[Pg 115]
On the Castle Hill the bluish haze12 caused by the ceaseless bursting of shells and shrapnel in some measure veiled the central scene of conflict; and this haze, spreading far and wide over the landscape, presently assumed the most delicate and beautiful colours as the sun rose up and threw its shafts13 of light on hill and dale. When the light grew stronger, cloud after cloud of smoke was seen to rush aloft from the contending forts, and every moment the sun, with growing glory, painted these rolling billows with glorious hues14 of burnished15 gold or bronze. Here and there, while the people watched, columns of earth and chalk rose high into the air, as shot and shell ploughed deep into the soil, while flashes of fire from the bursting shells, the pale smoke rushing like steam from the shrapnels, and the leaping fountains of soil, all combined to give the beholder16 the impression of some terrific convulsion of nature. So extraordinary and ghastly was the general effect produced that many of the spectators believed they were witnessing a volcanic17 eruption18 allied19 in some way with the seismic20 disturbances21 reported to have occurred at Bath and other inland watering-places.
Yet towards the awful crater22 of this man-made volcano, British troops were now advancing. It had been fondly hoped by the British staff that the tremendous bombardment from the big howitzers, maintained ceaselessly during the night, would have disabled Fort Warden to such an extent that an infantry23 attack in the morning would meet with but feeble resistance. Very few of the officers, however, had any true conception of the enormous strength and staying power with which Wardlaw had endowed his military master-piece.
Yet the onslaught had to be made. To the High[Pg 116]landers—brought over from Shorncliffe—was entrusted24 the honour of leading the attack on one side, while the Royal Marines, from Chatham; were simultaneously25 to advance on the other. The hour of trial came. Firing not a shot, but with heads bent26 low, creeping forward, and taking advantage of every inequality in the ground for cover, the attacking force approached the flaming portals that confronted them. It was but a short distance, for during the night the saps had been carried close to the first circle of wire entanglements28. Some of the wires, moreover, had been destroyed, leaving gaps through which the Highlanders were ordered to drag light scaling ladders and approach the moat, while others pushed sandbags before them to take the invaders29' fire.
Suddenly the word of command broke hoarsely30 on their ears. As it came from the Commanding Officer, a bullet struck him in the heart. He fell with a groan31 that was hardly audible. At the last word of their beloved Commander the Highlanders sprang up, and with an angry yell rushed headlong towards the moat. But narrow though the space they had to cross, the withering32 fire from the machine guns made it impossible to traverse it. The leading ranks, officers and men alike, were beaten down by lead as hail beats down a field of waving corn. The rest wavered, turned, and in a moment the ill-starred regiment33, all that was left of it, rushed down the hill in desperate flight. Attempts to rally them were futile34. Neither man nor devil could, or would, stand against that awful overwhelming hail of shot and shell.
On the other side of the fort, the Marines had approached somewhat nearer to success. Here the gaps in the wire entanglements seen at close quarters afforded some encouragement. With an inspiring[Pg 117] cheer, the men dashed forward, their bayonets fixed35; but suddenly, as if from the earth itself, sprang up an opposing line of bayonets. The gaps in the entanglement27 were filled with German soldiers, and in an instant the combatants were engaged, man to man, in a furious hand-to-hand encounter. Deep groans36 and screaming blasphemies37 blended with the tumult38 of the guns. Here and there in the mêlée, men whose bayonets were broken off clubbed their rifles and savagely39 battered40 at each other's faces; but still more ghastly than the injuries thus exchanged was the hellish work effected by the hand grenades, of which the Fort contained large quantities. These explosives, now used for the first time on English soil, blew men literally41 to pieces. Neither skill nor courage could avert42 these horrible results. The methods of the anarchist43 had been allowed to find scope in the warfare44 of civilized45 peoples. The bombs, wherever they struck, made mincemeat of humanity.
The Marines, like the Highlanders, had been driven back, and there came a ghastly interlude when the Germans sought to rescue their wounded and distinguish and carry in the dead. Those who had been butchered by the hand grenades had to be hastily shovelled46 into sacks and baskets before their remains47 could be removed. No pen could dare describe in detail all the revolting sights which this small battle-field in a few brief moments had revealed. Severed48 heads rolled down the hill, the eyes wide open, the features fixed in horror. In one spot from ten to fifteen corpses49, friends and foes50 together, involved and twisted in a shapeless mass, were suddenly discovered in a hollow. In many instances the force of the explosions had torn the clothing from the bodies of the soldiers. Arms and legs had been[Pg 118] wrenched51 from their trunks and blown away. From pyramidal heaps of mutilated English corpses stiffened52 fingers pointed53 towards the sky.
Many of the Marines who had escaped the hand grenades had had limbs clean amputated by the knife-like fragments of the high explosives ere the rush was made. In some instances the upper halves of bodies lay on the hill without marks of injury, the lower limbs having wholly disappeared. Yet terribly and suddenly as death had come to these devoted54 men, far more awful was the fate of those whom shell and bomb had shattered without absolutely killing55. These slowly dying fragments of humanity lay moaning in their tortured state, praying as they had never prayed before for that last agony which should release them from sufferings that no tongue could utter and no imagination even picture.
Already the havoc56 wrought in human flesh had been accompanied with inconceivable disaster in all directions. Fort Burgoyne, its guns silenced by the more modern ordnance57, was little better than a heap of ruins—ruins piled high above the dead and dying gunners. The more exposed batteries on the Western Heights had been dismantled58 long before the inhabitants of Dover climbed the hill and gazed across the valley. When, after the repulse59 of the British attack, the fury of fight was abated60 for a brief period, and the smoke of battle temporarily rolled away, the appearance of Dover Castle itself filled the spectators with amazement61 and dismay. So great was the destruction and the transformation62 that it was difficult to believe that what they now looked upon had any association with the great towers and massive walls which had been familiar objects to them all their lives. The Norman keep, with walls more than 20 feet thick, had been so[Pg 119] battered as to present the appearance of a jagged range of rock. Peveril's Tower had disappeared. The Cotton Gate, rising as it did to a height of 90 feet and 460 feet above sea-level, by some miracle had escaped all damage; but the Constable's Tower was reduced to half its former height. The upper half, it was conjectured63, lay crumbling64 in the moat below.
What had happened to the Duke of York's School, which the boys had evacuated65 overnight, or to the batteries that had been placed in Northfall Meadows and on the Golf Links, could only be a matter of surmise66. The Pharos and St. Mary's Church so far seemed to be untouched, possibly because the gunners in Fort Warden had not deemed it worth while to waste their fire on either.
In all the awestricken throng67 that stood upon the Western Heights and gazed across the ruined town towards Castle Hill, none had feelings that corresponded wholly with those of Major Wardlaw. Scanning the field of operations through his glasses, his face twitched68 as if in actual pain. The attention of the uninformed lookers-on was constantly diverted from one thing to another, the wreck8 of the Castle, the crash of a roof as it collapsed69 in the town below, or the woolly clouds caused by bursting shrapnel, which still was being fired at intervals70. But Wardlaw heeded71 none of the more picturesque72 effects. His mind, his powers of observation, his poignant73 feelings, were intent on causes, not effects. Every inch of the scene of operations was known to him. He knew the position and capacity of each fort and field battery. He could distinguish, where others knew no distinction, between the work of the big guns, the siege guns, howitzers, mortars74, and field artillery75. A sudden and terrific detonation76 told[Pg 120] him that a huge naval77 gun had been landed from one of the great ships in the Admiralty Harbour. It must have been a work of enormous difficulty to get that gun ashore78, during the night, and a still more terrific task to drag it into position to play with full effect upon Fort Warden. It was the work, as he knew, of British seamen79—British seamen at their best, which happily still meant that there were none better in the world. But, more than all, his thoughts ran on Fort Warden—the Fort itself.
Nearly all his life the study of fortification had obsessed80 him. While he looked at people, or even talked to them, his mind had been at work on parapets, banquettes, palisades, scarp and counter-scarp. All the technicology of the art of war and of the scientific defence of permanent positions was as familiar to this Engineer Officer as are household words to household people. Fort Warden, as already indicated, was the outcome of his concentrated mental labours and his soldier's instinct. In his younger days superior officers had looked rather coldly on his zeal81. He had shown that he was a young man with ideas, and ideas are unwelcome to officials who love red tape and well-established grooves82.
But as years went on and slow promotion83 at last came to him, he had gained the ear of men in military power. Thus advanced in confidence and authority, he had been allowed almost a free hand in designing the modernized84 defences of Castle Hill. It was so desirable to sooth the public mind that public money had been spent upon the works without any sort of stint85. Everything that the Major thought Fort Warden ought to have was there. In construction his plans had been faithfully observed. He had been allowed to make experiments of every[Pg 121] kind. Not satisfied with earthworks, moats, wire entanglements, and bomb-proof shelters for the trenches86, Wardlaw had adopted a novel system of armour87 plates for the protection of the Fort—plates that were produced by the use of tantalum ore alloyed with steel. This hardy88 metal, imported from Australia, had been proved to possess the most remarkable89 qualities. In itself it was heavier than iron, and could be so treated as to increase by 30 per cent. the resisting power of any armour plates previously90 in use for naval or military purposes.
The success of Wardlaw's designs, the wisdom of his carefully-considered plans, the selection and apportionment of warlike material (in the preparation of which the chemist played a more important part than the armourer), had been only too amply justified91. Results affirmed the first principle of fortification and of the art of gunnery, which principle lay in creating and arming a position of such strength and such resources that it could be held by a body of men greatly inferior in numbers to those by whom they were attacked. Fort Warden, the great outcome of the Major's career, the splendid achievement on the strength of which he had retired92 from active service, thus stood justified beyond all cavil93 or dispute.
Yet, as he gazed towards the work of his hands, Wardlaw's heart was full of grief and bitterness. There stood the Fort in all its pride and strength; around it lay the victims of its fury; within it less than three hundred foreigners still defied thousands of British troops on British soil. Above it floated, so far, in victory, two foreign Eagles—the flags of Germany and the United States.
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1
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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burnished
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| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
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beholder
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| n.观看者，旁观者 | |
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volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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eruption
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| n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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seismic
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| a.地震的，地震强度的 | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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crater
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| n.火山口，弹坑 | |
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infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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entanglement
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| n.纠缠，牵累 | |
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entanglements
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| n.瓜葛( entanglement的名词复数 )；牵连；纠缠；缠住 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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31
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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34
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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blasphemies
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| n.对上帝的亵渎，亵渎的言词[行为]( blasphemy的名词复数 )；侮慢的言词（或行为） | |
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38
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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39
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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40
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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41
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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42
avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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44
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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46
shovelled
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| v.铲子( shovel的过去式和过去分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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47
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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50
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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51
wrenched
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| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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52
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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55
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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56
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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57
ordnance
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| n.大炮，军械 | |
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58
dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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repulse
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| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
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60
abated
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| 减少( abate的过去式和过去分词 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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conjectured
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| 推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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70
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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71
heeded
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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74
mortars
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| n.迫击炮( mortar的名词复数 )；砂浆；房产；研钵 | |
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75
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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76
detonation
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| n.爆炸；巨响 | |
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77
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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79
seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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81
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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82
grooves
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| n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏 | |
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promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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84
modernized
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| 使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的过去式和过去分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法 | |
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85
stint
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| v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事 | |
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86
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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87
armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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88
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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89
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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90
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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91
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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92
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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93
cavil
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| v.挑毛病，吹毛求疵 | |
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