He saw them around him, lying at full length on the stubble, with their knapsacks over their heads, or snugly ensconced in the copses, or squatting in[Pg 64] the hollows in the ground. The iron hurricane increased in violence. It came rushing down like a furious hail bent upon hastily completing its work of destruction. Men suddenly leapt to their feet, spun on their heels and fell motionless, amid the yells of the wounded, the shouts of the soldiers exchanging remarks and even jokes and, over everything, the incessant thunder of the bursting bomb-shells.
And then, suddenly, silence! Total, definite silence, an infinite lull in the air and on the ground, giving a sort of ineffable relief!
The colonel expressed his delight by bursting into a laugh:
"By Jupiter, Corporal Delroze knows his way about! The crowning achievement would be for the beet-field to be shelled, as he promised."
He had not finished speaking when a shell exploded fifteen hundred yards to the right, not in the beet-field, but a little in front of it. The second went too far. The third found the spot. And the bombardment began with a will.
There was something about the performance of the task which the corporal had set himself that was at once so astounding and so mathematically accurate that the colonel and his officers had hardly a doubt that he would carry it out to the end and that, notwithstanding the insurmountable obstacles, he would succeed in giving the signal agreed upon.
They never ceased sweeping the horizon with their[Pg 65] field-glasses, while the enemy redoubled his efforts against the beet-field.
At five minutes past eleven, a red rocket went up. It appeared a good deal farther to the right than they would have suspected. And it was followed by two others.
Through his telescope the artillery-captain soon discovered a church-steeple that just showed above a valley which was itself invisible among the rise and fall of the plateau; and the spire of the steeple protruded so very little that it might well have been taken for a tree standing by itself. A rapid glance at the map showed that it was the village of Brumoy.
Knowing, from the shell examined by the corporal, the exact distance of the German batteries, the captain telephoned his instructions to his lieutenant. Half an hour later the German batteries were silenced; and as a fourth rocket had gone up the seventy-fives continued to bombard the church as well as the village and its immediate neighborhood.
At a little before twelve, the regiment was joined by a cyclists company riding ahead of the division. The order was given to advance at all costs.
The regiment advanced, encountering no resistance, as it approached Brumoy, except a few rifle shots. The enemy's rearguard was falling back.
The village was in ruins, with some of its houses still burning, and displayed a most incredible disorder of corpses, of wounded men, of dead horses, demolished guns and battered caissons and baggage-[Pg 66]wagons. A whole brigade had been surprised at the moment, when, feeling certain that it had cleared the ground, it was about to march to the attack.
But a shout came from the top of the church, the front and nave of which had fallen in and presented an appearance of indescribable chaos. Only the tower, perforated by gun-fire and blackened by the smoke from some burning joists, still remained standing, bearing by some miracle of equilibrium, the slender stone spire with which it was crowned. With his body leaning out of this spire was a peasant, waving his arms and shouting to attract attention.
The officers recognized Paul Delroze.
Picking their way through the rubbish, our men climbed the staircase that led to the platform of the tower. Here, heaped up against the little door admitting to the spire, were the bodies of eight Germans; and the door, which was demolished and had dropped crosswise, barred the entrance in such a way that it had to be chopped to pieces before Paul could be released.
Toward the end of the afternoon, when it was manifest that the obstacles to the pursuit of the enemy were too serious to be overcome, the colonel embraced Corporal Delroze in front of the regiment mustered in the square.
"Let's speak of your reward first," he said. "I shall recommend you for the military medal; and you will be sure to get it. And now, my lad, tell your story."
[Pg 67]And Paul stood answering questions in the middle of the circle formed around him by the officers and the non-commissioned officers of each company.
"Why, it's very simple, sir," he said. "We were being spied upon."
"Obviously; but who was the spy and where was he?"
"I learnt that by accident. Beside the position which we occupied this morning, there was a village, was there not, with a church?"
"Yes, but I had the village evacuated when I arrived; and there was no one in the church."
"If there was no one in the church, sir, why did the weather-vane point the wind coming from the east, when it was blowing from the west? And why, when we changed our position, was the vane pointed in our direction?"
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, sir. And that was why, after obtaining your leave, I did not hesitate to slip into the church and to enter the steeple as stealthily as I could. I was not mistaken. There was a man there whom I managed to overmaster, not without difficulty."
"The scoundrel! A Frenchman?"
"No, sir, a German dressed up as a peasant."
"He shall be shot."
"No, sir, please. I promised him his life."
"Never!"
"Well, you see, sir, I had to find out how he was keeping the enemy informed."
[Pg 68]"Well?"
"Oh, it was simple enough! The church has a clock, facing the north, of which we could not see the dial, where we were. From the inside, our friend worked the hands so that the big hand, resting by turns on three or four figures, announced the exact distance at which we were from the church, in the direction pointed by the vane. This is what I next did myself; and the enemy at once, redirecting his fire by my indications, began conscientiously to shell the beet-field."
"He did," said the colonel, laughing.
"All that remained for me to do was to move on to the other observation-post, where the spy's messages were received. There I would learn the essential details which the spy himself did not know; I mean, where the enemy's batteries were hidden. I therefore ran to this place; and it was only on arriving here that I saw those batteries and a whole German brigade posted at the very foot of the church which did the duty of signaling-station."
"But that was a mad piece of recklessness! Didn't they fire on you?"
"I had put on the spy's clothes, sir, their spy's. I can speak German, I knew the pass-word and only one of them knew the spy and that was the officer on observation-duty. Without the least suspicion, the general commanding the brigade sent me to him as soon as I told him that the French had discovered me and that I had managed to escape them."
[Pg 69]"And you had the cheek…?"
"I had to, sir; and besides I held all the trump cards. The officer suspected nothing; and, when I reached the platform from which he was sending his signals, I had no difficulty in attacking him and reducing him to silence. My business was done and I had only to give you the signals agreed upon."
"Only that! In the midst of six or seven thousand men!"
"I had promised you, sir, and it was eleven o'clock. The platform had on it all the apparatus required for sending day or night signals. Why shouldn't I use it? I lit a rocket, followed by a second and a third and then a fourth; and the battle commenced."
"But those rockets were indications to draw our fire upon the very steeple where you were! It was you we were firing on!"
"Oh, I assure you, sir, one doesn't think of those things at such moments! I welcomed the first shell that struck the church. And then the enemy left me hardly any time for reflection. Half-a-dozen fellows at once came climbing the tower. I accounted for some of them with my revolver; but a second assault came and, later on, still another. I had to take refuge behind the door that closes the spire. When they had broken it down, it served me as a barricade; and, as I had the arms and ammunition which I had taken from my first assailants and was inaccessible and very nearly invisible, I found it easy to sustain a regular siege."