THUNDER IN THE TROPICS

The scene changes.

For one moment we look, with clearer eyes than the poor old Dowager’s, across the cruel waste of waters into a very real dreamland, and we see Gerard, Baron van Helmont, after two years of weary waiting for glory, wearily waiting for glory still.

Gerard van Helmont stood before his hut in the compound of the little fort under his command on the Acheen River. All round him trembled, with soft persistence, the thousand breathings of the tropic night.

An hour ago it had flung itself, the sudden blackness, down the slopes of the Barissan Mountains, and away across the green islands of the Indian Ocean. It had fallen with the swiftness of a blow, wiping out all the luxuriance of dreamy glories that lay reposefully burning in endless variations of verdure under the moist veil of paludal heat. The wide sea of tropical foliage that laughed down the sides of the valley till within a few yards of the river fort had sunk back from view like a swiftly receding tide, and a living silence now brooded over these jungles a-quiver with hate. The roar of the million frogs in the marshes had at last ceased to beat against never-accustomed ears, and all the other manifold murmurs and flutterings had died down to one dully penetrative tone, whose ringing music, in its rhythmical rise and fall, swelled upon the ear of the listener like the pulse-beat of the world. Now and then the sudden howlings of distant wild dogs broke out hideously, or the clattering shriek of the tokkÈh resounded from the woods. And throughout the long darkness came the swish of the turbid water among its reeds and overhanging branches, as it went playing around the masses of logs and rotten refuse over which it quarrels day and night in slow pushings with the sea.

Nature under the equator knows not even the semblance of rest. In Northern countries she at least appears to sleep; here she sits through the cooler hours on her couch listening.

Certainly there was no rest for Gerard van Helmont, or for any Dutchman at that time in Acheen; there was only the tension of expectant inactivity amid all-encompassing treachery, hundred-eyed and hundred-handed. Barbaric murder lurked behind every tree and behind every smiling face that bent in allegiance. For if an Achinese stoop low before the Kafir it is with the idea, in rising, of ripping him up.

Gerard in this small “Benting” had fifty men under his orders, European and native fusileers. His nearest neighbors were established about half a mile off in a similar intrenchment, a certain number of these permanent camps having been constructed to keep open the way to the sea, for the invading force had gone up the valley into the interior.

The lanterns along the outer side of the wall had been lighted; their yellow reflection created a circle of vaguely lessening defence. Across this, into the dark tangle beyond the clearing, peered solitary sentinels by their guns. A sergeant tramped past. The night was starless and misty.

“Werda?” cried a sentry.

Something had moved, he thought, behind the glooming bushes. Something always seemed to be moving—creeping forward through the whispers of the forest, in the incessant alarm of guerilla night attack.

“Nonsense, it’s too early,” said the sergeant. “Besides, we’re quite safe now, here in these pacified districts. Keep a good lookout, all the same.”

Gerard smiled, overhearing the concluding exhortation. He knew that they were not safe—no, not for one moment. The friendly villagers from the farther side of the marsh who had sold them victuals that morning might even now be meditating a raid, one of those terrible Achinese swoops and withdrawals, the hand-to-hand swarm up the battlements—Allah il Allah!—On!

He lighted a cigarette, and wondered how many he still had left. It was painfully lonely and humdrum and wearing. Danger becomes humdrum; death can become humdrum, they say. Occasionally he met his brother officer from the neighboring fort. Otherwise not a white-faced Christian, except his own garrison, and the commissariat people from the camp, at long intervals, with stores.

He was thinking—no, not of home. Soldiers—thank God!—do not always think of home.

He was thinking of his men. One of them, an Amboinese, had got himself killed that morning through sheer temerity and disobedience. There were a couple of these insubordinates in the Benting, who, wearying of inaction, had broken out once before on the spree—that is to say, on the hunt for a grinning, long-haired devil with a klewang. He had punished them, of course, but at daybreak this morning Adja had slipped away alone, and had fallen into the hands of friendly Achinese. Gerard knew what that meant. Death by the most prolonged of cruelties, a slow chopping away of all parts except such as keep life extant. He sighed as he thought of the poor fellow’s fate, and the inevitable reprisals, and all the official bother and blame.

And he reflected on certain instructions issued not long ago. The army, whose women and children were daily exposed to fiendish barbarities, had been reminded that every Achinese was a man and a brother, and must be treated as such. Kindness to prisoners (even if they owned to having boiled your envoy); kindness to villagers (even if they potted you as you passed their houses)—these were of the elements of Christian warfare. It was quite true. And, moreover, the good people at home that write, in their slippers, to the newspapers never pardoned an act of cruelty, unless practised by the foe.

“I must speak to the other fellow, I suppose,” said Gerard. “I wonder how he takes it? Sergeant, send Popa along,” and he passed into his hut, that the interview might seem more imposing under the yellow glare of the lamp. The hut certainly had nothing impressive about it, with its bamboo walls and uneven furniture. There was a small rug by the bed, a red blot on the planks which alone distinguished this abode from the mud-floored homes of the soldiery. And two or three of the articles scattered about bespoke the refinement of their owner.

Popa presented himself, a lithe little fellow, brown and fierce. He saluted.

“Popa, you know what has happened to Adja?”

“Tjingtjang, Lieutenant,” replied Popa, saluting again.[L]

“You may be thankful that you didn’t accompany him this time. If you had—” He paused, and looked at the man.

“Perhaps—forgive me that I say it—we should not have been caught, Lieutenant.”

“In that case your punishment would have awaited you here. You understand that any attempt at insubordination will henceforth be repressed with the utmost severity. I will not have it. You can go.”

Popa saluted again, and tripped off. His heart was hot within him for the loss of his comrade.

“They call us ‘tiger-faces,’” he reflected; “they will call us ‘tiger-tails.’”

“A splendid fighter,” said Gerard, aloud, “like so many of these Amboinese. And nothing to be gained but death or unrecorded glory. God forgive the worthies at home, who care for no man’s soul or body as long as consols remain at par! If some of us didn’t love fighting for its own mad sake (which I certainly don’t) where would their Excellencies’ consols be?”

Then he lighted another cigarette, and once more told himself that really this time he must count his store. So he would—to-morrow.

He threw himself in his single rocking-chair and yawned. What should he do the live-long evening? What had he done through the creeping weeks and months? What could one do? It was the emptiness which tormented him—the not doing anything: he wanted to be with the invaders on ahead. He groaned over this misfortune for the five-hundredth time. Otherwise, Acheen was not half a bad place—much more spacious and much more mouvementÉ than Holland. Of course it was always horribly hot, and here where he lay, by the marsh, it was even especially unhealthy. Everybody sickened. But then, on the other hand, there were no duns. Gerard looked down at his lean, yellow fingers. Yes, he had altered.

But what matter? Who cared? Only he wished he had had something to show for it. He felt that the Home Government may send you to kill savages, but they ought to provide plenty of savages for you to kill.

In the military club at Kotta Radja he was popular. He would always be popular with brave men anywhere because of his unpretending unselfishness. And many of his comrades liked a fellow who was Baron van Helmont, you know, by George! and he never seems to remember, though, somehow, you never forget.

He devoutly wished himself in the club at this moment. They would be playing, and there would be unlimited tobacco.

“Werda?” He leaped to his feet. A swift brightness swept across the gloom outside. A signal rang clear. At his cabin door a sergeant met him.

“Friends, Lieutenant,” said the man.

Under the protection of a suddenly uplifted fire-ball, half a dozen soldiers in dark uniform were seen approaching the Benting, whistling a signal as they came. Gerard recognized a party from the neighboring fort, his companion in exile at their head. Greatly surprised, he went down to the gate.

“You, Streeling!” he cried. “What, in the name of mischief, brings you here? That light of yours will rouse the neighborhood.”

“Put it out, somebody,” said the new-comer. “I only fired it as we emerged from the wood. I felt no desire to test your sentries, thanks.”

“Well, what have you come for?”

“And why shouldn’t I take my walks abroad in the cool of the evening? Isn’t this the pacified zone?”

Gerard’s brother-commander was a facetious little man, melancholy by nature, and with a melancholy history, which he kept to himself.

“Let’s go into your hut and I’ll tell you,” he said. “Have you anything left to drink?”

“Only brandy.”

“Lucky fellow to have plenty of spirits still!” He settled himself, by right of sodality, in the rocking-chair, the proprietor of the shanty crouching on the bed.

“It’s just this,” began Streeling, with suppressed excitement. “Krayveld’s turned up at my place from the ships with important despatches. The steam-launch can’t get any farther to-night, and he says they must be taken on to the front, in any case, at once. It appears they’ve big plans for to-morrow up yonder.” He jerked his head in the direction of his hopes.

“Yes,” said Gerard, and his downcast eyelids twitched.

“His orders are that one of us is to take them on by road, and that he is to remain in command for the man that goes. He doesn’t know the road, you know—what there is of it, damn it!”

“Yes,” replied Gerard, continuing the close study of his cigarette-point. “Which is to take them on?”

“There’s the nuisance. The ‘Vice’ has left that to us to settle. Didn’t know which had least fever, you know. But one of us may go.”

“Yes,” repeated Gerard, with a sigh; “I suppose it must be you.”

“I suppose it must,” admitted the little man, echoing the sigh. “I’m the oldest, you see. It’s risky work. You’re as likely as not to get hashed into mince-meat by some of those klewang brutes. Save us from our friends, say I!”

“True, I hadn’t thought of the risk,” replied Gerard, with much alacrity. “I’ll go, if you like. In fact, you know, I think it had better be I.”

“Why? Nonsense. You were awfully seedy when I was over here last week. And it strikes me you’re looking pale to-day. The miasma’ll be murderous at this time of night round by the second swamp.”

“Yes,” said Gerard again, endeavoring to improve the lamplight. “How long is it—did you say—since your fever went?”

The other did not answer immediately, and in the silence that ensued Gerard let fall one word from the tips of his lips:

“Humbug!”

“Humbug, am I? And what are you? Yah!”

The two men looked at each other.

“Well, then, if it must be, it must be,” said Streeling, submissively; “I don’t want to spoil your chances, old man. Let’s draw lots.”

“You are the eldest,” admitted Gerard. “Thanks.”

“The eldest ought to remain in command,” replied Streeling, with a grin. “But I’ll tell you what—we’ll sit by the doorway, and if the first man that passes is a native, it’s yours. That’ll give me the odds, for you’ve got more Europeans.”

“Done,” said Gerard, and they waited near the dark entry in silence, puffing.

Presently Popa came by.

“Damn my luck!” ejaculated the little officer, with great energy, somewhere deep down in his throat. He got up. “Well, it’s fairly earned, and I wish you joy. I hope you’ll have a chance to-morrow of getting near the blackguards. Meanwhile I must make myself as comfortable as I can.”

“Oh, as likely as not you’ll see me back before breakfast to-morrow. However, if there’s a fight on, of course I shall ask leave to stay.”

“Of course. Well, here are the despatches. And—by Jove! Helmont, I beg your pardon—here are your letters that Krayveld brought up with him. I quite forgot, thinking of other things. Well, I wish you joy, that’s all I can say.”

“Thanks. I suppose I had better be getting ready.”

“How many men will you take? Half a dozen?”

“A sergeant and six fusileers. I shall let the men volunteer. But I want a couple of natives for the sake of their ears and eyes.” Gerard went out and set to work at once, selecting the best men from among a swarm of candidates. Half an hour afterwards everything was ready; the eight dark figures filed through the purposely darkened gateway: who could say what eyes might be watching, alarmed by Streeling’s sudden blaze? Gerard came first, with the sergeant, their loaded revolvers in their hands. Popa brought up the rear.

Gerard reflected that he owed his good-fortune to Popa’s opportune appearance. “Well, I’ll take you,” he said. “You’re in want of something to cheer you up. But none of your pranks, mind.”

Popa saluted.

A clearing, as has been said, surrounded the Benting; immediately beyond that, however, the party plunged into the forest, and were obliged to advance along the narrow path in single file. They had about two miles to go.

The night hung heavy in the enormous trees and among the tangled masses of underwood. Stars there were none, and the air seemed to be full of gray floatings that veiled its usual transparency. So much the better.

It was very silent now. The whole line of them went creeping forward, with eyes to right and left, everywhere alert, every footstep hushed, as the dim trunks loomed through the darkness in continuous clumps. It was the custom of the Achinese to lurk by these pathways day and night, waiting with infinite patience for the rare chance of killing a single foe. At any moment their shriek might burst forth and their scimitars might flash. The air all around was full of indistinct movement, soft and sultry under the palms and waringin-trees.

“’St! What was that?” They all stood as granite, finger on trigger. Only some faint breath high above them touching the never-silent tjimaras.

“Confound them tjimaras, sir!” whispers the sergeant. “They’re every bit as bad, sir, as women’s tongues.”

“’St! Forward.” Every now and then Gerard halts and listens; his thoughts are of the precious packet sleeping on his breast.

In fact, it was madness, this night excursion along the most uncertain of foot-paths. Why couldn’t they send up their despatches earlier?

Krayveld had answered that they couldn’t send them before they got them. Gerard shrugged his shoulders in the dark. Despatches from Government were hardly likely, he thought, to be worth a single soldier’s life.

With a feeling of very real relief he reached the rice-fields beyond the wood. He stopped and counted his men. Rear-guard there all right? Forward. Who’s that making his poniard click?

Far in the distance, miles away, lay a couple of sleeping villages; those nearest had been razed to the ground; some brute was howling among the ruins. From the fort rang the beat of the hour, as struck by a sentry on a wooden block, breaking across the solitude with terrifying distinctness. Eleven.

Beyond the rice-fields, through the tall, still grass, and by the sickening marshes, with their reeds and sleeping water-fowl, then up again into the great forest, darkling, dangerous. Into the depths of the forest, deeper, deeper.

“Hist!” In a moment the men had formed round their leader, for the noise of crackling branches resounded in every ear. Again.

The enemy was upon them!

“Kalong. Kalong,” said one of the Amboinese.

“It’s the big bats, sir, out feeding,” echoed the sergeant.

“I know,” replied Gerard. “What’s all this row about? Single file. We shall have to be doubly careful.” And on they went, with that occasional breaking of twigs around them that was infinitely worse than the silence had been. It would now prove impossible immediately to distinguish an approaching assassin. The darkness seemed to thicken, as with a flood of ink.

At last they once more stood outside the jungle. Before them, with an open space intervening, lay the camp, black against the darkness of the plain. All around stretched the rapid ruin of a roughly widened clearing; the smell of roots and rotting plants and freshly-hewn logs was almost insupportable. It would have signalled the camp from afar. Every one who has slept in these clearings knows the odor. From time to time a rocket went up in silence, piloting the patrols.

“Halt!” said Gerard. “What’s wrong behind?”

“Rear man missing, sir.”

He turned sharply. “Impossible!” No one ventured to contradict him, but their silence did not alter the fact that Popa had dropped away.

“We must go back,” said Gerard. “He must have fallen. How did you not notice?”

“Please, Lieutenant, it was the crackling. I thought it was the Kalongs.”

They retraced their steps in glum anxiety, and searched back into the forest for nearly half a mile. At last Gerard dared go no farther; already his military conscience pricked him. The military conscience almost always pricks.

“I must take on the despatches,” he said. “After that we can see. I don’t understand at all. He can’t have fallen. You, Drok, surely we have gone far enough?”

“We have gone too far, Lieutenant,” replied the man in an awe-struck whisper. “I saw him farther on than this.”

“Very well; it can’t be helped. Forward.” In grave procession the little party reached the camp.

Having delivered up his despatches, Helmont asked first for leave to stay and see to-morrow’s operations, and secondly for a search-party to hunt up his missing man. It cannot be said that the Colonel jumped at the latter proposal.

The next day was to be an important one, and he wanted every soul that could to get a decent sleep.

“Depend upon it,” he said, “the fellow has been cut down by a marauder. They always cut down the last of the troop.”

“Yes, but I should like to find that marauder,” replied Gerard, “or the corpse. May I go back with my own men?”

“Oh, certainly,” said the commanding officer, a little testily. “You may go back all the way, if you like. Good-night.”

So the little troop slipped away from the encampment and back into the jungle again. They all considered it hard lines, but entirely unavoidable. And they peered the more closely into the dark.

Presently one of the native soldiers stopped on a slope and pointed to the bush close behind him. None of the Europeans could distinguish anything.

“Man gone down here,” he said; “there’s a track.” He knelt and began cautiously feeling along the ground. “Lieutenant, there’s a man gone down here,” he repeated; “gone into the Aleh-Aleh (the long grass); you could see if it wasn’t so black.”

A path of any kind there certainly was not; still, Gerard consented to reconnoitre a short distance, cautiously following the trail.

It turned abruptly, and after a few steps which rendered them clear of the trees, the little party stood enclosed in tall green spikes on every hand.

“’Tis along here to the right,” persisted the fusileer. Here, at least, the dark sky hung free above them, and the air was fresher than in the wood. Gerard hesitated. “We shall lose ourselves,” he said. But even as he spoke a faint purl of human voices reached them, evidently coming from some distance farther on down below. For a moment they crouched, with straining ears. Then “Forward,” said their leader, and they slunk through the labyrinth, with constant precaution lest any weapon should catch, pausing to hearken, seeking the sound.

Their pulses quickened as they realized that it was drawing nearer. After a slow descent, which seemed wellnigh endless, they could even distinguish a flow of sound in suppressed but eager torrent. It was impossible to distinguish words, yet suddenly each man’s heart asked the self-same, silent question: Why were these Achinese marauders, with whom they were on the point of colliding, conversing in Malay? The voice ceased.

The Aleh-Aleh broke off unexpectedly on the ridge of a steep incline. Gerard, slipping forward, sprang back under shelter, not a moment too soon. In the sudden opening he had descried above them, a little to the right, as the fusileer had foretold, a dozen of the enemy grouped on a narrow, bamboo-protected ledge round a tiny, low-burning lamp. Cautiously he now peeped forth, and by the feeble flicker recognized the wretched Popa, bound and stripped to the waist, in the centre of the group.

“There,” he said, pointing. “Forward.” Slipping and crawling along the edge, so as to keep clear of the swish of the grass, the men followed him up. Under them the abyss fell straight.

On the skirts of the little plateau they stopped. They could now plainly perceive that Popa had a gaping klewang wound across his shoulder. What feeble light there was had been turned full upon the prisoner, the wild forms of his captors sinking away into the darkness. They have been arguing with him, reflected Gerard, trying to induce him, by the usual horrible threats, to desert. Judging by the man’s countenance, they had now accorded him time to consider.

Even while his comrades stood watching, waiting—to shoot were to imperil the central figure—the allotted moments must have run themselves out. One of the Achinese sprang to his feet, his big gold button twinkling, and with a hideous flash of his scimitar across the dilating stare of the soldiery, he swept off one of the prisoner’s ears. Another started up with a similar movement, but before he could fling himself forward a shrill chorus of shrieks overflowed on all sides. Somehow, he can never tell how, Gerard was up on the ledge, in the midst of them; Popa’s assailant had fallen, shot through the breast; a dozen distorted, yelling faces were seething around the drawn sword of the “Wolanda.”

Thirty seconds, swift, interminable, an unbroken clash of steel through the smoke and crash of the bullets—thirty seconds intervened before his soldiers, getting up to him, plunged fiercely forward, with bayonet and poniard, into the indistinguishable mass. The little lamp had immediately rolled over; the solemn darkness shook with a turmoil of oaths and outcries rising high above the clang of the fighting and the thud of the fallen. In a moment it was all over. Yet the trembling air still seemed to listen among the sudden silence of the tall tjimara-trees.

A heavy groan shuddered slowly forth. Then another. And again another in a different voice.

Gerard struck a match and lighted a pocket-lantern. Of his seven men, three, including Popa, still stood upright; a fourth rose, stumbling, from the dark confusion on the ground. Of the three remaining, two were already dead (one decapitated), and the third lay unconscious. Not one of the Achinese was able to continue the fray.

“Hurry up,” said Gerard, cutting Popa’s bonds. “No, I’m not wounded; it’s nothing but a scratch. We’re quite near the camp; the least hurt must help the others.”

The tomtom, the enemy’s well-known alarm, came thumping down the valley, re-echoed on every side from twenty watchful hiding-places.

“Hurry up for your lives!” cried Gerard. In shamefaced silence Popa pointed to an easier track. Slowly and laboriously the two badly wounded were passed down by the others; the trail was followed back again; the foot-path was reached. Near the entrance to the wood a patrol met them, sent out on the report of the firing.

“And you, Popa, speak,” said Gerard, after the tension was over.

“It is my crime, Lieutenant; the fault be on my head. I observed the trail as we went by; my thoughts were heavy for the murdered Adja. I wandered down it a few steps in my curiosity, knowing I could soon rejoin you. Suddenly one struck at me from the darkness through the grass.”

“And why did they not come after us?” questioned Gerard.

“You were gone on, up above; the grass is high. There were two of them only; I was alone, marauding.”

“You shall be shot to-morrow,” said Gerard.

“Lieutenant, it is right.”

But on the morrow nobody had any time to think of shooting Popa. At a very early hour, in the dewy silence of sunrise, the gates of the fortified camp were thrown back, and the stream of soldiers, solemnly emerging, went curling down into the rice-fields, with a long glitter of guns. All eyes were fixed on the farther frontier of forest, where stretched, half-hidden, the low, sullen line of the enemy’s defence. A couple of advance forts, whose small cannon were proving especially troublesome, had been marked out for the morning’s attack. Of late these operations had been greatly restricted, and the men now sent out accepted gratefully a possibility of painless death. For the shadow of cholera lay lurid upon the camp.

Gerard was indeed in luck, as Streeling had said, after all these wistfully patient months. He had taken a sick man’s place, and was acting as a (mounted) captain.

In the slow splendor of the burning daybreak, across that vast expanse of increasing sun, the “right half of the seventeenth battalion,” separating from the main body, advanced with half a company of sappers, under cover of artillery, against the fortifications of Lariboe. They were barely within range when the enemy opened fire from his lilas or little cannon, almost immediately backing up the discharge with the flat bang of numerous blunderbusses and the rarer whistle of the breech-loader. The roar of his resistance now became continuous, and soon his intrenchments ran like a torrent of flame under rapidly thickening clouds.

At a distance of some two hundred and fifty paces the troops halted, momentarily, to send back a volley in reply. Then on they went again, silently filling up the gaps in their ranks, while, after the custom of Eastern warfare, a hailstorm of curses and abusive epithets now mingled with the deadlier missiles that poured into their midst. At fifty paces the order was given to charge.

The men, rushing forward to their special point of attack, found themselves arrested by an outer hedge of thick bamboo bushes, with a broad border of bamboo spikes. Once close up against this position they were somewhat more sheltered from the fire of the central line, and, moreover, protected by the artillery behind them; but the garrison of the fort did not leave them one moment unharassed. They were now compelled to unsheathe their knives, and, with the aid of the sappers, they began calmly carving a passage through the dense obstruction of the bamboos.

A few terrible minutes elapsed. Some of the soldiers, cut by the spikes, flung themselves in furious effort against this living wall; others recoiled for a moment, disheartened by the groans of the wounded around them, feeling hopelessly arrested between advance and retreat. Then, as death still continued to blaze down upon them, amid the taunts of the enemy, they rushed bravely to their task again, cheered by their officers, who well knew the strain of such an obstinate impediment. Every moment of delay was calamitous. Through an opening the fort became visible, lying well back behind a field, its ramparts vaguely crowded with brightly turbaned heads. And half-way between hedge and fort rose insolently the banner of Acheen’s Sultan, with its crescent and klewangs, over a stuffed doll, intended for a caricature of the idolized Dutch General, ignominiously hanging by the feet.

Not one man who was there but will remember with what a fury of reprisal this childish insult filled our breasts. Amid shouts of execration the attack on the breach was renewed; but at that moment, above the hacking and swearing, a dark mass, rushing swiftly from the background, rose mighty in mid-air, and at one leap—grown historic—Helmont’s horse cleared spikes, soldiers, and bamboos, and landed serenely on the farther side. Then, galloping up to the derisive effigy, Helmont rapidly cut it loose, bringing down the enemy’s flag along with it, and, flinging the colors of Acheen across his revolver, he fired through them five swift barrels at the clustering turbans which were concentrating their aim on this unexpected target. Then, holding the image superbly aloft, he began backing his horse—all in one exquisite instant of time—and fell heavily, horse, rider, and effigy rolling together amid a sudden rush of blood. Before and behind rose a mingling yell as of wild beasts wounded. A little brown Amboinese, his clothes and limbs torn and ensanguined, ran forward, having fought his way first through the aperture, and flung himself as a screen across the prostrate officer. Only a moment longer and the whole lot of them, with faces distorted and uniforms disordered, came pouring over the field under a fierce increase of projectiles. They swept upward in the madness of the storm, the brief pandemonium of shouts, shrieks, and imprecations, the whirlwind of firing and fighting, in a mystery of dust and smoke. And a cheer, leaping high above that hell, leaping high with a human note of gladness, announced that the fort had been carried, that victory was won. Up with our own orange rag on the summit! Hark to the shrill blare of the bugle! Hurrah!

They disengaged Helmont from his dying charger and carried him away to the ambulance. In undressing him, cutting loose the clothes, the doctor came on his parcel of letters, and, a moment afterwards, on an old brown glove. The left hand still firmly clutched the hideously grinning doll. Popa would permit no one to force the fingers asunder—Popa, who, in spite of his shoulder-wound, had obtained leave that morning to get himself killed by the enemy if he could, and who certainly had done his best. The doctor gently put aside the relic and the opened letters. Gerard had still read them the night before. There had been one more, which he had read twice over, and had then burned carefully and ground to dust.

“Helmont,” cried the purple Colonel, hurriedly, stooping low by the young man’s unconscious ear. “Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I’ve only a moment. It’s the Military Cross. Gentlemen, surely that should call him to life again. Helmont, I swear, by the heavens above us, it’s bound to be the Military Cross!”

The Dowager looked up from her placid embroidery and smiled to Plush. Beyond the great gray window the sleepy twilight was softly sinking back into an unbroken veil of mist. “What a dull drab day it has been!” said the Dowager. “I wonder—” But she left her sentence unfinished. And the folds of the curtain hung dense. For an Angel of Mercy has drawn it across our horizon.