"Yes, the offensive always wins in the end. We must go on!"

"And once we have the range--yes, once we've won one vital position--the men will recover their enthusiasm and be crying: 'On to the capital!'"

"Right! We were forgetting history. We were forgetting the volatility of human nature."

XLI

WITH FELLER AND STRANSKY

Far up on a peak among the birds and aeroplanes, in a roofed, sh.e.l.l-proof chamber, with a telephone orderly at his side, a powerful pair of field-gla.s.ses and range-finders at his elbow, and a telescope before his eye, Gustave Feller, one-time gardener and now acting colonel of artillery, watched the burst of sh.e.l.ls over the enemy's lines. While other men had grown lean on war, he had taken on enough flesh to fill out the wrinkles around eyes that shone with an artist's enjoyment of his work. Down under cover of the ridge were his guns, the keys of the instrument that he played by calls over the wire. Their barking was a symphony to his ears; errors of orchestration were errors in aim. He talked as he watched, his lively features reflective of his impressions.

"Oh, pretty! Right into their tummies! Right in the nose! La, la, la!

But that's off--and so's that! Tell Battery C they're fifty yards over.

Oh, beady-eyed G.o.ds and shiny little fishes--two smacks in the same spot! Humph! Tell Battery C that the trouble with that gun is worn rifling; that's why it's going short. Elevate it for another hundred yards--but it ought not to wear out so soon. I'd like to kick the maker or the inspector. The fellows in B 21 will accuse us of inattention.

It's time to drop a sh.e.l.l on them to show we're perfectly impartial in our favors. La, la, la! Oh, what a pretty smack! Congratulations!"

B 21 was the position of Fraca.s.se's company and the pretty smack the one that broke one man's arm and crushed another's head.

The "G.o.d with us!" song was singularly suited to the great, bull voice of its composer, born to the red and become Captain Stransky in the red business of war. It was he who led the thunder of its verses not far from where Peterkin led the song of the Grays.

"I certainly like that song," said Stransky. Well he might. It had made him famous throughout the nation. "There's Jehovah and brimstone in it.

Now we'll have our own."

"Our own" was also of Stransky's composition and about Dellarme; for Stransky, child of the highways and byways, of dark, tragic alleys and sunny fields, had music in him, the music of the people. The skin on his high cheek-bones was drawn tighter than before, further exaggerating the size of his nose, and the deeper set of his eyes gave their cross a more marked character. He carried on the spirit of Dellarme in the company in his own fashion. The survivors among his men were as lean and dirty as Fraca.s.se's, but, never having expected to reach the enemy's capital, war had brought few illusions. They had known sleepless vigils, but not much digging since they had fallen back on the main line into the fortifications which, with all resources at command, the engineers had built before the war. And the Browns still held the range! The princ.i.p.al fortifications of Engadir and every other vital point of the main line was theirs. All that the enemy had gained in his latest attack were a few minor positions.

"But we're always losing positions!" complained one of the men. "Little by little they are getting possession."

"They say the offensive always wins," said another.

"Five against three! They count on numbers," said Lieutenant Tom Fragini.

"There you go, Tom! Any other pessimists or anarchists want to be heard?" called out Stransky. "Just how long, at the present rate, will it take them to get the whole range? There's a limit to the number of even five millions."

"Yes, but if they ever break through in one place and get their guns up--"

"As you've said before, Tom!"

"As we want to keep saying--as we want to keep fighting our d.a.m.nedest to make sure they won't," Tom explained.

"Yes, that's it!" declared a chorus.

"That's it, no matter what we pay!" declared Stransky. "We're not going back there except in hea.r.s.es!" He swung his hand in a semicircle toward the distant hills, gold and purple in their dying foliage under the autumn sunlight.

Then the telephone in the redoubt brought some news. The staff begged to inform the army that the enemy's casualties in the last three days had been two hundred thousand! Immediately everybody was talking at once in Stransky's parliament, as he sometimes called that company of which he was, in the final a.n.a.lysis, unlimited monarch.

"How do they know?"

"Do you think it's fake?"

"That sums up to pretty near a million!"

"My G.o.d! Think of it--a million!"

"We're whittling them down!"

"It doesn't make any difference whether Partow or Lanstron is chief of staff!"

"They're paying!"

"Paying for our fellows that they've killed! Paying for being in the wrong!"

"Let's have the song again! Come on!"

"Yes, the song! The song!"

"No; hold on!" cried Tom. "Not because men are killed!"

"That's right, that's right!" said Stransky. "After all, they're our brothers." It was the first time since he had undergone the transformation which the war had wrought in him that he had mentioned any of his world-brotherhood ideas. "I still believe in that. We're fighting for that!" he concluded.

With the ready change of subject of soldiers who have been long in company, they were soon talking about other things--things that concerned the living.

"Say, wouldn't I like a real bath--an altogether!"

"And plenty of soap all over!"

"A welter of lather from head to foot and blowing bubbles from between my lips!"

"And to shave off this beard!"

"Think of the beards that are going when the war is over!"

"Not if you can't grow any more than John!"

"I'm not fighting out of ambush like you!" replied John. "I haven't got a place for the birds to nest!"

"I'm going to trim mine down gradually," said another; "first an imperial and mustache with mutton choppers; then mow my cheeks; then a great, sweeping mustache; then a dandy little mustache; then--"

"Mow is the word! Don't inflict a barber!"

"And, after the bath, clean underclothes, and, oh, me!--a home dinner!"

"Stop with your home dinners! That's barred. Army biscuits!"