No Man's Land Part 27

Gos.h.!.+ it was great--that boy's palaver. He almost converted me, an'

then I showed him a couple o' little stunts of mine." Shorty put his pipe in his pocket. "Come here, son, an' pay attention. It was through forgetting in the excitement of the moment and not payin'

attention that my pal the winkle plucker went west."

Thus the mysterious lesson would start. "There'll come a time one night, boy, when you're out in the dark, an' you're crawling near the wire, when you'll feel on a sudden there's some one near you. Maybe, by the smell of him, you'll know it's a Boche. Well--then it's up to you to make good. You can plug him with your hand gun when you've got his dirty face dead set; but if you start shooting practice in No Man's Land, the audience join in. So I'll just show you a couple o' little tricks--silent tricks, which you can use when you get your hands on him. They kill just as clean if not cleaner than a gun, and no one's the wiser. Now come at me as if you meant to hurt me. No; not as if you were out pus.h.i.+ng the baby in the pram, but just as if you was goin'

all out to kill me. That's better, son; an' where are you now?"

To be correct our one and only Reginald was lying on his face with the unpleasant knowledge in his brain that if he moved an inch his left arm would snap at the elbow; and that kneeling above him Shorty held, in the neighbourhood of his ear, a villainous weapon of his own invention, which resembled a cross between a bill-hook and a kukri.

"You see the idea, boy, don't you? Now, you ask him if he'd like to surrender, and if you don't understand what he says or he seems doubtful like, put your clasp knife in there." Reginald felt a p.r.i.c.k under his right ear. "Right in--you take me. Get up, and we'll do it again."

"Where did you learn that, Shorty?" asked our pupil as he got up.

"A j.a.p taught me that an' a good few more in Los Angeles. Jujitsu, he said it was; dam good sense I call it. Come on--it takes practice."

And Reginald Simpkins practised. With growing confidence he practised day in, day out. Mogg's had faded into the limbo of forgotten things; his horizon consisted of a foetid sh.e.l.l hole, a panting, writhing Hun fighting for his life in the darkness of the night, a cracking arm and then . . . His imagination never took him beyond that point.

Sufficient of the old Adam of gentility still remained to prevent him picturing the final tableau. You see, Reginald Simpkins had not as yet killed anything larger than a rat, and even then he had bungled. . . .

III

AN IMPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION

As was proper and fitting his first head was gained cold-bloodedly and from a distance. It was his blooding into the ranks of the snipers.

His probationary period was over; Shorty Bill had professed himself satisfied. The battalion had moved from the place in which we found them, and had gone farther north. The country was flat and desolate; periodically the ground would shake and tremble, and in No Man's Land chalk and rubble and the salmon-pink fumes of ammonal would shoot upwards, showing that the men of the underworld still carried on.

Slag-heaps, sandbags, and desolate mounds of earth formed the scenery for his debut, while the orchestra consisted of rum jars and rifle grenades.

D Company it was who had lost a sergeant through a German sniper; and the fact was duly reported. Now when a German sniper takes the life of a man in a battalion which goes in for the art itself, it is an unwritten law that from that moment a blood feud exists between the German and English snipers opposite. Though it takes a fortnight to carry out, yet death is the only finish.

Wherefore, one morning, just as the first pale glints of dawn came stealing over the silent land, Reginald Simpkins climbed carefully into a great mound of sandbags which had conveniently been deposited just behind the front line by the miners. But it is doubtful if Miss Belsize of the camisole department would have recognised him. No longer the frock coat and pearl tie, no longer the patent-leather boots and immaculate trousers. In their place a dirty-faced man in khaki, tastefully draped in flapping sandbags--his boots covered, his hands stained. Very cautiously he made himself comfortable; with immense care he laid his rifle--also covered with sacking--in the direction he required; and then he covered his front and sides with filled bags.

Through a hole--also carefully arranged--his screened telescope covered the bit of German trench where the day before the German sniper had lain. Then he waited.

The mists cleared away; the morning sun shone down. From his point of vantage--for he was seven or eight feet above the trenches below--he watched the German lines. His fingers itched to pull the trigger two or three times; and once when he saw a German officer come out of his dug-out in the second line and lean against the back of the trench, smoking a fat cigar, he almost yielded to the temptation. But the splintering of a periscope gla.s.s below him, as a German bullet hit it, told him that the sniper was there--hidden somewhere, and watching too; and he knew that, perfect though his position was for one shot, that one shot would probably give him away. And that _one_ shot was for the sniper, and not to be wasted on a fat Ober Lieutenant. . . .

Three or four hours pa.s.sed, and the silence was complete. The perspiration trickled down his neck as he lay there motionless and clouded the eyepiece of his telescope. Then suddenly he saw a little black object shoot up into the air from the junction of two trenches near the German support line--an object which turned over and over in the air, and fell with a soft thud fifty yards to his right. A roar--and some sandbags and lumps of chalk flew in all directions, while fragments pattered down on Reginald out of the sky.

"Hope to G.o.d they don't come any closer," he muttered, watching the next rum jar shoot up. "Anyway, I've marked the place they're coming from." Then his eyes came back to the sniper's locality, and as they did so a quiver of excitement ran through him. Utterly regardless of the second rum jar which burst with a crack behind him, he knew for the first time the feeling of the big game man who has stalked his quarry successfully. There, five yards to the left of where he had been looking, a little stunted bush was moving--_and there was no wind_.

Trembling with excitement he focussed his telescope on the bush, and even as he did so, he knew his vigil was over. The thing which up to that moment he had taken for a log was a man--_the_ man, the sniper.

He could see the faint outline of his face, now that his attention was drawn to it, and with infinite care he drew a bead on the centre of it.

Then suddenly he started shaking with nervous keenness; his left hand wobbled like a jelly through sheer excitement until he almost sobbed with rage. The German moved again as another rum jar burst, confident that the English would have gone to ground to escape the trench mortaring. It was that arrogant movement that infuriated our friend.

It struck him as a deliberate challenge. And for just a moment the German's face and the crossed hairs of his telescopic sight coincided, and coincided steadily.

It seemed to Reginald that his pressing the trigger and the wild convulsive lurch of the man opposite were simultaneous. With his eye to the telescope he watched the log that writhed and squirmed; then it grew still, and the disguise had gone. No more a log: just a motionless twisted form; while something that showed dark and ominous through the telescope spread round its head. The sergeant of D Company was avenged. . . .

With a feeling rather as if he personally had won the war, our hero slipped backwards into the boyau beside him, and went in search of Shorty Bill. Two hours later he found him and poured out the story.

Shorty listened in silence; then he spoke.

"I've heard men talk like you, son, when they've kissed their first woman. Have you reported where that trench mortar is?"

"G.o.d! Shorty, I clean forgot. I'll go and do it now," remarked Reggie, his ardour somewhat damped.

"I should dam well think you'd better." Shorty relit his pipe, and grinned amiably. "Well done, kid; but for Holy Mike's sake don't crow over one plurry Boche. When you've touched three figures we'll celebrate. . . ."

He may have been right; but even on his own showing, is there any kiss which is quite like the first? Is there any Hun, who----? Still, possibly the a.n.a.logy is unfortunate. Anyway, I have given the account of his first cold-blooded victim; I will follow with his first hot-blooded one.

IV

SOMEWHAT MORE PERSONAL

It occurred about six weeks later in the same part of the line; and as a mark of special favour he had been allowed to accompany Shorty on one of his nightly prowls. That worthy was wont to remark that two men on a joy ride in No Man's Land was one too many; wherefore it must be a.s.sumed that Reginald had grown in wisdom and cunning, and found favour in the sight of his taskmaster.

They slipped over the top about ten p.m. Shorty was armed as usual merely with the villainous billhook-kukri of his own design, while Reggie carried a revolver and a clasp knife which resembled a young bayonet. It was not a reconnoitring patrol as laid down in the book of the words; it was merely a pleasure ramble, so Shorty said, as they pa.s.sed silently out of a sap and disappeared in the darkness.

The first thing Reggie did was to kick a tin and fall into a sh.e.l.l hole, where he was joined by Shorty.

"Frightening rooks, son," he remarked kindly, "or rehearsing as a knockabout comedian? About twenty-five yards from here on our left is the German sap party that I am visiting to-night. I like 'em to know I'm coming."

"Sorry, Shorty," muttered the delinquent. "I never saw the ruddy thing."

"You don't say. I thought you'd a-done it on purpose," returned the other with ponderous sarcasm. "Now you stop here; I'm goin' to that sap--an' I'll come back for you."

Like a wraith Shorty faded into the night, leaving our friend alone with his thoughts. A Lewis gun was firing away down the line in short bursts, while Verey lights and flares went up every now and then with a faint hiss. Above, the low-flying clouds scudded over the sky, and our friend lay back in his sh.e.l.l hole and pondered. With an inward chuckle he wondered what the beautiful Miss Belsize and the other fair ones of Mogg's would say if they could see him at that moment. A sense of physical well-being was on him, and he stretched himself luxuriously.

The next instant he was struggling impotently in a grip that throttled him.

"Quite so," remarked a voice as the grip relaxed, and by the light of a flare he found Shorty occupying the sh.e.l.l hole once again. "A ruddy lot o' good you are. Killed and dead as mutton by now, if I'd been a Boche."

Reggie reddened in the darkness with shame. "I wasn't thinking, Shorty. I--er . . ." His words died away.

"Thinking! You flat-footed clam--this show ain't a debating society, nor yet a penny reading." Shorty snorted with rage. "Go over to that saphead there--d'you see it--an' see what thinking does." His hand pointed to a low hummock of chalk behind a crater. "Go an' look in, I tell you; an' if ever you sit out here again dreaming like a love-sick poet, I hope to G.o.d it happens to you. You'll deserve it."

With a push like the kick of an elephant's hind leg he propelled the wretched Reggie in the required direction. Puzzled and surprised, but feeling very ashamed of himself, he moved cautiously towards the low mound that stood up dimly outlined against the night sky. Once on the short journey he crouched motionless while a flare burnt itself out twenty yards away, only to move forward immediately the darkness settled again with quickened step. There is no time so good to movement as the few seconds after the eyes of possible watchers have been dazzled. . . .

And so he came to the saphead, and cautiously peered in. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances his action was that of a fool; but Shorty had ordered, and those who knew Shorty got in the habit of carrying out his instructions. For a while in the blackness he could see nothing. He noted the sap running back towards the German lines; but at the head of it there was no sign of life. He carefully stretched farther over, and as he looked at the bottom of the trench he made out a dark, huddled figure. Then the next flare went up, and Reginald Simpkins got the shock of his life.

The green ghostly light came flooding in, and then went out as abruptly as it had come. But the moment was enough. Clear stamped on his brain, like a photographic exposure, was the image of two men. One lay at the bottom of the trench and grinned at the sky with his throat cut from ear to ear; the other--huddled in a corner with his hand still clutching a bomb--was even as he looked turning on his head and his knees, only to subside with a squelch in the mud, kick spasmodically, and lie still.

"Right in--you take me?--with your clasp knife." Shorty's words came back to him and he gasped. So this was what his teacher had meant, when he'd sent him to see the dangers of thinking.

It was just as he was visualising the scene: the sudden ghostly appearance of Shorty on top of the unsuspecting Germans; the sudden stroke of that awful weapon; the feeble attempt to get the bomb; the----well, it was just then that Reggie found himself contemplating from about six inches range the glaring face of a Prussian N.C.O. who had suddenly materialised. By the light of a flare down the line he watched, as he lay on top of the ground, with his head over the edge of the sap, the ring of the Prussian's revolver as it moved up towards his face.

What happened, happened quickly: most of these things are touch and go.

The bullet whizzed past his face into the night--his left hand hit the revolver just in time; and even as the bullet went wide his right hand struck sideways with the knife. It sank into the Prussian's neck; he felt a rush of something warm and sticky, and then he was grabbed from behind.

"Quick," muttered Shorty in his ear, "hop it; hop it like h.e.l.l. I'll guide you."