A Lively Bit of the Front Part 19

Fiercely he tugged at the Prussian's beard. With a yell of pain the fellow bent his knees and reared his body, only to fall inertly upon the half-suffocated Digger. In rising he had intercepted a dozen or more bullets from the machine-gun. So close was the muzzle, that his clothes smouldered in the blast of the weapon. Not that it mattered very much to him, for he was stone dead.

With a frantic effort Malcolm rolled himself clear of the body of his late foe; then, resisting the temptation to regain his feet, he crouched in a corner of the emplacement and took stock of his immediate front.

He could easily have touched the cooling-jacket of the weapon as the machine-gun continued its death-dealing work. He could discern the sullen, determined features of the two men who alone remained of the machine-gun's crew.

Vainly Malcolm groped for his rifle. The violent impact had sent the weapon yards away. Nor could he find the rifle of his late adversary. The man had been a bomber; perhaps some of his stock of hand-propelled missiles yet remained?

Very cautiously the New Zealander felt for the canvas pockets suspended from the Hun's neck. Every one was empty.

"Rough luck!" he soliloquized. "Don't know so much about it, though; if he had had any left when we sc.r.a.pped he might have chucked one at my head."

The machine-gun ceased firing. For a moment Malcolm was seized with the haunting fear that the gunners had spotted him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that they were fitting another belt of ammunition.

Presently Rifleman Carr's hand came in contact with a hard substance protruding from the Prussian's pocket. By the feel of it he was a.s.sured that he had found a revolver. Stealthily he withdrew the weapon and examined it. The pistol was evidently smaller than those used in the opposing armies. Belgian made, it had probably been obtained from a looted shop. Although officially unsanctioned, raiding parties, British, French, and German, frequently carried small revolvers when engaged in paying uninvited and unwelcome visits to the hostile lines.

The weapon was loaded in five chambers. Whether it was sufficiently powerful for the work Malcolm proposed to do the lad could not definitely form an opinion. It was like riding an untried steed.

Failure on the part of the cheap mechanism meant death; nevertheless, for the sake of his comrades who were exposed to the brisk fire of the machine-gun, he was determined to take the risk.

A gentle pressure on the trigger revealed the pleasing fact that the revolver was of a self-acting type. So far so good. The next question was--are the cartridges reliable?

Deliberately Malcolm, steadying the barrel on the neck of the dead Hun, aimed between the eyes of the fellow holding the firing-handle of the machine-gun.

Two shots rang out in quick succession. Giving a yelp of mingled pain and surprise, Fritz doubled up across the gun, his feet beating a tattoo against an ammunition-box. His companion, partly deafened by the double report almost under his nose, and taken aback by the collapse of the gunner, crouched irresolute. Before he could decide whether to s.n.a.t.c.h up his rifle or to raise his hands and shout "Kamerad" a bullet from Malcolm's revolver struck him fairly in the centre of his low forehead.

Wriggling from underneath the dead Prussian, Rifleman Carr regained his feet. The wave of New Zealanders forming the first storming-party had swept beyond the now silent machine-gun. The supports were doubling up, their numbers no longer lessened by the rain of bullets from the hitherto overlooked emplacement. Between the two lines of attackers khaki-clad figures littered the ground, while numbers of wounded, both New Zealanders and Huns, trickled towards the British trenches.

"My capture!" exclaimed Malcolm. "I'll put a tally on the beauty."

Searching, he found his rifle and bayonet. Unfixing the latter, he scratched upon the field-grey paint of the machine-gun the words: "99,109, Carr, No. 3 Platoon, C Company".

"If I go under, the boys will know I've done something towards my bit," he muttered. "I wonder where my pals are?"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Captured Trench

"Hallo, Malcolm!"

Above the rattle of musketry and the crash of bombs, Rifleman Carr heard his name shouted in cheery stentorian tones. Looking in the direction from which the shout came, the lad saw two stretcher-bearers jogging along with a heavy burden over the uneven ground. One of the men was Mike Dowit, the hero of the bombing exercise at far-off Featherstone Camp. It was not he who called, for his jaw was swathed in a bandage. The other man was unknown to Malcolm.

Right at the heels of the stormers the regimental stretcher-bearers had gone over the top, defenceless, and, as such, running even more risks than the infantry. Already Dowit and his companion had made three journeys to the advance dressing-station, notwithstanding the fact that the former had received a nasty wound in his chin from a fragment of sh.e.l.l.

"Hallo, Malcolm!" was the repeated hail, as the man in the stretcher waved his shrapnel helmet to attract attention still further.

It was Sergeant Fortescue,

"Proper bucks.h.i.+e this time," he declared, as the bearers, through sheer weariness, halted and set their burden on the ground.

"Machine-gun copped me fairly. Three if not four bullets through my left leg, close to knee. 'Fraid I won't see you for another three months."

"Seen Selwyn?" asked Malcolm anxiously.

"Up there clearing out the dug-outs," replied Fortescue. "He's all right; so's Joliffe, M'Kane, and M'Turk. Poor little Billy Preston's done in, though. Shot through the head. I saw him. A fearful mess."

"You're a liar, Sergeant!" muttered a hollow voice, as the subject of the conversation strolled in a leisurely manner up to the stationary stretcher.

Corporal Preston's appearance did not belie Fortescue's statement that it was a fearful mess. Almost as the last German was cleared out of the captured trench, a piece of shrapnel struck the Corporal just below his right ear, and ploughed through his skin from the cheek-bone to the corner of his mouth. He dropped like a stone, and Fortescue had come to the erroneous conclusion that Billy Preston had made the great sacrifice.

Despite his injuries, Corporal Preston was grinning broadly on the uninjured side of his face. A lighted cigarette was between his lips. A saturated field-bandage held to his wound partly concealed the slight but ugly gash.

"Feel as d.i.n.ky as anything, by gum!" he mumbled, without removing the consoling "f.a.g". "This'll mean a trip to Blighty. I can do with it nicely, but I'm jolly glad I got there. Five blessed Fritzes to my certain knowledge, by gum! I'm from Timaru, but I'm not timorous--not I."

And, waving his disengaged hand, Corporal Billy Preston resumed his long trek of pain that was to end somewhere in England under the kindly care of nurses from far-off New Zealand.

"By Jove, he has!" agreed Fortescue. "I saw him polish off a couple of Huns with his bayonet, and knock out another with the b.u.t.t of his rifle. Well, s'long, Malcolm, and _kia ora_."

The bearers lifted the stretcher and continued on their way, while Rifleman Carr, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, hurried towards the German second-line trenches, where, judging by the deep detonations of exploding bombs and the sharp crack of rifle-shots, there was still work to be done.

German sh.e.l.ls were "watering" the captured ground. Malcolm hardly noticed them. He had acquired the hardened campaigner's indifference to Fritz's "hate" that confidence in the knowledge of being on the winning side cannot fail to give. Overhead, British sh.e.l.ls screeched on their way, as with mathematical precision they fell in the place appointed, to form a "barrage" through which neither German supports could advance nor defeated Huns retire without risk of being pulverized by the high-explosive missiles.

The second-line German trenches formed the nearmost limit of ground practically unaffected by the explosion of the great mine. Beyond lay the tortured slopes of Messines Ridge, from the fissures of which escaping smoke trailed upwards in the wan morning light.

Already the first line of storming troops was engaged in consolidating the captured position, while the supports were a.s.sembling and concentrating prior to advancing upon the farthermost of their objectives--the village of Messines. Every Hun remaining above ground had been accounted for. Hundreds were lying in grotesque att.i.tudes, never to move again, while dejected and dazed prisoners were being marshalled in droves under escort for the advance cages. But in the tottering dug-outs the Prussian die-hards were still offering resistance; and it was the clearing of their sub-terranean strongholds that was occupying the attention of the victorious New Zealanders.

"Look out, chum!" shouted a voice as Malcolm approached a knot of Diggers gathered in a sh.e.l.lhole in what was formerly the parados of the trench. "Duck!"

Malcolm obeyed promptly. He was used to taking imperative hints with the utmost smartness. Even then he was only just in time to escape a bullet. For the second time that morning his steel helmet was sent flying, strap notwithstanding.

"Come and bear a hand and get your own back," continued the man who had warned him.

Recovering his head-gear, Rifleman Carr joined the group by a discreet and circuitous route, to find Grouser Joliffe and half a dozen men of his platoon engaged upon the task--up to now unsuccessful--of clearing out a dug-out. Joliffe had discarded his rifle. His wounded arm had given out, and he had the limb supported in a sling made from a puttee. A dozen bombs hung from his neck. He held another in his uninjured hand.

"Take that, you skulking Hun!" he shouted, hurling a bomb into the mouth of the dug-out. "That's the fifth I've given 'em," he added, addressing Malcolm as if to apologize for the fact that the occupants of the den were still in a state of aggressive activity.

"One of our chaps has gone for some smoke-bombs. He ought to be here by now if he isn't knocked out on the way. That'll settle their hash."

Rifleman Joliffe was the only member of the party who remained standing. Partly sheltered by a break in the traverse, he proposed to throw another missile, while his companions, taking cover behind a few hastily-piled sand-bags, waited with levelled rifles the expected rush from the dug-out.

Deftly the bomber lobbed another grenade fairly into the yawning cavity. With a m.u.f.fled crash the bomb exploded. Acrid fumes drifted from the sloping tunnel, while a succession of dismal groans gave credence to Joliffe's belief that he'd "done the blighter in this time".

"Hold hard!" cautioned the corporal of the section as the daring rifleman prepared for a closer inspection of his handiwork.

"What for?" expostulated Joliffe. "I know that copped him right enough."

"Then it's your bloomin' funeral," rejoined the non-com. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Confident in the result of his prowess, the bomber strode boldly towards the mouth of the dug-out. Before he had taken three steps the still eddying smoke was pierced by the flash of a rifle. With a look of pained surprise upon his face Rifleman Joliffe half-turned and stood stock-still for quite five seconds. Then his knees bent and down he went; his legs and arms quivered convulsively for a few seconds.