Barbarians

"Did you do business with Duck?" inquired Pick-em-up, curiously.

"Not so he noticed it. Joe, can't you and Heinie rise to your opportunities? This is the first time in your lives you've ever been decent, ever done a respectable thing. Can't you start in and live straight—think straight? You're wearing the uniform of God's own soldiers; you're standing shoulder to shoulder with men who are fighting God's own battle. The fate of every woman, every child, every unborn baby in Europe—and in America, too—depends on your bravery. If you don't win out, it will be our turn next. If you don't stop the Huns—if you don't come back at them and wipe them out, the world will not be worth inhabiting."

I stepped nearer: "Heinie," I said, "you know what your trade has been, and what it is called. Here's your chance to clean yourself. Joe—you've dealt out misery, insanity, death, to women and children. You're called the Coke King of the East Side. Joe, we'll get you sooner or later. Don't take the trouble to doubt it. Why not order a new pack and a fresh deal? Why not resolve to live straight from this moment—here where you have taken your place in the ranks among real men—here where this army stands for liberty, for the right to live! You've got your chance to become a real man; so has Heinie. And when you come back, we'll stand by you–"

"An' gimme a job choppin' tickets in the subway!" snarled Heinie. "Expec' me to squeal f'r that? Reeform, hey? Show me a livin' in it an' I carry a banner. But there ain't nothing into it. How's a guy to live if there ain't no graft into nothin'?"

Joe touched his gas-mask with a sneer: "He's pushin' the yellow stuff at us, Heinie," he said; and to me: "You get yours all right. I don't know what it is, but you get it, same as me an' Heinie an' Duck. I don't know what it is," he repeated impatiently; "maybe it's dough; maybe it's them suffragettes with their silk feet an' white gloves what clap their hands at you. I ain't saying nothin' to you, am I? Then lemme alone an' go an' talk business with Duck over there–"

Officers passed rapidly between the speaker and me and continued east and west along the ranks of riflemen, repeating in calm, steady voices:

"Fix bayonets, mes enfants; make as little noise as possible. Everybody ready in ten minutes. Ladders will be distributed. Take them with you. The bomb-throwers will leave the trench first. Put on goggles and respirators. Fix bayonets and set one foot on the pegs and ladders … all ready in seven minutes. Three mines will be exploded. Take and hold the craters.... Five minutes!… When the mines explode that is your signal. Bombers lead. Give them a leg up and follow.... Three minutes...."

From a communication trench a long file of masked bomb-throwers appeared, loaded sacks slung under their left arms, bombs clutched in their right hands; and took stations at every ladder and row of freshly driven pegs.

"One minute!" repeated the officers, selecting their own ladders and drawing their long knives and automatics.

As I finished adjusting my respirator and goggles a muffled voice at my elbow began: "Be a sport, Doc! Gimme a chanst! Make it fifty-fifty–"

"Allez!" shouted an officer through his respirator.

Against the sky all along the parapet's edge hundreds of bayonets wavered for a second; then dark figures leaped up, scrambled, crawled forward, rose, ran out into the sunless, pallid light.

Like surf bursting along a coast a curtain of exploding shells stretched straight across the débris of what had been a meadow—a long line of livid obscurity split with flame and storms of driving sand and gravel. Shrapnel leisurely unfolded its cottony coils overhead and the iron helmets rang under the hail.

Men fell forward, backward, sideways, remaining motionless, or rolling about, or rising to limp on again. There was smoke, now, and mire, and the unbroken rattle of machine guns.

Ahead, men were fishing in their sacks and throwing bombs like a pack of boys stoning a snake; I caught glimpses of them furiously at work from where I knelt beside one fallen man after another, desperately busy with my own business.

Bearers ran out where I was at work, not my own company but some French ambulance sections who served me as well as their own surgeons where, in a shell crater partly full of water, we found some shelter for the wounded.

Over us black smoke from the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that shell crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook earth and sods down on us and wrinkled the pool of water at our feet.

The Legion had taken the trench; but the place was a rabbit warren where hundreds of holes and burrows and ditches and communicating runways made a bewildering maze.

And everywhere in the dull, flame-shot obscurity, the Legionaries ran about like ghouls in their hoods and round, hollow eye-holes; masked faces, indistinct in the smoke, loomed grotesque and horrible as Ku-Klux where the bayonets were at work digging out the enemy from blind burrows, turning them up from their bloody forms.

Rifles blazed down into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing bloody gaps in huddling masses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-butts stammering out, "Comrades! Comrades!"—in the ghastly irony of surrender.

A man whose entire helmet, gas-mask, and face had been blown off, and who was still alive and trying to speak, stiffened, relaxed, and died in my arms. As I rolled him aside and turned to the next man whom the bearers were lowering into the crater, his respirator and goggles fell apart, and I found myself looking into the ashy face of Duck Werner.

As we laid him out and stripped away iron helmet and tunic, he said in a natural and distinct voice.

"Through the belly, Doc. Gimme a drink."

There was no more water or stimulant at the moment and the puddle in the crater was bloody. He said, patiently, "All right; I can wait.... It's in the belly.... It ain't nothin', is it?"

I said something reassuring, something about the percentage of recovery I believe, for I was exceedingly busy with Duck's anatomy.

"Pull me through, Doc?" he inquired calmly.

"Sure...."

"Aw, listen, Doc. Don't hand me no cones of hokey-pokey. Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out the coke. Do I get mine this trip?"

I looked at him, hesitating.

"Listen, Doc, am I hurted bad? Gimme a hones' deal. Do I croak?"

"Don't talk, Duck–"

"Dope it straight. Do I?"

"Yes."

"I thought you'd say that," he returned serenely. "Now I'm goin' to fool you, same as I fooled them guys at Bellevue the night that Mike the Kike shot me up in the subway."

A pallid sneer stretched his thin and burning lips; in his ratty eyes triumph gleamed.

"I've went through worse than this. I ain't hurted bad. I ain't got mine just yet, old scout! Would I leave meself croak—an' that bum, Mike the Kike, handin' me fren's the ha-ha! Gawd," he muttered hazily, as though his mind was beginning to cloud, "just f'r that I'll get up an'—an' go—home—" His voice flattened out and he lay silent.

Working over the next man beyond him and glancing around now and then to discover a brancardier who might take Duck to the rear, I presently caught his eyes fixed on me.

"Say, Doc, will you talk—business?" he asked in a dull voice.

"Be quiet, Duck, the bearers will be here in a minute or two–"

"T'hell wit them guys! I'm askin' you will you make it fifty-fifty—'r' somethin'—" Again his voice trailed away, but his bright ratty eyes were indomitable.

I was bloodily occupied with another patient when something struck me on the shoulder—a human hand, clutching it. Duck was sitting upright, eyes a-glitter, the other hand pressed heavily over his abdomen.

"Fifty-fifty!" he cried in a shrill voice. "F'r Christ's sake, Doc, talk business—" And life went out inside him—like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle—while he still sat there....

I heard the air escaping from his lungs before he toppled over.... I swear to you it sounded like a whispered word—"business."

"Then came their gas—a great, thick, yellow billow of it pouring into our shell hole.... I couldn't get my mask on fast enough … and here I am, Gray, wondering, but really knowing.... Are you stopping at the Club tonight?"

"Yes."

Vail got to his feet unsteadily: "I'm feeling rather done in.... Won't sit up any longer, I guess.... See you in the morning?"

"Yes," said Gray.

"Good-night, then. Look in on me if you leave before I'm up."

And that is how Gray saw him before he sailed—stopped at his door, knocked, and, receiving no response, opened and looked in. After a few moments' silence he understood that the "Seed of Death" had sprouted.

CHAPTER XIII