The Girl from Alsace Part 27

A savage voice behind them shouted, "Halt!" and then a bullet sang past and a rifle went off with a noise like a cannon--or so it seemed to Stewart; then another and another. It was the sentry, of course, pumping bullets after them. Stewart's flesh crept at the thought that any instant might bring a volley, which would sweep the track with a storm of lead. If he could only look back, if he only knew----

Suddenly the girl pulled him to the right, and he saw there was a cleft in the steep bank. Even as they sprang into it, the volley came, and then a second and a third, and then the sound of shouting voices and running feet.

Savagely the fugitives fought their way upward, over rocks, through briars--scratched, torn, bleeding, panting for breath. Even in the daytime it would have been a desperate scramble; now it soon became a sort of horrid nightmare, which might end at any instant at the bottom of a cliff. More than once Stewart told himself that he could not go on, that his heart would burst if he took another step--and yet he _did_ go on, up and up, close behind his comrade, who seemed borne on invisible wings.

At last she stopped and pressed close against him. He could feel how her heart was thumping.

"Wait!" she panted. "Listen!"

Not a sound broke the stillness of the wood.

"I think we are safe," she said. "Let us rest a while."

They sat down, side by side, on a great rock. Gradually their gasping breath slackened and the pounding of their hearts grew quieter.

"I have lost my cap," she said, at last. "A branch s.n.a.t.c.hed it off and I did not dare to stop."

Stewart put his hand to his head and found that his hat also was gone.

Until that instant he had not missed it.

"I feel as if I had been flayed," he said. "Those briars were downright savage. It was lucky we didn't break a leg--or stop a bullet."

"We must not run such risks again. We must keep clear of roads--the Germans seem to be everywhere. Let us keep on until we reach the crest of this hill, and then we can rest till daylight."

"All right," agreed Stewart. "Where thou goest, I will go. But please remember I don't travel on angelic wings as you do, but on very human legs! And they are very tired!"

"So are mine!" she laughed. "But we cannot remain here, can we?"

"No," said Stewart, "I suppose not," and he arose and followed her.

The ground grew less rough as they proceeded, and at last they came to the end of the wood. Overhead, a full moon was sinking toward the west--a moon which lighted every rock and crevice of the rolling meadow before them, and which seemed to them, after the darkness of the woods and the valleys, as brilliant as the sun.

"We must be nearly at the top," said the girl. "These hills almost all have meadows on their summits where the peasants pasture their flocks."

And so it proved, for beyond the meadow was another narrow strip of woodland, and as they came to its farther edge, the fugitives stopped with a gasp of astonishment.

Below them stretched a broad valley, and as far as the eye could reach, it was dotted with flaring fires.

"The German army!" said the girl, and the two stood staring.

Evidently a countless host lay camped below them, but no sound reached them, save the occasional rumble of a train along some distant track.

The Kaiser's legions were sleeping until the dawn should give the signal for the advance--an advance which would be as the sweep of an avalanche, hideous, irresistible, remorseless, crus.h.i.+ng everything in its path.

"Oh, look, look!" cried the girl, and caught him by the arm.

To the west, seemingly quite near, a flash of flame gleamed against the sky, then another and another and another, and in a moment a savage rumble as of distant thunder drifted to their ears.

"What is it?" asked Stewart, staring at the ever-increasing bursts of flame. "Not a battle, surely!"

"It is the forts at Liege!" cried the girl, hoa.r.s.ely. "The Germans are attacking them, and they resist! Oh, brave little Belgium!"

The firing grew more furious, and then a battery of searchlights began to play over the hillside before the nearest fort, and they could dimly see its outline on the hilltop--strangely like a dreadnaught, with its wireless mast and its armored turrets vomiting flame. Above it, from time to time, a sh.e.l.l from the German batteries burst like a greenish-white rocket, but it was evident that the a.s.sailants had not yet got their guns up in any number.

Then, suddenly, amid the thunder of the cannon, there surged a vicious undercurrent of sound which Stewart knew must be the reports of machine-guns, or perhaps of rifles; and all along the slope below the fort innumerable little flashes stabbed upward toward the summit. Surely infantry would never attack such a position, Stewart told himself; and then he held his breath, for, full in the glare of the searchlights, he could see what seemed to be a tidal wave sweeping up the hill.

A very fury of firing came from the fort, yet still the wave swept on.

As it neared the fort, what seemed to be another wave swept down to meet it. The firing slackened, almost stopped, and Stewart, his blood pounding in his temples, knew that the struggle was hand to hand, breast to breast. It lasted but a minute; then the attacking tide flowed back down the hill, and again the machine-guns of the fort took up that deadly chorus.

"They have been driven back!" gasped the girl. "Thank G.o.d! the Germans have been driven back!"

How many, Stewart wondered, were lying out there dead on the hillside?

How many homes had been rendered fatherless in those few desperate moments? And this was but the first of a thousand such charges--the first of a thousand such moments! There, before his eyes, men had killed each other--for what? The men in the forts were defending their Fatherland from invasion--they were fighting for liberty and independence. That was understandable--it was even admirable. But those others--the men in the spiked helmets--what were they fighting for? To destroy liberty? To wrest independence from a proud little people?

Surely no man of honor would fight for that! No, it must be for something else--for some ideal--for some ardent sense of duty, strangely twisted, perhaps, but none the less fierce and urgent!

Again the big guns in the armored turrets were bellowing forth their wrath; and then the searchlights stabbed suddenly up into the sky, sweeping this way and that.

"They fear an airs.h.i.+p attack!" breathed the girl, and she and Stewart stood staring up into the night.

Sh.e.l.ls from the German guns began again to burst about the fort, but its own guns were silent, and it lay there crouching as if in terror. Only its searchlights swept back and forth.

Suddenly a gun spoke--they could see the flash of its discharge, seemingly straight up into the air; then a second and a third; and then the searchlights caught the great bulk of a Zeppelin and held it clearly outlined as it swept across the sky. There was a furious burst of firing, but the s.h.i.+p sped on unharmed, pa.s.sed beyond the range of the searchlights, blotted out the setting moon for an instant, and was gone.

"It did not dare pa.s.s over the fort," said the girl. "It was flying too low. Perhaps it will come back at a greater alt.i.tude. I have seen them at the maneuvers in Alsace--frightful things, moving like the wind."

This way and that the searchlights swept in great arcs across the heavens, in frenzied search for this monster of the air; but it did not return. Perhaps it had been damaged by the gunfire--or perhaps, Stewart told himself with a s.h.i.+ver, it was speeding on toward Paris, to rain terror from the August sky!

Gradually the firing ceased; but the more distant forts were using their searchlights, too. Seeing them all aroused and vigilant, the Germans did not attack again; their surprise had failed; now they must wait for their heavy guns.

"Well," asked Stewart, at last, "what now?"

"I think it would be well to stay here till morning--then we can see how the army is placed and how best to get past it. It is evident we cannot go on to-night."

"I'm deadly tired," said Stewart, looking about him into the darkness, "but I should like a softer bed than the bare ground."

"Let us go to the edge of this meadow," the girl suggested. "Perhaps we shall find another field of grain."

But luck was against them. Beyond the meadow the woods began again.

"The meadow is better than the woods," said Stewart. "At least it has some gra.s.s on it--the woods have nothing but rocks!"

"Let us stay in the shelter of the hedge. Then, if a patrol happens into the field before we are awake, it will not see us. Perhaps they will attempt a pursuit in the morning. They will guess that we have headed for the west."

"I don't think there's much danger--it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack--in a dozen haystacks! But won't you be cold?"

"Oh, no," she protested, quickly; "the night is quite warm. Good-night, my friend."

"Good-night," Stewart answered, and withdrew a few steps and made himself as comfortable as he could.

There were irritating b.u.mps in the ground which seemed to come exactly in the wrong place; but he finally adjusted himself, and lay and looked up at the stars, and wondered what the morrow would bring forth. He was growing a little weary of the adventure. He was growing weary of the restraint which the situation imposed upon him. He was aching to take this girl in his arms and hold her close, and whisper three words--just three!--into her rosy ear--but to do that now, to do it until they were in safety, until she had no further need of him, would be a cowardly thing--a cowardly thing--a cowardly----