The Forest of Swords Part 29

"Quite true. Our own army is not large, but it has done as much per man."

"And the moral support," added John. "The French have felt the presence of a friend, a friend, too, who in six months will be ten times as strong as he is now."

"Where is Lannes?" asked Wharton.

"He's got your job, Wharton," replied John with a smile. "He's Envoy Extraordinary and Bearer of Messages concerning Life and Death between the armies. As soon as he landed he went directly to the British commander, and they're now conferring in a tent. That will never happen to you. You will never be closeted with the leader of a great army."

"I don't know. I may not be able to fly like the Frenchman, but he can't handle the wireless as I can, and he isn't the chain-lightning chauffeur that Carstairs is. Please to remember those facts."

"I do. But here comes Lannes, the man of mystery."

Lannes seemed preoccupied, but he greeted Carstairs and Wharton warmly.

"I'm about to take another flight," he said. "No, thank you so much, but I've time neither to eat nor to drink. I must fly at once, though it's to be a short flight. Take care of my friend, Monsieur Jean the Scott, while I'm gone, won't you? Don't let him wander into German hands again, because I won't have time to go for him once more."

"We won't!" said Carstairs and Wharton with one voice. "Having got him back we're going to keep him."

Lannes smiling sprang into the _Arrow_. The willing young Englishmen gave it a mighty push, and rising into the blue afternoon sky he sailed away toward the south.

"He'll be back all right," said Carstairs. "I've come to the conclusion that nothing can ever catch that fellow. He's a wonder, he is. One of the most difficult jobs I have, Scott, is to give the French all the credit that's due 'em. I've been trained, as all other Englishmen were, to consider 'em pretty poor stuff that we've licked regularly for a thousand years, and here we suddenly find 'em heroes and brothers-in-arms. It's all the fault of the writers. Was it Shakespeare who said: 'Methinks that five Frenchmen on one pair of English legs did walk?'"

"No," said Lord James Ivor, "It was the other way around. 'Methinks that one Englishman on five pairs of French legs did walk.'"

"I'm not so sure about the number, either," interjected Wharton. "Are you positive it was five?"

"Whatever it was," said Carstairs, "the Frenchman was slandered, and by our own great bard, too. But come and take something with us, if Lord James, our immediate chief, is willing."

"He's willing, and he'll go with you," said Lord James Ivor. "I need a bite myself and in war like this a man can't afford to neglect food and drink, when the chance is offered."

"The habits of you Europeans are strong," said John, whose spirits were still exuberant. "If you didn't have to stop now and then to work or to fight you'd eat all the time. One meal would merge into another, making a beautiful, savory chain linked together. I know the Englishman's heaven perfectly well. It's made of lakes of ale, beer, porter and Scotch highb.a.l.l.s, surrounded by high banks of cheese, mutton and roast beef."

"There could be worse heavens," said Carstairs, "and if it should happen that way it wouldn't be long before you Yankees would be trying to break out of your heaven and into ours. But here's a taste of it now, the cheese, for instance, and the beer, although it's in bottles."

A spry Tommy Atkins served them, and John, thankful at heart, ate and drank with the best of them. And while they ate the pulsing waves of air from the battle beat upon their ears. It seemed to these young men to have been beating that way for weeks.

"Lannes will be back soon," said John to Carstairs and Wharton, "and he'll tear you away from your friends here. You think, Carstairs, that you're an Englishman, and you're convinced, Wharton, that you're an American, but you're both wrong. You're Frenchmen, and you're going back to the French army, where you belong. Then Captain Daniel Colton of the Strangers will want to know from you why you haven't returned sooner."

"But how are we to go?" said Carstairs.

"And where are we to go?" said Wharton.

"I'd go in a minute," added Carstairs, "if the German army would let me."

"So would I," said Wharton, "but the Germans fight so hard that we can't get away."

"Lannes will attend to all those matters," said John. "I'll rest until he comes, if I have the chance. Is that your artillery firing?"

"It's our big guns out in front," said Lord James Ivor. "Jove, but what work they've done! A lot of our guns have been smashed, one half of our gunners maybe have been smashed with 'em, but they've never flinched.

They covered our retreat from Belgium, and they've been the heralds of our advance here on the Marne! Listen to 'em! How they talk!"

The heavy crash of guns far in front and the thunder of the German guns replying came back to their ears. It was a louder note in the general and ceaseless murmur of the battle, but the young men paid it only a pa.s.sing moment of attention. Carstairs presently added as an afterthought:

"Unless Lannes returns soon I don't think we'll hear from him. That blaze of the guns in front of us indicates close fighting again, and we'll probably be ordered forward soon."

"I don't think so," said Lord James Ivor. "Our guns and the German guns will talk together for quite a while before the infantry advance. You can spend a good two hours with us yet, and still have time to depart for the French army."

It was evident that Lord James Ivor knew what he was talking about, since, as far as John could see, the khaki army lay outspread on the turf. These men were too much exhausted and too much dulled to danger to stir merely because the cannon were blazing. It took the sharp orders of their officers to move them. Sh.e.l.ls from the German guns began to fall along the fringe of the troops, but thousands slept heavily on.

John, after disposing of the excellent rations offered to him, sat down on the gra.s.s with Wharton, Carstairs and Lord James Ivor. The sun was now waning, but the western sky was full of gold, and the yellow rays slanting across the hills and fields made them vivid with light. Lord James handed his gla.s.ses to John with the remark:

"Would you like to take a look there toward the east, Scott?"

John with the help of the gla.s.ses discerned the English batteries in action. He saw the men working about them, the muzzles pointing upward, and then the flash. Some of the guns were completely hidden in foliage, and he could detect their presence only by the heavy detonations coming from such points. Yet, like many of the English soldiers about him, John's mind did not respond to so much battle. He looked at the flashes, and he listened to the reports without emotion. His senses had become dulled by it, and registered no impressions.

"We've masked our batteries as much as possible," said Lord James. "The Germans are great fellows at hiding their big guns. They use every clump of wood, hay stacks, stray stacks and anything else, behind which you could put a piece of artillery. They trained harder before the war, but we'll soon be able to match 'em."

While Lord James was talking, John turned the gla.s.ses to the south and watched the sky. He had observed two black dots, both of which grew fast into the shape of aeroplanes. One, he knew, was the _Arrow_. He had learned to recognize the plane at a vast distance. It was something in the shape or a trick of motion perhaps, almost like that of a human being, with which he had become familiar and which he could not mistake.

The other plane, by the side of Lannes' machine, bothered him. It was much larger than the _Arrow_, but they seemed to be on terms of perfect friends.h.i.+p, each the consort of the other.

"Lannes is coming," announced John. "He's four or five miles to the south and he's about a quarter of a mile up, but he has company. Will you have a look, Lord James?"

Lord James Ivor, taking back his own gla.s.ses, studied the two approaching planes.

"The small one looks like your friend's plane," he said, "and the other, although much bigger, has only one man in it too. But they fly along like twins. We'll soon know all about them because they're coming straight to us. They're descending now into this field."

The _Arrow_ slanted gently to the earth and the larger machine descended near by. Lannes stepped out of one, and an older man, whom John recognized as the aviator Caumartin, alighted from the other.

"My friends," said Lannes, cheerily, "here we are again. You see I've brought with me a friend, Monsieur Caumartin, a brave man, and a great aviator."

He paused to introduce Caumartin to Wharton and the Englishmen, and then went on:

"This flying machine in which our friend Caumartin comes is not so swift and so graceful as the _Arrow_--few aeroplanes are--but it is strong and it has the capacity. It is what you might call an excursion steamer of the air. It can take several people and our good Caumartin has come in it for Lieutenant Wharton and Lieutenant Carstairs. So! he has an order for them written by the brave Captain Colton of the Strangers. Produce the order, Monsieur Caumartin."

The aviator took a note from a pocket in his jacket and handed it to Lord James Ivor, who announced that it was in truth such an order.

"You're to be delivered to the Strangers F.O.B.," said John.

"What's F.O.B.?" exclaimed Carstairs.

"It's a s.h.i.+pping term of my country," replied John. "It means Free on Board, and you'll arrive among the Strangers without charge."

"But," said Carstairs, looking dubiously at the big, ugly machine, "automobiles are my specialty!"

"And the wireless is mine!" said Wharton in the same doubting tone.

"Oh, it's easy," said John lightly. "Easiest thing in the world. You have nothing to do but sit still and look calm and wise. If you're attacked by a Zeppelin, throw bombs--no doubt Caumartin has them on board--but if a flock of Taubes a.s.sail you use your automatics. I congratulate you both on making your first flight under such auspices, with two armies of a million men each, more or less, looking at you, and with the chance to dodge the sh.e.l.ls from four or five thousand cannon."

"Your trouble, Scott, is talking too much," said Wharton, "because you went up in the air when you had no other way to go, you think you're a bird."