The Angels of Mons | Page 6

fired at his man in the grey advancing mass--300
yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to
the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully over the
head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's
ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted in drilling
funny patterns into dead Germans.
For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something

between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The
roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it,
he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal
crying, "Array, array, array!"
His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as
it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He
heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St.
George!"
"Ha! messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"
"St. George for merry England!"
"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us."
"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."
"Heaven's Knight, aid us!"
And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the
trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like
men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows
flew singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.
The other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no hope;
but they aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley. Suddenly
one of them lifted up his voice in the plainest English, "Gawd help us!"
he bellowed to the man next to him, "but we're blooming marvels!
Look at those grey... gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see them? They're
not going down in dozens, nor in 'undreds; it's thousands, it is. Look!
look! there's a regiment gone while I'm talking to ye."
"Shut it!" the other soldier bellowed, taking aim, "what are ye gassing
about!"
But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for, indeed, the grey
men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the guttural

scream of the German officers, the crackle of their revolvers as they
shot the reluctant; and still line after line crashed to the earth.
All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry: "Harow! Harow!
Monseigneur, dear saint, quick to our aid! St. George help us!"
"High Chevalier, defend us!"
The singing arrows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air;
the heathen horde melted from before them.
"More machine guns!" Bill yelled to Tom.
"Don't hear them," Tom yelled back. "But, thank God, anyway; they've
got it in the neck."
In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that
salient of the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In
Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General
Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells
containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were
discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man
who knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak
knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help
the English.

The Soldiers' Rest
The soldier with the ugly wound in the head opened his eyes at last,
and looked about him with an air of pleasant satisfaction.
He still felt drowsy and dazed with some fierce experience through
which he had passed, but so far he could not recollect much about it.
But--an agreeable glow began to steal about his heart--such a glow as
comes to people who have been in a tight place and have come through
it better than they had expected. In its mildest form this set of emotions
may be observed in passengers who have crossed the Channel on a

windy day without being sick. They triumph a little internally, and are
suffused with vague, kindly feelings.
The wounded soldier was somewhat of this disposition as he opened
his eyes, pulled himself together, and looked about him. He felt a sense
of delicious ease and repose in bones that had been racked and weary,
and deep in the heart that had so lately been tormented there was an
assurance of comfort--of the battle won. The thundering, roaring waves
were passed; he had entered into the haven of calm waters. After
fatigues and terrors that as yet he could not recollect he seemed now to
be resting in the easiest of all easy chairs in a dim, low room.
In the hearth there was a glint of fire and a blue,