United States or Bosnia and Herzegovina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Rather carefully he laid the pieces on the table before he rose and turned to Westerling, his decision made. "If the people respond with the war fever, then it is war!" he said. "I take you at your word that you will win!" Westerling's chair creaked with the tense drawing of his muscles in the impulse of delight.
"You will inform His Excellency," he said to Westerling's aide, "that they are coming for him all the people are coming, and we are powerless. And " Even Turcas's calmness failed him and his voice caught in a convulsive swallow. "I I understand!" the aide said thickly, and went up-stairs. He had suffered worse than in seeing his chief beaten; but even in disillusion he was loyal.
She met Westerling's look steadily, her eyes dark and still and in his the reflection of the vague realization of more than he had guessed in her relations with Hugo. "Well," she breathed to Westerling, "the war goes on!" "That's it! That's the voice!" exclaimed the subaltern in an explosion of recognition.
"Suppose they amount to half the forces that we send in!" he exclaimed. "Isn't the position, which means the pass and the range, worth it?" "Yes, if we both take and hold it; not if we fail," replied Turcas, quite unaffected by Westerling's manner. "Failure is not in my lexicon!" Westerling shot back. "For great gains there must be great risks."
It was embarrassing and as confusing as the white light of an impracticable logic. "In that case, please place a guard around our house lest some more of your soldiers get out of control," she went on. "I can do that, yes," he said. "But we are to make this a staff headquarters and must start at once to put the house in readiness." "General Westerling's headquarters?" she inquired.
The one stroke of generalship by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated mass attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single assault. "Engadir it is, then!" said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.
An orderly despatched to the chief of intelligence with the news returned with the order: "Drop everything and report to me in person at once." "For this I have made my sacrifice!" Marta thought. "The killing goes on by Lanny's orders, not by Westerling's, this time."
All her pictures became a whirling involution of extravaganza and all the speeches of the characters of the scenes a kind of wail. Then this demoralization passed, as a nightmare passes, with Westerling's boast again in her ears.
They were sweeping him up and down as if she were seeing the slim figure of Lanstron in contrast to Westerling's sturdiness; as if she were measuring the might of the five millions behind him and the three millions behind Lanstron. She let go a half-whispered "Yes!" which seemed to reflect the conclusion gained from the power of his presence.
A brief note it was, in farewell, beginning with conventional thanks for Westerling's confidence in the past. "I am punished for being right," it concluded. "It is my belief that Miss Galland sends news to the enemy and that she draws it from you without your consciousness of the fact. I tell you honestly. Do what you will with me."
Word Of The Day