The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne by Joseph A. Altsheler (i like reading TXT) 📖

The Arrow, like a bird, folding its wings, sank gracefully into the meadow, and Lannes, hastily jumping out, asked John to look after the aeroplane. Then he rushed toward a group of officers, among whom he recognized the chief of the army.

John himself disembarked stiffly, and stretched his limbs, while several young Englishmen looked at him curiously. He had learned long since how to deal with Englishmen, that is to take no notice of them until they made their presence known, and then to acquiesce slowly and reluctantly in their existence. So, he took short steps back and forth on the grass, flexing and tensing his muscles, as abstractedly as if he were alone on a desert island.

"I say," said a handsome fair young man at last, "would you mind telling us, old chap, where you come from?"

John continued to stretch his muscles and took several long and deep breaths. After the delay he turned to the fair young man and said:

"Beg pardon, but did you speak to me?"

The Englishman flushed a little and pulled at his yellow mustache. An older man said:

"Don't press His Highness, Lord James. Don't you see that he's an American and therefore privileged?"

"I'm privileged," said John, "because I was with you fellows from Belgium to Paris, and since then I've been away saving you from the Germans."

Lord James laughed. He had a fine face and all embarrassment disappeared from it.

"We want to be friends," he said. "Shake hands."

John shook. He also shook the hand of the older man and several others. Then he explained who he was, and told who had come with him, none less than the famous young French aviator, Philip Lannes.

"Lannes," said Mr. Yellow Mustache, who, John soon learned, was Lord James Ivor. "Why, we've all heard of him. He's come to the chief with messages a half-dozen times since this battle began, and I judge from the way he rushed to him just now that he has another, that can't be delayed."

"I think so, too," said John, "although I don't know anything about it myself. He's a close-mouthed fellow. But do any of you happen to have heard of an Englishman, Carstairs, and an American, Wharton, who belong to a company called the Strangers in the French army, but who must be at present with you—that is, if they're alive?"

John's voice dropped a little, as he added the last words, but Lord James Ivor walked to the brow of a low hill, called to somebody beyond, and then walked back.

"It's a happy chance that I can tell you what you want to know," he said. "Those two men have been serving in my own company, and they're both alive and well. But they were lying on the grass there, dead to the world, that is, sleeping, as if they were two of the original seven sleepers."

Two figures appeared on the brow of the hill, gazed at first in a puzzled manner at John and then, uttering shouts of welcome, rushed toward him. Carstairs seized him by one hand and Wharton by the other.

"Not killed, I see," said Carstairs.

"Nor is he going to be killed," said Wharton.

"Now, where have you been?" asked Carstairs.

"Yes, where have you been?" asked Wharton.

"I've been taking a couple of pleasure trips with my friend, Lannes," replied John. "Between trips I was a prisoner of the Germans, and I've seen a lot of the great battle. Has the British army suffered much?"

A shade flitted over the face of Carstairs as he replied:

"We haven't been shot up so much since Waterloo. It's been appalling. For days and nights we've been fighting and marching. Whenever we stopped even for a moment we fell on the ground and were asleep before we touched it. Half the fellows I knew have been killed. I think as long as I live I'll hear the drumming of those guns in my ears, and, confound 'em, I still hear 'em in reality now. If you turn your attention to it you can hear the confounded business quite plainly! But what I do know, Scott, is that we've been winning! I don't know where I am and I haven't a clear idea of what I've been doing all the time, but as sure as we're in France the victory is ours."

"But won by the French chiefly" John could not keep from saying.

"Quite true. Our own army is not large, but it has done as much per man."

"And the moral support," added John. "The French have felt the presence of a friend, a friend, too, who in six months will be ten times as strong as he is now."

"Where is Lannes?" asked Wharton.

"He's got your job, Wharton," replied John with a smile. "He's Envoy Extraordinary and Bearer of Messages concerning Life and Death between the armies. As soon as he landed he went directly to the British commander, and they're now conferring in a tent. That will never happen to you. You will never be closeted with the leader of a great army."

"I don't know. I may not be able to fly like the Frenchman, but he can't handle the wireless as I can, and he isn't the chain-lightning chauffeur that Carstairs is. Please to remember those facts."

"I do. But here comes Lannes, the man of mystery."

Lannes seemed preoccupied, but he greeted Carstairs and Wharton warmly.

"I'm about to take another flight," he said. "No, thank you so much, but I've time neither to eat nor to drink. I must fly at once, though it's to be a short flight. Take care of my friend, Monsieur Jean the Scott, while I'm gone, won't you? Don't let him wander into German hands again, because I won't have time to go for him once more."

"We won't!" said Carstairs and Wharton with one voice. "Having got him back we're going to keep him."

Lannes smiling sprang into the Arrow. The willing young Englishmen gave it a mighty push, and rising into the blue afternoon sky he sailed away toward the south.

"He'll be back all right," said Carstairs. "I've come to the conclusion that nothing can ever catch that fellow. He's a wonder, he is. One of the most difficult jobs I have, Scott, is to give the French all the credit that's due 'em. I've been trained, as all other Englishmen were, to consider 'em pretty poor stuff that we've licked regularly for a thousand years, and here we suddenly find 'em heroes and brothers-in-arms. It's all the fault of the writers. Was it Shakespeare who said: 'Methinks that five Frenchmen on one pair of English legs did walk?'"

"No," said Lord James Ivor, "It was the other way around. 'Methinks that one Englishman on five pairs of French legs did walk.'"

"I'm not so sure about the number, either," interjected Wharton. "Are you positive it was five?"

"Whatever it was," said Carstairs, "the Frenchman was slandered, and by our own great bard, too. But come and take something with us, if Lord James, our immediate chief, is willing."

"He's willing, and he'll go with you," said Lord James Ivor. "I need a bite myself and in war like this a man can't afford to neglect food and drink, when the chance is offered."

"The habits of you Europeans are strong," said John, whose spirits were still exuberant. "If you didn't have to stop now and then to work or to fight you'd eat all the time. One meal would merge into another, making a beautiful, savory chain linked together. I know the Englishman's heaven perfectly well. It's made of lakes of ale, beer, porter and Scotch highballs, surrounded by high banks of cheese, mutton and roast beef."

"There could be worse heavens," said Carstairs, "and if it should happen that way it wouldn't be long before you Yankees would be trying to break out of your heaven and into ours. But here's a taste of it now, the cheese, for instance, and the beer, although it's in bottles."

A spry Tommy Atkins served them, and John, thankful at heart, ate and drank with the best of them. And while they ate the pulsing waves of air from the battle beat upon their ears. It seemed to these young men to have been beating that way for weeks.

"Lannes will be back soon," said John to Carstairs and Wharton, "and he'll tear you away from your friends here. You think, Carstairs, that you're an Englishman, and you're convinced, Wharton, that you're an American, but you're both wrong. You're Frenchmen, and you're going back to the French army, where you belong. Then Captain Daniel Colton of the Strangers will want to know from you why you haven't returned sooner."

"But how are we to go?" said Carstairs.

"And where are we to go?" said Wharton.

"I'd go in a minute," added Carstairs, "if the German army would let me."

"So would I," said Wharton, "but the Germans fight so hard that we can't get away."

"Lannes will attend to all those matters," said John. "I'll rest until he comes, if I have the chance. Is that your artillery firing?"

"It's our big guns out in front," said Lord James Ivor. "Jove, but what work they've done! A lot of our guns have been smashed, one half of our gunners maybe have been smashed with 'em, but they've never flinched. They covered our retreat from Belgium, and they've been the heralds of our advance here on the Marne! Listen to 'em! How they talk!"

The heavy crash of guns far in front and the thunder of the German guns replying came back to their ears. It was a louder note in the general and ceaseless murmur of the battle, but the young men paid it only a passing moment of attention. Carstairs presently added as an afterthought:

"Unless Lannes returns soon I don't think we'll hear from him. That blaze of the guns in front of us indicates close fighting again, and we'll probably be ordered forward soon."

"I don't think so," said Lord James Ivor. "Our guns and the German guns will talk together for quite a while before the infantry advance. You can spend a good two hours with us yet, and still have time to depart for the French army."

It was evident that Lord James Ivor knew what he was talking about, since, as far as John could see, the khaki army lay outspread on the turf. These men were too much exhausted and too much dulled to danger to stir merely because the cannon were blazing. It took the sharp orders of their officers to move them. Shells from the German guns began to fall along the fringe of the troops, but thousands slept heavily on.

John, after disposing of the excellent rations offered to him, sat down on the grass with Wharton, Carstairs and Lord James Ivor. The sun was now waning, but the western sky was full of gold, and the yellow rays slanting across the hills and fields made them vivid with light. Lord James handed his glasses to John with the remark:

"Would you like to take a look there toward the east, Scott?"

John with the help of the glasses discerned the English batteries in action. He saw the men working about them, the muzzles pointing upward, and then the flash. Some of the guns were completely hidden in foliage, and he could detect their presence only by the heavy detonations coming from such points. Yet, like many of the English soldiers about him, John's mind did not respond to so much battle. He looked at the flashes, and he listened to the reports without emotion. His senses had become dulled by it, and registered no impressions.

"We've masked our batteries as much as possible," said Lord James. "The Germans are great fellows at hiding their big guns. They use every clump of wood, hay stacks, stray stacks and anything else, behind which you could put a piece of artillery. They trained harder before the war, but we'll soon be able to match 'em."

While Lord James was talking, John turned the glasses to the south and watched the sky. He had observed two black dots, both of which grew fast into the shape of aeroplanes. One, he knew, was the Arrow. He had learned to recognize the plane at a vast distance. It was something in the shape or a trick of motion perhaps, almost like that of a human being, with which he had become familiar and which he could not mistake. The other plane, by the side of Lannes' machine, bothered him. It was much larger than the Arrow, but they seemed to be on terms of perfect friendship, each the consort of the other.

"Lannes is coming," announced John. "He's four or five miles to the south and he's about a quarter of a mile up, but he has company. Will you have a look,