A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

"I got him," she whispered; "I saw him coming out and before he could get the shell into the muzzle, I fired. He dropped the shell and fell on top of it. What a pity it did not go off!"

Such a bloodthirsty Rhoda Polly! But the truth was that, when it came to fighting and what she called "taking a hand," Rhoda Polly felt absolutely at one with the defence. She only strove to outdo those who were her comrades, and the matter of sex, never prominent in Rhoda Polly's mind, was altogether in abeyance.

I tapped the keys of the Morse viciously. It was all I was good for.

"Rhoda Polly has shot the gunner – now is your time!"

But still the embankment for the four-inch did not quite please Dennis. He preferred to take his chance and wait. It seemed a long, weariful time. Rhoda Polly peered into the blackness along the tube of No. 27. Rhoda Polly wriggled and settled herself.

"Bang!" said No. 27. "Winged him! But he made off!" said the marksman disgustedly. "He was quarrying under the other fellow for the shell, so they can't have many or he would have brought out a fresh one. I do wish father would hurry up. In a minute or two there will be such a beautiful chance – just before they are going to fire. They will send three or four men this next time so that I can't shoot them all. If our folk are not speedy, down will come this old clock-tower!"

Rhoda Polly was a good prophet, and when next she spoke she had to report that there was a little cloud of men on either side, hiding behind the wall and preparing to load the piece, when their comrades were ready, at any hazard.

The four-inch was now poking a lean snout out of the door which had been smashed open by the mortar, and stretched along, laying her on the centre of the darkness, was Jack Jaikes, cursing the Providence which had not given him eyes like Rhoda Polly's.

"Now," said my mentor hastily, "tell them now is the time. They can't miss if they fire into the brown! Right in the centre of the gap in the line of that white chimney."

The discharge of the big gun beneath us quite made us gasp. It shook Rhoda Polly's aim, and this time No. 27 went off pretty much at random. But what we saw within the gap opposite made up for everything. The shell burst under the mortar or perhaps within it – I could not distinguish which. At any rate, something black and huge rose in the air, poised as if for flight, and then, turning over, fell with a clangorous reverberation into the house behind, smashing down the white chimney and causing the blue-coated National Guards with which it was filled to swarm out. Some took to their heels and were no more heard of in the history of the revolt of Aramon. Others pulled off their coats and fought it through in their shirts.

Dennis Deventer waved his hat, and all except Jack Jaikes yelled. He was busy getting the gun ready for a second discharge. But Dennis stopped him.

"Jackie, my lad," he said, "no more from this good lady the day – get up the mitrailleuses. They had only that one big fellow and you have tumbled him in scrap through the house behind. I don't know how you sighted as you did."

"I did not," said Jack Jaikes grumpily – "only where Rhoda Polly told me."

"Well, never mind – that job's done," said the Chief soothingly; "hurry with the machine guns. They will take ten minutes to get over that little surprise and wash it down with absinthe. Then we shall have to look out. They will come, and if we have not their welcome ready, they will come to stay."

At this point I begged for permission to come down and join Jack Jaikes' gang.

I was no use up there, I said, Rhoda Polly could see all round me. She must call down the news, as there was no time to teach her the Morse.

"Well, come along then," said Dennis, and I did not stop even to say good-bye to Rhoda Polly. At last I was going to have a chance.

When I got to my gang Dennis Deventer was speaking.

"I will give you what help I can by sending men from the north wall and that next the river. I don't expect any assault there. But I cannot weaken the defence along the side of the Château orchard. That is where we are weakest, and where I must go myself. For they are sharp enough to know it. I leave you in charge here, Jack Jaikes. Keep the men steady and don't allow swearing in the ranks!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

"HELL UPSIDE DOWN!"

There was strangely little exultation. Each man felt the tussle was yet to come and nerved himself for it. The big square lay out silent under the moon, splashed with the shadows of the pollarded poplars, the benches upturned, a tree or two uprooted, and beyond all the black gash knocked in the row of white houses. It had a strange look, sinister, threatening, all the more so because it had always been so peaceful and well-ordered – like a man's tranquil life till the day Fate's mortal-shell bursts and there is no more peace for ever and ever.

"Now mind, you fellows," said Jack Jaikes, "fire low and steady. They are ten times our numbers, but we will fight in shelter and we have these beauties!"

He patted the three mitrailleuses in turn. He had taken charge of the middle one himself, and set his friend Allerdyce and young Brown to command those on either side. We stood at attention, each man knowing that the time could not be long.

Far down towards the Château we heard the rush and jar of an attack. A similar noise came from farther up the wall towards the fitting shops.

"Jehoshaphat, they are flanking us!" exclaimed Jack Jaikes. And before anyone could interfere – supposing that any had so dared – Jack Jaikes had stepped outside the wall into the cumbered Cours of Aramon. I took the liberty of following. Away to the right we could see nothing, except the clouds of smoke drifting up or being tossed by the rough sudden swoop of the blast, stooping down out of the moonlit heavens and the night of stars.

Jack Jaikes must have been conscious of my presence, but he did not order me back. He was talking to himself and he wanted a listener. As Bacon says, he wanted a friend with whom to toss his ideas as a haymaker tosses hay.

"Down there by the Château doesn't matter," he said, looking that way long and earnestly, "Dennis Deventer is there – with MacIntyre and the whole Clydebank gang – little to fear there. Listen, young fellow, how the machine guns are barking —U-r-r-r-rh! I wish ours were talking too, but that mortar shot rather scared them – though it ought not – easy thing to rush a four-inch gun firing shell at that distance and with their numbers. One hole in the line, and then you are upon her. But – see, young un, there they go butting in at the corner of the wall yonder. We must give them a volley. Fellows, run out the mitrailleuses – my own one first. Easy there over the stones! Now the others!"

Presently with the three machine guns we were standing completely shelterless in the Cours of Aramon with half a dozen darksome streets and alleyways gaping at us truculently. "Turn them to the left," he shouted. "Farther out, Allerdyce! Keep your alignment, you Brown – swearing's forbidden, but think that ye hear Donald Iverach at it!"

The light little guns with the pepperpot snouts were swiftly swung round in the direction of the scaling ladders and the hurrying clouds of men.

Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the handle which was to grind death.

"Lie down, you sweeps!" he called to us. "Flat – not a head up."

We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me.

"GO!"

And then all hell broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out the moon.

The attacking party was mown as with a clean-swept scythe. For an instant three swathes were clearly visible – Jack Jaikes, Brown, and Allerdyce had each made his share of the crop lie down.

There came an explosion of rage and anguish.

"Again!" shouted Jack Jaikes. "Keep down that head," he cried to me, and kicked savagely in my direction as he danced about. I obeyed. No account could be required of men at such moments. He might stamp on my head if he found it in his way.

"Sweep the wall and fire low!" was the next order. "Mind, Donald Iverach and the boys are on top. We must not shoot them, but we must help those ladders down. It is a pity we dare not run out the four-inch – only we could never get her back."

Again the rending siren shriek divided the night. We lay on the ground seeing gigantic shapes twisted in seeming agony over guns high above us. Our chins were in the dust and the play of the lightning flashes made the thing somehow demoniacal and unearthly.

"Hell upside down!" as the man next to me pithily said – a parson's son like myself, but from Kent, Pembury in Kent, where young Battersby is still not forgotten.

The mitrailleuses flared red below and the skies flared blue above. The thunder roared continuously and the noise of the machine guns cut it like the thin notes in the treble corner of a piano. Heaven raged against earth, and earth in the person of Jack Jaikes ground out shrill defiance. But that night the bolts from the earthly artillery were the more deadly.

"Cleaned the beggars out!" shouted Jack Jaikes, or at least that is near enough to what he said. "Now then, up you fellows and we will get them back!"

It was easier said than done. For it was one thing to get the little guns down the rubble heaps beneath the battered gateway and quite another to fetch them back. We were compelled to put all our three gun crews into one, and even then we could not have succeeded without the help of the men with ropes pulling from within. I saw Rhoda Polly tugging like one possessed, though why she was not on her tower I do not know.

We had left the other two machine guns unprotected and had to jump back to rescue them. Still there was no enemy in sight and we got Brown's fine No. 1 back into shelter. Remained Allerdyce, and as we rattled down to fetch her up, suddenly the whole of the square in front of us was swept by a storm of bullets. Somehow I found Hugh Deventer beside me.

"You gave us a good easement up at the corner," he said, "I was sure they would get back on you next. Give me a place. I can hoist a gun better than you!"

He was behind the wheel, but even as he set his weight to it Allerdyce – eternally smiling Scot from Ayrshire, called Soda Bannocks – collapsed over the piece he had commanded and worked. Another man yelled with sudden pain, and I felt a sharp blow on the calf of my leg.

"Clear!" shouted Jack Jaikes, "I will fetch the men. Up with the gun." And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might gather a wet rag.

The storm passed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back.

"Great God, what's that?" I turned at the anguish and surprise in the voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm was – Alida!

I dreamed – I was sure I dreamed. That bullet – those fellows knocked over – Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own gun – Jack Jaikes gathering him up – all these things had crazed me, and no wonder. I saw "cats in corners," as I used to do in old college days when I studied too much and too long.

But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not speak. They keep an exact distance away – about four yards and always in the corner of a room or in a stairway – never in the open. What was he saying? One word recurred.

"Trêve! – Trêve! – Trêve!"

"I proclaim a truce in the name of the Internationale!"

Mocking laughter answered him. The Internationale! What did they care for the Internationale? They were out to kill and to take.

Little groups began to gather at the dark alley mouths. I could see the glitter of rifles and bayonets. Present fear was arrested when they saw us withdrawing our guns. Hope sprang into their minds that they might capture the mitrailleuse abandoned halfway up. Their losses stung them to a wild and reckless fury.

I do not know whence the first bullets came – I think from the north end of the Cours Nationale, where some men had been busy removing their dead and wounded. At any rate it was the signal for a general discharge. The streets and alley-ways vomited fire. The crackle of rifle shots sprang from the windows of houses. Somehow we found ourselves outside on the Cours. We had abandoned the gun. Jack Jaikes seemed to be giving some kind of instructions, but I could not make out what he was saying. What I saw was too terrible – Keller Bey on the ground, the white flag of truce stained with blood, and Alida kneeling beside him.

"Take them up!" yelled Jack Jaikes, "run for it!"

Before me strode Hugh Deventer, huge and blond like a Viking. He caught up Alida and would have marched off with her, but that Jack Jaikes barred the way.

"Idiot," he cried, "who can carry a man of Keller's size but you? Give the girl to Cawdor!"

I think at that moment Hugh could have killed him, but he gave me Alida as bidden, and bending he shouldered the dead weight of the wounded man. "Put him higher, then, you fool," he shouted to Jack Jaikes.

"I can't, they are coming at us with the white weapon. Heave him yourself," yelled back Jack Jaikes. I heard no more for Alida, waking suddenly to her position, fought desperately in my arms, escaped, and ran up the broken stones past the abandoned machine gun till I lost sight of her in the dusk of the broken gateway. Hugh Deventer, stumbling after with Keller Bey, cursed me for getting in his road. We did and said a number of things that night which can't well go in a log book, not even now.

I turned and in a moment was with the small band which Jack Jaikes had gathered about the gun. At any cost we must not lose that. There were too many men in Aramon who knew how to make ammunition for any purpose.

Yes, they were coming. They were so near that I had just time to snap in my bayonet and get beside Jack Jaikes. I saw him shake something wet from his hand.

"Are you wounded?" I asked anxiously, for that would have been the crown of our misfortunes.

"No, that's Allerdyce!" he answered, with ghastly brevity, but nevertheless the thing somehow nerved me. We all might be even as Allerdyce, but in the meantime we must stop that ugly black rush – the charge "with the white" as they called a bayonet charge. Behind was the gun – Allerdyce's gun – and beyond that the open defenceless port, the waiting men clewed there by their duty – and the girls!

Lord, how slow they were – these running men!

"Now then, one volley," said Jack Jaikes, "scourge them and then steady for the steel! Remember we are taller men and we have on an average a foot longer reach than they have. You, Gregory, keep behind and blow holes in anybody you can see running."

I cannot remember very clearly this part. How could I? I rather think we did not stand very firm. I seem to remember charging out to meet them – the others too – and Jack Jaikes laying about him in front of everybody with clubbed rifle, grunting like a man who fells bullocks. The lines met with a clash of steel. I remember the click and lunge perfectly. Then suddenly we seemed to be all back to back, and somehow or other the centre of a terrible mixed business, a sort of whirlpool of fighting. Men quite unknown to us had appeared mysteriously from the direction of the Mairie. They were attacking our assailants on the flank. It was warm there under the trees of the promenade for a few minutes. But after a volley or two, as if they had come to seek for Keller Bey, our new allies decided to retire without him. They sucked back firing as they went, and taking with them the red mayoral flag they had carried.

We were left with our own battle to fight. But they had done something. The solidity of the attack had been somewhat fused down. We were not now so closely surrounded.

"Glory, the tucker's out of them!" cried Jack Jaikes, "give them a volley – Henry rifles to the front. Scourge them!"

It was his word – "scourge them." And that to the best of our ability was what we did. The shooting was not very good, or we should have been rid of the enemy much more quickly.

"Stand clear, there!" commanded a voice from above our heads. Rhoda Polly had got a team of men together to lever up Allerdyce's machine gun. She was now bending over it, and those who remained of the dead man's crew bent themselves to the task of getting it in order.

"To right and left, and fire as they run. Now then – !" commanded Rhoda Polly.

"Re-r-r-r-rach-rach-rach!"

The mitrailleuse spat hate and revenge over our heads. The young "second-in-command," trained by Allerdyce, stood calmly to his post and swept the muzzle wherever he saw a cluster of assailants.

"Allerdyce! Allerdyce!" yelled the crew of No. 4. They did not mean him to hear. Allerdyce would never hear anything again – neither the voice of his native Doon, running free over the shallows, nor the raucous voice of his beloved gun, nor even the shouting of his men as they wrote their vengeance for a dead leader across the Cours of Aramon in letters of blood.

This happened almost at the end of the battle, but what I remember best of it all, in all that unknown and unknowable turmoil of death, is the half-wild, half-quixotic, altogether heroic figure of Jack Jaikes, dancing and vapouring under the splendours of the moonlight.

"Come back and fecht!" he yelled. "Come back and fecht for the sowl o' Allerdyce! On'y ten o' ye. I tell ye I'll slay ye for the sake o' Allerdyce! Ye made what's no human o' him. Come back and I will choke ye wi' my bare hands. We were chums, Allerdyce and me, at the Clydebank yaird. God curdle your blood for what ye did to Allerdyce. Come back and fecht, ye hounds o' hell, come back and fecht!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE PASSING OF KELLER BEY

We were hard put to it before we got the madman in, and then it was worse than ever. For he, our master, the bravest man that I ever saw or think to see, sat down beside his friend and wept like a child. He did not even look at us when we took up Allerdyce and buried him in a long trench with the others who had fallen – five in all, a heavy loss for us who were so few.

"I never want to see Greenock again!" wailed Jack Jaikes, "we were that pack, Allerdyce and me – "

"Go and fetch your father, Rhoda Polly," said I, "this will never do. It would be no use to telegraph. He would never believe the like of Jack Jaikes."

"May God grant he can come!" said Rhoda Polly, and darted off. I went into the outhouse where Keller Bey lay. Harold Wilson was bending over him, a steel probe in his hand. He stood up as I came in, looking narrowly at the point.

"I think we shall pull him through, but so long as we have that young lady" – he pointed at Alida, who was exhausting herself in a long outburst of Oriental sorrow – "I fear we can do nothing radical."

"Wait till Rhoda Polly comes back," I said, "she will get her friend away."

"I do not think so," he said, "she has been trying for some time."

"Could he be moved?"

"Far?" queried the doctor.

"Well, across the river in a boat, and up the hill to my father's house."

Wilson winced. "That is rather a responsibility," he said dubiously; "still, the man is unconscious and will probably remain so for many hours. It certainly would be a good thing if we could be rid of him and of that young woman – though in ordinary circumstances we should not be in such a hurry to send her off."

He grinned pleasantly, and asked how I proposed to set about the business. I told him it would be easy to get Keller Bey down to the nursery gardens by the waterside. Here I would rout out my friend the patron Arcadius, who would do as much for three or four of his gardeners – Italians all, and not touched with local politics. My boat was there, and the gardener lads would carry the stretcher up the hill. They did harder tasks every day of their lives.

"Well, but you see I can't leave all these – where's your doctor?"

I told him I could bring down the resident from the college hospital.

"Oh, I know him, Vallier, a very decent fellow for an interne. He'll do. Well, off with you. I will give you a note for him."

"We must wait till we get this stopped." I pointed to Jack Jaikes. "You can't do anything I suppose?"

He shook his head. "No, it needs moral authority for that. He would care as little for me as for you – less perhaps. But here comes Mr. Deventer!"

"Thank God!" I gasped.

"Jaikes," commanded Dennis Deventer, "bring the guns forward."

Jack Jaikes staggered to his feet and looked irresolutely about him. Was he going to obey? Did he even understand? For a moment it seemed doubtful. But whether his mind grasped the situation or not he answered the voice of Dennis Deventer.

"What guns, sir?"

"Allerdyce's, Brown's, and your own!" said Dennis firmly. "Take command. Forward with them into the breach," and the machine guns moved forward, the remnant of their crews being reinforced by men from other posts.

"Hold yourself ready there, Jack Jaikes," said Dennis, "this is your business. So far you have done well. We had to fight hard all along our wall, but you have beaten us!"

"But you scourged them too?" demanded Jack Jaikes, lowering and truculent.

Dennis drew a sigh of relief. His lieutenant was himself again.

"Yes, Jack Jaikes, we scourged them!"

For answer Jack Jaikes swept his index finger round the half-circle of the Cours of Aramon, dotted with black bodies lying still.

"It's a pity ye can't see them all," he said, "they are lying in heaps up in the corner yonder, where we cut the scaling ladders from beneath them!"

* * * * *

Though our gallant little Dr. Wilson permitted the removal of Keller Bey, the task before me was one to tax me to the utmost. I think I should have given it up and let Keller Bey lie, but for Rhoda Polly. She came out from a long consultation with Alida, and at once took charge of the situation, much as her father might have done.

I don't know in the least what the girls said to one another, or what reason Alida gave Rhoda Polly for her presence in Aramon or for her dislike of me, but whatever these might have been, they must at least have been sufficient.

As I say, Rhoda Polly took hold. She commandeered an improvised carrying stretcher, which had been prepared at the orchard end of the Château policies. She prevailed on her father to lend her a carrying party as far as the river.

The thought of letting any fraction of his few defenders go outside even for such a purpose made Dennis Deventer frown.

"It will not take ten poor minutes," pleaded Rhoda Polly. "I will see that they get safe back. Let me, Dennis!"

It was not often that she called him by his Christian name save in the heat of wordy strife, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of it touched him.

"Have it your own way then, but be quick – don't forget I am risking the whole defence. I do not see in the least why Wilson could not have attended to him here."

She stepped up and whispered in his ear. He looked first doubtful, then incredulous, and a smile flickered a moment on his face.

"Ah, so!" he exclaimed, "I did not know you were so fanciful, my lady."

But he made no further objection, and we lifted up Keller Bey and put him in the stretcher, where he lay without speech or knowledge. Wilson tried his pulse and listened to his respiration.

"Get him away," he commanded, "the quicker the better!"

Rhoda Polly, Hugh and I helped the men over the wall with him, and held the brancard in place till they could get over to our assistance. We did not try to go straight to the landing place through the bull ring, but instead cast a wide circuit about the town, and finally came out upon the little house of gardener Arcadius buried among its trees.

Him I awakened with care, first a hail of pebbles on his window panes, followed the scratching teeth of a garden rake to indicate a friend, and lastly my own voice calling softly his name. He looked sleepily out, for he cared nothing about the town and its ongoings, if the early blossoms were not frosted and his young trees were not eaten by predatory goats.