Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  II

  A dull, insistent pain gnawed at his leg, but he crawled farther in among the sheltering branches and then rose unsteadily to his feet and hobbled on. For five minutes he stumbled painfully onward, and then he tripped and fell. He crawled a few yards to where the undergrowth was very dense, and lay still. The two Germans were calling to each other, and the soldier, it seemed, was prodding among the bushes with his bayonet. But it was now nearly dark in the woods, and the soldier’s task was a hopeless one. The men evidently realized this, for the sounds grew fainter and soon ceased altogether.

  Bretherton examined the wound as best he could in the gloom. The bullet, he decided, had passed through the fleshy part of the thigh without damaging either bones or arteries. Apart from the danger of tetanus, it was not serious, and though painful, with proper medical attention should heal quickly; but unless he gave up all thoughts of escape he could not hope for medical aid till he had crossed the frontier. Had this happened thirty miles back, he would have had no alternative other than to surrender; but here he was less than fifteen miles from the Rhine, and on that great river he hoped to find a barge that would carry him to safety. But he realized that he would need all his strength to reach the river. Fifteen miles was a long journey for a man with an undressed wound who had lived on very short commons and had suffered considerable hardships.

  He tied up the wound as well as he could with a handkerchief, and then he ate the greater part of his meagre rations. It was do or die now; lack of food meant lack of strength, and he would need all his strength before he reached the river. He had dropped his stick, but in that wooded country the loss was not a serious one. He cut himself a stout stick about four feet long with a fork at one end. This he could use as a crutch to ease the weight upon his wounded leg. He had no idea of his exact position—a mile or two within the woods to the north-east of Eitorf, he believed. At all events the road ran east and west, and by going south or south-west he must strike it eventually. But it was still too early in the evening to use the roads, and they were sure to be watched to-night in the neighbourhood of Eitorf.

  He set off slowly westwards, steering by compass. The night was dark, which would have made the going slow through the undergrowth, but his leg made his progress very slow indeed, and frequent halts to rest and ease the pain were necessary.

  As the time passed, his slow progress became a nightmare to him. It seemed to him that he was in a forest that stretched right round the world. He longed for open spaces, for one glimmer of light, for a glimpse even of a starlit sky; but the night was cloudy, and above the few tiny glades in the woods no stars were visible. To add to his discomfort, rain began to fall. For a time the trees protected him, but soon the rain penetrated the leafy roof, and he was drenched to the skin by the water that ran in rivulets from the branches above him and the dripping undergrowth through which he had to force his way.

  The woods were full of sounds, the crackling of a branch, the rustle of some animal among the leaves, the stirring of birds in the branches, and the constant patter of rain and dripping water. He was surrounded by intense darkness; he blundered into unseen trees; wet, clammy leaves brushed his face; thick, clinging branches impeded his body; flexible saplings flew back and cut his hands and face. And before him in the darkness floated the picture of Melford—Melford lying on his face in the darkening forest, with a hole behind the left ear.

  At length he could bear the darkness and oppressiveness of the woods no longer. He set a course due south; but it took him an hour to reach the fringes of the woods, an hour of frequent halts and of semi-conscious dragging of one foot after the other with head down, thrusting mechanically through unseen obstacles.

  For a time he lay exhausted among the small bushes fringing the wood; till slowly his consciousness began to focus, and he dragged himself into a sitting posture. Twenty yards from him was the railway; a quarter of a mile away a signal lamp glowed through the darkness, a haven of rest to his darkness-weary eyes. Beyond the railway was the stream, and beyond the stream, unseen in the darkness, was the road which he knew crossed the stream and ran south of it just beyond Eitorf. Therefore he was in the neighbourhood of Hennef, less than four miles from the scene of the tragic events of the afternoon. And it was now past midnight. With his failing strength it was doubtful whether he could reach the river before dawn.

  He rose to his feet and hobbled painfully beside the railway. The sound of an approaching train drove him from the track to the shelter of the bushes. The train rumbled out of the night, and he saw the figure of the driver peering from the cab and the fireman with shovel lit up by the glare of the open furnace. The engine passed, and behind it came truck after truck in endless succession, rumbling and clanking and moving slowly. Then a sharp distant clank was followed by others, growing nearer as the buffers of the trucks clashed together.

  This goods train halting in front of him was heaven-sent, he thought. He doubted whether his strength would carry him the few miles that separated him from the Rhine; but here was a means of covering the distance without fatigue. He had a good memory for maps, and he and Melford had studied the map for many hours; it had been their one diversion during the long hours of lying up in daylight. He knew that the railway ran, converging upon the river, to Cologne. Goods trains travel slowly and with frequent halts. It should not be difficult for him to drop off near the river more or less when he pleased.

  The truck nearest to him was a low one, covered with a tarpaulin. He clambered painfully on to one of the wheels, stood upon the grease-box, and slowly dragged himself up. The tarpaulin was wet and slippery with rain, but fortunately was not tied securely. He raised one corner of it and crawled underneath. The tarpaulin was stretched over an iron bar which ran down the centre of the truck, and formed a kind of tent, the roof of which at its highest under the bar was about three feet above the wooden cases with which the truck was laden.

  He stretched himself upon the cases. They formed a hard couch, rendered more uncomfortable by the jolting of the train, which now moved slowly on; but he was protected from the drenching rain and the bitter wind, and he could rest his overtaxed wounded leg. His clothes were soaked, and he was shivering with cold, but he was too weary to care about such minor discomforts. The rumble and jolting of the train came as a confused and distant murmur to his ears, and in a few minutes he had fallen into a sleep of utter exhaustion.

  III

  He realized on awakening that he was very ill. A leaden languor possessed all his limbs, and sharp pains racked his head. His stomach seemed to contain a block of ice. He lay wedged beneath the tarpaulin on one side of the truck, to which he had rolled during his sleep. The train rumbled on its way in the unhurried fashion peculiar to goods traffic.

  He roused himself from the lethargy into which he was drifting back. How near the Rhine was he? he wondered. He glanced at his luminous wrist-watch, and then held it to his ear. The hands pointed to twenty minutes to nine. But the watch was still going. He experienced a pang of alarm till he realized that the watch might have stopped, but been set going again by the movement of his hand. And then he remembered that he had looked at it just before boarding the train, between twelve and one, and that it was going then. Now thoroughly alarmed, he turned over and for the first time noticed that it was not absolutely dark in the truck; there was a small slit in the tarpaulin through which shone a bright narrow bar of daylight.

  It was day, then, really twenty minutes to nine in the morning. Questions surged through his tired brain. Where was he now? How far had he travelled during those eight hours? While he slept, had he been carried back into the heart of Germany, back through those many miles that he and poor old Melford had travelled so precariously and so laboriously?

  He crawled across the truck and applied his eye to the slit in the tarpaulin. A dead-flat, cultivated country stretched away from the railway. No town or village came within the limited range of his vision. He opened his map and studied it by the light from
the slit. He had boarded the train near Hennef, he believed, and from that place the railway ran to Cologne, a distance of about fifteen miles. At Cologne the line made two main divergences, one line continuing northwards through the populous Ruhr district, and the other crossing the Rhine and running westwards towards Belgium. He must have passed Cologne hours ago. Had he gone north, he would now be in the industrial area; had he gone west, he would be in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle. The absence of villages told him that he was not in the industrial area, and the flatness of the country pointed to the plain that lay across the Rhine westward of Cologne.

  In any case, he had left the Rhine, and it mattered little where he was. Five or fifty miles from the river, it was all one. He could not have marched two miles in his present condition.

  For an hour and more he lay sunk in a resigned stupor, and the train rumbled on its way. Then with a clanking of buffers running from front to rear of the line of trucks it came to a halt. A sound of music reached his ears. He roused himself and peered through the slit in the tarpaulin. The same flat country met his eye, but now a few cottages and a road cut across the corner of the arc of vision. The sounds of music grew louder, a military march played by a band; and presently he saw a battalion of German infantry headed by a band pass along the segment of road.

  He watched them swing past and out of sight. The martial air and rhythmic beat of marching feet stirred his flagging spirit. His will began to grip once more. He was not done yet. His brain began to work clearly, and as the train moved on again, he took out a compass. He was travelling west-north-west. He had crossed the Rhine, then; he was on the plain between Cologne and Aix. Before long he would be across the frontier into Belgium, occupied Belgium, it is true, but out of Germany and in a country in which the inhabitants would be friendly and would help him as much as they dared. Once in Belgium, he must leave the train at the first opportunity and hide till dark. Then he must seek out some German-hating Belgian who would hide and tend him till his wound was healed and his strength restored, and he could make another bid for the Dutch frontier and freedom.

  His fear now was that the train would reach its destination before he could leave it. He turned his attention to the cases on which he lay; they might give some clue to the destination of the train. He struck a match and held the flame close to the floor of his travelling tent. One glance was sufficient. He had seen hundreds of such cases during his journey as a prisoner-of-war from the Somme to Ebenthal. They were small-arms ammunition boxes. The train was a munition train, bound, no doubt, for the western front. It was going probably right on into France, to some big dump well back behind the lines. That would be too far for him, however. The war zone would be too dangerous, too strictly watched. France or Belgium for him, preferably France just across the Belgian frontier. The French had no love for the Bosche; they would hide him till he could fend for himself.

  But the fear remained that the train might be bound for some nearer destination and the truck be unloaded before he could escape. In his present weak condition he could not leave the train while it was in motion, and although there were frequent halts, they were always amid surroundings which precluded the possibility of leaving the truck unperceived. Therefore he decided that, once across the Belgian frontier, should he get so far, he must take the first opportunity of escaping; and opportunities were likely to be rare, since nothing less than a halt in a wood away from any habitation would serve his purpose.

  He fretted at his own weakness. He knew that he would be able to drag himself only a short distance, and that very slowly. Illness, exposure, and hunger had sapped his strength and made a child of him. For a week he had eaten less each day than the average person takes at one meal, and for the last forty-eight hours he had eaten nothing except a bar of chocolate and a few meat lozenges. He ate the last of his store of food, half a bar of chocolate and three meat lozenges, and resigned himself to waiting.

  Hour after hour, with frequent halts that were full of suspense for Bretherton, the train rumbled on. Through Aix it rolled, and shortly afterwards crossed the frontier into Belgium. Thereafter it was passing down the valley of the Meuse, and through the slit in the tarpaulin he could see the river flowing green between the grey, verdure-clothed limestone cliffs. Whenever the train halted in lonely stretches of the line he reconnoitred through the slit the possible chances of escape, but always there were people about—military guards on the railway, troops, or the crew of the train itself. And when it halted in busy sidings or crowded goods yards and he heard the engine go puffing off alone, the fear that this was the train’s destination and the consequent certainty that he would be discovered was ever present. But the welcome jolt which announced the arrival of a fresh engine revived his hopes, and presently the train would again rumble on its way.

  Mons had been left behind, and late in the afternoon, when the train passed the outskirts of a large town and he read the name “Valenciennes” upon a platform, he knew that he was back again in France. He was getting very near the zone of military operations in which he could not hope to remain without discovery. But still no opportunity presented itself of getting away unobserved. Evening came, and with it dusk. The train halted in the half-light in the crowded goods-yard of a small town. Dumps of stores and ammunition lined the railway on either side, and he prayed that darkness might fall before the truck could be unloaded. The light faded slowly, and he had just decided that in another ten minutes it would be dark enough for him to leave his hiding-place, when the truck jerked, stopped, jerked again, and moved slowly on.

  He caught a glimpse of the name of the station as he moved through it—Douai. He was perilously close to the line now, and the unloading of the truck could not be long delayed. The train moved slowly on, leaving the outlying houses of the town behind, on through the deepening darkness of the young night.

  He made his preparations for leaving the truck. He pulled back the loose edge of the tarpaulin and waited with his head and shoulders through the opening. For a mile or more the train ran on and then slowed, and from the direction of the engine came once more the welcome clash of buffers. It was a lonely spot, very suitable for his purpose. He crawled out on top of the tarpaulin, and as soon as the train came to rest, let himself down to the full extent of his arms and dropped. He toppled over, picked himself up, and stole away.

  IV

  A hundred yards from the line he halted to rest. The going had been slow and painful. His wounded leg was stiff, and he had no crutch to help him. The train moved on again, and he could hear it faintly in the distance. The silence of the early night surrounded him. A cool wind fanned his cheek. Stars gleamed overhead. The western sky was lit by flashes as of summer lightning. From the distance came the familiar grumble of the guns.

  He rose to his feet and struggled on, filled with a new resolution. He was less than eight miles from the line, and he had more than ten hours of darkness before him. His progress was slow and painful, but he could manage to cover a mile per hour at least, and if his strength lasted, he would reach the line before dawn and crawl across the narrow ribbon of no-man’s-land to safety. It was a desperate venture, he knew well, but preferable to the only alternative of lying for weeks perhaps, wounded and ill in some hiding-place, relying upon the loyalty and devotion of some stranger for food and safety.

  He avoided the roads, but there was no risk of losing his way: that play of summer lightning in the western sky and the restless booming and growling of the guns was a sure guide. Clouds gathered overhead, and rain began to fall heavily. He was in a pitiable condition. His clothes were sodden and in rags, but he struggled on, making a circuit of the farms and lying flat when, as occasionally happened, files of men or formed bodies of troops passed near him.

  Hour after hour went by. He reached the zone of the heavies. Individual explosions came at intervals from the darkness that surrounded him. Music and voices singing in German came from cottages and huts that lay unseen around him. Southwards, wher
e a deeper tint of darkness cut the sky and proclaimed a wood, a railway gun, king among weapons, raised its deep voice and was silent.

  He rested in a copse surrounding a house from which came sounds of revelry and the clicking of a typewriter; but lying in the inky darkness of the undergrowth, he had no fear of detection. And as he lay weary and shivering upon the sodden ground, a shaft of light cut the darkness surrounding the house and a voice called, “Praegar! Praegar!” Immediately a voice answered near at hand, and less than ten yards from him the door of a hut, that he had not noticed in the darkness, was flung open, and the bareheaded figure of a German soldier was framed in the lighted doorway. The man stood motionless for a second, and then, with a glance upwards at the rain, ran towards the house.

  From where he lay Bretherton could see the interior of the hut. A wire-netting sleeping-bunk ran down one side of it. Beside the bunk was a packing-case on which stood an acetylene lamp and half a loaf of bread, and beside the packing-case stood a dainty Louis Seize chair across which lay, neatly folded, the tunic and breeches of a German officer.

  Bretherton eyed the bread hungrily. There was no one in the hut, and the man, obviously an officer’s servant, had gone to the house. He crawled towards the door, reached it, rose to his feet, and hobbled through. He snatched the bread from the packing-case, and as an afterthought grabbed the uniform from the chair. He limped into the friendly darkness and away through the copse. He gnawed the bread ravenously as he went, and on the edge of the copse exchanged his sodden rags for the dry uniform. And then off again he toiled towards the soaring Verey lights that were visible in the distance.