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Poor devils, their hopes crumbled along with their walls when the Germans brought up the forty-twos. We entered in through a breach in the first parapet and crossed, one at a time, on a tottery wooden bridge which was propped across a fossé half full of rubble, and so came to what had been the heart of the fort of Des Sarts.
There is a floating element of Kashgarians, Bokhariots, Persians, and Afghans, and a resident majority of Kirghiz, Tatars, Jews, Hindus, gypsies, and Sarts, the latter being a generic title for the urban, as distinguished from the nomad, people. Our winter quarters were obtained at the home of a typical Russian family, in company with a young reserve officer.
She will be home the day after to-morrow, if you could call again to see her." She flattered herself that she had evaded the difficulty very cleverly, but Miss Thacker rounded on her in unexpected fashion. "Shouldn't dream of asking you my love. Too much respect for your dear mother but wished to appeal to young and generous sarts like self and sisters! Any contribution however small!
We see Hindus from India, Egyptians from Cairo, Arabs from the coasts of the Red Sea, Circassians and Tatars from the Caucasus and the Crimea, Sarts from Samarkand and Bokhara, Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, and not infrequently we meet a negro from Zanzibar or a Chinaman from the farthest East. It is a confusion of shopmen and customers, brokers and thieves from all the East.
And what befell Fort Loncin on the hills behind Liege befell Fort Des Sarts outside of Maubeuge, as I have reason to know. When the first of the 42-centimeters emerged from Essen it took a team of thirty horses to haul it; and with it out of that nest of the Prussian war eagle came also a force of mechanics and engineers to set it up and aim it and fire it.
But agin it, thar's a contrary sarcumstance, in thar bein' two sarts o' Tekeneekas: one harmless and rayther friendly disposed torst white people, t'other bein' jest the revarse 'most as bad as the Ailikoleeps. The bad uns are called Yapoos, an' hev thar squattin' groun' east'ard 'long the channel beyont, whar a passage leads out, knowed as the Murray Narrer.
We spent the better part of a day in two of the forts which were fondly presumed to guard Maubeuge toward the north Fort Des Sarts and Fort Boussois; but Fort Des Sarts was the one where the 42-centimeter gun gave the first exhibition of its powers upon French soil in this war, so we went there first.
It was as though a giant had sat himself down upon each little house in turn and squashed it to the foundation stones. As a fort Des Sarts dated back to 1883. I speak of it in the past tense, because the Germans had put it in that tense. As a fort, or as anything resembling a fort, it had ceased to be, absolutely.
To reach a portion of Des Sarts, as yet un-visited, we skirted the gape of the crater, climbing over craggy accumulations of wreckage, and traversed a tunnel with an arched roof and mildewed brick walls, like a wine vault.
Immediately about Des Sarts stood many telegraph poles in a row, for here the road, which was the main road from Paris to Brussels, curved close up under the grass-covered bastions. All the telegraph wires had been cut, and they dangled about the bases of the poles in snarled tangles like love vines.
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