CHAPTER XXII THE BOYS PERFORM AN ACT OF MERCY

The Austrian commandant’s story of the frightful privations which his garrison had undergone, stirred all four of the boys deeply. Buck took Ned to one side and said:

“Did you note all of the awful things that the governor there says these poor chaps have had to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what do you say to inviting him on the sly to have one little square meal with us aboard the _Flyer_ before we leave? Just leave it to me to make it a Jim dandy! I’d like to feed the whole lot of them if only we had the victuals.”

“Let’s ask the commandant if he will accept,” said Ned, brightening.

The Austrian listened gravely to their well-meant offer, but the boys could feel him stiffening.

“You forget, gentlemen, that whatever hardships the soldier of the dual monarchy may have to suffer, his officers are proud to endure with him. I thank you for your courtesy, but cannot honorably accept it.”

Many pitiful sights were seen by the Airship Boys on their tour of the fortress, but none impressed them more deeply than that of a young man in one of the hospital wards. He was wasted to mere skin and bones with fever which flamed insanely in his eyes. His feet they had swathed in great layers of bandages, at the ends of which wooden splints protruded. All the time in his delirium he would keep whispering in the most heart-rending accents:

“Ah, Liebchen, dich kann ich nicht mehr gruessen!”

“What is that he keeps saying?” asked Alan of their guide.

“He is speaking of his young bride in Vienna--bemoaning the fact that he may never see her again. Lieutenant Racoszky here came of a comparatively poor middle-class family but fell in love with the heiress of Count Polnychek, one of the most influential noblemen of Budapest, and the head of one of the oldest families in Hungary. The girl was a reigning beauty of the fashionable set, but that did not keep her from falling in love with Racoszky here. He was handsome, gay, dashing, in those days before the war. So they were married secretly.

“By and by the old Count found out about it and would not permit Racoszky to see his girl-wife any more. Then she eloped one night and they fled together. They settled in a little town not far from Budapest and were happy. And one day she told Racoszky that she was about to bear him a child.

“That was one week after war had been declared. Already the Serbs were across our borders and Montenegro was daily threatening to join them. The war office was in a panic. All available troops were rushed to the southern frontier, where we were defeated badly. A second army was sent and it too met with reverses. Then the Russians began to cross our northeastern frontier by the millions. Every able-bodied man in the land was drafted.

“Racoszky here hoped to escape until after his child was born, but that he was not permitted to do. It was the hard-hearted old count, her father, who himself told the recruiting officers that Racoszky was a coward and was trying to avoid his duty. So one day they came and seized him in the market place as he was coming out of the doctor’s office.

“‘Come with us. You are called to the colors!’ they told him sternly.

“Racoszky was desperate. He tried to plead off.

“‘Good sirs,’ he pleaded, ‘I am but now come to hasten a doctor to the bedside of my wife. See, he is running there now. Let me at least wait until the crisis is past.’

“‘No!’ growled the recruiting sergeant roughly. ‘We have heard all about you and your trickiness. Come along now before we make you.’

“Then Racoszky became like a madman. He tried to break away from them and run back to his suffering wife. All in vain. They clubbed him insensible with their pistol butts, handcuffed him and took him away to Koloszvar, where the regiments were forming. For whole weeks thereafter he remained like one distraught. It was then that I first met him and learned the story. Finally a sort of dreadful calm came over him. He no longer raved nor wept nor tried to escape. His face lost all expression and he went methodically about his work like a person in a trance.

“Word had come that his old enemy, the count, had gone for his daughter and taken her away with him down the Danube to Vienna. All of the idle rich fled there when they saw there was really danger that the invading foe might overrun all Hungary.

“Poor Racoszky never has heard from his girl-wife since then. He never spoke of her to any of us until the delirium of this fever began to rack him. He became a terrible fighter. His ferocity in hand-to-hand combats with the Russians was appalling even to us who fought shoulder to shoulder with him. He was that way at Slovno, on the blood-soaked field of Lemberg, at Doukle in Galicia, where our great retreat first began.

“Then we came here to Przemysl, and Racoszky was among the first to volunteer to be one of the garrison which everybody agreed was doomed to certain death. I said to him at that time:

“‘Racoszky, my friend, why do you not go on with the main army? They are falling back upon Vienna, and there maybe you might see your cherished wife again.’

“He gave me so terrible a look that I never have dared mention the subject to him again.

“After that the army marched away and left us to our fate. Then came the Russian hordes, until the whole plain was black with them. They assaulted, they bombarded, they dug mines, and blood ran as freely as water. We beat them back. So then they camped all around us here like so many of their own Siberian wolves, waiting until the poor dog dropped from hunger and they could rend him limb from limb.

“We of the garrison all suffered cheerfully together. There was very little grumbling. The commandant’s hair turned white when we served up the roast flesh of his favorite charger as a delicacy on his birthday.

“Two weeks ago it seemed as if we all were about to starve at last. Only our spirits remained strong. Racoszky came forward and volunteered to lead a sortie out into the enemy’s camp if twenty men would follow him. He promised to bring back food, and did, but he came back with his legs riddled with bullets. All but two of them who accompanied him fell somewhere outside there.

“Long before this we had run out of all adequate medical supplies. Our surgeons could not probe Racoszky’s legs properly to remove but one of the three bullets which had lodged there. They wanted to amputate, but he swore that he would kill himself if they did. So there he has lain ever since, poor fellow, with his wounds festering, and blood poison getting more assured every day. Always he keeps moaning in that way for his girl-bride and the baby he has never seen.”

This touching story moved all of the boys profoundly and weighed on their spirits to such an extent that Alan finally said:

“What do you fellows say to playing the Good Samaritan and taking Lieutenant Racoszky out of here in the _Flyer_ to some place where he can get the medical attention that his bravery deserves?”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” answered Bob.

“And I,” echoed Buck. “But where shall we take him?”

Ned spoke up.

“Why not to Vienna, the capital? The very best hospitals and surgeons in the country are there and--so are his wife and baby. The sight of them would undoubtedly do him as much good as all of the expert medical attention he would receive.”

“The very thing! A great idea!” exclaimed the other boys. “But what about that crabbed old count, her father! Do you think that he will relent enough to permit Racoszky to see his daughter?”

“That,” said Ned briefly, “is up to us and can, I think, be managed. Anyway, it certainly is worth the trial. Now let’s go to the commandant and see if he will permit us to remove the lieutenant.”

The governor, they found, was only too pleased to afford his faithful officer this unexpected chance of recovery, and helped remove the invalid to a soft bed they had made ready in the airship’s spare stateroom.

“By nightfall we shall have him in competent hands there in Vienna,” said Ned, already at the wheel.

“Good luck and tell them there in the capital that Przemysl still holds out,” called the commandant.

“No fear that we won’t do that!” the boys cried, and, amid the increasing whir and roar of the powerful propellers, the _Ocean Flyer_ once more swept up into the sky and out over the great plain where the Russian encampment lay.

Buck threw a large, black, pear-shaped object overboard and down at the crowd below waving good-byes.

“Great heavens, what was that? A bomb?” exclaimed Bob, startled.

“No,” Buck replied solemnly, “that was a smoked ham--our last one, too.”