The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne

THE INVISIBLE HAND

It was a brilliant morning sun, deepening the green of the pleasant land, lighting up villages and glinting off church steeples.  In a field a little distance to their right John saw two peasants at work already, bent over, their eyes upon the ground, apparently as indifferent to the troops as the troops were to them.

It was very early, but the sun was rising fast, unfolding a splendid panorama.  The French army with its blues and reds was more spectacular than the German, and hence afforded a more conspicuous target.  John was sure that if the war went on the French would discard these vivid uniforms and betake themselves to gray or khaki.  He saw clearly that the day of gorgeous raiment for the soldier had passed.

The great puffing sound of primeval monsters which had blended into one rather harmonious note ceased, as if by signal, and the innumerable motors stopped.  As far as John could see the army stretched to left and right over roads, hills and fields, but in the fields behind them the silent peasants went on with their work—­in fields which the Republic had made their own.

“I think we take breakfast here,” said Rougemont.  “War is what one of your famous American generals said it was, but for the present, at least, we are marching de luxe.  Here comes one of those glorious camp-kitchens.”

An enormous motor vehicle, equipped with all the paraphernalia of a kitchen, stopped near them, and men, trim and neatly dressed, served hot food and steaming coffee.  General Vaugirard had alighted also, and John noticed that his step was much more springy and alert than that of some officers half his age.  His breath came in great gusts, and the small portion of his face not covered by thick beard was ruddy and glowing with health.  He drank several cups of coffee with startling rapidity, draining each at a breath, and between times he whistled softly a pleasing little refrain.

The march must be going well.  Undoubtedly General Vaugirard had received satisfactory messages in the night, while his young American aide, and other Frenchmen as young, slept.

“Well, my children,” he said, rubbing his hands after his last cup of coffee had gone to its fate, “the day dawns and behold the sun of France is rising.  It’s not the sun of Austerlitz, but a modest republican sun that can grow and grow.  Behold we are at the appointed place, set forth in the message that came to us from the commander-in-chief through Paris, and then by way of the air!  And, look, my children, the bird from the blue descends once more among us!”

There were flying machines of many kinds in the air, but John promptly picked out one which seemed to be coming with the flight of an eagle out of its uppermost heights.  He seemed to know its slim, lithe shape, and the rapidity and decision of its approach.  His heart thrilled, as it had thrilled when he saw the Arrow coming for the first time on that spur of the Alps near Salzburg.

“It’s for me,” said General Vaugirard, as he looked upward.  “This flying demon, this man without fear, was told to report directly to me, and he conies at the appointed hour.”

Something of the mystery that belongs to the gulf of the infinite was reflected in the general’s eyes.  He, too, felt that man’s flight in the heavens yet had in it a touch of the supernatural.  Lannes’ plane had seemed to shoot from white clouds, out of unknown spaces, and the general ceased to whistle or breathe gustily.  His chest rose and fell more violently than usual, but the breath came softly.

The plane descended rapidly and settled down on the grass very near them.  Lannes saluted and presented a note to General Vaugirard, who started and then expelled the breath from his lungs in two or three prodigious puffs.

“Good, my son, good!” he exclaimed, patting Lannes repeatedly on the shoulder; “and now a cup of coffee for you at once!  Hurry with it, some of you idle children!  Can’t you see that he needs it!”

John was first with the coffee, which Lannes drank eagerly, although it was steaming hot.  John saw that he needed it very much indeed, as he was white and shaky.  He noticed, too, that there were spots of blood on Lannes’ left sleeve.

“What is it, Philip?” he whispered.  “You’ve been attacked again?”

“Aye, truly.  My movements seem to be observed by some mysterious eye.  A shot was fired at me, and again it came from a French plane.  That was all I could see.  We were in a bank of mist at the time, and I just caught a glimpse of the plane itself.  The man was a mere shapeless figure to me.  I had no time to fight him, because I was due here with another message which made vengeance upon him at that time a matter of little moment.”

He flecked the red drops off his sleeve, and added: 

“It was but a scratch.  My weary look comes from a long and hard flight and not from the mysterious bullet.  I’m to rest here an hour, which will be sufficient to restore me, and then I’m off again.”

“Is there any rule against your telling me what you’ve seen, Philip?”

De Rougemont and several other officers had approached, drawn by their curiosity, and interest in Lannes.

“None at all,” he replied in a tone all could hear, “but I’m able to speak in general terms only.  I can’t give details, because I don’t know ’em.  The Germans are not many miles ahead.  They’re in hundreds of thousands, and I hear that this is only one of a half-dozen armies.”

“And our own force?” said de Rougemont eagerly.

Lannes’ chest expanded.  The dramatic impulse was strong upon him again.

“There is another army on our right, and another on our left,” he replied, “and although I don’t know surely, I think there are others still further on the line.  The English are somewhere with us, too.”

John felt his face tingle as the blood rose in it.  He had left a Paris apparently lost.  Within a day almost a tremendous transformation had occurred.  A mighty but invisible intellect, to which he was yet scarcely able to attach a name, had been at work.  The French armies, the beaten and the unbeaten, had become bound together like huge links in a chain, and the same invisible and all but nameless mind was drawing the chain forward with gigantic force.

“A million Frenchmen must be advancing,” he heard Lannes saying, and then he came out of his vision.  General Vaugirard bustled up and gave orders to de Rougemont, who said presently to John: 

“Can you ride a motor cycle?”

“I’ve had some experience, and I’m willing to make it more.”

“Good.  In this army, staff officers will no longer have horses shot under them.  We’re to take orders on motor cycles.  They’ve been sent ahead for us, and here’s yours waiting for you.”

The cycles were leaning against trees, and the members of the staff took their places beside them.  General Vaugirard walked a little distance up the road, climbed into an automobile and, standing up, looked a long time through his glasses.  Lannes, who had been resting on the grass, approached the general and John saw him take a note from him.  Then Lannes went away to the Arrow and sailed off into the heavens.  Many other planes were flying over the French army and far off in front John saw through his own glasses a fleet of them which he knew must be German.

Then he heard a sound, faint but deep, which came rolling like an echo, and he recognized it as the distant note of a big gun.  He quivered a little, as he leaned against his motor cycle, but quickly stiffened again to attention.  The faint rolling sound came again from their right and then many times.  John, using his glasses, saw nothing there, and the giant general, still standing up in the car and also using his glasses, saw nothing there either.

Yet the same quiver that affected John had gone through this whole army of two hundred thousand men, one of the huge links in the French chain.  There was none among them who did not know that the far note was the herald of battle, not a mere battle of armies, but of nations face to face.

General Vaugirard did not show any excitement.  He leaped lightly from the car, and then began to pace up and down slowly, as if he were awaiting orders.  The men moved restlessly on the meadows, looking like a vast sea of varied colors, as the sun glimmered on the red and blue of their uniforms.

But no order came for them to advance.  John thought that perhaps they were saved to be driven as a wedge into the German center and whispered his belief to de Rougemont, who agreed with him.

“They are opening on the left, too,” said the Frenchman.  “Can’t you hear the growling of the guns there?”

John listened and soon he separated the note from other sounds.  Beyond a doubt the battle had now begun on both flanks, though at distant points.  He wondered where the English force was, though he had an idea that it was on the left then.  Yet he was already thoroughly at home with the staff of General Vaugirard.

The growling on either side of them seemed soon to come a little closer, but John knew nevertheless that it was many miles away.

“Not an enemy in sight, not even a trace of smoke,” said de Rougemont to him.  “We seem to be a great army here, merely resting in the fields, and yet we know that a huge battle is going on.”

“And that’s about all we do know,” said John.  “What has impressed me in this war is the fact that high officers even know so little.  When cannon throw shells ten or twelve miles, eyesight doesn’t get much chance.”

A wait for a full half-hour followed, a period of intense anxiety for all in the group, and for the whole army too.  John used his glasses freely, and often he saw the French soldiers moving about in a restless manner, until they were checked by their officers.  But most of them were lying down, their blue coats and red trousers making a vast and vivid blur against the green of the grass.

All the while the sound of the cannon grew, but, despite the power of his glasses, John could not see a sign of war.  Only that roaring sound came to tell him that battle, vast, gigantic, on a scale the world had never seen before, was joined, and the volume of the cannon fire, beyond a doubt, was growing.  It pulsed heavily, and either he or his fancy noticed a steady jarring motion.  A faint acrid taint crept into the air and he felt it in his nose and throat.  He coughed now and then, and he observed that men around him coughed also.  But, on the whole, the army was singularly still, the soldiers straining eye or ear to see something or hear more of the titanic struggle that was raging on either side of them.

John again searched the horizon eagerly with his glasses, but it showed only green hills and bits of wood, bare of human activity.  The French aeroplanes still hovered, but not in front of General Vaugirard.  They were off to right and left, where the wings of the nations had closed in combat.  He was ceasing to think of the foes as armies, but as nations in battle line.  Here stood not a French army, but France, and there stood not a German army, but Germany.

As he looked toward the left he picked out a narrow road, running between hedges, and showing but a strip of white even through the glasses.  He saw something coming along this road.  It was far away when he first noticed it, but it was coming with great speed, and he was soon able to tell that it was a man on a motor cycle.  His pulse leaped again.  He felt instinctively that the rider was for them and that he bore something of great import.  The figure, man and cycle, molded into one, sped along the narrow road which led to the base of the hill on which General Vaugirard and his staff stood.

The huge general saw the approaching figure too, and he began to whistle melodiously like the note of a piccolo, with the vast thunder of the guns accompanying him as an orchestra.  John knew that the cyclist was a messenger, and that he was eagerly expected.  An order of some kind was at hand!  All the members of the staff had the same conviction.

The cyclist stopped at the bottom of the hill, leaped from the machine and ran to General Vaugirard, to whom he handed a note.  The general read it, expelled his breath in a mighty gust, and turning to his staff, said: 

“My children, our time has come.  The whole central army of which we are a part will advance.  It will perhaps be known before night whether France is to remain a great nation or become the vassal of Germany.  My children, if France ever had need for you to fight with all your hearts and souls, that need is here today.”

His manner was simple and majestic, and his words touched the mind and feeling of every one who heard them.  John was moved as much as if he had been a Frenchman too.  He felt a profound sympathy for this devoted France, which had suffered so much, to which his own country still owed that great debt, and which had a right to her own soil, fertilized with so many centuries of labor.

General Vaugirard, resting a pad on his knee, wrote rapid notes which he gave to the members of his staff in turn to be delivered.  John’s was to a Parisian regiment lying in a field, and expanding body and mind into instant action, he leaped upon the cycle and sped away.  It was often hard for him now to separate fact from fancy.  His imagination, vivid at all times, painted new pictures while such a tremendous drama passed before him.

Yet he knew afterward that the sound of the battle did increase in volume as he flew over the short distance to the regiment.  Both east and west were shaking with the tremendous concussion.  One crash he heard distinctly above the others and he believed it was that of a forty-two centimeter.

He reached the field, his cycle spun between the eager soldiers, and as he leaped off in the presence of the colonel he fairly thrust the note into his hand, exclaiming at the same time in his zeal, “It’s an order to advance!  The whole Army of the Center is about to attack.”

He called it the Army of the Center at a guess, but names did not matter now.  The colonel glanced at the note, waved his sword above his head and cried in a loud voice: 

“My lads, up and forward!”

The regiment arose with a roar of cheering and began to advance across the fields.  John caught a glimpse of a petty officer, short and small, but as compact and fierce as a panther, driving on men who needed no driving.  “Geronimo is going to make good,” he said to himself.  “He’ll do or die today.”

As he raced back for new orders, if need be, he knew now that fact not fancy told him the battle was growing.  The earth shook not only on right and left but in front also.  A hasty look through the glasses showed little tongues of fire licking up on the horizon before them and he knew that they came from the monster cannon of the Germans who were surely advancing, while the French were advancing also to meet them.

General Vaugirard sprang into his automobile, taking only two of his senior officers with him, while the rest followed on their motor cycles.  As far as John could see on either side the vast rows of French swept across hills and fields.  There was little shouting now and no sound of bands, but presently a shout arose behind them:  “Way for the artillery!”

Then he heard cries, the rumble of wheels and the rapid beat of hoofs.  With an instinctive shudder, lest he be ground to pieces, he pulled from the road, and saw the motor of General Vaugirard turn out also.  Then the great French batteries thundered past to seek positions soon in the fields behind low hills.  He saw them a little later unlimbering and making ready.

The French advance changed from a walk to a trot.  John saw the Parisian regiment, not far away, but at the very front and he knew that among all those ardent souls there was none more ardent than that of the little Apache, Bougainville.  Meanwhile, Vaugirard in his motor kept to the road and the staff on their motor cycles followed closely.

On both flanks the thunder of massed cannon was deepening, and now John, who used his glasses occasionally, was able to see wisps and tendrils of smoke on the eastern and northern horizons.  The tremor in the air was strong and continuous.  It played incessantly upon the drums of his ears, and he found that he could not hear the words of the other aides so well as before.  But there was no succession of crashes.  The sound was more like the roaring of a distant storm.

They advanced another mile, two hundred thousand men, afire with zeal, a whole vast army moved forward as the other French armies were by the hidden hand which they could not see, of which they knew nothing, but the touch of which they could feel.

John heard a whizzing sound, he caught a glimpse of a dark object, rushing forward at frightful velocity, and then he and his wheel reeled beneath the force of a tremendous explosion.  The shell coming from an invisible point, miles away, had burst some distance on his right, scattering death and wounds over a wide radius.  But Vaugirard’s brigades did not stop for one instant.  They cheered loudly, closed up the gap in their line, and went on steadily as before.  Some one began to sing the Marseillaise, and in an instant the song, like fire in dry grass, spread along a vast front.  John had often wished that he could have heard the armies of the French Revolution singing their tremendous battle hymn as they marched to victory, and now he heard it on a scale far more gigantic than in the days of the First French Republic.

The vast chorus rolled for miles and for all he knew other armies, far to right and left, might be singing it, too.  The immense volume of the song drowned out everything, even that tremor in the air, caused by the big guns.  John’s heart beat so hard that it caused actual physical pain in his side, and presently, although he was unconscious of it, he was thundering out the verses with the others.

He was riding by the side of de Rougemont, and he stopped singing long enough to shout, at the top of his voice: 

“No enemy in sight yet?”

“No,” de Rougemont shouted back, “but he doesn’t need to be.  The German guns have our range.”

From a line on the distant horizon, from positions behind hills, the German shells were falling fast, cutting down men by hundreds, tearing great holes in the earth, and filling the air with an awful shrieking and hissing.  It was all the more terrible because the deadly missiles seemed to come from nowhere.  It was like a mortal hail rained out of heaven.  John had not yet seen a German, nothing but those tongues of fire licking up on the horizon, and some little whitish clouds of smoke, lifting themselves slowly above the trees, yet the thunder was no longer a rumble.  It had a deep and angry note, whose burden was death.

They must maintain their steady march directly toward the mouths of those guns.  John comprehended in those awful moments that the task of the French was terrible, almost superhuman.  If their nation was to live they must hurl back a victorious foe, practically numberless, armed and equipped with everything that a great race in a half-century of supreme thought and effort could prepare for war.  It was spirit and patriotism against the monstrous machine of fire and steel, and he trembled lest the machine could overcome anything in the world.

He was about to shout again to de Rougemont, but his words were lost in the rending crash of the French artillery.  Their batteries were posted on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range.  All along the front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened forever.

The sight, at first magnificent, now became appalling.  The shells came in showers and the French ranks were torn and mangled.  Companies existed and then they were not.  The explosions were like the crash of thunderbolts, but through it all the French continued to advance.  Those whose knees grew weak beneath them were upborne and carried forward by the press of their comrades.  The French gunners, too, were making prodigious efforts but with cannon of such long range neither side could see what its batteries were accomplishing.  John was sure, though, that the great French artillery must be giving as good as it received.

He was conscious that General Vaugirard was still going forward along the long white road, sweeping his glasses from left to right and from right to left in a continuous semi-circle, apparently undisturbed, apparently now without human emotion.  He was no figure of romance, but he was a man, cool and powerful, ready to die with all his men, if death for them was needed.

Still the invisible hand swept them on, the hand that a million men in action could not see, but which every one of the million, in his own way, felt.  The crash of the guns on both sides had become fused together into one roar, so steady and continued so long that the sound seemed almost normal.  Voices could now be heard under it and John spoke to de Rougemont.

“Can you make anything of it?” he asked.  “Do we win or do we lose?”

“It’s too early yet to tell anything.  The cannon only are speaking, but you’ll note that our army is advancing.”

“Yes, I see it.  Before I’ve only beheld it in retreat before overwhelming numbers.  This is different.”

General Vaugirard beckoned to his aides, and again sent them out with messages.  John’s note was to the commander of a battery of field guns telling him to move further forward.  He started at once through the fields on his motor cycle, but he could not go fast now.  The ground had been cut deep by artillery and cavalry and torn by shells and he had to pick his way, while the shower of steel, sent by men who were firing by mathematics, swept over and about him.

Shivers seized him more than once, as shrapnel and pieces of shell flew by.  Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in spite of the shells, in spite of the deadly nausea that assailed him at times, he went on.  The rush of air from a shell threw him once from his motor cycle, but as he fell on soft clodded earth he was not hurt, and, springing quickly back on his wheel, he reached the battery.

The order was welcome to the commander of the guns, who was anxious to go closer, and, limbering up, he advanced as rapidly as weapons of such great weight could be dragged across the fields.  John followed, that he might report the result.  They were now facing toward the east and the whole horizon there was a blaze of fire.  The shells were coming thicker and thicker, and the air was filled with the screaming of the shrapnel.

The commander of the battery, a short, powerful Frenchman, was as cool as ice, and John drew coolness from him.  One can get used to almost anything, and his nervous tremors were passing.  Despite the terrible fire of the German artillery the French army was still advancing.  Many thousands had fallen already before the shells and shrapnel of the invisible foe, but there had been no check.

The cannon crossed a brook, and, unlimbering, again opened a tremendous fire.  To one side and on a hill here, a man whom the commander watched closely was signaling.  John knew that he was directing the aim of the battery and the French, like the Germans, were killing by mathematics.

He rode his cycle to the crest of a little elevation behind the battery and with his newfound coolness began to use his glasses again.  Despite the thin, whitish smoke, he saw men on the horizon, mere manikins moving back and forth, apparently without meaning, but men nevertheless.  He caught, too, the outline of giant tubes, the huge guns that were sending the ceaseless rain of death upon the French.

He also saw signs of hurry and confusion among those manikins, and he knew that the French shells were striking them.  He rode down to the commander and told him.  The swart Frenchman grinned.

“My children are biting,” he said, glancing affectionately at his guns.  “They’re brave lads, and their teeth are long and sharp.”

He looked at his signal man, and the guns let loose again with a force that sent the air rushing away in violent waves.  Batteries farther on were firing also with great rapidity.  In most of these the gunners were directed by field telephones strung hastily, but the one near John still depended upon signal men.  It was composed of eight five-inch guns, and John believed that its fire was most accurate and deadly.

Using his glasses again, he saw that the disturbance among those manikins was increasing.  They were running here and there, and many seemed to vanish suddenly—­he knew that they were blown away by the shells.  To the right of the great French battery some lighter field guns were advancing.  One drawn by eight horses had not yet unlimbered, and he saw a shell strike squarely upon it.  In the following explosion pieces of steel whizzed by him and when the smoke cleared away the gun, the gunners and the horses were all gone.  The monster shell had blown everything to pieces.  The other guns hurried on, took up their positions and began to fire.  John shuddered violently, but in a moment or two, he, too, forgot the little tragedy in the far more gigantic one that was being played before him.

He rode back to General Vaugirard and told him that his order had been obeyed.  The general nodded, but did not take his glasses from the horizon, where a long gray line was beginning to appear against the green of the earth.  “It goes well so far,” John heard him say in the under note which was audible beneath the thunder of the battle.

In a quarter of an hour the great batteries limbered up again, and once more the French army went forward, the troops to lie down and wait again, while the artillery worked with ferocious energy.  It was yet a battle of big guns, at least in the center.  The armies were not near enough to each other for rifles; in truth not near enough yet to be seen.  John, even with his glasses, could only discern the gray line advancing, he could make little of its form or order or of what it was trying to do.

But a light wind was now bringing smoke from one flank where the battle was far heavier than in the center, and the concussion of the artillery at that point became so frightful that the air seemed to come in waves of the utmost violence and to beat upon the drum of the ear with the force of a hammer.  Owing to the wind John could not hear the battle on the other flank so well, but he believed that it was being fought there with equal fury and determination.

He was watching with such intentness that he did not hear the sweep of an aeroplane behind him, but he did see Lannes run to General Vaugirard’s car and give him a note.

While the general read and pondered, Lannes turned toward the wheel on which John sat.  Although he tried to preserve calm, John knew that he was tremendously excited.  He had taken off his heavy glasses and his wonderful gray eyes were flashing.  It was obvious to his friend, who now knew him so well, that he was moved by some tremendous emotion.

John rode up by the side of Lannes and said: 

“What have you seen, Philip?  You can tell a little at least, can’t you?”

“More than a little!  A lot!  The Arrow and I have looked over a great area, John!  Miles and miles and yet more miles! and wherever we went we gazed down upon armies locked in battle, and beyond that were other armies locked in battle, too!  The nations meet in wrath!  You can’t see it here, nor from anywhere on the earth!  It’s only in the air high overhead that one can get even a partial view of its immensity!  The English army is off there on the flank, a full thirty miles away, and you’re not likely to see it today!”

He would have said more, but General Vaugirard beckoned to him, gave him a note which he had written hastily, and in a few more minutes Lannes was flitting like a swallow through the heavens.  Then General Vaugirard’s car moved forward and brigade after brigade of the French army resumed its advance also.

John felt that the great German machine had been met by a French machine as great.  Perhaps the master mind that thrills through an organism of steel no less than one of human flesh was on the French side.  He did not know.  The invisible hand thrusting forward the French armies was still invisible to him.  Yet he felt with the certainty of conviction that the eye and the brain of one man were achieving a marvel.  In some mysterious manner the French defense had become an offense.  The Republican troops were now attacking and the Imperial troops were seeking to hold fast.

He seemed to comprehend it all in an instant, and a mighty joy surged over him.  De Rougemont saw his glistening eye and he asked curiously: 

“What is it that you are feeling so strongly, Mr. Scott?”

“The thrill of the advance!  The unknown plan, whatever it is, is working!  Your nation is about to be saved!  I feel it!  I know it!”

De Rougemont gazed at him, and then the light leaped into his own eyes.

“A prophet!  A prophet!” he cried.  “Inspired youth speaks!”

A great crisis may call into being a great impulse, and de Rougemont’s words were at once accepted as truth by all the young aides.  Words of fire, words vital with life had gone forth, predicting their triumph, and as they rode among the troops carrying orders they communicated their burning zeal to the men who were already eager for closer battle.

The storm of missiles from the cannon was increasing rapidly.  John now distinctly saw the huge German masses, not advancing but standing firm to receive the French attack, their front a vast line of belching guns.  He knew that they would soon be within the area of rifle fire and he knew with equal truth that it would take the valor of immense numbers, wielded by the supreme skill of leaders to drive back the Germans.

The guns, some drawn by horses and others by motors, were moving forward with them.  When the horses were swept away by a shell, men seized the guns and dragged them.  Then they stopped again, took new positions and renewed the rain of death on the German army.

They began to hear a whistle and hiss that they knew.  It was that of the bullets, and along the vast front they were coming in millions.  But the French were using their rifles, too, and at intervals the deep thundering chant of the Marseillaise swept through their ranks.  In spite of shell, shrapnel and bullets, in spite of everything, the French army in the center was advancing and John believed that the armies on the other parts of the line were advancing, too.

The bullets struck around them, and then among them.  One aide fell from his cycle, and lay dead in the road, two more were wounded, but two hundred thousand men, their artillery blazing death over their heads, went on straight at the mouths of a thousand cannon.

Companies and regiments were swept away, but there was no check.  Nor did the other French armies, the huge links in the chain, stop.  A feeling of victory had swept along the whole gigantic battle front.  They were fighting for Paris, for their country, for the soil which they tended, alive, and in which they slept, dead, and just at the moment when everything seemed to have been lost they were saving all.  The heroic age of France had come again, and the Third Republic was justifying the First.

The battle deepened and thickened to an extraordinary degree, as the space between the two fronts narrowed.  John for the first time saw the German troops without the aid of glasses.  They were mere outlines against a fiery horizon, reddened by the mouths of so many belching cannon, but they seemed to him to stand there like a wall.

Another giant shell burst near them, and two more members of the staff fell from their cycles, dead before they touched the ground.  That convulsive shudder seized John again, but the crash of tremendous events was so rapid that fear and horror alike passed in an instant.  A piece of the same shell struck General Vaugirard’s car and put it out of action at once.  But the general leaped lightly to the ground, then swung his immense bulk across one of the riderless motor cycles and advanced with the surviving members of his staff.  Imperturbable, he still swept the field with his glasses.  Two aides were now sent to the right with messages, and a third, John himself, was despatched to the left on a similar errand.

It was John’s duty to tell a regiment to bear in further to the left and close up a vacant spot in the line.  He wheeled his cycle into a field, and then passed between rows of grapevines.  The regiment, its ranks much thinned, was now about a hundred yards away, but shell and bullets alike were sweeping the distance between.

Nevertheless, he rode on, his wheel bumping over the rough ground, until he heard a rushing sound, and then blank darkness enveloped him.  He fell one way, and the motor cycle fell another.