Part 3

The voice became rapid in nervous explanation.

"I'm lame--got lamed miles back there--I was 'urryin' to rejoin my regiment----"

"I _don't_ think," said Sam sternly. "You're a bloomin' deserter, that's wot you are."

"Oh, chuck it, Sam!" said Bill suddenly. "More the merrier! Let's get into this bloomin' public--I'm fair parched for a drink. Come along, matey--don't take no notice of 'im. You didn't 'arf give us a scare, though, my word!" he added, as he moved towards the door of the inn.

The third man, however, persisted in justifying himself in a querulous, tearful voice.

"I tell yer I got lamed--I ain't no deserter--I just couldn't keep up--there's a piece of skin off my foot as big as yer 'and--I'll show it yer if yer don't believe me----"

"Oh, chuck it," said Sam irritably, giving him an uninviting march-route for his foot. "'Elp us to knock this blighted door in!"

The three of them kicked and shouldered against the inn door without result. The locks held firm.

"'Ere, stand clear," said Sam, grasping his rifle by the muzzle. He swung it about his head and brought it down against the door with a heavy crash. Bill imitated him, swinging his reversed rifle like a sledgehammer in a manner that bespoke the ex-navvy. The third man's efforts were swifter if less effective. The noise of their blows sounded terribly loud in the hush of that dead village, so loud that once or twice they paused, frightened, their ears alert for answering sound. None came and they resumed their attack. The door commenced to splinter and to crack upon its hinges. Collectively they threw their whole weight against it in sudden impact. It gave way and the three of them followed it in a heap.

They struggled to their feet, cursing, and someone struck a match. It was Sam. The others followed the dim illumination into the interior. There was an exclamation of joyful surprise and then the match went out. The exclamation was renewed as Sam struck another and lit a hanging oil-lamp.

"Gawd blimy if they ain't left it for us!"

They were in a small room at the back of the bar. A long table filled most of the space, and on that table stood a large joint of beef, several loaves of bread, and one or two pewter tankards. A number of plates each containing food and crossed at odd angles by knife and fork told a story that the overturned chairs about the room corroborated.

"Left in a blamed 'urry," said Bill, picking up one of the tankards. "Fancy leavin' the beer!"

The third man pushed past him eagerly and sprang at the table, clawing at the food. He almost wept. "Two days--I ain't 'ad nuffink fer two days, mates," he whimpered between huge mouthfuls. He went on cramming himself with everything he could reach, uttering the while inarticulate cries of satisfaction that sounded like sobs.

The others were rivalled but not surpassed in this gastronomical performance. Less excitedly, they also were eating enormously. For long minutes the three men sat at the table under the hanging lamp without uttering a word. They fed like famished animals at a trough. As their hunger grew less fierce, however, the two comrades looked up and exchanged appraising glances with their new companion. He was a little fellow, with a cunning face and an ill-shaped head that needed no criminologist to class it. Petty rogue was stamped on him. The metal letters and number on the shoulder-strap of his dirty and ragged uniform showed that he, like themselves, belonged to a Cockney battalion. The two comrades were burly fellows of the navvy type, full-bodied, full-faced, narrow in the brows, powerful in the arms. Distress, the utter lack of work, had probably forced them into one of the new regiments. The little man, with equal probability, had enlisted for similar reasons and had found escape not so easy as he expected.

At last, replete, they desisted from their orgy of victuals. Bill stretched his legs and looked good-humouredly at his comrade.

"This ain't better than the army, I don't think!" he opined, qualifying the army by an epithet which in its circumstances was not inappropriate.

"Curse the army!" replied Sam, frowning from under his heavy sandy brows. He shivered with the commencement of digestion. "Light the fire, Bill," he commanded brutally. "And you," he added, turning to the little man, "go an' get some more beer--an' don't drink any or I'll smash your bloomin' 'ead in!"

Bill, always in awe of his friend, had already commenced to obey, but the little man was not yet broken to Sam's discipline.

"'Ere!--'Oo are you orderin' about?" he expostulated in his thin, aggrieved voice. Then he dodged quickly to escape a flying tankard. With a frightened glance at the burly tyrant, he hastened out, jug in hand.

When he returned, he deposited several packets of tobacco on the table and pushed them towards Sam. "Thought per'aps you'd be wantin' some, mate," he said humbly. "There's a 'ole barrel o' beer in the bar. If 'e'd 'elp me, I could get it in 'ere."

"Go and 'elp 'im, Bill," ordered Sam, pocketing the tobacco.

The two men rolled in the barrel of beer and hoisted it onto the table. Then, with full tankards handy and their pipes smoking like factory chimneys, the trio pulled their chairs up to the fire.

"Curse the army, I say!" said Sam in a challenging voice, apropos of nothing. He had been staring moodily at the crackling logs. "I want to get back to my wife an' kids."

"'Ear,'ear!" said Bill, raising his tankard before he drained it. "Curse the----army!"

"Chins!" said the little man. The proposal was drunk unanimously.

"I'm fed up with it," continued Sam, still in his mood of heavy reflection, "abso-bloomin'-lutely fed up! Marchin' 'ere, marchin' there, march all day, march all night; w'en you do stop, nothin' to eat; march back w'ere you come from, then right about face and march ag'in till you don't know w'ere you are. I joined the bloomin' army to fight, not to go on a blighted walkin'-tour!"

"Fight!" chimed in the little man. "You ought to 'a' been wiv us the other day! Talk about fightin'! Our company fought three thousand on 'em for hours an' hours--all alone. We killed 'undreds of 'em, me an' about a dozen others, till we 'ad to retreat. That's wot I calls fightin'!"

"Is it?" sneered Sam. "You wos one o' that picket guard wot run away from a cow, you mean. Fightin'! That ain't fightin'--bein' shot at by swine you can't see. I ain't 'ad a sight o' one on 'em yet, not one--an' yesterday forty men of our company was killed w'ere we laid in a 'tater-field. Ain't that so, Bill?"

"Forty-two," corrected Bill, "an' you couldn't find some of 'em after the shell 'ad 'it 'em."

"That's it," continued Sam, "shells! Shells plumpin' down and chokin' yer, shells over'ead as if the sky was breakin' in and droppin' down in bullets. Shells! That's wot I can't stand--bein' 'it on the back of the 'ead w'en you're lyin' down an' takin' cover accordin' to orders. It fair got on my nerves--all day, shells, shells, shells, an' not a mouthful to eat, an' then, at the end, right about face, quick march, we're beat. Beat! We'll see if we get beat! No,--it's just bloomin' silly--they march us orf our feet for a week just to make us a target for their damn artillery and then tell us we're licked and 'ave got to march back double-quick. I'm fed up wiv it. I've chucked the blank army. Chucked it, d'yer 'ear?" he turned savagely on the little man.

"You're right, mate," said the little man, standing up to refill his tankard at the barrel. "So 've I. W'y should we fight? That's wot I arsks yer. We're the pore workin'-man--we ain't got no property," he developed the manner of a street-corner orator, and thumped his tankard on the table. "We ain't got no stake in the country. Let them as 'as got a stake in the country fight for it, says I. Not get a pore _h_onest workin'-man to go an' do it for 'em. 'Tain't right, mates. That's w'y I chucked the bloomin' army, I don't mind tellin' yer--because I felt it wasn't right! I'm a _h_onest workin'-man an' I don't believe in war."

"'Ear, 'ear," said Bill sleepily.

"Chuck it!" commented Sam unsympathetically, regarding the hands of the orator. "You a workin'-man! You ain't never done a day's work in yer life, unless you calls work pickin' pockets at the races. I don't want no Socialism--an' I don't want no war, neither. I wants to get back to my missus an' the kids an' a regular job."

"'Ear, 'ear," said Bill. "Wot price the Ole Kent Road on a Saturday night, Sam?"

"That's wot I was thinkin'. Is to-night Saturday, Bill?"

"Cursed if I know," was the reply. "I've lost count."

Sam sat gloomily looking into the fire. In his brain was a vision of the great thoroughfare, lined with naphtha flares, thronged with people who clustered about the stalls, here and there the blaze of lights upon the white-and-gold façade of a picture-palace, the yellowish radiance of a public-house. He visualised it now, distant from it, as the rustic looks back to his village, sentimentally. There the incidents, commonplace enough, sordid even, which had made his life something individual to himself, had linked themselves one by one.

"Bill," he said huskily, "if I saw those blank foreigners marchin' up the Ole Kent Road, I'd go for 'em--if there wasn't a man to 'elp me."

"'Ear, 'ear!" said Bill. "So would I."

"I've got a bit o' skirt meself wot lives just off the Ole Kent Road," said the third man in a tone of reminiscence. "Let's 'ave some more beer. I say," he remarked suddenly, having refilled his mug, "if the army comes back it'll be a fair cop for us, won't it?"

"I ain't goin' back," said Sam sturdily, still gazing into the fire. "I'm fed up--and w'en I'm fed up I'm fed up."

Bill had wakened at the suggestion.

"But s'pose they come back, Sam? Wot'll we do?"

The third man interposed.

"'Tain't wot we'll do. It's wot they'll do. They'll shoot us, by Gawd they will!" Panic came into his sharp little white face. He was desperately in earnest. "They'll shoot every man of us!"

"_They_ won't come back," said Sam.

"Ho! Won't they? And 'aven't they countermarched before? W'y--I 'eard an officer say only this afternoon that they'd be 'avin' another go at 'em to-morrow."

"Did yer, really?" asked Bill, now thoroughly frightened.

"'Strue as I stand 'ere!--'We'll march back quick an' catch 'em,' 'e said," the little man invented rapidly. "An officer in the cavalry, it was. Staff-officer, shudn't wonder."

"Oh, my Gawd!" cried Bill, his beer-muddled faculties dispersing before a gale of fear. "'Ere, Sam--I'm orf! Come on! You brought me into this, yer know--I didn't want to desert. I told yer so, lots o' times--an' now!--Come on!--I ain't goin' to stop 'ere to get shot!"

"'Arf a mo!" said the little man. "'Tain't no good runnin' orf in that uniform. Wot we've got to do is to find some togs. Then if they comes back we're just _h_onest rustics, see?"

Sam stood up. The sudden panic of his companions had communicated itself to his slower brain. He also trembled at the prospect of recapture.

"That's the ticket, mate. You've got it. You're a smart little cove. Wot's yer name?" This, he implied, was condescension.

"Hoswald--Hoswald Smiff--my farver was a toff, a flash cove, 'e was. Come on, mates--there's sure to be some togs upstairs--shudn't wonder if they've left some dibs be'ind 'em, too."

"They left the beer, anyway," said Bill. His tone implied that people who left beer would leave anything.

Rather unsteadily, the trio ascended the steep and narrow stairs of the inn. Sam carried a lighted candle which Oswald Smith had found in the kitchen. A disappointment awaited them. In every room the drawers stood open, empty, their contents carried off. The trio swore in harmony and in fugues. They cursed with the pointless fluency of drunken men baulked of an intention. Then they lurched downstairs again.

"Wot'll we do now?" asked Bill, his face pale with fright. "They'll be on us before morning, sure!"

"Certain!" said Oswald.

"I ain't goin' back," said Sam doggedly. "I'm fed up." He stood and tried to think, his mind harassed by the necessity for a disguise which had been suggested to it.

Bill drank deeply from his tankard and, in the middle of the draught, was visited by a brilliant idea.

"I know," he cried. "Let's cut the letters orf our uniforms. They won't be able to tell w'ere we come from an' we can make up some yarn--say we found 'em--'ad our own togs pinched by the soldiers."

The others seized on the suggestion. To their alcoholised brains the plan seemed more than feasible; it was certain of success. Feverishly and clumsily they ripped the regimental letters from each other's uniforms and cast them into the fire. The identification labels, everything which could point to their connection with the army, followed. They stood, anonymous it seemed to them, in their stripped khaki.

"That's done wiv," said Sam, with a heavy sigh. "Let's 'ave some more beer."

Joyous now, their minds relieved of the fear of recapture, the trio refilled their tankards and their pipes. They settled themselves again.

"I say, mates," said Oswald, "ever 'eard the yarn of the bloke 'oo----?" He told the story and, ere the noisy laughter which greeted the end had died away, began another. He revealed himself as a fellow of rare social qualities. His repertory of anecdotes, many of them relating shady episodes of his own career, was inexhaustible. On his own confession he was a sharper or worse; the humour of his experiences the eternal humour of the sharp-witted clown and the dull policeman. He diversified his entertainment with comic songs rendered with more verve than elegance. Bill obliged with others of a sentimental nature. They drank beer and more beer. They bellowed out choruses whose rhythm was marked by the heavy beating of tankards upon the table and laughed and shouted as though they sat at a "free-and-easy" in the Old Kent Road. The fire blazed up the chimney, fed by chairs demolished one after another. Such merry men as they could not condescend to the fetching of fuel. The room was thick with tobacco-smoke. On the floor little lakes of beer communicated by a rivulet whose source was the spigot of the barrel. The three men gave themselves up to a roaring orgy. They forgot entirely the army which was marching away from them, the other army which approached.

At last, in an atmosphere heavy with debauch, they slumbered, three worthless soldiers of whom any army was well rid.

* * * * *

Sam was awakened from a muddled dream of a tenement near the Old Kent Road by a rough hand upon his shoulder and the sound of a peremptory voice.

"All-ri', Bill," he murmured, "revalley 'asn't sounded yet." Then he opened his eyes, tried to orientate himself in his surroundings. It was morning. He was in an unfamiliar room and the room was filled with unfamiliar men, dressed in a strange uniform. His shoulder was again roughly shaken. The voice, uttering words foreign to him, but whose meaning was not in doubt, spoke again. A strange stern face was thrust close to his. Sam got on his feet, still bewildered. Immediately he felt his arm firmly grasped. His companions were undergoing similar treatment. At the sight of them, the incidents of the previous night returned to his memory. Recapture? He was reassured by the foreign incomprehensible language about him. He would give himself up comfortable as a prisoner. His dangers were over.

Oswald was in the grasp of two stalwart captors, the frightened eyes in his cunning little face looking up wildly into their unemotional countenances. Bill, who had slid with his head under a chair in the stupor which followed their orgy, was less easy to awaken. The strange soldiers kicked him liberally, eliciting sleepy curses but scarce a movement.

Sam could not repress a grin; Bill's morning recall to the sorrows of this waking world was usually made in this manner.

Then he was pushed on by a firm, unrelenting hand which reminded him vividly of that of a policeman. As he was propelled through the door he had a glimpse of Bill being hoisted bodily on to his feet by several of the strange soldiers. Behind him, Oswald was asking imploring questions in his thin expostulating voice. They received no reply. The trio were pushed swiftly, inexorably, into the street.

Outside in the bright sunshine they perceived that the village was full of cavalrymen garbed in an unfamiliar uniform. Their position was obvious. They had been captured by the enemy's advance-guard. Just without the door they were halted and the danger of any movement was explained to them in dumb show by a soldier who allowed them a disconcerting view down the muzzle of a rifle.

In front of the inn was a rustic bench and table, occupied at the moment by a big, fair-moustached man who bent over a map. Around him a group of officers stood waiting in respectful attitudes. Presently the fair-moustached man looked up and said a few words to one of the officers. He had a good-humoured, smiling face, that man. The trio contemplated it anxiously and drew some comfort from its jovial appearance.

Sam turned to his companions.

"Mates," he said huskily, "we're copped. But mind, we don't know nuffink. We ain't goin' to give the boys away, are we?"

"No, Sam," replied Bill, even more huskily. "Wot'll they do to us, d'yer think?"

"Nuffink," was the answer. "We're soldiers--they don't shoot prisoners."

Oswald drew a long breath of relief at this. Sam looked at him sharply.

"Mind--not a word, you little skunk--or I'll bash yer 'ead in."

"All right, mate," said Oswald. "I ain't goin' to peach."

The good-humoured officer on the bench spoke a couple of sharp words. Immediately the prisoners were pushed in front of him. A pair of very blue eyes looked over them, seemed to smile at them, they thought and hoped.

"What are you?" he asked sharply in English.

"Soldiers, sir," replied Sam quickly. Not very confident of the discretion of his companions, he was anxious to make himself the spokesman of the party.

"Indeed? What corps?"

The blue eyes smiled on Sam. He felt them dangerously fascinating. It was with an effort that he kept himself from a reply and remained silent. His dull faculties were desperately on the defensive.

"What corps?"

No answer.

The officer drew out a heavy gold watch. He smiled outright at them.

"I give you five minutes. If you do not reply, you will be shot against that wall."

"We're soldiers--prisoners of war, sir," said Sam. "You can't shoot prisoners of war."

"Indeed!" The blue eyes above the fair moustache looked innocently amused. "You call yourselves soldiers--to what corps do you belong? To what regiment? Where are your shoulder-straps?" He got angry suddenly. "Tell me at once what regiments--what time they passed here, or you go against that wall!"

Sam set his teeth and went pale. The consequences of their anonymity became plain to him. He met the eyes of the quick-witted little Cockney rogue. The cunning, ill-shaped face was lit with a feverish excitement.

"Don't yer see, mate?" he whispered eagerly. "Our chaps 'ave give 'em the slip. 'E wants to find out wot corps passed through 'ere----"

"Silence!--Answer, you!"

The fascinating blue eyes looked at Sam, almost mesmerised him.

"We're soldiers--prisoners o' war," he repeated doggedly.

"Soldiers! Soldiers without regiments--without corps! Prove it then, my man. Quick! I have no time to waste. Where are your shoulder-straps? Your identification papers?"

The trio remained silent. The officer adopted a more cajoling tone.

"Come, come, my man. You don't want to throw your lives away on a trifle. I am willing to treat you as prisoners of war if you prove to me that you are soldiers. Tell me your regiments."

The trio stood in stubborn silence, the ex-navvies rather sheepish, the Cockney rogue watching the questioner with quick and knowing eyes. "No? Then you are spies." He turned to his men and uttered a brief order, pointing to Sam.

On the instant the ex-navvy found himself pushed with his back against the wall, looking into a grim row of rifle-barrels. The squad that menaced him stood equably waiting the word of command. The officer rose, walked across to him and smiled in his face. Once more he drew out his watch.

"One minute," he said pleasantly. "One minute to prove that you are a soldier and no spy."

Sam stood as erect as suddenly enfeebled knees would let him. He felt the bricks of the wall pushing against his back in the instinctive retreat of his body from the imminent danger. His eyes were fixed on the officer who stood calmly regarding his watch. He felt sick and dizzy and very cold. He shivered as in a mantle of ice. His mouth went dry. The panic-stricken part of his brain began an attempt to count the seconds without any revolt at the stubborn decision of his directing self. One, two, three--twenty--thirty--the minute seemed endlessly long. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, striving desperately to bring himself to speech in the fraction of time which remained to him. He succeeded.

His voice came raucously, an agonised appeal.

"Mates!--Remember--the Ole Kent Road!"

The officer uttered a sharp sound and the windows shook with the loud report of the rifles. In a thin haze of smoke, the prisoners saw Sam lurch forward, his arms outstretched, swaying on his toes for one ghastly moment ere he pitched.

The officer calmly replaced his watch and brushed past Oswald. He seized Bill by the arm.

"You!" he said, with that sudden and disconcerting anger of his. "Will you speak?"

Bill stood sheepishly staring at him.

"The Ole Kent Road--'Ome!" he mumbled to himself. Relentless hands pushed him against the wall. At his feet lay Sam, a dark pool forming under him.

"Will you speak?" vociferated the officer.

"'Ome," mumbled Bill. "'Ome!--Oh, Gawd!"

He ignored the demand--seemed not to hear it.

The officer, exasperated, stamped upon the gravel. Again he uttered the sharp order, again the windows shook. Bill slid down the wall with his head on his breast.

The officer turned to the survivor, the petty rogue, nurtured fatherless in a London slum. "Now, my man," he said cheerfully. "You see I am not to be trifled with. Come--tell me what corps passed through here yesterday." He added with a smile of contempt, "These scruples are absurd in a deserter."

A cunning grin came over Oswald's face.

"Yah!" he said. "Deserter, am I? So I am, but I ain't goin' to peach on my pals. They've give yer the slip right enough--an' yer knows it. Yah!" He finished with an ugly grimace.

A moment later, he also stood with his back to the wall.

"Yah!" he cried, and grinned as at some private joke.

The rifles spoke and he spun and fell. In his pocket was the officer's gold watch.

At the foot of a bullet-marked wall lay three worthless soldiers. Far away, a beaten army, lost for the nonce in the fog of war, rallied itself without molestation for another struggle.

NERVES!

A heavy north-east gale was setting with a flowing tide into the River Ems. Out at sea dark grey rainclouds blew raggedly over a background but little lighter in colour. The distant sea stretched away, cheerless and leaden, to a horizon that was whelmed in a grey mist where the elements met, indistinguishable. The nearer waters broke in a confused turmoil of white-caps on either hand. A heavy swell rolled dark between these shoals. Up the estuary a blur of dirty brown smoke, rising from behind a line of bleak sand-dunes, smudged the sagging sky. It rose from the little town of Emden, round the corner. A couple of tall posts, wireless "aerials," stood out black against the smoke.