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

THE TWO PRINCES

John sat with the other prisoners for more than two hours listening to the thunder of the great battle or rather series of battles which were afterwards classified under the general head the Battle of the Marne.  He was not a soldier, merely a civilian serving as a soldier, but he had learned already to interpret many of the signs of combat.  There was an atmospheric feeling that registered on a sensitive mind the difference between victory and defeat, and he was firm in the belief that as yesterday had gone today was going.  Certainly this great German army which he believed to be in the center was not advancing, and something of a character most menacing was happening to the wings of the German force.  He read it in the serious, preoccupied faces of the officers who passed near.  There was not a smile on the face of the youngest of them all, but deepest anxiety was written alike on young and old.

John and Fleury sat together at the edge of the brook, and for a while forgot their chagrin at not being on the battle line.  The battle itself which they could not see, but which they could hear, absorbed them so thoroughly that they had no time to think of regrets.

John had thought that man’s violence, his energy in destruction on the first day could not be equalled, but it seemed to him now that the second day surpassed the first.  The cannon fire was distant, yet the waves of air beat heavily upon them, and the earth shook without ceasing.  Wisps of smoke floated toward them and the air was tainted again with the acrid smell of burned gunpowder.

“You’re a mountaineer, Fleury, you told me,” said Scott, “and you should be able to judge how sound travels through gorges.  I suppose you yodel, of course?”

“Yodel, what’s that?”

“To make a long singing cry on a peak which is supposed to reach to somebody on another peak who sends back the same kind of a singing cry.  We have a general impression in America that European mountaineers don’t do much but stand in fancy costumes on crests and ridges and yodel to one another.”

“It may have been so once,” said the young Savoyard, “but this is a bad year for yodeling.  The voice of the cannon carries so far that the voice of man doesn’t amount to much.  But what sound did you want me to interpret?”

“That of the cannon.  Does its volume move eastward or westward?  I should think it’s much like your mountain storms and you know how they travel among the ridges.”

“The comparison is just, but I can’t yet tell any shifting of the artillery fire.  The wind brings the sound toward us, and if there’s any great advance or retreat I should be able to detect it.  I should say that as far as the second day is concerned nothing decisive has happened yet.”

“Do you know this country?”

“A little.  My regiment marched through here about three weeks ago and we made two camps not far from this spot.  This is the wood of Sénouart, and the brook here runs down to the river Marne.”

“And we’re not far from that river.  Then we’ve pressed back the Germans farther than I thought.  It’s strange that the German army here does not move.”

“It’s waiting, and I fancy it doesn’t know what to do.  I’ve an idea that our victory yesterday was greater than the French and British have realized, but which the Germans, of course, understand.  Why do they leave us here, almost neglected, and why do their officers walk about, looking so doubtful and anxious?  I’ve heard that the Germans were approaching Paris with five armies.  It may be that we’ve cut off at least one of those armies and that it’s in mortal danger.”

“It may be so.  But have you thought, Fleury, of the extraordinary difference between this morning and yesterday morning?”

“I have.  In conditions they’re worlds apart.  Hark!  Listen now, Scott, my friend!”

He lay on the grass and put his ear to the ground, just as John had often done.  Listening intently for at least two minutes, he announced with conviction that the cannonade was moving eastward.

“Which means that the Germans are withdrawing again?” said John.

“Undoubtedly,” said Fleury, his face glowing.

They listened a quarter of an hour longer, and John himself was then able to tell that the battle line was shifting.  The Germans elsewhere must have fallen back several miles, but the army about him did not yet move.  He caught a glimpse of the burly general walking back and forth in the forest, his hands clasped behind him, and a frown on his broad, fighting face.  He would walk occasionally to a little telephone station, improvised under the trees—­John could see the wires stretching away through the forest—­and listen long and attentively.  But when he put down the receiver the same moody look was invariably on his face, and John was convinced as much by his expression as by the sound of the guns that affairs were not going well with the Germans.

Another long hour passed and the sun moved on toward noon, but a German army of perhaps a quarter of a million men lay idle in the forest of Sénouart, as John now called the whole region.

Presently the general walked down the line and John lost sight of him.  But Weber reappeared, coming from the other side of the hillock, and John was glad to see him, since Fleury had gone back to attend to a wounded friend.

“There doesn’t seem to be as much action here as I expected,” said Weber, cheerfully, sitting down on the grass beside young Scott.

“But they’re shaking the world there! and there!” said John, nodding to right and to left.

“So they are.  This is a most extraordinary reversal, Mr. Scott, and I can’t conceive how it was brought about.  Some mysterious mind has made and carried through a plan that was superbly Napoleonic.  I’d give much to know how it was done.”

John shook his head.

“I know nothing of it,” he said.

“But doubtless your friend Lannes does.  What a wonderful thing it is to carry through the heavens the dispatches which may move forward a million armed men.”

“I don’t know anything about Lannes’ dispatches.”

“Nor do I, but I can make a close guess, just as you can.  He’s surely hovering over the battle field today, and as I said last night he certainly has some idea where you are, and sooner or later will come for you.”

John looked up, but again the heavens were bare and clear.  Then he looked down and saw walking near them a heavy, middle-aged, bearded man to whom all the German officers paid great deference.  The man’s manner was haughty and overbearing, and John understood at once that in the monarchical sense he was a personage.

“Do you know the big fellow there?” he said to Weber.  “Have you heard anyone speak of him?”

“I saw him this morning, and one of the guards told us who he is.  That is Prince Karl of Auersperg.  The house of Auersperg is one of the oldest in Germany, much older than the Emperor’s family, the Hohenzollerns.  I don’t suppose the world contains any royal blood more ancient than that of Prince Karl.”

“Evidently he feels that it’s so.  I’m getting used to princes, but our heavy friend there must be something of a specialist in the princely line.  I should judge from his manner that he is not only the oldest man on earth, speaking in terms of blood, but the owner of the earth as well.”

“The Auerspergs have an immense pride.”

“I can see it, but a lot of pride fell before Paris yesterday, and a lot more is falling among these hills and forests today.  There seems to be a lot of difference between princes, the Arnheims and the Auerspergs, for instance.”

Then a sudden thought struck John.  It had the vaguest sort of basis, but it came home to him with all the power of conviction.

“I wonder if Prince Karl of Auersperg once owned a magnificent armored automobile,” he said.

Weber looked puzzled, and then his eyes lightened.

“Ah, I know what you mean!” he exclaimed.  “The one in which we took that flight with Carstairs the Englishman and Wharton the American.  It belonged to a prince, without doubt, yes.  But no, it couldn’t have been Prince Karl of Auersperg who owned the machine.”

“I’m not so sure.  I’ve an intuition that it is he.  Besides, he looks like just the kind of prince from whom I’d like to take his best automobile, also everything else good that he might happen to have.  I shall feel much disappointed if this proves not to be our prince.”

“You Americans are such democrats.”

“I don’t go so far as to say a man is necessarily bad because of his high rank, but as I reminded you a little while ago, there are princes and princes.  The ancient house of Auersperg as it walks up and down, indicating its conviction of its own superiority to everything else on earth, does not please me.”

“The Uhlans are coming back!” exclaimed Weber in tones of excitement.

“And that’s von Boehlen at their head!  I’d know his figure as far as I could see it!  And they’ve had a brush, too!  Look at the empty saddles and the wounded men!  As sure as we live they’ve run into the French cavalry and then they’ve run out again!”

The Uhlans were returning at a gallop, and the German officers of high rank were crowding forward to meet them.  It was obvious to every one that they had received a terrible handling, but John knew that von Boehlen was not a man to come at a panicky gallop.  Some powerful motive must send him so fast.

He saw the Prussian captain spring from his horse and rush to a little group composed of the general, the prince and several others of high rank who had drawn closely together at his coming.

Von Boehlen was wounded slightly, but he stood erect as he saluted the commander and talked with him briefly and rapidly.  John’s busy and imaginative mind was at work at once with surmises, and he settled upon one which he was sure must be the truth.  The French advance in the center was coming, and this German army also must soon go into action.

He was confirmed in his belief by a hurried order to the guards to go eastward with the prisoners.  As the captives, the wounded and the unwounded, marched off through the forest of Sénouart they heard at a distance, but behind them, the opening of a huge artillery fire.  It was so tremendous that they could feel the shaking of the earth as they walked, and despite the hurrying of their guards they stopped at the crest of a low ridge to look back.

They gazed across a wide valley toward high green hills, along which they saw rapid and many flashes.  John longed now for the glasses which had been taken from him when he was captured, but he was quite sure that the flashes were made by French guns.  From a point perhaps a mile in front of the prisoners masked German batteries were replying.  Fleury with his extraordinary power of judging sound was able to locate these guns with some degree of approximation.

“Look! the aeroplanes!” said John, pointing toward the hills which he now called to himself the French line.

Numerous dark shapes, forty or fifty at least, appeared in the sky and hovered over the western edge of the wide, shallow basin.  John was sure that they were the French scouts of the blue, appearing almost in line like troops on the ground, and his heart gave a great throb.  No doubt could be left now, that this German army was being attacked in force and with the greatest violence.  It followed then that the entire German line was being assailed, and that the French victory was continuing its advance.  The Republic had rallied grandly and was hurling back the Empire in the most magnificent manner.

All those emotions of joy and exultation that he had felt the day before returned with increased force.  In daily contact he liked Germans as well as Frenchmen, but he thought that no punishment could ever be adequate for the gigantic crimes of kings.  Napoleon himself had been the champion of democracy and freedom, until he became an emperor and his head swelled so much with success that he thought of God and himself together, just as the Kaiser was now thinking.  It was a curious inversion that the French who were fighting then to dominate Europe were fighting now to prevent such a domination.  But it was now a great French republican nation remade and reinvigorated, as any one could see.

The guards hurried them on again.  Another mile and they stopped once more on the crest of a low hill, where it seemed that they would remain some time, as the Germans were too busy with a vast battle to think much about a few prisoners.  It was evident that the whole army was engaged.  The old general, the other generals, the princes and perhaps dukes and barons too, were in the thick of it.  John’s heart was filled with an intense hatred of the very name of royalty.  Kings and princes could be good men personally, but as he saw its work upon the huge battle fields of Europe he felt that the institution itself was the curse of the earth.

“We shall win again today,” said Fleury, rousing him from his absorption.  “Look across the fields, Scott, my friend, and see how those great masses of infantry charging our army have been repulsed.”

It was a far look, and at the distance the German brigades seemed to be blended together, but the great gray mass was coming back slowly.  He forgot all about himself and his own fate in his desire to see every act of the gigantic drama as it passed before him.  He took no thought of escape at present, nor did Fleury, who stood beside him.  The fire of the guns great and small had now blended into the usual steady thunder, beneath which human voices could be heard.

“We don’t have the forty-two centimeters, nor the great siege guns,” said Fleury, “but the French field artillery is the best in the world.  It’s undoubtedly holding back the German hosts and covering the French advance.”

“That’s my opinion, too,” said John.  “I saw its wonderful work in the retreat toward Paris.  I think it saved the early French armies from destruction.”

The German army was made of stern material.  Having planted its feet here it refused to be driven back.  Its cannon was a line of flaming volcanoes, its cavalry charged again and again into the face of death, and its infantry perished in masses, but the stern old general spared nothing.  Passing up and down the lines, listening at the telephone and receiving the reports of air scouts and land scouts, he always hurled in fresh troops at the critical points and Fritz and Karl and Wilhelm and August, sober and honest men, went forward willingly, sometimes singing and sometimes in silence, to die for a false and outworn system.  John as a prisoner had a better view than he would have had if with the French army.  In a country open now he could see a full mile to right and left, where the German hosts marched again and again to attack, and while the French troops were too far away for his eyes he beheld the continuous flare of their fire, like a broad red ribbon across the whole western horizon.

The passing of time was nothing to him.  He forgot all about it in his absorption.  But the sun climbed on, afternoon came, and still the battle at this point raged, the French unable to drive the Germans farther and the Germans unable to stop the French attacks.  John roused himself and endeavored to dissociate the thunder on their flanks from that in front, and, after long listening, he was able to make the separation, or at least he thought so.  He knew now that the struggle there was no less fierce than the one before him.

The Kaiser himself must be present with one or the other of these armies, and a man who had talked for more than twenty years of his divine right, his shining armor, his invincible sword and his mailed fist must be raging with the bitterness of death to find that he was only a mortal like other mortals, and that simple French republicans were defeating the War Lord, his Grand Army and the host of kings, princes, dukes, barons, high-born, very high-born, and all the other relics of medievalism.  Dipped to the heel and beyond in the fountain of democracy, John could not keep from feeling a fierce joy as he saw with his own eyes the Germans fighting in the utmost desperation, not to take Paris and destroy France, but to save themselves from destruction.

The afternoon, slow and bright, save for the battle, dragged on.  Scott and Fleury kept together.  Weber appeared once more and spoke rather despondently.  He believed that the Germans would hold fast, and might even resume the offensive toward Paris again, but Fleury shook his head.

“Today is like yesterday,” he said.

“How can you tell?” asked Weber.

“Because the fire on both flanks is slowly moving eastward, that is, the Germans there are yielding ground.  My ears, trained to note such things, tell me so.  My friend, I am not mistaken.”

He spoke gravely, without exultation, but John took fresh hope from his words.  Toward night the fire in their front died somewhat, and after sunset it sank lower, but they still heard a prodigious volume of firing on both flanks.  John remembered then that they had eaten nothing since morning, but when some of the prisoners who spoke German requested food it was served to them.

Night came over what seemed to be a drawn battle at this point, and after eating his brief supper John saw the automobiles and stretchers bringing in the wounded.  They passed him in thousands and thousands, hurt in every conceivable manner.  At first he could scarcely bear to look at them, but it was astonishing how soon one hardened to such sights.

The wounded were being carried to improvised hospitals in the rear, but so far as John knew the dead were left on the field.  The Germans with their usual thorough system worked rapidly and smoothly, but he noticed that the fires were but very few.  There was but little light in the wood of Sénouart or the hills beyond, and there was little, too, on the ridges that marked the French position.

John kept near the edges of the space allotted to the prisoners, hoping that he might again see von Arnheim.  He had discovered early that the Germans were unusually kind to Americans, and the fact that he had been taken fighting against them did not prevent them from showing generous treatment.  The officer in charge of the guard even wanted to talk to him about the war and prove to him how jealousy had caused the other nations to set upon Germany.  But John evaded him and continued to look for the young prince who was serving as a mere lieutenant.

It was about an hour after dark when he caught his first glimpse of von Arnheim, and he was really glad to see that he was not wounded.

“I’ve come to tell you, Mr. Scott,” said von Arnheim, “that all of you must march at once.  You will cross the Marne, and then pass as prisoners into Germany.  You will be well treated there and I think you can probably secure your release on condition that you return to your own country and take no further part in the war.”

John shook his head.

“I don’t expect any harshness from the Germans,” he said, “but I’m in this war to stay, if the bullets and shells will let me.  I warn you now that I’m going to escape.”

Von Arnheim laughed pleasantly.

“It’s fair of you to give us warning of your intentions,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll have much chance.  You must get ready to start at once.”

“I take it,” said John, “that our departure means the departure of the German army also.”

Von Arnheim opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it again suddenly.

“It’s only a deduction of mine,” said John.

Von Arnheim nodded in farewell and hurried away.

“Now I’m sure,” said John to Fleury a few minutes later, “that this army is going to withdraw.”

“I think so too,” said Fleury.  “I can yet hear the fire of the cannon on either flank and it has certainly moved to the east.  In my opinion, my friend, both German wings have been defeated, and this central army is compelled to fall back because it’s left without supports.  But we’ll soon see.  They can’t hide from us the evidences of retreat.”

The prisoners now marched in a long file in the moonlight across the fields, and John soon recognized the proof that Fleury was right.  The German army was retreating.  There were innumerable dull, rumbling sounds, made by the cannon and motors of all kinds passing along the roads, and at times also he heard the heavy tramp of scores of thousands marching in a direction that did not lead to Paris.

John began to think now of Lannes.  Would he come?  Was Weber right when he credited to him a knowledge near to omniscience?  How was it possible for him to pick out a friend in all that huge morass of battle!  And yet he had a wonderful, almost an unreasoning faith in Philip, and, as always when he thought of him, he looked up at the heavens.

It was an average night, one in which large objects should be visible in the skies, and he saw several aeroplanes almost over their heads, while the rattle of a dirigible came from a point further toward the east.

The aeroplane was bound to be German, but as John looked he saw a sleek shape darting high over them all and flying eastward.  Intuition, or perhaps it was something in the motion and shape of the machine, made him believe it was the Arrow.  It must be the Arrow!  And Lannes must be in it!  High over the army and high over the German planes it darted forward like a swallow and disappeared in a cloud of white mist.  His hair lifted a little, and a thrill ran down his spine.

He still looked up as he walked along, and there was the sleek shape again!  It had come back out of the white mist, and was circling over the German planes, flying with the speed and certainty of an eagle.  He saw three of the German machines whirl about and begin to mount as if they would examine the stranger.  But the solitary plane began to rise again in a series of dazzling circles.  Up, up it went, as if it would penetrate the last and thinnest layer of air, until it reached the dark and empty void beyond.

The Arrow—­he was sure it could be no other—­was quickly lost in the infinite heights, and then the German planes were lost, too, but they soon came back, although the Arrow did not.  It had probably returned to some point over the French line or had gone eastward beyond the Germans.

John felt that he had again seen a sign.  He remembered how he and Lannes had drawn hope from omens when they were looking at the Arc de Triomphe, and a similar hope sprang up now.  Weber was right!  Lannes would come to his rescue.  Some thought or impulse yet unknown would guide him.

Light clouds now drifted up from the southwest, and all the aeroplanes were hidden, but the heavy murmur of the marching army went on.  The puffing and clashing of innumerable automobiles came from the roads also, though John soon ceased to pay attention to them.  As the hours passed, he felt an increased weariness.  He had sat still almost the whole day, but the strain of the watching and waiting had been as great as that of the walking now was.  He wondered if the guards would ever let them stop.

They waded another brook, passed through another wood and then they were ordered to halt.  The guards announced that they could sleep, as they would go no farther that night.  The men did not lie down.  They fell, and each lay where he fell, and in whatever position he had assumed when falling.

John was conscious of hearing the order, of striking the grass full length, and he knew nothing more until the next morning when he was aroused by Fleury.  He saw a whitish dawn with much mist floating over the fields, and he believed that a large river, probably the Marne, must be near.

As far as he could see the ground was covered with German soldiers.  They too had dropped at the command to stop, and had gone to sleep as they were falling.  The majority of them still slept.

“What is it, Fleury?  Why did you wake me up?” asked John.

“The river Marne is close by, and I’m sure that the Germans are going to retreat across it.  I had an idea that possibly we might escape while there’s so much mist.  They can’t watch us very closely while they have so much else to do, and doubtless they would care but little if some of us did escape.”

“We’ll certainly look for the chance.  Can you see any sign of the French pursuit?”

“Not yet, but our people will surely follow.  They’re still at it already on the flanks!”

The distant thunder of cannon came from both right and left.

“A third day of fighting is at hand,” said Fleury.

“And it will be followed by a fourth.”

“And a fifth.”

“But we shall continue to drive the enemy away.”

Both spoke with the utmost confidence.  Having seen their armies victorious for two days they had no doubt they would win again.  All that morning they listened to the sounds of combat, although they saw much less than on the day before.  The prisoners were in a little wood, where they lay down at times, and then, restless and anxious, would stand on tiptoe again, seeking to see at least a corner of the battle.

John and Fleury were standing near noon at the edge of the wood, when a small body of Uhlans halted close by.  Being not more than fifty in number, John judged that they were scouts, and the foaming mouths of their horses showing that they had been ridden hard, confirmed him in the opinion.  They were only fifty or sixty yards from him, and although they were motionless for some time, their eager faces showed that they were waiting for some movement.

It was pure chance, but John happened to be looking at a rather large man who sat his horse easily, his gloved hand resting on his thigh.  He saw distinctly that his face was very ruddy and covered with beads of perspiration.  Then man and horse together fell to the ground as if struck by a bolt of lightning.  The man did not move at all, but the horse kicked for a few moments and lay still.

There was a shout of mingled amazement and horror from the other Uhlans, and it found its echo in John’s own mind.  He saw one of the men look up, and he looked up also.  A dark shape hovered overhead.  Something small and black, and then another and another fell from it and shot downward into the group of Uhlans.  A second man was hurled from his horse and lay still upon the ground.  Again John felt that thrill of horror and amazement.

“What is it?  What is it?” he cried.

“I think it’s the steel arrow,” said Fleury, pressing a little further forward and standing on tiptoe.  “As well as I can see, the first passed entirely through the head of the man and then broke the backbone of the horse beneath him.”

John saw one of the Uhlans, who had dismounted, holding up a short, heavy steel weapon, a dart rather than an arrow, its weight adjusted so that it was sure to fall point downward.  Coming from such a height John did not wonder that it had pierced both horse and rider, and as he looked another, falling near the Uhlan, struck deep into the earth.

“There goes the aeroplane that did it,” said John to Fleury, pointing upward.

It hovered a minute or two longer and flew swiftly back toward the French lines, pursued vainly a portion of the distance by the German Taubes.

“A new weapon of death,” said Fleury.  “The fighters move in the air, under the water, on the earth, everywhere.”

“The Uhlans are off again,” said John.  “Whatever their duty was the steel arrows have sent them on it in a hurry.”

“And we’re about to move too.  See, these batteries are limbering up preparatory to a withdrawal.”

Inside of fifteen minutes they were again marching eastward, though slowly and with the roar of battle going on as fiercely behind them as ever.  John heard again from some of the talk of the guards that the Germans had five armies along their whole line, but whether the one with which he was now a prisoner was falling back with its whole force he had no way of knowing.  Both he and Fleury were sure the prisoners themselves would soon cross the Marne, and that large detachments of the enemy would go with them.

Thoughts of escape returned.  Crossing a river in battle was a perilous operation, entailing much confusion, and the chance might come at the Marne.  They could see too that the Germans were now being pressed harder.  The French shells were coming faster and with more deadly precision.  Now and then they exploded among the masses of German infantry, and once or twice they struck close to the captives.

“It would be a pity to be killed by our own people,” said Fleury.

“And at such a time as this,” said John.  “Do you know, Fleury, that my greatest fear about getting killed is that then I wouldn’t know how this war is going to end?”

“I feel that way myself sometimes.  Look, there’s the Marne!  See its waters shining!  It’s the mark of the first great stage in the German retreat.”

“I wonder how we’re going to cross.  I suppose the bridges will be crowded with artillery and men.  It might pay the Germans just to let us go.”

“They won’t do that.  There’s nothing in their rules about liberating prisoners, and they wouldn’t hear of such a thing, anyhow, trouble or no trouble.”

“I see some boats, and I fancy we’ll cross on them.  I wonder if we couldn’t make what we call in my country a get-away, while we’re waiting for the embarkation.”

“If our gunners become much more accurate our get-away, as you call it, will be into the next life.”

Two huge shells had burst near, and, although none of the flying metal struck them, their faces were stung by fine dirt.  When John brushed the dust out of his eyes he saw that he was right in his surmise about the crossing in boats, but wrong about probable delays in embarkation.  The German machine even in retreat worked with neatness and dispatch.  There were three boats, and the first relay of prisoners, including John and Fleury, was hurried into them.  A bridge farther down the stream rumbled heavily as the artillery crossed on it.  But the French force was coming closer and closer.  A shell struck in the river sixty or eighty feet from them and the water rose in a cataract.  Some of the prisoners had been put at the oars and they, like the Germans, showed eagerness to reach the other side.  John noted the landing, a narrow entrance between thick clumps of willows, and he confessed to himself that he too would feel better when they were on the farther bank.

The Marne is not a wide river, and a few powerful pulls at the oars sent them near to the landing.  But at that moment a shell whistled through the air, plunged into the water and exploded practically beneath the boat.

John was hurled upward in a gush of foam and water, and then, when he dropped back, the Marne received him in its bosom.