Altsheler Joseph Alexander
The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne
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.
