Perhaps, too, you are curious to hear what was Priam’s fate. As soon as he beheld the catastrophe of the taken city, and his palace gates broken down, and the enemy planted in the middle of his private apartments, the aged monarch, with unavailing aim, buckles on his shoulders (trembling with years) arms long disused, girds himself with his useless sword, and rushes into the thickest of the foes, resolute on death. And lo! Polites, one of Priam’s sons, who had escaped from the sword of Pyrrhus, through darts, through foes, flies along the long galleries, and wounded traverses the waste halls. Pyrrhus, all afire, pursues him with the hostile weapon, is just grasping him with his hand, and presses on him with the spear. Soon as he at length got into the sight and presence of his parents, he dropped down, and poured out his life with a stream of blood. Upon this, Priam, though now held in the very midst of death, yet did not forbear, nor spared his tongue and passion; and, without any force, threw a feeble dart: which was instantly repelled by the hoarse brass, and hung on the highest boss of the buckler without any execution. Pyrrhus made answer and dragged him to the very altar, trembling and sliding in the streaming gore of his son: and with his left hand grasped his twisted hair, and with his right unsheathed his glittering sword, and plunged it into his side up to the hilt. Such was the end of Priam’s fate: this was the final doom allotted to him, having before his eyes Troy consumed, and its towers laid in ruins; once the proud monarch over so many nations and countries of Asia: now his mighty trunk lies extended on the shore, the head torn from the shoulders, and a nameless corpse.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The View from a Hill
By John Buchan
British novelist John Buchan (1875–1940) is renowned for his prolific works embracing outdoor action and adventure, intrigue, and historical details. Scottish-born and very much an adventurer in real life, Buchan experienced the air war of World War 1 and brought it to the pages of fiction in his book Mr. Standfast, which is excerpted here. His great fondness of Canada and its people resulted in his being appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V in 1935. The full list of Buchan titles will reveal great opportunities for reader reward.
—Lamar Underwood
We were standing by the crumbling rails of what had once been the farm sheepfold. I looked at Archie and he smiled back at me, for he saw that my face had changed. Then he turned his eyes to the billowing clouds.
I felt my arm clutched.
“Look there!” said a fierce voice, and his glasses were turned upward.
I looked, and far up in the sky saw a thing like a wedge of wild geese flying towards us from the enemy’s country. I made out the small dots which composed it, and my glasses told me they were planes. But only Archie’s practised eye knew that they were enemy.
“Boche?” I asked.
“Boche,” he said. “My God, we’re for it now.”
My heart had sunk like a stone, but I was fairly cool. I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten minutes to eleven.
“How many?”
“Five,” said Archie. “or there may be six—no, only five.”
“Listen!” I said. “Get on to your headquarters. Tell them that it’s all up with us if a single plane gets back. Let them get well over the line, the deeper in the better, and tell them to send up every machine they possess and down them all. Tell them it’s life or death. Not one single plane goes back. Quick!”
Archie disappeared, and as he went our anti-aircraft guns broke out. The formation above opened and zigzagged, but they were too high to be in much danger. But they were not too high to see that which we must keep hidden or perish.
The roar of our batteries died down as the invaders passed westwards. As I watched their progress they seemed to be dropping lower. Then they rose again and a bank of cloud concealed them.
I had a horrid certainty that they must beat us, that some at any rate would get back. They had seen our thin lines and the roads behind us empty of supports. They would see, as they advanced, the blue columns of the French coming up from the south-west, and they would return and tell the enemy that a blow now would open the road to Amiens and the sea. He had plenty of strength for it, and presently he would have overwhelming strength. It only needed a spearpoint to burst the jerry-built dam and let the flood through. . . . They would return in twenty minutes, and by noon we would be broken. Unless—unless the miracle of miracles happened, and they never returned.
Archie reported that his skipper would do his damnedest and that our machines were now going up. “We’ve a chance, sir,” he said, “a good sportin’ chance.” It was a new Archie, with a hard voice, a lean face, and very old eyes.
Behind the jagged walls of the farm buildings was a knoll which had once formed part of the highroad. I went up there alone, for I didn’t want anybody near me. I wanted a view-point, and I wanted quiet, for I had a grim time before me. From that knoll I had a big prospect of country. I looked east to our lines on which an occasional shell was falling, and where I could hear the chatter of machine-guns. West there was peace, for the woods closed down on the landscape. Up to the north, I remember, there was a big glare as from a burning dump, and heavy guns seemed to be at work in the Ancre valley. Down in the south there was the dull murmur of a great battle. But just around me, in the gap, the deadliest place of all, there was an odd quiet. I could pick out clearly the different sounds. Somebody down at the farm had made a joke and there was a short burst of laughter. I envied the humorist his composure. There was a clatter and jingle from a battery changing position. On the road a tractor was jolting along—I could hear its driver shout and the screech of its un-oiled axle.
My eyes were glued to my glasses, but they shook in my hands so that I could scarcely see. I bit my lip to steady myself, but they still wavered. From time to time I glanced at my wrist-watch. Eight minutes gone—ten—seventeen. If only the planes would come into sight! Even the certainty of failure would be better than this harrowing doubt. They should be back by now unless they had swung north across the salient, or unless the miracle of miracles—
Then came the distant yapping of an anti-aircraft gun, caught up the next second by others, while smoke patches studded the distant blue of the sky. The clouds were banking in mid-heaven, but to the west there was a big clear space now woolly with shrapnel bursts. I counted them mechanically—one—three—five—nine—with despair beginning to take the place of my anxiety. My hands were steady now, and through the glasses I saw the enemy.
Five attenuated shapes rode high above the bombardment, now sharp against the blue, now lost in a film of vapour. They were coming back, serenely, contemptuously, having seen all they wanted.
The quiet had gone now and the din was monstrous. Anti-aircraft guns, singly and in groups, were firing from every side. As I watched it seemed a futile waste of ammunition. The enemy didn’t give a tinker’s curse for it. . . . But surely there was one down. I could only count four now. No, there was the fifth coming out of a cloud. In ten minutes they would be all over the line. I fairly stamped in my vexation. Those guns were no more use than a sick headache. Oh, where in God’s name were our own planes?
At that moment they came, streaking down into sight, four fighting scouts with the sun glinting on their wings and burnishing their metal cowls. I saw clearly the rings of red, white, and blue. Before their downward drive the enemy instantly spread out.
I was watching with bare eyes now, and I wanted companionship, for the time of waiting was over. Automatically I must have run down the knoll, for the next instant I knew I was staring at the heavens with Archie by my side. The combatants seemed to couple instinctively. Diving, wheeling, climbing, a pair would drop out of the melee or disappear behind a cloud. Even at that height I could hear the methodical rat-tat-tat of the machine-guns. Then there was a sudden flare and wisp of smoke. A plane sank, turning and twisting, to earth.
“Hun!” said
Archie, who had his glasses on it.
Almost immediately another followed. This time the pilot recovered himself while still a thousand feet from the ground, and started gliding for the enemy lines. Then he wavered, plunged sickeningly, and fell headlong into the wood behind La Bruyère.
Farther east, almost over the front trenches, a two-seater Albatross and a British pilot were having a desperate tussle. The bombardment had stopped, and from where we stood every movement could be followed. First one, then another, climbed uppermost, and dived back, swooped out and wheeled in again, so that the two planes seemed to clear each other only by inches. Then it looked as if they closed and interlocked. I expected to see both go crashing, when suddenly the wings of one seemed to shrivel up, and the machine dropped like a stone.
“Hun,” said Archie. “That makes three. Oh, good lads! Good lads!”
Then I saw something which took away my breath. Sloping down in wide circles came a German machine, and, following, a little behind and a little above, a British. It was the first surrender in mid-air I had seen. In my amazement I watched the couple right down to the ground, till the enemy landed in a big meadow across the highroad and our own man in a field nearer the river.
When I looked back into the sky, it was bare. North, south, east, and west, there was not a sign of aircraft, British or German.
A violent trembling took me. Archie was sweeping the heavens with his glasses and muttering to himself. Where was the fifth man? He must have fought his way through, and it was too late.
But was it? From the toe of a great rolling cloud bank a flame shot earthwards, followed by a V-shaped trail of smoke. British or Boche? British or Boche? I didn’t wait long for an answer. For, riding over the far end of the cloud, came two of our fighting scouts.
I tried to be cool, and snapped my glasses into their case, though the reaction made me want to shout. Archie turned to me with a nervous smile and a quivering mouth. “I think we have won on the post,” he said.
He reached out a hand for mine, his eyes still on the sky, and I was grasping it when it was torn away. He was staring upwards with a white face.
We were looking at a sixth enemy plane.
It had been behind the others and much lower, and was making straight at a great speed for the east. The glasses showed me a different type of machine—a big machine with short wings, which looked menacing as a hawk in a covey of grouse. It was under the cloud bank, and above, satisfied, easing down after their fight, and unwitting of this enemy, rode the two British craft.
A neighbouring anti-aircraft gun broke out into a sudden burst, and I thanked Heaven for its inspiration. Curious as to this new development, the two British turned, caught sight of the Boche, and dived for him.
What happened in the next minutes I cannot tell. The three seemed to be mixed up in a dogfight, so that I could not distinguish friend from foe. My hands no longer trembled; I was too desperate. The patter of machine-guns came down to us, and then one of the three broke clear and began to climb. The others strained to follow, but in a second he had risen beyond their fire, for he had easily the pace of them. Was it the Hun?
Archie’s dry lips were talking.
“It’s Lensch,” he said.
“How d’you know?” I gasped angrily.
“Can’t mistake him. Look at the way he slipped out as he banked. That’s his patent trick.”
In that agonizing moment hope died in me. I was perfectly calm now, for the time for anxiety had gone. Farther and farther drifted the British pilots behind, while Lensch in the completeness of his triumph looped more than once as if to cry an insulting farewell. In less than three minutes he would be safe inside his own lines, and he carried the knowledge which for us was death.
Some one was bawling in my ear, and pointing upward. It was Archie and his face was wild. I looked and gasped—seized my glasses and looked again.
A second before Lensch had been alone; now there were two machines.
I heard Archie’s voice. “My God, it’s the Gladas—the little Gladas.” His fingers were digging into my arm and his face was against my shoulder. And then his excitement sobered into an awe which choked his speech, as he stammered, “It’s old—”
But I did not need him to tell me the name, for I had divined it when I first saw the new plane drop from the clouds. I had that queer sense that comes sometimes to a man that a friend is present when he cannot see him. Somewhere up in the void two heroes were fighting their last battle—and one of them had a crippled leg.
I had never any doubt about the result. Lensch was not aware of his opponent till he was almost upon him, and I wonder if by any freak of instinct he recognized his greatest antagonist. He never fired a shot, nor did Peter. . . . I saw the German twist and side-slip as if to baffle the fate descending upon him. I saw Peter veer over vertically and I knew that the end had come. He was there to make certain of victory and he took the only way. . . . The machines closed, there was a crash which I felt though I could not hear it, and next second both were hurtling down, over and over, to the earth.
They fell in the river just short of the enemy lines, but I did not see them, for my eyes were blinded and I was on my knees.
After that it was all a dream. I found myself being embraced by a French General of Division, and saw the first companies of the cheerful bluecoats for whom I had longed. With them came the rain, and it was under a weeping April sky that early in the night I marched what was left of my division away from the battlefield. The enemy guns were starting to speak behind us, but I did not heed them. I knew that now there were warders at the gate, and I believed that by the grace of God that gate was barred for ever.
They took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and left his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills. In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim’s Progress. It lies before me as I write, and beside it—for I was his only legatee—the little case which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.
It was from the Pilgrim’s Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale of the end, not of Mr. Standfast whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down the words as a salute and a farewell:
“Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.’
“So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
A Horseman in the Sky
By Ambrose Bierce
Newspaper columnist, satirist, essayist, short-story writer, and novelist Ambrose Bierce also chose to illustrate the consequences of divided loyalties in the haunting short story “A Horseman in the Sky.” Bierce was himself a veteran of the war, fighting for the Union at several major battles, including Shiloh and Chickamauga, before he was severely wounded in the head at Kennesaw Mountain. “A Horseman in the Sky” is the tale of Carter Druse, a young Virginian whose conscience tells him he must fight for the Union. This is a heartbreaking decision for his proud Southern father, who can only tell him, “Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you conceive to be your duty. . . .” For this one young man, however, following that advice costs him that which is most precious to him.
—Lisa Purcell
I
One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldi
er lay in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay at full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, death being the just and legal penalty of his crime.
The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road which after ascending southward a steep acclivity to that point turned sharply to the west, running on the summit for perhaps one hundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy to look.
War Stories Page 57
