"But it is nothing—nothing at all," that bearded veteran told his friends; and, indeed, he was as good as a reinforcement of a hundred men to them—so gay was he, so full of courage, so optimistic. "Poof! Who cares for noise? Not you, my comrades, who have stood days now when torrents of German shells were pouring on us, when our ears were deafened by the guns of either side. Then who cares for the scream and the hiss of these bullets? They are but a drizzle which follows a storm."

"Get ready to support the others!" Henri commanded of a sudden, having crept forward to the barricade and peered through one of the loopholes. "That officer man is getting impatient, and, if the truth be known, he is beginning to wonder if any of us are left up here; for, remember, we have made no answer."

"An easy shot, eh?" Jules told his chum, gripping the rifle which he had thrust through one of the upper loopholes. "I could bring him down like a bird, as easy as winking! But I won't," he added of a sudden; "no, for that would hardly be fair fighting."

A whistle sounded down in the hall below, and fifty or more grey-coated figures rushed from the far end, where, no doubt, they were waiting out of sight and under shelter. Forming up across the hall, they were given a sharp order, and almost at once dashed forward.

"They are coming!" Henri called softly to his following. "Don't show as much as a finger, if you can help it. Open fire only when they get to the exit from the hall, and cease fire immediately you have checked their dash towards us."

Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! The machine-gun opened with two short bursts just as the Brandenburgers reached the foot of the staircase, while the Frenchmen manning the loopholes opened a furious fire, which first checked the rush of the enemy and then drove the survivors backwards. Indeed, in one minute they were all out of sight, and even those who had been sniping at the barricade had disappeared entirely.

"But it will not be for long; no, my friends," Henri told his party. "That dash is in the form of a reconnaissance, I expect; though, no doubt, they hardly expected to meet with such resistance."

"Bien! We shall hear from them again shortly," Jules laughed; while the bearded veteran banged one broad hand down on his thigh and chuckled loudly.

"Yes, indeed! Yes, indeed! We shall hear from them, and they shall hear from us, and our voices will be as loud as any Prussian's. But, my Henri, though you are already a commander, and have won our hearts, yet your inexperience of command has led you to forget one thing which is essential."

Henri started. Unconsciously he had been carrying on the work just as he would have done had he and Stuart and Jules been alone together; that is to say, he had just done his best, and no one could do more. Then what was it that he had forgotten, this essential point which a commander of experience would certainly not have omitted? He gaped at the veteran, who thereupon laughed and chuckled even more loudly.

"Listen, then, my Henri. You ask us to fight these Boches, to drive them back, to keep them out so that we may hold the fort for France and for Grand-pere Joffre, and, of a truth, we would gladly do that. But listen, then. Men must eat to fight, and drink also, to retain their strength; for if men are not strong, how then can they fight as soldiers, my Henri? The hour has come for food, and is there not food and drink here in abundance?"

There were smiles all round at that; and presently the little garrison were seated close behind their barricade, where two men kept watch upon the enemy so that the rest could not be surprised, while the others ate the rations which forethought had caused them to bring into the fort, and took cautious draughts from their store of water. Then, having finished their meal, they drew cigarettes and pipes from their pockets, and presently a thick cloud of smoke almost hid the faces of Henri's detachment, and quite a column of it blew out from the aperture through which the gun, long since removed, had been wont to project its muzzle.

"Begins to look as though they intended to leave us alone, or perhaps they have been driven out of the fortress," said Jules, tiptoeing along from one of the loopholes. "There's not a sound down below, and not a single Prussian has put in an appearance. Perhaps our fellows have come up again, eh? Why not? And may be already above us and all about us."

"No. It is not so," called one of the garrison whom Henri had posted at the gun-embrasure, "for I have been watching here since we came to this chamber. The French troops have been driven back on to the plateau—not far, my friends, you will understand, not very far, but still far enough to take them hopelessly beyond us. No. We are cut off here; and if those Boches have left us alone for a while, and allowed us to enjoy a meal, it is not because they have forgotten. Maybe they are preparing a new attack; perhaps they have been engaged in consolidating their position; in any case, we shall hear from them again, and sooner rather than later."

The attack, when it did come, was indeed sudden and unexpected. A shout came from one of the men watching at the loopholes; and, darting forward, Henri discerned at once numbers of figures, which, dashing from the background, were rushing across the hall towards them. Indeed, half a dozen of the Brandenburgers were already at the exit from the hall, and as he looked through a loophole they leapt on the first step of the stairway.

"To your places!" he shouted. "Open fire! Supports get ready to come forward!"

Bang! There was the sharp report of a rifle from down below, a sudden piercing cry, and one of the defenders fell heavily against our hero. An instant later the wall of bags shook while a German bayonet transfixed one of the upper tier, and tore it from its position. Then the machine-gun opened, deafening all within the chamber, lighting by its flash the scene of the conflict; while the men at the loopholes blazed into the lines of Germans who were now swarming on the stairway.

That flimsy wall of bags filled with corn shook and swayed as bodies of frantic Germans, slaughtered by the defenders, fell heavily against it; while one huge Brandenburger who had leapt in advance of his friends, and who had been caught by a bullet fired from one of the loopholes, fixed a dying clutch on the summit of the wall, and held on convulsively for a few moments. Then, with a piercing scream, he fell backwards, carrying with him some two feet of the top of the slender defence which Henri and his friends had erected.

"Man the gap," shouted Henri at once, flinging himself towards the opening, and disentangling himself from another of the defenders who had fallen against him. "Bring bags up from behind and fill in the gap while we defend it."

What a pandemonium there was in that comparatively narrow space up which the stone steps ascended, and across the top of which the barricade of corn-sacks had been erected. Every step was crammed with Brandenburgers, while down below, in the gallery along which the miniature railway ran, which, with its truck, had proved of such service, the exit from the huge hall in the shattered interior of the fort, and that hall itself, were packed with shouting individuals, with men pressing forward to the attack, with fallen soldiers, and with wounded who called in shrill accents to their comrades. Those at the top of the stairs were bellowing with anger, and some with fear; for, forced on by the press from behind, and beaten by the opposition of the Frenchmen, they were, as it were, between two fires, and escape, and even the power of defence, were out of the question. They dropped, indeed, as Henri and his friends fired amongst them; while the bearded veteran, setting a splendid example to his comrades, leapt on to some of the fallen bags, and, leaning over the swaying wall, made havoc amongst the Germans with his bayonet. Then of a sudden the shouts died away, there was a rush of steps on the stairway, and silence—a silence which was almost painful, which seemed to smite the ear of those gallant men holding the gun embrasure and the chamber.



"It was hot work, my Henri, while it lasted," chuckled the bearded poilu as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and stood up after having deposited a fresh bag in its place; "but, mon Dieu! those Brandenburgers fight like the devil! And how they hate us; and how we hate them! Yes, yes! This is a war to the death! This is fighting for France! And only over our bodies shall they advance towards Paris. Comrades, we are holding them back. We here in the remains of this fortress, we are helping to keep the Kaiser's hordes away from the interior of France; helping, too, to rob him of victory and conquest."

Yes, indeed! The violent efforts of these men were helping not a little to check the advance of the enemy, just as the heroic fighting of the French all along the battered trenches round the salient of Verdun was assisting in defeating the enemy's object. We have said already that the conquest and capture of Verdun alone could be of no particular or material benefit to the Kaiser and his armies. Verdun was, as it were, merely an empty shell, a sleepy old town in the hollow by the River Meuse, overshadowed by heights which formed the major portion of that salient held by our ally. Forts there were in abundance—forts, as we have said, long since dismantled. Yet in Germany the tale spread by the German War Staff, that Verdun was heavily armed and considered impregnable, was thoroughly believed, just as it was confidently believed that the valour of the Kaiser's soldiers would snatch it from the enemy.

This terrible World War had come, at this stage, to a period when the spirits of Germans and Austrians were failing, when some stimulus was sadly needed, and when the courage of the people was hardly what it had been when the conflict opened. Who knows? Who can state with certainty what was the real object of the German War Staff in launching an attack upon such an impregnable position—impregnable not because of those dismantled forts and the guns which had once filled them, but because of the nature of the terrain, those hills with their steep escarpments, and those positions on the left or western bank of the Meuse which gave such splendid opportunity to the defenders to outflank with their guns those attacking the northern portion of the salient. Perhaps a sensational capture of Verdun was the objective of the Germans, merely with the idea that it would act as a stimulus to the peoples of the Central Empires. More likely, finding themselves getting weaker as the months drew on, and terrible losses reduced their fighting effectives, the Kaiser and his war lords were determined to risk all in one mighty effort—an effort which should break through the French line at Verdun, thus bringing kudos to the armies of Prussia, and at the same time demoralizing the French soldiers. Who knows? They may have hoped to dash through the gap thus formed, and once more advance on Paris. In any case, they were well aware of the phenomenal rise in power of the British forces. Five million men had volunteered to fight for king and country; and now, on the top of that, there was news that Great Britain had adopted conscription; every man up to the age of forty-one was to become a soldier, was to fight for that liberty dear to all Britons.

Then, seeing that Germany's forces were rapidly dwindling, a blow must be struck now—a sensational blow—which would, it was hoped, break the power of France before those British reinforcements could reach her. Later, Germany might still have strength to tackle Britain alone; and in that case this risky, if determined, attack on Verdun would be worth the price paid for it.

To France then, and the French armies at Verdun, all eyes were turned, for at this moment she held the fate of the Allies in her hands. Let her hold on to Verdun, let her defeat the Germans there by successful resistance, and hold off the enemy till that hour arrived, now fast approaching, when fresh British forces would have sailed for France, and have taken their place beside the poilus. Every little helped; and the fierce encounter taking place beneath the shattered roof of the fortress of Douaumont was assisting not a little.

"They will come again, later on, perhaps, when it is dark," Henri told his friends, "and we must make ready to resist them. Pile up the bags and place them three deep now, for during the last attack they were nearly pulled over. After that there's little for us to do but to wait and smoke. Of fighting we shall have our full before this little business is ended."

Darkness came on after a while, and presently the gloom within the fortress was so deep that even the walls lining the stairway were invisible, nor had any of the party any means of illuminating them, or of lighting up the interior of the hall held by the Brandenburgers. All they could do was to crouch behind their wall and listen for the attack which they knew must be coming. Then, of a sudden, there was a violent explosion just outside their wall, and one farther back in the chamber which they occupied. Hand-grenades had been thrown by the enemy, and hardly had the explosions taken place than there was the sound of another charge, and a horde of men dashed up the stairs and flung themselves upon the barricade which the poilus were defending.



CHAPTER XVI

A Fight to a Finish

A growl came from the man seated at the breech end of the machine-gun:

"Bah! It is smashed! That grenade has burst the casing and shaken the whole apparatus. Give me a rifle, one of you."

He searched in the darkness for the weapon, and indeed there were enough and to spare now, for the bomb which had lit in the chamber, and had exploded in that confined space, had damaged not a few of the defenders. It had stunned the majority of them, in fact, so that now, as they manned the barricade, they were half-stupid, more than half-deafened, and hardly knew what had happened. Henri and Jules, leaning against the bags and peering out into the darkness, could see the flash of men's rifles as they fired from below, and caught a glimpse of dusky figures. Then they felt the wall wobble, while something struck Henri a blow on the arm, and, stretching out his hand, he gripped first a pole and then an iron hook at the end of it. But it was only one of half a dozen such implements, which German cunning had suggested. They were at work then all about him. Those hooks caught in the upper layer of bags, and at once they were dragged outwards; Others followed, and even the storm of bullets from the rifles of the defenders could not stop them. Indeed, in quite a short space of time the better part of the barricade on which the defenders had counted had been swept away, dragged down the stairs, and flung into the passage.

"Bayonets ready!" shouted Henri grimly. "We have got to cut our way out of this place and through the Brandenburgers. Make ready!"

He could feel men swarming up beside him, and heard Jules at his left shouting encouragement to them. Then one of the poles armed with an iron hook, failing to catch a bag, became entangled in his clothing, and in a trice, before he knew where he was, Henri was dragged over the remnants of the wall, and found himself floundering down the stairway. A minute later, with a loud shout, the poilus charged over him, making play with their bayonets to right and to left, and driving the Germans backward. Then, in that narrow gallery at the foot of the stairway, and at the wide exit from the hall, there took place as desperate a combat as had ever been in the whole of this desperate warfare. Men used their bayonets till the weapons were beaten out of their hands, or clubbed their rifles and swung them overhead. Then, undefeated though outnumbered, they gripped their enemies about the waist and wrestled with them, while some, a few only, for the art does not come naturally to the poilu, dealt swinging blows with their fists, and, driving a way through the Germans, escaped into the passage. It was a melee in which all was confusion, in which shouts deafened the combatants, a pack of struggling, bellowing men, which seemed as if it would fill the place for ever, and which, as so often happens, suddenly burst asunder and scattered.

An hour later, when Henri recovered consciousness—for he had been stunned by his fall—he found himself lying at the foot of the stairway, his legs still resting on the last steps and his head on the narrow railway. A man lay across his body—a huge, beefy individual of extraordinary weight, who pressed him hard against the concrete. There were other men lying all about him—dead men, no doubt, for they made no movement—while the stairs themselves, what was left of the parapet of bags which he and his comrades had erected, and the entrance to the gun chamber above, were littered with soldiers, French and German. Strangely enough, though the place had been sunk in darkness during that last desperate attack, it was now illuminated, not brilliantly, it is true, but sufficiently for him to be able to make out his surroundings and to discern objects.

With a desperate effort, Henri contrived to throw off the dead weight which lay across him, and, raising his head slowly, peered in all directions, feeling dazed and shaken, and as yet hardly appreciating what had happened. Then, little by little, he realized the situation, realized that his band of noble poilus had broken up, that many, indeed, lay dead about him, and that the rest had scattered, perhaps had been dragged off as prisoners, and perhaps—and how he hoped it—had gained the open and had made their way back to the French lines.

"Better be careful. Better be a little cautious," he told himself, beginning to peer over the broad back of a man who lay beside him. "That's that hall in which the Brandenburgers had taken up their quarters. Why, they've a fire burning, and are eating a meal round it. And—and—who's that? I've seen that chap before; who is he?"

In his semi-dazed condition he was horribly puzzled, and, shading his eyes with one trembling hand, peered round the corner of the entrance to that hall at the group occupying its centre. There were perhaps a hundred Brandenburgers seated in a wide straggling ring round a fire which blazed in their midst, and which lit up their surroundings and threw long shadows upon what was left of the concrete walls of the fortress. The beams from those flickering flames fell too upon another group—a group, it seemed, of officers—occupying a retired corner, and upon two solitary individuals who stood near by under the eye of a sentry squatting on a block of masonry not far from them. It gave, no doubt, some indication of the strenuous time through which Henri had passed, and of his stunned condition, that it was quite two minutes before in one of those figures he recognized Jules—the jovial Jules, sadly dishevelled now, his helmet gone, his clothing torn, and a blood-stained handkerchief round his forehead. Yet it was the old Jules—that cheery, optimistic, unconquerable individual—looking about him with a careless air and watching the Brandenburgers as they laughed and smoked and chatted as if he would have gladly joined them. That, indeed, was one of the characteristics of the gallant Jules; he could fight like a tiger if need be, though always with a smile on his lips, and, when the time for fighting had gone, no more friendly individual could have been discovered. Yes, it was Jules, a prisoner, and with him another of the poilus who had formed one of Henri's party.

"Wait a moment! Jules right enough!" said Henri, still inclined to be doubtful; for his limbs shook, his head wobbled badly, and his eyes were bloodshot and almost incapable of seeing. "But, who's that other fellow—the chap up in the corner, with his helmet tilted back, that swaggering beggar who's laying down the law to the officers with him? Jingo! That man! Good Heavens!"

No wonder that he gave vent to such an exclamation, for now, as his shaken brain slowly cleared, and his eyes, becoming more accustomed to the flickering light, enabled him to see better, he realized that not only was his old friend a prisoner amongst the Brandenburgers, but that one of their officers—their commanding officer it seemed—was indeed none other than that individual whom he had accosted earlier. The man seemed to be dogging Henri's footsteps. For, consider: it was he who had followed the two young Frenchmen and the bulky Stuart along that tunnel when they were escaping from Ruhleben; it was he again with that party of officers into whose midst Henri and Jules had stumbled the other evening when out on a reconnaissance; and, once more, it was he who had demanded the surrender of the garrison manning that gun-chamber.

"Bah! He again!" growled Henri. "When lots of other Brandenburgers—better Brandenburgers, I should say—have been killed by our fire, he is still living, and he's the man who wanted to shoot us out of hand down in the forest. Wonder whether he's recognized Jules already?"

He had no need to wonder for very long, for hardly had he made this last discovery when the officer in question—that arrogant, snappy little individual, who peered about him with an indefinite something which stamped him as a man of lower caste, one who had gained promotion from the ranks—rose to his feet, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and swaggered towards the prisoners, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head pushed forward, and a truculent, domineering, brutal air about him. Halting in front of the two prisoners, he gave them the benefit of a stare which would have been rude at any time, and which even warfare hardly excused, and then, without the smallest warning, so swiftly in fact that Henri was staggered, he suddenly drew one hand out of his pocket and dealt Jules a blow across the jaw with his open hand which sent that young fellow staggering.

"Ha, ha! That moved you," the German laughed, turning his head over his shoulder to make sure that his brother officers had watched the movement. "That's stirred you up, my friend! Yes, my friend—for don't forget we have met before, haven't we? What, you don't remember? Then let me tell you: at Ruhleben, my friend, my Frenchman—at Ruhleben, where I happen to remember very thoroughly the manner in which you treated me. Do you forget, then? Do you deny that it was you who crept through that tunnel, and, breaking a hole through the earth beyond the entanglements, reached the open; and later, when I followed—having dared the journey along the tunnel—you and that huge brute of an Englishman—that swine of an Englishman—who was with you, pulled me up as if I were a puppy and threw me back again, shaking the teeth out of my head almost? Burr!"

The little dried-up German officer's eyes flashed vengefully as he spoke of the matter, and he was all the more incensed an instant later when, rather anticipating some fun—for to the German comrades of this officer the ill-treatment of a prisoner was certainly fun—these men drew nearer, and, hearing his words, one of them—a huge, fat, unwieldy person, with flabby cheeks and pendulous chin, to say nothing of the huge girth which he presented—giggled and chortled loudly, and suddenly placed a heavy hand on the lieutenant's shoulder—a hand the weight of which caused him to stagger.

"Drew you out like a puppy, ho?" he shouted. "Drew our dear Max up out of the earth as a bird draws a worm; and then had the daring, the effrontery, to dash our immaculate, if not extremely dignified friend backward till his teeth shook. Ho! That's fun! And how one would like to see the thing repeated!"

The steely-grey eyes of Lieutenant Max turned towards this hulking German, and shot at him a glance which was angry and threatening, a glance, however, which failed altogether to impress the man who had addressed him. For this hulking officer roared with laughter, and shook to such an extent that the wreaths of fat on his body wobbled.

"But this is fine!" he shouted, "We have roused the lion in our little Max, and he is angry—angry with me, mark you, my friends—because I would like to see repeated something which no doubt was most entertaining. But, surely, Max, you were not defeated by this fellow, this puny Frenchman?"

The big German ran a pair of critical eyes over the dishevelled figure of Jules, standing helpless before him, eyes which nevertheless did not fail to note the determined look of this young man, his unflinching attitude, and the gleam of anger which came from behind his eyes, and which threatened retaliation. Yes, at that very moment the impetuous Jules, stung by the blow which Max had dealt him, and understanding every word that passed, was on the eve of throwing himself upon the German; and then, as he glanced from one to the other, and helplessly round the hall at the backs of the Brandenburgers—indifferent to what befel their prisoners—to the exit from that hall and the stairway beyond it, at the summit of which he and Henri and those other comrades had put up such a fight, his wandering eyes lit upon the figures of Germans and Frenchmen—the fallen men who had grappled at the foot of the stairs—and, passing from one to another, came upon a face, an eager face, wherein two eyes were set—eyes which were staring hard in his direction. The face moved, while the owner of it sat up a little and held up a warning finger.

"Henri!" exclaimed Jules, and at once took command of himself, and pulled his somewhat shaken frame up at attention.

"What's that?" demanded the big German abruptly. "See, Max, he is defying you, this fellow. And you say that he drew you out of the earth and threw you back, almost shaking the teeth out of your head? Unbelievable! Yet, if it is true, why, no Brandenburger will sit still under such an insult."

The jeering laughter of this giant, the covert smiles and the outspoken remarks of other German officers, sent the blood flaring again to Max's cheeks. He scowled, first at one and then at others of his comrades; and, turning once more to the prisoner, and catching at that moment a gleam of defiance from his eyes, struck out again with one hand and almost floored the unfortunate and helpless Jules.

"That to commence with," he told him, "and then to finish the matter. I don't forget, mind you, the blow that you landed on my body in that forest the other night. No, believe me, I, Max, forget nothing of that sort. Then I would have had you shot out of hand, though the occasion was not convenient; but now there is no reason why the execution should not be carried out. You are an escaped prisoner of war; you have assaulted a German officer in the execution of his duty; and here you are, captured, defying the captors of the Fort of Douaumont. March him to the far end of the hall, and call out half a dozen of those guzzling fellows to shoot him."

The armed sentry, who had stood by all this while, taking but little notice of the scene, looking tired and bored and as if he longed to join his comrades, pulled himself together, and, shouldering his rifle, gave a husky order.

"Over there!" he called. "Stand up against the wall! Sergeant Huefer, the officer requires a shooting-party."

The selfsame Sergeant Huefer, at that moment engaged in finishing a hasty meal, looked round and scowled; and then, seeing the snappy little German officer, called Max, looking at him, stood up promptly.

"A shooting-party, sir?" he asked.

"A shooting-party," came the abrupt answer. "Draw them up in front of those two prisoners."

"Two!" exclaimed the big German officer, who with the others was watching the scene.

"Yes, two," snapped Max, swinging round upon him, ready to vent his anger on any one of them.

"But wait! Not two; one only—the escaped prisoner of war, who struck you."

The big German and this snappy little fellow, Max, stared at one another, the former looking urbane and jovial and unconcerned, whilst Max was trembling with rage. He could have kicked this big German who ventured to obstruct him, and who seemed about to thwart his purpose. Yet Max was a careful individual, who had indeed worked his way upwards in the German army, and obtained slow if certain promotion, by constant observation of the regulations. The shooting of captured Frenchmen was one thing—a common enough thing no doubt—but disobedience, defiance of a senior officer, was an altogether different matter, and this big, hulking German happened to be Max's senior by a very slender margin. So slender, indeed, that the position was almost doubtful. Indeed, at that moment neither Max nor this big German could say which of the two was the senior in rank, and entitled to command this party, though it happened that the bigger of the two was not a Brandenburger, but belonging to some other corps, who had by chance fallen in with the party told off to attack the fort of Douaumont, and so found himself amidst its captors. For a moment, then, the two regarded one another, Max flaming with anger, defiant, on the point of abruptly ordering this hulking individual to mind his own business. And then that sense of discretion which had helped him in the past came to his assistance, and he forced a smile—an unwilling smile—while his eyes flashed a vengeful glance at his opponent.

"Then you object?" he asked sharply. "Well, then, let it be one—the prisoner of war. We will shoot him, and get it over quickly. Sergeant, march the firing-party forward, I will give the word to shoot."

Still shaken, his head swimming yet after that struggle on the stairway, his bloodshot eyes fixed upon the figures of Jules, of the officers, and of Sergeant Huefer and the party of men he was now parading, Henri never felt more helpless in all his life before. He felt pinned to the spot, incapable of action; and, indeed, common sense—what little of it he still possessed after the blow which had rendered him unconscious—told him that action of any sort was useless. Yet, could he see a friend, an old chum, a comrade as dear to him as any brother, shot down in cold blood in front of these leering men? Could he watch him put up as a target, to be butchered by these unfeeling Germans? No. The thought that Jules's fate hung heavily in the balance, that some desperate action on his part might bring him assistance, spurred Henri to movement, and, rising to his knees, he groped his way towards the entrance to the hall wherein the firing-party were then assembling. As he crawled across the bodies then littering the gallery along which the tiny railway ran, and crossed the foot of the stairway, his hand lit upon a rifle, which he seized instantly and raised to his shoulder. Then he dropped it again, for the movement was too much for him, and, stumbling forward, fell on his face, his head swimming once more, his brain in a whirl, and his pulses beating in his ears till he was deafened. It was just at the moment when Sergeant Huefer, undisturbed by the task allotted to him, in fact, eager to finish off the prisoner and get back to his meal, gave a short, sharp order and set his firing-squad in motion, that Henri's outstretched fingers came into contact with another object—a round, cylindrical object attached to a short stick, a hand-grenade, one of those bombs which had helped to blow in the barricade which he and his gallant poilus had erected at the top of the stairway.

With an effort he pulled himself together, and, gripping the stick, felt for the safety-pin, removal of which would allow explosion of the grenade once it came into contact with any body. Then, rising to his knees, and unsteadily to his feet, he stretched out his left hand to the wall, while with his right he swung the hand-grenade backwards and forwards. By then the firing-party had been halted in front of Jules, who, head in air and arms folded, stood against the far wall.

"Load!" he heard the command ring out and echo down the gallery. "Present!"

Up went the rifles to the shoulders.

Henri gave a sharp jerk to the handle of the grenade as he loosened his hold of it, and sent it flying forward into the hall, where it landed a moment later—landed, indeed, within a foot of the fire which the men had built in the centre of this big place, and about which they had been seated. There followed a blinding flash, a thundering detonation, and then shouts and shrieks and groans, and clouds of dust and falling debris. An instant later, Henri had fallen backward into the gallery, and lay, much as he had lain before, among the bodies of those who had taken part in the fight on the stairway.



CHAPTER XVII

Charge of the Gallant Bretons

Let us for the moment leave Henri and Jules in the centre of the ruins of Fort Douaumont, and return for a few brief seconds to that gallant yet dangerously small force of Frenchmen, who, until this moment, had been fighting to check the advance of the Germans about the town of Verdun.

Five days of the most terrific fighting had passed. Five days of incessant bombardment from massed German guns, which had literally blown the defenders out of their trenches. And during those few days, when the French lines to the north of the salient and to the east of the River Meuse were driven in till they rested near Vacherauville, on the Meuse, and ran from thence to Thiaumont and Douaumont Fort and Vaux, and so back to the Meuse again, French efforts had not been confined alone to local fighting.

On the very first day, indeed, what had been strongly suspected before became abundantly apparent, and it was clear that a German attack of unprecedented force and violence on the salient of Verdun was to be expected. The weight of artillery alone which for all those hours had been pouring a torrent of shells on the heights of the Meuse was sufficient to indicate the nature of the German preparations. A thousand guns, directing their missiles on one sector of the long line of trenches wriggling across the north-eastern provinces of France, was no unusual feature of this extraordinary and gigantic warfare, but here there were not one thousand guns alone but many more, many hundreds more, probably even in excess of two thousand; while, moreover, the troops of the Kaiser, debouching from the woods, marching up those ravines giving access to the plateau of Douaumont, and massing behind evergreen firs farther away, as discerned by the air-pilots of our ally, disclosed the fact that those massed guns were to be supported by an equally enormous concentration of troops—a concentration which could have been effected only for one purpose. In short, and in fact, it was clear that this was to be no ordinary attack on the salient of Verdun, but a gigantic offensive—one which would demand a numerous defending force and guns in proportion.

But the movement of troops from one area of the field to another is a comparatively slow process at the best of times, for it must be remembered that, behind the fighting-lines of such an army as opposed the Germans, rails are always more or less congested, while an enormous mass of vehicles ply the roads, bringing up ammunition and food, and hundreds of other articles necessary for the fighters. Time, then, was required in which to gather French forces, and time in which to rush them over the rails, and by motor-transport along the roads, to the neighbourhood of Verdun, and then to push them up to the fighting-line.

Those gallant fellows who had faced the first rush of the Germans, who had stood under a tornado of shells, and who had held on to their positions so desperately, were fighting all the while, not so much to hold the particular positions in which they were, as to gain time, to resist as long as possible, to thwart the enemy in his intentions, to delay his advance, and to keep him away from the main line of defence till such time as reinforcements could reach them. Very gallantly had the thin line of heroes carried out their purpose, holding on, often enough, till they were killed to the last man. They had made the Kaiser's troops pay dearly for every inch of ground; and, whereas the German High Command had confidently expected to reach Verdun within a day or two, five days had passed, and yet, in spite of overwhelming gun-fire and masses of troops, the French had only just retired to their main defensive position.

Douaumont stood on that line. Douaumont, which the Kaiser had told his people was the corner-stone of the salient which he hoped to capture; and Douaumont, as we know, had fallen already to the Brandenburgers. Yet behind Douaumont, behind the Cote du Poivre and the Cote de Talou, there existed yet miles of upland plateau before the city of Verdun could be reached—miles which the Germans must cross before they could hope to complete its capture.

We have seen how, attempting to follow up their drive to the north, the French guns on Mort Homme and Hill 304 had outflanked the Germans, and had driven them from the Cote de Talou and the Cote du Poivre. We have followed their movements later, when, abandoning the drive in a southerly direction over the slopes of the Cote du Poivre, the German war lords caused their armies to swerve to the east to face the fort of Douaumont and to march towards it. Let us anticipate their movements by a little, and say that, having captured the fort—a mere empty and cracked vessel—they found themselves still faced by the French, who had retired only a short distance beyond it; and who, reinforced that very night by the 20th Corps—as dashing a corps as ever existed—counter-attacked with furious energy, and advanced their lines till they surrounded the captured fort on three sides, and held, indeed, a portion of the interior. There, in that position, they dug themselves in firmly, and though the Germans continued to attack that portion of the line with a fury never before exceeded, and with utter disregard of the losses they suffered, not for weeks did they so much as dent it. Like the Cote de Talou, and the approaches from the north, Douaumont and the neighbouring trenches defied them; and, tiring, as it were, of the venture in that direction, yet determined as ever to capture Verdun and the salient, they once more changed their line of attack. Crossing the Meuse, they flung their details against the Mort Homme and Hill 304, hoping to capture those positions and sweep away the guns which enfiladed the Cote du Poivre. The removal of these would allow them to continue that advance from the north which threatened to shorten the base of the salient and to capture its defenders.

If we were to venture to describe every attack made by the Germans, every gallant defence of the French poilus, and the course in detail of the terrific conflict which raged—and, indeed, still rages as we write—round the salient of Verdun, we should require a multiplicity of chapters. For, indeed, foiled at the outset by the failure of their giant attack to do more than drive the French on to their main positions, in spite of the huge advantage of a surprise effected on the 21st February, and forced, as it were, by public opinion—the opinion of Germans at home, of their Austrian allies, and of every neutral country in the world—the Kaiser's war lords kept desperately at the task of subduing the salient. Not one, but dozens of assaults were made either upon the Mort Homme and Hill 304 positions, or upon the plateau of Douaumont, extending at times to the farm of Thiaumont, and later, after weeks and weeks of conflict, to the fort of Vaux and the trenches south of it. The most gigantic attack on any one position that has ever been recorded in the history of the world was accompanied by other facts hitherto never seen in warfare.

The hosts of German troops concentrated on the face of the salient approached at times three-quarters of a million, and needed constant replenishment; for French 75's, machine-gun and rifle-fire bit deep into the ranks, and soldiers—hundreds of them, nay, thousands—fell, till the slopes leading to Mort Homme and to the gentle wooded heights of the Meuse became a mere shambles. Four months of fighting, indeed, found General Joffre and his brave troops still holding the line, still selling inches of the hills when the pressure became too great or the enemy gun-fire too fierce to be withstood—selling those inches at a price which can only be termed grisly and exorbitant—and now and again counter-attacking, when pressure from the enemy had forced them to yield ground of vital value.

Yes, after four months of terrific fighting, Verdun, that sleepy old town down by the River Meuse, and the lines of trenches surrounding it which formed that historic salient of which we have written, were still in the hands of the French, still denied the Germans; while the losses inflicted upon the latter, the increasing pressure of the British, now in crowded ranks along the Western Front—so crowded, indeed, that already a fourth army had taken over lines from the French, thus yielding reserves for further fighting at Verdun—that increasing pressure and a sudden brilliantly successful offensive on the part of the Russians in Galicia were putting the Kaiser and his war lords in a sad predicament. They, too, needed reserves: reserves to feed those horrible gaps at Verdun; reserves to march against the British Front; reserves to rail to Russia, there, if it were possible, to stem the tide of Muscovite troops pouring through the broken Austrian lines on their way to Vienna and Berlin.

Let us leave the combatants there to return to Jules and Henri. Pandemonium reigned in that huge battered hall of the fort of Douaumont when the bomb which Henry had thrown had done its work in the midst of the Germans. The fire hitherto burning so cheerfully in the centre of the darkened hall was scattered in every quarter, leaving glowing embers in odd corners and crannies. Had there been more light upon the surroundings, many of the men, seated but a moment or so before, would have been seen stretched on the ground, killed by the explosion. That big officer, who, still chuckling, had looked on at the preparations for Jules's execution, might have been seen leaning against the outer wall of the fort, his tunic torn and burned, a red pool collecting on the flags beside him, his jaw dropped, his eyes wide open, insensible and dying. And of Max, that little snappy officer, not a sign would have been found. For, like every surviving man who had stood in the hall, he had bolted. A hand gripped Jules suddenly, as he lay gasping against the wall.

"Who's that?" he demanded breathlessly. "Hands off, or I'll choke you," and, shaken though he was by the explosion, he prepared to throw himself upon the individual who had accosted him.

"Jules, is that you, Jules?" came a feeble voice, and almost at the same moment a heavy form flopped down beside him and straightway rolled across him.

It was Henri, as unconscious at that instant as was the big German, chuckling but a minute earlier.

"Henri!" Jules shouted; "Henri, what's happened? Are you killed like the rest of them?"

Evidently the gallant Henri was nothing of the sort, for, opening his eyes and staring out into the darkness, he growled a denial.

"Dead? Not much! but soon shall be if we stay here long enough for those fellows to bring lights," he grumbled. "If they bring lights they'll get us, and then——"

"You needn't mention the rest of the details. Pull yourself together!" Jules told him. "Here, wait a moment!"

Freeing himself from the dead weight of his chum, he dashed across the hall, feeling giddy and shaken by the explosion, and, scrambling on hands and knees amongst the bodies lying around the spot where the fire had been burning, he soon secured a water-bottle, and, hastening back, first dashed some of the contents into Henri's face, and then lifted the metal cup to his lips and let him drain it.

"Wanted that—eh?" he asked, having himself gulped down a draught. "Let's have another. Now, here we are! My word, what a bust-up! How did it happen? I saw you over there, just outside the hall, and wondered whether you'd do anything. You did—eh? Was that your bomb? Tell me about it."

Henri scoffed at him—scoffed angrily.

"Let's take a seat in the very centre, search for food, and sit down to a leisurely dinner," he said, his voice choked with satire. "Better still, let's ring a bell, if there's one, and ask that Max individual to come in and join us; he'd enjoy it, wouldn't he?"

"The demon! He'd have shot me in another minute. But still, here we are!"

"And the sooner we get out of it the better. That water's made me feel far better, and I can stand now, I believe. Yes, giddy a bit, but I can still stick to my pins, and that's something. What do we do—eh? Here, pull off the uniforms of a couple of these fellows, they'll not miss them, and let's change clothes as quickly as we can. Don't forget, too, that once we've changed we are Germans—Brandenburgers, 6th Brigade fellows, who've attacked the fort and helped to capture it. No more French after we've got into our disguises."

The suggestion came glibly enough, and sounded extremely simple; yet when the two—shaken after that terrific fight on the stairway, and once again by the explosion which Henri had manoeuvred—came to attempt the task they found it almost beyond them, for your German, as a general rule, is of no mean stature. Even in days when rations may be reduced owing to the British blockade, which holds up supplies destined for the German Empire, German recruits are still plump and fat, and Brandenburgers not less so than their fellows. Thus the task of turning dead men over and filching their garments, hard enough in any case, was made more difficult in the darkness, particularly so for young fellows such as Jules and Henri, who were not stoutly built like the Germans.

"Slip on any sort of an old coat and helmet at first," Henri advised, "then if that Max comes back we can push our way in amongst the bodies of the fallen, and he'll be none the wiser. Later, when we have the opportunity, we can make a more leisurely search, and perhaps we shall be lucky in finding garments that fit us."

It was a fortunate thing, indeed, that they decided on such a plan. For as they went about the hall, stooping over the bodies of the fallen, endeavouring to select and discover clothes likely to suit their own stature, a loud order was heard from behind the battered end of the hall, and presently some twenty men inarched in, the short and snappy officer leading them.

"Pull out the fellows who are still alive, or not too seriously injured," he commanded. "Leave the dead till later on. Now hurry!"

Parties of stretcher-bearers followed the soldiers, and, starting at once, began to bend over the fallen forms lying about the hall, turning men over, dragging the dead aside, and lifting those who were wounded out of the mass. Coming to a distant corner, not so far indeed from the exit leading to the stairway which Jules and Henri had defended, a party of bearers discovered a pack of Germans lying in all directions, their limbs stretched in the most fantastic postures, some on their sides, their heads resting on an arm as if they were sleeping; others on their faces, their arms doubled up beneath them; and others, again, on their backs, stiff and stark already.

"Dead!" said the commander of the party, a junior non-commissioned officer. "On one side with him!"

"Dead!" repeated one of the bearers, leaning over another figure. "Here, he's not a big man, I can manage him single-handed."

"As dead as any," cried a third, and seemed quite jovial about it. "Here we are! He's no weight at all—quite a puny fellow for a Brandenburger."

They dragged perhaps half a dozen bodies away from the corner to the far wall, and laid them in a row beside others already collected; then, gathering up the wounded and carrying them outside, they returned again, completing their task after some few minutes.

"Light up!" Max, that short and snappy German officer, commanded. "Get a fire going, and let us resume the meal. One moment though! Have any of you seen a sign of those Frenchmen—the two whom we were about to shoot?"

"One there, sir," came the answer, while a bearer holding a torch lit up that part of the hall by the wall against which Jules and his fellow-prisoner had been stationed. "He's dead—a piece of masonry, dislodged by the explosion, fell on him."

Max seized the torch from the man, and, striding forward, bent over the figure of the poilu, and, turning the body with his foot—for this German was an individual possessed of little feeling, indeed a heartless wretch, a callous fellow—he placed the torch nearer, and stared at the face of the Frenchman.

"Burr! Not my man! And no one has seen the other?"

"No one!"

"Then we will wait till morning and search the place. Now, let the men turn to at their meal. Sergeant, wake me in an hour's time, when I will go round and inspect the sentries."

Gradually the fire in the centre of the hall died down, while men nodded as they sat on blocks of fallen masonry, or on forms which had been dragged into the hall. Darkness slowly penetrated to every corner of the place and almost hid the Germans. Then a figure stirred, one of the dead sat up slowly and nudged another of the dead beside him. One of the nodding figures seated upon a form on the far side of the fire yawned, stretching his arms widely, kicked the ashes from the dying embers with a heavy boot, and looked about him. Then his hair rose on his head, while his eyes protruded in the most horrible manner. Perspiration dropped from his forehead, his hands shook, and his limbs trembled, as he gaped at those two dead figures sitting up and regarding him closely.

"Dead men sit up and look at me! Dead men!" he spluttered, and slowly rose to his feet.

There was a frozen look on the wretch's face now, and he kept his eyes on those two figures as if he had no power to turn them away, as if, like a serpent, they fascinated him. Then of a sudden he gave vent to a loud scream and dashed from the hall, upsetting his comrades as he did so.

"Down! Dead men again! Lower! What a business!" groaned Jules as he flopped himself on to the flags once more, his face turned towards Henri.

"S—s—sh! Shut up! They are all on their feet again. Confound that fellow! It was bad luck his suddenly looking up and finding us sitting here staring at him. We've got to move," whispered Henri.

"Soon too," Jules told him, "precious soon. My, isn't that Max in a rage, and aren't the lot of them bothered!"

Yet not so bothered that the noise which followed that piercing scream did not subside quickly. After all, screams were not unusual in those days of strenuous combat, when Germans were driven to the assault, time and again, and death and destruction were so near them—that terrible shell-fire which smote them from the missiles of the French 75's, the raking hail of bullets from machine-guns, the detonation of exploding missiles, the roar, the crash, the smoke, the ever-present danger. All had told on the nerves, not of one man here and there, but on hundreds of the Kaiser's soldiers. Men went mad in those days of attack on Douaumont, just as they went mad in the onslaught at Ypres in October, 1914; just, indeed, as they had lost their reason during other terrible periods. Yes, your German war lord is no sympathetic commander. Losses, frightful losses, do not frighten or trouble him so long as he is reasonably sure of obtaining his objective.

And German losses had been frightful enough in all conscience since the war started. Those losses were telling upon the German ranks now—had been telling for a considerable period—and were likely in the months coming, towards the end of 1916, to tell so severely, that it might be beyond the power of the Central Empires to hold their lines any longer. Yes, men went mad often enough, and no doubt the man in question was another such unfortunate individual.

"Confound him!" growled Max. "Why didn't he get shot as we came to the fort, or in the attack on that stairway? What's he want to disturb our rest for when we want every minute of rest we can get? for soon those Frenchmen will be returning. Turn in again, you men. We'll search for that rascal in the morning."

But would they? For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French trenches—the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of Douaumont—that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.

"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to join them'."



CHAPTER XVIII

A Sinister German

What a sight that 20th French Corps—those noble Bretons—would have presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont! Filled with elan, determined to throw the invader backward, stung by the loss of trenches which had been French but a little while before, and eager beyond all words to bring assistance to that gallant yet sadly-thinned line which had staved off the Kaiser's hordes, this 20th Corps—the first of the reserves which General Petain had been able to rush to the scene of action—hurled itself impetuously at the Germans. Star-shells burst into flame overhead, showing dashing poilus, flickered from the tips of bayonets and lit up the smoke from exploding shells, where a canopy of it hung about the devoted heads of that gallant corps. In the darkness, in the fitful light cast by those shells, now and again augmented by the flashing beams of an electric search-light, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place.

The line of Bretons was halted for a few moments as it met the Germans, it wavered, perhaps, here and there just a trifle, and then it swept on as a flood sweeps down a road, washing the debris of the 6th Brigade of the Brandenburg Corps before it, submerging hundreds, and trampling not a few into the mud and into the pit-holes and craters dug everywhere by German shells.

"They come! A counter-attack! Prepare to receive the enemy!"

It was Max, that snappy little German officer, who gave the command and called his men about him.

"Man every loophole! And hold on at whatever cost! You—you are fit to fight," he suddenly snapped, turning upon one of the wounded wretches who had suffered from that explosion caused by the bomb tossed by Henri. "You are skulking, my friend. Up! Seize a rifle! Get to your loophole!"

The man staggered. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothing torn and tattered after the explosion, with one arm swinging loose in its sleeve. He looked at this peremptory officer in dazed fashion. Indeed, like Henri and Jules, he had been more than half stunned, and his wits were still wool-gathering.

"Seize a rifle! Go to a loophole, eh?" he ejaculated.

"Fool! Yes! Fight—fight for your life; fight for your Fatherland!" Max shouted at him. "Here—here's a rifle," he went on, tearing one from beneath the body of a fallen soldier, and handing it to him. "Now off with you, at once!"

"At once? Fight at once?" the man stammered, while those who watched, even in that fitful light—for the fire built by the officer in the far corner was still burning—noticed that a dribble of blood was oozing from the corner of his lips, "but, sir——" he began.

"No 'buts'!" bellowed Max at him; "to your duty!"

The man gripped weakly at the rifle, turned obediently to carry out the order, and then, staggering a pace or two, fell full length on the floor.

"Bah! A bad choice then! Well, one makes mistakes," Max said, a grim smile on his face. "But you," he called, selecting another individual seated on the ground, his back resting against the wall—a man whose pallid face told that he was suffering—"you get up and go about your duty."

As if determined that there should be no error and no backsliding, no hesitation in this case, he applied his boot to the unfortunate individual, and drove him from his position. "Now, you, and you, and you! About your business! Get to your duty!"

Henri and Jules came in for his attentions, for they had crept away from that hideous row of dead, and both gaped at him for a while in open-mouthed amazement, wondering, indeed, whether they were discovered, wondering in a half-bewildered sort of way what they ought to do. For still Henri's ears buzzed, and still his brain reeled; not so much from the explosion—for the wall separating the hall from the corridor outside had sheltered him not a little, but reeling from the effects of his tumble downstairs and the mad melee which had taken place there. As for Jules, the fellow was quite light-headed, for the bomb had sent him backward against the wall with a crash, and he too had taken his share in that desperate fight at the top of the stairway. He began to giggle, which was a way Jules had, and Max, happening to catch sight of him at the moment, and stung to fury by such mirth on the part of one of his men, by such a sign of insubordination, smote him across the face, little realizing that the one he struck was the same man, that very prisoner, whom he had struck not so long before, and whom he would willingly have executed.

"Come along!" Henri managed to whisper to his chum. "Better to be taken for Germans than to be discovered in our disguises. Let's get hold of rifles and take our post at some loophole. Those were French shouts we heard, and it may be that we shall have an opportunity of joining our people."

"And in any case one needn't fire into our fellows," responded Jules, his face still smarting from the blow that Max had dealt him. "But listen, Henri; if I get a chance I'll kill that fellow. Better still, if I get a chance I'll capture the brute, and carry him back to our lines, where he can be tried for offering violence to prisoners. Crikey! How wobbly a fellow feels! My feet are too big and too clumsy for anything."

It was a sorry band which obeyed the peremptory order of the bullying German. Men staggered across the littered floor of that hall, steering their way between fallen blocks of masonry and wounded men damaged by the explosion of Henri's making. Passing through the exit, they clambered over the bodies of the fallen Germans who lay thickly at the foot of the stairway, and across the bodies, too, of many a gallant Frenchman. Then, directed by the bullying Max, they climbed the stairway or went along the gallery, and presently were manning the embrasures through which the guns of the fortress of Douaumont—when it was indeed a fortress—commanded the surrounding country. Flashes could be seen through those embrasures—flashes close at hand, and others farther distant—while the air was torn and rent by the crash of distant guns, by the detonation of exploding shells, and by the sharp snap and rattle of musketry. There were yells, too—shouts of terror from the Brandenburgers, now being driven back towards the fortress, and the bellows of excited and triumphant men wresting ground from them.

"Keep an eye round you," Henri told Jules, for the two were posted at one embrasure, and no one else was in the chamber. "What's to prevent a fellow lowering himself from this point and joining our fellows? A rope is what is wanted, but it's a plaguey thing to find in such a place and at such a moment. Hold on here, Jules, while I go skirmishing."

Staggering away from his comrade, Henri reached the head of the stairway and clambered down it, leaning against the side wall with both hands, for his feet were terribly uncertain. Then, reaching the gallery below, he turned along it, and in a little while, was within easy reach of the hall in which he and Jules had been lying, when suddenly the noise outside increased. There was a rush of steps somewhere near at hand, a crashing explosion as a bomb was thrown through an embrasure somewhere beyond him, and then a torrent of figures poured into the place—a torrent of gesticulating, shouting Frenchmen, of gallant Bretons, who had won their way to the western edge of the fortress. Lamps appeared, and flaring torches too were brought in by the soldiers, who at once proceeded to search that part of Douaumont.

In a dream, as it were, shaken by what he had gone through, and overcome somewhat by the sight and sound of friends, Henri had tumbled to the floor again, as he heard an officer give vent to a sharp order.

"Drive the fellows on before you as far as you can," he shouted, "then build up barricades across every corridor and gallery, and hold them off till we can get more men in here and drive them out of the fortress altogether. Bomb them, mes enfants! Blow them out of the place! Douaumont belongs to France, and not to the Kaiser."

Yes, in a dream, Henri heard the words, and tried to raise his shaken figure, tried his utmost to join them; and in a dream, too, he watched the Bretons as they moved rapidly about and obeyed those orders. It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later, perhaps only a few minutes, but more likely half an hour after their first appearance, that, still in the same hazy sort of way, still somewhat in dreamland, his head whirling and his ears singing, Henri became aware of a strange fact, a fact, however, which hardly struck him as peculiar at that moment, that a man not far from him—one of those corpses stretched in the gallery and illuminated by a torch thrust into a crevice of the masonry not far away—was moving, was lifting his head craftily, was creeping along over other bodies, and was peering round corners and watching the Bretons.

"Strange!" thought Henri. "What on earth can the fellow be doing? And—Christopher! He's not a Frenchman!"

That indeed was a peculiar thing; and, still in the same dazed sort of way, Henri watched and wondered.

"Not a Frenchman," he was telling himself, "then a German, and I don't know—yes, I do believe I know—the figure. Small, eh? Dressed in field-grey, yet not the usual sort of uniform. Who is he? What is the fellow? Well, I never!"

In ordinary times Henri would have made up his mind in an instant, would have acted promptly, and would have taken in the situation without a moment's hesitation. But now, what with that horrible feeling of nausea which assailed him, what with his miserable brain, which reeled and buzzed and whirled, making vision almost impossible and hearing almost out of the question, he could not, try as he would, collect his scattered wits. Indeed, he had no energy left with which to make any sort of an effort; he just gaped, smiled, and certainly grimaced at that crawling figure. He knew he was an enemy, knew that the man he watched boded no good to his comrades, and knew also that the fellow represented some subtle form of danger. Yet he could not move, could do no more than gape and grin and grimace, and could not properly realize the meaning of the situation. Then suddenly he started, for another crawling figure came from behind him, and a hand gripped his hand sharply.

"You, Henri! You here! And did not return! Why, you're sick! You're half stunned still!"

It was Jules, who, finding that his chum did not return, had descended to the gallery to find him, and, coming upon him stretched there amongst the dead, noticed, with the help of a flickering torch, that Henri's head hung, that perspiration dropped from his forehead, and that his face was deadly white and pallid. Yet his coming seemed suddenly to rouse Henri; for the latter's drooping eyelids opened widely at once, a frown crossed his forehead, and in a moment he had seized Jules's hand, and, tugging it, indicated that he was to lie down beside him.

"S—s—h!"

"What's up?" demanded Jules hoarsely.

"Down!" whispered Henri; for at that moment the figure he had been watching, and which had stretched itself flat like one of the dead, doubtless because a Frenchman was approaching, had now begun to rise stealthily. "Look!" he whispered, pointing, and then watched Jules's face as the latter fixed his eyes upon that figure.

Henri noticed at once—and it was remarkable how his wits were assembling now that Jules had stimulated them—that Jules's eyes started, that an intent look came into them promptly, while something approaching a scowl gathered on his features.

"That man!" he heard him exclaim, and then watched as his friend flopped down amongst the dead and lay as close as possible. Then together the two watched as that German crept on still farther. A minute later and he had turned where the gallery swept round the corner of the fort abruptly and proceeded in another direction. Following promptly, creeping across the bodies of the fallen, or finding their way between them when they could—for it was not exactly nice to kneel upon the forms of men who, to whatever side they had belonged, had died fighting—Henri and Jules too turned that corner, only to find themselves now in almost complete darkness, with no light to guide them, with not a sound to tell them of the whereabouts of that sinister German, and nothing to indicate his presence.

"Stop! Let's wait and listen."

Henri's hand went out and gripped Jules's sleeve, while the two came to a halt at once, sitting up on their haunches, as it were, and peered into the darkness and listened—peered till Henri's bloodshot eyes positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon his ear-drums.

"Bah!" He felt that old nausea, and felt horribly giddy, and was forced to stretch his hands forward and lean upon them to support his weight, while everything went round and round, and, strangely enough, instead of darkness surrounding him, a thousand flashes appeared before his eyes. Jules coughed. With all his light-heartedness he was an observant and wonderfully sympathetic fellow, particularly where Henri was concerned, and now had double reason for showing him attention. Putting his arm round Henri's waist, he supported him for a while.

"Pull yourself together, Henri," he said, "for we've got to go on in a little while and trap that beggar. What's he up to? Some dirty game, you may be sure. For he's a German, don't forget, and don't forget, either, what Stuart would have said——"

"Stuart!" gurgled Henri, trying to laugh. "That good fellow! Stuart?"

"A splendid beggar!" agreed Jules. "He'd have said, bluntly enough, that every German was a dirty beggar, wouldn't he?"

Henri chortled. Somehow or other Jules had a wonderful way of stirring up his old friend, of "bucking him up", to use a slang expression; and now, just the mention of the gallant Stuart, that very breezy, hefty Englishman, fixed Henri's wandering thoughts for a moment on a far more pleasant subject, and seemed to help to steady his reeling brain, and first set him giggling and then laughing merrily.

"You'll think I'm an old woman," he told Jules at last, shaking himself like a dog.

"Indeed! Like an old woman? Well, now, old women don't usually fight terrific combats at the top of a stone stairway, and finally tumble headlong down that same stairway locked in the arms of a German. Polite old women don't do their utmost to strangle the subjects of the Kaiser; now do they, Henri? And, besides—of course this is only a very small matter—such old women as you have mentioned don't, when they've got a chance to escape the notice of such sinister gentlemen as we have been associating with lately—I mean that Max beggar and his Brandenburg fellows, who would shoot a helpless prisoner—such old bodies don't as a rule, mind you, get hold of a bomb and sling it amongst them.

"It was fine—fine!" Jules told his chum, stretching out a hand and gripping Henri's energetically.

"Oh, rot!" Henri contrived to stutter. He was getting quite indignant now. "What utter nonsense you are talking! As if any old woman would fight a German!"

"Just so! That's why I retorted when you asked me if, or rather suggested that, I thought that you were one."

"Look here!" began Henri, quite nettled, and becoming increasingly impatient, whereat Jules grinned. Indeed, it was his turn to be amused, for intuitively in the darkness he had guessed at Henri's condition; and knowing already how shaken he was, how nearly on the verge of unconsciousness, he had racked his brain for some method which might revive him. Stimulants, water, food, things of that sort, were out of the question; words alone could be employed, and somehow the clever Jules had contrived to pick the proper subject. The mention of Stuart, then, had helped to revive his friend; and now mention of Henri's gallantry had made the owner of that name quite indignant.

"Utter rot!" shouted Henri again; "as if slinging a bomb was dangerous; and as if——"

"There's one thing you can't deny," said Jules; "it saved my life, as it was designed to do, and I've not forgotten. But how d'you feel? Better, eh? Don't forget that we've lost sight of that German."

As if Henri had ever forgotten it since he had seen the lithe, cunning figure of the Brandenburger creeping in front of him. True, in that curious state in which he had been—a state bordering on unconsciousness—he had hardly been able to appreciate at times the significance of the German's presence; but now he had wakened fully to its importance.

"Jingo," he told Jules as they squatted there in the darkness, "we must find the beggar! He's armed, without a doubt; and, worse than all, he's behind our fellows, for they've gone forward into the fort. What's to prevent him shooting 'em in the back? What's to prevent him carrying on any sort of vileness? We've got to follow at once, and, by hook or by crook, we've got to capture or kill the beggar."

"Whichever you like—either will suit me," Jules responded; "and in any case, if he's caught, it'll come to the same thing. Once we've marched him back behind our lines, and handed him over as a prisoner, he'll be shot, my boy. We can prove that he would have deliberately shot a prisoner; so it seems to me that, if we meet the gentleman, the best thing will be to end the matter promptly. But we've got to find him first, and perhaps he'll have something to say when it comes to a question of shooting."

Max, that sinister Brandenburger officer, was indeed likely enough to have a considerable amount to say in the question of his own disposal. Knowing the class of man he was—his fearlessness, for that seemed to be his one virtue; his frightfulness, for bullying and terrible deeds seemed to be the characteristic of every subject of the Kaiser—it was likely enough that this fellow would do anything to outwit the Frenchmen, and, if he could, would shatter the fort and bring it down upon his own head rather than see the French victorious.

"Stop! Wait a moment! I heard something move! Come on!" said Jules suddenly.

And together, creeping on hands and knees, the two went forward along that gallery in search of the German.



CHAPTER XIX

Heroic "Poilus"

Who can describe the condition of affairs in the shattered fort of Douaumont on that night when the gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps hurled themselves against the captors of the position? The whole of the fighting round the salient of Verdun since that eventful 21st February—now seemingly so long ago, for so much had happened, yet in reality less than a week—had been marked by the incessant thunder of guns, the continuous detonations of exploding shells, the intermittent rattle of machine-guns, and by the crescendoes of rifle-fire mingled with the shouts and shrieks of men, the cheers of triumphant attackers, and the grim, hoarse commands of officers leading their sections.

There had been many a silent, yet grimly ferocious struggle with the bayonet; when men stood outside their trenches or struggled with the enemy in what remained of their battered positions. Such scenes we know had taken place inside the fort of Douaumont, for had not Jules and Henri participated in such an adventure on the stairway? And now they were being repeated—those scenes—in many an odd part of that fortress.

Bursting in by a gateway to the west, the Bretons forced their way forward; while the Brandenburgers, beating a hasty retreat, threw up barricades and fought for them. Thus, as Henri and his chum crept along that gallery, comparatively silent for the moment, for the fight had drifted forward, and the Brandenburgers were holding a position farther to the east of the fortress, they came within sound of the combatants, and heard the shouts of men and the crack of rifles. Yet never a sight did they catch of Max, the German, though here and there torches threw a fitful gleam about the masonry.

"Then on!" said Henri, now rising to his feet and staggering forward. "Where's the beggar gone to? And what's he up to?"

"Can't say. Perhaps he's merely trying to escape; or more likely he's trying to join his own people, for you can tell quite easily that they are still holding a portion of the fort."

Yet to follow in the tracks of the German was an impossibility; for, let us explain, the interior of a fortress such as Douaumont is not so planned as to make progress easy and direct at the best of times. Such a place is designedly erected in sections, so that, should one portion suffer capture, the others may be held intact; while often enough such works are constructed so that one portion of the fortress commands by its fire the works immediately surrounding and attached to it. That gallery, then, did not run in a straight line for long: it curved abruptly to the left just as it had done before at the point where the German contrived to evade our heroes. It dropped down a flight of steps, and opened into a wide hallway much like that other in which Jules and Henri had already seen some adventure; and from this hall galleries led off, some reached by means of stairways, and others once barred by doors, now for the most part lying blackened and shattered on the flags which floored the galleries.

"Which way? Which one? How can a chap choose?" cried Henri peevishly, running the fingers of one hand through his matted hair, and looking from one to the other of the openings.

"A conundrum," smiled Jules, though he looked grim enough as Henri stared at him. "And those German shells have not made the question any the easier, have they? Who knows? The beggar may have disappeared down this hole, and one almost hopes so."

Gripping a torch suspended in a crevice between two fallen blocks of stone, he stepped towards a huge, jagged hole near the end of the hall, and held the flaming torch over it. Beneath there was a pit, with crumbling earth sides, and at the bottom a mass of shattered stonework and debris. Then, holding the torch overhead, he pointed upwards, and, glancing there, Henri saw a corresponding hole with jagged edges, through which the ponderous shells had entered. There, indeed, displayed at their feet, and just above them, was as fine an example as could well be discovered of the work of modern shells—of shells of huge calibre—projected by guns of such weight that weeks are required to move them, and filled with such a mass of high explosives that little can resist them. Indeed, let one of the huge projectiles sent by those German or Austrian howitzers hit fairly upon some building, and, be it a church—their favourite objective—a peasant's cottage, a convent, or even a mass of concrete and steel—such as, for instance, a modern fortress, such as, indeed, this fortress of Douaumont—and the result was likely to be little different. Destruction followed in the wake of those ponderous shells, and wreckage resulted. Here, then, before Henri and Jules, was displayed direct evidence of the wisdom which had caused General Joffre to dismantle every fort round the city of Verdun, and to convert the salient into an ordinary defensive position. A fortress might, and indeed would, be smashed by German artillery; but trenches were more movable, more replaceable, objects, and the picks and spades of poilus could easily repair damage.

"Nice little hole—eh?" smiled Jules. "But I don't see any sign of that German."

"Nor I. Let's get on. I've an uneasy feeling in my mind that he's up to some particularly vile sort of mischief. Let's push on," said Henri.

"And which way?"

"Which way? Any way! Straight ahead! The noise of rifles is getting closer, so that any way is likely to lead to the spot we're seeking."

"Then you think he has gone towards the fighting?" asked Jules.

"Yes!" came abruptly from Henri. "He's sneaking up behind our fellows, I feel sure. From what I've seen of this Max, this German, I feel positive that he'll think of escape last of all. To do him bare credit, he'll consider his own safety only when he's done his worst to our people. Let's push on! We've got to get to the beggar."

Glancing about them doubtfully for a second or two, they finally chose a central opening, only to be forced to turn back when they had progressed a dozen yards, for a fall of masonry blocked egress. Returning, therefore, to the hall, they skirted the edge of that giant pit the shell had burrowed through the flooring, and entered another gallery, where, attracted by loud shouts ahead and by heavy firing, they pushed on as fast as they were able.

Meanwhile; outside, the combat had for the moment subsided, for the dash of the 20th Corps of those gallant Bretons had taken them right up to the trenches hitherto held by that thin band of noble poilus who had sustained and held off the first German onslaught. The Bretons, indeed, were now repairing, in furious haste, and consolidating the trenches running along the edge of the plateau of Douaumont right up to the eastern corner of the fort, almost, in fact, surrounding the fortress and cutting it off from the Germans.

Yet a portion of the works projected beyond them to the east, and there an underground passage gave shelter to the Brandenburgers, and, indeed, allowed the enemy to reinforce their troops still holding a portion of the interior. Elsewhere there was little fighting; for on the Cote du Poivre and the Cote de Talou no German attack was possible, French guns on Mort Homme and Hill 304 still commanding every avenue of approach, and already having given the Germans practical, if dreadful, evidence of their deadly work. But along the whole line shells still plunged about the positions held by our allies, and, as the snowflakes whirled and the wind swept first from this quarter and then from another, the distant thud of cannon came in one low, continuous, muttering roar, which never stopped, and which for seven days now had gone on practically without intermission.

Pushing along that gallery, stumbling over blocks of fallen stone, and every once and again coming upon the bodies of fallen Brandenburgers, Henri and Jules at length reached a part where the gallery broadened out, and where the sound of combat was louder. In the distance they could see moving figures and the flash of rifles, while every few seconds there was a dull thud or a curious scuttling noise on the walls of the gallery as bullets flew by them. Then, as they drew nearer, the faint light shed by another torch showed them a number of Bretons sheltering behind an opening which led on eastward, while others lay full length on the floor, their packs in front of them to protect them. A glance into the room on the left—a store-room, no doubt, in which shells had been piled in other days—disclosed a number of wounded Frenchmen in the care of members of their ambulance corps, while, almost opposite, was another room packed with Bretons waiting to reinforce their friends when called for. Yet there was no sign of the German.

"Strange!" thought Henri. "Then where can he have gone? Surely he has not slipped from the fort elsewhere?"

"Hist! I thought I saw some fellow moving along there at the top of that flight of stairs," Jules said suddenly, pointing to the right just behind the room occupied by the Bretons in reserve, where stone steps led upward to another corridor, which itself gave entrance to another row of gun-chambers.

Darting to the foot of the stairway, Henri and Jules began to climb it cautiously and as noiselessly as possible; not that they had much to fear from noise, for, what with the shouts of the combatants and the sharp crack of rifles, rendered all the louder by the containing walls and masonry, there was little chance of their footsteps being heard. Then, too, there were the voices of those French reserves, those gallant and gay-hearted little Bretons of the 20th Corps, assembled in that room to their right, waiting till their comrades had cleared the way before them, or until a shrill whistle should call them to dash to the attack. The last peep which Henri had obtained of them had shown those very cheerful and collected individuals seated on the floor smoking heavily, chatting and laughing uproariously, as if, indeed, they were gathered miles away from the conflict, and as if fighting, and bullets, and sudden death were things of no consequence whatever.

"Hist!" Jules gripped his friend's arm again and pointed.

It was not so light in this higher gallery, and for a while it was almost impossible to make out their surroundings. But Jules had seen something, and presently Henri, too, caught a fleeting vision of a man's figure—a figure which stooped, and which crept along the farther wall, perhaps some fifty feet from them. More than that, there came a glimpse of the face of this individual on which a few scattered beams of the torches, smoking and flaring down below, happened to fall.

"Max! That German scoundrel!" he whispered to Jules. "What's he up to? Certainly not trying to make his escape. Let's close in on him."

They crept to the top of the stairs and along the gallery, their pulses fluttering not a little. For intuitively they realized that they had a struggle before them. And yet, judge of their disappointment, now that they had reached this higher gallery, for to all appearance it was empty. It was so dark up there that a man might have stood within ten paces of them and not have been discovered, while any sound he made would have been drowned quite easily. However, Henri pressed on cautiously, bent almost double, one hand against the wall to guide him, while Jules came immediately behind him, peering over his chum's shoulder. Then, when they had covered perhaps twenty feet or more, both suddenly stopped again—Henri so abruptly that Jules bumped into him.

"There!" Jules heard him say in a hoarse whisper, "There! See him! Watch him! What's he doing?"

Farther on, round an abrupt corner in the gallery, where it skirted the large room down below filled with Breton soldiers, there was a strange illumination, the source of light being uncertain. A moment or two later both those young Frenchmen following the tracks of that sinister German realized that a shaft led up from the room down below, and either the room itself borrowed its light from the gallery which in turn borrowed it from the embrasures and gun-emplacements on the farther side, or the shaft was merely for ventilation purposes. In any case, it was a wide affair, perhaps five feet square, and could the two of them have peered down it they would have discovered that it sloped steeply, and that, looking through it, they could see the happy fellows down below still smoking heavily, still chatting and joking, waiting patiently for the moment when their services would be called for.

And opposite that opening, peering through it, the upper part of his frame illuminated by the torches flaring down below him, was Max—Max, that sinister, dried-up, snappy German officer, who had already on more than one occasion given Henri and Jules some indication of his brutal nature. The man was gripping a heavy bag—a bag which undoubtedly required some effort to lift and handle—and, as he stood with his eyes glued upon the men down below, was slowly extricating some object from the bundle he carried.

"What on earth is it? What's he up to?" Jules asked breathlessly. "He's taking something out of the bag, and is fumbling. Look! He's put the bag down now, and has lifted the something so as to take a good look at it. It—it's——"

"A bomb—a hand-grenade of sorts. The beggar's got a whole bag of 'em! He's——"

They watched, rooted to the spot, as the German lifted that object in one hand till the light from the room below fell upon it. And then, fumbling at its base, presently extracted something. Then they saw him stoop over the heavy bag placed on the floor, lift the flap, and commence to insert the object. It was just then that Henri realized the villainy intended by this ruffian. Perhaps you will say that "all is fair in love and war", and that Henri himself had but a little while before given the Germans an exhibition of bomb-throwing. But that was in order to save his friend about to be executed, about to be murdered, indeed, by this selfsame ruffian. Now, taking a leaf from his book as it were, this Max was preparing a load of bombs to thrust down among the Bretons.

THE END