Kitabı oku: «The Fall of a Nation», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXIX

TO Vassar sleep had been impossible for the past two nights. He dozed for an hour during the day from sheer exhaustion, but the nearer the hour came for the test of strength between the opposing armies on which hung the fate of a hundred million people, the deeper became his excitement.

All life seemed to mirror itself in a vast luminous crystal before his eyes – the past, the present, the future.

He nodded in the saddle as he watched the construction of the second line of entrenchments five miles in the rear of the first. He wondered at the long reach of that first possible retreat. It was an ominous sign. It revealed the fear in the heart of the American commander.

He fell into a fevered dream. Far up in the sky he saw the sneering face of the Devil bending low over our shores and from his right hand shaking dice. The dice were the skulls of men. They rattled over the wide plain of our coming battlefield. The hideous face twisted with demoniac laughter as he shook the skulls and threw again.

He watched the game with bated breath. The count was made at last and we had lost!

And yet somehow it was well with the dreamer’s soul. An angel took him by the hand and led him from the field on which the skulls lay.

He looked at the angel and it was the face of his beloved. With a cry of joy he woke to find a courier by his side with a message from General Hood.

He rubbed his eyes and smiled for the joy of the dream that still lingered in his heart and quickly read the order.

To Colonel Vassar:

Please report immediately to the officer in command at Babylon and tell him to entrench his men at once. We shall make our third and last stand there.

(Signed) Hood.

Vassar scribbled a reply and turned his horse’s head to the staff headquarters.

Babylon was home! He would see his little girls on the eve of battle – but more than all he hoped to see Virginia.

He was still hoping and fearing as he delivered his horse to the hostler and ordered an automobile.

He was just leaping into the machine when Billy appeared on his motor-cycle and handed him a crumpled sealed note.

The boy saluted, smiled and turned back.

It was too good to be true – and yet there it was in his hand – a letter from Virginia!

He waved to the chauffeur:

“To Babylon – headquarters – third reserves – ”

The machine swept down the white smooth turnpike and he settled into his seat still holding the precious message unopened.

He broke the seal at last and read through dimmed eyes:

“Come to me at the earliest possible moment. I have much to tell you. I can’t write – ”

There was no formal address. There was no name signed. He kissed the delicately lined words and placed the note in his inside pocket.

What did the foolish happiness in his soul mean? Could fate mock him with an hour’s joy and send him to his death tomorrow? He would ride where men were falling like leaves before the sun should set – there could be no doubt of that. He shut his eyes and could see only the face of the woman he loved. He wondered what she would say? He wondered if she would make him ask her forgiveness for the wrong she herself had done, woman-like?

He would be afraid to kiss her again – Nonsense! She couldn’t refuse her lips if she loved. He’d risk it again if he died for it.

He delivered his orders and turned without delay for the Holland homestead. The flowers were in glorious bloom again.

The sun was sinking behind the trees in scarlet and purple glory. His father strolled thoughtfully across the lawn with one arm around Zonia and Marya’s hand clasped in his.

As the car turned into the drive and swept toward the house, the girls saw him and rushed with cries of joy to smother him with kisses.

“Our men are ready?” his father asked gravely.

“To die – yes – they are as ready as they can be without drill or quipment – or artillery to defend them.”

The old man shook his head.

“And the enemy – they are many?”

“A hundred and sixty thousand hardened veterans and the most magnificent equipment of the modern world – ”

Old Andrew Vassar lifted his hands in a gesture of pain.

“God help us!”

“Only He can now. We’ve done our best – that’s all – ”

He paused and turned to Zonia whispering softly:

“Where is she?”

The girl nodded toward the rose-embowered oak.

“Waiting for you. Billy telephoned us. She’s been there ever since.”

Vassar hurried across the lawn. The twilight was deepening and the new moon hung a half crescent in the evening sky.

She rose as he passed the trellis and stood smiling tenderly until he came close. Her hands were clasped tightly. Neither was extended to greet him.

She lifted her eyes to his in a long, tender gaze, deliberately slipped both arms around his neck and kissed his lips.

He held her close in a moment of strangling joy. She lifted her lips to his again, and spoke in tones so low that only the heart of love could hear:

“My darling – my own – my hero – my mate! I’ve loved you always from the first. I was too proud to surrender my will and mind, my body and soul to any man. I went away into the mountains to fight it out and love conquered, dear! I surrendered before I knew that your prophetic soul was right in sensing this black hour in life. I’m glad I gave up before I knew. It’s all love’s victory, dearest. I love you. I love you – I love you – and now Death is going to throw his shadow between us – ”

A sob caught her voice.

“But I shall love you through all eternity and I thank God for this holy hour in which we meet and know, face to face – ”

For two glorious hours they sat and held each other’s hands in the soft light of the half-fledged moon.

And then he rose, kissed her again and swiftly rode into the night toward the red dawn of Death.

CHAPTER XXX

THE grim gray wave of destruction from the sand dunes had rolled into battleline and spread out over the green clothed hills and valleys of the Island – swiftly, remorselessly, with an uncanny precision that was marvelous.

The scouts were soaring in the clear blue skies with keen eyes searching for the position of our guns.

As they found them, a puff of black smoke streamed downward and the distant officer, perched high on his movable observation tower, took the range and called it mechanically to the gunners of his battery.

Our rifles cracked in vain. The birdmen laughed and paid no attention. We had no high-powered, high-angle guns that could touch them. Over every section of our lines the huge vultures hung in the air and circled.

The giant guns miles away beyond the distant hills toward Southampton began to roar. Their first shells fell short from five to six hundred yards.

Our boys gazed over their earthworks and watched the geysers of earth and stone and smoke leap into the heavens and sink back in dull crashes. The wind brought in the acid fumes of the poisonous gases.

They stood in silence, clutching their rifles and waiting for the word to fire.

The vultures circled again and dropped more smoke balls. The invisible gunners at their places caught the singsong call from the tower, touched a wheel and raised the noses of their gray monsters the slightest bit.

Again the earth trembled. The air vibrated with the rush of projectiles like the singing of telegraph wires far above the heads of the listening men.

They struck within a hundred yards of where Vassar sat with the field telephone at his ear awaiting General Hood’s orders – a giant shell landed squarely in our trenches, tore a cavern in the earth sixteen feet deep, hurling our mangled men in every direction. Within a radius of a hundred feet no living thing could be seen when the smoke and dust had cleared. Those who had not been killed by stone and flying fragments of iron had been smothered to death where they stood by the deadly fumes.

Our guns answered now in deep thunder peals that shook the trenches.

For two hours without a pause the artillery of both armies sent their mighty chorus crashing into the heavens, their missiles of death whistling through the skies.

The fire of the enemy was incredibly accurate. Their shells struck our trenches with unerring certainty – and where one struck there was nothing left but an ugly crater in the ground. They simply annihilated every object in their track and left a mass of blackened dust and pulp.

Gun after gun of our batteries were silenced.

The vultures were still soaring aloft calling the range of each concealed battery as the fight revealed its place.

The battle had opened at dawn. By ten o’clock fifty pieces of our artillery had been reduced to junk and one-third of our trenches pulverized into shapeless masses of dust, broken stone and gaping caverns.

Apparently our heavy gun fire had made no impression on the enemy. Their long range pieces were hurling death with a steady clock-like regularity that was appalling. Our army was being ground to dust without a chance to strike their hidden foe. We had never possessed an aviation corps of any serviceable strength. The year before the nucleus of one had been authorized by Congress. This little group of efficient men had followed the fleet into the Pacific and the remaining dozen had been left to die in our tragic meeting with the armada.

General Hood possessed but two aeroplanes. It was madness to send them up against two hundred of the enemy. By an accident to his machinery a taube had fallen within our lines. The men had been captured, their uniforms taken, and delivered to General Hood. The machinery of the hostile aeroplane was promptly repaired, our blond sky pilot forced himself into the greenish-gray suit and stood by waiting for the chance to rise in a cloud of smoke and take his chance among the enemy as a spy.

At noon a wave of fog slowly crept in from sea and the guns had died away. As the mist rolled over the battlefield Hood stood beside the courier of the skies.

“Up with you now, boy, in this fog bank. Mix with the enemy and take your chances. Stay until the firing is resumed and give me the position of their guns. I must know whether we have reached them with our shells.”

The birdman saluted and swung the taube into the clouds. He circled toward the sea and disappeared in the mists.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon before he landed far in the rear of our lines and made his way by automobile to headquarters.

Hood sprang from his desk and rushed to meet him.

“Well?”

“Got over their lines all right, sir,” the scout answered. “Watched our shells for an hour. Not one of them fell closer than half a mile short of their batteries.”

The General pressed his hand in silence.

“All right. It’s as I thought. You’re a brave boy, my son. You’re marked for promotion for this day’s work.”

There was nothing to be done but move his lines five miles back to the second trenches. They were being pounded into pulp without a chance to strike back.

We had exhausted half our stock of shells without scoring a hit. Our losses in men and guns had been frightful. The tragic feature of the day was the loss of trained artillerymen whose places could not be filled. It takes three years to train the man behind the gun.

By daylight the retreat of five miles had been effected. The ground in front was more favorable here for long range work. From captive balloons the position of the batteries could be located. We hoped that some of them could be reached and put out of action. If so, we would give them a taste of cold steel.

All night the great guns growled in the distance while our shattered lines retreated and reformed in the second intrenchments.

At dawn the vultures signalled the retreat and the green-gray wave of Death rolled forward with incredible swiftness.

By noon their greatest guns, each drawn by fifty magnificent horses, had been brought up and were sweeping into position along the low hills that would form their new battleline.

Our commander made up his mind to pot at least one of those guns. He planted a battery of heavy artillery to sweep the road that curved gracefully over these hills. A clump of trees concealed its presence from the circling scouts.

The moment the huge siege gun swept into view – its fifty horses plunging forward with steady leaps, their sides a lather of white foam – our battery roared a salvo and four shells sang in chorus. The gunners lifted their glasses and watched. Every shell struck within dead range of the long line of plunging horses. A cloud of smoke and dust rose high on the crest of the hill and when it lifted the tangled mass of torn and mangled horses and men blocked the way. A second salvo landed squarely in the wreck and blew the tangled mass into fragments – the glasses could no longer find a moving object.

The vultures circled above the hidden battery, their signals flashed and then from five different points behind the hills the shells began to shriek. In thirty minutes they were silenced and torn to bits. But two men were left alive to reach headquarters with the brave story.

The second battle began in earnest at three o’clock in the afternoon. The pitiful story was repeated. With remorseless accuracy their guns tore our men to pieces. They held their own just half a mile beyond the range of our artillery.

All night our men clung blindly to their position and at the dawn of the third day the enemy’s infantry in solid formation, their bayonets flashing, moved swiftly and silently into line for their first charge.

A hundred machine guns were concentrated to relieve them. They formed at their leisure in plain view of our ragged trenches. Our field artillery got their range and began to pour a storm of shrapnel on their ranks. They closed up the gaps with clock-like precision and moved forward at double quick. Round after round of our artillery failed to stop them. The ranks closed automatically. They were cheering now – the breeze wafted their cries across the little valley that separated them from our trenches:

“For God and Emperor!”

When the ranks in front fell, the mass behind rushed over their bodies and shouted again:

“For God and Emperor!”

Our machine guns were mowing them down as wheat falls beneath the teeth of a hundred singing harvest machines on the prairies of Minnesota.

When the first division had been wiped out the second came rushing over their bodies as if they had been denied their just honors in losing the privilege of dying. The second wave of green reached the earth of our trenches before the last man fell and still a third wave was moving across the valley. Their shouts rang a mighty chorus now in the ears of our crouching men:

“For God and Emperor!”

Our fire was held until the third wave was within a hundred yards. The low words of quick command from charging officers could be distinctly heard as their waving swords flashed in the sunlight.

Vassar watched the thrilling scene with a smile of admiration. He saw their flag now for the first time – a huge scarlet field of silk, in its center an imperial crown wrought in threads of gold.

The Federated Monarchs of Europe had taken the red emblem of the Socialists to proclaim the common cause of royal blood against the mob, and on it set the seal of imperial power.

The cheering, rushing wave rolled within fifty yards and then from every trench poured a sheet of blinding flame. So terrific was the shock, the whole division seemed to drop to their knees at the same moment. Those who had not fallen staggered as if drunk and turned in blind circles as if groping their way in the darkness. In five minutes the last man of the third host had fallen and the slopes of the hill below were piled with the dead, the wounded and dying.

The charges ceased.

The big guns in the distance beyond the hills broke forth again in a savage chorus, continuous and infernal in its incredible power.

Vassar listened with new interest. There was a deep bass voice now in this artillery oratorio that had not been heard before. The monster guns were booming for the first time. The effects of their explosions were appalling. They spoke between the roar of the smaller guns as if the basso were answering the cry of a chorus of superhuman singers. A single shot from one of these guns rang with the volume of a salvo of ordinary artillery. Their shells weighed two thousand pounds – two thousand pounds of dynamite.

Vassar heard one of them coming toward the crest of the hill that was red with heroic blood. It came through the air with the uncanny roar of an express train. The sound rose until the heavens quivered with the howl of a cyclone.

And then came the crash squarely in the center of our trenches! An explosion followed that rocked the earth and sent a great billowing cloud of smoke and dust high over the treetops into the skies. Fragments of the débris were hurled half a mile in every direction. No living thing was left to tell the story within a hundred yards of the spot. A breach had been made in the trenches through which a regiment might have charged as over an open field. For eighteen hours this terrific hail of huge projectiles continued without pause. The dull thunder was incessant and its vibration shook the world in tremors as from an earthquake.

With grim persistence our men still clung to what was left of their trenches until the night of the second day.

Hood sullenly ordered the retreat to his last line of entrenchments resting on Babylon. The discovery of the movement lead to a fierce rear guard action with the pursuing cavalry of the enemy. Their great field searchlights now swept the heavens and flooded every open space with deadly glare.

The attacking cavalry fell into ambush carefully prepared and were annihilated. They didn’t repeat the attack. But our guns had no sooner limbered up and withdrawn from their position when a squadron of the new steel cavalry, guided by the searchlights, charged at full speed seventy miles an hour down the turnpike straight into our retreating infantry. An armored automobile, spitting a storm of lead from its machine guns, plunged headlong into a regiment of volunteers, worn and half-starved and ready to fall for the lack of sleep. The huge wheels rolled over prostrate men like a great juggernaut, hurling others into the fields and dashing them among the limbs of trees.

The monster stopped at last choked by the mangled bodies caught in its machinery. A hundred desperate men swarmed over its sides and in a fierce hand to hand fight captured the car and killed its crew.

Again and again through the night of this terrible retreat these tactics were repeated. Not one of the six machines that charged our lines ever returned to tell the story. Not one that charged failed to pile the dead in heaps along the white shining turnpike.

The Holland house was inside the third line. Vassar hurried forward to beg Virginia to return with the girls and the older people to New York.

They refused to stir.

“What’s the use, sir?” Holland snapped. “We’re as safe here as anywhere. If Hood can’t hold this railroad junction – it’s all over. The wildest reports come in hourly from New York. The looting and outrages surpass belief – ”

“Your house has been raided?” Vassar asked.

“I’ve just heard that every house on both Stuyvesant Square and Gramercy Park has been smashed and wrecked. The soldiers have been looting private dwellings at their leisure – while mobs of thieves and cutthroats join in the sport.”

There was no help for it then.

He whispered a hurried good-bye to Virginia, kissed Zonia and Marya and rushed for his horse.

The first gray streaks of dawn were already tinging the eastern sky. The invading army had followed with amazing rapidity. Whole regiments armed with machine guns had been hurled forward by automobile transports. Hood had destroyed the railroad as he retreated. The advancing hosts didn’t need it. The hardened veterans who marched, with quick swinging gait, smoking their pipes and singing, could make thirty miles a day and be ready for a fight at the end of their march. They meant to rush our trenches today and make quick work of it. They were not going to waste any more big shells which might be needed elsewhere.

The wind was blowing directly in the faces of our men for the first time since the landing had been made. They wondered if the wild stories we had heard of the use of poisonous gases and liquid fire in the great war were true. We had begun to scout these tales as press work of the various governments. The day was destined to bring a rude awakening.