NIGHTMARE

Jake Harding from early childhood had suffered from a horribly imaginative mind in the night hours, and had endured untold tortures from dreams and nightmares. One of his most frequent night terrors was to find himself fleeing over a dreary waste, struggling desperately to get along quickly and escape Something, while his feet and legs were clogged with dragging weights, and dreadful demons and bogies and bunyips howled in pursuit. This was an odd dream, because having been born and brought up in the bush he had never seen such a dreary waste as he dreamed of, and had never walked on anything worse than dry, springy turf or good firm road. There was one night he remembered for long years when he had a specially intensified edition of the same nightmare. It was when he was laid up as a child with a broken arm, and a touch of fever on top of it, and he went through all the usual items of dreary waste, clogged feet trying to run, howling demons in pursuit, and a raging, consuming throat-drying fear. He woke screaming just as he was on the point of being seized and hurled into a yawning furnace filled with flaming red fire, saw a dim light burning by his bedside, felt a cool hand on his brow, heard a soothing voice murmur, “H-sh-sh! There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re quite safe here. Go to sleep again.”

“I’m glad, Nursie,” said Jake, “I’m glad I’ve waked up; I’ve had a drefful dream.”

All that is a long way back, but it serves to explain, perhaps, why Long Jake, 6 ft. 3 in. in height, thin as a lath, but muscled apparently with whipcord and wire rope, known throughout the regiment as a “hard case,” felt a curious and unaccountable jerk back to childhood in his memory as he lay on the edge of a wet shell-hole peering out into the growing grey light. “I’ve never been up here before,” he thought wonderingly, “and I’ve never seen any bit of front like it. Yet I seem to know it by heart.” He knew afterwards, though not then, that it was the “dreary waste” of past dreams—a wide spreading welter of flat ground, broken and tumbled and torn and shiny wet, seen dimly through a misty haze, with nothing in sight but a few splintered bare poles of trees.

But Long Jake did not get much time to cudgel his memory. It was almost time for the battalion to “go over the top,” although here to be sure there was no top, and the going over merely meant their climbing out of the chain of wet shell-craters they occupied, and advancing across the flat and up the long slope. Both sides were shelling heavily, but the British, as Jake could judge, by far the heavier of the two. The noise was deafening. The thunder of the guns rose roaring and bellowing without an instant’s break. Overhead the shells howled and yelled and shrieked and whistled and rumbled in every conceivable tone and accent from the slow, lumbering moan and roll of a passing electric tram to the sharp rush of a great bird’s wings. The ground quaked to the roll of the guns like jelly in a shaken mould; out in front of them the barrage was dropping into regular line, spouting in vivid flame that rent the twisting smoke veil quick instant after instant, flinging fountains of water and mud and smoke into the air.

Jake heard no order given, did not even hear any whistle blown, but was suddenly aware that dim figures were rising out of the shell-holes to either side, and moving slowly forward. He scrambled out of his crater and moved forward in line with the rest. They went close up to the line of our bursting shells, so close that they could see the leaden hail splashing and whipping up the wet ground before them, so close that Jake more than once ducked instinctively at the vicious crack above his head of one of our own shells bursting and flinging its tearing bullets forward and down. But the line pressed on, and Jake kept level with it; and then, just when it seemed that they must come into that belt of leaping, splashing bullets, the barrage lifted forward, dropped again twenty or thirty yards ahead in another wall of springing smokeclouds and spurting flame.

Jake pushed on. It was terribly heavy going, and he sank ankle deep at every step in the soft, wet ground. It was hard, too, to keep straight on, because the whole surface was pitted and cratered with holes that ran from anything the size of a foot-bath to a chasm big enough to swallow a fair-sized house. Jake skirted the edges of the larger holes, and plunged in and struggled up out of the smaller ones. The going was so heavy, and it was so hard to keep direction, that for a long time he thought of nothing else. Then a man who had been advancing beside him turned to him and yelled something Jake could not hear, and next instant lurched staggering against him. Jake just caught a glimpse of the wild terror in the staring eyes, of the hand clutched about the throat, and the blood spurting and welling out between the clenched fingers, and then the man slid down in a heap at his feet. Jake stooped an instant with wild thoughts racing through his mind. What was he to do for the man? How did one handle—couldn’t stop bleeding by a tourniquet or even a tight bandage—choke the man that way—why’n blazes hadn’t the ambulance classes told them how to handle a man with a bullet in his throat? (The answer to that last, perhaps, if Jake had only known, being that usually the man is past handling or helping.)

Then before Jake could attempt anything he knew the man was dead. Jake went on, and now he was conscious of vicious little hisses and whutts and sharp slaps and smacks in the wet ground about him, and knew these for bullets passing or striking close.

The barrage lifted again, this time before they were well up on it, and the line ploughed on in pursuit of it. That was the third lift. Jake tried to recall how many times the pretended barrage had lifted in the practice attacks behind the lines, how many yards there were there from their own marked position to the taped-out lines representing the German positions.

Then through the bellowing of the guns, the unceasing howl of the shells, the running crashes of their bursts Jake heard a sharp tat-tat-tat, another like an echo joining it, another and another until the whole blended in a hurrying clatter and swift running rattle.

“Machine-guns,” he gasped. “Now we’re for it,” but plunged on doggedly. He could see something dimly grey looming through the smoke haze, with red jets of fire sparkling and spitting from it ... more spurting jets ... and still more, both these last lots seen before he could make out the loom of the block-house shelters that covered them. Jake knew where he was now. These were the concrete redoubts, emplacements, “pill-boxes.” But they were none of his business. Everyone had been carefully drilled in their own jobs; there were the proper parties told off to deal with the pill-boxes; his business was to push straight on past them, clearing any Germans out of the shell-hole they might be holding, then stop and help dig some sort of linked-up line of holes, and stand by to beat off any counter-attack. So Jake went steadily on, looking sharply about him for any Germans. A rifle flamed suddenly from a couple of yards ahead of him, and he felt the wind of the bullet by his face, thought for a moment he was blinded by the flash. But as he staggered back a bomber thrust past him and threw straight and hard into the shell-hole where the rifle had flashed. Jake saw a jumping sheet of flame, heard the crash of the bomb, felt the shower of dirt and wet flung from off the crater lip in his face, steadied himself, and plunged off after the hurrying bomber.

The next bit was rather involved, and Jake was never sure exactly what happened. There were some grey figures in front of him, scurrying to and fro confusedly, some with long coats flapping about their ankles, others with only half bodies or shoulders showing above the shell-hole edges. He thought some were holding their hands up; but others—this was too clear to doubt—were shooting rapidly at him and the rest of the line, the red tongues of flame licking out from the rifles straight at them. Jake dived to a shell hole and began firing back, felt somebody slide and scramble down beside him, turned to find the bomber picking himself up and shaking a blood-dripping left hand. “Come on, Jake,” yelled the bomber. “Rush ’em’s the game,” and went scrambling and floundering out of the hole with Jake close at his heels. There was a minute’s wild shooting and bombing, and the rest of the Germans either ran, or fell, or came crouching forward towards them with their empty hands high and waving over their heads.

An officer appeared suddenly from somewhere. “Come along. Push on!” he was shouting. “Bit further before we make a line to hold. Push on,” and he led the way forward at a staggering trot. Jake and the others followed.

They reached the wide flattened crest of the slope they were attacking and were pushing on over it when a rapid stutter of machine-gun fire broke out on their left flank, and a stream of bullets came sheeting and whipping along the top of the slope. The line was fairly caught in the bullet-storm, and suffered heavily in the next minute. There was some shooting from shell holes in front, too, but that was nothing to the galling fire that poured on them from the flank. Jake heard suddenly the long, insistent scream of a whistle, looked round and saw an officer signalling to take cover. He dropped promptly into a shell crater, and, hearing presently the bang of rifles round him, peered out over the edge for a mark to shoot at. Out to his left he caught sight of a sparkle of fire, and heard the rapid clatter of the machine-guns. He could just make out the rounded top of a buried concrete emplacement, and the black slit that marked the embrasure, and began to aim and fire steadily and carefully at it. The emplacement held its fire more now, but every now and then delivered a flickering string of flashes and a venomous rat-at-at-at. Jake kept on firing at it, glancing round every little while to be sure that the others were not moving on without him. The noisy banging raps of close-by machine-gunning broke out suddenly, and on Jake looking round from his shell hole he found a gun in action not more than a dozen yards away; and while he looked another one began to fire steadily from another shell crater fifty or sixty yards farther along. Jake crawled out of his hole, slithered over the rough ground and down into the crater where the nearest machine-gun banged rapidly. A sergeant was with the team, and Jake bawled in his ear, “If you’ll keep pottin’ at him every time he opens fire, I’ll try’n sneak over an’ out him with a bomb in the letter-box.”

“Please yerself,” returned the sergeant. “My job’s to keep pumpin’ ’em down ’is throat every time ’e opens ’is mouth.”

“Watch you don’t plug me in mistake when I get there,” said Jake, and crawled out of the hole. He ducked hastily into another as he heard the enemy bullets spatter about him, shift and begin to smack and splash about the gun he had just left. That gun ceased fire suddenly, but the one fifty yards farther round kept on furiously. “Got him in the neck, I s’pose,” said Jake, “worse luck.”

He had a couple of Mills’ bombs in his pockets, but added to his stock from a half-empty bucket he found lying by a dead bomber in a crater. He advanced cautiously, wriggling hurriedly over the dividing ground between craters, keeping down under cover as much as possible, working out and then sidling in towards the red flashes that kept spurting out at intervals from the emplacement. Once it seemed that the enemy gunners had spotted him as he crawled and wriggled from one hole to another, and a gust of bullets came suddenly ripping and whipping about him as he hurled himself forward and plunged head foremost into a crater with his left side tingling and blood trickling from his left arm. He fingered the rent in his tunic and satisfied himself that the side wound was no more than a graze, the arm one a clean perforation which did not appear to have touched the bone. Twice after that he heard the bullets’ swish-ish-ish sweeping over his head, or dropping to spatter the dirt flying from the edge of a hole he had reached. But he worked steadily on all the same, passed the line of the front and side embrasures, and was pondering his next move, when a sudden rapid outburst of fire made him lift his head and peer out. A dozen men had appeared suddenly within twenty yards of the emplacement and were making as rapid a dash for it as the ground allowed. The machine-guns were hailing bullets at them as hard as they could fire, and man after man plunged and fell and rolled and squirmed into holes or lay still in the open.

Jake did not wait to see the result of the dash. He was up and out of his cover and running in himself as fast as the wet ground would allow him. He was almost on the emplacement when a gun slewed round and banged a short burst at him. He felt the rush of bullets past his face, a pluck at his sleeve and shoulder strap, a blow on his shrapnel helmet, made a last desperate plunge forward, and scrambled on to the low roof. Hurriedly he pulled a bomb from his pocket and jerked the pin out, when a couple of rifles banged close behind them, a bullet whipped past overhead, and another smacked and ricochetted screaming from the concrete. Jake twisted, saw the head and shoulders of two men with rifles levelled over a hole, and quick as a flash hurled his bomb. The men ducked, and Jake drew the pin from another bomb and lobbed it carefully over just as the first bomb burst. The other followed, exploding fairly in the hole and evidently deep down since the report was low and muffled. Jake pulled another pin, and was leaning over to locate an embrasure when the gun flamed out from it. Jake released the spring, counted carefully “One and two and three and——” leaned over and slammed the bomb fairly into the slit. He had another bomb out as it burst—well inside by the sound of it—and this time leaned over and deliberately thrust it in through the opening. He had barely snatched his hand out when it went off with a muffled crash. Jake heard screams inside, and then an instant later loud calls behind him. He jerked round to see half a dozen arms waving from the hole where he had flung the first bomb. This, as he found after, was the underground stair down and up again into the emplacement, and the waving arms were in token of the garrison’s surrender.

Jake stood on the roof and waved his arm, while keeping a cautious eye on the surrenderers, saw the mud-daubed khaki figures rise from their holes and come scrambling forward, and sat down suddenly, feeling unpleasantly faint and sickish.

His officer’s voice recalled him. “Well done, lad, well done. This cursed thing was fairly holding us up till you scuppered it. We’ve got our objective line now.”

Jake staggered to his feet.

“You’re wounded,” went on the officer. “Get back out of this, and give a message to anyone that’ll take it, that we’ve got our third objective line, and want supports and ammunition quick as possible. Go on, off with you, now.”

“Right, sir!” said Jake with an effort, and started off back across the shell-torn ground again.

He felt a bit dizzy still—side hurt a heap—arm getting numb, too—must keep going and get that message through——

A high-explosive shrapnel burst directly overhead, and Jake heard several small pieces whip-down and one heavy bit splash thudding into the ground a yard from his feet. And this was only the first shell of many. The Germans had seen that their ground was lost, and were beginning to barrage it. Jake staggered blindly across the broken ground, in and out and round the craters, over sodden mounds that caught at his feet and crumbled wetly under his tread. Huge clods of wet earth clung to his feet and legs and made every step an effort. The shell fire was growing more and more intense, thundering and crashing and hurling cascades of mud and splinters in every direction, passing overhead in long-drawn howls and moans and yellings, or the short savage screams and rush of the nearer passing. The ground was veiled in smoke and drifting haze, and stretched as far as he could see in a dreary perspective of shiny wet earth and ragged holes. He felt that he’d never cover it, never get clear of these cursed—what were they—shells, bogies, demons screaming and howling for his life. He plunged into a patch of low-lying ground, sticky swamp that sank him knee deep at every step, that clutched and clung about his feet and held each foot gripped as he dragged it sucking out and swung it forward. He wanted to run—run—run—but his legs were lead—and the bogies were very close—and now there were dead men amongst his feet—horribly mud-bedaubed dead, half-buried in the ooze—and helmets, and scattered packs, and haversacks. A festering stench rose from the slime he waded through. He tried again to run, but could only stagger slowly, dragging one foot clear after the other. Once he trod on something he thought a lump of drier mud, and it squirmed weakly under his foot, and a white face twisted round and up, mouthing feeble curses at him. There were other things, horrible things he turned his eyes from as he tried to hurry past—and red stains on the frothy green scum. He reeled on, stupid and dazed, with the thunderous crashes of a world shattering and dissolving about him, deafened by the demon screeches and howlings. There were other people with him, some wandering aimlessly, others going direct the one way, meeting still others going the opposite, but all dragging clogged, weighted feet. Some fell and did not rise. Jake knew they had been caught. He saw two men who were carrying something, a stretcher, stop and look up, and lower the stretcher hastily and drop, one flat on his face, the other crouched low and still looking up. A spurt of red flame flung a rolling cloud of black smoke about them, and seconds after a flattened steel helmet whistled down out of the sky and thudded in the mud by Jake. When he came to where they had been there was only a hole with blue and grey reek curling slowly up its black calcined sides. Jake knew the three had been caught, too—as he would be caught, if he didn’t hurry. He struggled, panting.

They were still yelling and howling, looking for him. Demons, bogymen—and here was the loudest, and fiercest, the worst of them all—louder and louder to a tremendous chorus of all the noises devils ever made. He was flinging himself down to escape the demon clutch (thereby probably saving his life, since the great shell burst a bare score yards away) when he heard the thunderous clash of the furnace-doors flung back, caught a searing glimpse of the leaping red flames, and was hurled headlong.

As he fell he tried to scream. He did scream, but—although he knew nothing of the gap, and thought it was on the instant of his falling—it was days later—a queer choking, strangled cry that brought a cool hand on his hot forehead, a quiet voice hushing and soothing him and saying he was “all right now.”

He opened his eyes and closed them again with a sigh of relief and content. A low light was burning by his bed, the shadowy figure of a woman bent over him, and between the opening and closing of his eyes, his mind flicked back to full fifteen years.

“I’m glad I waked, Nursie,” he said weakly. “I’ve had a drefful dream; the very dreffulest I’ve ever had.”