A Tatter of Scarlet Part 31

I watched the wide Cours of Aramon, white under the moon, with its plane trees casting inky shadows on the flat stones and trampled earth. A silence had fallen upon the streets that opened on it, and no lights showed from the houses. The anarchists knew the value of darkness as well as we. But for a while the moon continued to block them. The sky filled and as regularly emptied of great white clouds, charioting up from the Mediterranean like angelic harvest-wains.

I did not see anything worth reporting from the top of the clock-tower, nor hear anything except a distant hammering. An intense quiet reigned over the town of Aramon-les-Ateliers. I saw no new conflagrations. The old were extinct, and no yelling mobs poured out towards the well-to-do suburbs. The Extremists of the Commune had withdrawn their sentries and outposts--at least from within sight of the defences of the works.

Jack Jaikes argued that this alone showed that they were plotting mischief.

"These gutter sc.r.a.pings of a hundred ports and a thousand prisons" was what he called "the new lot" who had supplanted Keller Bey.

I think he secretly rejoiced. For, so long as it was a matter of fighting the elected Commune with Keller Bey at its head, he knew that the Chief had been lukewarm about extreme measures. He had even negotiated in the early time, which Jack Jaikes called "a burning shame.

The best way to negotiate wi' a rattlesnake is to break his back wi' a stick!" He recognised, however, it was no use holding back when the Chief said "March!"

"But noo, lad," he confided to me, "they are coming for what they will get. They are going to harry and burn and kill. There are four women yonder, and Dennis kens as well as me that if they win in on us, it will be death and h.e.l.l following after. So he will let us turn on the fire-hose from the first, and let off no volleys in the air. That suits Jack Jaikes. This is no Sunday-school treat wi' tugs-o'-war and shying at Aunt Sally for coco-nits! Aye, a-richt, you below--haud a wee, I'm comin'!"

He had hardly remained five minutes with me, but he had put some iron into my blood. We were no longer fighting against theorists like Keller Bey, or broad-beamed, first-cla.s.s mechanicians like the Pere Felix.

And then the women--they would not bear thinking about, and indeed I had not time, for prompt, as if answering to a call, Rhoda Polly plumped down beside me in the sand-bag niche.

"I met Jack Jaikes," she explained. "He said he knew I was coming and had made all snug for me. How did he know? You did not?"

"He must have guessed, Rhoda Polly--perhaps it was something you said."

"Nonsense, he is altogether too previous, that Jack Jaikes, but all the same these sand-bags are comfy, and I can see as from an upper box."

"There is not much to see." I was saying the very words when with a crash a wall on the opposite side of the Cours seemed to crumble in upon itself. There was a jet of flame, a rain of stones, which reached half-way to the defences of the works, and then a gap, dark and vague in the veiled moonlight.

"That was dynamite," said Rhoda Polly, "though the report was not loud.

There is, quarrymen say, a silent zone in which the explosion is not heard. We must be just on the verge of that. I wonder if there is more to come."

We waited--I straining my eyes into the darkness and seeing nothing. The moon did not reach down into the gulf which the explosion had created.

But I was vaguely conscious of shapes that moved and of a curious crus.h.i.+ng noise like that of the steam-roller upon the fresh macadam of a roadway in the making.

But though Jack Jaikes came up to see for himself, none of us could make out anything--till Rhoda Polly, whose eyes were like those of a cat, made a telescope of her hands and after a long look whispered eagerly, "I see something they have got in there. It is like a bear on end--you know--when it is dancing."

"Try again, Rhoda Polly. Try the night-gla.s.s!"

"I can do better without it, Jack Jaikes--yes, I see better now--it is like a big boiler for was.h.i.+ng clothes or boiling pig's-meat with the mouth tilted towards us. It looks as if it were mounted on a kind of cradle!"

The words were hardly out of her mouth when Jack Jaikes exclaimed, in a voice which might have been heard half across the wide oblong of the Cours, "A mortar--I never thought of that--they have got a mortar. They were clearing a way for using it--at short range too. They can plug us anywhere now."

He sprang towards the Morse telegraph, but he did not reach it. A concussion and a roar shook the tower to its base. I saw the flame shoot out a yard wide from the gap in the defence wall. Our main gate and part of the rampart to the right had been badly smashed, quite enough for a determined storming party to penetrate if the new gun made any more successes.

"They are firing solid sh.e.l.l at us," said Jack Jaikes, frantically manipulating the keys of the telegraph instrument.

"Now I must get a gun to play upon them. It will need something big, for though we can scourge their gun emplacement with mitraille fire, the merit of their plan is that the gunners lie hid in a ditch. Only one man, or two at most, are needed to slip round and drop in the charge and sh.e.l.l."

"I see them," said Rhoda Polly, pointing where we saw only blank darkness. "Give me a rifle, Jack Jaikes. I believe I can pick that man off!"

"You shall have number 27, Rhoda Polly, the best ever made. Oh, if only I had eyes like you!"

Jack Jaikes groaned aloud, and Rhoda Polly settled herself behind the sand-bags. But she glanced up almost instantly.

"He is gone!" she said.

"Then look out!" cried Jack Jaikes.

We both saw the broad stream of fire this time, and the wall on the other side of the gate came rattling down, while a big ball went skipping across the yard of the works, kicking the dust into clouds and bringing up with a dull smack against the wall of the foundry just opposite.

"No harm done this journey, just topped us and brought down a few stones. But this can't last. They will get the range and make hay of us."

He was already making off on his quest.

"Better get down out of that, Rhoda Polly," he called back, as his feet clattered among the fallen bricks and masonry. "Go to the cellar, Rhoda Polly!"

"Go to the cellar yourself, Jack Jaikes--I'm going to watch for the man who does the loading of that gun!"

And Jack Jaikes laughed, well pleased. I felt vaguely humiliated, for I was a far better shot than Rhoda Polly, only I could not see.

Furthermore I wished her well out of the clock-tower, for the flash of a rifle from the top of it would almost certainly cause us to be bombarded, and with the lobbing action of the mortar shot the projectile might very well land right on top of us, in which case the sand-bags would prove no protection. All I could do, however, was to stick to the Morse machine and send down the reports that Rhoda Polly threw at me over her shoulder.

As soon as Jack Jaikes had made a tour of the posts, a hail of rifle fire broke from the wall of our defences, directed upon the gap in the wall and the _debris_ which sheltered the mortar.

"It's no use! Tell them to stop," called out Rhoda Polly; "they are only making the plaster fall." I transmitted the message, and the firing from our side slackened and ceased.

The smoke of the volleys drifted slowly along the wall, blinding and provoking the watcher. She waved it petulantly away with her hands.

"They will make me miss my chance," she mourned. "The gunners can do what they like behind that. I wish Jack Jaikes had had more sense. What is the use of shooting at sparrows' nests under the eaves when the men are down in a ditch?"

She was quite right, the next sh.e.l.l was a live one, and pa.s.sed quite near us with a whistling sound. It exploded just under the big iron door, which was blown from its fastenings and fell backward into the yard with a heavy, jangling crash which went to all our hearts like a warning.

The square of the doorway, seen over the edge of the clock-tower, was now quite open. The mortar of the anarchists had done good work, and our carefully-thought-out positions were endangered. I could see Dennis Deventer walking about from post to post, where there was danger of an attack. The wall was not high, especially on the side of the Chateau, and it would not do to leave these posts denuded of men.

At the moment while I was looking at him, Jack Jaikes with a full gunners' team came galloping across the yard with a four-inch Deventer quick-firing field-gun lurching after them. If once they could get that up to the doorway they might be able to make some efficient reply to the enemy's mortar. But a gun of that size needs some sort of emplacement, and an approach to the doorway must be contrived.

Dennis was on the spot and I could hear him giving his orders in sharp, lapidary phrases. In the interest below me I had not been watching Rhoda Polly, and so the sharp report of her No. 27 startled me. Of course I could discern nothing in the huge black gash torn by the explosion. But Rhoda Polly was triumphant.

"I got him," she whispered; "I saw him coming out and before he could get the sh.e.l.l into the muzzle, I fired. He dropped the sh.e.l.l and fell on top of it. What a pity it did not go off!"

Such a bloodthirsty Rhoda Polly! But the truth was that, when it came to fighting and what she called "taking a hand," Rhoda Polly felt absolutely at one with the defence. She only strove to outdo those who were her comrades, and the matter of s.e.x, never prominent in Rhoda Polly's mind, was altogether in abeyance.

I tapped the keys of the Morse viciously. It was all I was good for.

"Rhoda Polly has shot the gunner--now is your time!"

But still the embankment for the four-inch did not quite please Dennis.

He preferred to take his chance and wait. It seemed a long, weariful time. Rhoda Polly peered into the blackness along the tube of No. 27.

Rhoda Polly wriggled and settled herself.

"Bang!" said No. 27. "Winged him! But he made off!" said the marksman disgustedly. "He was quarrying under the other fellow for the sh.e.l.l, so they can't have many or he would have brought out a fresh one. I do wish father would hurry up. In a minute or two there will be such a beautiful chance--just before they are going to fire. They will send three or four men this next time so that I can't shoot them all. If our folk are not speedy, down will come this old clock-tower!"

Rhoda Polly was a good prophet, and when next she spoke she had to report that there was a little cloud of men on either side, hiding behind the wall and preparing to load the piece, when their comrades were ready, at any hazard.