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

IN HOSTILE HANDS

The task that lay before the two young men was one of great difficulty.  The battle line was shifting continually, although the Germans were being pressed steadily back toward the east and north, but among so many generals it would be hard to find the particular one to whom they were bearing orders.  The commander of the central army was of high importance, but the fact did not bring him at once before the eye.

They were to see General Vaugirard, too, but it was possible that he had fallen.  John, though, could not look upon it as a probability.  The general was so big, so vital, that he must be living, and he felt the same way about Bougainville.  It was incredible that fate itself should snuff out in a day that spark of fire.

Lannes, uncertain of his course, bore in again toward the German lines, and dropped as low as he could, compatible with safety from any kind of shot.  John meanwhile scanned every hill and valley wood and field with his powerful glasses, and he was unable to see any diminution in the fury of the struggle.  The cannon thundered, with all their might, along a line of scores of miles; rapid firers sent a deadly hail upon the opposing lines; rifles flashed by the hundred thousand, and here and there masses of troops closed with the bayonet.

Seen from a height the battle was stripped of some of its horrors, but all its magnitude remained to awe those who looked down upon it.  From the high, cold air John could not see pain and wounds, only the swaying back and forth of the battle lines.  All the time he searched attentively for men who did not wear the red and blue of France, and at last he said: 

“I’ve failed to find any sign of the British army.”

“They’re farther to the left,” replied Lannes.  “I caught a glimpse of their khaki lines this morning.  Their regular troops are great fighters, as our Napoleon himself admitted more than once, and they’ve never done better than they’re doing today.  When I saw them they were advancing.”

“I’m glad of that.  It’s curious how I feel about the English, Philip.  They’ve got such a conceit that they irritate me terribly at times, yet I don’t want to see them beaten by any other Europeans.  That’s our American privilege.”

“A family feeling, perhaps,” said Lannes, laughing, “but we French and English have been compelled to be allies, and after fighting each other for a thousand years we’re now the best of friends.  I think, John, we’ll have to go down and procure information from somebody about our general.  Otherwise we’ll never find him.”

“We must be near the center of our army, and that’s where he’s likely to be.  Suppose we descend in the field a little to the east of us.”

Lannes looked down, and, pronouncing the place suitable, began to drop in a series of spirals until they rested in a small field that had been devoted to the growth of vegetables.  Here John at once felt the shaking of the earth, and tasted the bitter odor again.  But woods on either side of them hid the sight of troops, although the sound of the battle was as great and violent as ever.

“We seem to have landed on a desert island,” said Lannes.

“So we do,” said John.  “Evidently there is nobody here to tell us where we can find our dear and long lost general.  I’ll go down to the edge of the nearest wood and see if any of our skirmishers are there.”

“All right, John, but hurry back.  I’ll hold the Arrow ready for instant flight, as we can’t afford to linger here.”

John ran toward the wood, but before he reached the first trees he turned back with a shout of alarm.  He had caught a glimpse of horses, helmets and the glittering heads of lances.  Moreover, the Uhlans were coming directly toward him.

In that moment of danger the young American showed the best that was in him.  Forgetful of self and remembering the importance of Lannes’ mission, he shouted: 

“The Uhlans are upon us, Philip!  I can’t escape, but you must!  Go!  Go at once!”

Lannes gave one startled glance, and he understood in a flash.  He too knew the vital nature of his errand, but his instant decision gave a wrench to his whole being.  He saw the Uhlans breaking through the woods and John before them.  He was standing beside the Arrow, and giving the machine a sharp push he sprang in and rose at a sharp angle.

“Up!  Up, Philip!” John continued to cry, until the cold edge of a lance lay against his throat and a brusque voice bade him to surrender.

“All right, I yield,” said John, “but kindly take your lance away.  It’s so sharp and cold it makes me feel uncomfortable.”

As he spoke he continued to look upward.  The Arrow was soaring higher and higher, and the Uhlans were firing at it, but they were not able to hit such a fleeting target.  In another minute it was out of range.

John felt the cold steel come away from his throat, and satisfied that Lannes with his precious message was safe, he looked at his captors.  They were about thirty in number, Prussian Uhlans.

“Well,” said John to the one who seemed to be their leader, “what do you want with me?”

“To hold you prisoner,” replied the man, in excellent English—­John was always surprised at the number of people on the continent who spoke English—­“and to ask you why we find an American here in French uniform.”

The man who spoke was young, blond, ruddy, and his tone was rather humorous.  John had been too much in Germany to hate Germans.  He liked most of them personally, but for many of their ideas, ideas which he considered deadly to the world, he had an intense dislike.

“You find me here because I didn’t have time to get away,” he replied, “and I’m in a French uniform because it’s my fighting suit.”

The young officer smiled.  John rather liked him, and he saw, too, that he was no older than himself.

“It’s lucky for you that you’re in some kind of a uniform,” the German said, “or I should have you shot immediately.  But I’m sorry we didn’t take the man in the aeroplane instead of you.”

John looked up again.  The Arrow had become small in the distant blue.  A whimsical impulse seized him.

“You’ve a right to be sorry,” he said.  “That was the greatest flying man in the world, and all day he has carried messages, heavy with the fate of nations.  If you had taken him a few moments ago you might have saved the German army from defeat today.  But your chance has gone.  If you were to see him again you would not know him and his plane from others of their kind.”

The officer’s eyes dilated at first.  Then he smiled again and stroked his young mustache.

“It may be true, as you say,” he replied, “but meanwhile I’ll have to take you to my chief, Captain von Boehlen.”

John’s heart sank a little when he heard the name von Boehlen.  Fortune, he thought, had played him a hard trick by bringing him face to face with the man who had least cause to like him.  But he would not show it.

“Very well,” he said; “which way?”

“Straight before you,” said the officer.  “I’d give you a mount, but it isn’t far.  Remember as you walk that we’re just behind you, and don’t try to run away.  You’d have no chance on earth.  My own name is Arnheim, Wilhelm von Arnheim.”

“And mine’s John Scott,” said John, as he walked straight ahead.

They passed through a wood and into another field, where a large body of Prussian cavalry was waiting.  A tall man, built heavily, stood beside a horse, watching a distant corner of the battle through glasses.  John knew that uncompromising figure at once.  It was von Boehlen.

“A prisoner, Captain,” said von Arnheim, saluting respectfully.

Von Boehlen turned slowly, and a malicious light leaped in his eyes when he saw John on foot before him, and wholly in his power.

“And so,” he said, “it’s young Scott of the hotel in Dresden and of the wireless station, and you’ve come straight into my hands!”

The whimsical humor which sometimes seized John when he was in the most dangerous situation took hold of him again.  It was not humor exactly, but it was the innate desire to make the best of a bad situation.

“I’m in your hands,” he replied, “but I didn’t walk willingly into ’em.  Your lieutenant, von Arnheim here, and his men brought me on the points of their lances.  I’m quite willing to go away again.”

Von Boehlen recognized the spirit in the reply and the malice departed from his own eyes.  Yet he asked sternly: 

“Why do you put on a French uniform and meddle in a quarrel not your own?”

“I’ve made it my own.  I take the chances of war.”

“To the rear with him, and put him with the other prisoners,” said von Boehlen to von Arnheim, and the young Prussian and two Uhlans escorted him to the edge of the field where twenty or thirty French prisoners sat on the ground.

“I take it,” said von Arnheim, “that you and our captain have met before.”

“Yes, and the last time it was under circumstances that did not endear me to him.”

“If it was in war it will not be to your harm.  Captain von Boehlen is a stern but just man, and his conduct is strictly according to our military code.  You will stay here with the other prisoners under guard.  I hope to see you again.”

With these polite words the young officer rode back to his chief, and John’s heart warmed to him because of his kindness.  Then he sat down on the grass and looked at those who were prisoners with him.  Most of them were wounded, but none seemed despondent.  All were lying down, some propped on their elbows, and they were watching and listening with the closest attention.  A half-dozen Germans, rifle in hand, stood near by.

John took his place on the grass by the side of a fair, slim young man who carried his left arm in a bandage.

“Englishman?” said the young man.

“No, American.”

“But you have been fighting for us, as your uniform shows.  What command?”

“General Vaugirard’s, but I became separated from it earlier in the day.”

“I’ve heard of him.  Great, fat man, as cool as ice and as brave as a lion.  A good general to serve under.  My own name is Fleury, Albert Fleury.  I was wounded and taken early this morning, and the others and I have been herded here ever since by the Germans.  They will not tell us a word, but I notice they have not advanced.”

“The German army is retreating everywhere.  For this day, at least, we’re victorious.  Somebody has made a great plan and has carried it through.  The cavalry of the invader came within sight of Paris this morning, but they won’t be able to see it tomorrow morning.  Whisper it to the others.  We’ll take the good news quietly.  We won’t let the guards see that we know.”

The news was circulated in low tones and every one of the wounded forgot his wound.  They spoke among themselves, but all the while the thunder of the hundred-mile battle went on with unremitting ferocity.  John put his ear to the ground now, and the earth quivered incessantly like a ship shaken at sea by its machinery.

The day was now waning fast and he looked at the mass of Uhlans who stood arrayed in the open space, as if they were awaiting an order.  Lieutenant von Arnheim rode back and ordered the guards to march on with them.

There was none too severely wounded to walk and they proceeded in a file through the fields, Uhlans on all sides, but the great mass behind them, where their commander, von Boehlen, himself rode.

The night was almost at hand.  Twilight was already coming over the eastern hills, and one of the most momentous days in the story of man was drawing to a close.  People often do not know the magnitude of an event until it has passed long since and shows in perspective, but John felt to the full the result of the event, just as the old Greeks must have known at once what Salamis or Platæa meant to them.  The hosts of the world’s greatest military empire were turned back, and he had all the certainty of conviction that they would be driven farther on the next day.

The little band of prisoners who walked while their Prussian captors rode, were animated by feelings like those of John.  It was the captured who exulted and the captors who were depressed, though neither expressed it in words, and the twilight was too deep now for faces to show either joy or sorrow.

John and Fleury walked side by side.  They were near the same age.  Fleury was an Alpinist from the high mountain region of Savoy and he had arrived so recently in the main theater of conflict that he knew little of what had been passing.  He and John talked in whispers and they spoke encouraging words to each other.  Fleury listened in wonder to John’s account of his flights with Lannes.

“It is marvelous to have looked down upon a battle a hundred miles long,” he said.  “Have you any idea where these Uhlans intend to take us?”

“I haven’t.  Doubtless they don’t know themselves.  The night is here now, and I imagine they’ll stop somewhere soon.”

The twilight died in the west as well as the east, and darkness came over the field of gigantic strife.  But the earth continued to quiver with the thunder of artillery, and John felt the waves of air pulsing in his ears.  Now and then searchlights burned in a white blaze across the hills.  Fields, trees and houses would stand out for a moment, and then be gone absolutely.

John’s vivid imagination turned the whole into a storm at night.  The artillery was the thunder and the flare of the searchlights was the lightning.  His mind created, for a little while, the illusion that the combat had passed out of the hands of man and that nature was at work.  He and Fleury ceased to talk and he walked on, thinking little of his destination.  He had no sense of weariness, nor of any physical need at all.

Von Arnheim rode up by his side and said: 

“You’ll not have to walk much further, Mr. Scott.  A camp of ours is just beyond a brook, not more than a few hundred yards away, and the prisoners will stay there for the night.  I’m sorry to find you among the French fighting against us.  We Germans expected American sympathy.  There is so much German blood in the United States.”

“But, as I told Captain von Boehlen, we’re a republic, and we’re democrats.  In many of the big ideas there’s a gulf between us and Germany so wide that it can never be bridged.  This war has made clear the enormous difference.”

Von Arnheim sighed.

“And yet, as a people, we like each other personally,” he said.

“That’s so, but as nations we diverge absolutely.”

“Perhaps, I can’t dispute it.  But here is our camp.  You’ll be treated well.  We Germans are not barbarians, as our enemies allege.”

John saw fires burning in an ancient wood, through which a clear brook ran.  The ground was carpeted with bodies, which at first he thought were those of dead men.  But they were merely sleepers.  German troops in thousands had dropped in their tracks.  It was scarcely sleep, but something deeper, a stupor of exhaustion so utter, both mental and physical, that it was like the effect of anesthesia.  They lay in every imaginable position, and they stretched away through the forest in scores of thousands.

John and Fleury saw their own place at once.  Several hundred men in French uniforms were lying or sitting on the ground in a great group near the forest.  A few slept, but the others, as well as John could see by the light of the fires, were wide awake.

The sight of the brook gave John a burning thirst, and making a sign to the German guard, who nodded, he knelt and drank.  He did not care whether the water was pure or not, most likely it was not, with armies treading their way across it, but as it cut through the dust and grime of his mouth and throat he felt as if a new and more vigorous life were flowing into his veins.  After drinking once, twice, and thrice, he sat down on the bank with Fleury, but in a minute or two young von Arnheim came for him.

“Our commander wishes to talk with you,” he said.

“I’m honored,” said John, “but conversation is not one of my strong points.”

“The general will make the conversation,” said von Arnheim, smiling.  “It will be your duty, as he sees it, to answer questions.”

John’s liking for von Arnheim grew.  He had seldom seen a finer young man.  He was frank and open in manner, and bright blue eyes shone in a face that bore every sign of honesty.  Official enemies he and von Arnheim were, but real enemies they never could be.

He divined that he would be subjected to a cross-examination, but he had no objection.  Moreover, he wanted to see a German general of high degree.  Von Arnheim led the way through the woods to a little glade, in which about a dozen officers stood.  One of them, the oldest man present, who was obviously in command, stood nearest the fire, holding his helmet in his hand.

The general was past sixty, of medium height, but extremely broad and muscular.  His head, bald save for a fringe of white hair, had been reddened by the sun, and his face, with its deep heavy lines and his corded neck, was red, too.  He showed age but not weakness.  His eyes, small, red and uncommonly keen, gazed from under a white bushy thatch.  He looked like a fierce old dragon to John.

“The American prisoner, sir,” said von Arnheim in English to the general.

The old man concentrated the stare of his small red eyes upon John for many long seconds.  The young American felt the weight and power of that gaze.  He knew too instinctively that the man before him was a great fighter, a true representative of the German military caste and system.  He longed to turn his own eyes away, but he resolutely held them steady.  He would not be looked down, not even by an old Prussian general to whom the fate of a hundred thousand was nothing.

“Very well, Your Highness, you may stand aside,” said the general in a deep harsh voice.

Out of the corner of his eye John saw that the man who stood aside was von Arnheim.  “Your Highness!” Then this young lieutenant must be a prince.  If so, some princes were likable.  Wharton and Carstairs and he had outwitted a prince once, but it could not be von Arnheim.  He turned his full gaze back to the general, who continued in his deep gruff voice, speaking perfect English: 

“I understand that you are an American and your name is John Scott.”

“And duly enrolled and uniformed in the French service,” said John, “You can’t shoot me as a franc tireur.”

“We could shoot you for anything, if we wished, but such is not our purpose.  I have heard from a captain of Uhlans, Rudolf von Boehlen, a most able and valuable officer, that you are brave and alert.”

“I thank Captain von Boehlen for his compliment.  I did not expect it from him.”

“Ah, he bears you no malice.  We Germans are large enough to admire skill and courage in others.  He has spoken of the affair of the wireless.  It cost us much, but it belongs to the past.  We will achieve what we wish.”

John was silent.  He believed that these preliminaries on the part of the old general were intended to create an atmosphere, a belief in his mind that German power was invincible.

“We have withdrawn a portion of our force today,” continued the general, “in order to rectify our line.  Our army had advanced too far.  Tomorrow we resume our march on Paris.”

John felt that it was an extraordinary statement for an old man, one of such high rank, the commander of perhaps a quarter of a million soldiers, to be making to him, a young American, but he held his peace, awaiting what lay behind it all.

“Now you are a captive,” continued the general, “you will be sent to a prison, and you will be held there until the end of the war.  You will necessarily suffer much.  We cannot help it.  Yet you might be sent to your own country.  Americans and Germans are not enemies.  I know from Captain von Boehlen who took you that you have been in an aeroplane with a Frenchman.  Some account of what you saw from space might help your departure for America.”

And so that was it!  Now the prisoner’s eye steadily confronted that of the old general.

“Your Highness,” he said, as he thought that the old man might be a prince as well as a general, “you have read the history of the great civil war in my country, have you not?”

“It was a part of my military duty to study it.  It was a long and desperate struggle with many great battles, but what has it to do with the present?”

“Did you ever hear of any traitor on either side, North or South, in that struggle?”

The deep red veins in the old general’s face stood out, but he gave no other sign.

“You prefer, then,” he said, “to become a charge upon our German hospitality.  But I can say that your refusal will not make terms harder for you.  Lieutenant von Arnheim, take him back to the other prisoners.”

“Thank you, sir,” said John, and he gave the military salute.  He could understand the old man’s point of view, rough and gruff though he was, and he was not lacking in a certain respect for him.  The general punctiliously returned the salute.

“You’ve made a good impression,” said von Arnheim, as they walked away together.

“I gather,” said John, “from a reference by the general, that you’re a prince.”

Von Arnheim looked embarrassed.

“In a way I am,” he admitted, “but ours is a mediatized house.  Perhaps it doesn’t count for much.  Still, if it hadn’t been for this war I might have gone to your country and married an heiress.”

His eyes were twinkling.  Here, John thought was a fine fellow beyond question.

“Perhaps you can come after the war and marry one,” he said.  “Personally I hope you’ll have the chance.”

“Thanks,” said von Arnheim, a bit wistfully, “but I’m afraid now it will be a long time, if ever.  I need not seek to conceal from you that we were turned back today.  You know it already.”

“Yes, I know it,” said John, speaking without any trace of exultation, “and I’m willing to tell you that it was one of the results I saw from the aeroplane.  Can I ask what you intend to do with the prisoners you have here, including myself?”

“I do not know.  You are to sleep where you are tonight.  Your bed, the earth, will be as good as ours, and perhaps in the morning we’ll find an answer to your question.”

Von Arnheim bade him a pleasant good night and turned to duties elsewhere.  John watched him as he strode away, a fine, straight young figure.  He had found him a most likable man, and he was bound to admit that there was much in the German character to admire.  But for the present it was—­in his view—­a Germany misled.

The prisoners numbered perhaps six hundred, and at least half of them were wounded.  John soon learned that the hurt usually suffered in stoical silence.  It was so in the great American civil war, and it was true now in the great European war.

Rough food was brought to them by German guards, and those who were able drank at the brook.  Water was served to the severely wounded by their comrades in tin cups given to them by the Germans, and then all but a few lay on the grass and sought sleep.

John and his new friend, Fleury, were among those who yet sat up and listened to the sounds of battle still in progress, although it was far in the night.  It was an average night of late summer or early autumn, cool, fairly bright, and with but little wind.  But the dull, moaning sound made by the distant cannonade came from both sides of them, and the earth yet quivered, though but faintly.  Now and then, the searchlights gleamed against the background of darkness, but John felt that the combat must soon stop, at least until the next day.  The German army in which he was a prisoner had ceased already, but other German armies along the vast line fought on, failing day, by the light which man himself had devised.

Fleury was intelligent and educated.  Although it was bitter to him to be a prisoner at such a time, he had some comprehension of what had occurred, and he knew that John had been in a position to see far more than he.  He asked the young American many questions about his flight in the air, and about Philip Lannes, of whom he had heard.

“It was wonderful,” he said, “to look down on a battle a hundred miles long.”

“We didn’t see all of it,” said John, “but we saw it in many places, and we don’t know that it was a hundred miles long, but it must have been that or near it.”

“And the greatest day for France in her history!  What mighty calculations must have been made and what tremendous marchings and combats must have been carried out to achieve such a result.”

“One of the decisive battles of history, like Platæa, or the Metaurus or Gettysburg.  There go the Uhlans with Captain von Boehlen at their head.  Now I wonder what they mean to do!”

A thousand men, splendidly mounted and armed, rode through the forest.  The moonlight fell on von Boehlen’s face and showed it set and grim.  John felt that he was bound to recognize in him a stern and resolute man, carrying out his own conceptions of duty.  Nor had von Boehlen been discourteous to him, although he might have felt cause for much resentment.  The Prussian glanced at him as he passed, but said nothing.  Soon he and his horsemen passed out of sight in the dusk.

John, wondering how late it might be, suddenly remembered that he had a watch and found it was eleven o’clock.

“An hour of midnight,” he said to Fleury.

Most all the French stretched upon the ground were now in deep slumber, wounded and unwounded alike.  The sounds of cannon fire were sinking away, but they did not die wholly.  The faint thunder of the distant guns never ceased to come.  But the campfire, where he knew the German generals slept or planned, went out, and darkness trailed its length over all this land which by night had become a wilderness.

John was able to trace dimly the sleeping figures of Germans in the dusk, sunk down upon the ground and buried in the sleep or stupor of exhaustion.  As they lay near him so they lay in the same way in hundreds of thousands along the vast line.  Men and horses, strained to their last nerve and muscle, were too tired to move.  It seemed as if more than a million men lay dead in the fields and woods of Northeastern France.

John, who had been wide awake, suddenly dropped on the ground where the others were stretched.  He collapsed all in a moment, as if every drop of blood had been drained suddenly from his body.  Keyed high throughout the day, his whole system now gave way before the accumulated impact of events so tremendous.  The silence save for the distant moaning that succeeded the roar of a million men or more in battle was like a powerful drug, and he slept like one dead, never moving hand or foot.

He was roused shortly before morning by some one who shook him gently but persistently, and at last he sat up, looking around in the dim light for the person who had dragged him back from peace to a battle-mad world.  He saw an unkempt, bearded man in a French uniform, one sleeve stained with blood, and he recognized Weber, the Alsatian.

“Why, Weber!” he exclaimed, “they’ve got you, too!  This is bad!  They may consider you, an Alsatian, a traitor, and execute you at once!”

Weber smiled in rather melancholy fashion, and said in a low tone: 

“It’s bad enough to be captured, but I won’t be shot Nobody here knows that I’m an Alsatian, and consequently they will think I’m a Frenchman.  If you call me anything, call me Fernand, which is my first name, but which they will take for the last.”

“All right, Fernand.  I’ll practice on it now, so I’ll make no slip.  How did you happen to be taken?”

“I was in a motor car, a part of a train of about a hundred cars.  There were seven in it besides myself.  We were ordered to cross a field and join a line of advancing infantry.  When we were in the middle of the field a masked German battery of rapid-firers opened on us at short range.  It was an awful experience, like a stroke of lightning, and I don’t think that more than a dozen of us escaped with our lives.  I was wounded in the arm and taken before I could get out of the field.  I was brought here with some other prisoners and I have been sleeping on the ground just beyond that hillock.  I awoke early, and, walking the little distance our guards allow, I happened to recognize your figure lying here.  I was sorry and yet glad to see you, sorry that you were a prisoner, and glad to find at least one whom I knew, a friend.”

John gave Weber’s hand a strong grasp.

“I can say the same about you,” he said warmly.  “We’re both prisoners, but yesterday was a magnificent day for France and democracy.”

“It was, and now it’s to be seen what today will be.”

“I hope and believe it will be no less magnificent.”

“I learned that you were taken just after you alighted from an aeroplane, and that a man with you escaped in the plane.  At least, I presume it was you, as I heard the Germans talking of such a person and I knew of your great friendship for Philip Lannes.  Lannes, of course was the one who escaped.”

“A good surmise, Fernand.  It was no less a man than he.”

Weber’s eyes sparkled.

“I was sure of it,” he said.  “A wonderful fellow, that Lannes, perhaps the most skillful and important bearer of dispatches that France has.  But he will not forget you, Mr. Scott.  He knows, of course, where you were taken, and doubtless from points high in the air he has traced the course of this German army.  He will find time to come for you.  He will surely do so.  He has a feeling for you like that of a brother, and his skill in the air gives him a wonderful advantage.  In all the history of the world there have never before been any scouts like the aeroplanes.”

“That’s true, and that, I think, is their chief use.”

Impulse made John look up.  The skies were fast beginning to brighten with the first light in the east, and large objects would be visible there.  But he saw nothing against the blue save two or three captive balloons which floated not far above the trees inside the German lines.  He longed for a sight of the Arrow.  He believed that he would know its shape even high in the heavens, but they were speckless.

The Alsatian, whose eyes followed his, shook his head.

“He is not there, Mr. Scott,” he said, “and you will not see him today, but I have a conviction that he will come, by night doubtless.”

John lowered his eyes and his feeling of disappointment passed.  It had been foolish of him to hope so soon, but it was only a momentary impulse, Lannes could not seek him now, and even if he were to come there would be no chance of rescue until circumstances changed.

“Doubtless you and he were embarked on a long errand when you were taken,” said Weber.

“We were carrying a message to the commander of one of the French armies, but I don’t know the name of the commander, I don’t know which army it is, and I don’t know where it is.”

Weber laughed.

“But Lannes knew all of those things,” he said.  “Oh, he’s a close one!  He wouldn’t trust such secrets not even to his brother-in-arms.”

“Nor should he do so.  I’d rather he’d never tell them to me unless he thought it necessary.”

“I agree with you exactly, Mr. Scott.  Hark!  Did you hear it?  The battle swells afresh, and it’s not yet full day!”

The roaring had not ceased, but out of the west rose a sound, louder yet, deep, rolling and heavy with menace.  It was the discharge of a great gun and it came from a point several miles away.

“We don’t know who fired that,” said Weber, “It may be French, English or German, but it’s my opinion that we’ll hear its like in our forest all day long, just as we did yesterday.  However, it shall not keep me from bathing my face in this brook.”

“Nor me either,” said John.

The cold water refreshed and invigorated him, and as he stooped over the brook, he heard other cannon.  They seemed to him fairly to spring into action, and, in a few moments, the whole earth was roaring again with the huge volume of their fire.

Other prisoners, wounded and unwounded, awakened by the cannon, strolled down to the brook and dipped into its waters.

“I’d better slip back to my place beyond the hillock,” said Weber.  “We’re in two lots, we prisoners, and I belong in the other lot.  I don’t think our guards have noticed our presence here, and it will be safer for me to return.  But it’s likely that we’ll all be gathered into one body soon, and I’ll help you watch for Lannes.”

“I’ll be glad of your help,” said John sincerely.  “We must escape.  In all the confusion of so huge a battle there ought to be a chance.”

Weber slipped away in the crowd now hurrying down to the stream, and in a few moments John was joined by Fleury, whose attention was centered on the sounds of the distant battle.  He deemed it best to say nothing to him of Weber, who did not wish to be known as an Alsatian.  Fleury’s heavy sleep had made him strong and fresh again, but he was in a fury at his helplessness.

“To think of our being tied here at such a time,” he said.  “France and England are pushing the battle again!  I know it, and we’re helpless, mere prisoners!”

“Still,” said John, “while we can’t fight we may see things worth seeing.  Perhaps it’s not altogether our loss to be inside the German army on such a day.”

Fleury could not reconcile himself to such a view, but he sought to make the best of it, and he was cheered, too, by the vast increase in the volume of the cannon fire.  Before the full day had crossed from east to west the great guns were thundering again along the long battle line.  But in their immediate vicinity there was no action.  All the German troops here seemed to be resting on their arms.  No Uhlans were visible and John judged that the detachment under von Boehlen, having gone forth chiefly for scouting purposes, had not yet returned.

They received bread, sausage and coffee for breakfast from one of the huge kitchen automobiles, and nearly all ate with a good appetite.  Their German captors did not treat them badly, but John, watching both officers and men, did not see any elation.  He had no doubt that the officers were stunned by the terrible surprise of the day before, and as for the men, they would know nothing.  He had seen early that the Germans were splendid troops, disciplined, brave and ingenious, but the habit of blind obedience would blind them also to the fact that fortune had turned her face away from them.

He wished that his friend von Arnheim—­friend he regarded him—­would appear and tell him something about the battle, but his wish did not come true for an hour and meanwhile the whole heavens resounded with the roar of the battle, while distant flashes from the guns could be seen on either flank.

The young German, glasses in hand, evidently seeking a good view, walked to the crest of the hillock behind which Weber had disappeared.  John presumed enough on their brief friendship to call to him.

“Do you see anything of interest?” he asked.

Von Arnheim nodded quickly.

“I see the distant fringe of a battle,” he replied amiably, “but it’s too early in the morning for me to pass my judgment upon it.”

“Nevertheless you can look for a day of most desperate struggle!”

Von Arnheim nodded very gravely.

“Men by tens of thousands will fall before night,” he said.

As if to confirm his words, the roar of the battle took a sudden and mighty increase, like a convulsion.