Front matter (continued 3)

An immeasurable time passed before an orderly entered, switched on the electric light, drew the blinds. She roused herself, found the grip upon her hand relaxed. She rose—with tight lips and burning eyes, went about her duties.

That evening it was by an effort of will, sternly administered, that she sat at table in the Sisters' messroom. She scarcely ate, was deaf to the feminine chatter around her. One of the sisters, a notorious flirt, joked her upon her loverlike posture with Number Ten. The orderly had evidently talked. Sister Braithwaite did not reply. As soon as possible she fled to her little matchboarded cubicle.

By her bedside was a photograph of a clean-featured young man, with intellectual eyes, more than ordinarily vivid in their expression. She kissed it passionately—"Ronald! Ronald!"—the loved name came from the depths of her. The merciful tears fell fast, her bosom heaved.

She slept with a packet of letters pressed tight against her warm body.

She heard her name called: "Mary! Mary!" in a startlingly familiar voice. She heard herself reply: "Ronald!" It was very dark. Where was she? Ah, by the stream. It seemed queerly natural that she should be by that stream. It was not so dark after all—only twilight. Twilight with dark woods coming down to the stream. Her name was called again: "Mary! Mary!" her lover's voice impatient. Again she heard herself reply: "Ronald! Where are you?" "Here, dear! On the other side! You must cross the stream."

Of course! She must cross the stream—that was quite natural—and there was a little footbridge, offering passage. She went over, not daring to look down. On the other side she waited. He was not yet visible. She wondered what suit he would be wearing, wondered why she wondered. He came towards her, his clothes curiously more conspicuous than his face. He was clad in his old tweed suit, and mysteriously it seemed odd to her. Yet what else should he be wearing? It was the suit he always wore when out for a walk. She glanced at her own clothes with a subtle sense of strangeness, yet it was her old summer frock she wore. This little puzzle about clothes played itself out in cosmic depths of her, receded or was solved, vanished. Her lover was standing at her side, enfolded her.

"Mary! I have been so anxious about you!"

She looked up to eyes that seemed like stars in the twilight.

"I, too, Ronald—I have been worrying about you." There was a sense of something terrible in the background, imminent, and yet she felt it had been with her for a long time. It ceased. "But everything's all right now—I have found you."

A little glimmering something in the depths of her asked why she said that, seemed to repeat doubtfully: "Found you——" in a long, eternally re-echoing voice. She felt eerie. It was as though her existence was a duplicate imperfectly combined, like the double vision, half running into each other, of badly adjusted binoculars.

"I am so glad you are safe, dear," she heard herself say.

"Let us go and hear the nightingales," he said in the voice so ringingly his own. He drew her along the path in the twilight, his arm about her waist.

Nightingales? Now? Of course, why not? The season was early June—what was the silly half-thought submerged beyond the horizon of her mind?

She allowed herself to be impelled by the pressure of his arm. Closely linked, they followed the tenebrous path by the wood, climbed skirting its dark edge. Her lover talked copiously and interestingly as he always did—on a multitude of subjects. He was humorous, satirical, rhapsodic, earnestly eloquent by turns. How like him it was! She admired the wide range of his mind. Much more easily than usual—she realised it in a little glow of self-flattery—she comprehended him all through a long and intricate disquisition. Yet lurking somewhere in her dream-consciousness was the feeling that there was an all-important topic on which he did not touch. A part of her tried to identify that topic and failed. The failure worried her. He talked of travel, of a trip into Germany through the Black Forest, across Lake Constance into Austria and the Tyrol. Of course! That was to be their honeymoon tour. In the days before—before what?—before something—they had often talked about it. They were not even officially engaged then—she remembered how they used to laugh together over these distant projects that were treated as imminent facts. They had even had a little quarrel over the choice of two alternative stopping places. She came back to his voice.

"Listen!" he said. "Listen!"

A nightingale was singing with supernatural power. Loud, thrillingly resonant under the stars that now powdered the sky, the song welled out to them. Its burden, mysteriously comprehended by them to esoteric depths, was sorrow—the sorrow of all the world, here completely expressed, transmuted into so strange a beauty that the listener held his breath. The deep sobs, shudderingly repeated, that threw off the magic runs of crystal sound, pervaded the atmosphere about them with a mystic spell, evoked an immense pity in them. They could have wept. Suddenly they were conscious of a perfidy in this magically induced compassion—a danger, common to both, implied in it, imminent. He flung his arms about her to protect her, shielding her from it.

"You are mine, dearest!—mine!—only mine!"

His words went ringing through the stars, passed out of hearing, but were not silenced. She felt kisses of intense fervour upon her mouth—responded.

"I am!" she cried. Her words also rolled away endlessly, as though permuted into imperishable brass. "I am yours alone!"

She half-woke in the feeling of a near presence, then sank again into a sleep that remembers not its dreams.

She awoke in the morning obsessed by the baffling sense of an occurrence she could not recall. Then the memory, the realisation of her loss flooded in on her—harshly predominant in those first empty moments as yet unlinked to the distractions of the day. She wept, uncontrollable tears. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried in a low voice, her face buried in the soft pillow. Then she remembered. Her tears were checked. The details of her dream opened one by one, stirred in her a curious, subtle fear she felt unworthy of her. The vividness of it woke an atavistic emotion, the shrinking reaction of primitive humanity from the influence of those dead to this world. Yet a more recent growth in her tried to glory in the contact—impelled by an obscure sentiment of duty. "I do love you, Ronald!" she murmured again to the pillow. "I am yours alone!" The saying of the words seemed to merge her dream-life into unison with the actual.

There was much to do in the long, freshly-aerated ward that morning. As one by one each bed had its sheets turned back, exposing the gashed, perforated or fractured bodies of men who winced with pain, the crude other side of war was laid bare. Into strong relief, too, was thrown the complementary phase of the other side of the vast catastrophe where the noblest are proudly conscious of the wounds they inflict. With tender care, the utmost solicitude not to cause one unnecessary pang of suffering, the khaki-clad doctors, the grey-uniformed, white-coifed and aproned nurses, laboured to save and heal.

Sister Braithwaite thrust herself utterly into her daily task of dressing wounds, of soothing pain, of bringing a cheerful smile on to the face of the sufferer.

So doing, she eluded for quite long periods the obsession which haunted her.

Number Ten was once more the focus of interest in the ward. His condition had grown worse during the night. To-day he was in a dangerous fever. The doctor was grave. Sister Braithwaite watched over him with unremitting care, found herself passionately fighting off death. In the early afternoon the crisis passed. He woke from a quiet sleep, looked up to the Sister standing by his bed.

"You have saved me, Sister," he said in a weak voice. "I could feel it——"

"Hush, Captain Lavering. Go to sleep. We are all trying to get you well."

"It was you," he said faintly, as his eyes closed once more.

The silence of the ward was suddenly broken by a merry peal of bells floating in through the open windows. In the little village church tucked away in a near-by hollow of the moor a wedding was being solemnised. Sudden tears, a strange emotion, surged up in Sister Braithwaite.

A case that had made good progress was removed from the ward, a newly-arrived, severely-wounded man brought in.

"If only it were Ronald!" The neat, prim figure of the Sister, supervising the orderlies busy lifting the casualty into the bed, gave no indication of the desperate agonised prayer.

She dreamed.

"——Mine at last, my beloved—really mine!" The familiar voice thrilled through her, very close, overhead.

"Yours! Always yours!" she heard herself murmur.

She took her head from the darkness that obscured her vision—it was his coat against which she had been nestling; she saw the little white touzled-up hairs of the rough tweed ere her gaze stretched to longer focus. She looked to his face, met his vivid eyes—looked round at her surroundings.

They were alone in the first-class compartment of a railway train that rocked and roared. His lips were pressed on hers. "The great day, dearest!" he said. Her mind leaped to the allusion. Their wedding-day! They had been married that morning—she could hear still the joyous peal of bells—were going away on their honeymoon. The tweed suit he wore was quite new—something like the old. She was in a travelling-dress that he had already admired. Of course! It all came back to her as if she had just awakened from a little sleep.

The train rushed on. She lived through all the cinematograph-like pictures of the journey. A halt and descent—little anxieties about the luggage—then—after an interlude which was vague—another train, another long journey—all was a continuous long experience. She thrilled at a surreptitious squeeze of his hand—ah, yes, there were other people in the carriage now—rounded her lips at him in a provoking similitude of a kiss, daringly profiting by the inattention of their fellow-travellers. A yearning for him—induced by the naughty little act—filled her breast, persisted. There was bustle, confusion. They were in a throng of travellers who hurried. Hurry! They must not lose the boat. It lay there before them, only its upper works seen, its two great funnels leaning backward, belching black smoke. The black smoke spread over the sky. It was night. They were on board the boat, cradled in an easy motion, sensible of the throb of the engines. On and on they journeyed, linked in a very close communion of eyes that spoke, of hands that squeezed each other. She tasted a thousand little kindnesses. How good he was! How loving!

And still the journey went on. Yet more trains. She must have slept. She woke to a great city, filled with innumerable inhabitants, all very busy. They spoke a strange language very rapidly to one another. She could not understand a word. But he, Ronald, understood—conversed with them in their foreign tongue. How clever he was! There was music somewhere—from a lighted café that flooded a damp street with radiance.

She was bewildered in a variety of new and strange impressions, leaned on him, soul and body. He led her, sure of himself. Her love for him seemed to increase at this revelation of his unfailing self-reliance. Yet she knew that she loved him with all her being, had always loved him so.

"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked. Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing, Rembrandtesque, on the carved stonework of the ancient buildings. She recognised it at once—how accurate the picture postcards had been! Brussels—the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning on his strong arm.

The dream continued——.

All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.

Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely, it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad. But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.

She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.

Her dream linked itself onto its predecessor. The honeymoon was finished. She looked back down a long vista of travel, of happy days. She had really lived through all those experiences. She picked them one by one from her memory like rare pieces from a jewel-case, contemplated them with a smile. Each expanded into a picture. The day they had walked together down the rugged path of the tiny valley imprisoned in the wooded hills, a fierce little stream outpacing them as it dashed against great boulders, and had come upon a sunny meadow where children garlanded with flowers laughed and danced in a ring; a wonderful blue lake on whose shores were yellow houses with red roofs and ancient cypresses on a greensward near the water's edge—the melancholy reiterated note of a church bell beat like a pulse through the scene; an old, old town with gabled houses leaning in close confidence, rich carvings—the grotesque; in all was a pervading peace, rich quiet life that thrives sleepy with well-being from year to year; over all was the ecstasy of mutual love through which they had beheld the world.

Another memory came to her—early morning in the Alps, a sea of wild narcissi all about them and, beyond, the great white peaks glittering in the sun of a blue sky. They went on and on, up and up. The flowers were left behind—and she remembered she had regretted leaving them, had grudged the effort to climb for the sake of climbing—but he had insisted. They stood at last high up, dazzlingly white snowfields stretching away on every side, a summer sun beating hot upon them. The air was rarefied, induced in them a subtle ecstasy as they stood marvelling at the brilliant austere beauty of the great peaks lifting themselves into the sky, their robes slipping from their rocky shoulders in a miracle of purity. He encircled her waist with his arm, spoke in the voice that stirred mysterious depths in her.

"Dearest," he said. "Not a flower but snow is the true emblem of love. White as the essential soul, how soon on the lower levels it is defiled, disappears! But on the heights it endures stainless for ever, no matter how hot the kiss of the sun."

And she had kissed him, speechlessly.

But all this was past. She was at home now, waiting for him to come back from his work. Their home, the home they had always planned, was all around her. The very pieces of furniture they had regarded in shop windows with longing eyes, had calculated the cost of, were there. That quaint old table in the centre of the room, half covered with the embroidered openwork white linen laid for tea—how covetously they had once looked on it! How depressed they had been at the dealer's price! But it was there, after all. Ronald had bought it, he who never rested until he attained his heart's desire. How purposeful he was! How strong! How loving-kind! She closed her eyes, leaned back in a swimming ecstasy of love.

There he was! She heard his footstep at the other side of the door. He entered, was radiant, enfolded her in that wonderful embrace where she was a surrendered thing. He had a little parcel, handed it to her. Tremblingly she opened it, certain of delight. It was a framed enlargement of a photograph they had taken that morning in the high Alps. With a little happy cry she gazed once more on the long smooth slopes of snow, stretching up to the dark-patched peaks. Once more his arm encircled her, his deep voice spoke.

"So shall we live, darling, always—ever upon the heights."

She lay awake in her bed, ere it was day, and understood in a great tremulous awe. In her dreams she and Ronald were living precisely the life they would have lived had there been no war. The honeymoon—their home—all would have been accomplished ere this. Had there been no war! Exactly as she had dreamed they would have travelled together—his arm would have enfolded her—in long, long happiness they would have lived. She burst into a passion of tears, stifled in the pillow. Then she turned her head, wondering, feeling as if her heart had stopped. Would this dream continue? Was it—in some mysterious way—real? Her lips moved in a prayer, but she scarcely knew what she prayed.

She was glad to escape into the busy actual life of the ward, into the light of day.

From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.

In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known, diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien, spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover. But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional interest.

Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional. When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project——. She fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face. When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.

At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that life—never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a continuous existence—the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It was the life they would have led—it played itself out now in what to her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She, too, loved him passionately, with all her soul.

But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was afraid—mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke his image—and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy—as happy as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange, almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred, views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her husband was a reality that filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long conversations together—wonderful little interludes where their always underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less boyish. There were difficulties—the difficulties of real life—to be encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until she woke.

And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance, avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not exchanged a word.

There came a night wonderful above all others. She thrilled with a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet, speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother—the mother of Ronald's child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head.

Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to disguise it.

But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes reproachful. He leaned over her.

"Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more than the symbol of our love. You must be mine—always mine. Promise me that you will always be mine alone!"

His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance:

"Always yours, dearest—always yours!"

He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of destiny, strangely significant.

"I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said, and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big, superhuman—she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier dream-memory.

He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine scene.

"You and I," he said. "Always together—alone upon the heights."

"Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always—always yours!"

She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.

When she woke again it was to look through the window and see the world white with snow. She remembered with some pleasure that she was off duty, had the day to herself. She wanted to be alone. Her head was a whirl of troubled thoughts. The emotions of her dream were still in her blood. Her arms felt vacant as though an infant had just been taken from them. A new longing came up in her—a craving for motherhood. She linked it to her dead lover. "Oh, Ronald!" she murmured. "If only we had been married before you went to the war——" she left the thought unfinished. The craving persisted, apart from his memory. She ached for a real, living affection in this world of men and women. Strange thoughts haunted her while she dressed.

As soon as possible she escaped from the hospital, went out upon the moor that stretched in suave contours of dazzling white. A pale blue sky sank into its mists. A cold wind hurried over it, whirling up little columns of dusty, frozen snow. She walked far into its solitudes, she hardly knew whether to escape from her thoughts or to be alone with them.

At last she turned back. She had climbed out of a little hollow, was descending a featureless slope when suddenly she perceived the figure of a man, dark against the snow. He walked towards her quickly. Simultaneous with her recognition of him was the flush of blood to her face, a peculiar nervous thrill. It was Captain Lavering. She half hesitated. Then she strode forward, an insidiously victorious temptation masquerading as strong will. Why should she not pass him? It was absurd. He might think——. She hoped that she was not blushing, or that the keen wind which fluttered her veil would be the self-evident excuse.

They met. He stopped, made a gesture of salute.

"Good morning, Captain Lavering." She was glad to hear her own voice, had been afraid that she could not bring it to utterance. What was there so troubling about this man? She avoided his eyes. "I'm pleased to see you walking about again." The crisis was successfully surmounted. She made as if to continue her way.

"I saw you in the distance, Sister," he said bluntly.

She did not find the commonplace remark for which she sought. He blocked her pathway.

"I have been waiting to speak to you for a long time, Sister," he continued, as though he knew there was no necessity for a trite beginning. "Ever since you saved my life. You did—we won't discuss that." She stared at him, speechless. "But I have waited until I was sure that I was quite well again. You know what I am going to say. For a long time you have felt what was in my mind. You must be my wife."

He was strong and real—vividly actual. She felt as she did sometimes when her eyes opened from a dream into the solid surroundings of her cubicle. He barred off the other world.

"No—no," she breathed, dodged past him, hurried over the snow.

He was by her side, keeping pace easily with her.

"You can't escape me like that," he said. There was obvious brute masculinity in his tone. Though she tried to resent it, it did not displease her, and she was angry with herself that it did not. "Listen. I am a plain man. There is no fancy romance about me. I don't want illusions. But I love you." He stated the fact with absolute decision. "I can offer you a good position and all that, but I know that does not affect the matter. The vital thing is that from the moment we set eyes on each other something happened——" for the first time he faltered in his tone. "We both knew it. There it is. I hate being sentimental. But I want you—and I know that you want me."

"No—no!" she said again, almost running. A blind desire to escape, from herself as much as from him, dominated her. "I—I can't."

"Can't? Why not? You are free. I know you were engaged. But he is—gone. We live in a world of flesh and blood. You can't exist on a memory. Besides," the words came like a slave-driver's whip—she almost obeyed it—"you never loved him as you love me!"

She revolted, stung to burning resentment against herself equally as against this masterful, crude male. She stopped and faced him.

"Captain Lavering, you talk like a sick man." She triumphed in the steadiness of her words. "You have insulted me in the most uncalled-for manner. Let that be enough."

His eyes looked into hers, challenged her sincerity, were assured of it. He went red, looked awkward.

"Forgive me," he mumbled.

She went on without a word, ignored the fact that he accompanied her. They breasted an upward smooth slope of snow that stretched up to a crisp, clear outline against the blue sky. He ventured a sidelong glance at her, a little light of primitive cunning in his eyes.

"Quite Alpine, isn't it?" he said.

As intended—his tone implied a resumption of ordinary commonplace relationship—the words took her off her guard. But he was ignorant of their esoteric significance. In a flash, in a deep convulsion of the soul, she saw the Alpine picture, vivid with symbolism, of her other life. "—On the heights!" In the full poignancy of the emotion it unlocked—her own vow of fidelity ringing in her ears from another world—she found herself struggling in a man's tight grasp, hot breath upon her face, lips seeking her own. "You must! You shall!" he muttered, straining forward to her. She stiffened, fought in a frenzy. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried.

An icy wind swept down the slope, smote upon them like a breath from the grave, shudderingly cold. Captain Lavering uttered a little cry, relaxed his grip, and fell sideways upon the snow.

Sister Braithwaite stared at him in horror. A great fear came upon her, an awe in the presence of unearthly power. She knew! Her soul slipped back into its dream-state, confronted the visage of her lover, stern as destiny. The eyes judged her, forgave. Then, weeping hysterically, she ran towards the hospital. It was not far distant.

They brought in the dead man.

"H'm," said the Medical Officer, looking at him. "Cerebral hæmorrhage. This intense cold—— I was always rather afraid of a lesion. A nasty shock for you, Sister. Well, well, another one finished—very sad, very sad."

An orderly brought Sister Braithwaite her share of the just arrived post. There was a letter from Ronald's mother. It enclosed one from the War Office.

"Dear Madam," it ran. "It is regretted that no further details have come to hand regarding your son. Officially he is still posted as 'missing, believed killed.'"

Sister Braithwaite shut herself in her cubicle, talked to the photograph with the vivid eyes, talked to it as primitive woman talks to the lover who has destroyed his rival. She reached out to the Other Side.

NA NOS!

(A study of Serb infantry in battle, 1914)

There is no moon. In black darkness a long file of men stumbles up a stony gully. Precipitous rock-walls keep them to the bed of a vanished stream, where they trip in succession over the same loose boulders. Their curses are hushed instantly by voices not less authoritative because they bark in whispers. Wrapped in long sheepskin coats the figures pass like ghosts of an antique time, whose grimness is accentuated by the incongruity of modern rifles with fixed bayonets that glint under the myriad stars. Presently the head of the file halts in what seems a black pit, the edge of which cuts sharply against the star-powdered bluish darkness of the sky. Those behind arrive continuously, collect in the hollow, are formed into ranks by sergeants who bully sotto voce like angry conspirators. The company commander is crawling on hands and knees up the wall of the hollow, which is not so precipitous as it appears in the darkness.

The captain peers cautiously over the crest. He sees only blackness which rises all around him from an abyss that reflects no ray in its profundity, and blots out the stars high in the sky with irregular cones and shapeless masses of inky night. From those mountains a wind blows chilly on his face. He fixes his gaze upon a point in the blackness far across the gulf. The point is decided upon after careful reference to a phosphorescent compass in his hand. He stares at this blank darkness until it almost seems that he must be staring against closed lids.

Suddenly in the gloom at which he strains his eyes, he perceives a pin-point of light. It flickers for an instant and then projects itself in a ray of intense brilliance widening from the point of origin, right across the gulf. It falls in a great oval of blinding whiteness upon the hill-side to his right. Its hard white glare is painful in its brutality. Everything outside the ray is swallowed in a blackness where even the stars are lost. The white oval on the hill-side moves slowly. It brings into vivid relief a long line of loosely piled stones behind which lie, in many attitudes, the motionless bodies of men. Some, which have fallen across the heap of stones, throw grotesque shadows, intensely black. The white oval stays its slow progress, vignettes them from the night. In the centre of the picture one of these figures stirs, raises itself upon one elbow and rubs its eyes stupidly like a man wakened from sleep by the sudden glare.

Instantly a group of sharp reports, multiplied by rapidly reiterated echoes, breaks from the distant blackness. The figure sinks quickly, a dark hole visible in the ghastly whiteness of its face. The oval begins to move again, assuring the men who lurk far back in the night that this uncompleted shelter-trench is held only by the dead.

Suddenly the light is cut off. The stars reappear in a sky that seems strangely pallid. The mountain masses silhouette themselves more definitely than before against their tenebrous background, the outlines of the high summits, where some snow still lies, picked out in a grey that has just the faintest tinge of yellow. From the black gulf below eddies of mist boil up like steam from a mighty cauldron, veiling the shrinking stars. A wall of fog rolls along the hill-side, blots out the mountains and the sky.

The captain turns instantly and calls down an order in a carefully restrained voice. The company in the hollow springs up and over the crest with the agility of born mountaineers. They follow their captain at a quick pace into the bank of fog. Behind them is a murmur of voices. The other companies of the battalion are coming up, deploying rapidly into line when they reach the crest. The first company has halted for a moment to allow time for their arrival. Seconds are precious. At any moment the cloud may roll away, expose them to the glare of hostile searchlights and a storm of bullets. In two long lines the battalion moves briskly down the hill, leaving the unfinished shelter-trench upon its right. Behind, another battalion is coming up in support.

Some way down the slope the infantry breaks out of the mist. They open their files and slacken pace, dodging nimbly from one to another of the boulders which glimmer in the twilight. Overhead the searchlights move uneasily in long pale bands against the paling sky and fall upon the fog-belt in white circles as upon a magic-lantern screen. The infantry is not yet discovered. It works stealthily but quickly forward, aiming at a lower ridge that rises before them. They seem alone in the narrow mountain-valley that begins to reveal itself in the dawn, but their officers know that to right and left of them other battalions are likewise creeping forward. They reach the ridge, halt and lie down upon its slope, wisps and wreaths of mist blowing over them.

The searchlights are extinguished—when, it is hard to say. The sky is now a translucent ultramarine where no stars are left, and against which the mountain peaks stand out in vivid orange. White fog patches wander over the dark lower faces of the hills. The infantry creeps cautiously up to the summit of its ridge and, like one man, peeps over. In front of them is a mountain-wall that goes back at an angle, leaving a great gap. Another ridge, parallel to their own, starts from the mountain-side and drops away to the left. Its foot is lost in a sea of fog. Between them and that ridge the ground drops into a ravine and then mounts in a smooth glacis to the further crest. A little below its summit the loose boulders, which are everywhere sown over the ground, are disposed in a long regular grey line. The officers of the battalion give the range to that line—750 yards. The infantrymen snuggle down behind boulders and inequalities on the crest and adjust their sights. There is a general loosening of sheepskin coats, a tinkle of cartridge-clips laid in readiness, and then the line lies still, waiting, its bayoneted rifles slid back out of view.

Far back the infantry brigade commander is lying upon his stomach upon the height to the left of the wrecked shelter-trench. The fog-belt has moved off. He has a clear view from ridge to ridge. Suddenly he takes his field-glasses from his eyes and picks up a telephone receiver at the end of a long line trailing over the ground. He speaks a few words into it, replies shortly to mysterious enquiries that emanate from the far distance, suggests a number of metres in thousands. Almost immediately the shriek of a shell passes overhead and the report of a cannon-shot comes echoing along the valley, arrives in a succession of distinct shocks to the ear. Ere the echoes have died away another shell screams past, followed by its series of reverberations. The infantry brigadier is watching the distant ridge through his binoculars. The line of boulders is faintly visible. The first shell bursts above it and beyond; the second bursts short. The bracket is too wide. The brigadier speaks again through the telephone. Another shell wakes weird noises from the mountains as an accompaniment to its own shriek. It bursts just in front of the line of boulders above it. Through his glasses the brigadier sees the splash of shrapnel bullets upon the rocks like twinkles in quick whiffs of dust. He speaks two brief words into the telephone. A flight of shells rushes overhead like a covey of screaming spirits and with an enormous roll of thunder arrives the roar of a battery in rapid action. Its reverberations roll and clash endlessly, surging from side to side of the valley in confused waves of violent sound. The long line of boulders is suddenly whelmed in a cloud of dust that renews itself as fast as it drifts into the air. From one end of that cloud spurt tiny points of flame, and shriek crosses shriek in the air above, whilst a series of sharp crashes mingles with the continuous roar. Quick puffs of white smoke appear in groups against the blue sky. In the unfinished shelter-trench spurts of dust leap up around the bodies of the dead men who lie behind the boulders. A battery of guns has been pushed up into the infantry line over there on the hostile ridge and, unobservant of the menace close at hand, is spending its fury upon the trench that it wrecked overnight.

The firing line upon the intervening ridge lies quiet in its concealment. Its officers have no wish to provoke a rafale from a battery protected by tall stone sangars. Intently they watch the sheets of dust that spurt up high over the line of boulders like the beat of a rough sea against a breakwater. They mark where the long thin tongues of flame shoot out ceaselessly in reply, spitting at a distant target far behind them. They communicate these observations to the battalion commander who is smoking a cigarette in an attitude of ease a little way down the slope. A man close to him commences a series of quick, jerky gesticulations with a pair of flags held stiffly at arm's length. No flags wave in reply, but, far back, the brigadier at the telephone speaks. A great shell rushes overhead with the roar of an express train. A moment later the officers upon the ridge see a sudden eruption of flame and rocks in the centre of the line of boulders. They send another message down to the signaller. Another shell hurtles through the air, another explosion shoots upward, this time nearer to the spitting guns. Where the fumes drift off, great holes, in which there is a scurry of tiny figures, are visible in the shelter trench. Wide grins open on the faces of the Serbian firing-line as they draw their rifles close to them and finger the triggers. They understand fully the value of artillery support. Again and again the volcanic eruptions spout into the air with an appalling detonation that breaks heavily into the rolling echoes which fill the valley. Two of them leap up suddenly from the very midst of the dust-cloud where the battery is at work. There is a fountain of flying rocks dark in the centre of the flame, and in the colossal roar of the explosion a brief, acute note of human agony comes like a high-pitched discord mingled with a thunderous bass. A moment later the line of guns is revealed, naked to attack. A few men are seen darting with short movements about them. Three out of the six eject a tongue of flame at short intervals. While they fire, a pale gleam flickers along the Serbian ridge as the bayoneted rifles are thrust forward, and with a long dry crackle a sheet of bullets leaps out at the wrecked battery. The sun rises over a shoulder of the mountains and a band of golden light spreads downwards, illuminates the flying clouds of dust in which figures can just be seen frantically endeavouring to turn the guns in the new direction. They are picked off one by one with deadly aim. Above the trench the shrapnel bursts incessantly, a new shower starting ere its predecessor has reached earth.

Along the Serbian ridge the sheepskin-clad figures lie in snug safety and pull trigger with chuckles of satisfaction. There is no excitement, only a keen savouring of primeval emotions that can now be given rein. About them dance quick spurts of dust and bright splashes of nickel appear upon the rocks. An irregular rifle fire is coming from the hostile ridge. One or two shells burst overhead and then the guns fall silent, are forgotten. The company on the right starts suddenly to its feet, dashes over the crest and down the slope. The rifle fire from the other ridge changes in character, welcomes them with rapid, violent claps. A couple of machine-guns strike into the din with a continued rapid and resonant hammering, nerve-racking in its persistency. Men in the running line throw up their arms or pitch forward here and there, but the company is lost to sight almost immediately on the rock-strewn hill-side. The men dart forward from boulder to boulder. Behind them on their left other companies are descending in quick succession towards the ravine.

At the other side of the ridge, in rear, the second line of the battalion is coming up in support, and behind them the other battalions of the brigade are streaming forward, unhindered as yet by artillery fire. It is a brief respite, however. In a moment or two a distant, unseen battery has got their range, flings shell after shell to burst over their heads and fall in a spreading cone of bullets. The brigade advances with quick onward dashes by battalions that spring up, race a hundred yards and disappear for a breathing space among the boulders. Gradually they draw into the shelter of the intervening ridge, and battalion after battalion tops it and moves down to the aid of those in front. A strong firing-line remains on the crest, keeps up a steady stream of bullets against the long grey line still whelmed in dust by an unceasing hail of shrapnel. The brigadier ensconces himself in a rock shelter at the end of this firing-line, the telephone receiver still ready to his hand.

The first line of the attack has now reached the ravine. The men seize hold of tiny shrubs that grow out at overhanging angles and swing themselves down, scrambling over loose stones and sliding sand. A hail of bullets is beating upon them from the trench above and from a line of supports that has come into action higher still. The machine-guns hammer with an appalling energy that knows not fatigue. Where their aim is directed the sand spouts up as though struck by an air-blast from a hose. In that ravine the first line is more than decimated. Men stumble and fall upon their own bayonets. Corpses, hanging limply, weigh down the shrubs. With fierce shouts the survivors scramble onward. The second line has caught them up, is mingled with them. The battle-madness seethes in every head; each bullet that strikes harmlessly upon the earth is a shock of stimulation to already hyper-excited nerves. They lose their identity, lose the instinct of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes their tissues. A savage cry breaks automatically from every throat; the blood-congested brains, that permit the action of the muscles, unconscious of it. They reach the bottom of the ravine, not very deep, and clamber up in the comparative security of the other side.

At the foot of the smooth slope which reaches to the dust-whelmed boulder-line, their officers halt them by orders, entreaties. The men lie down and open a rapid, irregular fire against the trench. More men arrive behind them, frenzied with excitement. They attempt to rush upward, are pulled back by officers, or are struck down quickly in the rain of bullets from the trench. The rifle-fire up there comes now in one long rolling crackle through the cloud of dust that flurries in answer to the continuous crashing of the shrapnel. The fire of the attack increases in sporadic bursts.

On the ridge behind, the brigadier speaks a few brief words into the telephone. A minute later the shrapnel ceases to burst over the trench.

In the disordered crowd of men that lies at the foot of the slope is a commotion that defies the efforts of the officers. In vain do they, knowing what is about to occur, endeavour to form a regular line of attack up the ravine, as, from those who are still swarming down the other side, arises one hoarse, savage cry that dominates the crash of rifle-volleys. It is the battle-cry of a primitive people that spontaneously clutches its primitive weapon in this awakening of its oldest instincts, this plunge into the æon-old chaos where man thirsts for the blood of man. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" comes the cry from a thousand throats, reiterated endlessly by frenzied men whose faces are deathly white or inflamed with blood. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" from parched mouths, from dry, cracked lips the shout issues, overpowering the orders of the officers. The bloodshot eyes that protrude with wild hatred at the trench no longer see those officers. It is a savage horde merely, in which the modern military hierarchy is lost, obliterated by an intensely individual lust to slay as their ancestors slew. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" "With the knife! With the knife!" What matters it that the knife is at the end of a rifle? It is still a knife, the primordial weapon. With an angry roar, the mass, no longer to be restrained, rushes madly up the slope.

With an answering crash the rifle-fire from the trench leaps to a climax. The men up there are firing for their lives. In the horde upon the slope is an appalling massacre. Heedless of it, blind to it, the mass surges upward, happily forgetful of the cartridges in their own rifles, mindful only of the blade that gleams at the muzzle. They see a line of faces, white behind countless spurts of flame. With one fierce roar they hurl themselves upon them. Men in grey-blue spring up and dash away or turn and run at them bayonet to bayonet. The attacking line howls in the joy of butchery—"Na Nos!"

PER LA PIÙ GRANDE ITALIA!

The hot sun of a morning in early summer beat down upon the narrow street of a little North Italian town. Down the long, confined vista of colonnaded shopfronts, hung with striped awnings of warm hue, the air quivered above the cobbles, troubled the view of an arched, square-turreted gateway which barred the street. The sky above was a long strip of intense azure. Sharp to the left, near at hand, was the roughly-paved piazza, white-fronted Venetian-shuttered houses looking out to the large round basin, the weather-worn Triton, of the fountain where the pigeons, flashing in the sun, circled down to drink. A group of girls, bare-armed, black-haired, skirts turned up over vividly-coloured petticoats, water-jars underneath the gush from the Triton's mouth, or poised already upon the graceful head, stood laughing and chattering about the fountain. Their gaze was unanimously turned towards the large building, the words Palazzo Municipale over its arcaded front, which occupied one side of the square. Carved on that front, beneath the clock, defaced but not entirely obliterated, might yet be made out the double-eagle of Austria—a memento of a tyranny that had fled before a passionate patriotism, to entrench itself, not far distant, high on the crag and glacier of the eagles' haunts, ready to swoop. But not to that did the merry, whispering girls dart their flirtatious glances. The two grey-uniformed Bersagliere sentries, strutting up and down before the building, superb under the drooping cocks' feathers of their grey-covered tilted hats, were for once immune. A handsome young officer, black-moustached, dark-eyed, who stood, one foot upon the running-board of a car that hummed ready to start, in conversation with another officer, was the point of interest. Both officers, clad in the grey field-service uniform, wore upon their arm the brassard which indicated that they were of the Staff. The officer on the point of departure wore the badges of captain; he who was giving him his final instructions was a tenente colonello (lieutenant-colonel).

"You quite understand what the General wants, don't you, Ricci?" he said, using the familiar "tu," universal between Italian officers. "As soon as possible after the position is captured, a report on its possibilities for field artillery if we can advance to the covering ridge. The General thinks it will command the valley road up from the railway. You will see. Don't get buried under an avalanche!"

"Very good, colonel. I quite understand." He saluted—a quick movement of the hand horizontally below the peak of the képi, palm downwards, as though shading the sight, in the Italian fashion—and jumped into the car. He pushed to one side a heavy fur coat, settled himself. A moment later the car was humming out of the square, spinning down the long colonnaded street.

In front of him loomed the heavy mediæval gateway, square above its arch. Its ordinarily forbidding gloomy aspect was lost in a generous decoration of green boughs, a trophy of Italian flags, red, white and green, above a white-crossed shield, a great inscription—"Per la più grande Italia!"[2] The battle-cry of Italy's greatest modern poet—the cry that had rung beseeching, dominating, inspiring, through dithyramb after dithyramb of the wonderful passionate orations by which he had wakened the glowing soul of the people into flame, was blazoned here as everywhere in Italy. Under that gateway thousands of Italy's sons had marched to conflict with the Tedeschi, to the redemption of their brethren; thousands more would march. And those to come would shout as those who had gone had shouted: "Per la più grande Italia! Evviva Italia!" The captain, glancing up at it ere the car shot under the dark arch, carried the inscription marked upon his brain through the obscurity. Familiar enough, he reperceived its meaning with a thrill. What mattered the little individual life he was hurrying to risk? "Per la più grande Italia!"

The car sped along a road on the left side of a pleasant valley. In front, immediately claiming the eye, a range of Alpine peaks, dark rock-scars breaking their dazzling whiteness, exquisitely delicate and fine-drawn as perceived through the warm atmosphere, towered in lofty austerity into the rich unvarying blue of the sky. The road, thick with dust, climbed towards them in long loops and bold curves. Close upon its left, dark woodland descended, masking ever and anon the distant prospect behind a shoulder of the hills. To the right, across the green valley where the cattle stood hock-deep in flowers, village after village—yellow-ochre and burnt-red, its slant-roofed campanile high above the flat houses—clustered itself upon an eminence or nestled low down to the valley stream. Viewing the scene of quiet bucolic prosperity it was difficult to imagine that among the silent peaks in the background lurked the terrors of war; men embattled for mutual destruction.

Along the road creaked and squealed clumsy country-carts drawn by oxen with patient heads bowed to the yoke. They hoofed the dust with the unhurried motion of centuries of tradition in their toil, careless of the goad of the barefooted contadina crying them to hasten, to turn aside to allow passage for impatiently hooting motor-lorries. In strange contrast of locomotion, column after column of lumbering mechanical transport rushed down from the mountains in a smother of dust and petrol-fumes. Column after column proceeding upward was overtaken and passed by the captain's car. Ever in front towered the range of glittering peaks, in unshakable, eternal calm. Yet from somewhere among their solitudes came a distant, faint roar that was not the roar of nature's thunder.

The road had climbed high. The valley was narrower. The orchards sloping to its stream were white with fruit-blossoms. The air was rarefied but still hot under the direct rays of the sun. The dark woods of oak gave place to darker woods of pine. The road swept round in sharp curves on low-parapeted stone bridges above a rushing torrent. Bare green slopes, strewn with grey boulders, opened between the woods. The car overtook a long marching column of Alpini crunching the dust under heavily nailed boots, pack high upon the shoulders, alpenstock as well as rifle, sweating profusely yet pressing upwards with quick step, the eagle's feather in their soft hats still jaunty. It was the rear battalion of a brigade whose units were successively overtaken and passed.

The road swung to the right round the head of the valley which here commenced in a sheer drop. As the car followed it there was a sudden spurt of flame, a drifting tawny smoke, in the dark depths to the right. A tremendous, shattering detonation that re-echoed endlessly down the valley ceased at last, leaving audible the eerie moaning of a great shell speeding upwards over the mountains, already far away. Another such flash and detonation followed the first. Looking over the side of the car, the captain perceived, deep down, the long barrel of a monster gun nosing upwards, men tiny about it. A second gun was depressed, a crane-slung shell hovering near its breech. Once more there was a crash—a series of distracted conflicting echoes that shattered the Alpine silence as thick glass is starred and fractured. In the sky above the valley an eagle beat the air with heavy, violent wings, startled into a vertical climb, and then glided swiftly with outstretched pinions downwards to its crag.

The road still ascended, left the valley, climbed tortuously a rocky spur, thinly grassed. The car took the gradient slowly, noisily, on second speed. In front, struggling on the brow of the spur, a column of "caterpillar" tractors drawing the component parts of a battery of heavy howitzers distributed on trucks rattled and detonated like machine-guns in full action. The battery personnel, harnessed to long ropes, hauled and strained at the leading piece in an effort to facilitate the passage of the steep crest. Before the war the boldest artilleryman would have scouted the possibility of such heavy ordnance at this height among the mountains. But the battery was only entering upon the area of its severest toil.

On the crest of the spur the road turned to the left, climbed at an easier angle. The view, hitherto much masked by closely overhanging slopes, opened out. To right and left the gaze plunged into blue depths, fell on miniature woods and thin white strips that were roads. Far away on either hand the mountain ranges lifted themselves, superb, into the blue sky. But directly in front the higher peaks were not seen. A sheer wall of dark rock barred the view as effectually as it seemed to bar further progress.

At the foot of the precipice was a stationary column of motor-lorries, tiny by comparison with the towering mountain. The road went straight up to it. The captain in the car bestirred himself, picked up his heavy fur coat. Far away and high above was a prolonged rumbling roar that seemed to re-echo from invisible walls in the upper atmosphere. Involuntarily the captain raised his eyes. The blue sky was untroubled.

Upon the face of the rock—which leaned back less precipitously than had appeared—swarmed hundreds of grey-uniformed engineers. They were laying a pathway of heavy timber, erecting huge sheers, arranging a complicated tackle of thick rope and large pulleys. Back along the road the first of the heavy pieces for which this hoisting apparatus was in preparation lumbered already into sight.

This tackle was not the only feature on the precipice. A little further along, at the centre of the line of lorries, a light cantilever steel standard was connected by drooping wire ropes to the summit. Suspended from those ropes by a running-gear of pulleys a little car was gliding steadily upwards, another coming down. It was the Teleferica—the famous wire-rope railway, that, many times multiplied, made modern war possible at these high altitudes.

Ammunition in boxes was being unloaded from the lorries, stacked on the roadside near the Teleferica. The downward-gliding car was seized by a group of waiting men, steadied, stopped, quickly loaded with the boxes.

The staff-captain's motor drew up. He descended, walked towards the Teleferica, exchanged a salute with the dapper little ammunition officer superintending the work.

"Buon' giorno, signor capitano," said the little lieutenant. "Are you going up to see the attack?"

The captain nodded.

"Ah! Some people have all the luck! I never see anything. My battery never has any casualties—and here am I left supernumerary. I might as well be mountaineering for my pleasure!" He drew a lugubrious grimace of comic, half-sincere self-pity.

The captain struggled into his heavy fur coat, apparently superfluous here in the fierce heat which glowed from the rock in the noonday sun.

"A glass of wine before you ascend, capitano!" said the lieutenant. "Come, I will take no denial!"

He led the way to a little wooden shack close under the lee of the precipice. Within, the walls were decorated with a number of scathingly satirical drawings of the Tedeschi; some extremely clever studies of the mountains in their different aspects of light—sunset and dawn, moonlight. The host, perceiving the captain's glance, made a deprecatory gesture.

"What I am reduced to, signor capitano! And I might be blowing the Austrians out of their eyries!" He was typical of that new Italy which, while it cannot cease to be artistic, holds all of small account that is not war against the Austrian. He filled the glasses, raised his own, half turned to a portrait of Gabriele d'Annunzio that shared with the King the honours of the wall. "Per la più grande Italia!"

"Per la più grande Italia!" Both officers drank the toast. "To-morrow morning she will be a little greater if the fates are kind," added the captain.

A few minutes later he was lying full-length in a narrow low-sided cage, suspended from a pulley on a thick wire-rope, and being hauled up, with much creaking and strident protest of the pulley-wheel and vicious jerking of the loose rope, to the summit of the cliff.

There he was again in a scene of activity. Broad-shouldered porters in frayed and much-worn Territorial uniforms were bearing away the ammunition boxes that had arrived at the summit, carrying them towards the next station of the Teleferica. The captain followed in their track.

The wire-rope railway ran in short sections from station to station. The gaps between the sections—stretches of comparatively level ground—were filled by the sturdy Alpine porters or, in the case of longer distances, by pack-mules. It was the line of communications to the sector of the front immediately ahead—a front that for the most part of 450 miles is thrust out amid the eternal snows of lofty mountains, along the edges of deep chasms, upon the knife-ridges of arêtes, across the Arctic desolation of glacier and neve. Over it was transported food and ammunition, light guns, clothing, equipment, all the necessaries for an army in action. By it descended the wounded and the sick, the unwanted stores.

Over section after section the staff-captain passed, ascending higher and ever higher towards his goal. About him rose the great peaks, their robes of snow dazzling white under the sun, splendidly superior to the ragged army of stunted pines that sought to climb them, last lost sentinels straggling half submerged in the snow. Up sheer rock-faces whence birds of prey darted frightened from their nests, over deep chasms where he looked down to a dark profundity of pines and rushing streams, over great empty fields of snow far away beneath him on which zigzagged long lines of tiny black figures insignificant in the immensity, bearing burdens, upward and ever upward to the regions where snow and ice reign in eternal winter, the Teleferica bore him. And ever between the stations there were throngs of busy men, more and more thickly clad at each successive height, who marched under heavy loads.

Always there was a thunder rolling among the mountains. From apparently inaccessible crags dark against the blue, from bare snow ridges, from bleak white wastes where there seemed nothing to detain the eye, spurted little darts of flame, drifted faint smoke. Detonations came in sharp direct cracks, fantastically re-echoed; in a long rumbling angry mutter from the more distant guns. From steep mountain-sides, avalanches, loosened by the concussions, rushed downwards in a white smoke of flying snow, their thunders rivalling the persistent artillery.

The staff-captain dallied not. The bombardment which was to prepare the way for the attack had already commenced. He hurried over the intervening spaces between the wire-rope stations, ascended higher and ever higher in the little dangling cages.

It was afternoon when he reached the limit of the Teleferica—a little snow-covered hut on a desolate ledge. Here, sheeted down from the weather, stacks of supplies awaited further transportation. It was the depot of the quartermaster of the battalion holding the sector. An Alpino soldier, thickly clad, was in waiting to act as guide.

The staff-captain borrowed an alpenstock from the quartermaster and set out. In front of him stretched a great smooth slope of snow that ascended until, high above him, it cut—in sharp contrast—across the blue of the sky. Its whiteness was blinding—the captain fitted on a pair of darkened spectacles. Far across it, dark dots strung like beads on an invisible thread, a company of soldiers was marching in a long single file zigzagged over the snow, climbing to the crest. Nearer at hand to the right, vivid spurts of yellow flame shot out from mounds of snow aligned at a little distance from each other. The detonations of the battery came crisply to the ear, predominant over the rumble and roll and confused echoes of the general bombardment.

As the captain followed his guide up the vast empty slope he heard a long plaintive whining in the air, descending a scale of tones. It had not ceased when over to his right a great fountain of snow leaped skywards from the field—subsided leaving a smother of dirty smoke. The whine finished in an ugly rush, a muffled detonation. Another and another followed, in each case the visible effects of the shell's explosion preceding the noise of its arrival. The Austrian batteries were replying.

The echoing thunder of the bombardment continued all through the dreary fatiguing climb up the slope of snow. The higher peaks began to throw long blue shadows across its whiteness, their argent heads to be suffused with gold.

The ridge to which they climbed was not, after all, the summit. There was another, yet higher, whence splintered crags serrated the sky. They reached it, stood among rocky pinnacles.

"Attenzione, signor capitano!" said the guide. "It is dangerous to linger!"

Followed by the captain he swung himself round a jut of rock, dropped into a trench excavated deeply in the snow. As they dropped a couple of ugly "phutts!" just above their heads explained the warning.

The Alpino grinned.

"Tirolese!" he said. "We could have gone round by a safer way, signor capitano, but their snipers do not often hit if one is quick."

The deep trench, in cold blue shadow through the gilded surface of the snow, descended the ridge at a gentle angle to the summit. It emerged into another trench that ran roughly parallel to the ridge. This was filled with soldiers who, well below the high parapet, larked with one another, threw snowballs, wrestled and laughed. They were keeping themselves warm during their enforced wait. Every one of them was garbed in a thick white outer coat, with a hood. This was the main trench; these were the men who presently were going to attack.

On steps cut in the parapet stood sentries, peering towards the enemy. The captain ceded to an impulse of curiosity, interrupted his hurried progress towards the battalion advanced headquarters, mounted to the side of one of these sentries, looked out.

About him was a sea of mountains, their lower flanks in cold blue light, their snow-covered peaks orange against the azure sky. Immediately in front of him were the nearly submerged stakes, the snow-thickened upper wires, of wide entanglements. Beyond them stretched the confused, humped and fractured white surface of a high glacier. On the other side of it was again a snow ridge, and in front of that ridge could be discerned a belt of wire entanglements—the enemy's. In the midst of that entanglement, and all up the snow to the ridge, leaped fountain after fountain of white snow, momentarily brilliant against the sky, falling back into a persistent cloud of dark smoke. The noise of the explosions overwhelmed the roar of the guns behind. The preparatory bombardment was in full swing.

Warfare in the high Alps, with their difficult communications, is necessarily carried on by comparatively small bodies of men. The vast masses of the Western and Eastern fronts could not possibly be maintained among the crags and glaciers of the Italian frontier. Operations by single battalions have all the importance of a divisional attack elsewhere. In this case one battalion had been allotted the task of storming and retaining the enemy's position.

In the little low timber hut sunk beneath the snow-level which was the battalion headquarters, the captain found the colonel commanding the regiment in conference with the local commander and the company leaders. The atmosphere of the cramped interior was thick with the exhalations of the half-dozen men, warm with the heat of a petrol-stove. Capitano Ricci saluted the colonel, was received affably. A pair of keen eyes under level brows appraised him, smiled upon him. For his benefit the colonel recapitulated.

"The plan is briefly this. The artillery is cutting the wire and shelling the trenches immediately in front of us. The Austrians of course will assume that we are going to attack there. They will keep strong reserves at hand in the vicinity—as strong as they can, for we know that there is no very large force opposite. The artillery is making it difficult to bring up the reserves from the rear. All their communications are under fire. Now, we hope that the enemy will concentrate on the damaged trench in front of us. The attack is being made by four companies. One company will advance at 9 p.m., using every precaution not to be seen, and will cross the glacier at an angle to its right. It will fall upon the enemy's trench here"—he indicated a spot on the left of the enemy's position as marked on a plan spread over the table. "It should effect a surprise as the enemy will be far from expecting an attack on a part of the line which has not been bombarded at all. Directly that attack gets into the trench it will turn to the left and continue to press on as hard as possible. If it is progressing well it will send up a green rocket. If it is in difficulties it will send up a red rocket. The second company will advance to within about a hundred metres of the trench that has been bombarded. There it will halt. If matters go as I expect them to, the company on the right will send up a green rocket. Then the Austrians, realising that they have made a mistake, will rush up their men from the damaged sector and put up a resistance. The green light will be followed by a red one which will automatically indicate that the enemy's reserves are engaged. Whenever that red light goes up, whether preceded by a green one or not, the second company will rush the trench in front of it. I hope that it will find it thinly held. The third company will advance, with every precaution, at 9.30 p.m. in support of the second company. The fourth company I will retain as general reserve under my command. The men will be served with hot cocoa at 8.30 p.m. Is that quite clear, gentlemen?"

There was a general murmur of assent. The staff-captain requested permission to advance with the second company, the one that was attacking straight ahead. He received it.

The conference was at an end. Officers went out to give final instructions to their subalterns, came in again, beating powdered snow from their huge fur coats. One and all looked like Polar explorers.

Presently orderlies entered, put a steaming hot meal upon the table. Crowded closely together in the confined space, the officers ate—talking and laughing in high confidence, though in all was the tension which precedes the moment of action. Occasionally during the meal they heard the dull thud of an Austrian shell's arrival. They sat over coffee and smoked.

At last the colonel looked at his watch, stood up.

"It is time to go to your companies, gentlemen. I rely upon all of you as upon myself. I have promised the general that the trench shall be taken—and held. Per la più grande Italia! And good luck to all of you!"

Some time later the staff-captain found himself by the side of the company commander in the deep trench hewn through the snow. It was night and in the faint reflected radiance of the white walls he could just dimly discern the figures of a long line of men, all garbed in white like himself. Only when their heads moved did they detach themselves from their surroundings. Overhead, above the crisp line of the parapet, the sky was a black background for an immense multitude of strangely brilliant stars. A wind raised little whirls of powdered snow upon the lip of the parapet, blew down into the trench in chill gusts that penetrated the clothing. Not a sound broke the intense silence. It seemed almost that one could hear the crackle of the sparkling vivid stars. The artillery bombardment had long since ceased. There was nothing to suggest that a death-dealing enemy was hidden only eight hundred metres away across the glacier. No sound came from the company that had already advanced. Along the trench was a murmur of conversation, stifled laughter. The company commander stood gazing at the luminous dial of his watch.

9.15! He turned his head, gave a command in a low voice.

"Avanti!"

It was repeated in a low murmur to right and left.

In an instant the company commander, the staff-captain at his side, had sprung up on to the parapet. A bitter wind smote upon them from the darkness, chilling to the bone. The commander glanced back, saw his men like a line of ghosts faint in the dim light, already over the parapet. Then the company commenced to thread its way through the openings previously cut in their own wire.

Stealthily, with the utmost precautions to avoid any unnecessary sound, the company stole across the uneven, heaped and riven snow and ice of the glacier. Under that black night of stars it stretched away white to a near indistinctness. The black masses of the mountains occulting the stars near the horizon were too indefinite to indicate direction. Compass in hand, the commander counted his paces over the snow, his only means of judging distance. For greater accuracy the staff-captain counted also. They spoke not a word. From the obscurity came the whispers of the men as they preserved a rough alignment.

Sliding, stumbling over the inequalities of the frozen surface, they pressed onwards. Somewhere over to their right, higher on the glacier in front of them, the other company was advancing also. There was neither sound nor sign of it. In that dim desolation the staff-captain might with difficulty see his immediate companions. The remainder of the company was swallowed up, was noiseless. It seemed that they were stumbling on alone—on and on, an interminable distance—a few lost figures struggling through an Arctic night.

Suddenly from the blackness straight ahead a beam of intensely white light shot out horizontal with the ground, sweeping it. At its first birth-splutter they flung themselves upon the snow, lay motionless. The searchlight—a wall of milky radiance to one side of them, suffusing the snow with a pale reflection—then, as it shone full on them, a lane of intolerable light from a blindingly violent source, casting long pitch-black shadows from every hump and hummock of the ice—swept questingly over the glacier, rested doubtfully here and there for a moment, passed on again. The Austrians were on the alert. Cautiously, still repeating to himself the number of paces they had marched when they dropped, the staff-captain glimpsed to right and left of him, looking for the company. The nearer figures he saw, immobile, their white humped backs looking like inequalities of the snow. Those more distant were utterly indistinguishable. The searchlight ceased abruptly. The world was annihilated in a profound blackness where the stars reigned alone.

The two officers rose to their feet, marched onward, resumed their count of the paces. To right and left of them rose ghostly figures, stumbling forward. On and on they went, bruising themselves on sudden obstacles in the black night, the dim uniform whiteness of the snow a bewilderment to the vision. Far away in the mountains of the Austrian position a livid flash leaped to the sky. The reverberation of a gun's discharge rolled heavily and ominously to their ears, the long hurrying whine of a shell approached them. There was an instant of suspense. Were they after all discovered? The shell passed overhead to burst far behind, inaudible. The trench in front was invisible in the darkness—not a flare, not a rifle-spurt marked its position.

"Seven hundred!" Both officers murmured the number at the same moment.

"Alt!" The whispered order was passed to right and left. The line of ghostly figures sank down, was merged in the ice and snow under the twinkling stars. "Baionett' cann!" There was a faint rustling, a just audible click and clink of bayonets being fixed. Then again silence. The company might have ceased to exist.

The company commander and the staff-captain gazed earnestly to their right front, towards the point where the other company should be attacking. At any moment now! Their comrades had a quarter of an hour's start, had a rather longer, more difficult stretch to traverse. But they should have reached their objective. At this moment stealthy white-clad figures should be crawling among the stakes of the entanglements, snipping at the wire. The two officers stared in the fateful direction—in suspense for the up-flung flare, the shouts and stabs of flame. They stared at complete obscurity.

The searchlight on the trench in front leaped out again to the night, its origin startlingly close. This time as it swept over them, it illumined the short heads of the stakes of the wire entanglement that cast black shadows on the snow which all but submerged them. They were very near. In the intense light the white craters of the shell-holes produced by the afternoon's bombardment, hung with broken wire from supports all askew, gleamed like craters of the moon seen in uncanny proximity. Once more the light swept the glacier, searched doubtfully and was extinguished.

A sudden shot, off to the right front—a swift succession of loud reports—woke wild echoes from unseen cliffs. High up on the glacier, to the left of the Austrian position, flare after flare was flung into the sky, eerily illuminant, plucking strange rock-forms into grotesque relief. There was a fierce shout that rolled in repeated reverberation, a wild tumult of voices in a crisis of human lives, confused shots, isolated and in irregular volleys, the dull thudding explosions of bombs. The first company was attacking.

The two officers lying in the snow gazed with fixed intensity towards the distant fight whose tumult swelled louder and louder with every moment. The wild flares continued to soar into the night, but as yet no rocket—neither red nor green—had leaped up to tell them of its fortunes. The searchlight in front shot out again, swept quickly from side to side. It illumined only the apparently empty, tumbled desolation of the glacier. But it continued to blaze out into the night. Both officers cursed it under their breath. From the trenches they had left, far behind, rifle-shots rang out, the rapid hammering of a machine-gun. The reserve company was indulging in a little tricky target-practice at the searchlight. It was successful. The beam of light vanished.

At the same moment a little spark of trailing fire went rushing skywards from the tumult of the flank attack. It was watched with suspended breath—green or red? The rocket burst into an effulgence of uncanny green light. The cheer which came from under it was like a ghostly utterance of the cheer repressed on the lips of the men lying prone and motionless on the glacier. The colonel's forecast was sound.

But now the uproar on the flank increased to a wild intensity. Incessant were the sharp detonations of the rifles, the dull thuds of the bombs, mingling with a clamour of voices, shrieks and yells. No more flares went up from the point of conflict, but from all along the trench they soared into the air, symptomatic of the nervousness of the unseen defenders. Machine-guns began to rap out their streams of bullets in blind hazard across the glacier.

The staff-captain pressed himself close to the snow, overhead cracked the rapid bullets of the Austrian machine-guns. The wind that blew over the glacier, ruffling the loose surface snow on to his face, was intensely cold. He felt himself a heavy leaden thing, frozen stiff. Over to his right front the savage noises of the contest, weird and awe-inspiring on this summit of the world that seemed so uncannily near to the flashing stars, swelled hideously cacophonous. Livid bursts of flame flickered and were reflected redly on snow surfaces, on black jagged spires of rock. All along the trench the blindingly white flares leaped upward, another soaring as its predecessor circled down in a parabola that illumined the unearthly confusion of the glacier surface. He seemed a mortal for ever severed from his fellow-men, set down in a world that was primitive Arctic chaos, a paralysed spectator of a contest of fierce mountain spirits fighting over spectral issues, remote from the interests of humanity. A part of his mind harked back to the warm summer, the green fields, the somnolent little town of the valley he had left that morning, and it seemed that those things belonged to another existence. Yet all the time he gazed fixedly to the point whence the next rocket should shoot up. He awaited it as he would await the breaking of a spell.

At last! The trailing spark of fire shot upwards, burst into hanging globes of red light, the snow rosy beneath them. On the instant the company was erect, rushing forward. Leaping, soaring flares from the trench revealed them—white moving figures casting black shadows on the white glacier. Spurts of livid flame, loud quick detonations darted from the white ridge in front. "Avanti! Avanti! Italia! Italia!" shouted the commander. "Italia! Italia! Savoia!" came the fierce antistrophe from the rushing men flinging aside their alpenstocks, brandishing their bayoneted rifles.

They were fighting their way through the deep loose snow, the wreck of the wire entanglements. The staff-captain floundered in a white shell-crater pitilessly illumined by an overhanging flare. The loose ends of the barbed wire tore at his clothes, clutched round his legs like tentacles that would hold him for death to strike. In front the spurts of flame sprang from a wall of darkness above the white, high up. Near him was the company commander, extricating himself from the shell-hole, the last of the wire safely passed. He had a sense of tensely struggling figures all around him. He, too, got clear of the wire. He saw the company commander throw up his hands, roll sideways over the snow, still shouting "Avanti! Avanti! Italia!"

He passed him, took up the cry: "Avanti! Avanti! Italia! La più grande Italia!" leading the company that yelled behind him like a pack of mountain wolves. He topped the snow parapet, saw a fierce face glaring up at him in a strange light, a rifle-barrel levelled. His revolver seemed to go off of itself, a sharp autonomous detonation. The face opened a black mouth, sank out of vision.

He sprang into the trench, shouting like a madman. Behind him came the Italians, tumbling down in fierce onslaught. One of them struck him violently on the back as he slid down, knocked him face forward into the snow. As he went he heard a sudden heavy crash, saw a flare of lurid light. A bomb! He picked himself up, only half realising his escape, fired at once into a dark body that wrestled with a white-clad soldier. There was a confusion of blows, of shots, of ear-splitting detonations—shouts, cries, shrieks. At one moment he was in close contact with a panting man, warm breath upon his face, eyes flashing momentarily in the reflection of a rifle-shot, looking into his—the next the man was gone, there was space about him. The confusion cleared—there were bodies underfoot—white-clad men about him shouting unintelligibly. Further along the trench another flare went up.

The staff-captain turned to his right along the trench.

"Avanti! Avanti! A destra! Italia! Italia!"

Behind him followed a rush of fiercely yelling soldiery.

"Italia! Italia!"

They were held up by a traverse of snow-covered rock. A shower of bombs came over it. From a communication trench a mass of dark figures rushed at them, shouting with guttural voices. There was bitter conflict—an ebb and flow in the surge of men.

Then another fierce shout: "Italia! Italia! Savoia!" It was the third company flinging itself in the trench to support the attack.

In the midst of the tumult could be distinguished the scream of Italian shells passing overhead to burst dully on the Austrian avenues of approach.

Suddenly the angry dominant note of the babel of voices changed. Accents of supplication rang out amid the jarring reports: "Kamerad! Kamerad!"

The staff-captain made his way along the deep dark gully in the snow where motionless figures stood with arms stretched up above their heads, rifles at their feet. Ghostly white figures who had retained their weapons joked at them in rough patois. He met the commander of the company which had attacked upon the flank. The trench was completely captured.

There followed a period of fierce toil in the trench. Under the twinkling stars in the black sky, men delved at the snow of the parados, cutting fire-steps, building it up into a breastwork. Behind them little parties of prisoners, stretcher-bearers and slightly wounded men, stumbled across the broken surface of the glacier. The toiling men gave no thought to them as they laboured to prepare for the storm which would surely burst.

It came. An ugly hissing rush heralded the first Austrian shell. It exploded with re-echoing violence and a great fount of up-flung snow right on the newly-strengthened breastwork. Another and another followed in a methodical bombardment directed by calmly judicial gunners ensconced in little huts far back in the mountains. Amid the nerve-harrying rush of ever new arrivals, constant explosions, the men toiled frenziedly. Reserves of ammunition were brought up. Machine-guns were put in position. Telephone wires were laid. The fourth company took up a post on the glacier whence it could rush into the trench in a counter-attack if needed.

Suddenly the bombardment ceased. The Alpini crouched behind the parapet, fingering their rifles with gloved hands, peered out into the indistinctness of the snow.

There was a rush of dimly-seen figures from the obscurity, a blaze of fire from the trench. Near the staff-captain the colonel sat speaking into the mouth-piece of a telephone. Rush after rush of hurrying shells passed overhead. Out there on the slope where an Austrian battalion was surging to the attack, shrapnel after shrapnel lit fierce sudden flares in the dark sky. There was again a tumult of voices, a re-echoing chaos of men at strife. It persisted, swelled, died down.

The silence of an Alpine night rested once more over the battleground, was broken only by the roar of a distant avalanche.

In the twilight of approaching morn an officer made his tour of the outposts on what had been Austria.

"Chi va là?" rang the sharp challenge of a white-garbed sentry almost indistinguishable against the snow.

"Italia!" came the proud response.

The first rays of the sun gilded the surrounding summits in the glory of a new dawn.

FOOTNOTES:

PANZERKRAFTWAGEN!

Hauptmann von Waldhofer, Batteriechef of the —th Battery Fussartillerie, stood, helmeted and with buttoned coat, hastily sipping a cup of steaming hot coffee in his dug-out. The electric light, fed from the power-station at Cambrai, miles back, illumined a cosy little apartment. Portraits of the Kaiser and Hindenburg looked stiffly from the matchboard walls in the incongruous company of a medley of coloured pages from Simplicissimus, Jugend, and, quaintly enough, the Vie Parisienne. One side was fully occupied by an enormous large-scale map of the Somme area, divided into numbered squares, heavily scored with blue pencil here and there, across which ran a great curve of red lines massed in intricate pattern—the enemy trenches, and radiating pin-supported coloured threads from a point slightly E.S.E. of Flers fan wise far across the opposing line. The battery-made bed, wiremesh stretched over a wooden frame, sloping slightly from the head downwards towards the foot, on which lay blankets in the disarray of recent use, bulked largely in the apartment. But there was still room for a little table, on which books and writing material were neatly arranged, and two comfortable plush-covered armchairs, besides the camp washstand in which the water yet steamed. A carpet, mudstained but thick and soft to the tread, covered the floor. In the corner remote from the bed was a stove whose long pipe bent at right angles below the roof and followed it until it ascended the steep stairway at the entrance. The deliberate comfort of the dug-out indicated long residence and the expectation of an indefinite stay. Only the pick and shovel in readiness by the door gave a hint of possible cataclysm.

An orderly stood stiffly at attention while his master finished his coffee. The captain put down the cup.

"What time is it?" he asked sharply.

"A quarter to seven,[3] Herr Hauptmann."

"What sort of morning?"

"Clear, Herr Hauptmann, but very cold."

"Any aeroplanes?"

"None over the battery, Herr Hauptmann."

The captain gave a final glance at himself in the French wall-mirror which hung over the table, touched lightly with his finger-tips the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross upon his breast, as though flickering away a speck of dust, and turned to go. As he went the hanging calendar caught his eye. He tore off the top leaf. The date revealed was September 15th, 1916.

He climbed, with the heavy step of an oldish man, the narrow steep thirty-tread stairway, and emerged into the blue sky of a clear dawn. Around him was bare rolling downlike country. About half a mile directly in front of him the village of Flers huddled itself among thin trees, its skeletal roofs silhouetted against the blue. Between him and it, but close at hand in a slight depression of the ground, the four 105[4] mm. guns of his battery stood spaced and silent under veils of a gauzelike material tufted with green and brown that blended well with the terrain. Inconspicuous even to a side view, thus covered they were invisible from above. Near them were stacks of ammunition also shrouded. Save for a sentry the guns were deserted. The personnel of the battery was lined up in two queues, where the smoke of a couple of field kitchens betokened breakfast.

The battery dug-outs were excavated in the breast of a slight swelling of the downs, their exits looking N.W., on the flank of the gun positions. The battery commander stood for a moment surveying his little community banded for the service of the four veiled idols lying unhuman and aloof from the domestic needs of men. Then, following his morning habit, he turned and climbed the little rise of ground. On his accustomed view-point he stopped and gazed westward. Before him, clear in the cold early light, the undulating downs gathered themselves into a long, fairly regular ridge, some two miles distant at the summit. A maze of communication and support trenches, just visible, criss-crossed their white lines in the chalk of the hither slope. On the skyline of the ridge directly west a large clump of bare, shell-sharpened tree-stumps broke its emptiness. It was the Bois de Foureaux. Further south a similar group of stumps spiked up into the sky—the Bois de Delville.[5] That clean-swept landscape mounting to the desolate skyline was the great dominant fact in his existence. Ever concrete in his mind, it claimed his first waking vision even as the weather horizon claims the first heed of the sailor, or Vesuvius the morning glance of the Neapolitan. This morning it lay cloudless—save for the towering smoke of an occasional shell-burst in the vicinity of the Bois de Foureaux—and strangely quiet. The whole wide stretch would have seemed untenanted by man had it not been for the occasional primrose twinkle of a field-gun's flash. The reports of such guns came in isolated slams at varying intervals. To his right an English shell hurried with a long-drawn whine to burst heavily in Flers. Far back several enemy aeroplanes, tiny specks in the cold blue sky yellowing to the dawn, were dodging like midges among a smother of little brown shell puffs. From overhead came the drone of a German machine. But, by contrast with the frequent uproar which welled out of this region to translate itself into long thick smoke along the ridge, the scene was curiously clear and silent.

Satisfied with his scrutiny, the Captain turned and descended again to the battery position. He passed along the line of dug-outs in the flank of the rise until he reached one whose entrance bore the notice "Fernsprecher und Befehls Unterstand"[6] neatly painted on a board. The Oberfeldwebel standing at the doorway sprang to a precise, heel-clicking salute. The officer acknowledged it curtly and dived into the dug-out.

Here yellow electric light replaced the cool grey dawn and tobacco smoke floated in long wreaths about the bulb. A young lieutenant, seated at the telephone instrument on the table, took the pipe out of his mouth and rose smartly as his superior entered.

"Good morning, Eberstein," said the captain. "Anything fresh?"

"Nothing, Herr Hauptmann," replied the lieutenant respectfully.

"Nothing of this rumoured attack?"

"Nothing."

The captain seated himself heavily at the table and the lieutenant was at liberty to resume his chair.

"And that frightful bombardment all last night, Eberstein, what do you make of it?" he asked as he lit himself a cigarette.

The mouth under the fair moustache of the young lieutenant twisted into a contemptuous smile.

"Bah! the Englanders want to make us nervous or to persuade themselves that their wonderful 'great push' is not played out."

The captain blew out a long puff of smoke and nodded his head in dubious thought.

"And you think it is?"

Von Waldhofer, a man of somewhat deliberate mental processes, was never unwilling to discuss general topics with his subordinate. Eberstein's cheering, if crude, optimism was a welcome stimulus to him.

"Of course it is," said the lieutenant. "Since the first rush they have been practically fought to a standstill. Here it is two and a half months since the offensive began and where are they? Now in one week on the Donajetz we——"

"Yes, I know, Eberstein," his superior interrupted him. "You did wonders. But it is the Somme and not the Donajetz that interests us now." He removed his helmet and passed his hand wearily over a high semi-bald brow. "I wish I could be as certain as you. These Englanders do not know when they are beaten——" He stopped, then broke out again with the over-emphasis of a man wearied with long brooding over a problem. "The colonel was so positive last night! And he had just come from the General Staff. At dawn, he said, we might expect it. I can't make it out. All night that frightful bombardment, obviously preparation. Then this quiet! I feel something is coming." He shook his head. "We are much too near in this position."