Front matter (continued 4)

"If they come, so much the better!" cried Eberstein. "We will annihilate them. But I do not for a moment believe——"

He was stopped by a heavy distant roar that commenced with the suddenness of a thunderclap and continued in one never-ending roll.

"There we are!" exclaimed von Waldhofer. He looked at his watch. It marked 7 o'clock precisely.[7]

A moment later the telephone bell rang in an excavated offshoot of the main dug-out. The orderly on duty there answered the call. "Message from the observation officer!" he announced in a loud voice. Eberstein picked up the receiver lying on the table in front of him.

"Yes?"

"Intense artillery fire all calibres upon entire sector. Whole front being heavily bombarded. Infantry attack expected momentarily."

Eberstein repeated the message, and ere he had finished the battery commander had sprung to the door of the dug-out, shouting his orders. He heard them megaphoned on by the sergeant-major above. Out there in the first rays of the sun the four squat idols had shaken aside their veils, lay surrounded by tensely waiting acolytes. The moment for their dread speech was at hand.

In the electric-lit dug-out the two officers sat silently listening to the distant storm. It rolled in one unnerving continuous thunder. Not their duty was it to reply. They were detailed for barrage upon a particular sector. But near at hand the heavy detonations of guns told off for counter-battery work followed one another ever more quickly. Near at hand, too, came the long whine and crash of the English counter-battery shells hurled in reply.

Again the bell rang and again the telephone orderly called out. "Speak to battalion commander,[8] please!"

This time von Waldhofer picked up the receiver himself.

"Ja, ja! We are all ready!" he said. "Yes. It is coming this time. No. No further message. Oh, yes, we are in communication. No? Have you heard anything definite? No. I wonder if there's any truth in it? Good-bye." He put down the receiver and turned to Eberstein, stopping for a moment to listen to the roll of the hostile bombardment.

"That old story again![9] You remember we heard it before the first of July? Some wonderful invention the Englanders are supposed to have for annihilating us all. I wonder if there's anything in it?"

The lieutenant laughed mockingly.

"The Englanders invent anything? Not they! Besides, I don't believe in the possibility of any new invention that can revolutionise war. Just think! Here have all the nations of the world been fighting for two years, and what new inventions have we seen? None! There have been perfections and the rediscovery of old methods—that's all. What is the Zeppelin but a perfected Montgolfier? It is neither the first nor the only dirigible even! Poison gas and liquid fire—what are they but the stinkpots and Greek fire of the middle ages, rediscovered and brought up to date? There is nothing, can be nothing really new!"

Von Waldhofer shook his head.

"You are very positive in all your ideas, Eberstein. I don't know. The English do get hold of new things sometimes—it is true that generally they leave it to us to make use of them. But these rumours are so persistent! They are vague, I admit. Yet where there is so much smoke there is generally a fire. We are very close here. Just listen to that bombardment!"

For a moment or two both officers sat silent again, listening to the roll of awful menace. Then von Waldhofer shouted an order to the telephonist.

"Get through to the observation officer!"

Almost immediately the orderly called out:

"Speaking, Herr Hauptmann!"

Von Waldhofer picked up the receiver.

"What is happening?"

"The bombardment is continuing," came the reply. "Much damage is being done to the trenches. Some sectors are almost obliterated. My wire has already been cut twice."

"No infantry attack?"

"Not yet. This is evidently preparatory."

"Keep me informed," said von Waldhofer, and put down the receiver. He turned to Eberstein. "Well, we shall soon see."

"There will be nothing," replied the lieutenant with his contemptuous laugh. "I should like to bet on it. If there were a patent way of breaking down trench lines, it would not be the Englanders who invented it. It would be we Germans!—--"

"Hush!" said von Waldhofer. "Listen!"

The roll of the hostile artillery ceased as though controlled by a single volition, remained silent for a few seconds and then, with one thunder-surge of sound, recommenced.

"The barrage has lifted!" cried von Waldhofer. He raised his voice to be heard by the Oberfeldwebel who waited megaphone in hand, his legs visible halfway down the dug-out steps. "All ready, sergeant-major?"

"All ready, Herr Hauptmann," replied the tranquil voice of the N.C.O.

The telephone bell rang again in the dug-out.

"Message from observation officer!" proclaimed the orderly.

Von Waldhofer snatched up the instrument.

"Yes?"

"Barrage!"

"Fire!" shouted von Waldhofer to the Oberfeldwebel.

Eberstein looked at his watch. The hour was 7.20.

As though the commanding officer had pressed an electric firing-button, the four heavy crashes of his guns followed, merging into each other, renewed in a never-ending chain of detonations as fast as the crews could load, relay and fire. A constant stream of 4.2" shells was rushing from the battery to fall in a narrow area at the predetermined range. But loud as were the violent concussions of the guns close at hand, they were but one element in the chaos of frenzied sound that had leaped from the whole countryside at the moment of their first report. Every German battery was firing at its maximum intensity. On the background of the dull continuance of the English guns danced the rapid reports of the quick-firers at full pressure of urgency, and surged ponderously the gruff double-roar of the howitzers, and the sharper, louder crash of the heavies, blended without a moment's interval into one unceasing peal. The rifle-fire from the trenches was inaudible, swallowed up.

Von Waldhofer sat with one telephone receiver pressed to his ear. Eberstein picked up the other. They heard the observation officer's voice, faintly.

"What?" shouted von Waldhofer into the instrument.

"Something is coming—something strange—I cannot see well, there is so much smoke—something—slow and crawling—a machine—firing—more—schreckliche——!" The voice ceased abruptly.

Von Waldhofer and his lieutenant looked at one another.

"The wire has gone!" cried Eberstein. He had to shout to be heard in the din.

"Let us hope it is only that," replied his chief. Both strove deliberately to ignore the fear in the forefront of their minds. Von Waldhofer shouted loudly into the telephone: "Kurt! Kurt! Are you there?"

There was no answer.

Outside the dug-out the battery was still firing furiously, would continue to do so until it received fresh orders. The general uproar had abated not at all, had if anything intensified. Into the welter of sound came a familiar, heart-stopping, hissing rush followed by a loud crash. Another and another and another swooped down on the heels of the first. An English 60 pr. battery was searching for their position. But the two officers, fascinated by the mysterious distant menace that was crawling into their world, did not hear and gave no thought to the shells. Once more von Waldhofer shouted into the telephone "Kurt! Kurt!" Still there came no answer. The eyes of the two men met.

"What can it be?" demanded Eberstein impatiently. "Is he dreaming?"

"Perhaps the wire has been cut close here," said his chief, resolute like a good soldier to allow no disturbing speculations in this battle crisis. He shouted an order to the Oberfeldwebel.

The telephone bell rang sharply.

"Order from the battalion commander," announced the telephonist.

Von Waldhofer was already listening.

"Yes?"

"Feindliche Panzerkraftwagen[10] übersteigen die Schützengräben Punkt C 32 d 4.1. Sofort Feuer dagegen mit aller Kraft eröffnen!" ("Enemy armoured motor-cars are crossing the trenches at point C 32 d 4.1. Open heaviest possible fire upon them immediately!")

The battery commander sprang to a little table, outspread with a large-scale map upon which lay protractor and dividers. A second or two of hasty calculation and he shouted his orders to the Oberfeldwebel.

"Cease fire! All guns 20 degrees more right! With percussion! Left half at 3150 metres! Right half at 3100 metres! Forty rounds battery fire!"

He heard them repeated in stentorian tones through the Oberfeldwebel's megaphone. The rapid detonations of the guns ceased. There was a pause, a few seconds only. Then the voice of the sergeant-major announced.

"All ready!"

"Fire!"

Again the fury of the guns burst forth.

"Panzerkraftwagen!" said Eberstein. "But surely armoured cars cannot cross wire entanglements and trenches! There is a mistake somewhere."

"There is no mistake that something has gone wrong and that we are without observation," returned von Waldhofer irritably, indisposed to abstract argument just then. The orderly had once more failed to elicit any response from the observation officer. "Take a couple of men and a new instrument, follow the wire along as far as possible, get into a good position for observing, and open up communication with the battery. No, wait a moment!" The telephone bell was ringing again.

"Message from battalion commander," said the orderly.

"Yes?" von Waldhofer spoke into the instrument. "I am firing on them now. No. I am without observation. Five minutes ago. Really? What are they? Not ordinary cars? Something quite new? Herr Gott, this is serious! Yes. Yes. I quite understand. I am not to retreat while I have ammunition. Good. You may rely on us. We shall stand to the last man. Für Gott und Kaiser! Lebewohl!" He put down the receiver and stood for a moment in deep thought, his hand pressed to his high bald brow. Then he shook himself alert. He turned to Eberstein. "Hurry!" he said irritably. "Everything is at stake!" The lieutenant sprang up the stairway and vanished.

Von Waldhofer put on his helmet and gave a last order to the telephonist before he followed his subaltern.

"Ring up Captain Pforzheim. Tell him to send up every available round as quickly as possible. Urgently required!"

Then he also ran up the narrow stairway into the bright morning light.

"Two telephonists, all necessary instruments, with me into flank observing station at once!" he shouted to the sergeant-major.

He went swiftly towards the battery. The last gun had just finished its allotted ten rounds. They lay now in their wide-spaced row, smoke upcurling from their muzzles. Their attendant crews stood, coatless, mopping the sweat on their brows. Far and near the thunderous uproar of the battle swelled; it seemed louder than ever now that he had come from the dug-out into the open air. The English batteries had lengthened their range. As he walked he glanced at Flers. It was whelmed in fumes. Explosion upon explosion leaped up among the huddled houses in the trees, fragments, timbers, earth-clods momentarily poised upon a dome of dark smoke. White shrapnel puffs sprang incessantly into existence above the roofs. He heard the hissing rush of an approaching shell without faltering in his pace, so preoccupied was he with the urgency of the moment. He saw the quick upspout of smoke; the heavy metallic crash came to his ears. He noted only that it was well behind the battery. His eyes were fixed on the officer with the guns.

"Oberleutnant Schwarz!" he called, stopping suddenly some twenty yards from the battery.

The long-coated, helmeted lieutenant stiffened as though galvanised, walked smartly up to him, saluted, and waited rigidly for his orders. Oberleutnant Schwarz, a young freckled-face fellow, set the pattern for discipline in that battery. The commander noted the punctilious attitude without his wonted inward smile. The occasion had found the man.

"Schwarz, communication with the forward officer is interrupted. Eberstein has gone to re-establish it if possible. I am going into the flank observing station. Orders will come from there. Put the Einjähriger into the telephone dug-out. The situation is critical. Something has gone wrong. A new kind of armoured car has broken through the trench-line. They must be stopped at all costs. The orders from the battalion commander are formal. The battery will not retire while it has ammunition. I have ordered up every available round. The battery will maintain its position, whatever happens, while it has a man and a shell. Is that clear?"

Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted in precise parade-ground fashion.

"Quite, Herr Hauptmann," he replied unemotionally.

"If I become a casualty the command devolves upon you," continued von Waldhofer. "Remember these armoured cars are your target, wherever they can be fired on. Use direct laying if you get the opportunity." A flight of shells burst in a succession of heavy crashes on the swelling ground to his right. He glanced at them. "Keep a couple of groundmen going over the wire to the flank observing station. Here, two of you!" he shouted suddenly to some mounted N.C.O.'s who at that moment trotted up to the battery with a string of ammunition limbers. Upon his sign one of them dismounted. The captain swung himself into the vacated saddle. Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted once more. Accompanied by the other N.C.O. the battery commander set off at a hard gallop, up the rising ground into the welter of dark smoke from the just-burst shells.

The flank observing station was a splinter-proof dug-out on a little knoll some 500 yards away to the left flank of the battery. It had been constructed in prevision of the unexpected. Von Waldhofer spurred towards it now at the top pace of his horse. Despite many shell-bursts, on the ground and in the air, he reached it safely. Leaping to earth, he threw the reins to his follower and sent both horses back. Then he dived into the dug-out.

Both telephonists were there awaiting him. The large-scale map was pinned out on a board, instruments upon it. The range-finder stood by the observation-slit. One of the orderlies was testing the telephone communication to the battery. Von Waldhofer pulled his glasses out of their case, pressed himself against the observation-slit and looked out.

Directly in front of him the bare ground with many minor undulations rose steadily to the shattered silhouette of the Bois de Foureaux on the skyline. But no longer was the view clear as when he last had gazed on it. Over all lay a haze which the early morning sun was powerless to penetrate. In the foreground and wide to right and left in the middle distance spurted and twinkled the primrose flashes of the guns, more rapidly multiplied than any eye could count. On the ridge the smoke lay thick, bellying in dark masses over the tree-stumps of the wood, poised on the horizon in tall, heavy-headed columns like elm trees in full foliage. In the air long bands of white shrapnel smoke reached out and clung to each other in a lazy drift, while among them the large dead-black bursts of heavy high-explosive shrapnel appeared suddenly, darted a head from the round nucleus and then unfolded themselves slowly and snakily earthward. Between him and the ridge the whole wide amphitheatre was being thickly sown with English shells. Near and far the smoke-columns shot incessantly into the air. Over the road from Flers to the Bois de Delville, which crossed his view at right angles, the white shrapnel puffs clustered in ever-renewed groups. Over all, English aeroplanes in scores flitted to and fro, daringly low yet apparently unchallenged. No longer did this arena appear untenanted. In every part there was movement and confusion of Lilliputian figures. Far away three tiny ammunition wagons raced towards a battery. Closer at hand, grey-clad infantry dashed in sections along the shell-swept road from Flers. They tugged low bomb-carts on long hand-ropes. He knew, subconsciously, that they were going to reinforce the great trench-line that stretched east and west from Martinpuich to Lesbœufs. Further afield other bands of grey midgets, scarcely visible, were rushing forward. Everywhere from the rim of battle-pressure grey figures were filtering in ragged streams down towards the lower ground. A long way off, on that rim, his glasses revealed a nodal point of confusion. He focussed on it. There were tiny grey figures grouped, in quick movement to and fro. Little smoke-dots were all round them. Then the confusion cleared. He saw darker figures, running forward, the twinkle of sun on a distant bayonet. For a moment he held them under view anxiously. Then with an impatient movement he swept his glasses round. Not there was the target that he sought.

Suddenly he arrested his sweep. To his left, much closer to him than he had been looking, a field battery topped a little rise, retiring at full gallop among a welter of shell-smoke. It passed down below his vision. His glasses remained steadily focussed on the rise over which it had come, fascinated by the abnormality, expectant of the cause.

It appeared. Slightly to the right of the course of the retreating battery, something emerged over the crest—something slow, ponderous, shapeless—drawing itself up. The silhouette of a gun projecting from its flank barred the sky. Swiftly he replaced his glasses by the range-finder. As he twisted the thumbscrews that brought the inverted vision into juxtaposition with the normal, he saw a group of grey soldiers surround the monster, hurl little puffs of smoke at it. He saw the gun slue, spit, saw soldiers who waved white rags tripping over those already fallen. The double visions met, he read the range. The thing drew itself up, turned slightly, creeping on its belly, snout in the air, like an uncouth saurian from the prehistoric slime. It was moving more quickly than he at first realised. In another instant he had taken the angle to the aiming post, plotted another, and was shouting orders to the telephonist.

"All guns 28·3 degrees left! Right half-section No. 1 gun 980 metres, No. 2 gun 960 metres! With percussion! one round! Fire!"

Through the range-finder he saw the burst of the two shells at the same moment that the detonations of the guns came to his ears. One fell full in the midst of the group of grey soldiery, whelmed them in black smoke. The other burst beyond. The thing paused not nor hurried. At an even pace it drew its low bulk along, dipped now for the descent.

"Right half-section 970 metres! Left half-section 960 metres! With percussion! Twenty rounds battery fire! Fire!"

Spout upon spout of black smoke heralded the rapid explosions of the guns. The monster was blotted out. Feeling like one engaged in a struggle with a creature born not in our time and space, of another world, von Waldhofer prayed for a direct hit. The smoke cleared. He looked for what should be its ripped and stationary bulk. It was not there. Only the grey bodies of the dead lay under the drifting fumes. The thing had passed onward, dipped into the hollow, out of sight.

He was suddenly aware that the enemy shell-fire, always heavy, had increased in intensity. The smoke-spouts shot up more numerously, grouped themselves more densely. Gradually they extended to new areas, abandoned those already covered. He realised in a flash that the monster was moving behind its special barrage, aeroplane directed from above. He shouted fresh orders, altering the range. Blindly he hurled his shells into the hollow behind the screen of smoke.

If only he had direct observation! He shouted to the telephonist.

"Ask if communication has been made with Leutnant Eberstein?"

The reply came: "Nothing has been heard of Leutnant Eberstein. Six men have just been killed in the battery."

Von Waldhofer's exclamation expressed annoyance rather than grief at the loss of his subordinate. He turned again to look through the observation slit. There was a blinding crash——

When he came to, he found himself gazing at the blue sky. The deep breath he drew half-choked him with the fumes of burnt explosive. Shaking in every limb he struggled to his feet. Before him lay his two orderlies, dead. The dug-out was wrecked and roofless. The telephone instrument was strewn in fragments on the floor. He himself was unwounded.

He listened, with a sudden anxiety, for the detonations of his guns. The general uproar had diminished not at all, but the familiar crashes were wanting in the din. How long had he lain there? A wild fear seized him. Scrambling out of the ruined dug-out he ran breathlessly towards the battery.

The enemy fire was as intense as ever. The air was filled with the whine and scream of arriving shells and the heavy crashes of their explosion. From somewhere behind came the rattle of rifles and machine-guns and the dull thud of bombs. Grey-clad men in swarms were running across the open ground athwart his path. He heard them shouting, saw officers gesticulating, realised as in a dream that they were running from the battle. But their fear touched him not. He was enveloped in concern for his beloved battery.

He arrived on the lip of the depression where it lay. In a surge of joy he saw the four guns lying in the familiar places, saw them strangely naked, their protective veils ripped and hurled aside, saw barely sufficient crews standing at their posts, saw the position gashed with shell-holes and littered with prone grey bodies, shattered limbers and dead horses. Even as he looked a salvo of shrapnel burst with deafening cracks above them, and white fleecy clouds floated over the battery. On the near flank, in the position of command, stood Oberleutnant Schwarz, rigid and precise as on the parade-ground.

Von Waldhofer ran down the slope towards him.

"Schwarz! Schwarz!" he called.

The Oberleutnant advanced to meet him, and, looking calmly at his chief as though his smoke-blackened face and torn clothing were in no way out of the normal, saluted with perfect gravity.

"What has been happening?"

"We have been under heavy fire, Herr Hauptmann. All the wires are cut in many places. The telephone dug-out has been blown in. We are absolutely without communications. The battery has fired whenever there was a chance of a target. Your orders have been obeyed. The battery has stood its ground. We have only three rounds per gun left. I am waiting now for an opportunity to fire."

Listening to the cool report of his subordinate, von Waldhofer recovered his soldierly poise.

"Excellent. You have done well, Schwarz. And the casualties?"

"I regret are heavy." He waved a gloved hand towards the bare dozen standing by the guns. "All that are left."

There was the loud, hissing, nerve-paralysing rush of a shell at arrival. Simultaneously with the shattering crash that leaped from the fountain of black smoke, Oberleutnant Schwarz put his hand to his breast, performed a sharp half-turn and fell—dead.

The reverberation yet rang when a second rush and crash followed the first. A third and fourth shook the air almost too quickly for distinction. The battery commander's brain worked with the timeless speed of a great crisis or a dream. In an incomputable fraction of a second he saw the heavy barrage which preceded the slowly crawling monster, was conscious of an aeroplane overhead, saw his opportunity and his plan. He ran towards the guns, shouting: "Lie down! Lie down!" The crews obeyed. Standing among the strewn corpses the guns seemed manned only by the dead. He flung himself prone on the flank of the battery.

Shell after shell swooped and burst on the stretch of ground in front of him. Fed by the constantly spouting black geysers, an ever-thickening dark mist drifted across, blotted out the distance. Through it he saw the freshly thrown edges, brown and white, of unfamiliar shell-craters pocking the undulating ground. The worn, smooth greensward that he had known was being churned into loose clay and chalk, mingled haphazard in their fall from the fierce upward gush. The reiterated crash upon crash of near explosions all but obliterated the far-flung din of the general battle, but through them he caught waves of an appalling uproar welling out of Flers. Slowly, riving, crashing, upspouting its black fountains of smoke and earth, the barrage marched onward, passing across the battery front. Now? Through the mist he saw the directing aeroplane sweep down in front of him, absurdly low, rattling its machine-gun. A group of grey figures sprang up beneath it, both arms high above the head, tumbling among the shell-holes as they ran. A temptation flitted across his mind. One round gun-fire and that aeroplane was blown to fragments. His lips tightened. He did not move. The battery seemed abandoned by all its dead.

Age-long seconds passed as he watched, peering through the thinning mist. Save for one little group of hasty, self-obliterating men, his immediate front was a deserted waste of churned earth, sloping gently upwards away from him. Once, over the low near skyline seen from his prone position, he thought he saw the spurt of a bomb. But he could not be sure. And a bomb did not necessarily betoken the presence of the—Thing. Yes! What was that?

Something was lifting itself, slowly and with jerks, beyond that near skyline. Ponderously, with the efforts of a limbless living thing, it drew its bulk up, seemed to stop—nosing the air with its blind snout. Now? Not yet! He had only one chance—certainty. The monster moved on again, downward now, lurching and wallowing among the shell-holes like a ship in a heavy sea. He saw the gun swinging in the side-turret as it rolled, the bright-splashed colouring of its flank. It was passing diagonally across his front. It must climb to escape. Now!

He sprang to his feet, shouting with all his lungs.

"To the guns!" The crews leaped up, resuscitated. "Point blank! At the devil! With percussion! All guns! Fire!"

But quick as he and his men had been, the monster was quicker. At his first movement, with a mighty jerk it had slued itself nose-on to the battery. Ere a hand could clutch a firing lever, a storm of small violently exploding shells burst right in among the guns, a hail of whip-cracking machine-gun bullets smote on men and metal. Von Waldhofer looked towards the monster lurching heavily towards him, keyed to a frenzy of suspense. To his horror he heard—not four—but one detonation. The Thing dipped. He saw the shell burst—over! He glanced towards the guns in speechless agony. The last gunner was in the act of falling lifeless across the trail.

High-nosed, seeming to smell its enemies rather than see them, like an uncouth blind monster of the rudimentary past, the Thing crept on, its speed as surprising as a reptile's. Viciously, with unallayed suspicions, it spat its missiles at the dead battery. Von Waldhofer stood alone, erect, praying that one might strike him.

Suddenly its fire ceased. He heard the loud clatter of its machinery as it approached, saw the rolling bands on which it moved. He felt that it was coming to mark its triumph over his beloved guns, felt its disdain for him their helpless master. An insane hatred for it gushed up in him, swept away his conscious self. He whipped out his pistol, ran like a madman towards it. He fired again and again, desperately seeking the eye, the brain, like a hunter at bay with a crocodile. But eyeless, featureless, the great snout slanted upwards above him, impenetrable steel plates, on which his bullets flattened.

Blindly the Thing rolled on, ponderous, invulnerable. It bulked huge above him. He heard a shriek. It was his own.

In the bright sunshine of a September morning the strange new monsters crawled over that bare countryside racked with noise and tortured with the leaping, eddying smoke of countless explosions. Behind them crowds of khaki-clad men, hatted with inverted bowls like Samurai, followed cheering and laughing like boys behind a circus-car. They waved newspaper posters, obtained Heaven knows whence, that proclaimed in fat bold type: "Great British Victory!"

FOOTNOTES:

NACH VERDUN!

In the long luxuriously furnished saloon car of the special train an officer clad in the field-service uniform of a South-Eastern Power sat in conversation with a colonel of the German General Staff. The deference shown to him made it immediately obvious that he was a distinguished personage representing a neutral whose friendliness was important. His dark, clever eyes rested thoughtfully upon the groups of officers with whom the car was overcrowded. All round was a buzz of talk, of suppressed excitement. The air was thick with cigar smoke.

"Ja, Excellenz," said the German colonel, podgy little fingers drumming the table between them. "The secret is out. You have rightly guessed our objective." His eyes were those of a rather clumsy and not too scrupulous diplomat. His smile was deliberate flattery. "Allow me to congratulate you upon your good fortune. You will see the machinery of our Kriegswirtschaftlichkeit,"[11] he throated the word impressively, "at the moment when it works at its highest power to shape for Germany her final victory."

The distinguished neutral smiled also, perfectly courteous. He spoke with a faint Austrian accent.

"I can understand your desire for the final," he underlined the word ever so lightly, "victory, Herr Oberst."

The German stared at him, suspicious of the nimbler brain.

"Who would not desire it, Excellenz? This awful slaughter," he waved a deprecating hand. "It is terrible that our adversaries do not recognise they are already beaten."

The neutral nodded.

"Bar-le-Duc and the Upper Marne, I suppose—Paris!"

The German colonel's eyes went dead.

"Excellenz, I believe the supreme command reserves to itself the honour of enlightening you on its plans."

The conversation languished. The train rolled on, heavily comfortable. The staff officers talked earnestly among themselves, the word "Majestät" oft repeated. Orderlies, garbed as soldiers but obviously royal Kammerdiener, stole noiselessly in and out of the car, went frequently into the car beyond. On those occasions the distinguished neutral had a glimpse of a world-familiar figure, upturned moustaches on a tired face, a uniform of grey hung with many decorations.

The train rolled into a station, stopped. The blare of a military band started on the precise instant of its arrival. The platform was thronged with officers, bright with the red of the General Staff.

The distinguished neutral took little interest in the ceremony outside. He busied himself with collecting the small articles of his kit. Through the large windows he glimpsed the salutes of the rigidly-erect officers. Above the noise of the band he heard the repeated "Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" of soldiers who cheered as they drilled, exactly synchronous.

He stepped on to the platform, followed by the Colonel appointed to be his conductor. "Majestät" had already departed. Officers were thronging to the exit, laughing and talking, much excited, revealing, despite the grey and red of the staff uniform, the essential childishness of the crowd-mind. "Nach Verdun!" said one of them, very close to the distinguished neutral, nudging another in the ribs. "Nach Verdun!" He repeated the just given watchword of victory as a schoolboy repeats the latest smart expression. The officers around him laughed. The crowd buzzed with high spirits.

Outside the station the roadway was choked with waiting motor-cars, lined with soldiers readjusting their helmets after tumultuous "Hochs!" Some cars—those containing the highest personages—had already departed. One after the other those remaining were filled, swerved out and sped away. The distinguished neutral and his companion found a vehicle reserved for them. The colonel led him to it with an air that suggested: "See how the smallest details are thought out!" They, too, sped away through the walls of infantry.

Behind the soldiers were a few listless French inhabitants; from the windows of that French town hung German flags, but no French faces looked out. The shops were open but their owners stood not at the doors. The neutral noted these things. The complete apathy of the population was in contrast to stories his companion had related in the train. In many of the side-streets long convoys of ammunition and ration wagons were halted to allow them passage. On one of those foremost wagons was scrawled in big chalk letters: "Nach Verdun!"

"Nach Verdun!" that was the Leitmotiv underlying all the intense military activity that filled the town and, as they shot out beyond the houses, the countryside also. Every road was choked with columns of marching infantry, with endless trains of wagons, of limbers, of ambulances. Even cavalry was in evidence, riding with tall lances and saddle-hung rifles on wretched-looking horses. "Nach Verdun!" The German colonel, though he warily gave no information, could talk of nothing else. Under that grey February sky pulsed and boomed the distant detonations of artillery. The neutral listened to it with a professional ear, was puzzled. It was persistent enough, but it was certainly not the prolonged roar of a preparatory bombardment.

The car swung into the drive of a park. A tunnel of winter-stripped trees, brown above, green streaking the bark, and then a large château drew itself across the vista. Thither the other cars had preceded them. They stood now ranked in a mass. There was a throng of officers round the great doors, the buzz awakened by the recent passage of the All-Highest. The neutral was shown to his room, the German colonel volubly regretting that exigencies of space forced him to share it.

Some hours later the neutral was ushered into a vast, lofty apartment whose tapestried walls were almost completely rehung with the huge maps pinned upon them. On easels stood other maps, strange diagrams in curves and slants of red, green and black ink. On a large table was a horizontal relief model of hills and woods, a river with tributary streams, a splash of red in the valley, thin lines of red converging upon it, passing through, opening out again. On all these maps, on the splash of red in the relief model, the name "Verdun" was repeated again and again.

All these things the neutral officer noticed with the corner of his eye—the large writing-tables behind which sat officers of high rank, other officers grouped in a corner. His direct gaze was held by the figure he saluted. Spare, of medium height, in the grey field-service uniform of a general, gold cord looping across his right breast, a star upon the left above the Iron Cross, gilt epaulettes, gilt leaves upon the red gorgets of his collar, the would-be conqueror of the world stood stiffly erect, graciously acknowledged his salute. The brushed-up moustache was still dark, though the short hair on the head was grey, almost white. The face was deeply furrowed with endless anxieties, but the blue eyes—pouched though were their under lids—gleamed with excitement. He spoke in a jerky but distinct manner that betrayed a temperament of long ill-controlled impulses.

"Guten Abend, Herr General! Welcome to Germany's greatest hour! You shall see our sun mount triumphantly to its zenith, breaking through the dark clouds of foes who cluster over against us in vain!" The tone was that of a rhetoric practised until it has become a habit. The right hand gesticulated with quick motions, the left arm was conspicuously still. "General!" he turned to one of the officers sitting at the tables, "be so good as to explain everything to our friend here."

It was to be clearly understood that the All-Highest was flatteringly gracious.

The neutral officer bowed, expressed his thanks courteously, ventured a request: "That I may be allowed to admire your War-Machine in all its work, Majestät—go where I will."

"By all means, General. We have nothing to hide. You will find much to interest you, much to relate to our well-wishers in your country. General! see that a pass is given to our friend that will give him the fullest freedom." The All-Highest answered the neutral's salute in a manner that terminated the conversation.

Seated at the huge, carved writing-table with the officer to whom he had been addressed, the neutral found himself looking at a pair of keen grey eyes that peered through pince-nez under bushy white eyebrows. The German spread out maps, indicated positions. He drew notice to the fact that all roads squeezed through a bottle-neck over the river at Verdun, spread out in a fan on the east bank to a long line of positions that climbed from the river over the Heights of the Meuse and fell into the plain of the Woevre across which they bent southward.

"Die Sache ist äusserst einfach!"[12] he said with the air of a man explaining a chess-problem. "The French have three divisions of Territorials in front of us to hold the entire sector. That force is not strong enough to defend it and certainly too weak to have kept the trench-systems in good repair. In fact we know that they have been allowed to fall into ruin.[13] We have fifteen divisions in front line, fifteen divisions in reserve. We do not intend to fling those divisions away. No. Step by step our artillery will blast a passage for them—see, here are our artillery positions," he showed concentric lines one within the other on the map, round the doomed sector. "It is the greatest artillery concentration the world has ever seen. Even our concentration on the Donajetz last year is surpassed. We shall obliterate the positions in front of us—other batteries will drench the only avenues of supplies with shells, they must all go through the town—our infantry will merely march into the devastated position, wait for the clearance of the next step. I may tell you that the French have only one small branch railway line which is safe from our fire. We have built fourteen new lines, besides those already existing. In the great problem of supply we have an overwhelming superiority. We believe we have the advantage of surprise. Certainly the French have no concentration within easy reach. In four days we shall be in Verdun. The Western Front will have been broken."

"In four days?" The neutral officer looked at the map as a chess-player looks at the board. "And—if I might ask the question—supposing you do not take Verdun in four days? There is said to be an enormous Allied force somewhere in France."

"We have yet another day," said the German a little wearily, as though resenting the effort to explain the unnecessary. "We have five clear days before any reinforcements can be brought up against us—all the chances have been calculated, you see. If we are not in Verdun by the evening of the fifth day—well, the battle will continue. But, I repeat, we shall be in Verdun within four days. The thing is certain!"

"Of course it is, General," said another voice above their heads. Both officers looked up, rose to their feet. "In four days we shall be in Verdun. In a fortnight—Paris!"

The speaker was a youngish man, with a long nose in a long face, somewhat bald upon the brow, a clipped moustache above a long thin mouth. There was something in his manner which suggested not too reputable finance doubled with Monte Carlo and the coulisses. He repeated, smacking his hand familiarly upon the back of the distinguished neutral: "In a fortnight—Paris!" He named the famous city with a smack of the lips.

"Undoubtedly, Highness," said the German general, his professional manner replaced by the obsequiousness of the courtier. "The army led by Your Highness cannot fail to conquer."

"Verdun—Paris! This time it will not fail, General." He walked across the room, smacking a riding-switch on his tall, patent-leather hussar boots, and chanting: "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!"[14]

The morning of the 21st February, 1916, opened damp and bleak. Over the heavy clay fields of the Woevre plain the mist hung persistently, enclosing all vision in a few hundred yards. Through the obscurity the poplars lining the roads loomed up like ghosts, dripping moisture from each bare twig. In the copses and the larger stretch of woodland known as the Forêt de Spincourt the conglobulated mist fell like rain. From either of the high knolls known as the Twins of Ornes, just south-west of the Forêt de Spincourt, the wooded slopes of the Heights of the Meuse—Merbebois and the Bois de Wavrille—rose dark and indefinite, discernible only when a little puff of the raw east wind, coming up the valley of the Orne, broke a rift in the fog.

The neutral and the German Oberst who was his inseparable companion stood on the more southerly of the twin heights. About them was a group of artillery officers. In their immediate front was the deep dug-out, sod-roofed, where telephonists sat and waited. It was an artillery observation post. The light was yet dim though the wet fog was white. It had been quite dark when the two spectators had made their way over roads deep in mud to this position of vantage.

The journey had been long, for their car had had to squeeze, lurching and slithering, past endless columns of infantry plodding over the atrocious roads. In the darkness those thousands of men had been scarcely more visible than phantoms who sang continuously as they marched, chorusing to the tune set by picked singers at the head of each company. Those who were merely the chorus broke off frequently to shout witticisms at the labouring motor-car. In high spirits, they wagered that they would be the first, after all, to arrive in Verdun.

On the hill-top of the Twin of Ornes, where the officers clustered, was tense expectation. The fog did not lift. Only at rare intervals was there a faint glimpse of the wooded heights towards which all gazed with thrilling foreknowledge. As yet all was a quiet broken only by an occasional isolated detonation that rolled heavily down the Orne valley. It echoed in a dull repercussion from the mist-filled woods upon the great scarp that was the far-flung rampart of the doomed city. An officer looked at his watch. The example was infectious. The seconds, the minutes passed slowly. It was like waiting for the curtain to go up. The watches marked 8.13 (German time)—8.14—8.15!

There was one simultaneous vast roar that leaped from an arc stretching from far in the north-west and passing round behind them to the south. It did not cease. Minute after minute it continued, unabated, prolonged. In the first sudden shock it appeared one colossal bellow of sound, evenly maintained. But as the ear became accustomed to it, instinctively analysed it, it was possible to distinguish spasms of even fiercer sound than the general welter: the ponderous concussion of especially heavy ordnance; the frenzied hammering of the quickfiring field-guns. The sense of hearing was overwrought, but the view changed not. The mist still hung over the landscape, was a curtain before the straining eye. Only down below them to the right a howitzer battery, adventurously pushed forward, rent the fog with stabs of orange-red flame.

It seemed, in the overpowering blast of the German guns, that the French artillery was making no general reply. From time to time a shell came whining over towards them, finished in an ugly rush and a crash somewhere upon the knoll. They scarcely noticed these occasional djinns of death, so ineffective were they by contrast to the whirlwind of destruction that swept the other way. The habituated ear could now pick out the rumbling tramcar-like progress of the heavy shells overhead, the fierce rushing drone of the missiles from lighter guns, mingling interwoven with the uninterrupted sheet of sound.

What was happening over there among the dank, wooded hills? Nothing could be seen, but the experienced imagination sketched, conscious that it fell below the reality, fearful havoc distant in the fog. Trees suddenly blasted, toppling; parapets leaping into the air—horrors among the spout of earth that had been a sheltered dug-out; trenches whose walls fell in; men who cowered, fear-paralysed, in a shambles; overhead a ceaseless cracking that rained down death; shock upon shock; chaos—such flitted through the minds of those who strained their eyes at the fog. An artillery observation officer turned to the neutral.

"Five hours of this, Excellenz," he said with a smile, "and then, the first step to Verdun!"

The Oberst expatiated on the wonderful German system for supplying all these batteries indefinitely at this intensity of fire. "Who can resist us?" was the implied corollary to his dissertation. The neutral was duly impressed, his dark clever eyes serious.

The bombardment continued, became monotonous. The fog thinned somewhat but permitted no clear vision. The batteries were firing by the map, according to a prearranged programme. The Oberst suggested to his distinguished guest that further stay was useless.

"I would like to see your guns at work, Herr Oberst," said the neutral, and the colonel saw himself forced to put aside his hopes of returning to Corps Headquarters for Mittagessen. He speculated on the Divisional Messes in their vicinity as he replied:

"By all means, Excellenz."

They scrambled down the rough path of the knoll, through a thin growth of birch, passed into the denser mist below.

They found themselves suddenly among long ranks of resting infantry squatting and lying in close proximity to their piled arms. The feld-grau uniforms merged, were lost in the fog, but there was an indefinable suggestion of the presence of many thousands. The Oberst and his guest might walk where they would, the shadowy grey forms still loomed up out of the mist. All were cheerful and confident. The officers in little groups smiling as they conversed, bent over a map. The men grinning. They were waiting for the guns to level the path for their "promenade."

At last the ranks of infantry ceased. They came upon a field battery that was firing furiously. The guns were in the open, their upturned caissons—lid upright to form a shield, exposing the pigeon-holed bases of the cartridges—close against the left wheel. Grouped behind each were the busy gunners, in rapid movement of arms and torso, crouching, labouring with swift concentrated intensity as they passed the long, gleaming projectile from hand to hand, thrust it into the breech, closed and fired. Behind them was a heap of brass cartridge-cases, the flat compartmented baskets that had held three rounds. The watching officers, helmeted, in long closely-buttoned coats, stood behind their sections. The battery hurled out its stream of death in absolute immunity. No enemy shell came to seek it. The fog veiled its target.

Beyond that battery was another, in the open like the first, almost wheel to wheel with it. And beyond that, another and yet others, an endless chain of them, all scorning concealment, all firing as fast as sweating, straining men could load and pull the lever. From behind came the prolonged, heavy, linked detonations of yet other batteries of more weighty metal. Overhead the rumble and rush of hurrying shells was as the sound of heavy traffic.

The neutral and his guide turned eastwards towards the zone of the great howitzers. Once more they were entangled in waiting masses of grey-clad infantry. The mist had thinned, permitted quite long vistas. Everywhere there was infantry, battalion upon battalion, regiment on regiment, brigade after brigade. The time had passed—by the neutral, at least, almost unnoticed, so much was there for his brain to register—it was now almost noon. The infantry was standing to its ranks, forming into column of route, marching forward with songs and shouts, their spiked helmets decorated with sprigs of fir. "Vorwärts!" came the sharp, barking commands of the officers. "Nach Verdun!" shouted the excited men, drunk with the prospect of superbly easy victory.

And ever the indefatigable batteries hammered and crashed, spewing forth death in volumes that the men they served might live. From behind every hedge, every hillock; in long lines across the open—so many that they could afford to neglect the enemy's reply; their tongues of flame shot out, flickered indefinitely repeated into the distance. Their infinitely reiterated detonations smote splittingly upon the ear, were gathered into one overpowering roar.

The dark mass of the Forêt de Spincourt was riven by red flame that lit and was gone momentarily in every part of its recesses. As the two officers approached it, they saw a faint film of smoke hanging over the tree-tops, saw the quick flashes gleaming through the undergrowth of the verge. They entered its obscurity. The air choked one with the fumes of burnt explosive, beat against the face in gusts with the disturbance of the multiplied discharges. The wood was a nest of howitzer batteries. On platforms of concrete and timber the monsters squatted, bowed their head to receive yet another shell, raised it again with slow, determined movement, the great round jaws gaping upward to the sky, belched with a sudden eructation of vivid flame, a tremendous shock of which the stunning noise was only part. The spectator behind the gun, looking upward, saw a black object speeding high into the air, rapidly diminishing, the while a rain of twigs pattered down upon his face. As the barrel was lowered again, the breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle. Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar.

Further within the wood were still greater monsters, so huge that their aliment was trundled to them on light rails, swung into their maw by overhanging cranes. The earth shook, the trees rocked, with the vehemence of their discharge.

"Frau Bertha has a most persuasive voice, nicht wahr?" said the Oberst to his guest. The neutral agreed as courteously as was possible in this chaos of bludgeoning noise. His dark eyes rested a little contemptuously on the dapper, somewhat podgy colonel whose soul, even in this crisis of nations, was still essentially the soul of a commercial traveller. The order to Krupp's was not yet given.

It was one o'clock—noon to the anxious French general far over there in the terrible distance. As suddenly as it had commenced, the vast bombardment ceased. There was an uncanny silence. All knew its significance. The German infantry was advancing to the assault. With what resistance would it be met? Every ear was at strain—machine-guns? There was no sound. Suddenly the bombardment opened again, as violent as before. The German guns were putting a screen of death behind the doomed positions, barring off all help. Far away huge shells were crashing down from a curve that was four miles high at its zenith, making an inferno of a once quiet cathedral town, wrecking the bridges across a flooded river, blocking every avenue of supply to the defenders agonising on the plateau.

That night in the Army Headquarters was a night of jubilation. Courtier soldiers—who none the less laboured into the small hours at the intricate calculations and orders that would improve the victory on the morrow—glanced at a youngish, very exalted personage and murmured platitudes about the pardonable intoxication of success. An even more exalted personage strode from general to general in the great tapestried, map-hung apartment and gave instructions that were received as the inspiration of genius and then merged, lost sight of, nullified in the mass of orders that emanated from those fiercely toiling brains.

The distinguished guest sat at the table with the keen-eyed, white-browed general, had everything patiently explained to him.

"All has gone exactly according to schedule," said the German. "The first line positions are ours. There has been a counter-attack in the Bois de Caures, but we have stemmed it. Elsewhere there has been no serious opposition. The first day has been a brilliant success. We have pierced the line where we intended to pierce it. If the French maintain their flank positions their disaster is certain. The battle will be developed to-morrow. We shall drive right through to the Ornes-Louvemont road. The French defence is dead, was annihilated by our bombardment. To-morrow disintegration will set in and our progress will be rapid. On the third day we shall take Fort Douaumont—the key to Verdun."

"And on the fourth day?" queried the neutral, his dark eyes gazing at the map in front of him.

"We shall be in Verdun!" said the German.

"Verdun! Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!" chanted an unsteady voice across the room, finished in a suspicious resemblance to a hiccup. There was a moment of tense, awkward silence in the great apartment, and then a buzz of low voices earnestly discussing technicalities.

Day followed day, surcharged with fateful issues. Men who flung themselves down, utterly wearied, to snatch a brief sleep, woke from it with an oppression of the breast, a tremor of the nerves. Their fiercely excited brains begrudged an instant's unconsciousness where every minute was a vehicle of destiny, once ahead never to be overtaken. Strenuously, night and day, laboured the Staffs in the Army Headquarters, in the Corps, Divisions, Artillery Groups—desperately, for after the second day they were behind their time-table. On that second day the French defence they had fondly thought annihilated woke to sternly resisting life. There had been terrific fighting on the whole front from Brabant to Ornes. Once more a frightful bombardment had opened with the dawn. Once more the German infantry had advanced in masses. They found the trenches in front of them weakly held, had occupied them. But en route a storm of shells had rained down on the swarming columns, had strewn the ground with dead and dying. Further advance was barred by sheets of rifle-fire, torrents of machine-gun bullets. There were ugly rumours as to losses. The day's objective had not been reached. Counter-attacks had flung the grey infantry out of positions already conquered.

During the black night of the 22nd-23rd, while the gun-teams of the German batteries strained and stumbled forward over a shell-torn ground to new positions, the French left flank had fallen back from Brabant. The German guns hurled an avalanche of projectiles blindly upon the new lines of defence, more or less at hazard since no longer did they have them accurately marked upon the map. Once more the grey masses swept forward, once more the hail of shells beat them down. The end of that day saw the centre pushed in with wild confusion, but the French resistance still alive, determined to perish rather than break. Once more the objective had not been attained. Douaumont was not even menaced. The time-table was hopelessly out. That night the French fell back on both flanks, withdrew from Ornes.

The fourth day dawned—the appointed day for final victory—and still the struggle continued, fiercer than ever. Slowly, slowly, the German infantry pressed forward, leaving behind them a sea of helpless bodies—a grey carpet as perceived from a distance. The artillery fire swelled and mounted in paroxysms of incredible violence, the German guns hammering in savage persistence, the French batteries lurking for their target, overwhelming it in a deluge. On and on pressed the grey infantry, thrust dangerously as night fell straight at the heart, towards Fort Douaumont. A fierce conflict—body to body, rifles that flashed in the face of the victim, bayonets perforce shortened for the thrust, griping fingers clutching at the throat as men wrestled and swayed—raved and roared in an indescribable tumult upon the Ornes-Louvemont road. The defenders had made a supreme rally. The Germans fought like men who grasp at victory, maddened that it is withheld. The French fought like heroes, desperately outnumbered, who know their duty is to die. When night fell the defence was still intact, but the French had withdrawn to their last line, covering Douaumont.

"We have still one more day," said the German general to the distinguished neutral that night in the great map-hung apartment. "We allowed that margin of time. To-morrow will see our greatest effort, Douaumont in our hands, Verdun untenable." The dark eyes of the neutral read a certain nervousness in the German's face, despite the confident tone.

"It has proved rather more difficult than you expected?"

"The French field-guns have been terrible—terrible," replied the German. "Without them——" He waved an expressive hand. "But to-morrow we shall deliver the coup de grâce. We have not boasted idly, Excellenz." His eyes looked searchingly through their pince-nez on the calmly interested face of the neutral. "When Germany threatens she performs."

On the morning of the 25th the German guns roared over white fields of snow, through veils of the softly falling flakes that fluttered inexhaustibly from the leaden sky. Their thunder swelled louder and ever louder as the batteries which had changed position, consequently upon the French withdrawal during the night, got to work, searching for their target, more or less accurately finding it despite the difficulty of observation. Not a minute was to be lost. The anxious German staff knew that the reinforcements of their foes must be hurrying—hurrying. Some perhaps had already arrived. If night fell without definite victory, the morrow would surely see fresh masses against them, reinvigorating the defence. Victory to-day—complete victory—Douaumont captured, the pursuit pressed into the streets of Verdun—meant victory indeed. Mighty therefore was the effort. By noon every German battery was firing at its maximum. Under the leaden sky, over the white ground, in the still cold of a bitter frost, their thunder swelled and crashed, roaring in a never-ending frenzy. Eighteen German divisions were massed to break down all opposition. Already they had attacked—again and again. Again and again, the rapid detonations of the French guns had leaped into the din, smiting desperately, frantically, to stay them. Over there, in the mist-hung gullies of the plateau, on its bare open spaces between the woods, the snow had ceased to be white—save where it fell freshly upon the huddled bodies of the fallen.

In the afternoon the weather cleared somewhat. More distant views were possible. On the higher of the Twins of Ornes, the knolls just south-west of the Forêt de Spincourt, stood the figure who more than any other individual would have to dare the answer for all the agony rolled out there before him, for all the agony that no eye could measure, spread over continents, crying to strange stars. Spiked helmet on his head, long grey cavalry-cloak wrapped about him, his field-glasses held to his eyes by the right hand only, he gazed upon the now distant conflict. At his side stood a younger figure, his face masked also by binoculars. Behind them was a group of dignitaries, generals of high position, the distinguished neutral and the Oberst who never quitted him. All gazed to the wooded scarp of the Heights of the Meuse, their glasses pointing south-south-west.

The great masses of woodland rose dark from the snow of the plain a long stretch of undulating, climbing tree-tops. Beyond them the bare bulk of the plateau humped itself yet higher, dirty grey against the sky. It rose to a culminating knoll—Douaumont! All that bare plateau was whelmed in a drifting reek, but the highest point was like a volcano in eruption. Great founts of smoke shot up from it incessantly, spread in the air in heavy plumes that overhung. It was the objective of the 3rd Corps (Brandenburgers), attacking under the eye of the Kaiser so particularly their chief. Their orders were that Douaumont was to be taken at all costs. On the Twin of Ornes operators from Army Headquarters had taken over the telephone dug-out. Behind them the line was clear to Berlin—waiting—waiting for the triumphant announcement that should thrill the world.

Somewhat impatiently the neutral scanned the lofty distances where the great drama was being enacted. Innumerable puffs of bursting shells indicated the conflict but gave no hint of its varying fortunes. The professional instinct was strong within him, the report to his Government an ideal to which it strove. To perfect that report he must see the fight at closer quarters, must describe the effects of the French fire as a complement to the already written minute on the German batteries. His keen eye picked out a position of vantage on the Heights. Then he waited for an opportunity, alert for the moment when the eye of majesty should rest itself from the distant view, should fall upon him. The opportunity occurred. The glance of the All-Highest swept over him, preoccupied. The neutral stepped forward, saluted, indicated the far-off point.

"Ich bitte um Erlaubnis, Majestät,"[15] he said.

A frowning glance rested upon him for an instant, intolerant of aught save the mighty contest whose issue was the fate of nations.

"Gestattet,"[16] was the curt, indifferent reply.

The German Oberst, standing behind the neutral, changed colour. He had no option but to accompany this damnable foreigner in his mad adventure into unnecessary danger. He, too, saluted "Majestät," followed the neutral to the spot where a number of orderlies stood at the heads of saddled horses. They had been sent forward in case the dignitaries should require them.

In a few moments the two officers, followed by mounted attendants, were slithering down the snowy side of the knoll, were cantering across the valley towards Ornes.

High above them towered the dark Bois de la Chaume as they threaded the débris-covered street of the wrecked village. It was packed with Brandenburger infantry waiting to advance. They followed the road southward, at the foot of the hills, towards Bezonvaux. Everywhere the infantry stood thick, waiting. The cannonade mounted to a frightful intensity, appalling even the ears now habituated to it, bewildering the senses, troubling the sight. French shells came whining, screaming, rushing, to burst with loud crashes in the woodland rising on their right hand, on the road and the fields through which it passed. Domes of dark smoke leaped upward from the earth, preceding the stunning, metallic detonation. White shrapnel puffs clustered thickly above the trees. Bezonvaux was a ruin. They turned off from it to the right, up a rough track that climbed into the woods. The snow on the track had been trampled into a dirty slush. All about them lay bodies, grey and blue; weapons pell-mell as they had fallen from a suddenly opened grasp. Their horses shuddered, whinnied, jerked nervous ears, moved disconcertingly sideways from red stains soaking deep into the snow.

Just under the edge of the plateau the neutral stopped, dismounted, threw his reins to an orderly. The Oberst followed his example. His face was blotchy white, he trembled in every limb.

"We shall see nothing, Excellenz—absolutely nothing," he asseverated appealingly.

"We can at least try," replied his guest. "Something is happening over there."

Above them, some distance ahead, was a tremendous uproar, a chaos of violent thudding slams, splitting crashes, a faint troublous murmur of human voices. Behind them, up the rough track, a column of infantry was advancing, overtaking them. They ascended with a steady progress, splashing through the slush; officers waving swords, shouting; rank upon rank of tense faces that had lost their humanity in the tremulous brute; glazed staring eyes under the spiked helmets; singing, singing like drugged, doomed gladiators marching to the arena. They passed upward.

The neutral, to whom his conductor had nervelessly surrendered the initiative, led the way. They left their horses behind them, struck off at a tangent to the right, through the woods, climbing always. They emerged upon the plateau, in a clearing. Across the open space, from a whelm of smoke and noise in the distance, groups of grey men were running swiftly towards them, shouting inarticulately. Along the edge of the woods was a line of pickets. Their weapons rose to the shoulder. Sternly, every fugitive but those wounded was driven again into the fight. Those who hesitated, screaming under the menace of the rifle, dropped shot.

The neutral hurried along the verge of the wood, scanning every tall tree carefully, expectantly. "Ah!" He had found what he sought. Against the green bark of a lofty beech dangled a rope ladder. It was an abandoned French artillery observation post. He scrambled up the ladder, followed by the trembling, shivering Oberst. High up among the topmost branches was a little platform.

The neutral settled himself, adjusted his binoculars, pushed aside the twigs. He looked out over an undulating terrain, dark with woods that ceased raggedly in deep indentations short of a bare hog's back that gathered itself into a hump. That bare ground was smothered in a turmoil of smoke that fumed to the grey sky, far to right and left. But through it, in chance rifts, his glasses revealed a dark mass upon the highest point. A reek of white smoke drifted away from it as from burning buildings, mingling with the darker clouds of incessant explosions. He had a glimpse of a rounded cupola. It was Douaumont!

The snow on the open space between the fort and the woods was grey. It was moving with crawling life like the festering of a stagnant pool. Over it burst occasional puffs of shrapnel.

"Ah!" The cry was involuntary from both the watching men. From the woods emerged masses of running tiny grey figures, running, running towards the fort. The open space was covered with them. A moment of tense expectation when the heart seemed to stop—and then, as by a terrible magic, great fountains of dark smoke and darker objects leaped up among those running figures, countless explosions. A canopy of vicious little shrapnel bursts in thousands spread itself over them. Under it men sprawled in great patches, seemed to be fighting the air ere they tumbled and fell. A horrid screaming came faint through the uproar. More masses rushed out, were beaten down. There was a running to and fro of men bewildered—a headlong flight.

The storm of fire did not cease. It rolled over the plateau towards the woods, remorselessly following the fugitives. Louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the crashes, the fountains, the puffs—the great mingled reek of the inferno—rolled towards the two men in the observation post.

The Oberst clutched the neutral's arm.

"Excellenz!" he shouted stammeringly. "We must go. I insist. I have superior authority—written authority—my discretion—I insist!" he almost screamed. His hand groped for a scrap of paper which he waved. "Arrest!" he cried like a maniac. "Arrest if you do not come!"

The storm of French shells was a very near menace. The neutral acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders. Nimbly they descended the ladder.

On the ground they found themselves among a swarm of slightly wounded, terror-stricken men. One of them, a tall, bearded Brandenburger, his clothes torn to rags, was shrieking and laughing in a manner horrible to hear. His comrades drew away from him as he clutched at them. He was insane.

"Only I am left!" he cried. "Only I! They are all dead—dead—out there. They were meant to be dead. They were dead men before we attacked—all dead men running on—I could see it in their faces—only I was alive! And now they are still crawling—crawling—dead men!" His tone emphasised the horror of his words, struck a chill. A sentry lowered his rifle, irresolutely.

The maniac turned, waved a hand to the westward. The sun, on the point of setting, showed itself in a rift of the threatening snow clouds, sank, a great ball of glowing fire, over the rim of the plateau. Its last rays were lurid on the face of the madman, as he stood, arm outstretched, his eyes flaming, his tangled beard falling upon his rags, like some antique prophet of the wilderness.

"Woe! woe!" he shrieked. "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"[17] He finished in a scream of maniac laughter, glorying in the crazy assonance of the words. "Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"

The neutral and the Oberst hurried through the woods to their horses.

A rapid ride with the German always in front, and once more they ascended the Twin of Ornes. As they arrived at the summit they found themselves among wildly cheering men. "Douaumont! Douaumont is taken!" Far away to the south-south-west, rocket after rocket shot up into the darkening sky. Already the great news had gone—electrical—to Berlin.

The crowd of dignitaries descended the steep path in the gloom to where the motor-cars were ranked in waiting. Along the road passed streams of wounded who could walk, phantoms half-distinguished in the dim light. Joyous were the voices of the War-Lords. One, a familiar tone, chanted: "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!"[18]

Out of the darkness came a screamed reply, a burst of insane laughter.

"Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung! Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"

It was the voice of the crazed Brandenburger. There was a scuffle, the sound of a man hurried away, resisting.

All through that dark journey as the car bumped and lurched over the atrocious roads, the words beat in a refrain through the mind of the neutral. "Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!" He wondered. Eclipse? Was it the sun of Germany that set on the French position? The Oberst was loquaciously cheerful.

That night, in the great map-hung apartment, the War-Lords received the news that their further advance was barred.

Next morning a furious counter-attack surrounded a handful of defenders in the fort for which they had paid so much. The French reinforcements had arrived.

FOOTNOTES:

THE CHÂTELAINE OF LYSBOISÉE

(AN IDYLL BETWEEN THE TRENCHES, 1914)

(Note.—This story is founded upon an actual occurrence narrated by Paul Grabein, "Im Auto durch Feindesland," Berlin, 1916.)

The sun set while a regiment of Zouaves was marching across the plateau. The after-glow yet illumined the sky when its leading files turned obliquely off to the right along a rough track that presently dropped abruptly into a deep ravine, sculped by one of the streamlet tributaries of the Oise. Bare for a little way below the lip, save for some scattered juniper bushes stiffly perpendicular from the close-cropped slope, the sides of the ravine were dark with a dense growth of tree and thorn. The road plunged into it.

Down and down went the road in a gloomy tunnel of arching boughs that scarce left an interstice for the twilight sky. It reached the floor of the little valley, followed it to the right in a more gentle descent. On its left a brook fell swiftly through a plantation of silver birch in a channel that brimmed to the long, rank, water-flattened grass and anon plashed over boulders in a miniature cascade. Save for the steady tramp of the marching troops and the occasional squawk of a frightened jay, there was no sound in the valley.

Mounted upon a magnificent black horse, the colonel rode at the head of the column. Seen in profile, his face was remarkable—virile, powerful, and intellectual. When it turned to full face it fascinated. Not the steel-grey eyes looked for under those level brows, but a pair of full brown orbs, romantic as those of an Arab, met the gaze. He raised his hand as the column approached a pair of high ornamental iron gates, set in a frame of lofty arched stone and surmounted by a carved escutcheon, on the left side of the road. "Halt!"

Behind him there was a clatter of accoutrements as the long column broke its ranks, settled itself in seated groups, with piled arms, by the roadside. In front, the advance-guard, receiving the order from the connecting files, halted also. The colonel walked his horse to the gates. The padlocked chain that had held them closed hung broken from one of the wrought-iron scrolls. The gates had evidently been forced. He pressed his horse's flank against one of them, slipped through the opening, and set off at a trot down a long avenue of ancient poplars. His capitaine-adjutant, cantering up from the leading company, followed the wave of his hand.

Beyond the clearing of lawn and Cupid-crowned fountain into which he emerged, lay a long white stone mansion, picturesque but not remarkable in its seventeenth-century architecture. Every window was shuttered. Throwing the reins to his companion, he dismounted and, with the stiff gait from long hours in the saddle, ascended the broad curving steps to the main entrance.

Only at his second summons on the loud, harshly clanging bell was there any answering sign of life. One of the great doors opened slightly until checked by a chain, and a woman's voice asked: "Who is it?"

"French officers, madame. Is the patronne at home?"

"I cannot see you," said the voice, evading the question.

The colonel placed himself so as to be visible through the narrow aperture. "Attendez!" said the voice. The door closed again.

A minute or two of waiting in the chill, misty air and once more the door opened, this time fully. "Entrez, monsieur!" said the voice.

He found himself in a large lofty hall, dimly illumined by the candle held by a little bent old woman. "Par ici, monsieur!" she said.

She led him through salon after salon. In the flickering light he could only just discern that they were richly furnished. At last she stopped and tapped at a closed door.

He was admitted into an apartment of costly and tasteful comfort, lit with warm soft radiance from a shaded pedestal lamp. Pine logs were burning on the hearth of a high stone fireplace. To one side stood a grand piano. A great dog, stretched before the hearth, growled surlily. These were salient details he was scarcely conscious of noting. His eyes were held by the woman who rose from an arm-chair by the fire.

Tall, gowned simply in a long robe of soft pale green, the lamplight shimmered on the waved masses of her auburn hair as she moved. Not vulgarly beautiful—the mouth was large, though well-cut—an oval ivory-white face looked into his. No longer very young—she was at least thirty—her instantly felt charm came accentuated by a hint of incomplete maturity. Those quiet eyes could still look at life with a questioning scrutiny, receptive of the new experience. They met his now and a personality leaped into them, communed with him ere yet a word had been uttered. Outwardly, only, they were still strangers. He noticed that she wore no jewellery as he bowed courteously, fez in hand.

"Madame, I am the colonel of the —th Regiment of Zouaves. A necessity, that must be disagreeable to you, forces me to ask your hospitality for my officers and men."

"For to-night only?" Her voice was singularly deep and rich.

"Perhaps for several, madame."

"You are many?"

"Eleven hundred men and twenty officers."

"A strong battalion!"

"Three battalions, madame," he corrected gently.

The expression of the eyes, which had never left his, changed slightly. The wordless, languageless message they were exchanging with his own was interrupted. "Ah," she said in a voice of sympathy. "You come from the battle? From the Marne?"

"Yes, madame. We were on the Ourcq. Since then, on the Aisne."

Her face lit up.

"But certainly! Who would refuse anything to the brave men who have saved France! You will excuse the coolness of your reception, Monsieur le colonel? We have had other guests—less welcome." The colonel thought of the broken chain on the gate. "Marie!" This to the old woman who stood by the door, shading the candle in her hand, incongruous in this luxurious apartment. "Place the large dining-room at the disposition of messieurs les officiers. The kitchen also." She turned again to the colonel. "I can offer only ten bedrooms to your officers, Monsieur le colonel, but doubtless they can arrange themselves. The stables are large, there are three barns and a disused mill, and there is a loft at the top of the house. I hope you will find room for all your men. There is plenty of straw in the barns. They may use it freely. Please consider the house entirely at your disposition." And all this time the eyes were talking wordlessly. And his, although he knew it not, were replying.

"You are too kind, madame!"

"It is a happy privilege, Monsieur le colonel!"

His business was finished, yet he felt curiously unwilling to go, much though awaited him to do. His apology seemed addressed as much to his own hidden inner self as to her.

"Mille remerciments, madame! You will excuse me if I withdraw? My men are very tired. Once more, a thousand thanks, madame——?"

She answered his unuttered question, a smile lighting up eyes and face.

"—La comtesse de Beaupré et Lysboisée."

He bowed.

"Le colonel Victor de Montévrault."

She held out a slender hand. Involuntarily, almost, he touched it with his lips as he took it in his own. She did not stir. He did not see her face.

"Au revoir, madame, et tous mes remerciments!"

"Au revoir, monsieur," she answered in her rich, deep voice.

He felt her eyes upon him as he turned to follow Marie, candle in hand, once more through the series of dark apartments.

A little later and the château and its precincts were thronged with the soldiers of the three war-worn battalions as they installed themselves for the night. From the great yard between the stables and the barns came the glow of cooking fires.

But not for all was the hour of rest arrived. In a little room of the château the colonel, with his three chefs de bataillon of whom one only was a major, was poring over a large-scale map and indicating the positions for the lines of sentries, outposts and grand'gardes. Up the opposite side of the ravine to that which they had ascended, well in advance across the high open ground, and down the valley road he posted them. On the three battalion commanders the greatest vigilance was enjoined. Ahead of them there should be French cavalry, but those were the days of flux and reflux in the meeting tides of war, and all things were possible.

Later still, the colonel sat at the head of the long lamp-lit table in the great dining-room. From the walls dim portraits in lustreless frames looked down upon the backs of the loudly chattering Frenchmen in the exotic, Oriental uniforms. There was little or no talk of the bitter, terrible but finally victorious days through which they—it seemed to each of them miraculously—had lived. Animated discussion of the future was the rule—a future confidently regarded through the glow of the so recently victorious past. Bold strategic plans were elaborated, illustrated with cruet and table-knives. There was much talk of envelopment, of a rapid dash on Le Cateau, Valenciennes and Mons that should hurl the Boche, deprived of his communications, into the tangled thicket of the Ardennes, if indeed he escaped at all. The colonel took no part in these arguments. He sat silently sipping the wine which a generous hostess had caused to be placed in ample quantity upon the table. His large brown eyes were soft, the muscles of his face relaxed. It is possible that he thought of something quite other than war.

One of the soldier orderlies flitting behind the chairs touched him on the shoulder.

"Pardon, mon colonel, but the domestic wishes to speak to you."

He turned in his chair to see the ancient Marie at the door.

"Madame presents her compliments, m'sieu le colonel, and would be honoured if you would take your coffee with her."

The colonel rose in his chair.

"Bonsoir et bonne nuit, messieurs!"

"Bonsoir, mon colonel," was reiterated from the score of upturned faces. "Bonne nuit."

In her cosy warm salon the châtelaine sat by the fire, a glow softly playing over her features. At her side, on a little table, a silver coffee-service steamed. As the colonel entered she looked up to greet him with a smile, indicating the corresponding arm-chair on the other side of the hearth. The large dog at her feet raised his head, wagged his tail in friendly welcome.

In a few moments they were conversing with the ease of those who have known each other for long years. Wartime, and particularly the kaleidoscopic wartime of those early days, is a great ripener of acquaintance. None might venture to forecast the circumstances of the morrow, to predict continued life for self or other. The actual moment must be snatched. The colonel with his quiet assured poise, his alert intelligence; the countess, polished grande dame and yet something more, a being of exquisite intuitions, would have set, naturally, to partners whatever the circumstances of their meeting. Each of the pair offered interest to the other. He, soldierly, his massive intellectual head on the broad shoulders, the glowing soft eyes so strangely set in the cold face, the Oriental Zouave uniform emphasising their hint of romance, claimed the eye not less than her slender figure, gowned with the refinement of a consummate civilisation, her supple yet strong carriage of the auburn glory that crowned the pale oval face, the flowing, delicate curve from rounded chin to the gently mobile breast. Her eloquent eyes were long-lashed, downcast towards the fire. He was asking the reason of her stay here in the danger zone. She turned them upon him.

"This is my own house—my family's house—the château of Lysboisée. Since my husband's death three years ago I have always inhabited it for a great part of the year. I have always loved it. I was a child in this dark ravine, among the birches of the water-meadows. My own life—that I have never shared with anyone—is here. I am of the country. All the peasant people know me, love me. And when the war came I felt that I must be among them, that I could not leave my house, my own dear house, alone, unprotected against anything that might happen. So I hurried here at a time when everybody was hurrying the other way. But the servants had gone. Only old Marie remained, and she and I have lived here all these black weeks, only Roland," she patted the dog's head smilingly, "to watch over us. We have had many visits from the German cavalry, but no violence. They saw, perhaps, that I was not afraid. Now the people are beginning to creep back to their homes."

He nodded his head sympathetically, described how the peasants of the Aisne valley crept back to their farms, continued their field-tasks close behind the trenches, apparently indifferent to the shrapnel and the marmites.

"Yes," she murmured, gazing thoughtfully into the fire, "amidst so much death the flame of life burns ever higher, will not, must not be extinguished."

There was a little pause, during which the colonel sipped his coffee. Lightly, with the smile of a prima ballerina pirouetting away from a serious posture into which she would have you believe she fell unwittingly, the countess commenced to talk of Paris of the days before the war. With a young enthusiasm she spoke of her morning rides in the Bois, of restaurants and dinner-parties—mentioning a name here and there that might lead to the discovery of a mutual acquaintance, of concerts and the play. The colonel listened, speaking little, seeing her—though she did not so much as hint at them—circled by a crowd of admirers.

"And madame," she said innocently, "does she inhabit Paris?"

"Madame——?" He was obviously at a loss.

"You are not married, then?"

"No, madame."

"But," she persisted gently, "you have doubtless friends in Paris? A man such as you——" she stopped, smiling. "I am indiscreet."

"Madame," he replied in a quiet voice, "I have been in Africa for more than twenty years. The Paris I knew exists no more."

She turned her gaze full on him. The freshness of the man appeared suddenly to her. An involuntary little blush suffused her face. She covered it by a slight withdrawal from the fire.

"Tell me about Africa," she commanded.

He spoke at first depreciatingly of the country, the grave of so many of France's best, so remote from all that to a Frenchman makes life worth while. Then as he warmed to his description she saw that he loved that parched land of immense distances where the pitiless sun consumes the human soul or heats it to an intense unworldly fervour. He told of interminable marches over the glowing sands, of forgotten skirmishes where a wound was worse than death, of fierce razzias, of lonely outpost nights in the desert underneath a miracle of stars, where under the naked presence of the infinite one watched, finger on trigger, for the gleam of a creeping burnous. She found herself seeking to detect a deliberate elimination of the feminine in his reminiscences. With sure instinct she felt there was a woman somewhere in the background. How far back?

"You have suffered much," she said, her deep rich voice all sympathy.

"Who has not suffered who lives?" he replied.

There was again a pause, where the breathing of the couched dog was the only sound.

"Will you not play something?" he asked, suddenly, looking at the piano. "My opportunities have been few——"

She rose, went to the piano, and seated herself without a word. She played, not with the brilliance of the showy amateur nor with the hard precision of the professional, but as though the notes on which her light fingers fell re-echoed an intimate music of the soul. Through the grave breath-restrained emotion of a Chopin Nocturne she led him, then, with an enigmatic inconsequence, into the flitting, dainty, Harlequin and Columbine passion of a Chaminade that left a question poised, smilingly. A moment's interval, and with a deep contralto voice she commenced to sing a chanson of old France, that followed, simply, exquisite quiet notes, compact of love and the tragedy of love, poignantly eloquent in their unadorned statement of the theme. He went across to the piano, stood over her. She felt his presence very close. A thrill passed into her voice, magical. She finished and stood up with a sudden movement. His glowing eyes were full with tears.

"Bonsoir, monsieur," she said abruptly, stretching out her hand. The voice was not her own.

He took her hand in his, held it tightly. His breath came in deep halations from a heaving chest.

"Madame," he said in a low intense voice, "you are divine!"

She strove to release her hand.

"Voyons!" she said plaintively, almost tearfully, averting her face. "We met only to-day."

"And to-morrow?—Who knows?"

"No! no! no!" she cried and tore away her hand from his. "Bonsoir, monsieur!" She ran across the room like a startled fawn, bowed herself against the stone fireplace, her face hidden. He saw her shoulders heave.

He followed her, stood irresolute. She turned on him suddenly.

"Oh, isn't there enough suffering in the world," she cried, "without——?"

"Without love?" He advanced with outstretched arms, laid his hands upon her shoulders. She stiffened, fending him off. "Without love? If to love is to suffer," he said in a voice deeply harmonious, "to love is also to live. And I have waited so long to live! Have waited for you, my twin soul! We met only to-day? What if we have only to-day to live——?"

She leaned back, away from him, yet held in his grasp.

"Oh, no, no, no! I mustn't listen!" Her bosom filled. Her eyes closed. She crumpled suddenly in his arms.

The next morning, mounted upon a fine-bred chestnut mare, a zealous Zouave at the bridle, she waited in the great courtyard behind the château. She had offered her knowledge of the locality to the colonel and gladly he had accepted it. He came towards her now on his noble black horse, bending down in grave talk with the chef de bataillon walking by his stirrup. She acknowledged his salutation, and a moment later they were riding out of the great gate together.

The ravine of Lysboisée lifted its towering further wall of dark undergrowth immediately behind the château. A narrow path, frequently stepped, zigzagging through the hanger in steep gradients, made the ascent of the sheer acclivity possible. Side by side they walked their horses up, bending often in the saddle to escape the low overhanging branches. They rode in silence, each in their own thoughts. She glanced sideways at her companion. It was the face of a soldier, not of a lover. Obviously he pondered some problem. She sighed. This undisturbed solitude, the screen of thick woodland arching over them, on the two pacing animals that nosed each other amicably, awoke primitive instincts in her. But she kept silence, made no movement.

At last, as though summoned by her thought, he turned his head towards her.

"You have received bad news, mon ami?" she asked.

"Orders that throw a heavy responsibility upon me," he answered.

Again they relapsed into silence. The ascent continued. Only a few yards short of the summit did the undergrowth cease.

For a dozen paces the path ran over bare close-cropped grass, then, sunk in a rough cutting, surmounted the crest.

A little beyond, on the open down, the grand'garde—a weak company of Zouaves—was digging energetically at shelter-trenches. The colonel spoke with the officer, rode on.

"Would you please take me to the highest point, chère amie?" he asked. The countess bowed her head, without a word. A touch of the spur, and he followed her at an easy, touch-controlled canter, his horse eager to get abreast the mare. At last she reined up, met his eyes with a smile.

They stood upon a knoll in the downs, wide-spaced horizon all round. Far to the south and east were the dark masses of the Forêt de Laigue. From beyond them came a heavy distant roll of artillery. The colonel listened, searching the panorama with narrowed eyes. At his request she pointed out localities and the direction of localities. He turned to look backward, saw the lips of the ravine widening out to the south-east until the slopes fell into another valley. His face hardened.

"Let us go back, chère amie," he said. "As quickly as possible."

At a swift, swinging gallop—the skirts of her amazon fluttering in the wind—they hastened back to the grand'garde. The officer came up. The colonel took out his note-book.

"Have you any spades or farm implements, madame?" he asked.

He nodded to her affirmation, writing the while in his note-book. He tore out the page, folded it, gave it to the officer. "To be delivered to the Commandant Legros at the Château. Without delay."

Then he turned his horse and, followed by his companion, rode slowly along the lip of the ravine. She searched his features, anxiously.

He stopped in a depression of the down, out of sight of the grand'garde. He turned to her, and her heart fluttered at the tenderness of his face.

"Pauline," he said gravely, laying his hand upon her arm, "you must not stay here. Listen! The regiment on our left extends to the head of the ravine. The orders I received this morning left me to choose on which side of the ravine I should place my trenches. We advance no further. We are only a screen, but the screen must be maintained, must not be risked. I am obliged to choose the other side of the ravine. We shall almost certainly be attacked. I do not know when—nothing is known. But you would be in danger. You must leave this afternoon, go right back—to Amiens, Paris."

She checked an impulse to quick speech, smiled at him.

"Mon ami, I was almost unjust to you——"

"You will go?"

She shook her head.

"No, cher ami, I remain with you."

"But if we are attacked and have to retire to the other side of the ravine? You cannot remain in the trenches."

"No. I should remain in my house until you advance again." She turned an appealing, coquettish glance upon him. "Should I be something to fight for?" She checked his protestations. "No, cher ami, I know all your arguments. They are useless. What did you say last night?—What if we have only to-day to live?" Her voice sank, her eyes dropped. "Cher ami, I want not a moment that your duty claims,—but those others, those precious little instants, can you not accept me in them? So little time is ours, cher!"

The horses had drawn close together. He put his right arm round her waist. She leaned back, face upturned. Their eyes met in a long deep look. Their mouths approached, were one. The flame of life burned high in them. Their horses' ears quivered to a louder roar of the distant guns.

Slowly they rode home together, by an easier, more roundabout path she showed him.

All that day those of the regiment not required for outposts laboured hard at the new entrenchments on the high, western edge of the ravine—a long, long line of delving men. Ranges were marked out; reserves of ammunition, food and water carried up. The energising source of all this activity, the colonel, laboured also, without haste and without rest. His brain worked quickly, coolly, definite in its decisions. She, his companion, unobtrusively at hand when required for information or material of defence, vanished unnoticed when her presence might become importunate. She quenched her personality, transfused, she felt, her life-force into him as he worked, an emotionless intellect. With his chefs-de-bataillon he elaborated plans of defence; nothing was left to chance; nothing could be misunderstood. Personally he supervised, corrected, the siting of the trenches, the emplacements of the mitrailleuses. In the afternoon he rode over to the colonel of the adjoining regiment, concerted arrangements. From the général de brigade he obtained the promise of a battery in support on the morrow.

But he was uneasy. Patrols sent out had failed to get into touch with the covering cavalry. The distant artillery roll was nearer. There had been one inexplicable burst of fire some miles away to the right. As night fell he ordered the new trenches to be manned with the bulk of his force, leaving outposts and grand'garde on the plateau above the ravine and down the valley. One company only he retained near the château.

That evening he sat again in the salon of his hostess. All was quiet. The dog snored in front of the hearth. At his request the countess seated herself at the piano, played dreamily with bowed head. The soft harmonies that awoke under her fingers seemed only to make the silence musical.

Suddenly a shot re-echoed loud along the valley; another and another followed. There was a burst of rapid, irregular fire, indefinitely prolonged. The colonel rushed to a window, flung it open, listened. The outposts down the valley were being driven in.

His companion had risen, stood by the piano with tense features. There was a loud hurried knock on the door. She ran to open it. A Zouave entered, breathing heavily from swift exertion. Saluting, he handed a message to the colonel. It was from the commander of the grand'garde on the edge of the ravine above. He reported that his advanced posts were in contact with the enemy, were retiring. For one moment the colonel stood by the window, listening to the rapid clatter of the rifles, deciding which was the heavier attack.

He wrote an order to the officer above. The messenger disappeared. The countess was holding out his fez and his revolver. One wild embrace and he sprang out of the room, dashed through the adjoining salons, out into the night.

In the courtyard he found the reserve company assembled, awaiting his orders. He gave them, quickly, succinctly. The company fell into fours, doubled out of the courtyard into the darkness to form a screen across the valley behind which the men above could seek safety. From the widening ravine the rifle fire swelled in intensity, was a continuous loud re-echoing clatter. Above, sharp definite reports rang out, were rapidly multiplied. It was the grand'garde—feu à volonté. He glanced to the other wall of the ravine and smiled in a grim satisfaction. His orders were being obeyed. The long line of trenches he knew to be there lay in silence and darkness.