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Updated: May 8, 2025
"Well, well, gentlemen!" exclaimed the general brusquely, "what is the matter with you? You act as if you were at a funeral! Hans," turning to the orderly, "open the champagne there. Fill the glasses. Bumpers all, gentlemen, for the greatest inventor of all times, Herr von Heckmann, the inventor of the Relay Gun!"
Send them to me by the diligence, that I may give them myself to Herr von Dummhoff, who will then remit them post-free. To whom? Why, to Heckmann a charming man, is he not? and a passionate lover of music. My chief object comes to-day at the close of my letter, but this is always the case with me. Through the window they thought it was you, and that we had come together.
He seized a magnum of champagne from the orderly and commenced pouring out the foaming liquid into the glasses beside the plates. Schelling made a feeble attempt at a joke at which the officers laughed loudly, for the general was a martinet and had to be humoured. "Now, then," called out the general as he glanced toward the window, "Herr von Heckmann, we are going to drink your health!
Officers of the First Artillery, I give you a toast a toast which you will all remember to your dying day! Bumpers, gentlemen! No heel taps! I give you the health of 'Thanatos' the leviathan of artillery, the winged bearer of death and destruction and of its inventor, Herr von Heckmann. Bumpers, gentlemen!" The general slapped Von Heckmann upon the shoulder and drained his glass.
It already pointed to after midnight. His face turned red and the veins in his forehead swelled. "To hell with peace!" he bellowed, turning back his watch until the minute hand pointed to five minutes to twelve. "To hell with peace, I say! Press the button, Von Heckmann!" But in spite of the agony of disappointment which he now acutely experienced, Von Heckmann did not fire.
"'Thanatos! Von Heckmann!" shouted the officers. And with one accord they dashed their goblets to the stone flagging upon which they stood. "And now, my dear inventor," said the general, "to you belongs the honour of arousing 'Thanatos' into activity. Are you ready, gentlemen? I warn you that when 'Thanatos' snores the rafters will ring."
Von Heckmann had stood with bowed head while the officers had drunk his health, and he now hesitatingly turned toward the little brass switch with its button of black rubber that glistened so innocently in the candlelight. His right hand trembled. He dashed the back of his left across his eyes. The general took out a large silver watch from his pocket.
"Fifty-nine minutes past eleven," he announced. "At one minute past twelve Paris will be disembowelled. Put your finger on the button, my friend. Let us start the ball rolling." Von Heckmann cast a glance almost of disquietude upon the faces of the officers who were leaning over the table in the intensity of their excitement. His elation, his exaltation, had passed from him.
Von Heckmann and the general of artillery continued to make their way through the intrenchments and other fortifications, until at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from the redoubt where they had left the Relay Gun they arrived at a small whitewashed cottage.
But to-night I shall be repaid, repaid a thousand times." The officers shook hands with him one after the other, and the group broke up; the men who were filling the trench completed their labours and departed; and Von Heckmann and the major-general of artillery alone remained, except for the sentries beside the gun. The night was balmy and the moon rode in a cloudless sky high above the hill.
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