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If we can hold them on this line till to-morrow noon, it's all we want for the present," he concluded. "We'll hold them! Don't worry!" put in Stransky. If a private had spoken to a colonel in this fashion at drill, without being spoken to, it would have been a glaring breach of military etiquette. Now that they were at war it was different. Real comradeship between officer and man begins with war.
But a good death a soldier's death!" he said. "I'll write to his mother myself." Then the voice of the machine spoke. "Who is in command?" "I am, sir!" said the callow lieutenant, coming up. Feller's fingers moved in a restless beat on his trousers' seam, his lips half parted as if he must speak, but the men of the company spoke for him. "Bert Stransky!" they roared.
"That's right, that's right!" said Stransky. "After all, they're our brothers." It was the first time since he had undergone the transformation which the war had wrought in him that he had mentioned any of his world-brotherhood ideas. "I still believe in that. We're fighting for that!" he concluded.
B 21 was the position of Fracasse's company and the pretty smack the one that broke one man's arm and crushed another's head. The "God with us!" song was singularly suited to the great, bull voice of its composer, born to the red and become Captain Stransky in the red business of war. It was he who led the thunder of its verses not far from where Peterkin led the song of the Grays.
"All right, sir, you're so decent about it!" grumbled Stransky, taking his place in the ranks. Hep-hep-hep! the regiment started on its way, with Grandfather Fragini keeping at his grandson's side. "Makes me feel young again, but it's darned solemn beside the Hussars, with their horses' bits a-jingling.
Stransky rolled his eyes in and out; the tendons of his neck swelled; his jaw worked as if crunching pebbles. Deafeningly, the shrapnel jackets continued to crack with "ukung-s-sh ukung-s-sh" as the swift breath of the shrapnel missiles spread. "Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em!" Grandfather Fragini cried, his old voice a quavering bird note in the pandemonium.
Whish-whish-whish! Enough pellets were singing by to have torn away the rim of the target, yet none got the centre before Stransky dropped behind the bush. Blessed bush! Back of it was a bowlder. Thrice-blessed bowlder! It protected grandfather as securely as the armor of a battleship. "We are having a noisy time," remarked Stransky as two or three of the leaves fell. "Intelligent thieves!
As she went along the path, steps uncertain from sheer fatigue, her sensibilities livened again at the sight of a picture. War, personal war, in the form of the giant Stransky, was knocking at the kitchen door. His two-days-old beard was matted with dust and there were dried red spatters on his cheek.
"Yes, just before we were ordered south," said Dellarme, obviously pleased to be remembered. "I overheard your speech," Lanstron continued, nodding toward Stransky. "It was very informing." A crowd of soldiers was now pressing around Stransky, and in the front rank was Grandfather Fragini. "Said our flag was no better'n any other flag, did he?" piped the old man. "Beat him to a pulp!
"Because he was a brave soldier, Clarissa," explained Marta in simpler terms. "Because he was ready to die for his country." "And for your mother!" put in Stransky, seizing Clarissa in his great hands and lifting her lightly to the level of his face. "Oh, I've got stories," he said to her, "a soldier-man's stories, to tell you, young lady, one of these days and such stories!"
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