library?”

Duke nodded, wondering how much they knew about his activities. He’d spent a lot of time going over the film for clues. It was so old that the color had faded in places. The rest would have been easier to take without color. Most wasn’t good photography, but all was vivid. It was the record of all the wars since Earth’s invention of the high-drive—nearly two hundred of them. Gimsul, Hathor, Ptek, Sugfarth, Clovis, and even Meloa—the part he hadn’t seen, beyond Kordule where the real damage lay; Ronda had been wrong, and cannibalism had been discovered, along with much that was worse. Two hundred wars in which victor and vanquished alike had been ruined—in which the supreme effort needed to win had left most of the victors worse than the defeated systems.

“War!” The word was bitter on Flannery’s lips. “Someone starts building war power—power to insure peace, as they always say. Then other systems must have power to protect themselves. Strength begets force—and fear and hatred. Sooner or later, the strain is too great, and you have a war so horrible that its very horror makes surrender impossible. You saw it on Meloa. I’ve seen it fifty times!”

* * * *

They reached the Foreign Office building and began crossing its lobby. Flannery glanced up at the big seal on the wall with its motto in twisted Latin—Per Astra ad Aspera—and his eyes turned back to Duke’s, but he made no comment. He led the way to a private elevator that dropped them a dozen levels below the street, to a small room, littered with things from every conceivable planet. One wall was covered with what seemed to be the control panel of a spaceship, apparently now used for a desk. The director dropped into a chair and motioned Duke to another.

He looked tired, and his voice seemed older as he bent to pull a small projector and screen from a drawer and set them up. “The latest chapter of the film,” he said bitterly, throwing the switch.

It was a picture of the breakup of the Outer Federation, and in some ways worse than the other wars. Chumkt rebelled against Kel’s leadership and joined the aliens, while a civil war sprang up on her surface. Two alien planets went over to Kel. The original war was forgotten in a struggle for new combinations, and a thousand smaller wars replaced it. The Federation was dead and the two dozen races were dying.

“When everything else fails, the fools try federation,” Flannery said as the film ended. “We tried it on Earth. Another race discovered the interstellar drive before we did and used it to build an empire. We’ve found the dead and sterile remains of their civilization. It’s always the same. When one group unites its power, those nearby must ally for protection. Then there’s a scramble for more power, while jealousies and fears breed new hatreds, internally and externally. And finally, there’s ruin—because at the technological level of interstellar travel, victory in war is absolutely, totally impossible!”

He sat back, and Duke waited for him to resume, until it was obvious he had finished. At last, the younger man gave up waiting. “All right,” he said. “Earth won’t fight! Am I supposed to turn handsprings? I figured that much out myself. And I learned a long time ago about the blessed meek who were to inherit the Earth—but I can’t remember anything being said about the stars!”

“You think peace won’t work?” Flannery asked mildly.

“I know it won’t!” Duke fumbled for a cigarette, trying to organize his thoughts. “You’ve been lucky so far. You’ve counted on the fact that war powers have to attack other powers nearby before they can safely strike against Earth, and you’ve buffered yourself with a jury-rigged economic trading system. But what happens when some really bright overlord decides to by-pass his local enemies? He’ll drop fifty planet bombs out of your peaceful skies and collect your vassal worlds before they can rearm. You won’t know about that, though. You’ll be wiped out!”

“I wouldn’t call our friends vassals, or say the system was jury-rigged,” Flannery objected. “Ever hear of paradynamics? The papers call it the ability to manipulate relationships, when we let them write a speculative article. It’s what lets us rebuild worlds in less than half a century—and form the first completely peaceful politico-economic culture we’ve ever known. Besides, I never said we had no weapons for our defense.”

Duke considered it, trying to keep a firm footing on the shifting quicksand of the other’s arguments. He knew a little of paradynamics, of course, but only as something supposed to remake the world and all science in some abstract future. It had been originated as a complex mathematical analysis of nuclear relationships, and had been seized on for some reason by the sociologists. It had no bearing he could see on the main argument.

“It won’t wash, Flannery. Without a fleet, it won’t matter if you have the plans of every weapon ever invented. The first time a smart power takes the chance, you’ll run out of time.”

“We didn’t!” Flannery swung to the control board that served as his desk, and his fingers seemed to play idly with the dials. From somewhere below them, there was a heavy vibration, as if great engines had sprung into life. He pressed another switch.

Abruptly, the room was gone. There was a night sky above them, almost starless, and with a great, glaring moon shining down, to show a rough, mossy terrain that seemed covered endlessly with row after row of rusting, crumbling spaceships. Atomic cannon spilled from their hatches, and broken ramps led down to the ground. Down one clearer lane among the countless ships that surrounded him, Duke saw what might be a distant fire with a few bent figures around it, giving the impression of age.

* * * *

Beside him, Flannery sat in his chair, holding a small control. There was nothing else of the office visible.

The director shook his head. “It’s no illusion, O’Neill. You’re here—fifty odd thousand light-years from Earth, where we transferred the attacking fleet. You never heard of that, of course. The dictator-ruler naturally didn’t make a report when his fleet simply vanished without trace. Here!”

The liquor burned in Duke’s throat, but it steadied him. He bent down, to feel the mossy turf under his hand.

“It’s real,” Flannery repeated. “Paradynamics handles all relationships, captain. And the position of a body is simply a statement of its geometrical relationships. What happens if we change those relationships—with power enough, that is? There is no motion, in any classic sense. But newspapers appear two high-drive days away minutes after they’re printed. We arrive here. And fleets sent against Earth just aren’t there any more!”

He pressed a button, and abruptly the walls of his office were around them again—the office that was suddenly the control room of a building that was more of a battleship than any Duke had ever seen.

He found himself clutching the chair, and forced himself to relax, soaking up the shock as he had soaked up so many others. His mind faced the facts, accepted them, and then sickly extended them.

“All right, you’ve got weapons,” he admitted, and disgust was heavy in his voice. “You can defend yourself. But can the galaxy defend itself when somebody decides it’s a fine offensive weapon? Or are all Earthmen supposed to be automatically pure, so this will never be turned to offensive use? Prove that to me and maybe I’ll change my mind about this planet and take that job of yours!”

Flannery leaned back, nodding soberly. “I intend to,” he answered. “Duke, we tried making peaceful citizens of our youngsters here a century ago, but it wouldn’t work. Kids have to have their little gang wars and their fisticuffs to grow up naturally. We can’t force them. Their interests aren’t those of adults. In fact, they think adults are pretty dull. No adventure. They can’t see that juggling a twenty-million gamble on tooling up for a new competitive product is exciting; they can’t understand working in a dull laboratory to dig something new out of nature’s files can be exciting and dangerous. Above all, they can’t see that the greatest adventure is the job of bringing kids up to be other adults. They regret the passing of dueling and affairs of honor. But an adult civilization knows better—because the passing of such things is the first step toward a race becoming adult, because it is adopting a new type of thinking, where such things have no value. You didn’t hit me when I called you names, because it made no sense from an adult point of view. Earth doesn’t go to war for the same reason. Thank God, we grew up just before we got into space, where adult thinking is necessary to survival!”

There had been the kids and their seemingly pointless argument on the street. There had been the curiously distant respect the Meloans had shown him, as if they guessed that only his exterior was similar. There were a lot of things Duke could use to justify believing the director. It made a fine picture—as it was intended to.

“It must be wonderful to sit here safely, while agents do your dangerous work, feeling superior to anyone who shows any courage,” he said bitterly. “I suppose every clerk and desk-jockey out there feeds himself the same type of rationalization. But words don’t prove anything. How do you prove the difference between maturity and timidity or smugness?”

“You asked for it,” Flannery said simply.

The button went down on the control again. The air was suddenly thin and bitingly cold as they looked down on a world torn with war, where a hundred ships shaped like half-disks and unlike anything Duke had seen were mixed up in some maneuver. The button was pushed again, and this time there was a world below that had a port busy with similar ships, not fighting now. A third press brought them onto the surface of a heavy world that seemed to be composed of solid buildings and factories, where the ships were being outfitted with incomprehensible goods. A thing like a pipe-stem man looked up from a series of operations, made a waving motion to them, and abruptly disappeared.

“Did you really think we could be the only adult race in the universe?” Flannery asked. “You’re looking at the Allr, the closest cultural gestalt to us, and somewhere near our level. Now—”

Something squamous perched on a rock on what seemed to be a barren world. Before it floated bright points of light that were obviously replicas of planets, with tiny lines of light between them, and a shuttling of glints along the lines. The thing seemed to look at them, briefly. A tentacle whipped up and touched Flannery, who sat with his hands off the control box. Without its use, they were abruptly back in their office.

Flannery shivered, and there was strain on his face, while Duke felt his mind freeze slowly, as if with physical cold. The director cleared his throat. “Or maybe we should look at more routine things, though you might consider that we have to get ready for the day when our advancing culture touches on other cultures. Because we can’t put it off forever.”

This time, they were in a building, like a crude shed, and there were men there, standing in front of a creature that seemed like a human in armor—but chitinous armor that was part of him. The alien suddenly turned, though Duke could now see that they were in a section behind one-way glass. Nevertheless, it seemed to sense them. Abruptly, something began pulling at his mind, as if his thoughts were being drained. Flannery hit the button again. “Telepathic race, and very immature,” he said, and there was worry in his voice. “Thank God, the only one we’ve found, and out of our immediate line of advance.”

There were other scenes. A human being who walked endlessly three feet off the floor, fighting against some barrier that wasn’t there, with his face frozen in fear, while creatures that seemed to be metallic moved about. “He found something while working on one of our paradynamic problems,” Flannery said. “He transported himself there and has been exactly like that ever since—three years, now. So far, our desk-jockeys here haven’t been able to discover exactly what line he was working on, but they’re trying!”

They were back in the office, and the director laid the control box on the big panel and cut off the power. He swung back to face Duke, his face tired.

“You’ll find a ship waiting to take you to Throm, and a man on board who’ll use the trip to brief you, if you decide to take the job, Duke. As I said, it’s up to you. If you still prefer your wars, come and see me next week, and maybe I can get the recruiting law set aside in your case, since you’re really a citizen of Meloa. Otherwise, the ship takes off for Throm in exactly three hours.”

He led the way back to the elevator, and rode up to the lobby. Duke moved out woodenly, but Flannery was obviously going no farther. The old man handed over what was left of the flask, shook Duke’s hand quickly, and closed the elevator door.

Duke downed the liquor slowly, without thinking. Finally, a flicker of thought seemed to stir in his frozen mind. He shook himself and headed down the lobby toward the Earth outside. A faint vibration seemed to quiver in the air from below, and he quickened his steps.

Outside, he shook himself again, signaled a cab, and climbed in.

“The first liquor store you come to,” he told the driver. “And then take me to the government space port, no matter what I say!”

X

It was quiet in the underground office of the director, except for the faint sound of Flannery’s arms sliding across each other in an unconscious massaging motion. He caught himself at it, and leaned back, his tired facial muscles twitching into a faint smile.

Strange things happened to a man when he grew old. His hair turned gray, he thought more of the past, and prosthetic limbs began to feel tired, as if the nerves were remembering also. And the work that had once seemed vitally important in every detail winnowed itself down to a few things, with the rest only bothersome routine.

He pulled a thermos of coffee from under the desk and turned back to the confusion of red-coded memoranda on his desk. Then the sound of the elevator coming down caught his attention, and he waited until the door opened.

“Hello, Harding,” he said without turning around. Only one man beside himself had the key to the private entrance. “Coffee?”

Harding took a seat beside him, and accepted the plastic cup. “Thanks. I tried to call you, but your phone was shut off. Heard the good word?”

Flannery shook his head. With the matter of the strange ship that had been reported and the problem of what to do with the telepaths both coming to a head, he’d had no time for casual calls. There was no question now that the telepaths had plucked the knowledge of how to build an interstellar drive from the observers’ minds, in spite of all precautions. And once they broke out into the rest of the galaxy—

“Var died of a heart attack in the middle of a battle,” Harding announced. “And Cathay and Kloomiria sent each other surrender notices the minute word was official! The damnedest thing I ever heard of. Edmonds came with me, and he’s upstairs now, planning a big victory celebration as soon as we can let the word out. It should finish his reorientation.”

“I’ll probably get word on it by the time someone has it all organized into a nice, official memo,” Flannery said. “Back him up on that celebration. It’s worth a celebration to find out both worlds are that close to maturity. Coming over for bridge tonight?”

Harding shook his head. “I’ll be up to my elbows in bills for the relief of Cathay and Kloomiria. It’s a mess, even if it could be worse. Maybe tomorrow.”

He dropped the cup onto the desk and turned to the elevator, while Flannery hunted through the memoranda. As he expected, he found a recent one announcing Var’s death. He rubbed his arms together as he read it, but there was no new information in it.

Then, reluctantly, he picked up his phone and started to call. Scanning for information, just as another bundle of memos came through a small door in the panel. At the sight of the top photo, he put the phone back on its cradle. His face tautened and his arms lay limp as he read through it.

The picture was that of one of the half-disk Allr ships. The rumors of the strange ship were true enough. One of the Allr races had crossed the gulf between the two expanding cultures, and had touched several worlds briefly, to land in the biggest city on Ptek, the trading center for a whole sector. It had been there two days already, before being reported to Earth!

To make matters worse, it had come because its home world had been visited by a foreign ship—from the description, apparently from Sugfarth; there was no longer any chance of cutting off the news, since it would be circulating busily through both cultures. And with it must be going a thousand wild schemes by trading adventurers for exploration!

He’d expected it to happen some day, maybe in fifty years, after he was out of the office. By then enough of the worlds should have reached maturity to offer some hope of peaceful interpenetration. But now—

Victory, he thought bitterly. A small victory, and then this. Or maybe two small victories, if O’Neill worked out as well on Throm as he seemed to be doing, and if he realized he’d never be satisfied until he could return to Earth to face the problems he now knew existed. Flannery had almost hoped that it would be O’Neill who would handle the problem of cultural interpenetration. The man had ability.

But all that was in the past now, along with all the other victories. And in the present, as always, there were larger and larger problems, while full maturity lay forever a little farther on.

Then he smiled slowly at himself. There were problems behind him, too—ones whose solutions made these problems possible. And there would always be victory enough.

What was victory, after all, but the chance to face bigger and bigger problems without fear?

Flannery picked up the phone, and his arms were no longer tired.

THE DEFENDERS, by Philip K. Dick

Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment.

“What is it?” Mary said, from the stove.

“They pasted Moscow again last night.” Taylor nodded his head in approval. “Gave it a real pounding. One of those R-H bombs. It’s about time.”

He nodded again, feeling the full comfort of the kitchen, the presence of his plump, attractive wife, the breakfast dishes and coffee. This was relaxation. And the war news was good, good and satisfying. He could feel a justifiable glow at the news, a sense of pride and personal accomplishment. After all, he was an integral part of the war program, not just another factory worker lugging a cart of scrap, but a technician, one of those who designed and planned the nerve-trunk of the war.

“It says they have the new subs almost perfected. Wait until they get those going.” He smacked his lips with anticipation. “When they start shelling from underwater, the Soviets are sure going to be surprised.”

“They’re doing a wonderful job,” Mary agreed vaguely. “Do you know what we saw today? Our team is getting a leady to show to the school children. I saw the leady, but only for a moment. It’s good for the children to see what their contributions are going for, don’t you think?”

She looked around at him.

“A leady,” Taylor murmured. He put the newspaper slowly down. “Well, make sure it’s decontaminated properly. We don’t want to take any chances.”

“Oh, they always bathe them when they’re brought down from the surface,” Mary said. “They wouldn’t think of letting them down without the bath. Would they?” She hesitated, thinking back. “Don, you know, it makes me remember—”

He nodded. “I know.”

He knew what she was thinking. Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface, they had seen a hospital train discharging the wounded, people who had been showered with sleet. He remembered the way they had looked, the expression on their faces, or as much of their faces as was left. It had not been a pleasant sight.

There had been a lot of that at first, in the early days before the transfer to undersurface was complete. There had been a lot, and it hadn’t been very difficult to come across it.

Taylor looked up at his wife. She was thinking too much about it, the last few months. They all were.

“Forget it,” he said. “It’s all in the past. There isn’t anybody up there now but the leadys, and they don’t mind.”

“But just the same, I hope they’re careful when they let one of them down here. If one were still hot—”

He laughed, pushing himself away from the table. “Forget it. This is a wonderful moment; I’ll be home for the next two shifts. Nothing to do but sit around and take things easy. Maybe we can take in a show. Okay?”

“A show? Do we have to? I don’t like to look at all the destruction, the ruins. Sometimes I see some place I remember, like San Francisco. They showed a shot of San Francisco, the bridge broken and fallen in the water, and I got upset. I don’t like to watch.”

“But don’t you want to know what’s going on? No human beings are getting hurt, you know.”

“But it’s so awful!” Her face was set and strained. “Please, no, Don.”

Don Taylor picked up his newspaper sullenly. “All right, but there isn’t a hell of a lot else to do. And don’t forget, their cities are getting it even worse.”

She nodded. Taylor turned the rough, thin sheets of newspaper. His good mood had soured on him. Why did she have to fret all the time? They were pretty well off, as things went. You couldn’t expect to have everything perfect, living undersurface, with an artificial sun and artificial food. Naturally it was a strain, not seeing the sky or being able to go any place or see anything other than metal walls, great roaring factories, the plant-yards, barracks. But it was better than being on surface. And some day it would end and they could return. Nobody wanted to live this way, but it was necessary.

He turned the page angrily and the poor paper ripped. Damn it, the paper was getting worse quality all the time, bad print, yellow tint—

Well, they needed everything for the war program. He ought to know that. Wasn’t he one of the planners?

He excused himself and went into the other room. The bed was still unmade. They had better get it in shape before the seventh hour inspection. There was a one unit fine—

The vidphone rang. He halted. Who would it be? He went over and clicked it on.

“Taylor?” the face said, forming into place. It was an old face, gray and grim. “This is Moss. I’m sorry to bother you during Rest Period, but this thing has come up.” He rattled papers. “I want you to hurry over here.”

Taylor stiffened. “What is it? There’s no chance it could wait?” The calm gray eyes were studying him, expressionless, unjudging. “If you want me to come down to the lab,” Taylor grumbled, “I suppose I can. I’ll get my uniform—”

“No. Come as you are. And not to the lab. Meet me at second stage as soon as possible. It’ll take you about a half hour, using the fast car up. I’ll see you there.”

The picture broke and Moss disappeared.

* * * *

“What was it?” Mary said, at the door.

“Moss. He wants me for something.”

“I knew this would happen.”

“Well, you didn’t want to do anything, anyhow. What does it matter?” His voice was bitter. “It’s all the same, every day. I’ll bring you back something. I’m going up to second stage. Maybe I’ll be close enough to the surface to—”

“Don’t! Don’t bring me anything! Not from the surface!”

“All right, I won’t. But of all the irrational nonsense—”

She watched him put on his boots without answering.

* * * *

Moss nodded and Taylor fell in step with him, as the older man strode along. A series of loads were going up to the surface, blind cars clanking like ore-trucks up the ramp, disappearing through the stage trap above them. Taylor watched the cars, heavy with tubular machinery of some sort, weapons new to him. Workers were everywhere, in the dark gray uniforms of the labor corps, loading, lifting, shouting back and forth. The stage was deafening with noise.

“We’ll go up a way,” Moss said, “where we can talk. This is no place to give you details.”

They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now.

“My God!” Taylor said, looking down the Tube involuntarily. “It’s a long way down.”

Moss laughed. “Don’t look.”

They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up.

“I’ll be right with you, Moss.” He gazed at Taylor studying him. “You’re a little ahead of time.”

“This is Commander Franks,” Moss said to Taylor. “He was the first to make the discovery. I was notified last night.” He tapped a parcel he carried. “I was let in because of this.”

Franks frowned at him and stood up. “We’re going up to first stage. We can discuss it there.”

“First stage?” Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a side passage to a small lift. “I’ve never been up there. Is it all right? It’s not radioactive, is it?”

“You’re like everyone else,” Franks said. “Old women afraid of burglars. No radiation leaks down to first stage. There’s lead and rock, and what comes down the Tube is bathed.”

“What’s the nature of the problem?” Taylor asked. “I’d like to know something about it.”

“In a moment.”

They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once been Man’s home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.

Now the surface was a lethal desert of slag and rolling clouds. Endless clouds drifted back and forth, blotting out the red Sun. Occasionally something metallic stirred, moving through the remains of a city, threading its way across the tortured terrain of the countryside. A leady, a surface robot, immune to radiation, constructed with feverish haste in the last months before the cold war became literally hot.

Leadys, crawling along the ground, moving over the oceans or through the skies in slender, blackened craft, creatures that could exist where no life could remain, metal and plastic figures that waged a war Man had conceived, but which he could not fight himself. Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves. In all the world—in Russia, in Europe, America, Africa—no living human being remained. They were under the surface, in the deep shelters that had been carefully planned and built, even as the first bombs began to fall.

It was a brilliant idea and the only idea that could have worked. Up above, on the ruined, blasted surface of what had once been a living planet, the leady crawled and scurried, and fought Man’s war. And undersurface, in the depths of the planet, human beings toiled endlessly to produce the weapons to continue the fight, month by month, year by year.

* * * *

“First stage,” Taylor said. A strange ache went through him. “Almost to the surface.”

“But not quite,” Moss said.

Franks led them through the soldiers, over to one side, near the lip of the Tube.

“In a few minutes, a lift will bring something down to us from the surface,” he explained. “You see, Taylor, every once in a while Security examines and interrogates a surface leady, one that has been above for a time, to find out certain things. A vidcall is sent up and contact is made with a field headquarters. We need this direct interview; we can’t depend on vidscreen contact alone. The leadys are doing a good job, but we want to make certain that everything is going the way we want it.”

Franks faced Taylor and Moss and continued: “The lift will bring down a leady from the surface, one of the A-class leadys. There’s an examination chamber in the next room, with a lead wall in the center, so the interviewing officers won’t be exposed to radiation. We find this easier than bathing the leady. It is going right back up; it has a job to get back to.

“Two days ago, an A-class leady was brought down and interrogated. I conducted the session myself. We were interested in a new weapon the Soviets have been using, an automatic mine that pursues anything that moves. Military had sent instructions up that the mine be observed and reported in detail.

“This A-class leady was brought down with information. We learned a few facts from it, obtained the usual roll of film and reports, and then sent it back up. It was going out of the chamber, back to the lift, when a curious thing happened. At the time, I thought—”

Franks broke off. A red light was flashing.

“That down lift is coming.” He nodded to some soldiers. “Let’s enter the chamber. The leady will be along in a moment.”

“An A-class leady,” Taylor said. “I’ve seen them on the showscreens, making their reports.”

“It’s quite an experience,” Moss said. “They’re almost human.”

They entered the chamber and seated themselves behind the lead wall. After a time, a signal was flashed, and Franks made a motion with his hands.

The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting.

“We are interested in learning something,” Franks said. “Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?”

“No. The war continues.” The leady’s voice was automatic and toneless. “We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some—”

“That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there’s too much room for error.”

“Error?” the leady asked. “In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they’re sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ—”

“I realize that,” Franks grunted behind his peep slot. “But perhaps we should see it all for ourselves. Is it possible that there might be a large enough radiation-free area for a human party to ascend to the surface? If a few of us were to come up in lead-lined suits, would we be able to survive long enough to observe conditions and watch things?”

The machine hesitated before answering. “I doubt it. You can check air samples, of course, and decide for yourselves. But in the eight years since you left, things have continually worsened. You cannot have any real idea of conditions up there. It has become difficult for any moving object to survive for long. There are many kinds of projectiles sensitive to movement. The new mine not only reacts to motion, but continues to pursue the object indefinitely, until it finally reaches it. And the radiation is everywhere.”

“I see.” Franks turned to Moss, his eyes narrowed oddly. “Well, that was what I wanted to know. You may go.”

The machine moved back toward its exit. It paused. “Each month the amount of lethal particles in the atmosphere increases. The tempo of the war is gradually—”

“I understand.” Franks rose. He held out his hand and Moss passed him the package. “One thing before you leave. I want you to examine a new type of metal shield material. I’ll pass you a sample with the tong.”

Franks put the package in the toothed grip and revolved the tong so that he held the other end. The package swung down to the leady, which took it. They watched it unwrap the package and take the metal plate in its hands. The leady turned the metal over and over.

Suddenly it became rigid.

“All right,” Franks said.

He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped—Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady!

“Good God!” Taylor said. “But it’s radioactive!”

The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully.

“Okay, sir,” one of them said to Franks. “It’s as cold as a long winter evening.”

“Good. I was sure, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You see,” Moss said to Taylor, “this leady isn’t hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed.”

“But what does it mean?” Taylor asked blankly.

“It may be an accident,” Franks said. “There’s always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it’s happened that we know of. There may be others.”

“The second time?”

“The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one.”

Moss took back the metal plate from the leady’s hands. He pressed the surface carefully and returned it to the stiff, unprotesting fingers.

“We shorted it out with this, so we could get close enough for a thorough check. It’ll come back on in a second now. We had better get behind the wall again.”

They walked back and the lead wall swung closed behind them. The soldiers left the chamber.

“Two periods from now,” Franks said softly, “an initial investigating party will be ready to go surface-side. We’re going up the Tube in suits, up to the top—the first human party to leave undersurface in eight years.”

“It may mean nothing,” Moss said, “but I doubt it. Something’s going on, something strange. The leady told us no life could exist above without being roasted. The story doesn’t fit.”

Taylor nodded. He stared through the peep slot at the immobile metal figure. Already the leady was beginning to stir. It was bent in several places, dented and twisted, and its finish was blackened and charred. It was a leady that had been up there a long time; it had seen war and destruction, ruin so vast that no human being could imagine the extent. It had crawled and slunk in a world of radiation and death, a world where no life could exist.

And Taylor had touched it!

“You’re going with us,” Franks said suddenly. “I want you along. I think the three of us will go.”

* * * *

Mary faced him with a sick and frightened expression. “I know it. You’re going to the surface. Aren’t you?”

She followed him into the kitchen. Taylor sat down, looking away from her.

“It’s a classified project,” he evaded. “I can’t tell you anything about it.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know. I knew it the moment you came in. There was something on your face, something I haven’t seen there for a long, long time. It was an old look.”

She came toward him. “But how can they send you to the surface?” She took his face in her shaking hands, making him look at her. There was a strange hunger in her eyes. “Nobody can live up there. Look, look at this!”

She grabbed up a newspaper and held it in front of him.

“Look at this photograph. America, Europe, Asia, Africa—nothing but ruins. We’ve seen it every day on the showscreens. All destroyed, poisoned. And they’re sending you up. Why? No living thing can get by up there, not even a weed, or grass. They’ve wrecked the surface, haven’t they? Haven’t they?”

Taylor stood up. “It’s an order. I know nothing about it. I was told to report to join a scout party. That’s all I know.”

He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light.

“It looks real,” he murmured. “Ruins, deadness, slag. It’s convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven’t seen it for ourselves, not after the first months…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” He put the paper down. “I’m leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let’s turn in.”

Mary turned away, her face hard and harsh. “Do what you want. We might just as well all go up and get killed at once, instead of dying slowly down here, like vermin in the ground.”

He had not realized how resentful she was. Were they all like that? How about the workers toiling in the factories, day and night, endlessly? The pale, stooped men and women, plodding back and forth to work, blinking in the colorless light, eating synthetics—

“You shouldn’t be so bitter,” he said.

Mary smiled a little. “I’m bitter because I know you’ll never come back.” She turned away. “I’ll never see you again, once you go up there.”

He was shocked. “What? How can you say a thing like that?”

She did not answer.

* * * *

He awakened with the public newscaster screeching in his ears, shouting outside the building.

“Special news bulletin! Surface forces report enormous Soviet attack with new weapons! Retreat of key groups! All work units report to factories at once!”

Taylor blinked, rubbing his eyes. He jumped out of bed and hurried to the vidphone. A moment later he was put through to Moss.

“Listen,” he said. “What about this new attack? Is the project off?” He could see Moss’s desk, covered with reports and papers.

“No,” Moss said. “We’re going right ahead. Get over here at once.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue with me.” Moss held up a handful of surface bulletins, crumpling them savagely. “This is a fake. Come on!” He broke off.

Taylor dressed furiously, his mind in a daze.

Half an hour later, he leaped from a fast car and hurried up the stairs into the Synthetics Building. The corridors were full of men and women rushing in every direction. He entered Moss’s office.

“There you are,” Moss said, getting up immediately. “Franks is waiting for us at the outgoing station.”

They went in a Security Car, the siren screaming. Workers scattered out of their way.

“What about the attack?” Taylor asked.

Moss braced his shoulders. “We’re certain that we’ve forced their hand. We’ve brought the issue to a head.”

They pulled up at the station link of the Tube and leaped out. A moment later they were moving up at high speed toward the first stage.

They emerged into a bewildering scene of activity. Soldiers were fastening on lead suits, talking excitedly to each other, shouting back and forth. Guns were being given out, instructions passed.

Taylor studied one of the soldiers. He was armed with the dreaded Bender pistol, the new snub-nosed hand weapon that was just beginning to come from the assembly line. Some of the soldiers looked a little frightened.

“I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Moss said, noticing his gaze.

Franks came toward them. “Here’s the program. The three of us are going up first, alone. The soldiers will follow in fifteen minutes.”

“What are we going to tell the leadys?” Taylor worriedly asked. “We’ll have to tell them something.”

“We want to observe the new Soviet attack.” Franks smiled ironically. “Since it seems to be so serious, we should be there in person to witness it.”

“And then what?” Taylor said.

“That’ll be up to them. Let’s go.”

* * * *

In a small car, they went swiftly up the Tube, carried by anti-grav beams from below. Taylor glanced down from time to time. It was a long way back, and getting longer each moment. He sweated nervously inside his suit, gripping his Bender pistol with inexpert fingers.

Why had they chosen him? Chance, pure chance. Moss had asked him to come along as a Department member. Then Franks had picked him out on the spur of the moment. And now they were rushing toward the surface, faster and faster.

A deep fear, instilled in him for eight years, throbbed in his mind. Radiation, certain death, a world blasted and lethal—

Up and up the car went. Taylor gripped the sides and closed his eyes. Each moment they were closer, the first living creatures to go above the first stage, up the Tube past the lead and rock, up to the surface. The phobic horror shook him in waves. It was death; they all knew that. Hadn’t they seen it in the films a thousand times? The cities, the sleet coming down, the rolling clouds—

“It won’t be much longer,” Franks said. “We’re almost there. The surface tower is not expecting us. I gave orders that no signal was to be sent.”

The car shot up, rushing furiously. Taylor’s head spun; he hung on, his eyes shut. Up and up.…

The car stopped. He opened his eyes.

They were in a vast room, fluorescent-lit, a cavern filled with equipment and machinery, endless mounds of material piled in row after row. Among the stacks, leadys were working silently, pushing trucks and handcarts.

“Leadys,” Moss said. His face was pale. “Then we’re really on the surface.”

The leadys were going back and forth with equipment moving the vast stores of guns and spare parts, ammunition and supplies that had been brought to the surface. And this was the receiving station for only one Tube; there were many others, scattered throughout the continent.

Taylor looked nervously around him. They were really there, above ground, on the surface. This was where the war was.

“Come on,” Franks said. “A B-class guard is coming our way.”

* * * *

They stepped out of the car. A leady was approaching them rapidly. It coasted up in front of them and stopped, scanning them with its hand-weapon raised.

“This is Security,” Franks said. “Have an A-class sent to me at once.”

The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around.

“Obey!” Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. “You’ve been ordered!”

The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two A-class leadys appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front.

“From the Surface Council,” Franks whispered tensely. “This is above ground, all right. Get set.”

The two leadys approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down.

“I’m Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to—”

“This in incredible,” one of the leadys interrupted him coldly. “You know you can’t live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can’t possibly remain on the surface.”

“These suits will protect us,” Franks said. “In any case, it’s not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?”

“You human beings can’t survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger.”

“We know that. Please assemble the Council.” Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. “Is it night or day right now?”

“Night,” one of the A-class leadys said, after a pause. “Dawn is coming in about two hours.”

Franks nodded. “We’ll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the Sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it.”

A stir went through the leadys.

“It is an unpleasant sight,” one of the leadys said. “You’ve seen the photographs; you know what you’ll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey.”

“However it may be, we’ll stay long enough to see it. Will you give the order to the Council?”

“Come this way.” Reluctantly, the two leadys coasted toward the wall of the warehouse. The three men trudged after them, their heavy shoes ringing against the concrete. At the wall, the two leadys paused.

“This is the entrance to the Council Chamber. There are windows in the Chamber Room, but it is still dark outside, of course. You’ll see nothing right now, but in two hours—”

“Open the door,” Franks said.

The door slid back. They went slowly inside. The room was small, a neat room with a round table in the center, chairs ringing it. The three of them sat down silently, and the two leadys followed after them, taking their places.

“The other Council Members are on their way. They have already been notified and are coming as quickly as they can. Again I urge you to go back down.” The leady surveyed the three human beings. “There is no way you can meet the conditions up here. Even we survive with some trouble, ourselves. How can you expect to do it?”

The leader approached Franks.

“This astonishes and perplexes us,” it said. “Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here—”

“We know,” Franks said impatiently. “However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise.”

“If you insist.”

There was silence. The leadys seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound.

“For your own good,” the leader said at last, “you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good.”

“We are human beings,” Franks said sharply. “Don’t you understand? We’re men, not machines.”

“That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore—”

The leadys moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.

“We must insist,” the leader said, its voice without emotion. “We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary.”

“What’ll we do?” Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. “Shall we blast them?”

Franks shook his head. “All right,” he said to the leader. “We’ll go back.”

He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadys followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking.

At the lip, Franks turned. “We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if—”

“Here comes the car,” Taylor said.

There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadys moved toward the edge to receive it.

“I am sorry,” the leader said, “but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit.”

The car rose to the surface.

Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, this does change things. It came off just right.”

The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadys. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse.

“Even now,” the leader said, “we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared.”

“Very carefully,” Franks said.

They closed in.

“How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands—”

The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadys were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies.

“They can’t fire back,” Franks said calmly. “This is another bluff. They’ve tried to bluff us all the way.” He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. “They can only try to frighten us. Remember that.”

* * * *

They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out.

Then it was over. The leadys were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadys were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them.

Franks breathed a shuddering sigh.

“All right,” he said. “You can take us back to the windows. It won’t be long now.”

The leadys separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows.

“Take us outside,” Franks said impatiently. “We’ll see it directly, not in here.”

A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily.

“Come on,” Franks said. “Outside.”

He walked out through the door, the others following him.

They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible.

“It’ll be bright enough to see in a few minutes,” Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. “It’s worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it’s the last thing we see—”

“Watch,” Franks snapped.

They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed.

“A chicken!” Taylor murmured. “Did you hear?”

Behind them, the leadys had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them.

“God in heaven!” Franks exclaimed.

Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them.

“Look!” Moss whispered.

Color came into the sky. The Sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind.

Franks turned to the row of leadys behind them.

“Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface—”

“Yes,” an A-class leady admitted. “As soon as you left, the war ceased. You’re right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up.”

“But why?” Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below. “Why?”

“You created us,” the leady said, “to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.

“We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.

“At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind.

“It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him.”

Taylor was listening intently. “Do you think this time will come?”

“Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture—a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture. It will not be long—

“But it has not come yet, and so the war had to go on, to satisfy the last violent surge of hatred that Man felt. Eight years have passed since the war began. In these eight years, we have observed and noted important changes going on in the minds of men. Fatigue and disinterest, we have seen, are gradually taking the place of hatred and fear. The hatred is being exhausted gradually, over a period of time. But for the present, the hoax must go on, at least for a while longer. You are not ready to learn the truth. You would want to continue the war.”

“But how did you manage it?” Moss asked. “All the photographs, the samples, the damaged equipment—”

“Come over here.” The leady directed them toward a long, low building. “Work goes on constantly, whole staffs laboring to maintain a coherent and convincing picture of a global war.”

* * * *

They entered the building. Leadys were working everywhere, poring over tables and desks.

“Examine this project here,” the A-class leady said. Two leadys were carefully photographing something, an elaborate model on a table top. “It is a good example.”

The men grouped around, trying to see. It was a model of a ruined city.

Taylor studied it in silence for a long time. At last he looked up.

“It’s San Francisco,” he said in a low voice. “This is a model of San Francisco, destroyed. I saw this on the vidscreen, piped down to us. The bridges were hit—”

“Yes, notice the bridges.” The leady traced the ruined span with his metal finger, a tiny spider-web, almost invisible. “You have no doubt seen photographs of this many times, and of the other tables in this building.

“San Francisco itself is completely intact. We restored it soon after you left, rebuilding the parts that had been damaged at the start of the war. The work of manufacturing news goes on all the time in this particular building. We are very careful to see that each part fits in with all the other parts. Much time and effort are devoted to it.”

Franks touched one of the tiny model buildings, lying half in ruins. “So this is what you spend your time doing—making model cities and then blasting them.”

“No, we do much more. We are caretakers, watching over the whole world. The owners have left for a time, and we must see that the cities are kept clean, that decay is prevented, that everything is kept oiled and in running condition. The gardens, the streets, the water mains, everything must be maintained as it was eight years ago, so that when the owners return, they will not be displeased. We want to be sure that they will be completely satisfied.”

Franks tapped Moss on the arm.

“Come over here,” he said in a low voice. “I want to talk to you.”

He led Moss and Taylor out of the building, away from the leadys, outside on the hillside. The soldiers followed them. The Sun was up and the sky was turning blue. The air smelled sweet and good, the smell of growing things.

Taylor removed his helmet and took a deep breath.

“I haven’t smelled that smell for a long time,” he said.

“Listen,” Franks said, his voice low and hard. “We must get back down at once. There’s a lot to get started on. All this can be turned to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?” Moss asked.

“It’s a certainty that the Soviets have been tricked, too, the same as us. But we have found out. That gives us an edge over them.”

“I see.” Moss nodded. “We know, but they don’t. Their Surface Council has sold out, the same as ours. It works against them the same way. But if we could—”

“With a hundred top-level men, we could take over again, restore things as they should be! It would be easy!”

Moss touched him on the arm. An A-class leady was coming from the building toward them.

“We’ve seen enough,” Franks said, raising his voice. “All this is very serious. It must be reported below and a study made to determine our policy.”

The leady said nothing.

Franks waved to the soldiers. “Let’s go.” He started toward the warehouse.

Most of the soldiers had removed their helmets. Some of them had taken their lead suits off, too, and were relaxing comfortably in their cotton uniforms. They stared around them, down the hillside at the trees and bushes, the vast expanse of green, the mountains and the sky.

“Look at the Sun,” one of them murmured.

“It sure is bright as hell,” another said.

“We’re going back down,” Franks said. “Fall in by twos and follow us.”

Reluctantly, the soldiers regrouped. The leadys watched without emotion as the men marched slowly back toward the warehouse. Franks and Moss and Taylor led them across the ground, glancing alertly at the leadys as they walked.

They entered the warehouse. D-class leadys were loading material and weapons on surface carts. Cranes and derricks were working busily everywhere. The work was done with efficiency, but without hurry or excitement.

The men stopped, watching. Leadys operating the little carts moved past them, signaling silently to each other. Guns and parts were being hoisted by magnetic cranes and lowered gently onto waiting carts.

“Come on,” Franks said.

He turned toward the lip of the Tube. A row of D-class leadys was standing in front of it, immobile and silent. Franks stopped, moving back. He looked around. An A-class leady was coming toward him.

“Tell them to get out of the way,” Franks said. He touched his gun. “You had better move them.”

Time passed, an endless moment, without measure. The men stood, nervous and alert, watching the row of leadys in front of them.

“As you wish,” the A-class leady said.

It signaled and the D-class leadys moved into life. They stepped slowly aside.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m glad that’s over,” he said to Franks. “Look at them all. Why don’t they try to stop us? They must know what we’re going to do.”

Franks laughed. “Stop us? You saw what happened when they tried to stop us before. They can’t; they’re only machines. We built them so they can’t lay hands on us, and they know that.”

His voice trailed off.

The men stared at the Tube entrance. Around them the leadys watched, silent and impassive, their metal faces expressionless.

For a long time the men stood without moving. At last Taylor turned away.

“Good God,” he said. He was numb, without feeling of any kind.

The Tube was gone. It was sealed shut, fused over. Only a dull surface of cooling metal greeted them.

The Tube had been closed.

* * * *

Franks turned, his face pale and vacant.

The A-class leady shifted. “As you can see, the Tube has been shut. We were prepared for this. As soon as all of you were on the surface, the order was given. If you had gone back when we asked you, you would now be safely down below. We had to work quickly because it was such an immense operation.”

“But why?” Moss demanded angrily.

“Because it is unthinkable that you should be allowed to resume the war. With all the Tubes sealed, it will be many months before forces from below can reach the surface, let alone organize a military program. By that time the cycle will have entered its last stages. You will not be so perturbed to find your world intact.

“We had hoped that you would be undersurface when the sealing occurred. Your presence here is a nuisance. When the Soviets broke through, we were able to accomplish their sealing without—”

“The Soviets? They broke through?”

“Several months ago, they came up unexpectedly to see why the war had not been won. We were forced to act with speed. At this moment they are desperately attempting to cut new Tubes to the surface, to resume the war. We have, however, been able to seal each new one as it appears.”

The leady regarded the three men calmly.

“We’re cut off,” Moss said, trembling. “We can’t get back. What’ll we do?”

“How did you manage to seal the Tube so quickly?” Franks asked the leady. “We’ve been up here only two hours.”

“Bombs are placed just above the first stage of each Tube for such emergencies. They are heat bombs. They fuse lead and rock.”

Gripping the handle of his gun, Franks turned to Moss and Taylor.

“What do you say? We can’t go back, but we can do a lot of damage, the fifteen of us. We have Bender guns. How about it?”

He looked around. The soldiers had wandered away again, back toward the exit of the building. They were standing outside, looking at the valley and the sky. A few of them were carefully climbing down the slope.

“Would you care to turn over your suits and guns?” the A-class leady asked politely. “The suits are uncomfortable and you’ll have no need for weapons. The Russians have given up theirs, as you can see.”

Fingers tensed on triggers. Four men in Russian uniforms were coming toward them from an aircraft that they suddenly realized had landed silently some distance away.

“Let them have it!” Franks shouted.

“They are unarmed,” said the leady. “We brought them here so you could begin peace talks.”

“We have no authority to speak for our country,” Moss said stiffly.

“We do not mean diplomatic discussions,” the leady explained. “There will be no more. The working out of daily problems of existence will teach you how to get along in the same world. It will not be easy, but it will be done.”

The Russians halted and they faced each other with raw hostility.

“I am Colonel Borodoy and I regret giving up our guns,” the senior Russian said. “You could have been the first Americans to be killed in almost eight years.”

“Or the first Americans to kill,” Franks corrected.

“No one would know of it except yourselves,” the leady pointed out. “It would be useless heroism. Your real concern should be surviving on the surface. We have no food for you, you know.”

Taylor put his gun in its holster. “They’ve done a neat job of neutralizing us, damn them. I propose we move into a city, start raising crops with the help of some leadys, and generally make ourselves comfortable.” Drawing his lips tight over his teeth, he glared at the A-class leady. “Until our families can come up from undersurface, it’s going to be pretty lonesome, but we’ll have to manage.”

“If I may make a suggestion,” said another Russian uneasily. “We tried living in a city. It is too empty. It is also too hard to maintain for so few people. We finally settled in the most modern village we could find.”

“Here in this country,” a third Russian blurted. “We have much to learn from you.”

The Americans abruptly found themselves laughing.

“You probably have a thing or two to teach us yourselves,” said Taylor generously, “though I can’t imagine what.”

The Russian colonel grinned. “Would you join us in our village? It would make our work easier and give us company.”

“Your village?” snapped Franks. “It’s American, isn’t it? It’s ours!”

The leady stepped between them. “When our plans are completed, the term will be interchangeable. ‘Ours’ will eventually mean mankind’s.” It pointed at the aircraft, which was warming up. “The ship is waiting. Will you join each other in making a new home?”

The Russians waited while the Americans made up their minds.

“I see what the leadys mean about diplomacy becoming outmoded,” Franks said at last. “People who work together don’t need diplomats. They solve their problems on the operational level instead of at a conference table.”

The leady led them toward the ship. “It is the goal of history, unifying the world. From family to tribe to city-state to nation to hemisphere, the direction has been toward unification. Now the hemispheres will be joined and—”

Taylor stopped listening and glanced back at the location of the Tube. Mary was undersurface there. He hated to leave her, even though he couldn’t see her again until the Tube was unsealed. But then he shrugged and followed the others.

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn’t be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles.

“It has taken thousands of generations to achieve,” the A-class leady concluded. “Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history.”

“The conquest of space,” breathed Colonel Borodoy.

“The meaning of life,” Moss added.

“Eliminating hunger and poverty,” said Taylor.

The leady opened the door of the ship. “All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great.”

The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.

THE DESTROYERS, by Randall Garrett

Anketam stretched his arms out as though he were trying to embrace the whole world. He pushed himself up on his tiptoes, arched his back, and gave out with a prodigious yawn that somehow managed to express all the contentment and pleasure that filled his soul. He felt a faint twinge in his shoulders, and there was a dull ache in the small of his back, both of which reminded him that he was no longer the man he had been twenty years before, but he ignored them and stretched again.

He was still strong, Anketam thought; still strong enough to do his day’s work for The Chief without being too tired to relax and enjoy himself afterwards. At forty-five, he had a good fifteen years more before he’d be retired to minor make-work jobs, doing the small chores as a sort of token in justification of his keep in his old age.

He settled his heels back to the ground and looked around at the fields of green shoots that surrounded him. That part of the job was done, at least. The sun’s lower edge was just barely touching the western horizon, and all the seedlings were in. Anketam had kept his crew sweating to get them all in, but now the greenhouses were all empty and ready for seeding in the next crop while this one grew to maturity. But that could wait. By working just a little harder, for just a little longer each day, he and his crew had managed to get the transplanting done a good four days ahead of schedule, which meant four days of fishing or hunting or just plain loafing. The Chief didn’t care how a man spent his time, so long as the work was done.

He thumbed his broad-brimmed hat back from his forehead and looked up at the sky. There were a few thin clouds overhead, but there was no threat of rain, which was good. In this part of Xedii, the spring rains sometimes hit hard and washed out the transplanted seedlings before they had a chance to take root properly. If rain would hold off for another ten days, Anketam thought, then it could fall all it wanted. Meanwhile, the irrigation reservoir was full to brimming, and that would supply all the water the young shoots needed to keep them from being burnt by the sun.

He lowered his eyes again, this time to look at the next section over toward the south, where Jacovik and his crew were still working. He could see their bent figures outlined against the horizon, just at the brow of the slope, and he grinned to himself. He had beaten Jacovik out again.

Anketam and Jacovik had had a friendly feud going for years, each trying to do a better, faster job than the other. None of the other supervisors on The Chief’s land came even close to beating out Anketam or Jacovik, so it was always between the two of them, which one came out on top. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.

At the last harvest, Jacovik had been very pleased with himself when the tallies showed that he’d beaten out Anketam by a hundred kilos of cut leaves. But The Chief had taken him down a good bit when the report came through that Anketam’s leaves had made more money because they were better quality.

He looked all around the horizon. From here, only Jacovik’s section could be seen, and only Jacovik’s men could be seen moving.

When Anketam’s gaze touched the northern horizon, his gray eyes narrowed a little. There was a darkness there, a faint indication of cloud build-up. He hoped it didn’t mean rain. Getting the transplants in early was all right, but it didn’t count for anything if they were washed out.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Rain or no rain, there was nothing could be done about it except put up shelters over the rows of plants. He’d just have to keep an eye on the northern horizon and hope for the best. He didn’t want to put up the shelters unless he absolutely had to, because the seedlings were invariably bruised in the process and that would cut the leaf yield way down. He remembered one year when Jacovik had gotten panicky and put up his shelters, and the storm had been a gentle thing that only lasted a few minutes before it blew over. Anketam had held off, ready to make his men work in the rain if necessary, and when the harvest had come, he’d beaten Jacovik hands down.

* * * *

Anketam pulled his hat down again and turned to walk toward his house in the little village that he and his crew called home. He had warned his wife to have supper ready early. “I figure on being finished by sundown,” he’d said. “You can tell the other women I said so. But don’t say anything to them till after we’ve gone to the fields. I don’t want those boys thinking about the fishing they’re going to do tomorrow and then get behind in their work because they’re daydreaming.”

The other men were already gone; they’d headed back to the village as fast as they could move as soon as he’d told them the job was finished. Only he had stayed to look at the fields and see them all finished, each shoot casting long shadows in the ruddy light of the setting sun. He’d wanted to stand there, all by himself feeling the glow of pride and satisfaction that came over him, knowing that he was better than any other supervisor on The Chief’s vast acreage.

His own shadow grew long ahead of him as he walked back, his steps still brisk and springy, in spite of the day’s hard work.

The sun had set and twilight had come by the time he reached his own home. He had glanced again toward the north, and had been relieved to see that the stars were visible near the horizon. The clouds couldn’t be very thick.

Overhead, the great, glowing cloud of the Dragon Nebula shed its soft light. That’s what made it possible to work after sundown in the spring; at that time of year, the Dragon Nebula was at its brightest during the early part of the evening. The tail of it didn’t vanish beneath the horizon until well after midnight. In the autumn, it wasn’t visible at all, and the nights were dark except for the stars.

Anketam pushed open the door of his home and noted with satisfaction that the warm smells of cooking filled the air, laving his nostrils and palate with fine promises. He stopped and frowned as he heard a man’s voice speaking in low tones in the kitchen.

Then Memi’s voice called out: “Is that you, Ank?”

“Yeah,” he said, walking toward the kitchen. “It’s me.”

“We’ve got company,” she said. “Guess who.”

“I don’t claim to be much good at guessing,” said Anketam. “I’ll have to peek.”

He stopped at the door of the kitchen and grinned widely when he saw who the man was. “Russat! Well, by heaven, it’s good to see you!”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then a minute or two of handshaking and backslapping as the two brothers both tried to speak at the same time. Anketam heard himself repeating: “Yessir! By heaven, it’s good to see you! Real good!”

And Russat was saying: “Same here, Ank! And, gee, you’re looking great. I mean, real great! Tough as ever, eh, Ank?”

“Yeah, sure, tough as ever. Sit down, boy. Memi! Pour us something hot and get that bottle out of the cupboard!”

Anketam pushed his brother back towards the chair and made him sit down, but Russat was protesting: “Now, wait a minute! Now, just you hold on, Ank! Don’t be getting out your bottle just yet. I brought some real stuff! I mean, expensive—stuff you can’t get very easy. I brought it just for you, and you’re going to have some of it before you say another word. Show him, Memi.”

Memi was standing there, beaming, holding the bottle. Her blue eyes had faded slowly in the years since she and Anketam had married, but there was a sparkle in them now. Anketam looked at the bottle.

“Bedamned,” he said softly. The bottle was beautiful just as it was. It was a work of art in itself, with designs cut all through it and pretty tracings of what looked like gold thread laced in and out of the surface. And it was full to the neck with a clear, red-brown liquid. Anketam thought of the bottle in his own cupboard—plain, translucent plastic, filled with the water-white liquor rationed out from the commissary—and he suddenly felt very backwards and countryish. He scratched thoughtfully at his beard and said: “Well, Well. I don’t know, Russ—I don’t know. You think a plain farmer like me can take anything that fancy?”

Russat laughed, a little embarrassed. “Sure you can. You mean to say you’ve never had brandy before? Why, down in Algia, our Chief—” He stopped.

Anketam didn’t look at him. “Sure, Russ; sure. I’ll bet Chief Samas gives a drink to his secretary, too, now and then.” He turned around and winked. “But this stuff is for brain work, not farming.”

He knew Russat was embarrassed. The boy was nearly ten years younger than Anketam, but Anketam knew that his younger brother had more brains and ability, as far as paper work went, than he, himself, would ever have. The boy (Anketam reminded himself that he shouldn’t think of Russat as a boy—after all, he was thirty-six now) had worked as a special secretary for one of the important chiefs in Algia for five years now. Anketam noticed, without criticism, that Russat had grown soft with the years. His skin was almost pink, bleached from years of indoor work, and looked pale and sickly, even beside Memi’s sun-browned skin—and Memi hadn’t been out in the sun as much as her husband had.

* * * *

Anketam reached out and took the bottle carefully from his wife’s hands. Her eyes watched him searchingly; she had been aware of the subtleties of the exchange between her rough, hard-working, farmer husband and his younger, brighter, better-educated brother.

Anketam said: “If this is a present, I guess I’d better open it.” He peeled off the seal, then carefully removed the glass stopper and sniffed at the open mouth of the beautiful bottle. “Hm-m-m! Say!” Then he set the bottle down carefully on the table. “You’re the guest, Russ, so you can pour. That tea ready yet, Memi?”

“Coming right up,” said his wife gratefully. “Coming right up.”

Anketam watched Russat carefully pour brandy into the cups of hot, spicy tea that Memi set before them. Then he looked up, grinned at his wife, and said: “Pour yourself a cup, honey. This is an occasion. A big occasion.”

She nodded quickly, very pleased, and went over to get another cup.

“What brings you up here, Russ?” Anketam asked. “I hope you didn’t just decide to pick up a bottle of your Chief’s brandy and then take off.” He chuckled after he said it, but he was more serious than he let on. He actually worried about Russat at times. The boy might just take it in his head to do something silly.

Russat laughed and shook his head. “No, no. I’m not crazy, and I’m not stupid—at least, I think not. No; I got to go up to Chromdin. My Chief is sending word that he’s ready to supply goods for the war.”

Anketam frowned. He’d heard that there might be war, of course. There had been all kinds of rumors about how some of the Chiefs were all for fighting, but Anketam didn’t pay much attention to these rumors. In the first place, he knew that it was none of his business; in the second place, he didn’t think there would be any war. Why should anyone pick on Xedii?

What war would mean if it did come, Anketam had no idea, but he didn’t think the Chiefs would get into a war they couldn’t finish. And, he repeated to himself, he didn’t believe there would be a war.

He said as much to Russat.

His brother looked up at him in surprise. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Why, the war’s already started. Sure. Five, six days ago. We’re at war, Ank.”

Anketam’s frown grew deeper. He knew that there were other planets besides Xedii; he had heard that some of the stars in the sky were planets and suns. He didn’t really understand how that could be, but even The Chief had said it was true, so Anketam accepted it as he did the truth about God. It was so, and that was enough for Anketam. Why should he bother himself with other people’s business?

But—war?

Why?

“How’d it happen?” he asked.

Russat sipped at his hot drink before answering. Behind him, Memi moved slowly around the cooker, pretending to be finishing the meal, pretending not to be listening.

“Well, I don’t have all the information,” Russat said, pinching his little short beard between thumb and forefinger. “But I do know that the Chiefs didn’t want the embassy in Chromdin.”

“No,” said Anketam. “I suppose not.”

“I understand they have been making all kinds of threats,” Russat said. “Trying to tell everybody what to do. They think they run all of Creation, I guess. Anyway, they were told to pull out right after the last harvest. They refused to do it, and for a while nobody did anything. Then, last week, the President ordered the Army to throw ’em out—bag and baggage. There was some fighting, I understand, but they got out finally. Now they’ve said they’re going to smash us.” He grinned.

Anketam said: “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, they won’t do anything,” said Russat. “They fume and fuss a lot, but they won’t do anything.”

“I hope not,” said Anketam. He finished the last of his spiked tea, and Memi poured him another one. “I don’t see how they have any right to tell us how to live or how to run our own homes. They ought to mind their own business and leave us alone.”

“You two finish those drinks,” said Memi, “and quit talking about wars. The food will be ready pretty quickly.”

“Good,” said Anketam. “I’m starved.” And, he admitted to himself, the brandy and hot tea had gone to his head. A good meal would make him feel better.

Russat said: “I don’t get much of a chance to eat Memi’s cooking; I’ll sure like this meal.”

“You can stay for breakfast in the morning, can’t you?” Anketam asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you to all that trouble. I have to be up to your Chief’s house before sunrise.”

“We get up before sunrise,” Anketam said flatly. “You can stay for breakfast.”

II

The spring planting did well. The rains didn’t come until after the seedlings had taken root and anchored themselves well into the soil, and the rows showed no signs of heavy bruising. Anketam had been watching one section in particular, where young Basom had planted. Basom had a tendency to do a sloppy job, and if it had showed up as bruised or poorly planted seedlings, Anketam would have seen to it that Basom got what was coming to him.

But the section looked as good as anyone else’s, so Anketam said nothing to Basom.

Russat had come back after twenty days and reported that there was an awful lot of fuss in Chromdin, but nothing was really developing. Then he had gone on back home.

As spring became summer, Anketam pushed the war out of his mind. Evidently, there wasn’t going to be any real shooting. Except that two of The Chief’s sons had gone off to join the Army, things remained the same as always. Life went on as it had.

The summer was hot and almost windless. Work became all but impossible, except during the early morning and late afternoon. Fortunately, there wasn’t much that had to be done. At this stage of their growth, the plants pretty much took care of themselves.

Anketam spent most of his time fishing. He and Jacovik and some of the others would go down to the river and sit under the shade trees, out of the sun, and dangle their lines in the water. It really didn’t matter if they caught much or not; the purpose of fishing was to loaf and get away from the heat, not to catch fish. Even so, they always managed to bring home enough for a good meal at the end of the day.

The day that the war intruded on Anketam’s consciousness again had started off just like any other day. Anketam got his fishing gear together, including a lunch that Memi had packed for him, and gone over to pick up Blejjo.

Blejjo was the oldest man in the village. Some said he was over a hundred, but Blejjo himself only admitted to eighty. He’d been retired a long time back, and his only duties now were little odd jobs that were easy enough, even for an old man. Not that there was anything feeble about old Blejjo; he still looked and acted spry enough.

He was sitting on his front porch, talking to young Basom, when Anketam came up.

The old man grinned. “Hello, Ank. You figure on getting a few more fish today?”

“Why not? The river’s full of ’em. Come along.”

“Don’t see why not,” said Blejjo. “What do you think, Basom?”

The younger man smiled and shook his head. “I’ll stay around home, I think. I’m too lazy today to go to all that effort.”

“Too lazy to loaf,” said Blejjo, laughing. “That’s as lazy as I ever heard.”

Anketam smiled, but he didn’t say anything. Basom was lazy, but Anketam never mentioned it unless the boy didn’t get his work done. Leave that sort of kidding up to the others; it wasn’t good for a supervisor to ride his men unless it was necessary for discipline.

Basom was a powerful young man, tall and well-proportioned. If the truth were known, he probably had the ability to get a good job from The Chief—become a secretary or something, like Russat. But he was sloppy in his work, and, as Blejjo had said, lazy. His saving grace was the fact that he took things as they came; he never showed any resentment towards Anketam if he was rebuked for not doing his work well, and he honestly tried to do better—for a while, at least.

“Not too lazy to loaf,” Basom said in self-defense. “Just too lazy to walk four miles to loaf when I can do it here.”

Old Blejjo was taking his fishing gear down from the rack on the porch. Without looking around, he said: “Cooler down by the river.”

“By the time I walked there,” said Basom philosophically, “walking through all that sun, I’d be so hot it would take me two hours to cool down to where I am now, and another two hours to cool down any more. That’s four hours wasted. Now—” He looked at Anketam with a sly grin. “Now, if you two wanted to carry me, I’d be much obliged. Anketam, you could carry me piggyback, while Blejjo goes over to fetch my pole. If you’d do that, I believe I could see my way clear to going fishing with you.”

Anketam shook his head positively. “I’m afraid the sun would do you in, anyway.”

“Maybe you’d like The Chief to carry you,” said Blejjo. There was a bite in his voice.

“Now, wait,” Basom said apprehensively, “I didn’t say anything like that. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Blejjo pointed his fishing pole at the youth. “You ought to be thankful you’ve got Anketam for a supervisor. There’s some supers who’d boot you good for a crack like that.”

Basom cast appealing eyes at Anketam. “I am thankful! You know I am! Why, you’re the best super in the barony! Everybody knows that. I was only kidding. You know that.”

Before Anketam could say anything, the old man said: “You can bet your life that no other super in this barony would put up with your laziness!”

“Now, Blejjo,” said Anketam, “leave the boy alone. He meant no harm. If he needs talking to, I’ll do the talking.”

Basom looked gratefully reprieved.

“Sorry, Ank,” said Blejjo. “It’s just that some of these young people have no respect for their elders.” He looked at Basom and smiled. “Didn’t mean to take it out on you, Bas. There’s a lot worse than you.” Then, changing his tone: “Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

Basom looked apologetic, but he stuck to his guns. “No. Thanks again, but—” He grinned self-consciously. “To be honest, I was thinking of going over to see Zillia. Her dad said I could come.”

Anketam grinned at the boy. “Well, now, that’s an excuse I’ll accept. Come on, Blejjo, this is not a sport for old men like us. Fishing is more our speed.”

Chuckling, Blejjo shouldered his fishing pole, and the two men started down the dusty village street toward the road that led to the river.

* * * *

They walked in silence for a while, trying to ignore the glaring sun that brought the sweat out on their skins, soaking the sweatbands of their broad-brimmed hats and running in little rivulets down their bodies.

“I kind of feel sorry for that boy,” old Blejjo said at last.

“Oh?” said Anketam. “How so? He’ll get along. He’s improving. Why, he did as good a job of transplanting as any man this spring. Last year, he bruised the seedlings, but I gave him a good dressing down and he remembered it. He’ll be all right.”

“I’m not talking about that, Ank,” said the old man, “I mean him and Zillia. He’s really got a case on with that girl.”

“Anything wrong with that? A young fellow’s got a right to fall in love, hasn’t he? And Zillia seems pretty keen on him, too. If her father doesn’t object, everything ought to go along pretty smoothly.”

“Her father might not object,” said Blejjo, looking down at his feet as they paced off the dusty road. “But there’s others who might object.”

“Who, for instance?”

Blejjo was silent for several steps. Then he said: “Well, Kevenoe, for one.”

Anketam thought that over in silence. Kevenoe was on The Chief’s staff at the castle. Like many staff men—including, Anketam thought wryly, his own brother Russat, on occasion—he tended to lord it over the farmers who worked the land. “Kevenoe has an eye on Zillia?” he asked after a moment.

“I understand he’s asked Chief Samas for her as soon as she’s eighteen. That would be this fall, after harvest.”

“I see,” Anketam said thoughtfully. He didn’t ask how the old man had come about his knowledge. Old Blejjo had little to do, and on the occasions that he had to do some work around The Chief’s castle, he made it a point to pick up gossip. But he was careful with his information; he didn’t go spreading it around for all to hear, and he made it a point to verify his information before he passed it on. Anketam respected the old man. He was the only one in the village who called him “Ank,” outside of Memi.

“Do you think The Chief will give her to Kevenoe?” he asked.

Blejjo nodded. “Looks like it. He thinks a great deal of Kevenoe.”

“No reason why he shouldn’t,” said Anketam. “Kevenoe’s a good man.”

“Oh, I know that,” said the old man. “But Basom won’t like it at all. And I don’t think Zillia will, either.”

“That’s the way things happen,” said Anketam. “A man can’t expect to go through life having everything his own way. There’s other girls around for Basom. If he can’t have the prettiest, he’ll have to be satisfied with someone else.” He chuckled. “That’s why I picked Memi. She’s not beautiful and never was, but she’s a wonderful wife.”

“That’s so,” said Blejjo. “A wise man is one who only wants what he knows he can have. Right now”—he took off his hat and wiped his bald head—”all I want is a dip in that river.”

“Swim first and then fish?”

“I think so, don’t you? Basom was right about this hot sun.”

“I’ll go along with you,” agreed Anketam.

They made their way to the river, to the shallow place at the bend where everyone swam. There were a dozen and more kids there, having a great time in the slow moving water, and several of the older people soaking themselves and keeping an eye on the kids to make sure they didn’t wander out to where the water was deep and the current swift.

Anketam and Blejjo took off their clothes and cooled themselves in the water for a good half hour before they dressed again and went on upriver to a spot where Blejjo swore the fish were biting.

They were. In the next four hours, the two men had caught six fish apiece, and Blejjo was trying for his seventh. Here, near the river, there was a slight breeze, and it was fairly cool beneath the overhanging branches of the closely bunched trees.

Blejjo had spotted a big, red-and-yellow striped beauty loafing quietly in a back eddy, and he was lowering his hook gently to a point just in front of the fish when both men heard the voice calling.

“Anketam! Anketam! Blejjo! Where you at?”

Blejjo went on with his careful work, knowing that Anketam would take care of whatever it was.

Anketam recognized the voice. He stood up and called: “Over here, Basom! What’s the trouble?”

A minute later, Basom came running through the trees, his feet crashing through the underbrush.

Blejjo sat up abruptly, an angry look on his face. “Basom, you scared my fish away.”

“Fish, nothing,” said Basom. “I ran all the way here to tell you!” He was grinning widely and panting for breath at the same time.

“You suddenly got an awful lot of energy,” Blejjo said sourly.

“What happened?” Anketam asked.

“The invasion!” Basom said between breaths. “Kevenoe himself came down to tell us! They’ve started the invasion! The war’s on!”

“Than what are you looking so happy about?” Anketam snapped.

“That’s what I came to tell you.” Basom’s grin didn’t fade in the least. “They landed up in the Frozen Country, where our missiles couldn’t get ’em, according to Kevenoe. Then they started marching down on one of the big towns. Tens of thousands of ’em! And we whipped ’em! Our army cut ’em to pieces and sent ’em running back to their base! We won! We won!”

III

The battle had been won, but the war wasn’t won yet. The invaders had managed to establish a good-sized base up in the Frozen Country. They’d sneaked their ships in and had put up a defensive system that stopped any high-speed missiles. Not that Xedii had many missiles. Xedii was an agricultural planet; most manufactured articles were imported. It had never occurred to the government of Xedii that there would be any real need for implements of war.

The invaders seemed to be limiting their use of weapons, too. They wanted to control the planet, not destroy it. Through the summer and into the autumn, Anketam listened to the news as it filtered down from the battlegrounds. There were skirmishes here and there, but nothing decisive. Xedii seemed to be holding her own against the invaders.

After the first news of the big victory, things settled back pretty much to normal.

The harvest was good that year, but after the leaves were shredded and dried, they went into storage warehouses. The invaders had set up a patrol system around Xedii which prevented the slow cargo ships from taking off or landing. A few adventurous space officers managed to get a ship out now and then, but those few flights could hardly be called regular trade shipments.

The cool of winter had come when Chief Samas did something he had never done before. He called all the men in the barony to assemble before the main gate of the castle enclosure. He had a speech to make.

For the first time, Anketam felt a touch of apprehension. He got his crew together, and they walked to the castle in silence, wondering what it was that The Chief had to say.

All the men of the barony, except those who couldn’t be spared from their jobs, were assembled in front of Chief Samas’ baronial castle.

The castle itself was not a single building. Inside the four-foot-high thorn hedge that surrounded the two-acre area, there were a dozen buildings of hard, irridescent plastic shining in the sun. They all looked soft and pleasant and comfortable. Even the thorn hedge, filled as it was by the lacy leaves that concealed the hard, sharp thorns, looked soft and inviting.

Anketam listened to the soft murmur of whispered conversation from the men around him. They stood quietly outside the main gate that led into the castle area, waiting for The Chief to appear, and wondering among themselves what it was that The Chief had to say.

“You think the invaders have won?”

Anketam recognized the hoarse whisper from the man behind him. He turned to face the dark, squat, hard-looking man who had spoken. “It couldn’t be, Jacovik. It couldn’t be.”

The other supervisor looked down at his big, knuckle-scarred hands instead of looking at Anketam. He was not a handsome man, Jacovik; his great, beaklike nose was canted to one side from a break that had come in his teens; his left eye was squinted almost closed by the scar tissue that surrounded it, and the right only looked better by comparison. His eyebrows, his beard, and the fringe of hair that outlined his bald head made an incongruous pale yellow pattern against the sunburnt darkness of his face. In his youth, Jacovik had been almost pathologically devoted to boxing—even to the point of picking fights with others in his village for no reason at all, except to fight. Twice, he had been brought up before The Chief’s court because of the severe beating he had given to men bigger than he, and he had finally killed a man with his fists.

Chief Samas had given him Special Punishment for that, and a final warning that the next fight would be punished by death.

Anketam didn’t know whether it was that threat, or the emotional reaction Jacovik had suffered from killing a man, or simply that he had had some sense beaten into his head, but from that moment on Jacovik was a different man. He had changed from a thug into a determined, ambitious man. In twenty-two years, he had not used his fists except to discipline one of his crew, and that had only happened four times that Anketam knew of. Jacovik had shown that he had ability as well as strength, that he could control men by words as well as by force, and The Chief had made him a supervisor. He had proved himself worthy of the job; next to Anketam, he was the best supervisor in the barony.

Anketam had a great deal of respect for the little, wide-shouldered, barrel-chested man who stood there looking at the scars on the backs of his hands.

Jacovik turned his hands over and looked at the calloused palms. “How do we know? Maybe the Council of Chiefs has given up. Maybe they’ve authorized the President to surrender. After all, we’re not fighters; we’re farmers. The invaders outnumber us. They’ve got us cut off by a blockade, to keep us from sending out the harvest. They’ve got machines and weapons.” He looked up suddenly, his bright blue eyes looking straight into Anketam’s. “How do we know?”

Anketam’s grin was hard. “Look, Jac; the invaders have said that they intend to smash our whole society, haven’t they? Haven’t they?”

Jacovik nodded.

“And they want to break up the baronies—take everything away from the Chiefs—force us farmers to give up the security we’ve worked all our lives for. That’s what they’ve said, isn’t it?”

Jacovik nodded again.

“Well, then,” Anketam continued remorselessly, “do you think the Chiefs would give up easily? Are they going to simply smile and shake hands with the invaders and say: ‘Go ahead, take all our property, reduce us to poverty, smash the whole civilization we’ve built up, destroy the security and peace of mind of millions of human beings, and then send your troops in to rule us by martial law.’ Are they going to do that? Are they?”

Jacovik spread his big, hard hands. “I don’t know. I’m not a Chief. I don’t know how their minds work. Do you? Maybe they’ll think surrender would be better than having all of Xedii destroyed inch by inch.”

Anketam shook his head. “Never. The Chiefs will fight to the very end. And they’ll win in the long run because right is on their side. The invaders have no right to change our way of living; they have no right to impose their way of doing things on us. No, Jac—the Chiefs will never give up. They haven’t surrendered yet, and they never will. They’ll win. The invaders will be destroyed.”

Jacovik frowned, completely closing his left eye. “You’ve always been better at thinking things out that I, Ank.” He paused and looked down at his hands again. “I hope you’re right, Ank. I hope you’re right.”

* * * *

In spite of his personal conviction that he was right, Anketam had to admit that Jacovik had reason for his own opinion. He knew that many of the farmers were uncertain about the ultimate outcome of the war.

Anketam looked around him at the several hundred men who made up the farming force of the barony. His own crew were standing nearby, mixing with Jacovik’s crew and talking in low voices. In the cool winter air, Anketam could still detect the aroma of human bodies, the smell of sweat that always arose when a crowd of people were grouped closely together. And he thought he could detect a faint scent of fear and apprehension in that atmosphere.

Or was that just his imagination, brought on by Jacovik’s pessimism?

He opened his lips to say something to Jacovik, but his words died unborn. The sudden silence in the throng around him, the abrupt cessation of whispering, told him, more definitely than a chorus of trumpets could have done, that The Chief had appeared.

He turned around quickly, to face the Main Gate again.

The Main Gate was no higher than the thorn-bush hedge that it pierced. It was a heavily built, intricately decorated piece of polished goldwood, four feet high and eight feet across, set in a sturdy goldwood frame. The arch above the gate reached a good ten feet, giving The Chief plenty of room to stand.

He was just climbing up to stand on the gate itself as Anketam turned.

Chief Samas was a tall man, lean of face and wide of brow. His smooth-shaven chin was long and angular, and his dark eyes were deeply imbedded beneath heavy, bushy eyebrows.

And he was dressed in clothing cut in a manner that Anketam had never seen before.

He stood there, tall and proud, a half smile on his face. It was several seconds before he spoke. During that time, there was no sound from the assembled farmers.

“Men,” he said at last, “I think that none of you have seen this uniform before. I look odd in it, do I not?”

The men recognized The Chief’s remark as a joke, and a ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

The Chief’s smile broadened. “Odd indeed. Yes. And do you perceive the golden emblems, here at my throat? They, and the uniform, indicate that I have been chosen to help lead the armed forces—a portion of them, I should say.”

He smiled around at the men. “The Council of Chiefs has authorized the President to appoint me a Colonel of Light Tank. I am expected to lead our armored forces into battle against the damned Invaders.”

A cheer came from the farmers, loud and long. Anketam found himself yelling as loud as anyone. The pronunciation and the idiom of the speech of the Chiefs was subtly different from those of the farmers, but Anketam could recognize the emphasis that his Chief was putting on the words of his speech. “Invaders.” With a capital “I.”

The Chief held up his hands, and the cheering died. At the same time, the face of Chief Samas lost its smile.

“I will be gone for some time,” he said somberly. “The Council feels that it will be two or three years before we have finally driven the Invaders from our planet. This will not be a simple war, nor an easy one. The blockade of orbital ships which encircle Xedii keep us from making proper contact with any friends that we may have outside the circle of influence of the damned Invaders. We are, at the moment, fighting alone. And yet, in spite of that—in spite of that, I say—we have thus far held the enemy at a standstill. And, in the long run, we shall win.”

He took a deep breath then, and his baritone voice thundered out when he spoke.

“Shall win? No! We must win! None of you want to become slaves in the factories of the Invaders. I know that, and you know it. Who among you would slave your life away in the sweatshops of the Invaders, knowing that those for whom you worked might, at any time, simply deprive you of your livelihood at their own whim, since they feel no sense of responsibility toward you as individuals?”

Again The Chief stopped, and his eyes sought out each man in turn.

“If there are any such among you, I renounce you at this moment. If there are any such, I ask…nay, I plead…I order…I order you to go immediately to the Invaders.”

Another deep breath. No one moved.

“You have all heard the propaganda of the Invaders. You know that they have offered you—well, what? Freedom? Yes, that’s the way they term it. Freedom.” Another pause. “Freedom. Hah!”

He put his hands on his hips. “None of you have ever seen a really regimented society—and I’m thankful that you haven’t. I hope that you never will.”

Chief Samas twisted his lips into an expression of hatred. “Freedom? Freedom from what! Freedom to do what?

“I’ll tell you. Freedom to work in their factories for twelve hours a day! Freedom to work until you are no longer of any use to them, and then be turned out to die—with no home, and no food to support you. Freedom to live by yourselves, with every man’s hand against you, with every pittance that you earn taxed to support a government that has no thought for the individual!

“Is that what you want? Is that what you’ve worked for all your lives?”

A visual chorus of shaken heads accompanied the verbal chorus of “No.”

Chief Samas dropped his hands to his sides. “I thought not. But I will repeat: If any of you want to go to the Invaders, you may do so now.”

Anketam noticed a faint movement to his right, but it stopped before it became decisive. He glanced over, and he noticed that young Basom was standing there, half poised, as though unable to make up his mind.

Then The Chief’s voice bellowed out again. “Very well. You are with me. I will leave the work of the barony in your hands. I ask that you produce as much as you can. Next year—next spring—we will not plant cataca.”

There was a low intake of breath from the assembled men. Not plant cataca? That was the crop that they had grown since—well, since ever. Anketam felt as though someone had jerked a rug from beneath him.

“There is a reason for this,” The Chief went on. “Because of the blockade that surrounds Xedii, we are unable to export cataca leaves. The rest of the galaxy will have to do without the drug that is extracted from the leaves. The incident of cancer will rise to the level it reached before the discovery of cataca. When they understand that we cannot ship out because of the Invader’s blockade, they will force the Invader to stop his attack on us. What we need now is not cataca, but food. So, next spring, you will plant food crops.

“Save aside the cataca seed until the war is over. The seedlings now in the greenhouses will have to be destroyed, but that cannot be helped.”

He stopped for a moment, and when he began again his voice took on a note of sadness.

“I will be away from you until the war is won. While I am gone, the barony will be run by my wife. You will obey her as you would me. The finances of the barony will be taken care of by my trusted man, Kevenoe.” He gestured to one side, and Kevenoe, who was standing there, smiled quickly and then looked grim again.

“As for the actual running of the barony—as far as labor is concerned—I think I can leave that in the hands of one of my most capable men.”

He raised his finger and pointed. There was a smile on his face.

Anketam felt as though he had been struck an actual blow; the finger was pointed directly at him.

“Anketam,” said The Chief, “I’m leaving the barony in your hands until I return. You will supervise the labor of all the men here. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Anketam weakly. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

IV

Never, for the rest of his life, would the sharp outlines of that moment fade from his memory. He knew that the men of the barony were all looking at him; he knew that The Chief went on talking afterwards. But those things impressed themselves but lightly on his mind, and they blurred soon afterwards. Twenty years later, in retelling the story, he would swear that The Chief had ended his speech at that point. He would swear that it was only seconds later that The Chief had jumped down from the gate and motioned for him to come over; his memory simply didn’t register anything between those two points.

But The Chief’s words after the speech—the words spoken to him privately—were bright and clear in his mind.

The Chief was a good three inches shorter than Anketam, but Anketam never noticed that. He just stood there in front of The Chief, wondering what more his Chief had to say.

“You’ve shown yourself to be a good farmer, Anketam,” Chief Samas said in a low voice. “Let’s see—you’re of Skebbin stock, I think?”

Anketam nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“The Skebbin family has always produced good men. You’re a credit to the Skebbins, Anketam.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’ve got a hard job ahead of you,” said The Chief. “Don’t fail me. Plant plenty of staple crops, make sure there’s enough food for everyone. If you think it’s profitable, add more to the animal stock. I’ve authorized Kevenoe to allow money for the purchase of breeding stock. You can draw whatever you need for that purpose.

“This war shouldn’t last too long. Another year, at the very most, and we’ll have forced the Invaders off Xedii. When I come back, I expect to find the barony in good shape, d’you hear?”

“Yes, sir. It will be.”

“I think it will,” said The Chief. “Good luck to you, Anketam.”

As The Chief turned away, Anketam said: “Thank you, sir—and good luck to you, sir.”

Chief Samas turned back again. “By the way,” he said, “there’s one more thing. I know that men don’t always agree on everything. If there is any dispute between you and Kevenoe, submit the question to my wife for arbitration.” He hesitated. “However, I trust that there will not be many such disputes. A woman shouldn’t be bothered with such things any more than is absolutely necessary. It upsets them. Understand?”

Anketam nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Good-by, Anketam. I hope to see you again before the next harvest.” And with that, he turned and walked through the gate, toward the woman who was standing anxiously on the porch of his home.

Anketam turned away and started towards his own village. Most of the others had already begun the trek back. But Jacovik, Blejjo, and Basom were waiting for him. They fell into step beside him.

After a while, Jacovik broke the silence. “Well, Ank, it looks like you’ve got a big job on your hands.”

“That’s for sure,” said Anketam. He knew that Jacovik envied him the job; he knew that Jacovik had only missed the appointment by a narrow margin.

“Jac,” he said, “have you got a man on your crew that you can trust to take over your job?”

“Madders could do it, I think,” Jacovik said cautiously. “Why?”

“This is too big a job for one man,” said Anketam quietly. “I’ll need help. I want you to help me, Jac.”

There was a long silence while the men walked six paces. Then Jacovik said: “I’ll do whatever I can, Ank. Whatever I can.” There was honest warmth in his voice.

Again there was a silence.

“Blejjo,” Anketam said after a time, “do you mind coming out of retirement for a while?”

“Not if you need me, Ank,” said the old man.

“It won’t be hard work,” Anketam said. “I just want you to take care of the village when I’m not there. Settle arguments, assign the village work, give out punishment if necessary—things like that. As far as the village is concerned, you’ll be supervisor.”

“What about the field work, Ank?” Blejjo asked. “I’m too old to handle that. Come spring, and—”

“I said, as far as the village is concerned,” Anketam said. “I’ve got another man in mind for the field work.”

And no one was more surprised than Basom when Anketam said: “Basom, do you think you could handle the crew in the field?”

Basom couldn’t even find his tongue for several more paces. When he discovered at last that it was still in his mouth, where he’d left it, he said: “I…I’ll try, Ank. I sure will try, if you want me to. But…well…I mean, why pick me?”

Old Blejjo chuckled knowingly. Jacovik, who hardly knew the boy, just looked puzzled.

“Why not you?” Anketam countered.

“Well…you’ve always said I was lazy. And I am, I guess.”

“Sure you are,” said Anketam. “So am I. Always have been. But a smart lazy man can figure out things that a hard worker might overlook. He can find the easy, fast way to get a job done properly. And he doesn’t overwork his men because he knows that when he’s tired, the others are, too. You want to try it, Basom?”

“I’ll try,” said Basom earnestly. “I’ll try real hard.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation. “Just one thing, Anketam—”

“What’s that?”

“Kevenoe. I don’t want him coming around me. Not at all. If he ever said one word to me, I’d probably break his neck right there.”

Anketam nodded. The Chief had given Zillia to Kevenoe only two months before, and the only one who liked the situation was Kevenoe himself.

“I’ll deal with Kevenoe, Basom,” Anketam said. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“All right, then,” Basom said. “I’ll do my best, Anketam.”

“You’d better,” said Anketam. “If you don’t, I’ll just have to give the job to someone else. You hear?”

“I hear,” said Basom.

V

The war dragged on. In the spring of the following year, over a hundred thousand Invader troops landed on the seacoast a hundred miles from Chromdin and began a march on the capital. But somebody had forgotten to tell the Invader general that it rained in that area in the spring and that the mud was like glue. The Invader army bogged down, and, floundering their way toward Chromdin, they found themselves opposed by an army of nearly a hundred thousand Xedii troops under General Jojon, and the invasion came to a standstill at that point.

Farther to the west, another group of forty thousand Invader troops came down from the Frozen Country, and a Xedii general named Oljek trounced them with a mere seventeen thousand men.

All in all, the Invaders were getting nowhere, but they seemed determined to keep on plugging.

The news only filtered slowly into the areas which were situated well away from the front. A thousand miles to the west of Chief Samas’ barony, the Invaders began cutting deeply into Xedii territory, but they were nowhere near the capital, so no one was really worried.

Anketam worked hard at keeping the barony going during the absence of The Chief. Instead of cataca, he and Jacovik planted food crops, doing on a larger scale just what they had always done in the selected sections around the villages. They had always grown their own food, and now they were doing it on a grand scale.

No news came from off-planet, except for unreliable rumors. What the rest of the galaxy was doing about the war on Xedii, no one knew.

Young Basom proved to be a reasonably competent supervisor. He was nowhere near as good as Anketam or Jacovik, but there were worse supers in the barony.

Anketam found that the biggest worry was not in the handling of the farmers, but in obtaining manufactured goods. The staff physician complained to Kevenoe that drugs were getting scarce. Shoes and clothing were almost impossible to obtain. Rumor had it that arms and ammunition were running short in the Xedii armies. For two centuries, Xedii had depended on other planets to provide manufactured goods for her, and now those supplies were cut off, except for a miserably slow trickle that came in via the daring space officers who managed to evade the orbital forts that the Invaders had set up around the planet.

Even so, Anketam’s faith in the power of Xedii remained constant. The invading armies were still being held off from Chromdin, weren’t they? The capital would not fall, of that he was sure.

What Anketam did not and could not know was the fact that the Invaders were growing tired of pussy-footing around. Instead of fighting Xedii on Xedii’s terms, the Invaders decided to fight it on their own.

Everyone on Chief Samas’ barony and the others around it expected trouble to come from the north, from the Frozen Country, if and when it came. They didn’t look to the west, where the real trouble was brewing.

Anketam was shocked when he heard the news that the Invaders had reached Tana L’At, having cut down through the center of the continent, dividing the inhabited part of Xedii into two almost equal parts. They knocked out Tana L’At with a heavy shelling of paralysis gas, evacuated the inhabitants, and dusted the city with radioactive powder to make it uninhabitable for several years.

Then they began to march eastward.

VI

For the first time in his life, Anketam was feeling genuine fear. He had feared for his life before, yes. And he had feared for his family. But now he feared for his world, which was vaster by far.

He blinked at the tall, gangling Kevenoe, who was still out of breath from running. “Say that again.”

“I said that the Invader troops are crossing Benner Creek,” Kevenoe said angrily. “They’ll be at the castle within an hour. We’ve got to do something.”

“What?” Anketam asked dazedly.

“Fight them? With what? We have no weapons.”

“I don’t know,” Kevenoe admitted. “I just don’t know. I thought maybe you’d know. Maybe you could think of something. What about Lady Samas?”

“What about her?” Anketam still couldn’t force his mind to function.

“Haven’t you heard? The Invaders have been looting and burning every castle in their path! And the women—”

Lady Samas in danger! Something crystallized in Anketam’s mind. He pointed in the direction of the castle. “Get back there!” he snapped. “Get everyone out of the castle! Save all the valuables you can! Get everyone down to the river and tell them to hide in the brush at the Big Swamp. The Invaders won’t go there. Move!”

Kevenoe didn’t even pause to answer. He ran back toward the saddle animal he had tethered at the edge of the village.

Anketam was running in the opposite direction, toward Basom’s quarters.

He didn’t bother to knock. He flung open the door and yelled, “Basom!”

Basom, who had been relaxing on his bed, leaped to his feet. “What is it?”

Anketam told him rapidly. Then he said: “Get moving! You’re a fast runner. Spread the news. Tell everyone to get to the Swamp. We have less than an hour, so run for all you’re worth!”

Basom, like Kevenoe, didn’t bother to ask questions. He went outside and started running toward the south.

“That’s right!” Anketam called after him. “Tell Jacovik first! And get more runners to spread the word!”

And then Anketam headed for his own home. Memi had to be told. On the way, he pounded on the doors of the houses, shouting the news and telling the others to get to the Big Swamp.

By the time the Invader troops came, they found the entire Samas barony empty. Not a single soul opposed their march; there was no voice to object when they leveled their beam projectors and melted the castle and the villages into shapeless masses of blackened plastic.

VII

The wooden shelter wasn’t much of a home, but it was all Anketam could provide. It had been difficult to cut down the trees and make a shack of them, but at least there were four walls and a roof.

Anketam stood at the door of the rude hut, looking blindly at the ruins of the village a hundred yards away. In the past few months, weeds had grown up around the charred blobs that had once been the homes of Anketam’s crew. Anketam stared, not at, but past and through them, seeing the ghosts of the houses that had once been there.

Behind him, Memi was speaking in soft tones to Lady Samas.

“Now you go ahead and eat, Lady. You can’t starve yourself to death. Things won’t always be this bad, you’ll see. When that oldest boy of yours comes back, he’ll fix the barony right back up like it was. Just you see. Now, here; try some of this soup.”

Lady Samas said nothing. She seemed to be entirely oblivious of her surroundings these days. Nothing mattered to her any more. Word had come back that Chief Samas had accompanied General Eeler in the fatal expedition towards the Invader base, and The Chief had been buried there in the Frozen Country.

Lady Samas had nowhere else to stay. Kevenoe was dead, his skull crushed by—by someone. Anketam refused, in his own mind, to see any connection between Kevenoe’s death and the fact that Basom and Zillia had disappeared the same day, probably to give themselves over to the Invader troops.

A movement at the corner of his eye caught Anketam’s attention. He turned his head to look. Then he spun on his heel and went into the hut.

“Lady Samas,” he said quickly, “they’re coming. There’s a ground-car coming down the road with four Invaders in it.”

Lady Samas looked up at him, her fine old face calm and emotionless. “Let them come,” she said. “We can’t stop them, Anketam. And we have nothing to lose.”

Three minutes later, the ground-car pulled up in front of the hut. Anketam watched silently as one of the men got out. The other three stayed in the car, their handguns ready.

The officer, very tall and straight in his blue uniform, strode up to the door of the hut. He stopped and addressed Anketam. “I understand Lady Samas is living here.”

“That’s right,” Anketam said.

“Would you tell her that Colonel Fayder would like to speak to her.”

Before Anketam could say anything, Lady Samas spoke. “Tell the colonel to come in, Anketam.”

Anketam stepped aside to let the officer enter.

“Lady Samas?” he asked.

She nodded. “I am.”

The colonel removed his hat. “Madam, I am Colonel Jamik Fayder, of the Union army. You are the owner of this land?”

“Until my son returns, yes,” said Lady Samas evenly.

“I understand.” The colonel licked his lips nervously. He was obviously ill at ease in the presence of the Lady Samas. “Madam,” he said, “it would be useless for me to apologize for the destructions of war. Apologies are mere words.”

“They are,” said Lady Samas. “None the less, I accept them.”

“Thank you. I have come to inform you that the Xedii armies formally surrendered near Chromdin early this morning. The war is over.”

“I’m glad,” said Lady Samas.

“So am I,” said the colonel. “It has not been a pleasant war. Xedii was—and still is—the most backward planet in the galaxy. Your Council of Chiefs steadfastly refused to allow the”—he glanced at Anketam—”workers of Xedii to govern their own lives. They have lived and died without proper education, without the medical care that would save and lengthen their lives, and without the comforts of life that any human being deserves. That situation will be changed now, but I am heartily sorry it took a war to do it.”

Anketam looked at the man. What was he talking about? He and his kind had burned and dusted cities and villages, and had smashed the lives of millions of human beings on the pretense that they were trying to help. What sort of insanity was that?

The colonel took a sheaf of papers from his pocket.

“I have been ordered to read to you the proclamation of the Union President.”

He looked down at the papers and began to read:

“Henceforth, all the peoples of Xedii shall be free and equal. They shall have the right to change their work at will, to be paid in lawful money instead of—”

Anketam just stood there, his mind glazed. He had worked hard all his life for the security of retirement, and now all that was gone. What was he to do? Where was he to go? If he had to be paid in money, who would do it? Lady Samas? She had nothing. Besides, Anketam knew nothing about the handling of money. He knew nothing about how to get along in a society like that.

He stood there in silence as his world dissolved around him. He could hear, dimly, the voice of the blue-clad Union officer as he read off the death warrant for Xedii. And for Anketam.

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFO

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, by Stephen Crane

CAPTAINS VENOMOUS, by Arthur J. Burks

A SAHIBS’ WAR, by Rudyard Kipling

WHIRLWIND SQUADRON, by Robert W. Nealey

THEY DIED IN VAIN, by George Bruce

THE BLOCKADE RUNNERS, by Jules Verne

IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TURK, by Benge Atlee

THE CRIME OF THE BRIGADIER, by Arthur Conan Doyle

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, by Ambrose Bierce

WHISPERING DEATH, by Laurence Donovan

A ONE-MAN NAVY, by Eugene Cunningham

WHEN A YANK GETS FIGHTING MAD, by Lieut. Jay D. Blaufox

A MYSTERY OF HEROISM, by Stephen Crane

THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED, by Mark Twain

WITHOUT THE BLUE, by Johnston McCulley

PRIVATE WAR, by Norman A. Daniels

THE CLOUD WIZARD, by David Goodis

KILLER ACE, by David Goodis

THE FLY, by Katherine Mansfield

THE COLONEL’S IDEAS, by Guy de Maupassant

THREE MIRACULOUS SOLDIERS, by Stephen Crane

NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison

VICTORY, by Lester del Rey

THE DEFENDERS, by Philip K. Dick

THE DESTROYERS, by Randall Garrett