The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne by Joseph A. Altsheler (13 ebook reader .TXT) 📕

appalling. The shells came in showers and the French ranks were torn and mangled. Companies existed and then they were not. The explosions were like the crash of thunderbolts, but through it all the French continued to advance. Those whose knees grew weak beneath them were upborne and carried forward by the press of their comrades. The French gunners, too, were making prodigious efforts but with cannon of such long range neither side could see what its batteries were accomplishing. John was sure, though, that the great French artillery must be giving as good as it received.

He was conscious that General Vaugirard was still going forward along the long white road, sweeping his glasses from left to right and from right to left in a continuous semi-circle, apparently undisturbed, apparently now without human emotion. He was no figure of romance, but he was a man, cool and powerful, ready to die with all his men, if death for them was needed.

Still the invisible hand swept them on, the hand that a million men in action could not see, but which every one of the million, in his own way, felt. The crash of the guns on both sides had become fused together into one roar, so steady and continued so long that the sound seemed almost normal. Voices could now be heard under it and John spoke to de Rougemont.

"Can you make anything of it?" he asked. "Do we win or do we lose?"

"It's too early yet to tell anything. The cannon only are speaking, but you'll note that our army is advancing."

"Yes, I see it. Before I've only beheld it in retreat before overwhelming numbers. This is different."

General Vaugirard beckoned to his aides, and again sent them out with messages. John's note was to the commander of a battery of field guns telling him to move further forward. He started at once through the fields on his motor cycle, but he could not go fast now. The ground had been cut deep by artillery and cavalry and torn by shells and he had to pick his way, while the shower of steel, sent by men who were firing by mathematics, swept over and about him.

Shivers seized him more than once, as shrapnel and pieces of shell flew by. Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in spite of the shells, in spite of the deadly nausea that assailed him at times, he went on. The rush of air from a shell threw him once from his motor cycle, but as he fell on soft clodded earth he was not hurt, and, springing quickly back on his wheel, he reached the battery.

The order was welcome to the commander of the guns, who was anxious to go closer, and, limbering up, he advanced as rapidly as weapons of such great weight could be dragged across the fields. John followed, that he might report the result. They were now facing toward the east and the whole horizon there was a blaze of fire. The shells were coming thicker and thicker, and the air was filled with the screaming of the shrapnel.

The commander of the battery, a short, powerful Frenchman, was as cool as ice, and John drew coolness from him. One can get used to almost anything, and his nervous tremors were passing. Despite the terrible fire of the German artillery the French army was still advancing. Many thousands had fallen already before the shells and shrapnel of the invisible foe, but there had been no check.

The cannon crossed a brook, and, unlimbering, again opened a tremendous fire. To one side and on a hill here, a man whom the commander watched closely was signaling. John knew that he was directing the aim of the battery and the French, like the Germans, were killing by mathematics.

He rode his cycle to the crest of a little elevation behind the battery and with his newfound coolness began to use his glasses again. Despite the thin, whitish smoke, he saw men on the horizon, mere manikins moving back and forth, apparently without meaning, but men nevertheless. He caught, too, the outline of giant tubes, the huge guns that were sending the ceaseless rain of death upon the French.

He also saw signs of hurry and confusion among those manikins, and he knew that the French shells were striking them. He rode down to the commander and told him. The swart Frenchman grinned.

"My children are biting," he said, glancing affectionately at his guns. "They're brave lads, and their teeth are long and sharp."

He looked at his signal man, and the guns let loose again with a force that sent the air rushing away in violent waves. Batteries farther on were firing also with great rapidity. In most of these the gunners were directed by field telephones strung hastily, but the one near John still depended upon signal men. It was composed of eight five-inch guns, and John believed that its fire was most accurate and deadly.

Using his glasses again, he saw that the disturbance among those manikins was increasing. They were running here and there, and many seemed to vanish suddenly—he knew that they were blown away by the shells. To the right of the great French battery some lighter field guns were advancing. One drawn by eight horses had not yet unlimbered, and he saw a shell strike squarely upon it. In the following explosion pieces of steel whizzed by him and when the smoke cleared away the gun, the gunners and the horses were all gone. The monster shell had blown everything to pieces. The other guns hurried on, took up their positions and began to fire. John shuddered violently, but in a moment or two, he, too, forgot the little tragedy in the far more gigantic one that was being played before him.

He rode back to General Vaugirard and told him that his order had been obeyed. The general nodded, but did not take his glasses from the horizon, where a long gray line was beginning to appear against the green of the earth. "It goes well so far," John heard him say in the under note which was audible beneath the thunder of the battle.

In a quarter of an hour the great batteries limbered up again, and once more the French army went forward, the troops to lie down and wait again, while the artillery worked with ferocious energy. It was yet a battle of big guns, at least in the center. The armies were not near enough to each other for rifles; in truth not near enough yet to be seen. John, even with his glasses, could only discern the gray line advancing, he could make little of its form or order or of what it was trying to do.

But a light wind was now bringing smoke from one flank where the battle was far heavier than in the center, and the concussion of the artillery at that point became so frightful that the air seemed to come in waves of the utmost violence and to beat upon the drum of the ear with the force of a hammer. Owing to the wind John could not hear the battle on the other flank so well, but he believed that it was being fought there with equal fury and determination.

He was watching with such intentness that he did not hear the sweep of an aeroplane behind him, but he did see Lannes run to General Vaugirard's car and give him a note.

While the general read and pondered, Lannes turned toward the wheel on which John sat. Although he tried to preserve calm, John knew that he was tremendously excited. He had taken off his heavy glasses and his wonderful gray eyes were flashing. It was obvious to his friend, who now knew him so well, that he was moved by some tremendous emotion.

John rode up by the side of Lannes and said:

"What have you seen, Philip? You can tell a little at least, can't you?"

"More than a little! A lot! The Arrow and I have looked over a great area, John! Miles and miles and yet more miles! and wherever we went we gazed down upon armies locked in battle, and beyond that were other armies locked in battle, too! The nations meet in wrath! You can't see it here, nor from anywhere on the earth! It's only in the air high overhead that one can get even a partial view of its immensity! The English army is off there on the flank, a full thirty miles away, and you're not likely to see it today!"

He would have said more, but General Vaugirard beckoned to him, gave him a note which he had written hastily, and in a few more minutes Lannes was flitting like a swallow through the heavens. Then General Vaugirard's car moved forward and brigade after brigade of the French army resumed its advance also.

John felt that the great German machine had been met by a French machine as great. Perhaps the master mind that thrills through an organism of steel no less than one of human flesh was on the French side. He did not know. The invisible hand thrusting forward the French armies was still invisible to him. Yet he felt with the certainty of conviction that the eye and the brain of one man were achieving a marvel. In some mysterious manner the French defense had become an offense. The Republican troops were now attacking and the Imperial troops were seeking to hold fast.

He seemed to comprehend it all in an instant, and a mighty joy surged over him. De Rougemont saw his glistening eye and he asked curiously:

"What is it that you are feeling so strongly, Mr. Scott?"

"The thrill of the advance! The unknown plan, whatever it is, is working! Your nation is about to be saved! I feel it! I know it!"

De Rougemont gazed at him, and then the light leaped into his own eyes.

"A prophet! A prophet!" he cried. "Inspired youth speaks!"

A great crisis may call into being a great impulse, and de Rougemont's words were at once accepted as truth by all the young aides. Words of fire, words vital with life had gone forth, predicting their triumph, and as they rode among the troops carrying orders they communicated their burning zeal to the men who were already eager for closer battle.

The storm of missiles from the cannon was increasing rapidly. John now distinctly saw the huge German masses, not advancing but standing firm to receive the French attack, their front a vast line of belching guns. He knew that they would soon be within the area of rifle fire and he knew with equal truth that it would take the valor of immense numbers, wielded by the supreme skill of leaders to drive back the Germans.

The guns, some drawn by horses and others by motors, were moving forward with them. When the horses were swept away by a shell, men seized the guns and dragged them. Then they stopped again, took new positions and renewed the rain of death on the German army.

They began to hear a whistle and hiss that they knew. It was that of the bullets, and along the vast front they were coming in millions. But the French were using their rifles, too, and at intervals the deep thundering chant of the Marseillaise swept through their ranks. In spite of shell, shrapnel and bullets, in spite of everything, the French army in the center was advancing and John believed that the armies on the other parts of the line were advancing, too.

The bullets struck around them, and then among them. One aide fell from his cycle, and lay dead in the road, two more were wounded, but two hundred thousand men, their artillery blazing death over their heads, went on straight at the mouths of a thousand cannon.

Companies and regiments were swept away, but there was no check. Nor did the other French armies, the huge links in the chain, stop. A feeling of victory had swept along the whole gigantic battle front. They were fighting for Paris, for their country, for the soil which they tended, alive, and in which they slept, dead, and just at the moment when everything seemed to have been lost they were saving all. The heroic age of France had come again, and the Third Republic was justifying the First.

The battle deepened and thickened to an extraordinary degree, as the space between the two fronts narrowed. John for the first time saw the German troops without the aid of glasses. They were mere outlines against a fiery horizon, reddened by the mouths of so many belching cannon, but they seemed to him to stand there