The Girl from Alsace Part 29

"Very well for a beginning," he commented. "Now for the melon, the bacon, the rolls, the b.u.t.ter, and the coffee!"

"I fear that those must wait," she said. "Here is your breakfast," and she handed him three of the eggs.

Stewart looked at them rather blankly.

"Thanks!" he said. "But I don't quite see----"

"Then watch!"

Sitting down on the door-step, she cracked one of her eggs gently, picked away the loosened bit of sh.e.l.l at its end, and put the egg to her lips.

"Oh!" he said. "So _that's_ it!" and sitting down beside her, he followed her example.

He had heard of sucking eggs, but he had never before tried it, and he found it rather difficult and not particularly pleasant. But the first egg undoubtedly did a.s.suage the pangs of hunger; the second a.s.suaged them still more, and the third quite extinguished them. In fact, he felt a little surfeited.

"Now," she said, "for the dessert."

"Dessert!" protested Stewart. "Is there dessert? Why didn't you tell me?

I never heard of dessert for breakfast, and I'm afraid I haven't room for it!"

"It will keep!" she a.s.sured him, and leading him around the larger of the outbuildings, she showed him a tree hanging thick with ruddy apples.

"There are our supplies for the campaign!" she announced.

"My compliments!" he said. "You would make a great general."

They ate one or two apples and then filled their pockets. From one of hers, the girl drew a pipe and pouch of tobacco.

"Would you not like to smoke?" she asked. "I have been told that a pipe is a great comfort in times of stress!"

And Stewart, calling down blessings upon her head, filled up. Never had tobacco tasted so good, never had that old pipe seemed so sweet, as when he blew out the first puff upon the morning air.

"Salvation Yeo was right," he said. "As a hungry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a chilly man's fire, there's nothing like it under the canopy of heaven! I only wish you could enjoy it too!"

"I can enjoy your enjoyment!" she laughed as they set happily off together.

At the corner of the wood, Stewart turned for a last look at the house.

"How glad I am I didn't break in!" he said.

CHAPTER XII

AN ARMY IN ACTION

The sound of cannonading grew fiercer and fiercer, as they advanced, and the undertone of rifle fire more perceptible. It was evident that the Germans were rapidly getting more and more guns into action, and that the infantry attack was also being hotly pressed. Below them in the valley, they caught glimpses from time to time, as the trees opened out a little, of the gray-clad host marching steadily forward, as though to overwhelm the forts by sheer weight of numbers; and then, as they came out above a rocky bluff, they saw a new sight--an earnest that the Belgians were fighting to some purpose.

In a level field beside the road a long tent had been pitched, and above it floated the flag of the Red Cross. Toward it, along the road, came slowly a seemingly endless line of motor ambulances. Each of them in turn stopped opposite the tent, and white-clad a.s.sistants lifted out the stretchers, each with its huddled occupant, and carried them quickly, yet very carefully, inside the tent. In a moment the bearers were back again, pushed the empty stretchers into place, and the ambulance turned and sped swiftly back toward the battlefield. Here, too, it was evident that there was admirable and smoothly-working system--a system which alleviated, so far as it was possible to do so, the horror and the suffering of battle.

Stewart could close his eyes and see what was going on inside that tent.

He could set the stripping away of the clothing, the hasty examination, the sterilization of the wound, and then, if an operation was necessary, the quick preparation, the application of the ether-cone and the swift, unerring flash of the surgeon's knife.

"That's where I should be," he said, half to himself, "I might be of some use there!" And then he turned his eyes eastward along the road.

"Great heavens! Look at that gun."

Along the road below them came a monstrous cannon, mounted on a low, broad-wheeled truck, and drawn by a mighty tractor. It was of a girth so huge, of a weight evidently so tremendous, that it seemed impossible it could be handled at all, and yet it rolled along as smoothly as though it were the merest toy. Above it stretched the heavy crane which would swing it into the air and place it gently on the trunnions of its carriage. Drawn by another tractor, the carriage itself came close behind--more huge, more impressive if possible, than the gun itself. Its tremendous wheels were encircled with heavy blocks of steel, linked together and undulating along the road for all the world like a monster caterpillar; its ma.s.sive trail seemed forged to withstand the shock of an earthquake.

"So that is the surprise!" murmured the girl beneath her breath.

And she was right. This was the surprise which had been kept so carefully concealed--the Krupp contribution to the war--the largest field howitzer ever built, hurling a missile so powerful that neither steel nor stone nor armored concrete could stand against it.

In awed silence, the two fugitives watched this mighty engine of destruction pa.s.s along the road to its appointed task. Behind it came a motor truck carrying its crew, and then a long train of ammunition carts filled with what looked like wicker baskets--but within each of those baskets lay a sh.e.l.l weighing a thousand pounds! And as it pa.s.sed, the troops, opening to right and left, cheered it wildly, for to them it meant more than victory--it meant that they would, perhaps, be spared the desperate charge with its almost certain death.

Scarcely had the first gone by, when a second gun came rolling along the road, followed by its crew and its ammunition-train; and then a third appeared, seemingly more formidable than either of the others.

"These Germans are certainly a wonderful people," said Stewart, following the three monsters with his eyes as they dwindled away westward along the road. "They may be vain and arrogant and self-confident; apparently they haven't much regard for the rights of others. But they are thorough. We must give them credit for that! They are prepared for everything."

"Yes," agreed his companion; "for everything except one thing."

"And that?"

"The spirit of a people who love liberty. Neither cannon nor armies can conquer that! The German Staff believed that Belgium would stand aside in fear."

"Surely you don't expect Belgium to win?"

"Oh, no! But every day she holds the German army here is a battle won for France. Oh, France will honor Belgium now! See--the army has been stopped. It is no longer advancing!"

What was happening to the westward they could not see, or even guess, but it was true that the helmeted host had ceased its march, had broken ranks, and was stacking arms and throwing off its accouterments in the fields along the road. The halt was to be for some time, it seemed, for everywhere camp-kitchens were being hauled into place, fires started, food unloaded.

"Come on! come on!" urged the girl. "We must reach the Meuse before this tide rolls across it."

They pressed forward again along the wooded hillside. Twice they had to cross deep valleys which ran back into the mountain, and once they had a narrow escape from a cavalry patrol which came cantering past so close upon their heels that they had barely time to throw themselves into the underbrush. They could see, too, that even in the hills caution was necessary, for raiding parties had evidently struck up into them, as was proved by an occasional column of smoke rising from a burning house.

Once they came upon an old peasant with a face wrinkled like a withered apple, sitting staring down at the German host, so preoccupied that he did not even raise his eyes as they pa.s.sed. And at last they came out above the broad plain where the Vesdre flows into the Meuse.

Liege, with its towers and terraced streets, was concealed from them by a bend in the river and by a bold bluff which thrust out toward it from the east--a bluff crowned by a turreted fortress--perhaps the same they had seen the night before--which was vomiting flame and iron down into the valley.

The trees and bushes which clothed its sides concealed the infantry which was doubtless lying there, but in the valley just below them they could see a battery of heavy guns thundering against the Belgian fort.

So rapidly were they served that the roar of their discharge was almost continuous, while high above it rose the scream of the sh.e.l.ls as they hurtled toward their mark. There was something fascinating in the precise, calculated movement of the gunners--one crouching on the trail, one seated on either side of the breech, four others pa.s.sing up the sh.e.l.ls from the caisson close at hand. Their officer was watching the effect of the fire through a field-gla.s.s, and speaking a word of direction now and then.

Their fire was evidently taking effect, for it was this battery which the gunners in the fort were trying to silence--trying blindly, for the German guns were masked by a high hedge and a strip of orchard, and only a tenuous, quickly-vanis.h.i.+ng wisp of white smoke marked the discharge.

So the Belgian gunners dropped their sh.e.l.ls. .h.i.ther and yon, hoping that chance might send one of them home.

They did not find the battery, but they found other marks--a beautiful white villa, on the first slope of the hillside, was torn asunder like a house of cards and a moment later was in flames; a squad of cavalry, riding gayly back from a reconnoissance down the river, was violently scattered; a peasant family, father and mother and three children, hastening along the road to a place of safety, was instantly blotted out.

It was evident now that the Meuse was the barrier which had stopped the army. Far up toward Liege were the ruins of a bridge, and no doubt all the others had been blown up by the Belgians.

Down by the river-bank a large force of engineers were working like mad to throw a pontoon across the swift current. The material had already been brought up--heavy, flat-bottomed boats, carried on wagons drawn by motor-tractors, great beams and planks, boxes of bolts--everything, in a word, needed to build this bridge just here at a point which had no doubt been selected long in advance! The bridge shot out into the river with a speed which seemed to Stewart almost miraculous. Boat after boat was towed into place and anch.o.r.ed firmly; great beams were bolted into position, each of them fitting exactly; and then the heavy planks were laid with the precision and rapidity of a machine. Indeed, Stewart told himself, it was really a machine that he was watching--a machine of flesh and blood, wonderfully trained for just such feats as this.