WAR STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 68, 20 March 1915, Page 18

WAR STORIES.

I (By OLE-LUK-OIE.)

THE SECOND DEGREE.

(Oondmded). IV. The Chief of Staff eat deep in thought, trying to ineca.ll a now far-distant epoch of his past schoolboy daye. Slowly it came back to him, bit by bit, each Tpminisctmce of the old life drawing another in ite train. He recollected the •house, thte maetrns, and many of three utterly undmporfcwi* details which eHng to ttoe memory—the shape of the cracks m the dormitory ceiling at which he used to store on the late Sunday morni-nge, the hot (stuffy emell of the Gcbootroom on a, summer afternoon, even <the taste of the pale and watered ink with which he used to cover hie ftngere. H« recalled many of hie schoolfellows, amongst them one ratlwr older than himself—a foreigner. There were a good many foreigners at that whool. Pairufy owing •to his nationality, but more to h'm disposition, this boy wae heartily <lieliked. He ■was eallied the '■Ferret." * Yes, yea, he now well Temembeircd the Ferrtt—hie thick crop of stiff -red iliair. Ji» pale face, pale eyes, and, aibove nil. his poioited nose, with a dividing line down Hβ tip, which, was always pi-nk and quivering like a young rife. Y«e, he remembered him. What a curious ibeast he wan?; a bit of a eporteman, too, in his own way, but it was not the way of otlrens. 'Reserved, untruthful, and" conceited—a disconcerting element and a perpetuaJ mystery to the boys- as well as u> the roaeteiß. There were other sneaks, other Kam, other queer youths at the school, which, was mixed enough, but their characters w.erc transparent .in comfMTieow with the Ferret's. Hie chief peculiarity was that though he sometimes lied, he often told the truth. It wae also 'hie success, for no one knew which way to take thim. and he always attained hie object when he wished to deceive. The General fold arrived en far. step by step, but it was not enough. Tlicire was something moTe he wished to roca.ll, some special incident which would give the complete clue to hie schoolfellow's character. Strive ac he would, and though ho folt it at the back of his mind, he could not entice this spprial reminiscence from its cell in his brain. It was exasperating. As he fidgeted he felt for tire first time the attacks of the midges hovering about his head; he lit a cigar in self-defence, in the hope adso thnt perhaps it might c-oothe his nerves and make his memory work. But no! He could not recall this thing. 110 looked at his watch. Time was going, and here 'he was within an ace of the clue to the situation, t.he key to victoTy. and perhaps to the fate of a nation fox generations. Always excitable and impatient, ho now mad*> no ifflort to keep calm, even in the hope of beguiling his memory. The wound in his head began to throb. Swearing softly, he got up .from his chair, stirode out across the road, and /started to waik '.nto tlip little.plantation on the other side, but had not gone twi paces before his head struck the branch of a tree with a force tliat made him reel. II? stopped, muttering, und heard some heavy object fall into the long grass at his feet. He was dizzy, and without any reason stooped and picked up the thing. It was an imrrpe apple. Absently placing it to his nose, he sniffed. Like a flash, the scent took him back across the space of yeaTS—back, back to the dusty class-room. It was afternoon, andHhe room smelt strong of apples. He stood petrified, apple to nostril, eyes closed, for now he was getting near it. Yes, the schoolroom reeked of apple; there -were apple-cores lying all about, and numerous boys munching. One—the Ferret—approached him and jeeringly offered him a core; he could remember the expression—the twitching nose. Xow he had itjAs he Htood there in the dark in that orchard the smell of the apple projected a series of pictures upon his mental retina as clear as those of a cinematograph, and now they came in logical, chronological sequence. , He -well remembered that autumn -when his boyish heart had been torn between two desires—either to go to a certain orchard to get the last of some special «ipples, or else to pay a visit to an old lady who gave teas that were celebrated. He could not do both things. He wanted the tea; but of the whole school he and the Ferret alone knew of this special apple-tree, and he dared not pay the visit in case the other should clear off the fruit. If the Ferret would wait, he could have, his good tea; if not, it would ■have to be postponed. He met the Ferret, and asked him point-blank if he -was going for the fruit. He could recall the very ■words of the puzzling answer, given with a disconcerting smile: "Of coTiTse I am, youngster. Yee, get every one of them, and cell what I can't eat. What d'you iJhin-k?" This was so obviously chaff t-hat he •went off to pay the visit and eat his tea ■wfth a light heart. The old dame was not at 'home. He got no tea, and returned cold, twed, and hungry —to be offered a gna-wed applecore in the schoolroom. He could see the cores now lying about the room, and almost 'feel the hail of shiny pips -with which he was bombarded. •His subsequent onslaught on the Ferret had only resulted in his own discomfiture. But the explanation? Ah, yes! It woe •when lip got his hamper. He had been very keen to lea-rn the Ferret's system of misleading people better by truth than by lies, and had finally extracted si promise of revelation in exchange for a cake, a cake on top of which -the almonds simply jostled, and a two-bladed pocket-knife with a shiny black handle. Having taken payment in kind beforehand, and ea-ten onehalf of the price, the Ferret had one night—the last night hut one of *he term —come and sat on the edge of his bed and told him his '"theory of scoring" as he called it. How unpleasant his pale face had looked in .the moonlight, all chequered by the shadows of the baTs of the diamond-paned window, and ho-w glibly he had talked a.s he-ran his hands through his fiery hair! He did not mind jjiving his theory away, he had said, for it was his last term. To get on it was necessary to be ahead of everyone else, to anticipate what they would think or would do, to know their natures, and he added a good deal more stuff which then appeared to be sheer nonsense. He concluded by paying that lying—good hying—was useful in moderation, and his last words were: "To a stranger 1 never lie till I am forced—fchen I lie well; the other man thinks I am telling the truth—α-nd is misled. That's the First Degree of Cunning. Next time I wish to deceive •fchat-ma-n. I teH He, of course, <

thinks that I am lying, and so is again \ misled—the Second Degree. If I wish to " But his listener had bad enough of the Ferret's rubbish, and cut him short. How angry he hod been, for he did not understand this rigmarole, and thought it nonsense! How be had vainly demanded his knife back —the cake was eaten—and how he hod received another thrashing in his endeavour to get it! It all came -back now so clearly. The Ferret had departed next day but one, and he had never seen him again or heard of him since; but the way in which he had been, as be considered, cheated out of (his knife had long rankled. It was not for some years afterwards .that he had seen any -sense in his philosophy. That was the Ferret with his "First and Second Degree." If this man now against -them were the Ferret —and there could be no doubt of it—his nature would at bottom, at the crises e/f 'life,bo the same. Given <the occasion, be would act in the ramc way. The General looked at his watch, for he was going to "take his full time in consielering the matter, relit his cigar, and paced up and down the dusty road, again running the Ferret's philosophy over in his mind io make absolutely certain. As he did this tho humour of the situation gradually struck him—the incongruity between the immense issues at stake and the things he was trying to recall appeared ghastly, then ludicrous. He smiled. His appreciation of the gravity of affairs and his vindictive Teelings were struggling against his strong-sense of humour. It was only after some effort that ho canned 'himself sufficiently to go in and see his Chief. The task before him of explaining this thing to his unimaginative senior was sufficiently hard -without prejudicing himself in the other's eyes by any misplaced levity. Throwing away his cigar, bo went towards .the house with a firm step, and as ho crossed tho beams of the headquarters lanterns, it was not a pleasant face that flashed out three times crimson against the darkness. In his hand was the apple. V. It was past midnight, and the FieldMarshal -was sadly studying the fnlryflagged map now hung up on the wall of his private room. From a short distance tho sheet of paper gave a very good pictorial representation of what tho positions of tho two forces would bo next day. One might have supposed that a pattern had been -traced on it in some sweet and sticky substance upon which laTgc coloured flies had settled and 6luck. Running about due east and west in a curve, with its convexity northwards, were two lines of these flies, blue and yellow, facing each other. In the yellow wore two conspicuous clusters or knots, one right up on the line towards the centre, and -the other towards the eastern end and some way back from the front. Those were the enemy's concentrations: that on the centre, ascertained and visible the sham attack; the other, conjectured only—the real attack. Tho blue flies wore slightly crowded at each end of tho lino where it curled back. rind, to 7neot the real attack, there was a dense cloud on the oast ro'fjrod J rom <tho -front.- The position of thi 8 concentration was such that, should the opposite crowd of yellows press forward and penetrate the blue lino, they would in their turn be fallen upon and overwhelmed. This gaudy picture was the result of deep calcuhrtion and irnnicn.se work on the part of its artists—the General Staff at headquarters, and of superhuman efforts on the part of the troops —the blue flies. The old man gazed steadily at it. Though its colour scheme was per- i haps a trifle crude, yet till a short half-hour ago its composition and values hail seemed so excellent— and now pos-1 siblv all this labour had been in vain, or oven worse than in vain. A quick step outside and the Chief of \ Staff entered with an impetuosity strange in a tired and convalescent man i at this time of night. "Well J" "Xow, sir. I can tell you something, definite. I said I knew him of the ml I hair. I have now placed him exactly, and can give you tho man." i "What's the use? Tell mc what he's 1 going to do, not what he is like." "Quite so. I will give y ou the boy, his nature, and the way his mmd 1 worked. This will give us" his personal equation ; from that " , "Yes, 1 gee; but 1 am afraid, my dear' fellow, you are still as madly keen as ever on tho 'personal equation.' Tarn a bit shaken in my belief. But go on, please." i The two sat down facing each other across the table, a candle on either hand, while the General as clearly and as briefly as possible, and without dotails, laid bare to hi s Chief the Ferret's soul —as he estimated it. During his bald statement he laboured under the effort of intense restraint, for however natural the different steps by which his -memory worked had appeared to him when trying to recall his schooldays, they did not well lend themselves to words. Now he was talking to another man—an especially stolid man —the contrast between his boyish escapades — apples, pocket-knives, and cakes.—and the supreme gravity of the present situation struck him with increased force. It was all he could do to keep from laughing, for hi s self-control, through the present and past tension on his nerves, was no longer what it had been. He already saw something more than interested wonder in the eyes of his matter-of-fact Chief, and this look warned him off any picturesque details. With an effort he at last logically worked up to his end, and finished almost calmly: That was the boy, sir, and that must be a good deal of the man!" There was silence for a few moments. "Yes, knowledge like that has been used in war, certainly." "Since the days of Hannibal, at the very least." "I have also heard something of that theory of cunning before," mused the] senior. | "Probably. One Bacon once wrote on the subject. That's what sead e mc think that there -was more in it than I had first imagined, and that perhaps, after all, I. had not let that knife go so chea ' He stopped with a jerk and a suppressed snigger which made bim cough. "Knife. What knife?" "Nothing, sir; that's quite another matter, which does not at all concern the question," was the hasty reply. Fortunately the Field-Marshal had no petty curiosity, and did not press the point; but be eyed his friend keenly before he continued: "Now, are we quite sure that this man is the Ferret—your Ferret?" "It must be —the same name, saime red hair, same foxy nose. These corohorative facts—independent details—make a uxathematical certainty.- In. -jfactg-joU

works out so pat that it smacks of the strawberry-mark and the long-lost br-r-r-other of the play." "Yes, so I ■was thinking." "However, that does not vitiate facts. You have seen the man yourself—indeed, you gave mc the details, so they have not been imagined by a visionary faddist "to fit in with seme preconceived theory." "Yes, the appearance is certainly correct. I knew the man well by sight." "And I knew the boy by sight, and all through." "Well, well. It may be—it may be. Anyway, we have nothing elße." He sighed. "Supposing this is the Ferret, and that he. is unchanged—to cone to actualities —-what then? It means, of course, that—that '" The quicker nature here broke in. "That as he has not fought against you before, and as you do "not know bim, he will deceive you in the simplest way; in other words, he will use the First Degree. For two days now he has carried on his predecessor's dispositions and is visibly, nay blatantly, massing against our centre" —he waved his hand in an excited gesture at the map; as be did so his senior noticed, to his bewilderment that he was clutching a green apple— "therefore, he will not attack there. He will attack our right!" The Field-Marshal pondered. This was going quick with a vengeance, and his mind worked more slowly than that of his friend. As he thought over it, half carried away by the other's personality and fervour, his eyes were fixed on the apple. "AFyes, so it appears to -work out. But how about you? Won't he know you are here—you, his old school-fellowV" "You forget that I am dead. That idea of mine may 'be our trump-card." 'Yes, I forgot that. It turns out luckily though, for our present arrangements stand good, and we can carry on as we are doing, it is more than lucky —it is providential; I doubt if we should now have time to alter. 1 don't eec how we can do belter than work on your theory—wild though it seems. Right or wrong, we must choose a course and follow it through unreservedly. We may be wrong, which will mean failure, if not defeat; but if -we simply wait, equally strong all along the line, for a further sign of the enemy's intentions, wo are certain of failure." He paused. "Yes, I'll do it. We will carry on as we arc against a real attack on our right." He sighed again—more from relief than from anything else. "It's the obvious course, I think, sir.'' "We can do no more at present — everything is in train. Thank God it works out this way! Of courgCj it pans out as 1 thought all along, but that dispatch certainly did upset mc for a bit. I was like a ship without a compass." His tone had again become cheerful, almost smug, for he had something tangible to light against, and, having conic to a conclusion, he again ceased to fear. He continued: "But it certainly docs seem far-fetched. The tactical scheme of an army based on what a schoolboy once said many years ago!" Ho chuckled. The other did not reply; the older man's last remarks reawakened his sense of the ludicrous, so far successfully repressed; he could not speak. He felt bis self-control slipping away. The Field-Marshal, still chuckling, carefully chose a cigar from hia case, and drew from his pocket a knife —a two-bladed knifo with a black horn handle, just like Tlus was too much. The Genera: began to giggle. "Eh?" said the other without looking up. "Hee-bee-hee," was the reply. The Field-Marshal gazed in surprise at his friend, in surprise mingled with misgiving, for his giggling, coupled to the reasonless clutch on an unripe apple, seemed to denote some lack of balance — perhaps his wound? "Ha-ha-ha!" —and like an unheaval of nature the reaction took place. The General roared. He lay back in his chair and roared louder. He walked up and down the room, holding the apple at arms-length, and shrieked in idiotic tones: "Apocketknife! A two-bladed pocket, knife, apples, and a cake?" The Field-Marshal dropped his cigar and stood up. His first feeling was one of extreme anger, for it certainly looked as if his old friend was presuming on their mutual affection in order to playthc fool at a most inopportune moment; but he had never known him to be a practical joker. A second glance showed him that there was no fooling here, and his look changed to one of sympathy for his subordinate. Men often get unstrung on active service, and he was not surprised at this case, for, before being wounded, tbe strain on the Chief of Staff had been terrible, and for such a highly-strung man to start work again so soon after recovery was most unwise; those quick, nervous men will always wear themselves to bits. The shrieks of the hysterical General were now ringing through the night, and one or two officers came running in to ascertain the cause of the uproar. Laying the panting man on the floor, they tore open his collar and threw water over bim, and he recovered as quickly as be had collapsed. As he began a string of fervent but unnecessary apologies—for a nervous breakdown is common enough— the other officers quietly withdrew. Tbe two sat on for some minutes, while the Chief of Staff collected himself. The Field-Marshal's qualms as to the other's sanity had now vanished, and he cordially assented when the General got up, saying: "If you have done with mc, sir, I think I will try and snatch some sleep." "Yes, certainly," and he added as the other reached the door, "Get a sleep while you can; you may have no chance to-mor-row. Dream of how we shall defeat the Ferret—lying brute!" Something in the- tone of the last words made the hearer stop. From the phlegmatic Field-Marshal, even though he were worked up, they seemed unusually spiteful. He turned his head. "Why do you call him a lying brute, sir?" "Good Lord, man! haven't you been spending the best part of half an hour trying to convince mc of his lying character?" "Yes, certainly. I know him to be a lying brute, but you do not. You spoke bitterly, as if you had some personal reason for calling him that. Have you?" "Why, yes, I have. All this talk about the fellow has reminded mc of a good deal that I had forgotten. The man did lie to mc badly once when I was attache —about something or other, I don't " The other whipped round. "Has Jicd to you V "Yes, yes, I tell you. He " But the Field-Marshal did not finish, for the General, glaring fiercely, stalked slowly up to the table and hit it such a blow with his clenched fist that a candle jumped out of its socket and fell over still burning. He then thrust his face across the table to within a few inches of his astonished senior's, and said in the crescendo whisper of forced calm, "Do— f»

The elder man's fears for his friend's reason returned in ten-fold force. Certainly, as he stood there in the gloom leaning across the table, his face covered with a slime composed of dust and water, and his clenched fist—still holding the apple:—in a pool of rapidly congealing candle-grease, he looked almost dangerous. The Field-Marshal held on to his chair. He was momentarily at a loss. The other answered his own question. "That was his first,bout with you!" "Oh! Now I see what you are driving at; but he will never remember." "Won't he? He remembers everything, and will think you do too." "Then " "He will play his Second Degree—and —wil I—attack —the—centre!" "Ah!" There was no more sleep for the tired telegrapphist or for anyone else at headquarters that night. War is a juggernaut that recks not of the weariness of individuals, and it was high noon next day before the click of the typewriters, the tap of the telegraph keys, and the smack of the wireless had abated. By that time, too, many of the pretty blue flies on the map might have been seen in the sunlight to have danced round to a 1 fresh pattern—nearer the centre of the picture. VI. Three mornings later. In response to the clamour of the guns the weather has broken. Though the rain has tailed off into drizzle, the ground is still sopping and the bushes drip sadly as the damp breeze shakes them. Behind the wayside railway station in the centre of the valley rises a semicircle of purple hills, and above and beyond them again heavy clouds are hanging. A thread of blue smoke, bullied by the rain, quivers up from the station buildings, and tbe sodden flag banging limp from its staff close by gives an occasional sad flap as a puff of air galvanises it into momentary life. Though sodden with rain, its colours can be recognised as those of the Field-Marshal's headquarters, now moved on far from the village inn. A cavalcade winds slowly over the hills to the left, and approaches. As they come nearer it can be seen that nearly all the bedraggled men composing it are officers, though not all their horses are officers' mounts. They must, indeed, have been scratched together anyhow. Some are troop horses, others are most palpably "hairics," which have long known the drag of gun or wagon, but all are alike in their weary dejection as they stumble over rocks and slither down the slippery clay of the hillside. In spite of tlieir evident j fatigue and discomfort an air of smothered satisfaction sits on the faces of all but a few of the party. The dejected ones are riding in the centre,- and as far as the universal coating of mud allows of comparison they appear to be wearing a different uniform. At their head rides a slight man, hatlcss, and as he turns his head his bushy crop of red hair presents the only spot of colour in the sombre picture. Though his eyes are cast down, and the whole of his sharp-featured face is expressive of hopeless perplexity, yet he supplies also the only touch of briskness, for, in spite of the damp, his moustache retains its stiff upward curL This man is the captured commander of the defeated army, who, with a few survivors from his staff, is on hia way to surrender to his vanquisher. As the cavalcade approaches the flagstaff the challenging neigh of a horse suddenly rings out from behind the house, and the air is filled with the shrill noise of the chorus in reply. Ears are pricked, nostrils quiver, bits jingle, and as regards horseflesh tlie appearance of the dismal party is transformed. A small knot of mounted men appears from behind the house. It is the Field-Marshal coming out to accept the surrender of his foe. A few moments and the parties halt as the leaders alone ride forward. Courteously they salute in silence, and then as the vanquished commander faces his victor, perplexity is still stronger on bis face than any other emotion. Then his glance passes the Field-Marshal and falis upon a tall man with a scarred face riding behind. It turns to a stare. A gleam of recognition, of comprehension— almost of relief—comes slowly into his tired eyes. He recognises his real conqueror!