the forest of sword 8

the forest of sword 8

"The thrill of the advance! The unknown plan, whatever it is, is

working! Your nation is about to be saved! I feel it! I know it!"

 

De Rougemont gazed at him, and then the light leaped into his own eyes.

 

"A prophet! A prophet!" he cried. "Inspired youth speaks!"

 

A great crisis may call into being a great impulse, and de Rougemont's

words were at once accepted as truth by all the young aides. Words of

fire, words vital with life had gone forth, predicting their triumph,

and as they rode among the troops carrying orders they communicated

their burning zeal to the men who were already eager for closer battle.

 

The storm of missiles from the cannon was increasing rapidly. John now

distinctly saw the huge German masses, not advancing but standing firm

to receive the French attack, their front a vast line of belching guns.

He knew that they would soon be within the area of rifle fire and he

knew with equal truth that it would take the valor of immense numbers,

wielded by the supreme skill of leaders to drive back the Germans.

 

The guns, some drawn by horses and others by motors, were moving forward

with them. When the horses were swept away by a shell, men seized the

guns and dragged them. Then they stopped again, took new positions and

renewed the rain of death on the German army.

 

They began to hear a whistle and hiss that they knew. It was that of the

bullets, and along the vast front they were coming in millions. But the

French were using their rifles, too, and at intervals the deep

thundering chant of the Marseillaise swept through their ranks. In spite

of shell, shrapnel and bullets, in spite of everything, the French army

in the center was advancing and John believed that the armies on the

other parts of the line were advancing, too.

 

The bullets struck around them, and then among them. One aide fell from

his cycle, and lay dead in the road, two more were wounded, but two

hundred thousand men, their artillery blazing death over their heads,

went on straight at the mouths of a thousand cannon.

 

Companies and regiments were swept away, but there was no check. Nor did

the other French armies, the huge links in the chain, stop. A feeling of

victory had swept along the whole gigantic battle front. They were

fighting for Paris, for their country, for the soil which they tended,

alive, and in which they slept, dead, and just at the moment when

everything seemed to have been lost they were saving all. The heroic age

of France had come again, and the Third Republic was justifying the

First.

 

The battle deepened and thickened to an extraordinary degree, as the

space between the two fronts narrowed. John for the first time saw the

German troops without the aid of glasses. They were mere outlines

against a fiery horizon, reddened by the mouths of so many belching

cannon, but they seemed to him to stand there like a wall.

 

Another giant shell burst near them, and two more members of the staff

fell from their cycles, dead before they touched the ground. That

convulsive shudder seized John again, but the crash of tremendous events

was so rapid that fear and horror alike passed in an instant. A piece of

the same shell struck General Vaugirard's car and put it out of action

at once. But the general leaped lightly to the ground, then swung his

immense bulk across one of the riderless motor cycles and advanced with

the surviving members of his staff. Imperturbable, he still swept the

field with his glasses. Two aides were now sent to the right with

messages, and a third, John himself, was despatched to the left on a

similar errand.

 

It was John's duty to tell a regiment to bear in further to the left and

close up a vacant spot in the line. He wheeled his cycle into a field,

and then passed between rows of grapevines. The regiment, its ranks much

thinned, was now about a hundred yards away, but shell and bullets alike

were sweeping the distance between.

 

Nevertheless, he rode on, his wheel bumping over the rough ground, until

he heard a rushing sound, and then blank darkness enveloped him. He fell

one way, and the motor cycle fell another.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V

 

SEEN FROM ABOVE

 

 

John's period of unconsciousness was brief. The sweep of air from a

gigantic shell, passing close, had taken his senses for a minute or two,

but he leaped to his feet to find his motor cycle broken and puffing out

its last breath, and himself among the dead and wounded in the wake of

the army which was advancing rapidly. The turmoil was so vast, and so

much dust and burned gunpowder was floating about that he was not able

to tell where the valiant Vaugirard with the remainder of his staff

marched. In front of him a regiment, cut up terribly, was advancing at a

swift pace, and acting under the impulse of the moment he ran forward to

join them.

 

When he overtook the regiment he saw that it had neither colonel, nor

captains nor any other officers of high degree. A little man, scarcely

more than a youth, his head bare, his eyes snapping fire, one hand

holding aloft a red cap on the point of a sword, had taken command and

was urging the soldiers on with every fierce shout that he knew. The

men were responding. Command seemed natural to him. Here was a born

leader in battle. John knew him, and he knew that his own prophecy had

been fulfilled.

 

"Geronimo!" he gasped.

 

But young Bougainville did not see him. He was still shouting to the men

whom he now led so well. The point of the sword, doubtless taken from

the hand of some fallen officer, had pierced the red cap which was

slowly sinking down the blade, but he did not notice it.

 

John looked again for his commander, but not seeing him, and knowing how

futile it was now to seek him in all the fiery crush, he resolved to

stay with the young Apache.

 

"Geronimo," he cried, and it was the last time he called him by that

name, "I go with you!"

 

In all the excitement of the moment young Bougainville recognized him

and something droll flashed in his eyes.

 

"Did I boast too much?" he shouted.

 

"You didn't!" John shouted back.

 

"Come on then! A big crowd of Germans is just over this hill, and we

must smash 'em!"

 

John kept by his side, but Bougainville, still waving his sword, while

the red cap sank lower and lower on the blade, addressed his men in

terms of encouragement and affection.

 

"Forward, my children!" he shouted. "Men, without fear, let us be the

first to make the enemy feel our bayonets! Look, a regiment on the right

is ahead of you, and another also on the left leads you! Faster!

Faster, my children!"

 

An angle of the German line was thrust forward at this point where a

hill afforded a strong position. Bullets were coming from it in showers,

but the Bougainville regiment broke into a run, passed ahead of the

others and rushed straight at the hill.

 

It was the first time that men had come face to face in the battle and

now John saw the French fury, the enthusiasm and fire that Napoleon had

capitalized and cultivated so sedulously. Shouting fiercely, they flung

themselves upon the Germans and by sheer impact drove them back. They

cleared the hill in a few moments, triumphantly seized four cannon and

then, still shouting, swept on.

 

John found himself shouting with the others. This was victory, the first

real taste of it, and it was sweet to the lips. But the regiment was

halted presently, lest it get too far forward and be cut off, and a

general striding over to Bougainville uttered words of approval that

John could not hear amid the terrific din of so many men in battle--a

million, a million and a half or more, he never knew.

 

They stood there panting, while the French line along a front of maybe

fifty miles crept on and on. The French machine with the British wheels

and springs coöperating, was working beautifully now. It was a match and

more for their enemy. The Germans, witnessing the fire and dash of the

French and feeling their tremendous impact, began to take alarm. It had

not seemed possible to them in those last triumphant days that they

could fail, but now Paris was receding farther and farther from their

grasp.

 

John recovered a certain degree of coolness. The fire of the foe was

turned away from them for the present, and, finding that the glasses

thrown over his shoulder, had not been injured by his fall, he examined

the battle front as he stood by the side of Bougainville. The country

was fairly open here and along a range of miles the cannon in hundreds

and hundreds were pouring forth destruction. Yet the line, save where

the angle had been crushed by the rush of Bougainville's regiment, stood

fast, and John shuddered at thought of the frightful slaughter, needed

to drive it back, if it could be driven back at all.

 

Then he glanced at the fields across which they had come. For two or

three miles they were sprinkled with the fallen, the red and blue of the

French uniform showing vividly against the green grass. But there was

little time for looking that way and again he turned his glasses in

front. The regiment had taken cover behind a low ridge, and six rapid

firers were sending a fierce hail on the German lines. But the men under

orders from Bougainville, withheld the fire of their rifles for the

present.

 

Bougainville himself stood up as became a leader of men, and lowered his

sword for the first time. The cap had sunk all the way down the blade

and picking it off he put it back on his head. He had obtained glasses

also, probably from some fallen officer, and he walked back and forth

seeking a weak spot in the enemy's line, into which he could charge with

his men.

 

John admired him. His was no frenzied rage, but a courage, measured and

stern. The springs of power hidden in him had been touched and he stood

forth, a born leader.

 

"How does it happen," said John, "that you're in command?"