The Green Flag | Page 6

crew
swerved away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had
already been made for them.
But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men
leaned moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon
the ground. Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain
Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
revolver in his hand.

"This is your doing, you villain!" he cried.
"If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,"
said a low voice at his side.
He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had
pressed forward, and were by his side. "What is it, then?" he cried,
looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another. "Are you
Irishmen? Are you soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for your
country?"
"England is no country of ours," cried several.
"You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and for
the Empire of which it as part."
"A black curse on the Impire!" shouted Private McQuire, throwing
down his rifle. "'Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me
onto the roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
"What's the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what's the Widdy to us
ayther?" cried a voice.
"Let the constabulary foight for her."
"Ay, be God, they'd be better imployed than pullin' a poor man's thatch
about his ears."
"Or shootin' his brother, as they did mine."
"It was the Impire laid my groanin' mother by the wayside. Her son will
rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
next coort-martial."
In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
already a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was

accelerating. The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by
a common instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could
re-form. Three faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved in,
and badly mauled, without its comrades being able to help it. The
Guards had met a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back
the tribesmen with a volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another
stream of them, as they welled out of the gully. A litter of hamstrung
horses, and haggled men behind them, showed that a spearman on his
face among the bushes can show some sport to the man who charges
him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling swiftly backwards,
trying to shake itself clear of this torment which clung to its heart.
Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of five regiments and the
honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost
all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard officers,
who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold them.
The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had
not spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil,
had lost touch with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that
even now there might be time to avert a disaster. "Think what you are
doing, man," he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader. "There are a
thousand Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break."
The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter. It
is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how he
was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that
moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had
fended them off. There was a Struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over,
a wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and
then through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad
with battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with
blood--blood dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces. Their
yells, their bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of
their spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit.
And were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to

strike for her against her enemies? Conolly's soul rose up in loathing at
the thought.
He was a man of firm purpose, and yet