Part 6
For some way from the dump the journey was uneventful. The path to the guns led along a sunken road, completely hidden from the enemy's observation posts. The dull, persistent rain had ceased for a little, and the broad patches of blue overhead were dotted with our droning aeroplanes, which every now and then would dive into a low-drifting rack of grey cloud to shake off the shrapnel of the German "Archies." Of German 'planes none were to be seen, for they had all sped home to their hangars when our fighting squadrons rose to the encounter. The earth rocked to the explosions of our 9.2 howitzers ranged about Pozieres and Martinpuich, and the air clamoured under the passage of their giant shells as they went roaring over toward the German lines. Now and again a vicious whining sound would swell suddenly to a nerve-racking shriek, and an enemy shell would land with a massive cr-r-ump, and a furious blast of smoke and mud would belch upwards to one side or other of the sunken road. But none of these unwelcome visitors came into the road itself, and neither the black mule nor Jimmy Wright paid them any more attention than the merest roll of an eye to mark their billet.
"Change o' heart hain't spoiled old Sonny's nerve, anyhow," thought the driver to himself, with deep approval.
A little further on and the trail up to "X's Group," quitting the shelter of the sunken road, led out across the red desolation, in the very eye, as it seemed to the New Brunswicker, of the enemy's positions. It was a narrow, undulating track, slippery as oil, yet tenacious as glue, corkscrewing its laborious way between the old slime-filled shell-pits. From the surface of one of these wells of foul-coloured ooze the legs of a dead horse stuck up stiffly into the air, like four posts on which to lay a foot-bridge. A few yards beyond, the track was cut by a fresh shell-hole, too new to have collected any water. Its raw sides were streaked red and white and black, and just at its rim lay the mangled fragments of something that might recently have been a mule. The long ears of Wright's mule waved backwards and forwards at the sight, and he snorted apprehensively.
"This don't appear to be a health resort for us, Sonny," commented the New Brunswicker, "so we won't linger, if it's all the same to you." And he led the way around the other side of the new shell-hole, the big mule crowding close behind with quivering muzzle at his shoulder.
However urgent Wright's desire for speed, speed was ridiculously impossible. The obstinate pro-German mud was not lightly to be overcome. Even on the firmer ridges it clung far above the fetlocks of the black mule, and struggled to suck off Wright's hob-nailed boots at every labouring step. Though a marrow-piercing north-easter swept the waste, both man and mule were lathered in sweat. Half their energy had to be expended in recovering themselves from continual slithering slides which threatened to land them in the engulfing horrors of the shell-holes. For all that he had so little breath to spare, Jimmy Wright kept muttering through his teeth strange expletives and objurgations from the vocabulary of the lumber camps, eloquent but unprintable, to which the black mule lent ear admiringly. He seemed to feel that his driver's remarks, though he could not understand them, were doubtless such as would command his fullest accord. For his own part he had no means of expressing such sentiments except through his heels, and these were now all too fully occupied in their battle with the mud.
By this time the black mule had become absolutely convinced that his fate was in the hands of his ginger-haired driver. Jimmy Wright, as it seemed to him, was his sole protection against this violent horror which kept bursting and crashing on every hand about him. It was clear to him that Jimmy Wright, though apparently much annoyed, was not afraid. Therefore, with Jimmy Wright as his protector he was safe. He wagged his ears, snorted contemptuously at a 5.9 which spurted up a column of mud and smoke some hundred yards to the left, and plodded on gamely through the mud. He didn't know where he was going, but Jimmy Wright was there, and just ahead of his nose, where he could sniff at him; and he felt sure there would be fodder and a rub down at the end of the weary road.
In the midst of these consoling reflections something startling and inexplicable happened. He was enveloped and swept away hi a deafening roar. Thick blackness, streaked with star-showers, blinded him. Though half stupefied, he kicked and struggled with all his strength, for it was not in him to yield himself, like a stricken horse, to any stroke of Fate.
When he once more saw daylight, he was recovering his feet just below the rim of an old shell-hole. He gained the top, braced his legs, and shook himself vigorously. The loaded panniers thumping heavily upon his ribs restored him fully to his senses. Snorting through wide red nostrils, he stared about him wildly. Some ten paces distant he saw a great new crater in the mud, reeking with black and orange fumes.
But where was Jimmy Wright? The mule swept anxious eyes across the waste of shell-holes, in every direction. In vain. His master had vanished. He felt himself deserted. Panic began to clutch at his heart, and he gathered his muscles for frantic flight. And then he recovered himself and stood steady. He had caught sight of a ginger-haired head, bare of its shrapnel helmet, lying on the mud at the other side of the shell-hole from which he had just struggled out.
His panic passed at once, but it gave place to anxious wonder. There, indeed, was Jimmy Wright, but what was he doing there? His body was buried almost to the shoulders in the discoloured slime that half filled the shell-hole. He was lying on his face. His arms were outstretched, and his hands were clutching at the slippery walls of the hole as if he were striving to pull himself up from the water. This effort, however, seemed anything but successful. The mule saw, indeed, that his protector was slowly slipping deeper into the slime. This filled him with fresh alarm. If Jimmy Wright should disappear under that foul surface, that would be desertion complete and final. It was not to be endured.
Quickly but cautiously the mule picked his way around the hole, and then, with sagacious bracing of his hoofs, down to his master's side. But what was to be done next? Jimmy Wright's face was turned so that he could not see his would-be rescuer. His hands were still clutching at the mud, but feebly and without effect.
The mule saw that his master was on the point of vanishing under the mud, of deserting him in his extremity. This was intolerable. The emergency quickened his wits. Instinct suggested to him that to keep a thing one should take hold of it and hold on to it. He reached down with his big yellow teeth, took hold of the shoulder of Jimmy Wright's tunic, and held on. Unfamiliar with anatomy, he at the same time took hold of a substantial portion of Jimmy Wright's own shoulder inside the tunic, and held on to that. He braced himself, and with a loud, involuntary snort began to pull.
Jimmy Wright, up to this point, had been no more than half conscious. The mule's teeth in his shoulder revived him effectually. He came to himself with a yell. He remembered the shell-burst. He saw and understood where he was. He was afraid to move for a moment, lest he should find that his shoulder was blown off. But no, he had two arms, and he could move them. He had his shoulder all right, for something was pulling at it with quite sickening energy. He reached up his right arm--it was the left shoulder that was being tugged at--and encountered the furry head and ears of his rescuer.
"Sonny!" he shouted. "Well, I'll be d----d!" And he gripped fervently at the mule's neck.
Reassured at the sound of his master's voice, the big mule took his teeth out of Wright's shoulder and began nuzzling solicitously at his sandy head.
"It's all right, old man," said the New Brunswicker, thinking quickly, while with his left hand he secured a grip on the mule's head-stall. Then he strove to raise himself from the slime. The effort produced no result, except to send a wave of blackness across his brain. Wondering sickly if he carried some terrible injury concealed under the mud, he made haste to pass the halter rope under his arms and knot it beneath his chest. Then he shouted for help, twice and again, till his voice trailed off into a whimper and he relapsed into unconsciousness. The mule shifted his feet to gain a more secure foothold on the treacherous slope, and then stood wagging his ears and gazing down on Jimmy in benevolent content. So long as Jimmy was with him, he felt that things were bound to come all right. Jimmy would presently get up and lead him out of the shell-hole, and take him home.
Shell after shell, whining or thundering according to their breed, soared high over the hole, but the black mule only wagged his ears at them. His eyes were anchored upon the unconscious sandy head of Jimmy Wright. Suddenly, however, a sharp voice made him look up. He saw a couple of stretcher-bearers standing on the edge of the shell-hole, looking down sympathetically upon him and his charge. In a second or two they were beside him, skilfully and tenderly extricating Jimmy's body from the mud.
"He ain't gone west this time," pronounced one, who had thrust an understanding hand into the breast of the tunic.
Jimmy Wright opened his eyes wide suddenly.
"Not by a d----d sight I ain't, Bill!" he muttered, rather thickly. Then, his wits and his voice coming clearer, he added: "But if I ain't, it's thanks to this here old ---- of an Argentine mule, that come down into this hole and yanked me out o' the mud, and saved me. Eh, Sonny?"
The big mule was crowding up so close to him as to somewhat incommode the two men in their task on that treacherous incline. But they warded off his inconvenient attentions very gently.
"He's some mule, all right," grunted one of the bearers, as they got Jimmy on to the stretcher and laboriously climbed from the shell-hole.
*STAR-NOSE OF THE UNDER WAYS*
He was in a darkness that was dense, absolute, palpable. And his eyes were shut tight,--though it made no difference, under the circumstances, whether they were shut or open. But if his sense of sight was for the moment off duty, its absence was more than compensated for by the extreme alertness of his other senses. To his supersensitive nostrils the black, peaty soil surrounding him was full of distinct and varying scents. His ears could detect and locate the wriggling of a fat grub, the unctuous withdrawal of a startled earth-worm. Above all, his sense of touch was so extraordinarily developed that it might have served him for eyes, ears and nostrils all in one. And so it came about that, there in the blackness of his close and narrow tunnel, deep in the black soil of the swamp, he was not imprisoned, but free and at large as the swift hares gambolling overhead,--far freer, indeed, because secure from the menace of prowling and swooping foes.
Star-nose was a mole. But he was not an ordinary mole of the dry uplands and well drained meadows, by any means, or he would not have been running his deep tunnel here in the cool, almost swampy soil within a few yards of the meandering channel of the Lost-Water. In shape and colour he was not unlike the common mole,--with his thick, powerful neck of about the same size as his body, his great, long-clawed, immensely strong, hand-like fore-feet, and his mellow, velvety, shadowy, grey-brown fur. But his tail was much longer, and thicker at the base, than that of his plebeian cousin of the lawns. And his nose,--that was something of a distinction which no other beast in the world, great or small, could boast of. From all around its tip radiated a fringe of feelers, no less than twenty-two in number, naked, flexible, miraculously sensitive, each one a little nailless, interrogating finger. It entitled him, beyond question, to the unique title of Star-Nose.
This tireless worker in the dark was driving a new tunnel,--partly, no doubt, for the sake of worms, grubs, and pupae which he might find on the way, and partly for purposes known only to himself. At the level where he was digging, a scant foot below the surface, the mould, though damp, was fairly light and workable, owing to the abundance of fine roots and decayed leafage mixed through it; and his progress was astonishingly rapid.
His method of driving his tunnel was practical and effective. With back arched so as to throw the full force of it into his fore-shoulders, with his hind feet wide apart and drawn well up beneath him, he dug mightily into the damp soil straight before his nose with the long, penetrating claws of his exaggerated and powerful fore-paws. In great swift handfuls (for his fore-paws were more like hands than feet), the loosened earth was thrown behind him, passing under his body and out between his roomily straddling hind legs. And as he dug he worked in a circle, enlarging the tunnel head to a diameter of about two-and-a-half inches, at the same time pressing the walls firm and hard with his body, so that they should not cave in upon him. This compacting process further enlarged the tunnel to about three inches, which was the space he felt he needed for quick and free movement. When he had accumulated behind him as much loose earth as he could comfortably handle, he turned around, and with his head and chest and forearms pushed the mass before him along the tunnel to the foot of his last dump-hole,--an abrupt shaft leading to the upper air. Up this shaft he would thrust his burden, and heave it forth among the grass and weeds, a conspicuous and contemptuous challenge to would-be pursuers. He did not care how many of his enemies might thus be notified of his address, for he knew he could always change it with baffling celerity, blocking up his tunnels behind him as he went.
And now, finding that at his present depth the meadow soil, at this point, was not well-stocked with such game--grubs and worms--as he chose to hunt, he slanted his tunnel slightly upward to get among the grass-roots near the surface. Almost immediately he was rewarded. He cut into the pipe-like canal of a large earth-worm, just in time to intercept its desperate retreat. It was one of those stout, dark-purplish lob-worms that feed in rich soil, and to him the most toothsome of morsels. In spite of the eagerness of his appetite he drew it forth most delicately and gradually from its canal, lest it should break in two and the half of it escape him. Dragging it back into his tunnel he held it with his big, inexorable "hands," and felt it over gleefully with that restless star of fingers which adorned the tip of his nose. Then he tore it into short pieces, bolted it hurriedly, and fell to work again upon his tunnelling. But now, having come among the grass-roots, he was in a good hunting-ground, and his work was continually interrupted by feasting. At one moment it would be a huge, fat, white grub as thick as a man's little finger, with a hard, light-copper-coloured head; at the next a heavy, liver-coloured lob-worm. His appetite seemed insatiable; but at last he felt he had had enough, for the moment. He stopped tunnelling, turned back a few inches, drove a short shaft to the surface as a new exit, and heaved forth a mighty load of debris.
In the outer world it was high morning, and the strong sunlight glowed softly down through the tangled grasses of the water-meadow. The eyes of Star-Nose were but two tiny black beads almost hidden in fur, but after he had blinked them for a second or two in the sudden light he could see quite effectively,--much better, indeed, than his cousin, the common mole of the uplands. Though by far the greater part of his strenuous life was spent in the palpable darkness of his tunnels in the under world, daylight, none the less, was by no means distasteful to him, and he was not averse to a few minutes of basking in the tempered sun. As he sat stroking his fine fur with those restless fingers of his nose, and scratching himself luxuriously with his capable claws, a big grasshopper, dropping from one of its aimless leaps, fell close beside him, bearing down with it a long blade of grass which it had clutched at in its descent. Star-Nose seized the unlucky hopper in a flash, tore off its hard inedible legs, and started to eat it. At that instant, however, a faint swish of wings caught his ear and a swift shadow passed over him. At the touch of that shadow,--as if it had been solid and released an oiled spring within his mechanism,--he dived back into his hole; and the swooping marsh-hawk, after a savage but futile clutch at the vanishing tip of his tail, wheeled off with a yelp of disappointment.
It was certainly a narrow shave; and for perhaps a whole half-minute Star-Nose, with his heart thumping, crouched in his refuge. Then, remembering the toothsome prize which he had been forced to abandon, he put forth his head warily to reconnoitre. The hawk was gone; but the dead grasshopper was still there, green and glistening in the sun, and a burly blue-bottle had just alighted upon it. Star-Nose crept forth cautiously to retrieve his prey.
Now at this same moment, as luck would have it, gliding along one of the tiny run-ways of the meadow-mice, came a foraging mole-shrew, a pugnacious cousin of the Star-Nose tribe. The mole-shrew was distinctly smaller than Star-Nose, and handicapped with such defective vision that he had to do all his hunting by scent and sound and touch. He smelt the dead grasshopper at once, and came straight for it, heedless of whatever might stand in the way.
Under the circumstances Star-Nose might have carelessly stood aside, not through lack of courage, but because he had no special love of fighting for its own sake. And he knew that his cousin, though so much smaller and lighter than himself, was much to be respected as an opponent by reason of his blind ferocity and dauntless tenacity. But he was no weakling, to let himself be robbed of his lawful prey. He whipped out of his hole, flung himself upon the prize, and lifted his head just in time to receive the furious spring of his assailant.
Between two such fighters there was no fencing. The mole-shrew secured a grip upon the side of the immensely thick and muscular neck of his antagonist, and immediately began to worry and tear like a terrier. But Star-Nose, flexible as an eel, set his deadly teeth into the side of his assailant's head, a little behind the ear, and worked in deeper and deeper, after the manner of a bulldog. For a few seconds, in that death-grapple, the two rolled over and over, thrashing the grass-stems. Then the long teeth of Star-Nose bit into the brain; and the mole-shrew's body, after a convulsive stiffening, went suddenly limp.
But the disturbance in the grass--there being no wind that golden morning--had not escaped the eyes of the foraging marsh-hawk. She came winnowing back to learn the cause of it. The sun being behind her, however, her ominous shadow swept over the grass before her,--and Star-Nose, unfailingly vigilant even in the moment of victory, caught sight of it coming. He loosed his hold on his dead adversary and plunged for the hole. At least he tried to plunge for it. But the plunge was little more than a crawl; for the teeth of the mole-shrew, set deep in his neck, had locked themselves fast in death, and all that Star-Nose could do was to drag the body with him. This, however, he succeeded in doing, so effectively that he was in time to back down into the hole, out of reach, just as the hawk swooped and struck.
The clutching talons of the great bird fixed themselves firmly in the protruding hind-quarters of the mole-shrew, and she attempted to rise with her capture. But to her amazed indignation the prize resisted. Star-Nose was holding on to the walls of his tunnel with all the strength of his powerful claws, while at the same time struggling desperately to tear himself loose from the grip of those dead teeth in his neck. The contest, however, was but momentary. The strength of Star-Nose was a small thing against the furious beating of those great wings; and in two or three seconds, unable either to hold on or to free himself from the fatal incubus of his victim, he was dragged forth ignominiously and swept into the air, squirming and dangling at the tip of the dead mole-shrew's snout.
Star-Nose was vaguely conscious of a chill rush of air, of a sudden dazzling glare of gold and blue, as the victorious hawk flapped off towards the nearest tree-top with her prize. Then, suddenly, the grip of the dead jaws relaxed and he felt himself falling. Fortunately for him the hawk had not risen to any great height,--for the marsh-hawk, hunter of meadow-mice, and such secretive quarry, does not, as a rule, fly high. He felt himself turn over and over in the air, dizzily, and then he landed, with a stupefying swish, in a dense bed of wild parsnips. He crashed right through, of course, but the strong stems broke his fall and he was little the worse for the stupendous adventure. For a few moments he lay half stunned. Then, pulling himself together, he fell to digging with all his might, caring only to escape from a glaring outer world which seemed so full of tumultuous and altogether bewildering perils. He made the earth fly in a shower; and in an unbelievably brief space of time he had buried himself till even the tip of his tail was out of sight. But even then he was not content. He dug on frantically, till he was a good foot beneath the surface and perhaps a couple of feet more from the entrance. Then, leaving the passage safely blocked behind him, he enlarged the tunnel to a large chamber, and curled himself up to lick his wounds and recover from his fright.
It was perhaps half an hour before Star-Nose completely regained his composure and his appetite. His appetite--that was the first consideration. And second to that, a poor second, was his need of tunnelling back into his familiar maze of underground passages. Resuming his digging with full vigour, he first ran a new shaft to the surface, gathering in several fat grubs in his progress through the grass-roots. Then, at about six inches below the surface--a depth at which he could count upon the best foraging--he began to drive his tunnel. His sense of direction was unerring; which was the more inexplicable as there in the thick dark he could have no landmarks to guide him. He headed straight for the point which would, by the shortest distance, join him up with his own under-ways.
It happened, however, that in that terrible journey of his through the upper air the swift flight of the hawk had carried him some distance, and across the course of a sluggish meadow brook, a tributary of the Lost-Water. Suddenly and unexpectedly his vigorous tunnelling brought him to this obstacle. The darkness before him gave way to a glimmer of light. He hesitated, and then burrowed on more cautiously. A screen of matted grass-roots confronted him, stabbed through with needles of sharp gold which quivered dazzlingly. Warily he dug through the screen, thrust forth his nose, and found himself looking down upon a shimmering glare of quiet water, about a foot below him.