With Haig on the Somme Part 38

He came back again in a few minutes, to find that Dennis had taken him at his word, and was watching the rats fearlessly searching for crumbs between his very feet.

"A corporal and five men," said the sergeant laconically. "And a splinter has broken the Herr Captain's gla.s.ses. Oh, he is in a rare fury!"

Another sh.e.l.l burst farther away behind the dug-out, and Dennis wondered whether the French gunners were lengthening their fuses preparatory to the counter-attack.

Mist still hung about the ground, and the moon gave it a very ghostly effect.

Peeping through the door from the dark dug-out--for a rat had suddenly pounced upon the lighted candle and made off with it--he saw the look-out motionless and alert behind the sandbagged parapet, and, sitting on the fire-step, the men of No. 6 Company huddled up. Some of them were asleep with their heads on their comrades' shoulders. The man who had been five times wounded bent forward, grasping one wrist with the other hand, and staring into vacancy; perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife!

Without warning a terrific fire suddenly opened on the village; and Dennis, used as he was to the British bombardment, sat dazed in his cubby-hole as sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l burst in such quick succession that the explosions seemed like the continuous fire of some giant machine-gun. He put his hands to his ears and crouched there, bowed, like one awaiting inevitable doom, wondering how it fared with the company outside in the trench and with the rest of the battalion.

For a quarter of an hour the inferno continued, and then ceased as suddenly as it had begun; and in the lull that followed he rose to his feet, knowing that the dug-out would not be a safe place in which to await the counter-attack which would come on the heels of that terrible devastation.

In the doorway he stumbled over something soft, and recognised the upturned face of the good-natured sergeant! The lower part of him from the waist downwards had been blown away; and, stooping down, Dennis gently disengaged the Iron Cross from the breast of his tunic.

"Poor chap!" he muttered. "This will be something for dear little Billy." And then he looked round.

The trench existed no longer as a trench, and terrified, trembling men crawled from among the tumbled sandbags, and out of nooks and corners where they had lain.

The barbed wire looked like a parrot's cage that had been run over by a motor-car, and everyone saw that the position was untenable.

So No. 6 Company, or all that was left of it, hurried towards a wood between Biaches and the hill of La Maisonette, and no sooner had they cleared the broken trench than the first wave of the French poured over it.

The ferret-faced German captain had made his way back to headquarters just before the bombardment began. He had a cousin on the staff, from whom he hoped to borrow a spare pair of spectacles to replace his own.

He secured the gla.s.ses, and found that he could not have arrived at a better moment, for a message had just been received from the Divisional General!

"You are the very man we want," said Colonel Schlutz. "There is a spy in No. 6 Company masquerading under the name of Carl Heft. It is very serious and altogether extraordinary. The real Carl Heft was wounded by a sh.e.l.l splinter, and has turned up again over there. The spy actually took down the general's order for our move, and he must be discovered at once. He is young, and he wears brown boots."

"Himmel! I know the fellow!" exclaimed the captain. "He shall be arrested within the next twenty minutes!"

But the French fire began, and it was impossible to move; and they cowered in their temporary shelter, expecting death.

"Where is the company?" demanded its captain when the 75's ceased, and he encountered a wounded man dragging himself to the rear.

"The survivors have retired into yonder wood, Herr Captain. May I beg a draught of water from your bottle?"

"You will get some farther back; I have no time now," was the brutal response. And, grinning with secret satisfaction, he ran in the direction of the tree-tops, hugely elated as every stride carried him farther away from the ruined village, against which he knew the counter-attack would be delivered.

As soon as he judged himself to be out of danger he skulked among the trees for more than an hour. He was in no hurry to find his men; besides, the sky was lightening, and he preferred to wait until daylight.

During that hour the fury of combat raged among the brick heaps of Biaches and upon the hill of La Maisonette, and when morning came the French had recovered both positions.

He could hear them cheering, and was hoping that all was over, when the crackle of rifle fire commenced from the western edge of the wood, and he knew that he could delay no longer. His smile gave place to the bl.u.s.tering frown that No. 6 Company knew so well, and, striding forward, he became aware from the hoa.r.s.e roar of voices that something serious was taking place.

The growing daylight had revealed to the French that the enemy was holding the wood in some strength; and Dennis, who had spied a long line of blue-painted helmets in the distance, was stealthily working his way forward from tree to tree, intent on making a bolt towards them, when that same roar fell upon his ear.

Looking round, he saw a double company of the battalion that had entrained with them forming up for an advance with the bayonet. In sixty seconds they would go charging across the open strip of ground which he had decided upon as his own line of escape, and their right flank would pa.s.s within a dozen yards of a white-walled cottage that had been unroofed by a French sh.e.l.l.

He looked at the solid, desperate ma.s.s, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command "Vorwarts!"

Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans.

Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of the explosions.

Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees.

But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think!

Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting for his life for the shelter of a big sh.e.l.l crater, where he meant to strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer act as a pa.s.sport to the rapidly advancing French.

As he reached the lip of the huge hole his laugh of triumph died away, for before he could check himself he had slid down among the remnants of No. 6 Company, huddled together, leaderless, demoralised.

At the same moment a sh.e.l.l burst on the other side of the crater, flinging an iron rain into the already terrified mob, and half burying a man who had been descending into the pit.

It was the ferret-faced captain who picked himself up, white as a sheet of paper, and then gave a guttural cry of surprise. Drawing his revolver he strode forward and stopped in front of Dennis, covering him with the weapon.

"I am looking for you, Carl Heft," he laughed hoa.r.s.ely. "Possibly you know why they want you at headquarters!"

No one knew exactly how it came about, but there was a sharp report, the captain staggered back and fell, shot through the heart; and "Carl Heft"

stood like some avenging spirit, looking down at him, with the smoking Webley in his hand.

"Kamerads!" he cried to the throng, "there lies the cause of half our troubles! That beast would have driven us on again while he slunk in the rear. Look at this!" And he pointed to the man who had already been wounded five times. A fragment of the sh.e.l.l had just carried away his right hand. "The game is up; we have the right to choose whether we die like sheep, or live to rejoin our families. You can do as you like, but I am going to surrender. I have had enough!"

Very erect, he swung round and began to walk up the side of the crater in the direction of the French, and fifty voices cried: "He is right; we have all had enough!" And they sprang forward in his wake, every man with his hands raised above his head.

Dennis had planted one foot on the firm ground when a skewer-like bayonet pa.s.sed within an inch of his ear; and with a disappointed roar its owner flung a pair of terrible arms about him, and the two rolled backwards into the hole again.

"Now you had better say your prayers, Boche!" growled his a.s.sailant, as a hairy hand closed on his throat; "I am going to kill you!"

CHAPTER XXIX

An Old Friend--and a Bitter Enemy!

The terrified German herd sprang aside as the two figures hurtled down through the middle of them. Arms were raised sky-high, and quavering voices clamoured "Mercy, Kamerad--we surrender!" but never a finger was lifted to help Dennis. He lay on his back looking into the bloodshot eyes of his old acquaintance, Aristide Puzzeau, who, having dropped his rifle as they rolled, was searching grimly for his knife.

"Puzzeau, you fool!" gurgled the lad, as the huge paw of the Herculean _poilu_ tightened its pressure on his throat.

"Eh, what!" exclaimed the Alsatian. "Who are you, then?" And the terrible grip relaxed ever so slightly.

"Look again," was the reply, and Dennis managed to tear Carl Heft's grey tunic open wide enough to reveal the khaki s.h.i.+rt and tie of an English officer.

"_Zut alors!_" cried the man, greatly puzzled; "still I do not know you!"