第137章 CHAPTER III WAR(8)

Everything appeared clean with that simple and rather clumsy cleanliness exercised by men living far from women and thrown upon their own resources. The galleries were something like the cloisters of a monastery, the corridors of a prison, and the middle sections of a ship. Their floors were a half yard lower than that of the open spaces which joined the trenches together. In order that the officers might avoid so many ups and downs, some planks had been laid, forming a sort of scaffolding from doorway to doorway.

Upon the approach of their Chief, the soldiers formed themselves in line, their heads being on a level with the waist of those passing over the planks. Desnoyers ran his eye hungrily over the file of men. Where could Julio be? . . .

He noticed the individual contour of the different redoubts. They all seemed to have been constructed in about the same way, but their occupants had modified them with their special personal decorations.

The exteriors were always cut with loopholes in which there were guns pointed toward the enemy, and windows for the mitrailleuses.

The watchers near these openings were looking over the lonely landscape like quartermasters surveying the sea from the bridge.

Within were the armories and the sleeping rooms--three rows of berths made with planks like the beds of seamen. The desire for artistic ornamentation which even the simplest souls always feel, had led to the embellishment of the underground dwellings. Each soldier had a private museum made with prints from the papers and colored postcards. Photographs of soubrettes and dancers with their painted mouths smiled from the shiny cardboard, enlivening the chaste aspect of the redoubt.

Don Marcelo was growing more and more impatient at seeing so many hundreds of men, but no Julio. The senator, complying with his imploring glance, spoke a few words to the chief preceding him with an aspect of great deference. The official had at first to think very hard to recall Julio to mind, but he soon remembered the exploits of Sergeant Desnoyers. "An excellent soldier," he said.

"He will be sent for immediately, Senator Lacour. . . . He is on duty now with his section in the first line trenches."

The father, in his anxiety to see him, proposed that they betake themselves to that advanced site, but his petition made the Chief and the others smile. Those open trenches within a hundred or fifty yards from the enemy, with no other defence but barbed wire and sacks of earth, were not for the visits of civilians. They were always filled with mud; the visitors would have to crawl around exposed to bullets and under the dropping chunks of earth loosened by the shells. None but the combatants could get around in these outposts.

"It is always dangerous there," said the Chief. "There is always random shooting. . . . Just listen to the firing!"

Desnoyers indeed perceived a distant crackling that he had not noted before, and he felt an added anguish at the thought that his son must be in the thick of it. Realization of the dangers to which he must be daily exposed, now stood forth in high relief. What if he should die in the intervening moments, before he could see him? . . .

Time dragged by with desperate sluggishness for Don Marcelo. It seemed to him that the messenger who had been despatched for him would never arrive. He paid scarcely any attention to the affairs which the Chief was so courteously showing them--the caverns which served the soldiers as toilet rooms and bathrooms of most primitive arrangement, the cave with the sign, "Cafe de la Victoire," another in fanciful lettering, "Theatre." . . . Lacour was taking a lively interest in all this, lauding the French gaiety which laughs and sings in the presence of danger, while his friend continued brooding about Julio. When would he ever see him?

They stopped near one of the embrasures of a machine-gun position stationing themselves at the recommendations of the soldiers, on both sides of the horizontal opening, keeping their bodies well back, but putting their heads far enough forward to look out with one eye. They saw a very deep excavation and the opposite edge of ground. A short distance away were several rows of X's of wood united by barbed wire, forming a compact fence. About three hundred feet further on, was a second wire fence. There reigned a profound silence here, a silence of absolute loneliness as though the world was asleep.

"There are the trenches of the Boches," said the Commandant, in a low tone.

"Where?" asked the senator, making an effort to see.

The Chief pointed to the second wire fence which Lacour and his friend had supposed belonged to the French. It was the German intrenchment line.

"We are only a hundred yards away from them," he continued, "but for some time they have not been attacking from this side."

The visitors were greatly moved at learning that the foe was such a short distance off, hidden in the ground in a mysterious invisibility which made it all the more terrible. What if they should pop out now with their saw-edged bayonets, fire-breathing liquids and asphyxiating bombs to assault this stronghold! . . .

From this window they could observe more clearly the intensity of the firing on the outer line. The shots appeared to be coming nearer. The Commandant brusquely ordered them to leave their observatory, fearing that the fire might become general. The soldiers, with their customary promptitude, without receiving any orders, approached their guns which were in horizontal position, pointing through the loopholes.