With Haig on the Somme Part 41

"What a night!" murmured Harry Hawke, as he lay on his stomach in two inches of water some twenty yards in front of the trench with his pal, Tiddler, beside him. "An' me on the peg to-morrer!"

"Bet you there won't be no show," said Tiddler.

"Don't you make too sure of that, c.o.c.ky. I'll put a s.h.i.+lling on Mr.

Dashwood both ways, and he's got a notion that something's up."

They both looked round, as a slim figure in a thin mackintosh crawled up alongside.

"Hear anything, Hawke?" said Dennis.

"Not so far, sir, but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night--the rain makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the sh.e.l.l 'oles a fair knock-art."

"Well now, look here," said Dennis impressively, "I'm going to shove along, and I want you both to listen with your eyes. You know the Morse code, and if you see anything straight in front of you, pa.s.s the word back to Mr. Wetherby on the parapet behind."

"But you ain't goin' alone, sir! You'll let one of us come wiv yer!"

"I am going alone, Hawke. I marked the lie of the ground before the light went, and it's as easy as walking down Piccadilly. If I can't find out what I want I shall come back; anyhow, look and listen!" And he glided off into the rain and was lost to view long before the slither of his footsteps had died away.

Two hundred yards separated friend and foe; two hundred yards of pulverised No Man's Land, now soaked like a sponge. About midway stretched an unfinished German trench, from which our guns had driven the enemy before they had had time to complete it. It was little more than a wet shallow ditch now, with a line of sandbags on the British side, and when Dennis had crossed it he continued his perilous course on hands and knees.

It was a zigzag course to avoid the thirty or forty sh.e.l.l holes that our guns had made, and as he wormed himself forward the darkness of the night and the strange silence of the enemy batteries on that sector confirmed him more than ever in his conviction that something was in preparation.

The trench he was approaching was of quite unusual strength, with a formidable redoubt making a salient in one place, and as he reached the foot of it he knew that a wall of sandbags nearly fifteen feet high towered above his head.

He had seen that before the light went. Now, in the pitchy darkness of the drenching rain, as he crouched at the foot of the wall he could hear the hoa.r.s.e murmur of many voices behind it, as it seemed to him.

He looked back across that dreary No Man's Land, and then again at the barrier in front of him, and, carrying his life in his hand as he well knew, began to worm his way up the face of the sandbags.

The actual climb presented little difficulty to an athlete; the danger was if a rocket should soar into the sky and some sharp eye discover him.

But the desire to learn something of the enemy's movements from their conversation deadened all sense of risk, until he had reached the last row of sandbags but one, when, without any warning, a group of heads popped up over the parapet, and five officers with night gla.s.ses examined the British line.

He could have reached out and taken the first one by the collar, so close was he, and clinging there, ready to drop and bolt for it, he listened with all his ears.

Secure from all eavesdropping--for who would venture across that No Man's Land on such a night?--the five men talked freely, with all the blatant self-a.s.sumption of Prussian sabre rattlers, and the wet wind that brought their words to him brought also the smell of their cigars.

But if the listener's pulse quickened at their conversation, his heart beat faster still at the conclusion of it.

"By the way, Von Dussel," said one of them, "how comes it that you are going in with us to-night? Surely you are not abandoning the role that you have filled with such success?" And Dennis recognised the short laugh that preluded the reply.

"Not at all, Herr Colonel," said the nearest of the five, "but I have had no word to-day from my wife, so I know it is of no use penetrating their lines. Besides, I have an old grudge against the regiment in front of us--a quarrel I hope to settle to-night."

"You may rest quite easy that you will do so," laughed the colonel; "our five battalions of Prussians are going to do what their Bavarian and Saxon comrades failed to accomplish. Let me see, it is General Dashwood's Brigade that is before us here, _nicht wahr?_"

"Yes," chortled Von Dussel; "and it is with the Dashwood family that I hope to renew an interrupted acquaintance, the pig hounds!"

Dennis had never found it necessary to place such a powerful restraint upon himself as he did at that moment, and it was perhaps a lucky thing that the five men withdrew as the spy spoke.

His own clutch on the sandbags had been gradually relaxing, and his feet were so cramped that he regained the ground with difficulty.

For several seconds he paused irresolute, figuring out how long it would take him to crawl back to the British trench, and then, suddenly coming to a very hazardous decision, he sat down on his heels with his back against the German sandbags.

Spreading the skirt of his saturated mackintosh over his knees, and holding the Orilux torch which young Wetherby had recharged for him between his ankles, he breathed a silent prayer to Heaven, and pressed the b.u.t.ton.

Before he had started he had pasted a strip of paper over the electric bulb to reduce the light, leaving only a tiny aperture in the centre of it.

But the two men on listening-post in the distance caught the gleam distinctly, and read off the Morse code message in whispered chorus without a mistake.

"Wetherby," twinkled the tiny speck from the foot of the enemy trench, "find Bob at once, and tell him that five Prussian battalions will attack in half an hour. They are to form up on this side of the line of sandbags midway between us, and the signal for their advance will be the turning on of their searchlights. If he'll move our chaps forward to your side of the sandbags and lie doggo, the brutes will get the surprise of their lives, for they're c.o.c.ksure of a walk-over. Tell Bob they're attacking with emptied magazines, and it will be bayonet work--that'll fetch him."

The listening-post waited eagerly for more, but the Orilux did not show again, and when Hawke crawled back to find Mr. Wetherby, his heart sank into his muddy boots, for the officer boy was not there.

Meanwhile Dennis had gathered himself together for the return journey.

It seemed an hour since the voices above him had ceased, and a thousand wild doubts chased one another through his brain, but he had not left the shelter of the wall three yards when he glided back to it again, and wormed himself into a crevice at its base.

Earth had come dribbling from the top of the parapet, and following the earth panting men scrambling down the sandbags until they reached the ground. One trod upon his shoulder as he lay there, but the lad never moved, and whispered words all about him told that the enemy was mustering for the a.s.sault.

At the end of a few minutes the soft squelch of heavy boots died away in the direction of the British line, and Dennis Dashwood swallowed rapidly and felt sick. He could not see his hand in front of him, and the rain continued to hiss without cessation, falling into a neighbouring sh.e.l.l hole with an ever-increasing plop.

Had they seen his signal and understood it? was his agonised thought, as eight powerful searchlights were suddenly turned on to the ground in front.

Everything was now as light as day, and he saw the Prussian battalions lying on their faces, packed like sardines in a tin, behind those sandbags that concealed them from his own people.

The iron plates on their boot soles gleamed like silver, and not a man of them moved. Then, without warning, a hurricane of German sh.e.l.ls plumped into the trench where he had left his beloved battalion, raking it from end to end.

No need for those waiting bayonets now, was his soul-rending thought, as he saw the trench disappear in a holocaust of flame and smoke. He had acted for the best, but he ought to have gone back with his news, for, if the battalion was where he had left it, then the 2/12th Royal Reeds.h.i.+res must have been wiped off the face of the earth!

CHAPTER x.x.xI

With Dashwood's Brigade

High overhead three red rockets burst in the sky, and the German guns ceased at the signal.

In the dazzling gleam of the concentrated searchlights, Dennis saw a Prussian officer raise himself cautiously to peer across the sandbags, and reconnoitre the obliterated British trench.

His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis recognised young Wetherby.

Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white figures pouring in one cras.h.i.+ng volley at point-blank range, and with a full-throated British cheer the Reeds.h.i.+res vaulted over the wet ditch and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet.

Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a trigger the battalion was into them.

There was no quarter asked or given. The Reeds.h.i.+res were out to kill, and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his being itching to be in it. But between him and that raving, raging tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection of the strong trench.