Behind the Lines (29 page)

Alf recovered the bent cigarette from between two bricks at his feet. “Awkward beggar!” he growled as he straightened it between his fingers. “They wouldn't 'ave noticed nothin'. It ain't as though they was looking for us.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” answered Rawley. “We can't afford to play the fool, anyway.”

Alf relapsed into grumpy silence; Rawley kept watch. The only sounds that reached him were the murmur of voices from the men below, and the klop of hoofs on the road as the horses were walked slowly up and down.
The light was gradually failing, and the mist that was so common over all the devastated area was shrouding distant objects one by one. Alf was dozing, and Rawley himself found the cold and silence were slowly wearing down his wakefulness.

He was aroused by the thud of hoofs behind him. Three horsemen rode out of the dusk and beside them plodded a man on foot. And as they rode slowly down the slope, passing within a few yards of his hiding-place, Rawley had confirmation of the suspicion that had troubled him for the past hour. In the slouching figure beside them he recognized one of the outcasts of the devastated area.

The men sitting on the bank rose at their approach, and the usual gruff interchange of chaff took place between them. The fast-gathering darkness made it difficult to see what was going on, and Rawley had to be guided by his ears. He heard the sound of rough English voices mingled with the jingle of bits. Then boots scraped on the road, and he heard the restless movement that a horse makes when a man climbs into the saddle. Feet pawed the road intermittently like instruments tuning up, and then, following a gruff “Walk March!” the whole orchestra of hoofs broke suddenly into sound. He watched the road where it was visible for fifty yards as a pale strip in the gloom and a few moments later saw the cavalcade pass as a dark slowly-moving shadow. It disappeared and the echo of the hoof beats died away.

“ 'Ave they gone?' asked Alf in a hoarse whisper. “Well, I ain't sorry. What wiv draughts in me ear'ole and 'arf
bricks in the back of me neck I ain't slep a wink. Roll on duration! What about movin'?”

“Presently,” said Rawley. “We will give them a few more minutes to get right away. We've got to go dashed carefully. Kelly did us a good turn when he blew in our shaft.”

“What'yer mean?”

“I mean that while we were digging our way out Kelly and his crowd were being rounded up. Didn't you see that chap those three fellows brought in just before they went off? He was one of the mob that raided the village. I expect they have cleaned up Kelly and now they have got the cavalry out rounding up the stragglers. We've got to go mighty carefully. No more daylight trekking, that's certain. One pipe and then we will start. Hold your coat open while I strike a match. We are taking no chances now.”

IV

It was quite dark when they left their hiding-place. They recovered their sacks from the shell holes and set out. Rawley insisted that the rolled blankets should no longer be carried round the chest like a bandoleer. If they were hung loosely over one shoulder the whole of the impedimenta could then be dropped in a moment. He said it was absurd to take the suit-case, but Alf was adamant on this point. He declared that it balanced the sack on his back, and he had to carry it, so it was his funeral anyway.

They descended the slope and crossed the sunken road. There was no moon, but there were rifts in the
clouds through which the stars shone, and Rawley set his course by the occasional glimpses he had of Altair and the Great Bear. It was a very unsatisfactory method, but no other was available.

They plodded on side by side at a steady pace and in silence. The exertion and the load they carried kept them warm in spite of the chill night air. They had eaten nothing since midday, but Rawley refused to stop. He said they could not afford the time that would be lost in stopping to open sacks and tins. When they had gone to earth in their new home it would be time enough to think of eating. They had brought two battered water-bottles with them and had quenched their thirst before leaving their hiding-place under the shattered roof.

Hour after hour went by, and the ceaseless plodding through the formless night produced in Rawley a kind of numbness of the brain. His limbs moved without his volition. It seemed that he was doomed to march to the end of time through a formless, endless and darkened world. He had no notion of his whereabouts. In that desert from which all landmarks had been obliterated the map was useless. He had set out from the dug-out on a course which, if accurately adhered to, would bring him straight to his destination, but he knew how difficult it was to march across country at night even with the aid of a compass. The rough-and-ready methods he was forced to use left all too much latitude in which to go astray. And in addition they had to make several detours to avoid hutments; and after these it was almost certain that they had not always got
back even to the rough line they were following. The only course was to go ahead and trust that Alf would recognize some locality. One thing, however, Rawley had decided upon, and that was not to continue the march longer than two hours before dawn, unless Alf could say for certain that they were close to their destination. The best part of two hours might be required to find a suitable hiding-place, and they must be below ground before the darkness lifted.

They trudged on wearily like automatons, and the only variation in the movement was when some fracture of the ground caused them to lengthen or shorten their pace and the occasional hitch given to sack or blankets. Rawley estimated that barely three hours of darkness remained.

A huge truncated pyramid loomed up darkly to their left, its outlines ragged and undefined in the murk. Rawley broke the long silence. “What on earth's that?” he whispered. They turned towards it by silent consent. The ground was much broken by ancient shell holes and shallow trench remains. The huge shape bulked broader and higher as they approached. It was mottled with pale grey streaks and patches, and quite suddenly they found themselves at its foot. It towered above them, a gigantic pimple of earth on a high plateau. Its surface was furrowed and pitted; rank grass grew upon it, but the underlying chalk showed in streaks and patches. “My God, it might be Silbury Hill!” muttered Rawley.

Alf made a sudden exclamation. “I know where we are, mate,” he cried excitedly. “This 'ere's the old Butte de
Warlincourt. Don't I know it! Proper 'ealth resort it was in '16—I don't think.”

“I've heard of it,” answered Rawley in a low voice. “Don't shout. But whereabouts is it?”

“Bapaume way.”

“Yes, but north, south, east or west?”

“It's before you come to Bapaume.”

“What, west of it? Wait a minute—how does it lie with regard to that road, the Albert-Bapaume Road?”

“You can see it from the road easy.”

“But which side of it—north or south? Coming from Albert, say, is it right or left?”

“Right—an' it ain't more'an about fifteen kilos from Albert.”

“Good—we're getting near. Now let me think.” Rawley did not think it prudent to strike a match so near a road, but he had studied the map so carefully that he carried a plan of its main features in his mind. The Albert-Bapaume road, he remembered, ran diagonally across the map—roughly S.W. and N.E. If they marched between those two points, N.W. that was, they must strike the road. Then they must follow the road in the direction of Albert and turn off it southwards at Poizières—that was if Alf could recognise a pile of bricks as that village. He turned his attention to the sky. Gaps in the clouds were rare and the clouds moved sluggishly. He had to wait several minutes before a glimpse of the Great Bear gave him the direction of the Pole Star. Then he faced it, turned half left and set off.

They came upon the road in a few minutes, one of those straight French roads that switchback uncompromisingly across the country as though drawn with a ruler; but they did not venture to follow it. They went back a few yards and moved parallel with the pale glimmer on their right.

“We haven't much time,” whispered Rawley. “It will be dawn in something under three hours. It's fifteen kilometres to Albert, you say; how far to Poizières, do you think?”

Alf thought for a moment. “Not more'an eight or nine, I reckon.”

“Well, it will take us the best part of an hour and a half to do that—and then this cellar of yours I made out to be about two kilometres south of that. And we have got to find it, too. By jove, we shall not have much time if we're not to be caught by the dawn.”

“Don't you worry, old cock,” answered Alf confidently. “There are thousands of perishin' dug-outs round this ruddy place.”

They plodded steadily along. Once they dropped flat while a lorry rumbled along the road with rattling chains and flapping cover. That was the only sound that broke the silence.

Once to their right they saw the framework of a raised water-tank dark against the sky, and they went warily till it had disappeared in the gloom behind them. Then a few low mounds of brick rubble announced that they were passing over a village. Beyond it to their right the wedge-shaped nose of a tank pointing upwards showed dimly
against the night sky. Rawley halted. “Is that a derelict or not?” he whispered.

“A derelick,” said Alf. “I remember him. This 'ere's Poizières.”

They turned south. Crumbling trenches lay everywhere about them. To their left the ground sloped down to a shallow valley. “Keep just below the crest on this side and follow the slope,” said Rawley. Some minutes later some stark, ragged tree trunks stabbed the night sky ahead. “There's your wood,” said Rawley. “Or I'm a Dutchman.”

Alf was dubious till they came upon a grass-grown rutted track fronting the stark trees; then he said, “You're right, mate. That's where we 'ad the guns—why, you can see some of the pits now. Come on, we'll soon be 'ome.” And he led the way confidently in among the shattered tree stumps. Presently they were stumbling over the brick rubble remains of a building. “ 'Ere we are,” whispered Alf. “I'll go an' hinspect the billet.” He slipped off the sack, suit-case, roll of blankets, and rifle, and revolver in hand moved cautiously around the pile of rubbish.

He was back again in a few minutes. “It's all right, mate. There ain't nobody there. There's a bit of water on the floor, but one of the old bunks is there and a bit of a table. We'll be as snug as a bug in a rug in a couple of shakes.” He shouldered his load again, and Rawley followed him round the heap of rubble, through a tangle of brambles, and down a number of brick steps. Ten minutes later they were both asleep.

CHAPTER XIX

I

They awoke rested, but ravenously hungry. They therefore ate a substantial meal, washed down with the water that remained in their water-bottles. They thought it unwise to light a fire until they had satisfied themselves that there were no troops in the neighbourhood. At the end of the meal Rawley lighted his pipe and inspected his new home by the light of the candle that was perched on two bricks. It was a small cellar some fifteen feet square, with a vaulted roof. The brick floor was dry except where a small pool of water had collected in a hollow at the foot of the steps. An old wire-netting bunk stood against one wall, and an overturned table with a broken leg completed the furniture. A rusty oil drum, punched with holes to serve as a brazier, stood on three bricks in a corner.

There was plenty of work to be done. There was the table to mend and a second bunk to be constructed. Timber was to be had for the gathering in the wood above, and they had brought a dozen or more nails with them. But they needed some wire netting.

Rawley went up the steps to prospect. It was just after three o'clock in the afternoon, and he went cautiously. The steps reached the ground level among a heap of rubble overgrown with brambles, and were thus most satisfactorily screened from the view of anyone who might chance that way. He walked to the edge of the wood and
surveyed the prospect. Some five hundred yards away beyond a slight depression were the remains of a village, a few heaps of mouldering bricks; one white ragged wall a few feet high, the remains of the church, and two or three shivered tree trunks standing stark against the grey sky. He made the complete circuit of the little wood. On the second side a crumbling trench protected by a tangle of rusty wire ran along its margin; on the third, the bare slope was patterned with a network of old trenches, the old German Line of '15, he surmised; and along the fourth ran a weed-grown rutted track and a shallow zigzagging communicating-trench.

On his way back he noticed the rusty iron cylinder of a pump lying by a small mound of brick rubble. Where there is a pump, there is a well, he told himself, and he set about looking for it. The mound of brick rubble was probably the remains of an outhouse in which the pump had been, but though he probed all over the area with the broken handle of the pump he could find no trace of the well. The narrow pump shaft had evidently been effectively blocked by rubbish and fallen bricks. He was just giving up the task as hopeless when a memory of a boyish holiday spent on a Norfolk farm occurred to him. He remembered there just such a pump in the long brick-floored kitchen, and a yard or two outside the kitchen door there had been a circular stone flag with an iron ring in it. He had tugged at that ring with boyish curiosity, and he remembered how the farmwife had come out and scolded him, telling him that underneath was a well so
deep that one waited half a minute to hear a stone splash in the water below.

He left the little mound of rubbish and walked slowly in a circle round it, stamping the ground and foraging among the grass and rubbish with his toes. He completed the circle and began a wider one. Half way round, his stamping feet struck a firm surface that rang hollow. He cleared away the grass and dirt and disclosed a circular flagstone with an iron ring, the double of the one he had tugged at as a boy. The flagstone was heavy and sealed with dirt, but, using the pump handle as a lever, he managed to move it far enough to allow a stone to pass through the gap. He listened and heard a slight splash far below. He returned to the cellar well pleased with the results of his exploration.