Crockett Samuel Rutherford
A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

CHAPTER XXXIII
"HELL UPSIDE DOWN!"

There was strangely little exultation. Each man felt the tussle was yet to come and nerved himself for it. The big square lay out silent under the moon, splashed with the shadows of the pollarded poplars, the benches upturned, a tree or two uprooted, and beyond all the black gash knocked in the row of white houses. It had a strange look, sinister, threatening, all the more so because it had always been so peaceful and well-ordered – like a man's tranquil life till the day Fate's mortal-shell bursts and there is no more peace for ever and ever.

"Now mind, you fellows," said Jack Jaikes, "fire low and steady. They are ten times our numbers, but we will fight in shelter and we have these beauties!"

He patted the three mitrailleuses in turn. He had taken charge of the middle one himself, and set his friend Allerdyce and young Brown to command those on either side. We stood at attention, each man knowing that the time could not be long.

Far down towards the Château we heard the rush and jar of an attack. A similar noise came from farther up the wall towards the fitting shops.

"Jehoshaphat, they are flanking us!" exclaimed Jack Jaikes. And before anyone could interfere – supposing that any had so dared – Jack Jaikes had stepped outside the wall into the cumbered Cours of Aramon. I took the liberty of following. Away to the right we could see nothing, except the clouds of smoke drifting up or being tossed by the rough sudden swoop of the blast, stooping down out of the moonlit heavens and the night of stars.

Jack Jaikes must have been conscious of my presence, but he did not order me back. He was talking to himself and he wanted a listener. As Bacon says, he wanted a friend with whom to toss his ideas as a haymaker tosses hay.

"Down there by the Château doesn't matter," he said, looking that way long and earnestly, "Dennis Deventer is there – with MacIntyre and the whole Clydebank gang – little to fear there. Listen, young fellow, how the machine guns are barking —U-r-r-r-rh! I wish ours were talking too, but that mortar shot rather scared them – though it ought not – easy thing to rush a four-inch gun firing shell at that distance and with their numbers. One hole in the line, and then you are upon her. But – see, young un, there they go butting in at the corner of the wall yonder. We must give them a volley. Fellows, run out the mitrailleuses – my own one first. Easy there over the stones! Now the others!"

Presently with the three machine guns we were standing completely shelterless in the Cours of Aramon with half a dozen darksome streets and alleyways gaping at us truculently. "Turn them to the left," he shouted. "Farther out, Allerdyce! Keep your alignment, you Brown – swearing's forbidden, but think that ye hear Donald Iverach at it!"

The light little guns with the pepperpot snouts were swiftly swung round in the direction of the scaling ladders and the hurrying clouds of men.

Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the handle which was to grind death.

"Lie down, you sweeps!" he called to us. "Flat – not a head up."

We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me.

"GO!"

And then all hell broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out the moon.

The attacking party was mown as with a clean-swept scythe. For an instant three swathes were clearly visible – Jack Jaikes, Brown, and Allerdyce had each made his share of the crop lie down.

There came an explosion of rage and anguish.

"Again!" shouted Jack Jaikes. "Keep down that head," he cried to me, and kicked savagely in my direction as he danced about. I obeyed. No account could be required of men at such moments. He might stamp on my head if he found it in his way.

"Sweep the wall and fire low!" was the next order. "Mind, Donald Iverach and the boys are on top. We must not shoot them, but we must help those ladders down. It is a pity we dare not run out the four-inch – only we could never get her back."

Again the rending siren shriek divided the night. We lay on the ground seeing gigantic shapes twisted in seeming agony over guns high above us. Our chins were in the dust and the play of the lightning flashes made the thing somehow demoniacal and unearthly.

"Hell upside down!" as the man next to me pithily said – a parson's son like myself, but from Kent, Pembury in Kent, where young Battersby is still not forgotten.

The mitrailleuses flared red below and the skies flared blue above. The thunder roared continuously and the noise of the machine guns cut it like the thin notes in the treble corner of a piano. Heaven raged against earth, and earth in the person of Jack Jaikes ground out shrill defiance. But that night the bolts from the earthly artillery were the more deadly.

"Cleaned the beggars out!" shouted Jack Jaikes, or at least that is near enough to what he said. "Now then, up you fellows and we will get them back!"

It was easier said than done. For it was one thing to get the little guns down the rubble heaps beneath the battered gateway and quite another to fetch them back. We were compelled to put all our three gun crews into one, and even then we could not have succeeded without the help of the men with ropes pulling from within. I saw Rhoda Polly tugging like one possessed, though why she was not on her tower I do not know.

We had left the other two machine guns unprotected and had to jump back to rescue them. Still there was no enemy in sight and we got Brown's fine No. 1 back into shelter. Remained Allerdyce, and as we rattled down to fetch her up, suddenly the whole of the square in front of us was swept by a storm of bullets. Somehow I found Hugh Deventer beside me.

"You gave us a good easement up at the corner," he said, "I was sure they would get back on you next. Give me a place. I can hoist a gun better than you!"

He was behind the wheel, but even as he set his weight to it Allerdyce – eternally smiling Scot from Ayrshire, called Soda Bannocks – collapsed over the piece he had commanded and worked. Another man yelled with sudden pain, and I felt a sharp blow on the calf of my leg.

"Clear!" shouted Jack Jaikes, "I will fetch the men. Up with the gun." And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might gather a wet rag.

The storm passed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back.

"Great God, what's that?" I turned at the anguish and surprise in the voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm was – Alida!

I dreamed – I was sure I dreamed. That bullet – those fellows knocked over – Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own gun – Jack Jaikes gathering him up – all these things had crazed me, and no wonder. I saw "cats in corners," as I used to do in old college days when I studied too much and too long.

But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not speak. They keep an exact distance away – about four yards and always in the corner of a room or in a stairway – never in the open. What was he saying? One word recurred.

"Trêve! – Trêve! – Trêve!"

"I proclaim a truce in the name of the Internationale!"

Mocking laughter answered him. The Internationale! What did they care for the Internationale? They were out to kill and to take.

Little groups began to gather at the dark alley mouths. I could see the glitter of rifles and bayonets. Present fear was arrested when they saw us withdrawing our guns. Hope sprang into their minds that they might capture the mitrailleuse abandoned halfway up. Their losses stung them to a wild and reckless fury.

I do not know whence the first bullets came – I think from the north end of the Cours Nationale, where some men had been busy removing their dead and wounded. At any rate it was the signal for a general discharge. The streets and alley-ways vomited fire. The crackle of rifle shots sprang from the windows of houses. Somehow we found ourselves outside on the Cours. We had abandoned the gun. Jack Jaikes seemed to be giving some kind of instructions, but I could not make out what he was saying. What I saw was too terrible – Keller Bey on the ground, the white flag of truce stained with blood, and Alida kneeling beside him.

"Take them up!" yelled Jack Jaikes, "run for it!"

Before me strode Hugh Deventer, huge and blond like a Viking. He caught up Alida and would have marched off with her, but that Jack Jaikes barred the way.

"Idiot," he cried, "who can carry a man of Keller's size but you? Give the girl to Cawdor!"

I think at that moment Hugh could have killed him, but he gave me Alida as bidden, and bending he shouldered the dead weight of the wounded man. "Put him higher, then, you fool," he shouted to Jack Jaikes.

"I can't, they are coming at us with the white weapon. Heave him yourself," yelled back Jack Jaikes. I heard no more for Alida, waking suddenly to her position, fought desperately in my arms, escaped, and ran up the broken stones past the abandoned machine gun till I lost sight of her in the dusk of the broken gateway. Hugh Deventer, stumbling after with Keller Bey, cursed me for getting in his road. We did and said a number of things that night which can't well go in a log book, not even now.

I turned and in a moment was with the small band which Jack Jaikes had gathered about the gun. At any cost we must not lose that. There were too many men in Aramon who knew how to make ammunition for any purpose.

Yes, they were coming. They were so near that I had just time to snap in my bayonet and get beside Jack Jaikes. I saw him shake something wet from his hand.

"Are you wounded?" I asked anxiously, for that would have been the crown of our misfortunes.

"No, that's Allerdyce!" he answered, with ghastly brevity, but nevertheless the thing somehow nerved me. We all might be even as Allerdyce, but in the meantime we must stop that ugly black rush – the charge "with the white" as they called a bayonet charge. Behind was the gun – Allerdyce's gun – and beyond that the open defenceless port, the waiting men clewed there by their duty – and the girls!

Lord, how slow they were – these running men!

"Now then, one volley," said Jack Jaikes, "scourge them and then steady for the steel! Remember we are taller men and we have on an average a foot longer reach than they have. You, Gregory, keep behind and blow holes in anybody you can see running."

I cannot remember very clearly this part. How could I? I rather think we did not stand very firm. I seem to remember charging out to meet them – the others too – and Jack Jaikes laying about him in front of everybody with clubbed rifle, grunting like a man who fells bullocks. The lines met with a clash of steel. I remember the click and lunge perfectly. Then suddenly we seemed to be all back to back, and somehow or other the centre of a terrible mixed business, a sort of whirlpool of fighting. Men quite unknown to us had appeared mysteriously from the direction of the Mairie. They were attacking our assailants on the flank. It was warm there under the trees of the promenade for a few minutes. But after a volley or two, as if they had come to seek for Keller Bey, our new allies decided to retire without him. They sucked back firing as they went, and taking with them the red mayoral flag they had carried.

We were left with our own battle to fight. But they had done something. The solidity of the attack had been somewhat fused down. We were not now so closely surrounded.

"Glory, the tucker's out of them!" cried Jack Jaikes, "give them a volley – Henry rifles to the front. Scourge them!"

It was his word – "scourge them." And that to the best of our ability was what we did. The shooting was not very good, or we should have been rid of the enemy much more quickly.

"Stand clear, there!" commanded a voice from above our heads. Rhoda Polly had got a team of men together to lever up Allerdyce's machine gun. She was now bending over it, and those who remained of the dead man's crew bent themselves to the task of getting it in order.

"To right and left, and fire as they run. Now then – !" commanded Rhoda Polly.

"Re-r-r-r-rach-rach-rach!"

The mitrailleuse spat hate and revenge over our heads. The young "second-in-command," trained by Allerdyce, stood calmly to his post and swept the muzzle wherever he saw a cluster of assailants.

"Allerdyce! Allerdyce!" yelled the crew of No. 4. They did not mean him to hear. Allerdyce would never hear anything again – neither the voice of his native Doon, running free over the shallows, nor the raucous voice of his beloved gun, nor even the shouting of his men as they wrote their vengeance for a dead leader across the Cours of Aramon in letters of blood.

This happened almost at the end of the battle, but what I remember best of it all, in all that unknown and unknowable turmoil of death, is the half-wild, half-quixotic, altogether heroic figure of Jack Jaikes, dancing and vapouring under the splendours of the moonlight.

"Come back and fecht!" he yelled. "Come back and fecht for the sowl o' Allerdyce! On'y ten o' ye. I tell ye I'll slay ye for the sake o' Allerdyce! Ye made what's no human o' him. Come back and I will choke ye wi' my bare hands. We were chums, Allerdyce and me, at the Clydebank yaird. God curdle your blood for what ye did to Allerdyce. Come back and fecht, ye hounds o' hell, come back and fecht!"

CHAPTER XXXIV
THE PASSING OF KELLER BEY

We were hard put to it before we got the madman in, and then it was worse than ever. For he, our master, the bravest man that I ever saw or think to see, sat down beside his friend and wept like a child. He did not even look at us when we took up Allerdyce and buried him in a long trench with the others who had fallen – five in all, a heavy loss for us who were so few.

"I never want to see Greenock again!" wailed Jack Jaikes, "we were that pack, Allerdyce and me – "

"Go and fetch your father, Rhoda Polly," said I, "this will never do. It would be no use to telegraph. He would never believe the like of Jack Jaikes."

"May God grant he can come!" said Rhoda Polly, and darted off. I went into the outhouse where Keller Bey lay. Harold Wilson was bending over him, a steel probe in his hand. He stood up as I came in, looking narrowly at the point.

"I think we shall pull him through, but so long as we have that young lady" – he pointed at Alida, who was exhausting herself in a long outburst of Oriental sorrow – "I fear we can do nothing radical."

"Wait till Rhoda Polly comes back," I said, "she will get her friend away."

"I do not think so," he said, "she has been trying for some time."

"Could he be moved?"

"Far?" queried the doctor.

"Well, across the river in a boat, and up the hill to my father's house."

Wilson winced. "That is rather a responsibility," he said dubiously; "still, the man is unconscious and will probably remain so for many hours. It certainly would be a good thing if we could be rid of him and of that young woman – though in ordinary circumstances we should not be in such a hurry to send her off."

He grinned pleasantly, and asked how I proposed to set about the business. I told him it would be easy to get Keller Bey down to the nursery gardens by the waterside. Here I would rout out my friend the patron Arcadius, who would do as much for three or four of his gardeners – Italians all, and not touched with local politics. My boat was there, and the gardener lads would carry the stretcher up the hill. They did harder tasks every day of their lives.

"Well, but you see I can't leave all these – where's your doctor?"

I told him I could bring down the resident from the college hospital.

"Oh, I know him, Vallier, a very decent fellow for an interne. He'll do. Well, off with you. I will give you a note for him."

"We must wait till we get this stopped." I pointed to Jack Jaikes. "You can't do anything I suppose?"

He shook his head. "No, it needs moral authority for that. He would care as little for me as for you – less perhaps. But here comes Mr. Deventer!"

"Thank God!" I gasped.

"Jaikes," commanded Dennis Deventer, "bring the guns forward."

Jack Jaikes staggered to his feet and looked irresolutely about him. Was he going to obey? Did he even understand? For a moment it seemed doubtful. But whether his mind grasped the situation or not he answered the voice of Dennis Deventer.

"What guns, sir?"

"Allerdyce's, Brown's, and your own!" said Dennis firmly. "Take command. Forward with them into the breach," and the machine guns moved forward, the remnant of their crews being reinforced by men from other posts.

"Hold yourself ready there, Jack Jaikes," said Dennis, "this is your business. So far you have done well. We had to fight hard all along our wall, but you have beaten us!"

"But you scourged them too?" demanded Jack Jaikes, lowering and truculent.

Dennis drew a sigh of relief. His lieutenant was himself again.

"Yes, Jack Jaikes, we scourged them!"

For answer Jack Jaikes swept his index finger round the half-circle of the Cours of Aramon, dotted with black bodies lying still.

"It's a pity ye can't see them all," he said, "they are lying in heaps up in the corner yonder, where we cut the scaling ladders from beneath them!"

* * * * *

Though our gallant little Dr. Wilson permitted the removal of Keller Bey, the task before me was one to tax me to the utmost. I think I should have given it up and let Keller Bey lie, but for Rhoda Polly. She came out from a long consultation with Alida, and at once took charge of the situation, much as her father might have done.

I don't know in the least what the girls said to one another, or what reason Alida gave Rhoda Polly for her presence in Aramon or for her dislike of me, but whatever these might have been, they must at least have been sufficient.

As I say, Rhoda Polly took hold. She commandeered an improvised carrying stretcher, which had been prepared at the orchard end of the Château policies. She prevailed on her father to lend her a carrying party as far as the river.

The thought of letting any fraction of his few defenders go outside even for such a purpose made Dennis Deventer frown.

"It will not take ten poor minutes," pleaded Rhoda Polly. "I will see that they get safe back. Let me, Dennis!"

It was not often that she called him by his Christian name save in the heat of wordy strife, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of it touched him.

"Have it your own way then, but be quick – don't forget I am risking the whole defence. I do not see in the least why Wilson could not have attended to him here."

She stepped up and whispered in his ear. He looked first doubtful, then incredulous, and a smile flickered a moment on his face.

"Ah, so!" he exclaimed, "I did not know you were so fanciful, my lady."

But he made no further objection, and we lifted up Keller Bey and put him in the stretcher, where he lay without speech or knowledge. Wilson tried his pulse and listened to his respiration.

"Get him away," he commanded, "the quicker the better!"

Rhoda Polly, Hugh and I helped the men over the wall with him, and held the brancard in place till they could get over to our assistance. We did not try to go straight to the landing place through the bull ring, but instead cast a wide circuit about the town, and finally came out upon the little house of gardener Arcadius buried among its trees.

Him I awakened with care, first a hail of pebbles on his window panes, followed the scratching teeth of a garden rake to indicate a friend, and lastly my own voice calling softly his name. He looked sleepily out, for he cared nothing about the town and its ongoings, if the early blossoms were not frosted and his young trees were not eaten by predatory goats.

He made me a sign that he would be down immediately, and he was buckling an equatorial waistbelt even as he opened the door.

He started back at the sight of the brancard. "What! A dead man?"

I explained the desperate need of Keller Bey and his daughter – how they must cross the river and how we counted on him to give us porters. For the boat Rhoda Polly and I would be sufficient, but for the carrying of the stretcher up the hill we had need of four stout fellows.

"I have my Italians," he said, "that is, if none of them have decamped; I locked them in, but the lads from the Peninsula are very handy with a crooked nail."

As we went, Arcadius, lurching in front like a huge sea-lion doing tricks, waved a lantern and spoke of the prospects of his garden. The hard winter had done no harm. It had broken the clods and killed the grubs. The war, the Commune, the black terror of Aramon did not exist for Arcadius. Barrès would not come to expropriate his cauliflowers and early potatoes. He asked no questions about Keller Bey and genially cut short any offer of explanation. His business was the soil, the fruit trees, planting and transplanting, and the sale of young vegetables. Beyond these he desired to know nothing.

His four Italians were there, big, good-looking lads from the north, who found gardening more to their taste than making roads or piling up railway embankments. Arcadius addressed them in a kind of lingua franca which included much gesticulation and even foot-stamping.

The men appeared to understand, and I put in a few words as to remuneration in their own tongue. For the son of the historian of Italian Art had, of course, been bred to the language. They started and turned upon me eager eyes, and then broke into a torrent of Tuscan which took me instantly to the scented bean-fields and beautiful hills about Siena. Of course they would be proud to carry my friend up the hill. I was the son of the Wise Man of the Many Books. I had been with Garibaldi. Ah, then, that said all. One had a brother who had died following the Little Father. Another had even been told to get out of the way by hasty Menotti. He laughed at the oath which accompanied the command. Of course they were all ready. They could find the boat. It was quite safe. They knew where. They had emptied it once when a squall had overturned it, so that it lay on its side facing the rain.

So with Hugh, Rhoda Polly, one of the Tuscans and myself at the oars we were soon letting ourselves slip away from the shore on which stood Arcadius and his lantern, urging us to bring the lads safe back, because there was a big job with the sweet peas on the morrow.

We went slantingly, not fighting the current too hard, but gliding easily, and avoiding the shallows where we could hear the current roar over the sand and pebbles.

Presently we grounded in the shadow of woods. I knew the place well. The path led almost directly up past Rameau's hut to the little door of the Lycée St. André. We could not have fallen better. We would escape the town altogether, and along a clairière or open vista of cleared forest land we could easily gain the garden gate of Gobelet.

Keller Bey lay still, the wound on his head keeping him in a state of unconsciousness, which was very helpful to our project. The bullet had glanced from the bone and was now imbedded in the muscles of the neck.

During the transit Alida clove to Rhoda Polly when she could, and when she could not (because of that young person's surprising activity), she fell back on Hugh Deventer. Not once did she look at me, and if I approached she would slip away to the other side.

The four Italians lifted the stretcher and began the ascent. Morn was just beginning to break, so there was not much time. The Tuscans marched to a kind of grunting chorus, as if they were counting numbers slowly. They arranged their own work and rested when they had enough. Once the cleared alley-way of the forest was reached the work became easy. Now the march was on the level. We found the garden gate locked on the inside, but Hugh gave me a hoist up, and in a moment I had it open.

My father, ever a light sleeper, was easily awakened, indeed his student's lamp still burned in his room, and he took it up when he went to warn Linn. She came out sternly composed, listened silently to my report of what Dr. Wilson had said, and what still remained to be done. Then she nodded, still without words, and with a decided air she moved towards their bedroom.

At first sight of Linn, Alida had sprung forward and caught her foster-mother in her arms. Linn gently kissed her, but immediately released herself, that she might be able to give all her attention to her husband.

The leave-takings were of the scantiest. The Italians were on fire to be off before the morning broke. I repeated the directions about the interne Vallier up at the hospital to my father. Then we struck riverward through the pines, racing the sun. Rhoda Polly arrived far in front, and in a few minutes we were on the water again.

It was not till we landed on the little greensward above the backwater where I hid the boat that we asked one another, "Where is Hugh?"

As we did so the sun rose and lighted up the world and all its problems with the terrible clarity of morn, and by it we saw clearly that Hugh Deventer had stayed behind.

Rhoda Polly and I looked at one another till we could look no longer, and then, in spite of the danger, we burst into a peal of the gayest laughter.