Jimmie chattered with the men in the compartment, soldiers and
workers, each a cog in the big machine, each bound upon some
important errand. Each had news to tell--tales of the fighting, or
of the progress of preparation. For more than a year now America had
been getting ready, and here, in the most desperate crisis of the
war, what was she going to do? Everybody was on tip-toe with
excitement, with impatience to get into the scrap, to make good in
the work upon which his soul was set. Every man knew that the
"dough-boys" would show themselves the masters of "Fritz"; they knew
it as religious people know there is a God in Heaven--only, unlike
most religious people, they were anxious to get to this heaven and
meet this God at the earliest possible moment. Next to Jimmie sat a
Wisconsin farmer-boy, German in features, in name, even in accent;
yet he was ready to fight the soldiers of the Kaiser--and quite sure
he could lick them! Had he not lived since childhood in a free
country, and been to an American public-school?

Everybody had funny stories to tell about the adventures of soldiers
in a foreign land. The French were all right, of course, especially
the girls; but the shop-keepers were frugal, and you had better
count your change, and bite the coins they offered you. As for the
language--holy smoke! Why did civilized people want to talk a lingo
that made you grunt like a pig--or like a penful of pigs of all
sizes? Across the way sat a Chicago street-car conductor with a
little lesson book, and now and then he would read something out
loud. AN, IN, ON, UN, and many different sizes of pigs! When you
wanted bread, you asked for a pain, and when you wanted a dish of
eggs, you asked for a cat-roof omelette. How was this for a
tongue-twister--say five hundred and fifty-five francs in French!

Fortunately you didn't have to say that many--not on the pay of a
dough-boy, put in a plumber from up-state in New York. For his part,
he did not bother to grunt--he would make drinking motions or
eating motions, and they would bring him things till they found what
he wanted. One time he had met a girl that he thought was all right,
and he wanted to treat her to a feed, so he drew a picture of a
chicken, thinking he would get it roasted. She had chattered away to
the waiter, and he had come back with two soft-boiled eggs. That was
the French notion of taking a girl out to dinner!




IV



They loaded Jimmie into a motor-lorry and whirled him away. You knew
you were going to the war then, by heck; there were two almost solid
processions of wagons and trucks, loaded with French soldiers and
materials going, and damaged French soldiers returning. It was like
Broadway at the most crowded hour; only here everything went by in a
whirl of dust--you got quick glimpses of drivers with tense faces
and blood-shot eyes. Now and then there would be a blockade, and men
would swear and fume in mixed languages; staff-cars in an extra
hurry would go off the road and bump along across country, while
gangs of negro labourers, French colonials, seized the opportunity
to fill up the ruts worn in the highway.

They put Jimmie off at a village where his motor-unit was located,
in a long shed made of corrugated iron, the sort of shed which the
army threw up overnight. Here were a score of men working at
repairs, and Jimmie stopped for no formalities, but took off his
coat and pitched in. There was plenty of work he could see; the
machines came, sometimes whole truck-loads of them, damaged in every
way he had ever seen before, and in new ways not dreamed of in
Kumme's bicycle-shop--tyres torn to shreds by fragments of shrapnel,
frames twisted out of shape by explosions, and nasty splotches of
blood completing the story.

It was one of the many places where American units had been taken to
plug the damaged French lines. There was a reserve battalion near
by, and outside this village a group of men were at work, putting up
tents for a hospital. Some thirty miles ahead was the front, and you
heard the guns off and on, a low sullen roar, punctuated with
hammer-strokes f big fellows. Millions of dollars every hour were
being blown to nothingness in that fearful inferno; a gigantic
meat-mill that was grinding up the bodies of men and had never
ceased day or night for nearly four years. You could be a violent
pacifist in sound of those guns, or you could be a violent
militarist, but you could not be indifferent to the war, you could
not be of two minds about it.

And yet--Jimmie Higgins was of two minds! He wanted to beat back the
Huns, who had made all this fearful mess; but also he wanted to beat
the profiteers who were making messes at home. It happened that
Jimmie had reached the army at a trying moment, when there were no
American big guns, and when promises of machine-guns and aeroplanes
had failed. There was wild excitement in the home papers, and not a
little grumbling in the army. It was graft and politics, men said;
and Jimmie caught eagerly at this idea. He pointed out how the
profiteers at home were entrenching themselves, making ready to
exploit the soldiers returning without jobs. That was a line of talk
the men were ready for, and the little machinist rejoiced to see the
grim look that came upon their faces. They would attend to it, never
fear; and Jimmie would go on to tell them exactly how to attend to
it!




V



But that was only now and then, when the wind was the other way, and
you did not hear the guns. For the most part Jimmie's thoughts were
drawn irresistibly to the front; about him were thousands of other
men, all their thoughts at the front, their hands clenched, their
teeth set, their beings centred upon the job of holding the Beast at
bay. Jimmie saw the grey ambulances come in, and the wounded lifted
out on stretchers, their heads bandaged, their bodies covered with
sheets, their faces a ghastly waxen colour. He saw the poilus, fresh
from the trenches, after God alone knew what siege of terror. They
came staggering, bent double under a burden of equipment. The first
time Jimmie saw them was a day of ceaseless rain, when the dust
ground up by the big lorries was turned into ankle-deep mud; the
Frenchmen were plastered with it from head to foot; you saw under
their steel helmets only a mud-spattered beard, and the end of a
nose, and a pair of deep-sunken eyes. They stopped to rest not far
from the place where Jimmie worked; they sank down in the wet, they
fell asleep in pools of water, where not even beasts could have
slept. You did not have to know any French to understand what these
men had been through. Good God! Was that what was going on up there?

Jimmie thanked his stars he was no nearer. But that coward's comfort
did not last him long, for Jimmie was not a coward, he was not used
to letting other men struggle and suffer for him. His conscience
began to gnaw at him. If that was what it cost to beat down the
Beast, to make the world safe for democracy, why should he be
escaping? Why should he be warm and dry and well-fed, while
working-men of France lay out in the trenches in the rain?

Jimmie went back and worked overtime without extra pay--something
that old man Granitch had never got out of him, you bet, nor old man
Kumme either. For three whole days he stayed a militarist,
forgetting his life-long training in rebellion. But then he got into
an argument with a red-headed Orangeman in his unit, who expressed
the opinion that every Socialist was a traitor at heart, and that
after the war the army should be used to make an end of them all.
Jimmie in his rage went farther than he really meant, and again got
a "calling down" from his superior officer; so for several days his
proletarian feelings blazed, he wanted the revolution right away,
Huns or no Huns.




VI



But most of the time now the spirit of the herd mastered Jimmie; he
wanted what all the men about him wanted--to hold back the Beast
from these fair French fields and quaint old villages, and these
American hospitals and rest-camps and Y.M.C.A. huts--to say nothing
of motor-cycle repair-sheds with Jimmie Higgins in them! And the
trouble was that the Beast was not being held back; he was coming
nearer and nearer--one bull rush after another! Jimmie's village was
near the valley of the Marne, and that was the road to Paris; the
Beast wanted to get to Paris, he really expected to get to Paris!

The sound of guns grew louder and louder, and rumour flew wild-eyed
and wild-tongued about the country. The traffic in the roads grew
denser, but moving more slowly now, for the Germans were shelling
the road ahead, and blockades were frequent; one huge missile had
fallen into a French artillery-train only a couple of miles away.
"They'll be moving us back, if this keeps up," said Jimmie's
sergeant; and Jimmie wondered: suppose they didn't move them!
Suppose they forgot all about it? Was there any person whose
particular duty it was to remember to see that motor-cycle units got
moved in the precise nick of time? And what if the Germans were to
break through and sweep over all calculations? This was a little
more than Jimmie Higgins had bargained for when he entered the
recruiting-office in Leesville, U.S.A.!

They gave out gas-masks to everyone in Jimmie's unit, and put an
alarm bell in the shed, and made everybody practise putting on the
masks in a hurry. Jimmie was so scared that he thought seriously of
running away; but--such is the perversity of human nature--what he
did was to run in the opposite direction! His officer in command
came into the shed and demanded, "Can any of you men ride?" And
imagine any fellow who worked at repairing motor-cycles admitting
that he couldn't ride! "I can!" said Jimmie. "I can!" said every
other workman in the place.

"What is it!" asked Jimmie--always of the forward and pushing sort.

"The French ask for half a dozen men in a rush. They've had several
motor-cycle units wiped out or captured."

"Gee!" said Jimmie. "I'll go!"

"And me!" said another. "And me!" "And me!"

"All right," said the officer, and told them off: "You and you and
you. And you, Cullen, take command. Report to French headquarters at
Chatty Terry. You know where it is!"

"Sure, Mike!" said Cullen. "I been there." Jimmie hadn't been to
"Chatty Terry", but he knew it was somewhere across the Marne. The
officer gave him a map, showing the villages through which he would
go. Jimmie and his companions named these villages, using sensible
language, without concession to the fool notions of the natives.
Wipers, Reems, Verdoon, Devil Wood, Arm-in-tears, Saint Meal--all
these Jimmie had heard about; also a place where the Americans had
won their first glorious victory a week ago, and which they called,
sometimes Cantinny, sometimes Tincanny. And now Jimmie was going to
"Chatty Terry", in charge of a red-headed Orangeman who a few days
ago had expressed the opinion that all Socialists were traitors and
should be shot!

The officer gave them passes, one for each man, in case they got
separated, and they started towards the place where the new machines
were lined up. On the way Jimmie had a moment of utter panic. What
was this he was getting himself in for, idiot that he was? Going up
there where the shells were falling, wiping out motor-cycle units!
And shells that were full of poison gases, most of them! Of all the
fool things he had done in his life this was the crown and climax!
His knees began to shake, he turned sick inside. But then he glanced
about, and caught Pat Cullen's menacing blue eye; Jimmie returned
the glare, and the spirit of battle flamed up in him, he laid hold
of the handles of a motor-cycle and strode towards the door. Was any
Irish mick going to catch him in a funk, and "bawl him out" before
this crowd, and put the Socialist movement to shame? Not much!






CHAPTER XXIII

JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE HUN

I





The six motor-cyclists leaped on to their machines and went chugging
down the road. Of course they raced one another; all motor-cyclists
always race--and here was the best of all possible excuses, the
French army in dire need of them, several of its precious
cycle-units wiped out or captured! They tore along, dodging in and
out between trucks and automobiles, ambulances and artillery
caissons, horse-wagons and mule-wagons, achieving again and again
those hair's-breadth escapes which are the joy in life of every
normal motor-cyclist. Now and then, when things were too slow, they
would try a crawl in the ditches, or push their machines over the
ploughed fields. So it happened that Jimmie found himself competing
with his red-headed Irish enemy; there was a narrow opening between
two stalled vehicles, and Jimmie made it by the width of his hand,
and vaulted on to his machine and darted away, free and
exulting--his own boss! He shoved in the juice and made time, you
bet; no "mick" was going to catch up and shout orders at him!

There were long trains of refugees streaming back from the
battle-fields; pitiful peasant-people with horse-carts and dog-carts
and even wheelbarrows, toothless old men and women trudging
alongside, children and babies stuck in amidst bedding and furniture
and saucepans and bird-cages. This was war, as the common people saw
it; but Jimmie could not stop now to think about it--Jimmie was on
his way to the front! There were big observation balloons up over
his head, looking like huge grey elephants with broad ears; there
were aeroplanes whirring about, performing incredible acrobatic
feats, and spraying each other with showers of steel; but Jimmie had
no time for a single glance at these marvels--Jimmie was on his way
to the front!

He swept around a curve, and there directly in front of him was a
hole in the middle of the road, as big as if a steam-shovel had been
working for a week. Jimmie clapped on the brakes, and swerved
sideways, missing a tree and plunging into a cabbage patch. He got
off and said, "Gee!" once or twice; and suddenly it was as if he
were whacked on the side of the ear with a twelve-inch board--the
whole world about him turned into a vast roar of sound, and a
mountain of grey smoke leaped into being in front of him. Jimmie
stared, and saw out of a little clump of bushes a long black object
thrust itself out, like the snout of a gigantic tapir from some
prehistoric age. It was a ten-inch gun, coming back from its recoil;
and Jimmie, smelling its fumes, struggled back to the road with his
machine, before the monster should speak again and stifle him
entirely.

There was a frame-house in the distance, and in front of it a
barnyard, and sheds with thatched roofs. There came a scream,
exactly like the siren of Hook and Ladder Company Number One that
used to go tearing about the streets in Leesville, U.S.A; a light
flashed in one of the sheds, and everything disappeared in a burst
of smoke, which spread itself in the air like a huge duster made
from turkey feathers. There came another shriek, a little nearer,
and the ground rose in a huge black mushroom, which boiled and
writhed like the clouds of an advancing thunderstorm. Boom! Boom!
Two vast, all-pervading roars came to Jimmie's ears; and his knees
began to quake. By heck! He was under fire! He looked ahead; there
must be Germans just up there! Was a fellow supposed to ride on
without knowing?

There was a big battle on, that much was certain; but the uproar was
so distributed that one could hardly tell whether it was in front or
behind. However, the transport was steadily advancing--horse-wagons,
mule-wagons, motor-wagons, all plodding patiently, paying no heed to
the shell-bursts. And then Jimmie took a look behind, and saw that
infernal red-headed Orangeman! He imagined a raucous voice,
shouting: "C'mon here! Whatcher waitin' fer?" Jimmie bounced on to
his machine and turned her loose!

He came to a place where something had hit a load of ammunition, and
there were pieces of a wagon and a driver scattered about; it was a
horrible mess, but Jimmie passed it without much emotion--his whole
soul was centred on beating Pat Cullen into "Chatty Terry"! He came
to the outskirts of a village, and there was a peasant's cottage
with the roof blown off, and a smell fresh out of the infernal
regions, and a terrified old woman standing by the road side with
two terrified children clinging to her skirts. Jimmy stopped his
machine and shouted: "Chatty Terry?" When the old woman did not
answer quickly, he shouted again: "Chatty Terry? Chatty Terry? Don't
you understand French? Chatty Terry?" The old woman apparently did
not understand French.

He rode up the street of the village, and came to a military
policeman directing traffic at a crossing. This fellow understood
English, and said: "Chatty Terry? Eet ees taken!" And when Jimmie
stood dismayed, wondering what he was to do now, the policeman told
him that headquarters had been shifted to this village--it was in
the chateau; he did not say "chatty", so Jimmie did not understand
his kind of English. But Jimmie rode as directed, and came to a
place with iron gates in front, and a big garden, and a sentry in
front, and a bustle of coming and going, so he knew that he had
reached his destination, and had beaten his Irish enemy!




II



Jimmie's pass was in duplicate French and English, so the sentry
could read it, and signed him to pass in. At the door of the chateau
he showed the paper again, and a French officer in the hall-way
espied him, and exclaimed, "A cyclist? Mon Dieu!" He half-ran Jimmie
into another room, where another officer sat at a big table with a
chart spread out on it, and innumerable filing cabinets on the
walls. "Un courier Americain!" he exclaimed.

"Only one?" asked the officer, in English.

"Five more's comin'," said Jimmie quickly. He hated Pat Cullen like
the devil, but he wouldn't have any French officer think that Pat
would lie down on his job. "The road's cut up, an' there's lots o'
traffic. I come as fast--"

"See!" interrupted the officer--not quite as polite as Frenchmen are
supposed to be. "This packet contains maps, which we make from
aeroplane-photographs--you comprehend? It is for the artillerist--"

The officer paused for a moment; there came a deafening crash
outside, and the window of the room collapsed and something grazed
Jimmie's face.

"Voila!" remarked the officer. "The enemy draws nearer. Our wires
are cut; we send couriers, but they perhaps do not arrive; it needs
that we send many--what you say?--duplicates. You comprehend?"

"Sure!" said Jimmie.

"It is most urgent; the battle depends upon it--the war, it may be.
You comprehend?"

"Sure!" said Jimmie again.

"You are brave, mon garcon?"

Jimmie did not reply so promptly to that; but the officer was too
tactful to wait. Instead, he asked, "You know French?" And when
Jimmie shook his head: "It needs that you learn. Say this: Botteree
Normb Cott. Try it, if it pleases you: Botteree Normb Cott."

Jimmie, stammering like a schoolboy, tried; the officer made him
repeat the sounds, assuring him gravely that he need have no doubts
whatever; if he would make those precise sounds, any Frenchman would
know what he was looking for. He was to take the main road east from
the village and ride till he came to a fork; then he was to bear to
the right, and when he came to the edge of a dense wood, he was to
take the path to the left, and then say to everybody he met:
"Botteree Normb Cott!"

"Is it that you have a weapon?" inquired the officer; and when
Jimmie answered no, he pressed a button, and spoke quick words to an
orderly, who came running with an automatic revolver and a belt,
which Jimmie proceeded to strap upon him with thrills, half of
delighted pride and half of anguished terror. "You will say to the
men of the botteree that the Americans come soon to the rescue. You
will find them, my brave American?" The officer spoke as if to a son
whom he dearly loved; and Jimmie, who had never received an order in
that tone of voice, reciprocated the affection, and clenched his
hands suddenly and answered, "I'll do my best, sir." He turned to
leave the room, when whom should he see coming in--Mike Cullen!
Jimmie gave him a wink and a grin, and hustled outside and leaped
upon his machine.




III



And now here was the little machinist from Leesville, U.S.A., flying
down the battered street of this French village with something like
a mid-western cyclone going on in his head. They say that a drowning
man remembers everything that ever happened in his life; perhaps
that was not true of Jimmie, but certainly he remembered every
pacifist argument he had ever heard in his life. For the love of
Mike, what was this he had let himself in for? Bound for the spot
where the whole German army was trying to break through--upon an
errand the most dangerous of any in the war! How in the name of Karl
Marx and the whole revolutionary hierarchy had he managed to get
himself into such a pickle? He, Jimmie Higgins, Bolshevik and
wobbly!

And he was going through with it! He was going to throw his life
away--just because he had started--because he had pledged
himself--because he was carrying maps which might enable a
"botteree" to win the war! Did he really care that much about this
infernal capitalist war? So cried out the proletarian demons in the
soul of Jimmie Higgins; and meantime the engine hammered and
chugged, and a miraculous power in the depths of his
subconsciousness moved the handle-bars so that he dodged shell-holes
and grazed automobiles.

The air was full of the scream of shells and the clatter of their
bursting, an infernal din out of which he could hardly pick
individual sounds. The road ahead was less crowded; the vehicles had
left it, spreading out to one side or the other. How much farther
ahead was that fork? And suppose the Germans had got there, and had
captured "Botteree Normb Cott"--was he going to present them with a
brand new motor-cycle in addition? There were other "botterees"
which he passed; why couldn't he give them the maps? Jimmie rode on,
raging inwardly. If he had been a dispatch rider he would have known
all about this, but he was only a repair man, and they had had no
business to put such a job off on him!

There were woods about him now, the trees smashed up by shells, and
Jimmie considered it the part of prudence to get off his machine and
steal forward and peer out to see if there were Germans in the
opening beyond. And suddenly his knees gave way, because of the
fright he was in, with all this deadly racket. He became violently
sick at his stomach, and began to act as he had acted on the first
three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all
the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of
Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was
ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it--he
wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they
had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of
shell-holes were opening in the ground, and whole trees were being
lifted out of the earth, and the air was full of a stink which might
require a gas-mask or might not--how was poor Jimmie to tell?




IV



He mastered the awful trembling of his knees and the grotesque
efforts of his body to get rid of everything inside him, and got on
his machine again and stole ahead. He could only go a few rods at a
time, because the road was so cut up. Should he leave the machine
and run for it? Or should he go back and tell them their infernal
maps were all wrong, there was no fork in the road? No--for there at
last was the fork, and after Jimmie had ridden and run a hundred
yards farther, there was a wheat-field, and a line of woods, and at
the edge of it four guns belching flame and smoke and racket. Jimmie
stood his machine in a ditch and went tearing across the fields,
wild with relief, because he had found his "Botteree Normb Cott",
and could hand over his precious packet and get out of this mess as
fast as two wheels would take him.

But to his dismay he found that it wasn't the French battery, it was
an American battery; the French battery was farther ahead, and a
little to the right; the officer gave directions, taking it entirely
for granted that Jimmie would go on to his goal.

But then came another officer. "What have you got there?" And when
Jimmie answered maps, he demanded them; he seemed as greedy for maps
as a child for his gifts on Christmas morning. He ripped open the
packet--what is called "cutting red tape" in the army--and spread
out the papers and began to call out figures to another officer who
sat on a camp stool at a little folding table, with many sheets of
figures in front of him. This officer went on noting down the
information--and the men at the guns went on shoving in shells and
stepping back while the screaming messengers were hurled upon their
way. In the rear were other men, wheeling up ammunition, unloading
one of the big camions which Jimmie had been dodging on the roads.
It was a regular factory, set up there in the middle of the fields,
dispatching destruction to the unseen foe.

"We're having the hell of a time," remarked the officer, as he
folded up the maps again and handed them to Jimmie. "Our wires have
been cut three times in the last half-hour, and we have to shoot
blind."

"Where are the Germans?" asked Jimmie.

"Somewhere up ahead there."

"Have you seen them?"

"Good Lord, no! We hope to move before they're that near!"

Jimmie felt a bit reassured by the quiet, business-like demeanour of
all the men in this death-factory. If they could stand the racket,
no doubt he could; only, they were all together, while he had to go
off by himself. Jimmie wished he had enlisted in the artillery!

He shoved the maps into the inside pocket of his jacket, and chased
back to his machine and set out. He took a side-path as directed,
and then a wood-road--and then he got lost. That was all there was
to it--he was hopelessly lost! The path didn't behave at all as the
one he was looking for. It went through a long stretch of woods with
shattered trees lying this way and that; then it crossed a field of
grain, and then it plunged down into a ravine, and climbed to the
other side, and up a ridge and down again. "Hell!" said Jimmie to
himself. And if you could imagine all the noises in all the
boiler-factories in America, you would have something less than the
racket in that wood through which Jimmie was wandering, saying
"Hell!" to himself.




V



He got to the top of the ridge, puffing and panting and dripping
perspiration; and there suddenly he jumped from his machine and ran
with it behind a tree-trunk and stood anxiously peering out. There
were men ahead; and what sort of men? Jimmie tried to remember the
pictures of Germans he had seen, and did they look like this? The
air was full of smoke, which made it hard to decide; but gradually
Jimmie made out one group, dragging a machine-gun on wheels; they
placed it behind a ridge of ground, and began to shoot in the
direction of Germany. So Jimmie advanced, but with hesitation, not
wanting to interfere with the aiming of the gun, which was making a
noise like a riveting machine, only faster and louder. It had a big
round cylinder for a barrel, and the men were feeding it with long
strips of cartridges out of a box, and were so intent on the process
that they paid no attention whatever to Jimmie. He stood and stared,
spellbound. For these creatures seemed not men, but hairy monsters
out of caves-ragged, plastered with mud, grimed and smoke-blackened,
with their faces drawn, their teeth shining like the teeth of angry
dogs. Jimmie forgot all about the enemy, he saw only this roaring,
flame-vomiting machine and the men who were a part of it.

Suddenly one of the men leaped up, a little hairier and a little
blacker than the rest, and shouted, "Ah derry-air! Ah derry-air!"
And the gun stopped roaring and vomiting flame, and the men laid
hold and began to tug and strain to draw it back. The leader
continued exhorting them; until suddenly an amazing thing
happened--right in the midst of his shouting, the whole of his mouth
and lower jaw disappeared. You did not see what became of it--it
just vanished into nothingness, and there in the place of it was a
red cavern, running blood. The man stood with his startled eyes
shining white in his black and hairy face, and gurgling noises
coming out--as if he thought he was still shouting, or could if he
tried harder.

The others paid not the least attention to this episode; they
continued tugging at the gun. And would you believe it, the man with
no mouth and jaw fell to helping again! The wheels struck a rise in
the ground, and he waved his hands in impotent excitement, and then
rushed at Jimmie, exposing to the horrified little machinist the
full ghastliness of that red cavern running blood.

Jimmie tried his magic formula: "Botteree Normb Cott." But the man
waved his hands frantically and grabbed Jimmie by the arm--the very
incarnation of that Monster of Militarism which the little machinist
had been dodging for four years! He pushed Jimmie towards the gun,
and the other men shouted: "Asseestay!" So of course there was
nothing for Jimmie to do but lay hold and tug with the rest.

Presently they got the wheels to moving, and rolled the thing up the
ridge. A wagon came bumping through the woods, and the men at the
gun gave a gasp which was meant to be a cheer, and one of them laid
hold of Jimmie again, crying: "Portay! Portay!" He dragged out a
heavy box and loaded it into Jimmie's arms and carried another
himself, and so in a few moments the machine-gun was drumming, and
Jimmie went on carrying boxes. The men who were driving the wagon
leaped upon the horses and drove away; and still Jimmie carried
boxes, blindly, desperately. Was it because he was afraid of the
little French demon who was shouting at him? No, not exactly,
because when he went back with a box he saw the little demon
suddenly double up like a jack-knife and fall forward. He did not
make a sound, he did not even kick; he lay with his face in the dirt
and leaves--and Jimmie ran back for another box.




VI



He did it because he understood that the Germans were coming. He had
not seen them; but when the gun fell silent he heard whining sounds
in the air, as if from a litter of elephantine puppies. Sometimes
the twigs of trees fell on him, the dirt in front of him flew up
into his face; and always, of course, everywhere about him was that
roar of bursting shells which he had come to accept as a natural
part of life. And suddenly another man went down, and another--there
were only two left, and one of them signalled to Jimmie what to do,
and Jimmie did not say a word, he just went to work and learned to
run a machine-gun by the method favoured by modern educators--by
doing.

Presently the man who was aiming the gun clapped his hand to his
forehead and fell backwards. Jimmie was at his side, and the gun was
shooting--so what more natural than for Jimmie to move into position
and look along the sights? It was a fact that he had never aimed any
sort of gun in his life before; but he was apt with machinery--and
disposed to meddle into things, as we know.

Jimmie looked along the sights; and suddenly it seemed as if the
line of distant woods leaped into life, the bushes vomiting grey
figures which ran forward, and fell down, and then leaped up and ran
and fell down again. "Eel vienn!" hissed the man at Jimmie's side.
So Jimmie moved the gun here and there, pointing it wherever he saw
the grey figures.

Did he kill any Germans? He was never entirely sure in his own mind;
always the idea pursued him that may be he had been making a fool of
himself, shooting bullets into the ground or up into the air--and
the poilus at his side thinking he must know all about it, because
he was one of those wonderful Americans who had come across the seas
to save la belle France! The Germans kept falling, but that proved
nothing, for that was the method of their advance, anyway, and
Jimmie had no time to count and see how many fell and how many got
up again. All he knew was that they kept coming--more and more of
them, and nearer and nearer, and the Frenchmen muttered curses, and
the gun hammered and roared, until the barrel grew so hot that it
burned. And then suddenly it stopped dead!

"Sockray!" cried the two Frenchmen, and began frantically working to
take the gun to pieces; but before they had worked a minute one of
them clapped his hand to his side and fell back with a cry, and a
second later Jimmie felt a frightful blow on his left arm, and when
he tried to lift it and see what was wrong, half of it hung loose,
and blood ran out of his sleeve!




VII



That was too much for the remaining Frenchman. He caught Jimmie by
the other arm, exclaiming "Vennay! Vennay!" Apparently that meant to
run away; Jimmie didn't want to run away, but the Frenchman
chattered so fast, and tugged so hard, and Jimmie was half-dazed
anyhow with pain, so he let himself be dragged back. And presently
they came to a dead soldier lying with a gun by his side, and the
Frenchman grabbed the gun and unstrapped the cartridge belt, and
then threw himself down behind a big rock. Jimmie remembered the
automatic which he had strapped at his waist; he held it out to the
Frenchman, shaking his head and saying, "No savvy! No work!"--as if
he thought the Frenchman would understand bad English better than
good English! But the Frenchman understood the head-shaking, and
showed Jimmie how to move the little catch which released the
trigger for firing. With hasty fingers he tore off the sleeve of
Jimmie's shirt, and bound up his arm tightly with a bandage from his
kit; then he raised up over the rock and cursed the sockray Bosh and
began to fire. Jimmie got up the nerve to peer out, and there were
the grey figures, much nearer now, and he knew they were Germans
because they were like the pictures he had seen. They were running
at him, firing as they came, and Jimmie fired his revolver, shutting
his eyes because he was scared of it. But then, finding that it
behaved all right, he fired again, and this time he did not close
his eyes, because he saw a big German running straight towards him,
the fury of battle in his face. It was plain what this German meant
to do--to leap on Jimmie with his sharp bayonet; and somehow Jimmie
never once thought of his pacifist arguments--he fired, and saw the
German fall, and was murderously glad at the sight.

There were shots from behind him; apparently there had been a lot of
Frenchmen hidden in these woods, and the enemy was not finding it
easy to advance. Jimmie's companion jumped up and ran again, and
Jimmie followed, and a hundred yards or so back they came to a
shell-hole with half a dozen poilus in it. Jimmy tumbled in, and the
men chattered at him, and gave him more cartridges, so that when the
Germans appeared again he did his part. A bullet took a lump of hair
off his temple, and shrapnel exploding near by almost split his
ear-drums; but still he went on shooting. His heart was really in
the job now, he was going to stop these Bosh or bust. With five
Frenchmen, two of them wounded, he held the shell-hole for an hour;
one of them ran back and staggered up with a supply of ammunition,
and loaded up a rifle for Jimmie, and laid it so that he could
manage it with one hand. So Jimmie went on shooting, half-dead,
half-blind, half-choked with powder smoke.

The sockray Bosh made another charge, and this was the end, every
man in the shell-hole knew. There were literally swarms of the grey
figures, their bullets came like a shower of hail. Jimmie decided to
wait till the enemy was near enough for him to aim the revolver with
effect. He crouched, watching a Frenchman with the life-blood oozing
out of a hole in his chest; then he raised up and emptied his
automatic, and still there were Germans rushing on.

Jimmie was so very tired now, he really did not care very much what
happened; he knelt in the hole, looking up, and suddenly he saw the
huge figure of a German looming above him, his rifle poised. Jimmie
closed his eyes and waited for the blow, and suddenly the German
came down with a crash on top of him.

Jimmie thought for sure he must be dead; he lay wondering, was this
immortality? But it did not seem like either heaven or hell as he
had imagined them, and gradually he realized that the German was
writhing and moaning. Jimmie wriggled from under, and looked up,
just in time to see another German loom over the shell-hole and
pitch forward and hit on his face.

It was evident that somebody farther back was attending to these
Germans; so Jimmie lay still, with a feeble flicker of hope in his
heart. The rattle of shots went on, a battle that lasted ten or
fifteen minutes, but Jimmie was too tired to peer out and see how
matters were going. Presently he heard someone running up behind
him, and he looked around and up, and saw two men jump into the
shell-hole. He took one glance, and his heart leaped. The doughboys!




VIII



Yes, sir, there were two doughboys in the shell-hole! Jimmie had
seen so many tens of thousands of them that he had no doubt.
Compared with the war-battered poilus, they were like soldiers out
of a fashion-plate: smooth-shaven, with long chins and thin lips,
and a thousand other details which made you realize that home was
home, and better than any other place in the world. And oh, the
beautiful business-like precision of these fashion-plate soldiers!
They never said a word, they never even glanced about; they just
threw themselves down at the edge of the shell-hole, and leaned
their rifles over and set to work. You didn't need to see--you could
tell from the look on these men's faces that they were hitting
something!

Presently came two more, leaping in. Without so much as as a nod of
greeting, they settled down and went to shooting; and when they had
used up most of their cartridges, one of them got up and shouted to
the rear, and there came a man running with a fresh supply in a big
pouch.

Later on came three more with rifles. Apparently there were not so
many Germans now, for these new-comers found time for words. "They
told us to hold a line back there," said one. "But hell!"

"There's more Huns up ahead," said another. "Let's get 'em."

"Just as well now as later," said a third.

"You stay behind and get that finger tied up," said the first
speaker; but the other told him to go and get his own fingers tied
up.

Then one of them looked about and spied Jimmie. "Why, here's a
Yank!" he cried. "What you doin' here?"

Jimmie answered: "I'm a motor-cycle man, and they sent me with maps
for a battery, but I think it's been captured long ago."

"You're wounded," said the other.

"It ain't much," said Jimmie, apologetically. "It was a long time
ago, anyhow."

"Well, you go back," said the doughboy. "We're here now--it'll be
all right." He said it, not boastingly, but as a simple matter of
fact. He was a mere boy, a rosy-cheeked kid with a little ugly
pug-nose covered with freckles, and a wide, grinning mouth. But to
Jimmie he seemed just the loveliest boy that had ever come out of
the U.S.A. "Can you walk?" he asked.

"Sure!" said Jimmie.

"And these Frenchies?" The doughboy looked at the others. "You savvy
their lingo?" When Jimmie shook his head, he turned to the
battle-worn hairy ones. "You fellows go back," he said. "We don't
need you now." When they stared uncomprehending, he asked: "Polly
voo Francy?"

"We, we!" cried they in one voice.

"Well, then," said the doughboy, "go back! Go home! Toot sweet! Have
sleep! Rest! We lick 'em Heinies!" As the poilus did not show much
grasp of this kind of "Francy", the doughboy boosted them to their
feet, pointed to the rear, patted them on the back, and grinned with
his wide mouth. "Good boy! Go home! American! American!"--as if that
was enough to make clear that the work of France in this war was
done! The poilus looked over the top of the shell-hole, and saw a
swarm of those new fashion-plate soldiers, darting forward through
the woods, throwing themselves down and shooting at the sockray
Bosh. They looked at the rosy-cheeked boy with the grateful faces of
dogs, and shouldered their packs and rifles and set out for the
rear, helping Jimmie, who suddenly found himself very weak, and with
a splitting headache.




IX



These doughboys had a song that Jimmie had heard all the time: "The
Yanks are coming!" And now the song needed to be rewritten: "The
Yanks are here!" All these woods through which Jimmie had blundered
with his motor-cycle were now swarming with nice, new, clean-shaven,
freshly-tailored soldier-boys, turned loose to get their first
chance at the Hun. Four years they had been reading about him and
hating him, a year and a half they had been getting ready to hit
him--and now at last they were turned loose and told to go to it!
Back on the roads was an endless procession of motor-trucks, with
doughboys, and also marines, or "leather-necks", as they were
called. They had started at four o'clock that morning, and ridden
all day packed in like sardines; and here, a mile or two back in the
woods, the trucks had come to a halt, and the sardines had jumped
out and gone into this war!

Jimmie did not realize till long afterwards what a world-drama he
had been witnessing. For four months the Beast had been driving at
Paris; irresistibly, incessantly, eating his way like a forest fire,
spreading ever wider and more fearful desolation--this Beast with
the Brains of an Engineer! The world had shuddered and held its
breath, knowing that if he got to Paris it would mean the end of the
war, and of all things that free men value. And now here he made his
last supreme rush, and the French lines wavered and cracked and gave
way; and so in this desperate crisis they had brought up the
truck-loads of doughboys for their first real test against the
Beast.

The orders had been to hold at all hazards; but that had not been
enough for the doughboys, they and the leather-necks had seized the
offensive and sent the Germans reeling back. The very pride of the
Prussian army had been worsted by these new troops from overseas, at
whom they had mocked, whose very existence they had scouted.

It was a blow from which "Fritz" never recovered; he never gained
another foot, and it was the beginning of a retreat that did not
stop until it reached the Rhine. And the Yanks had done it--the
Yanks, with the help of Jimmie Higgins! For Jimmie had got there
first; Jimmie had held the fort while the Yanks were coming! Yes,
truly; if he hadn't stuck by that machine-gun and helped to work it,
if he hadn't hid in that shell-hole, emptying the contents of a
rifle and an automatic pistol into the charging Huns, if he hadn't
held them up that precious hour--why, they might have swept over
this position, and the Yanks might not have had a chance to deploy,
and the victory of "Chatty Terry" might not have gone resounding
down the ages! The whole course of the world's history might have
been different, if one little Socialist machinist from Leesville,
U.S.A., had not chanced to be wandering through "Bellow Wood" in
search of a fabulous and never-discovered "Botteree Normb Cott!"






CHAPTER XXIV

JIMMIE HIGGINS SEES THE OTHER SIDE

I





But these exultations and glory-thoughts were reserved for a later
stage of Jimmie Higgins's life. At present he was weak, and his head
was splitting, and his left arm burning like fire. And on top of
this came a happening so strange that it drove the whole battle from
his thoughts. He was walking on a path with his French companions,
when one of them noticed a man in a French uniform lying on the
ground a little way to one side. He was not a soldier, but a
hospital-orderly or stretcher-bearer, as you could tell by the white
bandage with a red cross on his arm. He had been shot through the
shoulder, and someone had plugged up the wound and left him; so now
the French soldiers helped him to his feet and started to lead him
back. Jimmie watched them, and when he saw the man's face, the
conviction stole over him that he had seen that face before. He had
seen it, or one incredibly like it--and under circumstances of
intense emotion. The old emotion stirred in the depths of his
subconsciousness, and suddenly it burst to the surface, an explosion
of excitement. It could not be! The idea was absurd! But--it must
be! It was! The wounded French stretcher-bearer was Lacey Granitch!

The young heir of the Empire Machine Shops might never have known
the little Socialist machinist; but recognition was so evident on
Jimmie's face, that Lacey was set groping in his own mind. Now and
then as the party walked along he stole an uneasy glance at his
fellow-countryman; and presently when they struck a road, and sat
down to rest and wait for a vehicle of some sort, Lacey put himself
beside Jimmie and began: "You're the fellow that was in the house
that night, aren't you?"

Jimmie nodded; and the young lord of Leesville looked at him
uneasily, looked away, and then looked back. "I've got something I
want to ask you," he said.

"What's that?"

"Don't give me away."

"How do you mean?"

"Don't tell who I am: There's no reason why anybody should know. I'm
trying to get away from it."

"I see," said Jimmie. "I won't tell."

"You promise?"

"Sure."

Then was a silence. Then suddenly, with no reason that Jimmie could
see, the other exclaimed: "You'll tell!"

"But I won't!" protested Jimmie. "What makes you say so?"

"You hate me!"

Jimmie hesitated, as if investigating his own mind. "No," he said,
"I don't hate you--not any more."

"God!" exclaimed the other. "You don't need to--I've paid all I
owe!"

Jimmie studied his face. Yes, you could see that was true. Not
merely was Lacey haggard, his features drawn with the pain he was
enduring; there were lines in his face that had not been put there
by a few days of battle, nor even by a couple of years of war. He
looked twenty years older than the insolent young aristocrat whom
Jimmie had seen hurling defiance at the Empire strikers.

His eyes were searching Jimmie's anxiously, pleadingly. "I had to
get away," he said. "I couldn't face it--everybody staring at me,
grinning at me behind my back! I tried to enlist in the American
army, but they wouldn't have me--not to do any sort of work. So I
came to France, where they need men badly--they let me carry a
stretcher. I've been through it all now--more than a year. I've been
wounded twice before, but I can't seem to get killed, no matter
where I go. It's the fellows that want to live that get killed--damn
it!"

The speaker paused, as if seeing visions of the men whom he had seen
die when they wanted to live. When he went on, it was in a voice of
humble entreaty. "I've tried to pay for my blunders. All I ask now
is to be let alone, and not have everybody gossiping about me.
That's fair, isn't it!"

Jimmie answered: "I give you my word--I won't tell a soul about it."

"Thank you," said Lacey; and then, after a moment's pause, "My name
is Peterson. Herbert Peterson."




II



A truck came along and gave them a lift to the nearest
dressing-station: a couple of tents with big red crosses on them,
and a couple more being put up, and motor-cars bringing nurses and
supplies, and others with loads of wounded, French and American.
Jimmie was so weak now that he hardly cared about anything; he took
his place in a row of wounded men, waiting patiently, trying not to
make a fuss, because this was war, and the Hun had to be licked, and
everybody was doing his best. He lay down on the ground, and shut
his eyes; and gradually there came to him a familiar odour. At first
he thought it was the product of his imagination--because he had
just met Lacey Granitch, and had been reminded of the night when he
and Lizzie had crouched in the room of the lonely farm-house and
listened to the sounds and smelled the odour through the door. And
presently Jimmie heard the very same sounds from the tent--moans and
shrieks, babbling as of insane men. How strange that both times when
he smelt this odour and heard these cries he should be with the
young master of the Empire Shops!

Jimmie's turn came, and they led him into the tent, making short
work of him--merely ascertaining that no artery was cut and that he
would not bleed to death, and then tagging him for the brigade
hospital. They loaded him into a truck with a score of other
"sitting cases", including Lacey Granitch, and treated him to a long
ride which he did not at all enjoy. At the hospital, which was a big
group of tents, now swarming with activity, Jimmie waited his turn
again--so many wounds all at once, and so few to tend them!

At last he was led into the operating-place; the first sight that
greeted his eyes being a couple of orderlies carrying out a tub
filled with sawed-off arms and legs and miscellaneous fragments of
men. There was a surgeon with a white costume smeared with blood,
and a white mask over his face, and several nurses with white masks
also. Nobody greeted him, or stopped for preliminaries--they laid
him on the operating-table, and covered all but his shattered arm
with a rubber sheet, and slit off his bandages, and then a nurse put
someting over his face and said, "Breathe deeply, please."

It was that ghastly odour again, but overpowering now. Jimmie
breathed, and everything began to rock and swim, his head began to
roar, worse than when he had fought the machine-gun. He could not
stand any more of it; he cried and struggled to get loose, but they
had strapped his feet, and someone held his other arm, so his
frantic efforts were of no avail.

He began to fall; head over heels he went tumbling, into vast
bottomless abysses-down, down, down. He heard a strange voice
saying: "Their collars are too tight." The words rang in his ears,
they assumed monstrous and overwhelming significance, they became a
whole universe by themselves--"Their collars are too tight!" All the
rest of creation ceased, the lamp of being went out; there remained
only a voice, pronouncing amid whirling infinities: "Their collars
are too tight!"