“This is not the main fighting at all,” said Boylan. “This is but the edge of the game. It won't break into print. The big stuff is farther on. These that we meet are the Austrian columns hurrying forward. This territory is ours for the marching through. We'll catch it later—and this will be forgotten.”
Samarc had known these towns that the Russian column was passing through, yet he had to ask the names, because of the destruction. The Austrians would always destroy in haste before leaving, and more leisurely3 the Russians would destroy. It seemed to affect Samarc, as some landmark4 reopened from its ruin for his eyes.
“It seems to say,” he told the lens-maker, “'I was this at one time, and now I must go.'” Orders came for Samarc and Spenski, but they were not to be remotely stationed, since their battery was assigned to Kohlvihr's division—a different camp but the same field. Few words about the separation, but each of the four understood.... Night and day, the dead had been with them in the recent days—in such richness and variety they could not escape, could not cover them, and something from the dead entered their hearts. To Peter—so queerly were his thoughts running—the memorable5 incident of their last night together had to do with an ant colony.
Supper was over, and they had tossed on a decayed log to keep up the fire. A nest of ants was presently driven forth6 by the heat from the soft heart of the wood. They found themselves hemmed7 in flame and turned back, as Peter thought, to seek the treacherous8 shelter of the nest again. It was not so; they were wiser than that, and marched forth in scores once more, each carrying an egg in its jaws9. Spenski swung the end of the log out to the grass for them to make good their retiring. It was all very sane10 and admirable. Peter respected them....
The dead were with them. They had not learned to forget. Spenski would whimper in his sleep. The days did not fill him, wearied his body but other faculties11 and potencies12 were restless at night. This man who could grind a lens so that a line from the center of the earth to the center of the sun would pass through it without chromatic13 aberration14, was more shocked than the other three by the cursory15 killing16 of the days, his imagination intoxicated17 and sleep perverted18. His companion who imagined himself of coarser and heavier texture19 often placed his hand upon the dreaming one. Spenski would start, open his eyes and say, “Thanks, Samarc.”
Continual rocking through the long days, and the rumbling20 of the earth from the artillery21 forward. A mountain country of sharply cool nights, of cool bright days—the scent22 of cedar23 and balsam, good water, steady skirmishing—food just a bit scarce so that the peasants snapped and bolted, showing sharp about the eyes. It was not hunger—just the lean kind of fare. Peter often watched the halted columns at night as the men sprang to the feeding. Supper fires burst forth at the drop of the rifles. Not so raw now, the Warsaw contingent24, a military eye would remark—getting ripe, in fact.
A week afterward25, Boylan reported at supper that they would be permitted to ride with the battery on the following day. In the meantime they had not seen nor heard of the other pair. Fighting and marching from dawn to nightfall usually; human nature refused effort after that. They were so near dead at night that they laughed about it, and felt their faces in embarrassment26, sharp-boned and unfamiliar27 as the faces of the dead. Mowbray's was still clean shaven. Young Dabnitz, the exquisite28 of the staff, and a rather brilliant young Russian, was the only other who had kept his razors in order. Perhaps a woman ruled his heart, as Berthe Wyndham ruled Mowbray's.
Big Belt had lost his last reservation about his companion. He gave everything to Peter that he had given to Lonegan and something more—for the field called a little more, and perhaps Peter called a little more. The extent of Boylan's loyalty29 had nothing to do with words or matters of conduct so far, but it was a huge affair, a suggestion of which came to the younger man from time to time and humbled30 him.
Twice during the first fortnight, Boylan had asked if this were positively31 his first venture into the field with troops. “The reason I ask,” he explained later, “is that you appear to have been on the job before.”
This would have been a matter interesting to the Old Man of The States, according to Lonegan's story.
“I miss the little guy,” said Boylan, referring to Spenski. They were anticipating the next day with the battery.
“I miss Samarc, too,” said Peter.
Romanceless, remorseless routine. The day that followed was their hardest, for they were pressing the Austrians, taking their punishment but inflicting32 punishment, as if called of God to extinguish a nation. The face of the world seemed turned from them, in Peter's fancy. He marveled at what seemed the swift disintegration33 of an ancient worldly establishment like Austria—going down unsung. It was not like a country losing its identity, though that had to do with the facts; but rather like a shadow passing, to be followed, not by sunlight, but by another shadow of different contour and texture.
“We put such store by names,” he muttered, as he watched the Austrian infantry34 give way before them, “and yet, the world will get on with other names just the same.”
...There had been no chance for talk. They had merely pressed the hands of their friends, something darkly melancholy35 about Samarc, as if his eyes were in deep shadow, and something luminous36 in the eyes that shone from the haggard face of Little Spenski. They looked forward to the night, as men famished37 and athirst in a pit listen to the toil38 of rescuers. Almost the last thing that Peter remembered was that the moon came up before the sun had set. The rapid-fire battery was at work on a hot smoky hill, the shrapnel and larger pieces still higher, and the great masses of infantry moving below among the wind-driven hazes39 of the valley, their long necklaces, of white puffs41, showing and vanishing.
Mowbray's ears were deadened to all sounds save from the immediate machine-guns and the big hounds above; to his eyes the swaying strings42 of infantry smoke-puffs in the valley were spectral43 and soundless.
The Russians had taken the little town of Judenbach in the early afternoon, but the Austrians gave them a stand two miles beyond, finding solid position in a range of craggy hills. The Russians had not cared to leave them there over night, but the dislodgment proved difficult. The unlimbering of the batteries toward the end of the day on the shoulders of a thickly-wooded mass (from which Peter watched the infantry and the moonrise in daylight), was the final effort of the day to drive the enemy farther afield from Judenbach.
The two infantries44 were contending; gray Russian lines in the bottom land and already advancing up the slopes. Day after day, smitten45 and replenished—tillers of land becoming the dung of the land. Mowbray had always pitied the infantry, and watched them now with unspeakable awe46 and depression—moving up the slopes, lost in their white necklaces of skirmish-fire, sprayed upon with steel vomit47 from the Austrian machines.
Samarc's battery was idle. It was often so, Boylan reported, when the enemy's duplicate pieces were busy.
Now withering—those gray Russian lines. They diminished, gave way, a thin ghostly pattern of the whole, falling back. An Austrian sortie of yellow-brown men to finish the task.
“That's our cue,” Big Belt whispered.
The officers were already finding the range and fall. Samarc's machine was set, before his superior spoke48. Peter saw what a week had done for him. Samarc seemed old at the task, already to have grown old. Spenski at the hopper—and the mutilating racket on. Between fire, Peter could not hold in mind the inconceivable magnitude and velocity49 of these sounds. His brain seemed to plow50 under, as it does the great events of pain, the impress of hideous51 suffering which the proximity52 of the machines caused. Yet at every firing the damnable things hurt him more. Fast beyond count, as the threads break in a strip of canvas torn with one movement—yet each crackling thread here meant projected steel.
They saw their work on the Austrian infantry lines. Yet always more infantry would come forth, and in the silence following the machines, the gray Russian lines stole forward again. Such was the slow battle vibration53.
A company of sappers was below, opening the wood of the slope, so that the machine fire would not be impeded54 in case the Austrians drove back the infantry beyond the hollows at the bottom of the valley. A hundred yards down they were working like beavers55 among the trunks of cedar and balsam, when a shrapnel broke among them. The Russian higher batteries had been trying the same game among the Austrian emplacements, but could not see results.
All battery men near the two Americans knew well that the Austrians would note that explosion of their shrapnel, and would relate the range to the higher positions above. That one shot showed the Russian artillerymen that their position was untenable. It was not that the Austrians could see the damage they inflicted56 in one company of sappers, but that the shattering blow in plain sight from their position would show the exact means to displace the higher pieces that devastated57 their infantry.
“We've got to get out of here,” Boylan whispered. Again as he spoke the orders to retire came quietly as a bit of garrison58 gossip, and as coldly. Horses came running down for the ammunition59 carts; every muscle of man and beast had its work now.
In thirty or forty seconds Austrian shrapnel would land higher. Peter was tallying60 off the seconds, wondering if they would get clear.... At this moment he noted61 that the moon had come up and that the sun was not yet sunk. The two on the eastern and western rims62 of the world were almost of a size and color, very huge and alike, except that one dazzled the eyes—the difference between incandescence63 and reflection. The whole dome64 was lost in florid haze40. He almost laughed at what followed in his mind, so strange is the caravan65 of pictures that hurries through in action. It was the beauty above and ghastly waste of the infantry that brought back to his brain the reason and decency66 of the ants in the burning log—their order in contrast to this chaos67....
The Austrians were workmen. Their searching shrapnel had been quite enough. Samarc's battery had begun to move, when they landed in the heart of it. All was changed about, and new. The silence was like a deep excavation68, and the smell of fresh ground was in the air.
Peter did not see Boylan. He arose, half crawled up the torn ground to the place where Spenski and Samarc had stood. They were some distance—a saving distance for Mowbray—when he saw Samarc arise, his face sheeted in red. Samarc was staring about for Spenski. Presently, Peter followed the eyes of Samarc and saw the little man—half down, but looking up toward his friend, the eyes wide open; also Spenski's mouth, and the most extraordinary smile in the red beard.
Peter crawled a step nearer. There was no voice yet. He was tranced before this meeting of the companions, each of whom saw none but the other. Spenski had been partly kneeling, but as Samarc approached, his head bowed slowly down, and the smile was gone.
“Come on—they'll do it again!”
Peter heard the words—but did not know who spoke them—possibly Boylan from behind, possibly he had said it. He had not seen Samarc's lips move.
Now Peter saw none but Spenski, until Samarc reached him, lifted, called. Peter saw the body raised from the ground to Samarc's arms—saw the little man's body open upon his friend like a melon that has rotted underneath70.
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1
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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2
scouting
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| 守候活动，童子军的活动 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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4
landmark
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| n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标 | |
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5
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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8
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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9
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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11
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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12
potencies
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| n.威力( potency的名词复数 )；权力；效力；（男人的）性交能力 | |
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13
chromatic
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| adj.色彩的，颜色的 | |
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14
aberration
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| n.离开正路，脱离常规，色差 | |
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15
cursory
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| adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的 | |
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16
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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17
intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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18
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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19
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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20
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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21
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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22
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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23
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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24
contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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25
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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27
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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28
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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29
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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30
humbled
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| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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31
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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32
inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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33
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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34
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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35
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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36
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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37
famished
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| adj.饥饿的 | |
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38
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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39
hazes
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| n.（烟尘等的）雾霭( haze的名词复数 )；迷蒙；迷糊；（尤指热天引起的）薄雾v.（使）笼罩在薄雾中( haze的第三人称单数 )；戏弄，欺凌（新生等，有时作为加入美国大学生联谊会的条件） | |
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40
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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41
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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42
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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43
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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44
infantries
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| 步兵（infantry的复数形式） | |
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45
smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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46
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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47
vomit
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| v.呕吐，作呕；n.呕吐物，吐出物 | |
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48
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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49
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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50
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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51
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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52
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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53
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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54
impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
beavers
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| 海狸( beaver的名词复数 )； 海狸皮毛； 棕灰色； 拼命工作的人 | |
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56
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
devastated
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| v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的 | |
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58
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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59
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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60
tallying
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| v.计算，清点( tally的现在分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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61
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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62
rims
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| n.（圆形物体的）边( rim的名词复数 )；缘；轮辋；轮圈 | |
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63
incandescence
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| n.白热，炽热；白炽 | |
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64
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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65
caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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66
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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67
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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68
excavation
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| n.挖掘，发掘；被挖掘之地 | |
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69
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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70
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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