The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land by Ralph Connor (page 5)

set forth his ideals for the chaplain service in the Canadian army.

“Three things,” he said, “I tell my men, should mark the Canadian chaplain service. The first, Unity–unity among themselves, unity with the other departments of the army. Two words describe our chaplains–Christian and Canadians. I am an Anglican myself, but on this side of the channel there are no Anglican, no Presbyterian, no Methodist chaplains, only Christian and Canadian chaplains. I have had to fight for this with high officials both in the army and in the church. I have won out, and while I’m here this will be maintained. The second thing is Spirituality. The Chaplain must be a Christian man, living in touch with the Divine–alive toward God. Third, Humanity. He must be ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmity,’ sharing the experiences of the men, getting to know their feelings, their fears, their loneliness, their misery, their anxieties, and God knows they have their anxieties for themselves and for their folks at home.”

As Barry listened, he heard again his father’s voice. “They need you. They are afraid. They are lonely. They need God.”

“And remember,” said the A. D. C. S., as he rose to close the interview, “that I am at your back. If you have any difficulty, let me know. If you are wrong, I promise to tell you. If you are right, I’ll back you up. Now, let us go and look over the hospital. There are some of our fellows there. If you feel like saying anything in the convalescent ward, all right, but don’t let it worry you.”

As they went through the wards, Barry could not but notice how the faces of the patients brightened as his chief approached, and how their eyes followed him after he had passed.

They moved slowly through those long corridors, sanctified by the sufferings and griefs and hidden tears of homesick and homelonging men, to many of whom it seemed that the best of life was past.

When they had gone the length of the convalescent ward, the A. D. C. S. turned and, after getting permission of the medical superintendent, briefly introduced Barry to the wounded men, as “a man from the wild and woolly Canadian west, on his way up the line, and therefore competent to tell us about the war, and especially when it will end.”

Beside them stood a piano, and on it lay a violin in its open case. Barry took up the violin, fingered its strings in an absent-minded way, and said:

“I don’t know anything about the war, men, but I do know when it will end, and that is when we lick those Huns good and plenty, as our American friends would say,” bowing to the doctor at his side. “I’m an awfully poor speaker, boys,” he continued in a confidential tone, “but I can make this thing talk a bit.”

Without further preface he began to play. He had not held a violin in his hands since he had played with his father at home. Unconsciously his fingers wandered into the familiar notes of Handel’s Largo. He found the violin to possess an exceptionally rich and pure quality of tone.

As he began to play, a door opened behind them, admitting Paula, the V. A. D. and two or three young doctors, who took their places in the corner about the piano.

“Do you know this?” whispered Paula to the V. A. D., as she caught the strains of the Largo.

“Yes. I used to play it with my brother.”

“Go to it, then,” said Paula.

But the V. A. D. hesitated.

“Go on! Look at the boys, and look at his face.”

The V. A. D. glanced about the room at the lines of pale and patient faces, which, in spite of the marks of pain, were so pathetically and resolutely bright. Then she glanced at Barry’s face. He had forgotten all about his surroundings, and his face was illumined with the light from those hidden lamps that burn deep in the soul of genius, a light enriched and warmed by the glow of a heart in sympathy with its kind.

In obedience to Paula’s command and a little push upon her shoulder, the V. A. D. sat down at the piano and touched the notes softly, feeling for the key, then fell in with the violin.

At the first note, Barry turned sharply about and as she found her key and began to follow, he stepped back to her side. Immediately, from his instrument, there seemed to flow a richer, fuller stream of melody. From the solemn and stately harmonies of the Largo, he passed to those old familiar airs, that never die and never lose their power over the human heart–“Annie Laurie” and “Ben Bolt,” and thence to a rollicking French chanson, which rather bowled over his accompanist, but only for the first time though, for she had the rare gift of improvisation, and sympathetic accompaniment.

Then with a full arm bowing, he swept them into the fiercely majestic strains of the “Marseillaise,” bringing the blue-coated orderlies about the door, and such patients as could stand, and the group about the piano to rigid attention. From the “Marseillaise” it was easy to pass into the noble simplicity of his own national song, “Oh, Canada!” where again his accompanist was quite able to follow, and thence to the Empire’s National Anthem, which had for a hundred years or more lifted to their feet British soldiers and sailors the world over.

As he drew his bow over the last chord, Paula stepped to his side, and whispered in his ear:

“Where’s America in this thing?”

Without an instant’s break in the music, he dropped into a whimsical and really humorous rendering of “Yankee Doodle.” Quickly the V. A. D. moved from the stool, caught Paula and thrust her into the vacant place. Then together the violin and piano rattled into a fantastic and brilliant variation of that famous and trifling air. Again, with a sudden change of mood, Barry swung into that old song of the homesick plantation negro, “The Suwanee River”–a simple enough air, but under the manipulations of a master lending itself to an interpretation of the deep and tender emotions which in that room and in that company of French, British, Canadian, American folk were throbbing in a common longing for the old home and the “old folks at home.” Before he had played the air once through, the grey-haired American doctor was openly wiping his eyes, and his colleagues looking away from each other, ashamed of the tears that did them only honour.

Paula’s flushed face and flashing eyes were eloquent of her deep emotion, while at her side the V. A. D. stood quiet, controlled, but with a glow of tender feeling shining in her face and in her soft brown eyes.

Not long did Barry linger amid those deeps of emotion, but straightening his figure to its full height, and throwing up his head, he, in full octaves, played the opening bars of what has come to be known as America’s national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Instantly the A. D. C. S., the orderlies about the door, the wounded French, British and Canadian soldiers that could stand, sprang to attention and so remained while the violin, with its piano accompaniment, throbbed forth the sonorous chords. With the last bar, Barry dropped his bow to his side, but held the violin still at his chin. Not one of that company moved, but stood with their eyes fastened upon his face. After a moment’s pause, he quietly lifted his bow again, and on the silence, still throbbing to the strains of that triumphant martial air, there stole out pure, sweet, as from some ethereal source, the long drawn, trembling notes of that old sacred melody, which, sounding over men and women in their hours of terror and anguish and despair, has lifted them to peace and comfort and hope–“Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

The tension which had held the company was relaxed, the wounded men sank to their seats, the A. D. C. S. removed his hat, which, according to military regulations, he had worn to this moment. On all sides, heads dropped in an attitude of reverence, and so continued until Barry had drawn the last deep, vibrating note to a close.

When he had laid his violin in its case, the old American doctor came forward, with his hand extended.

“Let me, as an American and a Christian, thank you, sir,” he said.

One by one the group of Americans came to shake hands with him, the last being Paula, who held his hand a moment and said softly:

“Thank you, Barry. I believe all that stuff now. I have learned it here.”

The last of all to come was the V. A. D. Shyly, with a smile radiant through her tears, she offered her hand, saying: “Thank you! He would have liked that, I know.”

“Captain Dunbar, where’s your own violin?” The abrupt tone of the A. D. C. S. startled them all.

“At home, sir. I didn’t think a chaplain would need one.”

“Whose violin in this?” asked the A. D. C. S. in his brusque manner.

“I rather think this is mine,” said one of the doctors.

“Will you sell it? I’ll buy it from you, at any price you say. I want it for him.”

“You can’t buy it, colonel,” said the doctor. “It’s his now. I never knew it had all that heart stuff in it.”

He took up the violin, and handed it to Barry. But Barry drew back in astonishment. Then the old doctor came forward.

“No, Travis,” he said, “we’ll do better than that. What did your fiddle cost?”

“A hundred and fifty dollars, I think.”

“Travis, this company of Americans, representing their country here in France, as a token of their sympathy with the allies and their sacred cause, and of gratitude to you, sir,” bowing to Barry, “will buy this instrument and present it to this young man, on condition that he repeat in similar circumstances the service he has rendered this afternoon. Am I right?” he asked, looking about him.

“You bet you are! Right you are!” said the doctors.

“Oh, doctor, you are a dear old thing!” exclaimed Paula.

Barry stood holding the instrument in his hand, unable to find his voice. The A. D. C. S. came to his aid.

“In the name of my chaplain, and in the name of thousands of Canadian soldiers to whom I promise you he will bring the blessing that he has brought us this afternoon, I thank you for this very beautiful and very characteristic American act.”

“Well,” said the old doctor, “I don’t know how you folks feel, but I feel as if I had been to church.”

“Now, sir,” said the A. D. C. S. to Barry, in his military tone, “I am organising a company of musicians who will go through our camps and help the boys as you have helped us to-day. I would like you to be one of them. What do you say?”

“Oh, sir,” exclaimed Barry hastily, laying the violin upon the piano and standing back from it, “don’t make that an order, sir. I want to stay with my men.”

His face was quivering with deep emotion. The A. D. C. S. looked into the quivering face.

“All right, Dunbar,” he said, with a little laugh, and putting his hand on Barry’s shoulder. “I guess you are all right.”

“Some boy! What?” said the American doctor. “Here I think you had better take your fiddle along,” handing Barry the violin. “It doesn’t belong to any one in this bunch.”

The burst of laughter that followed, all out of proportion to the humour of the remark, revealed the tensity of the strain through which they had passed.

Through the little town of Etaples they drove together in almost complete silence, until they had emerged into the country, lying spread out about them in all the tender beauty of the soft spring evening. As the car moved through the sweet silence of the open fields, the V. A. D. said softly:

“Oh, Captain Dunbar, I–“

“My name is Barry,” he said gently.

A quick flush came into the beautiful face and a soft light to the brown eyes, as she answered:

“And mine is Phyllis.” Then she hurried to add, “I was going to say that you helped me this afternoon as nothing has since my dear brothers went.”

“Thank you, Phyllis. What you have been to me through all these days, I wish I could tell, but I can’t find words.”

Then they rode together in silence that was more eloquent than any words of theirs could be. At length Barry burst forth enthusiastically:

“Those Americans! What a beautiful and gracious act of kindness that was to me.”

“Oh,” replied Phyllis, with answering enthusiasm, “aren’t they fine! That was perfectly ripping of them.”

CHAPTER XIII

INTENSIVE TRAINING

Barry’s return to the battalion was like a coming home. In the mess there was no demonstration of sympathy with him in his loss, but the officers took occasion to drop in casually with an interesting bit of news, seeking to express, more or less awkwardly, by their presence what they found it impossible to express in actual words.

It was to Barry an experience as new as it was delightful. Hitherto, as far as any real fellowship was concerned he had lived a life of comparative isolation among his fellow officers, and while they were careful to preserve the conventions and courtesies imposed by their mutual relations, he had ever been made to feel that in that circle he was an outsider.

Among the officers who came to call upon him, none surprised him more than did Major Bayne. While that officer had always been careful to maintain an attitude toward him, at once correct and civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence. Its routine consists in the continual performance of “duties” under an authority ruthless in its exactions and relentless in its penalties. Only after months of experience of its iron rigidity does the civilian, accustomed as he is to self-determination, with a somewhat easygoing regard for the conventions of his community, arrive at the state of mind in which unconsciously and as a matter of second nature he estimates the quality of the most trivial act by its relation to the standard set by the Military High Command. Like a spectre does that solemn, impalpable, often perfectly unreasonable omniscient and omnipotent entity lurk in the shadow ready to reach out a clutching hand, and for some infraction of regulations, wilful or inadvertent, hale the luckless and shivering defaulter to judgment. It therefore behooves a man to take heed to himself and to his ways, for, with the best intention, he may discover that he has been guilty of an infraction, not of a regulation found in K. R. & O., with which he has painfully made himself familiar and which he has diligently exercised himself to observe, but of one of those seventeen hundred and sixty-nine “instructions” and “informations” which from time to time have appeared in those sacred writings known as Army, Divisional, Brigade, or Battalion Orders.

In consequence, an officer with a conscience toward his duty, or an ambition for promotion, gives himself so completely to the business of “watching his step” that only by a definite exercise of his altruistic faculties can he indulge himself in the commendable civilian luxury of caring for his neighbour.

And so it came about that Major Bayne, possessing in a large measure the quality of “canniness” characteristic of his race–a quality which for the benefit of the uninitiated Saxon it may be necessary to define as being a judicious blending of shrewdness and caution,–and being as well, again after the manner of his race, ambitious for his own advancement, and, furthermore, being a man of conscience, had been so entirely engrossed in the absorbing business of “watching his step” that he had paid slight heed to the affairs of any other officer, and least of all to those of the chaplain, whose functions in the battalion he had regarded, it must be confessed, as more or less formal, if not merely decorative.

But, in spite of all this, in the major the biggest thing was his heart, which, however, true to his race type again, he kept stored in the deepest recesses of his system. To “touch” the major’s “heart” was an operation of more than ordinary difficulty. It was that very thing, however, which the letter to the battalion Commanding Officer from the A. D. C. S. had achieved. The effect of this letter upon the members of the mess, and most especially upon the junior major in regard to their relation to their chaplain, was revolutionary. Hence the major’s visit to Barry upon the evening of his return.

It was with an unusually cordial handshake that he greeted the chaplain.

“We are glad to have you back with us, Captain Dunbar,” he said. “We missed you, and we have discovered that we need you. Things have been moving while you were away. This battalion is undergoing a transformation. The O. C. is tightening down the screws of discipline. He sees, and we all are beginning to see, that we are up against a different proposition from what we had imagined, and right here, Captain Dunbar, I want to say for myself, and I believe for the rest of the boys, that we have not given you a square deal.”

His attitude and his words astounded Barry.

“Don’t say that, major,” he said, in a voice husky with emotion. “Don’t say that. I have been all wrong. I am not going to talk about it, but I am awfully glad to get a second chance.”

“If you need a second chance, Pilot,” said the major, for the first time using the friendly western sobriquet, “believe me, you’ll get it.”

The major sat down, pulled out his pipe, and began to impart some interesting bits of news.

“Things are moving rather swiftly with us these days. There are many changes taking place. Duff has gone permanently to the transport, and is in the way for a captaincy. Hopeton has gone for a machine gun course. Sally is to be company commander in his place. Booth takes charge of the bombers. Your friend, Sergeant Knight, is slated for a commission. He is doing awfully well with the signallers, and, by the way, there is something I want to show you to-morrow, something quite unique and remarkable, our new instructor in bayonet fighting. Do you know we were rather stuck on our bayonet fighting, but he has made the boys feel that they didn’t know anything about bayonet fighting, or, for that matter, about anything else. I think you will enjoy him. The boys are all up on their toes. There is nothing like the scream of a live shell ‘coming in’ to speed up the training.”

When the major had departed, he left Barry in a maze of wonder and gratitude. That the battalion were glad to have him back, that all the old feeling of latent hostility of which he had been conscious was gone, and that they felt that they really needed him stirred in his heart a profound sense of humility and gratitude.

Late as it was he felt he must go out for a stroll about the camp just to see the men and give them greeting.

Wherever he went he was greeted with a new respect and a new cordiality. It was as if he had passed through some mystic initiation ceremony and had been admitted into a magic circle of comradeship with the common soldier, than which no privilege is more dearly coveted by the officers, from the colonel himself to the youngest sub, and which is indeed, in the last analysis, the sine qua non of effective leadership.

As Barry was passing the sergeants’ mess-room the door opened and there came out Sergeant Major McFetteridge himself, with two others of the mess.

“Good evening, sergeant major,” said Barry quietly passing on his way.

“Good evening, sir,” said the sergeant major with his usual stiff salute. “Oh, it’s you, sir,” he cried as the light fell upon Barry’s face. “We’re glad to see you back, sir.”

“Thank you, sergeant major,” replied Barry, offering his hand, “and I’m glad to be back with you all again.”

“Thank you, sir. I assure you we’re glad to have you. Won’t you come in, sir? The boys will all want to see you,” and so saying the sergeant major threw wide open the door.

Nowhere is class privilege more appreciated and more jealously guarded than in the sergeants’ mess. It is the most enclusive of all military circles. Realising this, Barry was glad to accept the invitation. The hut was filled with sergeants in easy deshabille, smoking, lounging, playing various games.

“The chaplain, boys,” announced the sergeant major, and instantly every man was on his feet, and at attention.

“It’s all right, boys,” said the sergeant major. “The chaplain has just dropped in for a minute for a friendly call, and we want you to feel, sir,” he added, for the sergeant major loved a little ceremonial, “that we respectfully sympathise with you in your loss, and that we consider ourselves honoured by your presence here tonight.”

Barry was so deeply touched by the unexpected warmth of their welcome, and by the reference to his recent sorrow, that he could not trust himself to speak. Without a word he passed around the group, shaking hands with each man in turn. By the time he had finished the round, he had his voice in control, and said:

“Sergeant major, this is very kind of you. I thank you for this welcome, and I am grateful for your sympathy.” He hesitated a moment or two; then, as if he heard his father’s voice, “Tell them! Tell them! They don’t know Him,” he added: “And, sergeant major, if you will allow me, I have something I want to say to all the men when I get a chance. I cannot say it all to-night to the sergeants, but this much I would like to say: That since I saw you, I believe I have got a new idea of my work in the battalion. I got it from a sergeant major whose men told me that he was a fine soldier and a brave man, and more than that, that he was ‘like a father to them.’ That, sergeant major, was my own father. From him I learned that my job was not to jump on men for their faults, but to help men to know God, who is our Father in Heaven, and, men, I think if I can do this, I shall count myself happy, for He is worth knowing, and we all need Him.”

His words gripped them hard. Then he added, “Before I say ‘good night,’ may I have the privilege of leading you to Him in words that you have all learned at your mother’s knee?” Then simply he spoke the words of that immortal prayer, the men joining in low and reverent voices.

After the prayer, he quietly said, “Good night!” and was passing out of the hut. He had not got to the door, however, when the sergeant major’s voice arrested him.

“Sir, on behalf of the sergeants, I thank you for coming in and I thank you for your words. You have done us all good.”

The following morning, a sergeant from a neighbouring battalion, visiting the transport lines, and observing Barry passing along with Major Bayne on the battalion parade ground, took occasion to remark:

“That is your padre, ain’t it? He checks you fellows up rather short, don’t he?”

“Yes, that is our padre, or Pilot, as we like to call him,” was Sergeant Mackay’s answer, “but I want to tell you that he can just check us up until our heads touch the crupper, and it’s nobody’s damned business but our own.”

“Well, you needn’t get so blasted hot over it. I ain’t said nothing against your padre that I haven’t heard from your own fellows.”

“That’s all right, sergeant. That was before we got to the war. I’m not huntin’ for any trouble with anybody, but if any one wants to start up anything with any one, sergeant, in this battalion, he knows how to do it.”

And this came to be recognised as an article in the creed of the sergeant’s mess.

The bayonet-fighting squad were engaged in some preliminary drill of the more ordinary kind when Major Bayne and the chaplain arrived on the ground.

“We’ll just watch the little beggar a while from here and go up later,” said the major.

As Barry watched the drill sergeant on his job, it seemed to him that he had never seen a soldier work before. In figure, in pose, in action there was a perfection about him that awakened at once admiration and envy. Below the average height, yet not insignificant, erect, without exaggeration, precise in movement without angularity, swift in action without haste, he was indeed a joy to behold.

“Now, did you ever see anything like that?” enquired the major, after their eyes had followed the evolutions of the drill sergeant for a time.

“Never,” said Barry, “nor do I hope to again. He is a–I was going to say dream, but he’s no dream. He’s much too wide awake for that. He’s a poem; that’s what he is.”

Back and forth, about and around, stepped the little drill sergeant, a finished example of precise, graceful movement. He was explaining in clean cut, and evidently memorised speech the details of the movements he wished executed, but through his more formal and memorised vocabulary his native cockney would occasionally erupt, adding vastly to the pungency and picturesqueness of his speech.

“He knows we are here all right,” said the major, “but he would not let on if it were King George himself. I’ll bet you a month’s pay, though, that we can’t get one foot beyond what he considers the saluting point before he comes to attention, and as for his salute, there is nothing like it in the whole Canadian army. Talk about a poem, his salute has Shakespeare faded. Now he’s going to move them off. Watch and listen!”

“Ye-a-ou-w!” came the long-drawn cry, fiercely threatening, representing in English speech the word “squad.” Then followed an expletive, “Yun!” which for explosive quality made a rifle crack seem a drawl, and which appeared to release in the men a hidden spring drawn to its utmost tension. The slack and sagging line leaped into a rigid unit, of breathless, motionless humanity.

“Aw-e-ou-aw!” a prolonged vocalisation, expressive of an infinite and gentle pity, and interpreted to the initiated ear to mean “As you were!” released the rigid line to its former sagging state.

“N-a-w then,” said the voice in a semi-undertone, slow and tense, “this ain’t no arter dinner bloomin’ siester. A little snap–ple– ease!” The last word in a sharply rising inflection, tightening up the spring again for the explosive “Ye-a-ou-w–yun!” (Squad attention.) “Aw-e-ou-r–yun!!! Aw-e-ou-r–yun!!!”

Without warning came the commands, repeating “As you were!” “Attention!” He walked up and down before the rigid line, looking them over and remarking casually,

“Might be a little worse,” adding as an afterthought, “per-haps!” After which, with a sharp right turn, and a quick march, he himself leading with a step of clean-cut, easy grace, he moved them to the bayonet-fighting ground.

“By Jove!” breathed Barry. “Did you ever imagine anything like that?”

“The result of ten years in the regular army,” said the major.

“It’s almost worth it,” answered Barry.

Arriving at the bayonet-fighting ground, the little sergeant major put the squad through their manual as if they had been recruits, to a running comment of biting pleasantries. After bringing them to attention, he walked slowly down the line, then back again, and remarked after due deliberation:

“I have seen worse–not often–” Then, in a tone of resignation, he gave the order:

“Stan-a-yeh!!!”

The men “stood at ease,” and then “stood easy.”

“Now, then,” said the major, “we’ll steal in on him, if we can.” They moved forward toward the little sergeant major, who remained studying the opposite horizon in calm abstraction until their toes had reached a certain line, when, like the crack of a whip, there came once more the long-drawn cry with its explosive termination:

“Ye-a-ou-w!–Yun!!!” with the result that the line was again thrown into instantaneous, breathless and motionless rigidity.

Toward the advancing officers the sergeant major threw himself into a salute with one smooth, unbroken movement of indescribable grace and finish.

“Good morning, sergeant major,” said Major Bayne. “Captain Dunbar, this is Sergeant Major Hackett.”

Again came the salute, with a barely perceptible diminution of snap, as befitted a less formal occasion.

“Sergeant major,” said Barry, “I would give a great deal to be able to do that.”

“Wot’s that, sir?” enquired the sergeant major.

“That salute of yours.”

“Quite easy wen you knaow ‘ow!” permitting himself a slight smile.

“You are doing some bayonet-fighting, I see, sergeant major,” said Major Bayne.

“Yes, sir, goin’ to do a bit, sir,” replied the sergeant major.

“Very well, carry on!”

And the sergeant major “carried on,” putting into his work and into his every movement and utterance an unbelievable amount of concentrated and even vicious energy.

On the bayonet-fighting ground, the first line of the enemy was represented by sacks stuffed with straw, hung upon a frame, the second by stuffed sacks deposited on the parapet of a trench. In bayonet-fighting the three points demanding special emphasis are the “guarding” of the enemy’s attack, a swift bayonet thrust and an equally swift recovery, each operation, whether in case of a living enemy or in the stuffed effigy, being attended with considerable difficulty. Barry was much interested in the psychological element introduced into the exercises by the drill master.

“You must halways keep in mind that the henemy is before you. It’s important that you should visualise your foe. The henemy is hever before you. Anything be-ind a British soldier won’t trouble anybody, and you are to remember that hit’s either you or ‘im.”

In moments of rapid action the sergeant major evidently had difficulty with his aspirates.

“The suspended sacks before you represent the henemy. You are to treat ’em so.”

Having got his line within striking distance of the swinging sacks, the exercise was directed by two commands, “On guard!” and “Point!” the first of which was supposed to knock off the enemy’s thrust, and the second to drive the bayonet home into his vitals, after which, without command, there must be a swift recovery.

“Naw then, “Hn-gah!–Pint!!!”

For some moments, in response to these orders, the squad practised “guarding” and “pointing,” not, however, to the complete satisfaction of the sergeant.

“Naw, then, number five, stick it hinto ‘im. Ye ain’t ‘andin’ a lidy an unbreller!”

Another attempt by number five being still suggestive of the amenities proper to a social function, the sergeant major stepped up to the overgentle soldier.

“Naw, then,” he said, “hobserve! There’s my henemy. See ‘is hugly mug. Hn-gah! Pint!!!”

At the words of command, the sergeant major threw himself into his guard and attacked with such appalling ferocity as must have paralysed an ordinary foe, sending his bayonet clean through to his guard, and recovering it with a clean, swift movement.

Having secured a fairly satisfactory thrust, the sergeant major devoted his attention to the recovery of the bayonet.

“Fetch it hout!” he cried fiercely. “There’s another man comin’. Fetch it hout! Ye may fetch ‘is spinial column with it. No matter, ‘e won’t need it.”

The final act in this gruesome drama was the attack upon the second line represented by the sacks lying upon the parapet of the trench beyond. The completed action thus included the guard, thrust, recovery, the leap forward past the swinging line of sacks, and a second thrust at the figure prone upon the parapet, with a second recovery of the weapon, this second recovery being effected by stamping the foot upon the transfixed effigy, and jerking back the bayonet with a violent upward movement.

This last recovery appeared to cause number five again some difficulty.

“Now then, number five, put a little aight (hate) into it. Stamp your bleedin’ ‘obnyles (hobnails) on his fice, and fetch it hout! This wye!” As he took the rifle from number five, the sergeant major’s face seemed to be transformed into a living embodiment of envenomed hate, his attack, thrust, recovery, gathering in intensity until with unimaginable fury he leaped upon the prostrate figure, drove his bayonet through to the hilt, stamped his hobnails upon the transfixed enemy, jerked his weapon out, and stood quivering, ready for any foe that dared to approach. The savage ferocity of his face, the fierce energy in his every movement, culminating in that last vicious leap and stamp, altogether constituted such a dramatic and realistic representation of actual fighting that the whole line burst into a very unsoldierly but very hearty applause, which, however, the sergeant major immediately and sternly checked.

“What do you think of that?” enquired the major. “Isn’t he a scream?”

“He is perfectly magnificent,” said Barry, “and, after all, he is right in his psychology. There is no possibility of training men to fight, without putting the ‘aight into it!'”

CHAPTER XIV

A TOUCH OF WAR

The period of intensive training was drawing to a close. The finishing touches in the various departments that had come to be considered necessary in modern warfare had been given. With the “putting on the lacquer” the fighting spirit of the men had been sharpened to its keenest edge. They were all waiting impatiently for the order to “go up.” The motives underlying that ardour of spirit varied with the temperament, disposition and education of the soldier. There were those who were eager to “go up” to prove themselves in that deadly struggle where their fellow Canadians had already won their right to stand as comrades in arms with the most famous fighting battalions of the British army. Others, again, there were in whose heart burned a deep passion to get into grips with those hellish fiends whose cruelties, practised upon defenceless women and children in that very district where they were camped, and upon wounded Canadians, had stirred Canada from Vancouver to Halifax with a desire for revenge.

But, with the great majority there was little of the desire either for military glory or for revenge. Their country had laid upon them a duty for the discharge of which they had been preparing themselves for many months, and that duty they were ready to perform. More than that, they were eager to get at it and get done with it, no matter at what cost. With all this, too, there was an underlying curiosity as to what the thing would be like “up there.” Far down below all their feelings there lay an unanswered interrogation which no man dared to put to his comrade, and which indeed few men put to themselves. That interrogation was: “How shall I stand up under the test?”

The camp was overrun with rumours from returning battalions of the appalling horrors of the front line. Ever since that fateful 22nd of April, 1915, that day of tragedy and of glory for the Canadian army, and for the Canadian people, the Ypres salient, the point of honour on the western front from Dixmude to Verdun, had been given into the keeping of the Canadian army. During those long and terrible months, in the face of a continued bombardment and of successive counter-attacks, with the line growing thinner, week by week, hacked up by woefully inadequate artillery, the Canadian army had held on with the grim tenacity of death itself. There was nothing that they could do but hold on. To push the salient deeper into the enemy lines would only emphasise the difficulty and danger of their position. The role assigned them was that of simply holding steady with what ultimate objective in view no one seemed to know.

Week by week, and month after month, the Canadian battalions had moved up into the salient, had done their “tours,” building up their obliterated parapets, digging out their choked-up water- courses, revetting their crumbling trenches, and rebuilding their flimsy dugouts, and then returning to their reserve lines, always leaving behind them in hastily dug graves over the parados of their trenches, or in the little improvised cemeteries by Hooge, or Maple Copse or Hill 60, a few more of their comrades, and ever sending down the line their maimed and broken to be refitted for war or discharged again to civilian life. It was altogether a ghastly business, a kind of warfare calling for an endurance of the finest temper and a courage of the highest quality.

From this grim and endless test of endurance, the Canadians had discovered a form of relief known as a “trench raid,” a special development of trench warfare which later came to be adopted by their comrades of the French and British armies. It was a form of sport, grim enough, deadly enough, greatly enjoyed by the Canadian soldiers; and the battalion which had successfully pulled off a trench raid always returned to its lines in a state of high exaltation. They had been able to give Fritz a little of what they had been receiving during these weary months.

While the battalion waited with ever-growing impatience for the order that would send them “up the line,” a group of officers was gathered in the senior major’s hut for the purpose of studying in detail some photographs, secured by our aircraft, of the enemy trenches immediately opposite their own sector of the front line. They had finished their study, and were engaged in the diverting and pleasant exercise of ragging each other. The particular subject of that discussion was their various sprinting abilities, and the comparative usefulness of various kinds of funk-holes as a protection against “J.J.s” (Jack Johnsons), “whizzbangs,” or the uncertain and wobbling “minniewafers.”

Seldom had Barry found occasion to call upon Major Bustead, with whom he had been unable to establish anything more than purely formal relations. A message, however, from the orderly room to Lieutenant Cameron, which he undertook to deliver, brought him to the senior major’s hut.

“Come in, padre,” said the major, who of late had become more genial, “and tell us the best kind of a funk-hole for a ‘minniewafer.'”

“The deepest and the closest for me, major, I should say,” said Barry, “from what I have heard of those uncertain and wobbling beasts.”

“I understand that chaplains do not accompany their battalions to the front line, but stay back at the casualty clearing stations,” suggested the major. “Wise old birds, they are, too.” The major had an unpleasant laugh.

“I suppose they go where they are ordered, sir,” replied Barry, “but if you will excuse me, I have here a chit for Lieutenant Cameron, sir, which has just come in,” and Barry handed Cameron his message.

“Will you allow me, sir?” said Cameron.

“Certainly, go on, read it,” said the major.

Cameron read the message, and on his face there appeared a grave and anxious look.

“It’s from the casualty clearing station, sir. One of our chaps from Edmonton is there dangerously wounded, and wants to see me. I’d like to go, sir, if I might.”

“Oh, certainly. I’ll make it all right with the O. C. Get a horse from the transport. Which casualty clearing station is it?”

Cameron looked at his message.

“Menin Mill, sir.”

“Menin Mill! By gad, I thought it was Brandthoek, but Menin Mill, good Lord, that’s a different proposition. That’s way beyond Ypres, you know. Right up on the line. You can’t take a horse there. Do you think you ought to go up at all?”

“I think I should like to go, sir,” replied Cameron. “I know the chap well. Went to school and college with him.”

“Then,” said the major, “you had better hurry up and attach yourself to one of the transports going in. You will barely be in time.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cameron, and left the room.

Barry went out with him. “Who is it, Cameron?” he said. “Do I know him?”

“I don’t know, sir, whether you do or not. It’s young McPherson of Edmonton, an awfully decent chap, and my very best friend.”

“May I go up with you, Duncan? I know Colonel Tait and Captain Gregg, who are at the Mill, I understand.”

“I would be awfully glad if you would, but I hardly liked to ask you. It hasn’t the reputation of being a very healthy place, I hear.”

“All right, Cameron. I’m going up,” said Barry.

Upon enquiry they found that they were too late for the transports, and again the question arose as to whether, in view of the major’s order, they should make the attempt by themselves.

“It was not really an order, I think, sir,” said Cameron. “It was more in the way of a suggestion. I think I’ll go. The note said, ‘dangerously wounded,’ and he sent for me.”

“All right,” said Barry, “we’ll go on, and we’ll almost certainly pick up some one who will be able to direct us to the Mill.”

Their road, which took them to Vlammertinghe, led through level fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds. As they approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the cruel marks of war. On either side of the road were roofless and shattered cottages, grown around with nettles and briars. Among these ruins, as they found on a later day, were the old garden flowers, pansies and daisies, bravely trying to hold their own. Among the rank weeds was to be seen the half-hidden debris of broken farm gear. Here and there stood the ruins of what had been a thrifty homestead, with its stone-flagged courtyard, around which clustered its stables. Now nettles and briars grew around the broken walls and shattered, staring windows. At rare intervals, a great house appeared, with pretentious gateway, and grass-grown drive winding up between stately and mutilated trees. Over the whole countryside hung a melancholy and weird desolation, cottages, homesteads, fields, the very trees crying aloud to high heaven for pity and vengeance.

At Vlammertinghe, itself, the church tower still stood whole, but the church itself was wrecked, as were most of the village shops and dwellings. In the village was to be seen no living thing except some soldiers, who in the broken cellars were making their bivouacs. The village stood deserted of its inhabitants, ever since the terrific onslaught of the Huns, on the 22nd of April, 1915, which had driven them forth from their homes, a panic- stricken, terror-hunted crowd of old men, women and little babes, while over them broke, with a continuous and appalling roar, a pitiless rain of shells.

At the cross-roads stood a mounted officer, directing the traffic, which here tended to congestion. As they entered the village, the sentry halted them to enquire as to their bona fides. Having satisfied him, they enquired their way to the Menin Mill.

“Menin!” The rising inflection of the sentry’s voice expressed a mild surprise. “The old Mill! Are you going there?”

“Yes,” said Barry, answering his inflection. “Why not?”

“Well, sir, you know, it’s rather a bad road. Warm bit of country up there, but–” He shrugged his shoulders in quite a French manner as if to say it was no business of his. “If you are going to Menin, you keep this road straight through past Wipers past the Cloth Hall, out by the Menin Gate. A hot place, that, sir. Then straight on, taking the right incline for about a mile and a half. You will see a big cemetery on your left. The Mill stands near a big school on your right. But why not drop into the dressing station, here, sir, right here in this old mill, which stands at the cross-roads? You may catch an ambulance going straight up to the Mill.”

“Thank you very much,” said Barry. “We’ll do that very thing.”

“Good luck, sir,” said the sentry, saluting.

They found an ambulance about to start, and asked for a lift.

“All right, sir,” said the driver, “but you’d better step in and ask the officer.”

They passed into a large and high-vaulted stone building, which in peace days had been a mill. The old-fashioned, massive machinery was still standing intact. Obtaining permission from the officer, they took their places beside the driver of the ambulance, and were soon on their way.

It was already growing dark, but, although the surface of the stone pave was frequently broken with shell-holes, the ambulance, dodging round the holes, rushed without pause along at a high rate of speed.

“You don’t use your lights?” asked Barry.

“No, not lately, sir,” said the driver. “That’s the newest order,” he added in a tone of disgust.

The road lay between double rows of once noble trees, centuries old, with the first delicate green of spring softening their bare outlines. Now, splintered, twisted, broken, their wounds showing white in the darkening light through the delicate green, they stood silently eloquent of the terrific force of the H. E. shell.

As they went speeding along the shell-marked road they came upon a huge trunk of a mighty elm, broken clear from its stump, lying partially cross their track, which soldiers were already busy clearing away. Without an instant’s pause, the driver wheeled his car off the ‘pave’, crashed through the broken treetops, and continued on his way.

Barry looked upon the huge trunk with amazement.

“Did a single shell break that tree off like that?” he asked.

“You bet,” was the reply, “and all these you see along here. It’s the great transport road for our front line, and the boches shell it regularly. Here comes one now,” he added, casually.

There was a soft woolly “whoof” far away, a high, thin whine, as from a vicious insect overhead, with every fractional second coming nearer and yet nearer, ever deepening in tone, ever increasing in volume, until, like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of speed and power, and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them. In the field on their left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a huge mass of earth and smoke. Then a stunning detonation.

Insensibly Barry and Cameron both crouched down in the car, but the driver held his wheel, without the apparent quiver of a muscle.

“There’ll be three more, presently, I guess,” he said, putting on full speed.

His guess proved right. Again that distant woolly “whoof,” the long-drawn whine, deepening to a scream, the appalling roar and crash, and a second shell fell in the road behind them.

“Two,” said the driver coolly. “There will be a couple more.”

Again and yet again, each time the terror growing deeper in their souls, came the two other shells, but they fell far behind.

“Oh, Fritzie,” remonstrated the driver, “that’s rotten bad work. You’ll have to do better than that.”

Again and again, in groups of four, the shells came roaring in, but the car had passed out of that particular zone of danger, and sped safely on its way.

“Do you have this sort of thing every night?” enquired Barry.

“Oh, no,” cheerfully replied the driver. “Fritzie makes a lot better practice than that, at times. Do you see this?” He put his finger upon a triangular hole a few inches above his head. “I got that last week. We don’t mind so much going up, but it’s rather annoying when you’re bringing down your load of wounded.”

As they approached Ypres, the road became more and more congested, until at length they had to thread their way between two continuous streams of traffic up and down, consisting of marching battalions, transports, artillery wagons, ambulances, with now and then a motor or a big gun.

About a mile from the city, they came to a large red brick building, with pretentious towers and surrounded by a high brick wall.

“An asylum,” explained the driver. “Now used as a dressing station. We’ll just run in for orders.”

At what seemed to Barry reckless speed, he whirled in between the brick posts, and turned into a courtyard, on one side of which he parked his ambulance.

“Better come inside, sir,” said the driver. “They sometimes throw a few in here, seeing it’s a hospital.”

They passed down the wide stairs, the centre of which had been converted into a gangway for the passage of wheeled stretchers, into a large basement, with concrete floors and massive pillars, lit by flaring gasjets. Along the sides of the outer room were rows of wounded soldiers, their bandaged heads and arms no whiter than their faces, a patient and pathetic group, waiting without complaint for an ambulance to carry them down the line.

In an inner and operating room, Barry found two or three medical officers, with assistants and orderlies, intent upon their work. While waiting there for their driver, they heard overhead again that ominous and terrifying whine, this time, however, not long drawn, but coming in with terrific speed, and ending with a sharp and shattering crash. Again and again and again, with hardly a second between, there came the shells. It seemed to Barry as if every crash was fair upon the roof of the building, but no man either of the medical attendants or of the waiting wounded paid the slightest heed.

At length there came a crash that seemed to break within the very room in which they were gathered. The lights flickered, some of them went out, there was a sound as if a tower had crashed down upon the roof. Dust and smoke filled the room.

“Light up that gas,” said the Officer Commanding. An orderly sprang to obey. The gasjets were once more lighted and the work went on.

“Rather near, wasn’t that one?” asked Barry of a wounded man at his side.

“Yes,” he replied casually, “they got a piece that time,” and again he sunk into apathetic silence.

In a few moments the driver had obtained his orders and was ready to set forth.

“Better wait a bit,” said the sergeant at the door, “until their Evening Hate is over.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the driver. “I guess Fritz is pretty well through. They are rather crowded there at the mill, and I guess we’ll go on.”

In his heart, Barry earnestly hoped that the sergeant would interpose with a more definite command, but, inasmuch as the bombardment had apparently ceased, and as if it were all in a day’s work, the driver, buttoning up his coat, said:

“We’ll go, sir, if you are ready.”

A few minutes’ run brought them to the gate of the ruined city. As the car felt its way through the ghostly town, Barry was only vaguely conscious in the darkness of its ghostly skeletonlike ruins. Fifteen minutes brought them to the Menin gate.

“Sounds rather hot out there,” remarked the driver. “Well, Fritzie, I guess we won’t join your party this time. We prefer to wait, if you don’t mind, really.”

He ran the car into the lee of the ramparts, by the side of the gateway, waited there half an hour or so, until the “Evening Hate” was past; then onward again to the Menin Mill.

They lifted the blanket covering the sandbagged entrance, passed through a dark corridor and came into a cellar, lit by lanterns, swinging from the roof, and by candles everywhere upon ledges or upon improvised candlesticks.

No sooner had they come into the light, than Barry saw across the room his friend, Dr. Gregg, his coat off, and his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows.

“Hello, Dunbar,” said the doctor, coming forward. “I guess I won’t shake hands just now. Sit down. Won’t you have a cup of coffee? Jim,” turning to an orderly, “give Captain Dunbar a cup of coffee.”

Barry presented Cameron to his friend, and together they sat down and waited. When the doctor was through with his patient, he came and sat down with them.

“We came up to see a young chap named McPherson. I think you sent a note down about him to-day.”

“McPherson,” said the doctor. “I don’t remember, but I will see.”

He turned to a desk and turning over the pages of a record, apparently found the name, and returned to Barry.

“I am sorry to say that McPherson died this afternoon,” he said.

“Dead,” said Barry. He turned to Cameron. “I’m awfully sorry, Duncan.”

“Was there anybody with him?” he enquired of the doctor. “He was Lieutenant Cameron’s very close friend, and college companion.”

“Oh, awfully sorry,” replied the doctor. “Yes, I think Captain Winter, the chaplain of the –th, was with him at the last. He’s not here just now. I can tell you where to get him. To-morrow is his day here.”

“Is–is–is his body still here?” enquired Cameron, after a few moments’ silence.

“Yes, it’s in the next room. Do you want to see it? He was pretty badly smashed up, I’m afraid.”

“I think I should like to see him,” said Cameron. “I know his people, you see, and I would like to tell them that I saw him.”

“Oh, all right,” said the doctor. He called an orderly.

“Come this way, sir,” said the orderly.

Together they followed the orderly into the next room, apparently a storehouse for grain. There lying upon the floor they saw three silent shapes, wrapped in grey blankets.

“This is Mcpherson, sir,” said the orderly, looking at the card attached to the blanket.

He stooped, drew down the blanket from the face and stepped back. In civil life, both Barry and Cameron had seen the faces of the dead, but only in the coffin, after having been prepared for burial by those whose office it is to soften by their art death’s grim austerities.

Cameron gave one swift glance at the shapeless, bloody mass, out of which stared up at him wide-open glassy eyes.

“Oh, my God, my God!” he gasped, gripping Barry by the arm, and staggering back as if he had received a blow. He turned to the door as if to make his escape, but Barry, himself white and shaken, held him firmly.

“Steady, old boy,” he said. “Steady, Duncan!”

“Oh, let me go! Let me get out of here!”

“Duncan, there are a lot of wounded chaps out there.”

The boy–he was only nineteen–was halted at the word, stood motionless and then muttered:

“You are right, sir. I was forgetting.”

“And, Duncan, remember,” said Barry, in a quiet and solemn voice, “there’s more than that to McPherson. That fine young chap whom you knew and loved is not that poor and battered piece of clay. Your friend has escaped from death and all its horrors.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” whispered Cameron, still shaking. “We’ll go out now, sir. I’ll be all right. I assure you I’m all right.”

They passed out into the dressing-room again, where the wounded were continuing to arrive. Cameron was for departing at once, but Barry held him back, unwilling that the lad should be driven away beaten and unnerved by what he had seen.

“I say, Duncan, let’s see some of these boys. We can perhaps cheer them up a bit. They need it badly enough, God knows.”

“All right,” muttered Cameron, sitting down upon a bench in the shadow. They waited there till Dr. Gregg came along.

“Hello, Dunbar, you are looking seedy. Feeling rotten, eh?” said the doctor, eying him critically for a few moments.

“Oh, I’m all right,” said Barry. “The truth is, I’ve just been in there with young Cameron. Rather a ghastly sight. Cameron’s badly knocked up. Can you do anything for him?”

“Sure thing,” said the doctor cheerfully. “Stay right there where you are. I’ll bring you something in a moment or two. Now sit right there, do you hear? Don’t move.”

In a few moments he returned, bringing hot coffee for them both.

“There,” he said in a cheerful matter-of-fact voice, “drink that.”

Barry gulped it down, Cameron taking his more slowly, and with evident distaste. The doctor continued to converse with them in tones of cheerful and, as Barry thought, of almost careless indifference.

“Now, I must leave you,” said the doctor. “I see there’s a case of shell shock. We didn’t know how to handle that for a while. The British R. A. M. C. for some months declined to recognise it as requiring treatment at all. You might care to look at this chap. Poor devil!”

Barry had been looking at the man ever since he had come into the room, supported by two of his comrades. He was indeed an object of pity. Of splendid physique, six feet and powerfully built, with the fine intelligent face of an educated man, he stood there white, twitching in every muscle, in a state of complete nerve-collapse.

Colonel Tait, who had been observing him keenly ever since his entering the room, now approached him, greeted him with a cheerful “Hello!” took him by the hand and felt his pulse.

“How are you, old chap? Feeling a little better than you were, aren’t you?”

“Yes–doc–tor. Rather–rotten–though– Be all right–to-morrow–“

“Sure you will! Still a little rest won’t do you any harm. We’ll send you down for a couple of weeks, and then you will be fit enough to have another go at the boche.”

So saying he turned him over to an assistant, and went on with his work. At this point Cameron, from whose eyes the look of horror had not yet faded, leaned over to Barry and whispered:

“Let’s get out of this. For Heaven’s sake, this thing is getting me.” He glanced at Barry. “What, are you ill, too?”

“Ill,” answered Barry between his clenched teeth. “Ill? No, why should I be ill? Look at these boys. I see myself ill. By Jove!” he added under his breath, “here’s another shell shock. Sit down, Cameron!” His voice took on a sterner tone. “Sit down. Don’t be an ass!”

Once more Colonel Tait took in hand the shell-shock man. This second was a stretcher case. The man was very violent, requiring two men to hold him on his stretcher.

“Oh, let him go! Let him go!” said Colonel Tait. “What’s wrong with you?” he said to the man. “Have you any wounds?”

“No, sir,” chattered the man miserably. “Shell–shock,–sir. Buried–twice–by a shell. Oh! Ah!”

The colonel had a few moments’ conversation with Gregg, who came over to where Barry was sitting and said:

“I say, Dunbar, watch this case. You will see some fun.”

“Fun,” echoed Barry, shaken and indignant. “Not much fun for that poor chap.”

“Stand up,” said the colonel sharply.

The man stood up without much apparent difficulty.

“Ah!” said the colonel. “Shell shock. Bad case, too.” His voice was kind and sympathetic. He gripped the man by the arm and ran his hand down his spine until he came to the small of his back.

“Pain there, eh?” he said, giving the man a poke.

“Yes, yes! Ouw! Doctor. Awful.”

“Thought so,” said the doctor. “Bad case! Poor chap! A curious feeling in the legs, eh?”

The man nodded vigorously, still twitching violently and making animal moanings.

Still pursuing his investigations and continuing to sympathise with his patient, the doctor enquired as to other symptoms, to all of which the patient promptly confessed. When the examination was completed, the doctor gave his man a hearty slap on the back and said:

“You’re all right, my boy. Go treat yourself to a cup of cocoa, and a good, thick slice of bread and raspberry jam–raspberry, remember–and to-morrow you can report to your battalion medical officer.”

“What!” exclaimed the man. “Doctor, I can’t go up again. I’m not fit to go up.”

“Oh, yes, you can, my boy. You’ll be in good fighting trim to- morrow. You’ll see! You’ll see! Come back here some day, perhaps, with a V. C.”

Thereupon the man began to swear violently.

“Here, none of that,” said the doctor sharply, “or up you go to- night.”

A grin ran around the dressing station, in which none joined more heartily than the first shell-shock man, waiting to be conveyed down the line.

“They don’t get by the old man often, nowadays,” was Dr. Gregg’s comment.

“You don’t often get cases like this, though, do you?” enquired Barry.

“Not often. We have passed through this dressing station some thousands of cases, and we may have had eight or ten malingerers. But this is not all sham. There is a strong mixture of hysteria and suggestion with the sham. A chap with a highly organised temperament gets buried by a shell. That is a terrific nerve shock. He sees two or three chaps blown to bits. Another nerve shock. Now he has heard about shell shock as a result of a similar experience. Immediately the suggestion begins to work and the man discovers in himself the well known symptoms of genuine shell shock, and, begad! I don’t wonder. What we have just given him is part of the treatment for hysteria–a little nerve tonic. A good sleep may put him all right by to-morrow morning. The chances are, however, that the O. C. will send him down for a few days’ rest and change. If so, the chap will be as happy as a clam. The boys will rag him half to death down there, so that he will be keen to get back again, and the chances are may get his V. C. Oh, we all get scared stiff,” laughed Gregg. “We are none of us proud about here. That hero stuff that you read about in the home papers, we don’t know much about. We just ‘carry on’.”

“By Jove, Gregg! That’s all right, but to just ‘carry on’ in this business, it seems to me, calls for some pretty fine hero stuff.”

“Well, we don’t call it so,” said Gregg. “Now I’ll see about your ambulance. I believe there’s one about ready to go. I think I can find a place for you and your friend, and it will save you a long walk.”

They came away from the old mill with mingled feelings. Barry had to a certain extent recovered from his shock, and had himself somewhat firmly in hand. Cameron was still silent and obviously shaken.

It was grey dawn when they arrived at the camp, physically weary, nervously exhausted, and sick at heart. Barry wakened Hobbs, who greeted them with the news that the battalion was under orders to go up that night. By his own state Barry was able to gauge that of his friend Cameron. The experiences of the last ten hours had been like nothing in his previous life. The desolation wrought by war upon the face of the country, upon the bodies of men, upon their souls, had sickened and unnerved him; and this he remembered was an experience of only a brief ten hours. He was conscious of a profound self-distrust and humiliation, as he thought of those other men, those medical officers, with their orderlies, the ambulance drivers, those wounded soldiers. How could they endure this horror, day in and day out, for weeks and for months? In a few hours he would have to meet his fellow officers and the men. They could not fail to read in his face all this that he carried in his heart.

By his grey, haggard face he knew that the same horror and fear had gone deep into his friend’s soul. There came to him the sudden thought that Cameron, too, must meet his fellow officers, and must endure their searching chaff, and that he would reveal himself to his undoing; for no man can ever live down in his battalion the whisper that he is a “quitter.” That very night Cameron would be forced to lead up his platoon into the front line, and must lead them step by step over that same Vlammertinghe road, where the transports were nightly shelled. In the presence of any danger soever, he must not falter. When the shells would begin to fall, he knew well how the eyes of his men would turn to their leader and search his very soul to see of what quality he was. Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the startled look in Cameron’s eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the courage of his friend.

“Come in with me, Cameron,” he said, standing at the door of his hut. “I’m dead beat and so are you. We’ll have coffee and some grub, and then sleep for a couple of hours until reveille.”

Cameron hesitated. The thing he most longed for at that moment was to be alone.

“Come on!” insisted Barry. “Hobbs will have a fire going, and hot coffee in ten minutes. Come on, old chap. I want you to.”

He threw his arm around Cameron’s shoulder and dragged him in. The boy dropped onto Barry’s cot, and, as he was, boots and coat on, was asleep before the coffee was ready. His boyish face, with its haggard look, struck pity to Barry’s heart, and recalled his father’s words, “These boys need their mothers.” If ever a lad needed his mother, it was young Cameron, and just in that hour.

He woke the boy up, gave him his coffee, had Hobbs remove his boots, made him undress and covered him up in his blankets. Then, taking his own coffee, he lay down on Hobbs’ bed.

“Harry,” he said, “give us every minute of sleep you can. Wake us just one-half hour before reveille with coffee and everything else good you can rustle, and, Harry, waken me before Mr. Cameron.”

When he lay down to sleep he made an amazing discovery–that his own horror and fear and self-distrust had entirely passed away. He felt himself quite prepared to “carry on.” How had this thing come to pass? His physical recuperation by means of coffee and food? This doubtless in part, but only in part. In his concern for his friend he had forgotten himself, and in forgetting himself he had forgotten his fear. It was an amazing discovery.

“Thank the good God,” he said. “He never forgets a fellow, and I won’t forget that.”

He woke to find Hobbs at his side, with coffee, toast and bacon, and on the floor beside his cot his tub awaiting him–the tub being a rubber receptacle exactly eighteen inches in diameter.

He hurried through his dressing, and his breakfast, all the while Cameron lying like a dead man, and with almost a dead man’s face.

Barry hated to waken him, but reveille was but a bare thirty minutes off, and he had an experiment to work upon his friend.

“Bring the coffee, Harry. Not the bacon, yet,” he ordered.

“Hello, Cameron, old boy! Wake up.”

Cameron rolled over with a groan and opened his eyes, still dull and heavy with sleep.

“Here you are. Pipe this down your tunnel and look lively, too. You have got thirty minutes–twenty-five, really–to reveille, and you have your toilet to perform–shave, massage, manicure and all the rest–so go to it. Here’s your tub. You can’t get into it, but soap yourself over, and Hobbs will sluice you with a pail or two outside.”

“Why all this Spartan stuff? It’s awfully cold. I think I’ll content myself with a nose rub this morning.”

“Get out of bed, and be quick about it,” commanded Barry, “unless you’d rather take your tub where you are.”

So saying he jerked the clothes clear off the cot, threatening Cameron with the tub. Cameron sprang up, stripped, soaped himself over, groaning and shivering the while; then stood outside in the open, while Hobbs administered the order of the bath, and after a vigorous rub, came in glowing.

“By jingo! That’s bully! It’s a pity a fellow can’t always feel just how bully it is before he takes it.”

“Na-a-w then! a little snap!” ordered Barry, in attempted imitation of the inimitable Sergeant Major Hackett. “A little speed, ple-ease! That’s better. I’ve seen worse–not often!”

And so he rattled on through Cameron’s dressing and shaving operations.

“Now then, ‘Obbs, a little Delmonico ‘ere. Shove this bacon against your fice, Cameron.”

“What about yours, sir?” said Cameron, as he sat down to the luxuries which somehow Hobbs had “rustled.”

“Had it, you slacker.” Then with a swift change of voice and manner he added: “Listen to me, Cameron. I’m going to have my prayers. You won’t bother me any, and if you don’t mind I’ll do them out loud. Don’t you stop eating, though. Hobbs, stop your wandering around there and sit down and listen.” Barry took his Bible.

“Cameron,” he said, “one comfort in reading the Bible to a chap with a father like yours is that you know all about the thing already–context, historical references and theological teaching– therefore, no need of comment. Also you have a good imagination to see things. Turn on the juice while I read. Hobbs, you waken up, too.”

Then he began to read the vivid words which picture as in miniature etchings the life stories of the heroes of Faith who in their day held their generation steady and pointed the way to duty and victory. As he read his face became alight, his dark eyes glowed, his voice thrilled under the noble passion of the words he read. Then he came to this stately peroration:

“And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon,” and so on through the list of heroes, “Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, (of whom the world was not worthy). Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Both reader and hearers were swept along upon the tide of dramatic passion. They were themselves a part of the great and eternal conflict there pictured; they, too, were called upon to endure the cross.

Cameron had forgotten his breakfast, and with his kindling eyes fastened upon the reader’s face, was listening to the noble music of the thrilling words.

Barry closed his book and laid it down.

“Great, eh! Wonderful company! All the finest and the best of the war’s heroes are in it. Now, then, prayer–” He dropped on his knees, Cameron and Hobbs following his example.

It was a prayer chiefly of thanksgiving for those who in their day and in the face of anguish and terror and death had kept the faith; of thanksgiving, too, for all who in this present day of sacrifice in the home land and of sacrifice upon the field of battle were keeping that same faith for the Empire and for this same sacred cause of humanity. The prayer closed with a simple petition that they in the battalion might be found worthy of a humble place in that great company.

As they were repeating together the prayer “Our Father,” the notes of the reveille sounded shrilly over the camp.

“Go out, Hobbs, for a minute,” said Barry after they had risen from their prayer. He knew well that Cameron would want a few minutes with him alone.

“Sir,” said the boy, and his voice was quiet and steady, “I’m not going to try to thank you, but I believe I can ‘carry on’ now.”

“You bet you can,” said Barry, gripping his hand. “You bet you can! It’s the point of view after all, old man, isn’t it? For ourselves it doesn’t matter, but we have got to think of the boys, and we have got to stay with the game.”

Eighteen hours later the relief was completed, and the battalion was in its place in the line, all but the sentries asleep in their flimsy dugouts and behind their rotten parapets.

An hour later, Barry, who was sleeping with the M. O. in the regimental aid post, was wakened from a dead sleep by the M. O.

“There’s something doing out there,” he said. “Listen!”

There was a quick succession of sharp explosions.

“Bombs!” said the M. O.

The explosions were followed by the rat-tat-tat–tat-tat–tat-tat- tat of the machine guns. Instantly they were both on their feet and out in the trench.

“I guess Fritzie is trying to put something over on us, being our first night,” said the M. O. “I’ll get my boys out.”

He ran to the adjoining dugout, where his corporal and stretcher bearers were sleeping, roused them and sent them up the trench. There was the sound of subdued voices and of quick marching feet along the communication trench a few yards away. They stood together listening for a few minutes.

“I’m going,” said Barry, hurrying off in the direction of the sound. “Come on.”

“Captain Dunbar,” called the M. O. sharply, “my place is here, and I think this is where you will be most useful as well. They will bring the wounded to us right here.”

In a few minutes all was still again, except for the machine guns, which still kept up their incessant tattoo.

The M. O. was correct in his forecast. In a few minutes down the communication trench came a wounded man walking, jubilant in spite of his wounds.

“Fritzie tried to put one over on us,” he exclaimed, while the doctor was dabbing with iodine and tying up his wounded arm, “but I think he’s got another guess coming. You ought to have seen our officer,” he added. “The first one in the bunch to be ‘at ’em.’ With a bayonet, too, mind you. Grabbed one from a private as he ran past, and bombs bursting like hell all around. Beg pardon, sir,” he added, turning to Barry. “He’s some kid, poor chap. He’s got his, I guess.”

“Who is he?” asked the M. O.

“Lieutenant Cameron, sir.”

“Cameron!” cried Barry. “Where is he?”

“They are carrying the stretcher cases right down to the dressing station, I hear,” said the man.

“I’m going, doc,” said Barry, and was off at a run.

At the casualty clearing station there was no excitement, the doctors and orderlies “carrying on” as usual, receiving the wounded, dressing their wounds, sending them down with the smoothness and despatch characteristic of their department.

“Cameron?” said the doctor in answer to Barry’s question. “Why certainly, I’ll show you.” And he led him to Cameron’s cot.

“Well, old chap,” said the doctor cheerily, “we’re going to send you down in a minute or two. Now don’t talk.”

Cameron’s eyes welcomed Barry.

“Dear old boy,” said Barry, dropping on his knees beside him. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“It’s all right,” whispered Cameron. “They–never–knew.–You’ll write dad–and tell him–I kept–” The voice trailed off into silence. The morphia was doing its merciful work.

“Kept the faith,” said Barry.

“Yes,” whispered Cameron with a smile, faint but exultant.

“Good old boy,” whispered Barry.

“Yes, I–kept–I kept–“

The bearers came to carry out the stretcher.

“Will he recover?” whispered Barry to the doctor.

“Recover? Surest thing you know,” said the doctor in a loud cheery voice. “We can’t spare this kind of stuff, you know.”

And again Barry leaned over the stretcher and said, patting Cameron on the shoulder:

“Good old boy. You make us proud of you. You kept the faith.”

CHAPTER XV

THINNING RANKS

“Three months in that hell-hole of the salient have made their mark on this battalion,” said Transport Sergeant Mackay.

“Yes, there’s quite a lot of these round the first line and back about here,” replied the pioneer sergeant, who was putting the finishing touches upon some crosses, that were to be sent up the line that night.

“That’s so, Fatty. Whose is that cross you are finishing?”

“That’s Lieutenant Salford’s, a fine young officer he was, too. Always had a smile. The deeper the mud the more Sally smiled. And this here is Lieutenant Booth’s. There’s a chap now that picked up wonderful. Two months ago everybody thought he was a big soft slob, and those bombers say that he was all, right. And here’s the M. O.’s. Poor old doc! There was a man, now, if there ever was one. He wasn’t afraid of nothing. He would go walking about with a smile when a bombardment was on, and in that last big show the other day, they say him and the chaplain–there’s another peach– they ‘carried on’ wonderful. I wasn’t around there at the time, but the boys at the dressing station told me that them two worked back and forward getting out the wounded, I think they had about thirty injured up at that time, as if it was a kind of er summer shower that was falling, let alone H. E.’s and whizzbangs, and then after they got the last man out, the M. O. went in with some stretcher bearers, just lookin’ around before he left, and a shell came and got ’em all, and they say it was about the last shell that was throwed. And that’s where poor Harry Hobbs got his, too. The Pilot went out just a minute before, and when he came back that’s what he saw. They say he was terrible cut up over the M. O. Funny thing, the M. O.’s face was just as quiet as if he had gone to sleep, but the rest of the boys, well you could hardly get ’em together, and the Pilot walkin’ up and down there lookin’ like a lost man. We buried ’em right there by Maple Copse. I want to tell you, sergeant, that that’s the hardest job I ever done in this war. The Pilot, he broke right down in the middle of the service. It must have been hard for him. I’ve been with him now at every funeral and he stands up to his work like a man. He takes it kind of cheery almost, but when we was puttin’ down the M. O. and poor Harry, the Pilot just couldn’t appear to stand it. I cried like a baby, and you ought to have seen the crowd, the O. C. and the adjutant and the pioneers, and they are all pretty hardened up by this time. They have done enough plantin’ anyhow. They just all went to pieces. The shells was goin’ overhead among the trees, something awful, but nobody minded more than if they had been pea- shooters. First time I ever seen the Pilot break, and I have been with him ever since the first one we buried, and that was big Jim Berry. A sniper got him. You don’t remember? I guess you don’t see much or get much of the news back here.”

“Back here!” exclaimed Sergeant Mackay. “What do you mean, ‘back here’? Don’t I have to go up every night with the transport, and through that barridge, too. This aint no ‘safety first’ job.”

“I know, sergeant. I’m not sayin’ you ain’t at war. Believe me, I’d rather be up front than to go up round Hell Fire Corner and come back by the Menin Gate every night like you fellows. I ain’t sayin’ nothing about that, but you don’t see things that I see, and you don’t get the news same as I do. Now, about Jim Berry, you know, he was goin’ to do some snipin’ in place of McCuaig, who went to the machine gun company.”

“McCuaig, in the machine gun company! I never heard that.”

“Well, that’s what I’m sayin’,” said Sergeant Matthews, “you don’t get some of the chances to get news down here, same as me. You see, when we’re sewin’ up the boys and fixin’ ’em up like, and when we’re fixin’ up the graves and puttin’ on the crosses, you get kind of thinkin’ about things, and kind of lonesome, and so the boys keep telling the news to cheer themselves up, and that’s how I heard about McCuaig. You see, McCuaig was snipin’ the first tour, and he’s a killer, you bet, and he had only cut three natches in his rifle. The boys say he had got four of the Huns, but he had only put down three natches on his rifle to be sure, and after he seen the machine gun work, stoppin’ a raid, he comes to the officer, and says he, givin’ him his rifle: ‘Say, this is all right for sport, but it ain’t good enough for killin’ these devils. I’d like to get on to your gang, if I can,’ and they put him right onto the machine gun. Say, he’s sleepin’ with that Lewis gun ever since. Just pets it like a baby. What was I tellin’ you? Oh, yes, about McCuaig and Jim Berry. Well, he took McCuaig’s place snipin’ and a good sniper he was too. He used to hunt, you know, up in the mountains with Jim Knight every fall. Well, he started out snipin’ the day after McCuaig quit, and McCuaig gave him his rifle too, and took him up to the ‘hide.’ Well, big Jim was always a careless cuss, you know. He gets his eye on the hole, sightin’ his rifle, and McCuaig was watchin’ through one of them new things–“

“Perry’s scope.”

“Yes, that’s it, Paris cope. Them French is mighty smart fellows, you bet. When along walks a Hun. ‘There he comes!’ sings out McCuaig. ‘Didn’t see him until he got past,’ says Jim, pretty mad, because Jim hated to show that he’d got ‘buck fever,’ or something, and waited for the next. ‘Here he comes!’ says McCuaig, again. ‘Bang!’ goes Jim. ‘I’ve got him,’ he shouts, hoppin’ up to get a good look, when McCuaig grabs him and jerks him down, swearin’ somethin’ awful, and tellin’ him he wasn’t shootin’ no mountain goats. ‘Oh shaw!’ says Jim. ‘They can’t get me.’ ‘You keep your head down, Jim,’ said McCuaig. That’s the very last words he said to him, just as he was leavin’ him. He wasn’t down the next day when bang! goes Jim’s rifle, and again up he jumps to see what he’d got, when ping! goes a Boche bullet right through his head. You know McCuaig was real mad, and he stood quiet at that hole for three hours. Then he got Corporal Thom to shove up a hat on a rifle, when ping! comes the bullet and bang! goes Jim’s rifle. ‘Guess he won’t shoot no more, unless there’s shootin’ in hell,’ says he, and makes another natch. Say, the boys all felt bad about Jim and so did the Pilot. Well, we had to plant him that night, as we was goin’ out next day. It was out beyond the Loop. You don’t know where that is, I guess.”

“Of course, I do,” asserted Mackay indignantly. “I’ve been all around that front line. What are you givin’ us!”

“Oh, you have, eh! Well, I wouldn’t unless I had to, you bet. It’s no place for a man with a waist line like mine. Well, as I was sayin’, that cemetery was right out in the open, right under observation, and exposed to machine guns, snipers, whizbangs, all the hull bloody lot of ’em. Wasn’t no place for a cemetery anyway, I say. I’m not after any bomb proof job but a cemetery should be–“

“Should be a quiet and retired spot,” suggested one of the transport boys.

“Yes. What’s the use of getting livin’ men shot up when they’re buryin’ dead men, I want to know. Not saying anything about the officers that’s always round, and the chaplain. I say a cemetery should be somewhere out of sight, like Maple Copse; now, there’s a good place, except that the roots make it hard diggin’. Up against a railway bank like that down at Zillebeck, by the Railway Dugouts, there’s a lovely place.”

“How would the Ramparts do, sergeant?” enquired another transport lad.

“Ramparts? You mean at Ypres? Yes,” said the sergeant, with a grin, “but I’d hate to turn out the Brigade Headquarters Staff.”

“Go on, sergeant.”

“Well, as I was sayin’, that’s no place for a cemetery up there beyond the Loop, but I didn’t know so much about it then, you bet. That’s where we had to bury Jim. It was a awful black night, and of course, just as we got out to the trench to go ‘overland’ to the cemetery, them flares started up something awful. I don’t know what they was lookin’ for, but when they went up, I want to tell you, I felt about the size of a tree, and I wisht I was one. Well, Jim, you know, was pretty heavy, an awful heavy carry he was for the boys. I was tryin’ to hurry ’em along, but that Pilot, he heads the procession, and on he goes at a funeral march pace. Now I believe in doin’ things right. I’ve heard of some pioneers that hurries their job. I don’t believe in that, but when you are going across the open on a dark night, with them flares going up, I say between flares is a good time to get a move on, but, no, that there Pilot, he just goes that pace and no more. I want to tell you the boys was nervous and the officers too. The O. C. and Major Bustead was there. I could see the major fussin’ to get on. Well, we got Jim down all right, and just as the Pilot got started, darned if they didn’t open up the biggest kind of a machine gun chorus you ever heard.”

“What did you do, sergeant?”

“Me? Well, I started huggin’ mud and saying all the good words I could think of. Even the O. C. got down on his knees, and the major, he near got into the grave, but that darned Pilot stood up there getting taller every minute, and goin’ on with his prayer, and the boys sayin’ ‘Amen!’ that loud and emphatic that I thought he’d take the hint and cut out somethin’, but cut out nothin’! Seemed as if his memory was workin’ over time, the way he kept a fetchin’ up things that he could a easily forgot, and when he comes to the benediction, the whizbangs begin to come. Up goes his hand, the way they do. I thought to myself that that was a kind of unnecessary display. I looks up and there he was, more like a tree than ever. In fact, I says to myself–it’s queer how you think things at times like that–darned if they won’t think the darned fool is a tree, for nothin’ but a darned tree would stand up in the flare light and look so much like a tree anyhow. I guess that’s what saved him. He never moved until he was done, and then didn’t he stay with us pioneers after the rest had gone until we filled up. Say, he’s all right.”

“You bet he’s all right,” said Sergeant Mackay, “and he’s gettin’ in his work with the boys.”

“What do you mean, ‘gettin’ in his work’?” enquired the pioneer sergeant.

“Oh, well, you know,” said Sergeant Mackay awkwardly, “he’s makin’ ’em think a lot different about things. I know he has ’em tied up all right in their language.” And this was as near to a confession of faith as the sergeant cared to go.

“Oh, I can see a difference myself up the line,” said the pioneer sergeant. “The boys used to get out of his way. He used to jump on ’em something fierce. You remember?”

“Huh-uh!”

“Well, they just love to have him drop in now and they tell him things. I saw Corporal Thom the other night showin’ him his girl’s picture, and the Pilot thought she was a fine girl too, and got her address down, and said he was going to write her and tell her what a fine chap the corporal was, and you ought to see Corporal Thom swell up until he ‘most bust his tunic.”

“Oh, I know the corporal’s dippy about the Pilot,” said Sergeant Mackay.

“Yes, and the officers, too,” said the pioneer sergeant. “There’s Captain Duff. Well, you know what a holy terror he is.”

“He’s all right,” said Sergeant Mackay stoutly. “He was my chief for about a month here, and he was the first one to get this transport licked into shape, you bet.”

“I’m not saying anything against Captain Duff, but he was a roughneck, you know well enough, and I guess he hadn’t much use for the Pilot.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” said Sergeant Mackay. “The Pilot used to go up with us on the transport. It was awful hard on Captain Duff, handlin’ the column and the mules and all the rest, to hold in when the Pilot was along. The captain, he had to come round now and then to the rear. There he would have a lovely time for a few minutes, with the Pilot safe up in front. But the Pilot calmed him down all right.”

“Yes, and there’s that young Captain Fraser,” said the pioneer sergeant, with a note of enthusiasm in his monotonous voice. “There a soldier. He just loved fightin’. I remember the night he got his wound. It was on a raid of course. If there was a raid on, Captain Neil was sure to be there. He just about got his arm blown off, but they say he’s goin’ to be all right. I was at the regimental aid post when they fetched him in. Oh, he was a dirty mess, face all cut up, and his arm hangin’, and not a word out of him until the Pilot comes along. Then he begins to chirp up and the Pilot starts jollyin’ him along one minute and sayin’ Psalms to him the next minute, and little prayers, and the boys around listenin’, sometimes grinnin’ and sometimes all choked up, but I’m awful glad Captain Neil is comin’ round all right.”

By this time the pioneer sergeant had his crosses finished.

“Well,” he said, as he set the crosses against the wall, “there’s three of the finest officers we ever had in this battalion. You take ’em up to-night when you go, sergeant.”

“We’re not going up to-night. The boys are coming out this evening,” replied Sergeant Mackay.

“No? Is that so? I never heard that. Guess I’ll have to go up with some other outfit. Comin’ out this evening? Well, it’s time they were. They’ve had one hell all the time, I hear, this tour.”

“Yes,” continued Sergeant Mackay, “and the highlanders are sending up their band to meet them and play them out. I call that a mighty fine thing to do. You know our own band had to go up with water and rations last night, and they can’t get out until to-night. So the Highlanders’ band–“

“Pretty good band, too, isn’t it?”

“Best pipe band in the army,” said Sergeant Mackay with enthusiasm.

“Oh, a pipe band!” exclaimed the pioneer sergeant in a disappointed tone.

“Yes, a pipe band, what else?” enquired Sergeant Mackay truculently.

“Why don’t they send up their real band, when they’re doin’ it, anyway?”

“What!” shouted Sergeant Mackay. “I’ll tell you. For the same reason that they don’t make you O. C. in this battalion, you damned fat lobster! There now, you’ve started me swearin’ again, and I was quittin’ it.”

Sergeant Mackay’s wrath at the slur cast upon the pipe band, the only band, in his opinion, worthy of any real man’s attention, was intensified by his lapse into his habit of profanity, which, out of deference to the Pilot, he for some weeks had been earnestly striving to hold in check.

“Oh well, Scotty, don’t spoil your record for me. I guess a pipe band is all right for them that likes that kind of music. For me, I can’t ever tell when they quit tunin’ up and begin to play.”

Sergeant Mackay looked at him with darkening face, evidently uncertain as to what course he should adopt–whether to “turn himself loose” upon this benighted Englishman or to abandon him to his deserved condition of fatuous ignorance. He decided upon the latter course. In portentous silence he turned his back upon Fatty Matthews and walked the whole length of the line to get a mule back over the rope. It took him some little time for the mule had his own mind about the manoeuvre and the sergeant was unwontedly deliberate and gentle with him. Then, the manoeuver executed, he walked slowly back to the pioneer sergeant and in restrained and carefully chosen speech addressed him.

“Look here, Fatty, I’m askin’ you, don’t you ever say things like that outside of these lines, for the sake of the regiment, you know. I’d really hate the other battalions to know we had got such–” He halted himself abruptly and then proceeded more quietly, “A man as you in this battalion. My God, Fatty, they’d think your brains had run down into your pants. I know they haven’t, because I know you haven’t any.” He took a fresh breath, and continued his address in a tone of patient remonstrance. “Why, man, don’t you know that wherever the British Army has gone, its Highland regiments have cleared the way; and that when the pipes get playin’ the devil himself couldn’t hold them back?”

“I don’t wonder,” said Fatty innocently. “They make a man feel like fightin’ all right.”

Sergeant Mackay scanned his face narrowly, uncertain as to whether he should credit the pioneer sergeant with intelligence sufficient to produce a sarcasm.

“What I mean is,” exclaimed Fatty, seeking to appease the wrathful transport sergeant, “when you hear them pipes, you get so stirred up, you know, that you just feel like kullin’ somebody.”

This apparently did not improve matters with Sergeant Mackay.