Part 18

Whether he got through, or whether the burst of rifle fire reached the listening ears at the guns, nobody knew; but just as 'Enery did his ear-embracing shoulder-shrug the first shells screamed over, burst and leaped down along the German parapet. After that there was no complaint about the guns. They scourged the parapet from end to end, up and down, and up again; they shook it with the blast of high explosive, ripped and flayed it with, driving blasts of shrapnel, smothered it with a tempest of fire and lead, blotted it out behind a veil of writhing smoke.

At the sound of the first shot the gunner captain had leaped back to the trench. "Is he in? Is he arrived?" he shouted in the ear of the B Company captain who leaned anxiously over the parapet. The captain drew back and down. "He's in--bless him--I mean dash his impudent hide!"

The Frenchman turned and called to his signaler, and the next moment the guns ceased. But the captain waited, watching with narrowed eyes the German parapet. The storm of his shells had obliterated the rifle fire, but after a few minutes it opened up again in straggling shots.

The captain snapped back a few orders, and prompt to his word the shells leaped and struck down again on the parapet. A dozen rounds and they ceased, and again the captain waited and watched. The rifles were silent now, and presently the captain relaxed his scowling glare and his tightened lips. "Vermin!" he said. He used just the tone a man gives to a ferocious dog he has beaten and cowed to a sullen submission.

But he caught sight of 'Enery making his way along the trench past his laughing and chaffing mates, and leaped down and ran to him. "Bravo!" he beamed, and threw his arms round the astonished soldier, and before he could dodge, as the disgusted 'Enery said afterwards, "planted two quick-fire kisses, smack, smack," on his two cheeks.

"Mon brave!" he said, stepping back and regarding 'Enery with shining eyes, "Mon brave, mon beau Anglais, mon----"

But 'Enery's own captain arrived here and interrupted the flow of admiration, cursing the grinning and sheepish private for a this, that, and the other crazy, play-acting idiot, and winding up abruptly by shaking hands with him and saying gruffly, "Good work, though. B Company's proud of you, and so'm I."

"An' I admit I felt easier after that rough-tonguin'," 'Enery told B Company that night over a mess-tin of tea. "It was sort of natural-like, an' what a man looks for, and it broke up about as unpleasant a sit-u-ation as I've seen staged. I could see you all grinnin', and I don't wonder at it. That slobberin' an' kissin' business, an' the Mong Brav Conkerin' 'Ero may be all right for a lot o' bloomin' Frenchies that don't know better--"

He took a long swig of tea.

"Though, mind you," he resumed, "I haven't a bad word to fit to a Frenchman. They're real good fighting stuff, an' they ain't arf the light-'earted an' light-'eaded grinnin' giddy goats I used to take 'em for."

"There wasn't much o' the light 'eart look about the Mong Cappytaine to-night," said Robinson. "'Is eyes was snappin' like two ends o' a live wire, and 'e 'andled them guns as business-like as a butcher cutting chops."

"That's it," said 'Enery, "business-like is the word for 'em. I noticed them 'airy-faces shootin' to-day. They did it like they was sent there to kill somebody, and they meant doin' their job thorough an' competent. Afore I come this trip on the Continong I used to think a Frenchman was good for nothing but fiddlin' an' dancin' an' makin' love. But since I've seen 'em settin' to Bosh partners an' dancin' across the neutral ground an' love-makin' wi' Rosalie,[Footnote: Rosalie--the French nickname for the bayonet.] I've learned better. 'Ere's luck to 'im," and he drained the mess-tin.

And the French, if one might judge from the story mon capitaine had to tell his major, had also revised some ancient opinions of their Allies.

"Cold!" he said scornfully; "never again tell me these English are cold. Children--perhaps. Foolish--but yes, a little. They try to kill a man between jests; they laugh if a bullet wounds a comrade so that he grimaces with pain--it is true; I saw it." It was true, and had reference to a sight scrape of a bullet across the tip of the nose of a Towers private, and the ribald jests and laughter thereat. "They make jokes, and say a man 'stopped one,' meaning a shell had been stopped in its flight by exploding on him--this the interpreter has explained to me. But cold--no, no, no! If you had seen this man--ah, sublime, magnificent! With the whistling balls all round him he stands, so brave, so noble, so fine, stands--so! 'Vive la France!' he cried aloud, with a tongue of trumpets; 'Vive la France! A bas les Boches!'"

The captain, as he declaimed "with a tongue of trumpets," leaped to his feet and struck an attitude that was really quite a good imitation of 'Enery's own mock-tragedian one. But the officers listening breathed awe and admiration; they did not, as the Towers did, laugh, because here, unlike the Towers, they saw nothing to laugh at.

The captain dropped to his chair amid a murmur of applause. "Sublime!" he said. "That posture, that cry! Indeed, it was worthy of a Frenchman. But certainly we must recommend him for a Cross of France, eh, my major?"

'Enery Irving got the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But I doubt if it ever gave him such pure and legitimate joy as did a notice stuck up in the German trench next day. Certainly it insulted the English by stating that their workers stayed at home and went on strike while Frenchmen fought and died. But it was headed "Frenchman!" and it was written in French.

THE FEAR OF FEAR

"At ---- we recaptured the portion of front line trench lost by us some days ago."--EXTRACT FROM DISPATCH.

"In a charge," said the Sergeant, "the 'Hotwater Guards' don't think about going back till there's none of them left to go back; and you can always remember this: if you go forward you may die, if you go back you will die."

The memory of that phrase came back to Private Everton, tramping down the dark road to the firing-line. Just because he had no knowledge of how he himself would behave in this his baptism of fire, just because he was in deadly fear that he would feel fear, or, still worse, show it, he strove to fix that phrase firmly in front of his mind. "If I can remember that," he thought, "it will stop me going back, anyway," and he repeated: "If you go back you will die, if you go back you will die," over and over.

It is true that, for all his repetition, when a field battery, hidden close by the side of the road on which they marched, roared in a sudden and ear-splitting salvo of six guns, for the instant he thought he was under fire and that a huge shell had burst somewhere desperately close to them. He had jumped, his comrades assured him afterwards, a clear foot and a half off the ground, and he himself remembered that his first involuntary glance and thought flashed to the deep ditch that ran alongside the road.

When he came to the trenches, at last, and filed down the narrow communication-trench and into his Company's appointed position in the deep ditch with a narrow platform along its front that was the forward fire-trench, he remembered with unpleasant clearness that instinctive start and thought of taking cover. By that time he had actually been under fire, had heard the shells rush over him and the shattering noise of their burst; had heard the bullets piping and humming and hissing over the communication- and firing-trenches. He took a little comfort from the fact that he had not felt any great fear then, but he had to temper that by the admission that there was little to be afraid of there in the shelter of the deep trench. It was what he would do and feel when he climbed out of cover on to the exposed and bullet-swept flat before the trench that he was in doubt about; for the Hotwaters had been told that at nine o'clock there was to be a brief but intense bombardment on a section of trench in front of them which had been captured from us the day before, and which, after several counter-attacks had failed, was to be taken that morning by this battalion of Hotwaters.

At half-past eight, nobody entering their trench would have dreamed that the Hotwaters were going into a serious action in half an hour. The men were lounging about, squatting on the firing-step, chaffing and talking--laughing even--quite easily and naturally; some were smoking, and others had produced biscuits and bully beef from their haversacks and were calmly eating their breakfast.

Everton felt a glow of pride as he looked at them. These men were his friends, his fellows, his comrades: they were of the Hotwater Guards--his regiment, and his battalion. He had heard often enough that the Guards Brigades were the finest brigades in the Army, that this particular brigade was the best of all the Guards, that his battalion was the best of the Brigade. Hitherto he had rather deprecated these remarks as savoring of pride and self-conceit, but now he began to believe that they must be true; and so believing, if he had but known it, he had taken another long step on the way to becoming the perfect soldier, who firmly believes his regiment the finest in the world and is ready to die in proof of the belief.

"Dusty Miller," the next file on his left, who was eating bread and cheese, spoke to him.

"Why don't you eat some grab, Toffee?" he mumbled cheerfully, with his mouth full. "In a game like this you never know when you'll get the next chance of a bite."

"Don't feel particularly hungry," answered Toffee with an attempt to appear as off-handed and casual and at ease as his questioner. "So I think I'd better save my ration until I'm hungry."