Action Front. Cable Boyd
thing I got was a slash wi' a bit switch he pulled out from the trench wall. We've no sticks like it here, so I maun just do the best I can instead."
He leant forward and fastened a huge hand on the prisoner's coat-collar, jerked him to him, and, despite his frantic struggles and raging tongue, placed him face down across his knees and administered punishment.
"I think that's about enough," he said, and returned the choking and spluttering prisoner to his place between the guards.
"He kept me," he said, "on my knees, so I think he ought … thank ye," as the German went down again none too gently. "After that he went on saying some things it would be waste o' time to repeat. Swine dog was about the prettiest name he had any use for. But there was another thing he did; ye'll see some muck on my face and on my jacket. It came there like this; he took hold o' me by the hair—this way." And Macalister proceeded to demonstrate as he explained.
"Then—my hands being tied behind my back you will remember, like this—it was easy enough for him to pull me over on my face—like this … and rub my face in the mud. … The bottom o' this trench is in no such a state a' filth as theirs, but it'll just have to do." He hoisted the German back to his knees. "Then I think it was after that the pistol and the killing bit came in." And Macalister put his hand to his pocket and drew out the officer's pistol which he had thrust there.
"He gave me five minutes, so I'll give him the same. Has ony o' ye a watch?"
A timekeeper stepped forward out of the little knot of spectators that crowded the trench, and Macalister requested him to notify them when only one minute of the five was left.
"My manny here was good enough," said Macalister, "to tell me he wouldna' bandage my eyes, because he wanted me to look down the muzzle of his pistol; so now," turning to the prisoner, "you can watch my finger pulling the trigger."
As the four minutes ebbed, the German's courage ran out with them. The jokes and laughter about him had ceased. Macalister's face was set and savage, and there was a cold, hard look in his eye, a stern ferocity on his mud and bloodstained face that convinced the German the end of the five minutes would also surely see his end.
"One minute to go," said the timekeeper. A sigh of indrawn breaths ran round the circle, and then tense silence. Outside the trench they were in the roar of the guns boomed unceasingly, the shells whooped and screwed overhead, and from oat in front came the crackle and roar of rifle-fire; and yet, despite the noise, the trench appeared still and silent. Macalister noted that, as he had noted it over there in the German trench.
"Time's up," said the man with the watch. The German, looking straight at the pistol muzzle and the cold eye behind the sights, gasped and closed his eyes. The silence held, and after a dragging minute the German opened his eyes, to find the pistol lowered but still pointing at him.
"To make it right and fair," said Macalister, "his hands should be loose, because I had managed to loose mine. Will one o' ye … thank ye. It's no easy," continued Macalister, "to just fit the rest o' the program in, seeing that it was here a bomb fell in the trench, an' his men bein' weel occupied gettin' oot o' its way, I threw him ower the parapet and dragged him across to oor lines. Maybe ye'd like to try and throw me out the same way."
The German was perhaps a brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an officer pushed his way through.
"What's this?" he said. "Oh, yes! the prisoner. Well, you fellows might have more sense than heap yourselves up in a crowd like this. One solitary Krupp dropping in here, and we'd have a pretty-looking mess. Open out along the trench there, and keep low down. You can be ready to move in a few minutes now; we are being relieved here and are going further back. Now what about this prisoner? Who is looking after him?"
"I am, sir," said Macalister. "The Captain said I was to take him back."
"Right," said the subaltern. "You can take him with you when you go.
They've got some more prisoners up the line, and you can join them."
It was here that the episode ended so far as Macalister was concerned, and his relations with the German officer thereafter were of the purely official nature of a prisoner's guard. There were some other indignities, but in these Macalister had no hand. They were probably due to the circulation of the tale Macalister had told and demonstrated, and were altogether above and beyond anything that usually happens to a German prisoner. They need not be detailed, but apparently the most serious of them was the removal of a portion of the black mud which masked the German's face, so as to leave a diamond-shaped patch, of staring cleanness over one eye, after the style of a music-hall star known to fame as the White-eyed Kaffir; the ripping of a small portion of that garment which permitted of the extraction of a dangling shirt into a ridiculous wagging tail about a foot and a half long, and a pressing invitation, accompanied by a hint from the bayonet point, to give an exposition of the goose-step at the head of the other prisoners whenever they and their escort were passing a sufficient number of troops to form a properly appreciative audience. Probably a Cockney-born Highlander was responsible for these pleasantries, as he certainly was for the explanation he gave to curious inquirers.
"He's mad," he explained. "Mad as a coot; thinks he's the devil, and insists on wagging his little tail. I have to keep him marching with his hands up this way, because he might try to grab my rifle. Now, it's no use you gritting your teeth and mumbling German swear words, cherrybim. Keep your 'ands well up, and proceed with the goose-step."
But with all this Macalister had nothing to do. When he had returned as nearly as he could the exact sufferings he had endured, he was quite satisfied to let the matter drop. "I suppose," he said reflectively, when the officer had gone, after giving him orders to see the prisoner back, "as that finishes this play, we'll just need to treat ma lad here like an ordinary preesoner. Has ony o' ye got a wee bit biscuit an' bully beef an' a mouthful o' water t' gie the puir shiverin' crater!"
A BENEVOLENT NEUTRAL
" … the enemy temporarily gained a footing in a portion of our trench, but in our counter-attack we retook this and a part of enemy trench beyond."—EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.
A wet night, a greasy road, and a side-slipping motor-bike provided the means of an introduction between Second Lieutenant Courtenay of the 1st Footsloggers and Sergeant Willard K. Rawbon of the Mechanical Transport branch of the A.S.C. The Mechanical Transport as a rule extend a bland contempt to motor-cycles running on the road, ignoring all their frantic toots of entreaty for room to pass, and leaving them to scrape as best they may along the narrow margin between a deep and muddy ditch and the undeviating wheels of a Juggernaut Mechanical Transport lorry. But a broken-down motor-cycle meets with a very different reception. It invariably excites some feeling compounded apparently of compassion and professional interest to the cycle, and an unlimited hospitality to the stranded cyclist.
This being well known to Second Lieutenant Courtenay, he, after collecting himself, his cycle, and his scattered wits from the ditch and conscientiously cursing the road, the dark, and the wet, duly turned to bless the luck that had brought about an accident right at the doorstep of a section of the Motor Transport. There were about ten massive lorries drawn up close to the side of the road under the poplars, and Courtenay made a direct line for one from which a chink of light showed under the tarpaulin and sounds of revelry issued from a melodeon and a rasping file. Courtenay pulled aside the flap, poked his head in and found himself blinking in the bright glare of an acetylene lamp suspended in the middle of a Mechanical Transport traveling workshop. The walls—tarpaulin over a wooden frame—were closely packed with an array of tools, and the floor was still more closely packed with a work-bench, vice and lathe, spare motor parts, boxes, and half a dozen men. The men were reading newspapers and magazines;