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Page 51
"Thanks," said von Arnheim, a bit wistfully, "but I'm afraid now it will
be a long time, if ever. I need not seek to conceal from you that we
were turned back today. You know it already."
"Yes, I know it," said John, speaking without any trace of exultation,
"and I'm willing to tell you that it was one of the results I saw from
the aeroplane. Can I ask what you intend to do with the prisoners you
have here, including myself?"
"I do not know. You are to sleep where you are tonight. Your bed, the
earth, will be as good as ours, and perhaps in the morning we'll find an
answer to your question."
Von Arnheim bade him a pleasant good night and turned to duties
elsewhere. John watched him as he strode away, a fine, straight young
figure. He had found him a most likable man, and he was bound to admit
that there was much in the German character to admire. But for the
present it was--in his view--a Germany misled.
The prisoners numbered perhaps six hundred, and at least half of them
were wounded. John soon learned that the hurt usually suffered in
stoical silence. It was so in the great American civil war, and it was
true now in the great European war.
Rough food was brought to them by German guards, and those who were able
drank at the brook. Water was served to the severely wounded by their
comrades in tin cups given to them by the Germans, and then all but a
few lay on the grass and sought sleep.
John and his new friend, Fleury, were among those who yet sat up and
listened to the sounds of battle still in progress, although it was far
in the night. It was an average night of late summer or early autumn,
cool, fairly bright, and with but little wind. But the dull, moaning
sound made by the distant cannonade came from both sides of them, and
the earth yet quivered, though but faintly. Now and then, the
searchlights gleamed against the background of darkness, but John felt
that the combat must soon stop, at least until the next day. The German
army in which he was a prisoner had ceased already, but other German
armies along the vast line fought on, failing day, by the light which
man himself had devised.
Fleury was intelligent and educated. Although it was bitter to him to be
a prisoner at such a time, he had some comprehension of what had
occurred, and he knew that John had been in a position to see far more
than he. He asked the young American many questions about his flight in
the air, and about Philip Lannes, of whom he had heard.
"It was wonderful," he said, "to look down on a battle a hundred miles
long."
"We didn't see all of it," said John, "but we saw it in many places, and
we don't know that it was a hundred miles long, but it must have been
that or near it."
"And the greatest day for France in her history! What mighty
calculations must have been made and what tremendous marchings and
combats must have been carried out to achieve such a result."
"One of the decisive battles of history, like Plat�a, or the Metaurus or
Gettysburg. There go the Uhlans with Captain von Boehlen at their head.
Now I wonder what they mean to do!"
A thousand men, splendidly mounted and armed, rode through the forest.
The moonlight fell on von Boehlen's face and showed it set and grim.
John felt that he was bound to recognize in him a stern and resolute
man, carrying out his own conceptions of duty. Nor had von Boehlen been
discourteous to him, although he might have felt cause for much
resentment. The Prussian glanced at him as he passed, but said nothing.
Soon he and his horsemen passed out of sight in the dusk.
John, wondering how late it might be, suddenly remembered that he had a
watch and found it was eleven o'clock.
"An hour of midnight," he said to Fleury.
Most all the French stretched upon the ground were now in deep slumber,
wounded and unwounded alike. The sounds of cannon fire were sinking
away, but they did not die wholly. The faint thunder of the distant
guns never ceased to come. But the campfire, where he knew the German
generals slept or planned, went out, and darkness trailed its length
over all this land which by night had become a wilderness.
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