With Haig on the Somme Part 34

He could hear the excited clamour as men left the trench and ran towards it; and even in the midst of his extraordinary peril he was fired with a wild desire to escape.

His manoeuvre had not been seen, and, lowering himself rapidly hand under hand, he gained the foot of the tree which had proved his salvation, torn and bleeding, but with every nerve of mind and body on the alert.

"They've not got me yet!" he muttered, as he looked about him; and, crawling on hands and knees, crept under the trunk of a fallen tree half a dozen yards away, where he lay down flat on his face.

The very ground beneath him seemed to shake with every discharge, and the roar of the firing was continuous. Not only were both sides flinging a terrific barrage to check the arrival of reinforcements, but half a dozen isolated actions were taking place at various points of the extended battle line. From Trones Wood to Contalmaison Villa heavy fighting was in progress, and Dennis raged inwardly that by his own fault he should have neither act nor part in any of it.

Presently, as he lay with his ear to the ground, he caught another sound much nearer than that of the firing--the thud of men running in heavy boots in his vicinity; and, worming himself still deeper among the undergrowth that surrounded the fallen tree, he drew his Webley revolver and waited.

About a dozen of the enemy came past the tree on either side of it, peering this way and that, and stirring such brushwood as remained with their fixed bayonets.

"Pooh!" said one of them, "this is a fool's quest. What is the good of looking for a man who has got a broken neck by this time?"

"What is the good of the war, I should like to know?" replied one of his companions. "For my part, I am so sick of this terrible life that I would willingly surrender."

"You had better not let our captain hear you talk like that, or you will be shot, my friend," said another of them; "though I dare say, if we were honest, two-thirds of the battalion would agree with you. But it is very certain the Englishman is not here, and the sooner we get back the better."

They pa.s.sed on; and as the crackle of their going among the bushes died away quickly, Dennis drew a deep breath of relief. He had no idea where he was, for the whole of that rolling country was dotted with irregular patches of woodland, his map case was gone, and the balloon had drifted considerably to the east before it fell.

He knew it would be wiser for him to wait until nightfall and take advantage of the moonlight; but the desire to rejoin his men was too strong to be resisted; and after cautiously peering over the undergrowth he crept from his concealment, and dodged from bush to bush until he reached the edge of the wood.

There the hum of voices warned him that he was only a few yards from the parados of an enemy trench--and not a very deep one at that--for as he parted the brambles behind which he cowered, he could see the round forage caps and shaven heads in front of him.

For an hour he lay there, watching and listening, hoping against hope that our fellows would deliver a frontal attack on the trench, which was thinly held.

Once, indeed, the alarm was given; the enemy manned the fire-step, and the machine-gunners were on the _qui vive_; but after a while the threatened danger had evidently pa.s.sed, for they stood down again, greatly relieved.

Every now and then a British sh.e.l.l burst in the wood behind him, tearing off branches and great strips of bark, and bringing the slender trees down with a crash.

"This won't do, Dennis Dashwood, my friend," he murmured. "The way is barred here. Let us see how far their trench extends. I'll swear that was a British cheer on the left." And he crawled back again deeper into the trees, whose shadows were now falling in long lines as the afternoon waned.

Taking his bearings, he worked his way from sh.e.l.l hole to sh.e.l.l hole, now pa.s.sing through a belt of timber comparatively unscathed, now encountering a stretch that had been heavily sh.e.l.led, where the trees seemed to stand on their heads with their roots in the air.

Always keeping his eyes on the sky, across which the clouds were drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German sh.e.l.ls burst furiously among the neglected fields.

The wood, straggling out still eastward, seemed to indicate the route he must follow; and, without knowing it, he crossed the identical road our troops had taken earlier in the day when they went up to the capture of Bazentin village.

If he could only pa.s.s the limit of the German barrage he had an idea that he would find himself among friends before long; and he was right, although the manner of his meeting them was very unexpected.

He paused as the trees suddenly came to an end, and was astonished to see a riderless horse trotting towards him. His astonishment increased as he recognised the saddlery to be British. There was no other living creature in sight. A waving wheatfield, among which some scarlet poppies were growing, marked the skyline, beyond which the ground fell away, and far off in the distance across the wheat was the top of another wood.

"That's a trooper's mount if ever I saw one," said Dennis. And as the mare, with nostrils distended and ears set forward, neighed loudly, he jumped out of his concealment and caught her rein.

"Whoa, little lady--steady!" he said soothingly. "Ah, if you could only speak, and tell me where you have come from!"

He had some difficulty in bringing her to a stand, for she was quivering from the effects of recent alarm; and he saw a red smear on the leather wallets, and the saddle flap on the near side had been cut by a bullet.

As he placed his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, rifle fire suddenly opened from somewhere beyond the ridge of the wheat. He was down again in an instant, and leading the mare cautiously forward through the corn.

Craning his neck above the waving grain, he saw the white line of a trench farther down the slope, and beyond it, retiring at a hand gallop, a row of brown dots in extended order, which he knew to be British cavalry!

A glance had shown him that there was a machine-gun in the trench, and his course was clear now. He must warn the hors.e.m.e.n if they did not know it already; and, turning the mare, he led her back out of sight of the enemy and, mounting, rode off in a wide detour before he put her to top speed across the open.

The sergeant who had ridden her was lying on his back at the edge of the cornfield, and the greyness of his face told that he was dead.

"Now, my beauty!" he cried, with a squeeze of his knees. And away he dashed, taking a barbed wire entanglement like a bird, and coming up with a little bunch of hors.e.m.e.n re-forming in a hollow.

They were Dragoon Guards, and with them was a detachment of the Deccan Horse, whose lance-points and steel helmets twinkled in the suns.h.i.+ne, with here and there a turban among them.

Horses and men betrayed their eagerness, for it was the first time since the dark days of 1914 that the cavalry had had their chance.

"Hallo, sir! Who are you?" was their commander's greeting, as Dennis reined up beside him.

"Lieutenant Dashwood, of the Reeds.h.i.+res, sir--just escaped from the German lines, thanks to the mare which I found running wild up yonder. I want to report a machine-gun in the corn up there."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Nothing could check the victorious rush"]

"The d.i.c.kens you do!" was the response; and the officer glanced at his men.

Every eye was turned upon him, and the horses were pawing impatiently, shaking the foam from their bits.

"It would be cruelty to animals to disappoint my chaps," he said, with an odd laugh. "This is our day out, you know, and we've waited a tidy while for it." And, raising his voice, he cried: "Come on, men! Slap through 'em--and hang the consequences!"

A rapturous shout greeted his words, and the lance-points came down.

The next moment Dennis found himself galloping beside the leader through the green corn-stalks. Grey figures sprang up in front; someone made a prod at him with a bayonet and missed. Mausers cracked out and a machine-gun began to bark, while here and there little knots of the enemy pressed in close together and prepared to receive cavalry, others flinging up their arms, crying: "Pity, Kamerad!"

But nothing could check the victorious rush.

When his revolver was empty, Dennis drew the sword attached to the saddle, and though he could not distinctly remember what happened, he saw that the blade was red from point to forte, when a parapet stopped the charge, and voices shouted "Retire!"

They streamed back in any sort of order, laughing like schoolboys; and though a few saddles had been emptied, they carried thirty-two prisoners with them--men whose courage had failed at the sight of their glittering lance-points, with the driving force of the galloping steeds behind them.

It had been short and sharp, perhaps a little foolish, but it had been a charge in the old style, and no one minded a cut or a slash when the squadron sergeant-majors formed them up again in the hollow from which they had started.

"Great, eh?" said their leader, binding a silk handkerchief round his wrist.

"Yes, I think it was worth it," laughed Dennis, tying the knots for him.

"I should rather think it was. Didn't some poet Johnny say something about 'one crowded hour of glorious life'? And by gad, boy, if you only knew how we've been eating our hearts out to get a show! Now you can do as you like, but we're going to work up along that wood over yonder.

That's Delville Wood, you know. You're miles from your crush."

"Then I'll come with you if I may," responded Dennis, as the line opened out and pushed slowly forward on reconnaissance.

They had not gone very far when machine-guns on their front suddenly opened, and this time the leader deemed discretion the better part of valour. Besides, an aeroplane flying very low came over their heads, and for some minutes they were uncertain whether it was an enemy craft or no, until it swooped above the hidden enemy among the corn and opened fire upon them.

"By Jupiter, that's a good plucked 'un!" said the squadron commander, as the airman swooped for the fourth time before he flew away unscathed.

But out of the ragged volley which the panic-stricken enemy fired at the plane one ball found its billet in the neck of Dennis's mare, and with a squeal and a bound that almost unseated him she tore madly northwards, in spite of all his efforts to stay her.