In Secret

But it proved to be a deadline that he and his half-starved comrade faced; shadowy figures, half seen, sometimes merely heard and divined, flitted everywhere through the open woods beyond them. And at night a necklace of fires—hundreds of them—barred the west to them, curving outward like the blade of a flaming scimitar.

On the fifth day McKay, lying in his blanket beside the girl, told her that if they found no water that day they must let their carrier-pigeon go.

The girl sat up in her torn blanket and met his gaze very calmly. What he had just said to her meant the beginning of the end. She understood perfectly. But her voice was sweet and undisturbed as she answered him, and they quietly discussed the chances of discovering water in some sunken hole among the outer ledges and bowlders whither they were being slowly and hopelessly forced.

Noon found them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water; but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture—a crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was slowly creeping—a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into the slime again, leaving a trail of iridescent moisture where its sagging belly dragged.

In a grove of saplings there were a few ferns; and here McKay dug with his trench knife; but the soil proved to be very shallow; everywhere rock lay close to the surface; there was no water there under the black mould.

To and fro they roamed, doggedly seeking for some sign of water. And the woods seemed damp, too; and there were long reaches of dewy ferns. But wherever McKay dug, his knife soon touched the solid rock below. And they wandered on.

In the afternoon, resting in the shade, he noticed her lips were bleeding—and turned away, sharply, unable to endure her torture. She seemed to understand his abrupt movement, for she leaned slightly against him where he sat amid the ferns with his back to a tree—as a dog leans when his master is troubled.

"I think," she said with an effort, "we should release our pigeon now. It seems to be very weak."

He nodded.

The bird appeared languid; hunger and thirst were now telling fast on the little feathered messenger.

Evelyn shook out the last dusty traces of corn; McKay removed the bands. But the bird merely pecked at the food once or twice and then settled down with beak gaping and the film stealing over its eyes.

McKay wrote on tissue the date and time of day; and a word more to say that they had, now, scarcely any chance. He added, however, that others ought to try because there was no longer any doubt in his mind that the Boche were still occupied with some gigantic work along the Swiss border in the neighbourhood of Mount Terrible; and that the Swiss Government, if not abetting, at least was cognizant of the Hun activities.

This message he rolled into a quill, fastened it, took the bird, and tossed it westward into the air.

The pigeon beat the morning breeze feebly for a moment, then fluttered down to the top of a rock.

For five minutes that seemed five years they looked at the bird, which had settled down in the sun, its bright eyes alternately dimmed by the film or slowly clearing.

Then, as they watched, the pigeon stood up and stretched its neck skyward, peering hither and thither at the blue vault above. And suddenly it rose, painfully, higher, higher, seeming to acquire strength in the upper air levels. The sun flashed on its wings as it wheeled; then the distant bird swept westward into a long straight course, flying steadily until it vanished like a mote in mid-air.

McKay did not trust himself to speak. Presently he slipped his pack over both shoulders and took the rifle from where it lay against a rock. The girl, too, had picked up the empty wicker cage, but recollected herself and let it fall on the dead leaves.

Neither she nor McKay had spoken. The latter stood staring down at the patch of ferns into which the cage had rolled. And it was some time before his dulled eyes noticed that there was grass growing there, too—swale grass, which he had not before seen in this arid eastern region.

When finally he realised what it might signify he stood staring; a vague throb of hope stirred the thin blood in his sunken cheeks. But he dared not say that he hoped; he merely turned northward in silence and moved into the swale grass. And his slim comrade followed.

Half an hour later he waited for the girl to come up along side of him. "Yellow-hair," he said, "this is swale or marsh-grass we are following. And little wild creatures have made a runway through it… as though there were—a drinking-place—somewhere—"

He forced himself to look up at her—at her dry, blood-blackened lips:

"Lean on me," he whispered, and threw his arm around her.

And so, slowly, together, they came through the swale to a living spring.

A dead roe-deer lay there—stiffened into an indescribable attitude of agony where it had fallen writhing in the swale; and its terrible convulsions had torn up and flattened the grass and ferns around it.

And, as they gazed at this pitiable dead thing, something else stirred on the edge of the pool—a dark, slim bird, that strove to move at the water's edge, struggled feebly, then fell over and lay a crumpled mound of feathers.

"Oh God!" whispered the girl, "there are dead birds lying everywhere at the water's edge! And little furry creatures—dead—all dead at the water's edge!"

There was a flicker of brown wings: a bird alighted at the pool, peered fearlessly right and left, drank, bent its head to drink again, fell forward twitching and lay there beating the grass with feeble wings.

After a moment only one wing quivered. Then the little bird lay still.

Perhaps an ancient and tragic instinct possessed these two—for as a wild thing, mortally hurt, wanders away through solitude to find a spot in which to die, so these two moved slowly away together into the twilight of the trees, unconscious, perhaps, what they were seeking, but driven into aimless motion toward that appointed place.

And somehow it is given to the stricken to recognise the ghostly spot when they draw near it and their appointed hour approaches.

There was a fallen tree—not long fallen—which in its earthward crash had hit another smaller tree, partly uprooting the latter so that it leaned at a perilous angle over a dry gully below.

Here dead leaves had drifted deep. And here these two came, and crept in among the withered branches and lay down among the fallen leaves. For a long while they lay motionless. Then she moved, turned over, and slipped into his arms.

Whether she slept or whether her lethargy was unconsciousness due to privation he could not tell. Her parted lips were blackened, her mouth and tongue swollen.

He held her for awhile, conscious that a creeping stupor threatened his senses—making no effort to save his mind from the ominous shadows that crept toward him like live things moving slowly, always a little nearer. Then pain passed through him like a piercing thread of fire, and he struggled upright, and saw her head slide down across his knees. And he realised that there were things for him to do yet—arrangements to make before the crawling shadows covered his body and stained his mind with the darkness of eternal night.

And first, while she still lay across his knees, he filled his pistol. Because she must die quickly if the Hun came. For when the Hun comes death is woman's only sanctuary.

So he prepared a swift salvation for her. And, if the Hun came or did not come, still this last refuge must be secured for her before the creeping shadows caught him and the light in his mind died out.

With his loaded pistol lifted he sat a moment, staring into the woods out of bloodshot eyes; then he summoned all his strength and rose, letting his unconscious comrade slip from his knees to the bed of dead leaves.

Now with his knife he tried the rocky forest floor again, feeling blindly for water. He tried slashing saplings for a drop of sap.

The great tree that had fallen had broken off a foot above ground. The other tree slanted above a dry gully at such an angle that it seemed as though a touch would push it over, yet its foliage was still green and unwilted although the mesh of roots and earth were all exposed.

He noted this in a dull way, thinking always of water. And presently, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he placed both arms against the leaning trunk and began to push. And felt the leaning tree sway slowly earthward.

Then into the pain and confusion of his clouding mind something flashed with a dazzling streak of light—the flare-up of dying memory; and he hurled himself against the leaning tree. And it slowly sank, lying level and uprooted.

And in the black bed of the roots lay darkling a little pool of water.

The girl's eyes unclosed on his. Her face and lips were dripping under the sopping, icy sponge of green moss with which he was bathing her and washing out her mouth and tongue.

Into her throat he squeezed the water, drop by drop only.

It was late in the afternoon before he dared let her drink.

During the night she slept an hour or two, awoke to ask for water, then slept again, only to awake to the craving that he always satisfied.

Before sunrise he took his pack, took both her shoes from her feet, tore some rags from the lining of her skirt and from his own coat, and leaving her asleep, went out into the grey dusk of morning.

When he again came to the poisoned spring he unslung his pack and, holding it by both straps, dragged it through marsh grass and fern, out through the fringe of saplings, out through low scrub and brake and over moss and lichens to the edge of the precipice beyond.

And here on a scrubby bush he left fragments of their garments entangled; and with his hobnailed heels he broke crumbling edges of rock and smashed the moss and stunted growth and tore a path among the Alpine roses which clothed the chasm's treacherous edge, so that it might seem as though a heavy object had plunged down into the gulf below.

Such bowlders as he could stir from their beds and roll over he dislodged and pushed out, listening to them as they crashed downward, tearing the cliff's grassy face until, striking some lower shelf, they bounded out into space.