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Title: Guerrilla

Author: Lord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth Baron Dunsany] (1878-1957)

Date of first publication: 1944

Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook: Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944 (First U.S. Edition)

Date first posted: 14 July 2008

Date last updated: 14 July 2008

Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #145



This ebook was produced by: Iona Vaughan, Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net









This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws.GuerrillaLord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth Baron Dunsany] (1878-1957)1944Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944 (First U.S. Edition)14 July 200814 July 2008Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #145This ebook was produced by: Iona Vaughan, Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

Guerrilla

A Novel

by

Lord Dunsany

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PUBLISHERS

INDIANAPOLIS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1944, by Lord Edward Dunsany

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

FOREWORD

The man who told this tale had got to London, after sufferings of which he never spoke. He was full of hope, a hope so firm that it induced in him almost a kind of gaiety, and certainly a fine energy. He was an uncle of the lad of whom the story chiefly tells. And the story went something like this: without details, with few names of persons or places, nor even the name of the country. Something had taught him to mention names rarely, and to believe that German ears were always listening, even in London.

But it is not the names or the places or the lesser details that are important. And I cannot be sure enough that this violent story of mine of this little fraction of the rage of a furious year will last to be read in the calm days that shall come after our war, for me to describe with any more exactitude this story, magnificent in its spirit and hope and courage.

[Pg 9]

GUERRILLA

I

The army had surrendered, the Germans were through the mountains; and what was always referred to as The Land, as though in reality there were no other country to care about, was one more particle of the German loot. To men accustomed to horses, the Germans had come with amazing speed; to men who never spoke of a distance by measurement, but only of the time it took to get from one place to another, their pace was bewildering. One day they were ringing their bells in the little capital, for news of a fine stand that one of their divisions had made. The next day the Germans were marching down the main street.

Puzzled citizens were walking slowly about the central square; and, when a man stood up on a dais where tea was usually served in the afternoons, and began to make a speech, there was soon a crowd. A few politenesses and little flatteries, and he began to explain the position. England had begun the war, he explained, by attacking Poland. The Germans had therefore had to establish a defensive position there; and, in order to make this impregnable, they had to occupy several other countries as a purely temporary measure. To these countries they came for the countries' own good, as otherwise England would seize them, and this was particularly the case with The Land. Hitler himself had[Pg 10] appointed a Protector for The Land, and, if he were duly obeyed, his protection would be equally shared by all, and The Land would have the advantage of the highest possible culture, which was only to be enjoyed by those nations banded together in the new European order established by Adolf Hitler. Resistance would be most severely punished, and was also useless, because they had no rifles, and could not possibly fight in the plains, where they would be helpless against the big German tanks. Anyone who went into the mountains would be foolish, because the German aeroplanes, of which there were hundreds of thousands, could go over the mountains as easily as tanks could go over the plains, and even quicker. The army had surrendered, and it was the duty of all civilians to maintain order and wear a quiet demeanour. The Germans wished them well, and he reciprocated by calling for three cheers for Adolf Hitler. He got a cheer from a few; the rest were silent; and three men who had not cheered were led away by German policemen and instantly shot.

The sound of the volley from a small wood near by, in which the men were shot, came, as it was intended to come, to the central square. But instead of having an effect, as the Germans had planned, it had two effects. One effect was the one the Germans intended, merely fear; but on most of the crowd the effect was one that the Germans have never understood.

There was no protest: all in the square were unarmed. The crowd moved quickly away from the speaker, and[Pg 11] slowly out of the square; Srebnitz was among them, the nephew of the old man who told this story in London. Srebnitz had just left school and not yet gone to the university, where he was due for his first term in a fortnight's time. He went away mournfully, about halfway between the two moods I have mentioned. He went back to his home, where he lived with his father and mother in a street not far from the square. He went into the room in which his parents were sitting. His mother looked up quickly when he came in, but said nothing. His father did not even look up. At last Srebnitz spoke.

"Is The Land finished?" he said.

His father smiled grimly. "That is impossible," he said.

"Oh, no," was his mother's answer to Srebnitz.

"Why is it impossible?" asked the boy.

"After three thousand years of freedom," said his father, "it cannot be lost."

"But why not?" his son asked.

"You don't know what three thousand years are," his father replied. "In all that time freedom grows so hard that it is like a piece of rock at the core of a mountain, that cannot be broken or ground away, and cannot disappear ever."

"We have no rifles," said his son.

His father sighed and shrugged his shoulders, but would not abandon his point. His wife said nothing, but agreed with him and hoped that their son would share his father's point of view. But the son only repeated all the arguments about mountains and tanks and plains that the man had[Pg 12] used who had spoken in the square, although he hated the man; and his father had nothing to say against these arguments; for tanks and planes were all new to him, or rather new to his thought: he had heard about them for more than twenty years, but he had not thought of them much. Deep in his thoughts was the old thought of The Land and its three thousand years of story, and he felt that aeroplanes may come and go, and all other inventions that had been on trial as yet for so short a time, while The Land must go on for ever. But he could only repeat that The Land was eternal, and had nothing whatever to say to help Srebnitz when he asked how they could help her. Srebnitz had an air-gun, which for the last five years had been the principal treasure of his life. He used to go up with it into the mountain beyond the city, and sometimes, very rarely, shoot a coney.

"I have my air-gun," he said.

But his father only smiled. Why? thought the boy, and felt the smile was unjust. His father could tell him of no actual deed, no material thing, that could be of any practical use. And when he mentioned one, small but at least something, he only met with derision. Almost he flared up, to defend himself and his air-gun, but he saw his mother's face looking so sad, and his country's case seemed to himself so hopeless, that he walked mournfully away and went up to his own room.

In an air that was vibrating with events, every sound seemed to be magnified. He heard the bronze knocker on their door send echoes through the house, and the trifle[Pg 13] altered his mood as a pebble may alter the face of a pond. And it altered it for the better, for his hopes were then at the lowest at which they had ever been, and any change was good. He ran down the stairs with the speed of a man who is expecting a visitor, though he expected nothing; and, opening the door, he found his friend Gregor, a young man who had been at school with him and had left for the university the term before. He was standing there, with his handsome southern face, dark hair and keen eyes, and Srebnitz saw in an instant that that expression of misery, that was in nearly all faces now, was not in Gregor's face. Two women passed, both with tears in their eyes, but Gregor's eyes were flashing, as they usually were when he talked with Srebnitz, and Srebnitz's spirits rose at the sight: here seemed some glimmer of hope where there had been none at all, a light in complete darkness. Perhaps Srebnitz was volatile, but these were times in which all men were volatile.

"What are you going to do?" asked Gregor.

Do? There seemed nothing to do. Yet the very question cheered Srebnitz. Gregor must think that something could be done. Srebnitz had the admiration for Gregor that boys have for an elder boy, picked from among other elder boys as one standing out even among them. All elder boys are wonderful to the younger ones: indeed half a year's growth is a phenomenon making a real, and rather mysterious, difference, such as more rarely exists among full-grown men; and, added to these few months of extra age, was the[Pg 14] superiority of Gregor himself, which made him stand out even among his own exact contemporaries; or at least so it seemed to Srebnitz. The world knows nothing of the great figures between eighteen and nineteen years old, as viewed by those between seventeen and eighteen. Sometimes such a lad fulfils his promise, and dazzles the world as he dazzled the boys that knew him: more often the chances of life and his character, interwoven together, produce something that soon fades in the light of the years, while a boy that nobody quite remembers has at length from mankind the kind of honour that ought to have gone to the captain of the football eleven. But it was not in football that Gregor shone, a game with which they toyed rather than played, nor even at their own national game; it was not in athletics at all that Gregor excelled in such a way as to win the admiration of Srebnitz, but in an intense brightness of mind, which could go to the heart of poetry as the humming-bird hawk-moth goes to the hearts of the flowers, which great numbers of them were doing every evening at the time that the Germans arrived.

It was from Gregor's conversation that Srebnitz found whole new worlds. He was all to Srebnitz that Chapman had been to Keats. He quoted to him not only from Byron, of whom Srebnitz knew already, but told him that there were other poets in the world beyond The Land. He had astounded Srebnitz with Coleridge. He had told him, roughly, in their own language, the story of Kubla Khan. Gregor himself did not know much English, and his story[Pg 15] was wholly in prose, but his keen enthusiasm passed the enchantment on. Queer fragments of it stayed in Srebnitz's mind, and grew there like flowers from seeds brought from a far country.

"There were very old voices there," said Gregor, "that prophesied war." That was one of the sounds of a strange dark scene that remained in Srebnitz's imagination for ever.

Another fragment told of a girl singing. "She sang of Mount Abora," said Gregor, with eyes shining. Had Srebnitz had any idea of where Mount Abora was, the effect on his imagination, and indeed on the memories of his life, would have been weaker; as it was, the gardens and forests of a new and very wonderful land were added to the store that his mind had garnered, and there they lay among all those facts and illusions upon which he looked whenever his eyes turned inwards. And in those gardens was always a girl singing; and far far beyond the gardens and over the forest, a grey shape faint in pale sky, arose the peak of Mount Abora. Had it been shown on the map, it was only a mountain. Had he seen it with his own eyes, it was still but a mountain, a material thing, unenchanted. But a Coleridge told of it, and as translation withered it, and as Gregor brought it to life again, it was a thing so wonderful as to be the theme of a song; and the Abyssinian girl brought it nearer, calling it over the world with a power denied to Mahomet.

And here was Gregor asking what Srebnitz was going to do, as though a free choice were still possible, as though[Pg 16] freedom, after all, had not left The Land. What could be done?

"What are you going to do?" asked Srebnitz.

"I am going into the Mountain," said Gregor.

A tramp of marching feet was heard, as the boys went inside. On the way up to Srebnitz's room Gregor explained that an army was gathering there, led by Hlaka, a veteran of an old war, who had gone to the Mountain, and was already among the peaks when the Germans arrived in the capital, and his followers would join him there one by one. Srebnitz listened at first with flaming hopes, but upon them suddenly fell like thunder-showers the arguments of the traitor in the Square: they had no guns, no rifles. All the light suddenly went out of Srebnitz's eyes as they walked across his room to the window. "We have no rifles," said Srebnitz.

"There are plenty there," said Gregor, pointing out over the town.

The marching feet were nearer: it was a battalion of German infantry coming down the street. Gregor opened the window and waved his handkerchief to them and, as they came underneath, shouted "Sieg heil."

"What does that mean?" asked Srebnitz, puzzled and mournful.

"I don't know," said Gregor, "but it is something the Germans shout."

"Why do you do it?" asked Srebnitz.

"Because I want one of their rifles," Gregor replied.

[Pg 17]Srebnitz looked in astonishment at his face, and saw nothing there but a grim determination. Srebnitz's astonishment had no effect on that look, and it remained there steadfast. Then Srebnitz knew that Gregor had really a plan, and that something could be done. Gregor turned from him again to the window and went on waving his handkerchief, and again shouted "Sieg heil." It was long before Gregor turned from the window.

"Every man who brings a rifle," he said, "will be admitted to Hlaka's army."

"One of theirs?" asked Srebnitz.

"One of theirs," said Gregor.

Gregor went to the window again and leaned out and looked down the street after the German battalion. He was no longer waving his handkerchief, and he had a different look in his eyes now. Then he closed the window and turned back to Srebnitz.

"And bring some cartridges if you can," he said. "Rifles are no good without cartridges."

"You are really going?" said Srebnitz.

"I am going tonight," said Gregor.

"How lovely," cried Srebnitz.

"Not at all," Gregor answered. "It is very terrible indeed. When I go there will be reprisals, and they will kill people."

"They will kill innocent people?" gasped Srebnitz.

"I don't know what 'innocent people' means," said Gregor. "They will kill people who have done nothing, [Pg 18]because I have done my duty. It is most terrible. It will be as though I had plunged my knife into their hearts. But Our People must be free. Or dead. Many have died in three thousand years. But all who lived have been free. We must be free."

Srebnitz gazed at him and hope came among his dreams, as Gregor had once brought Mount Abora into his imagination.

Gregor went on. "Say Heil Hitler wherever you go. The little monkey likes it, and his slaves insist on it. Say it whenever you speak to anyone, and whenever you stop speaking to them. I waved from your window and shouted one of their shouts, so that they shan't come here first, when they come to shoot people. But they'll come here some day, and it's better to die on the Mountain. They'll kill your father and mother when they come."

Srebnitz gasped. "They wouldn't do that!" he exclaimed.

Gregor turned round on Srebnitz, full in front of him, close.

"You must understand the Germans," he said. "Get your mind clear. If they are harmless decent people, you don't want to kill them, at least not the way we shall do it. You must find out what they are, before you know how to treat them. You don't shoot your neighbours' dogs; you do shoot the fox. Find out what they are, for yourself; then you'll know how to treat them. When you are ready, come to the Mountain."

The Mountain was quite close to the town: they could see its peaks clear from the window, and could sometimes see[Pg 19] moving dots that were wild sheep: nothing else lived there.

"I am ready now," said Srebnitz.

"No," said Gregor. "You believe what I say. That's nice of you. But wait till you know it for yourself. You will fight better that way. You will fight then as we shall have to fight. This isn't war, you know. No battles and medals and strategy. This is guerrilla. This is killing, as we kill animals. That is to say, as butchers in the town, and as hunters up in the Mountain."

To his astonishment Srebnitz saw that Gregor was going. He gazed at him. Gregor had told him nothing of what he was to do, and he had looked to Gregor for the minutest instructions. Hoping yet to be told how to act, he said:

"But how do I get a rifle?"

"You have a knife?" asked Gregor.

"Yes," answered Srebnitz.

And, as Srebnitz said that, Gregor's face lit up with a most charming smile, which lingered upon it as he walked across the room and was shining there still as he went out of the door, looking back into Srebnitz's face.

II

Srebnitz went downstairs to the room where his parents sat, full of his new hopes. "There's an army up in the Mountain," he said. "It will free The Land."

[Pg 20]Half an hour earlier his father was telling him there was hope, when he had none. Now he was instructing his father in the same thing, as though it were new. Naturally they did not quite agree: the old man was not going to sit at a desk and be instructed by his son, especially in a matter in which he had so recently been the instructor.

"Who told you that?" his father asked. And when the boy said that it was the brilliant Gregor, he only found that Gregor meant nothing to his father, and that he did not believe in the army. Then he mentioned the name of Hlaka, and that did impress his father. But where was Hlaka? How could he get to him? Suddenly there surged back into Srebnitz's mind the horrible words of Gregor, that they would shoot his father and mother. Srebnitz did not believe it; and that was what Gregor had meant when he had said that he was not yet ready to go to the Mountain. He did not believe it, and yet the thought came back with a deadening shock. For it was a dreadful thing to think of, even though it could not be true. As they talked there came knocks on the door, strangely different from Gregor's knocks. They sounded so angrily impatient that Srebnitz ran to open the door. There was a Prussian major there.

"Heil Hitler," said Srebnitz.

"Heil Hitler," replied the major.

It was true then; they did talk like that.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" said the major.

"Nein," said Srebnitz, for the words they had spoken so far were the only German words that Srebnitz knew. And[Pg 21] then the Prussian officer spoke to him with a fairly good accent in his own Near Eastern language.

"I am billeted here," said the officer.

"Won't you come in?" said Srebnitz, for he was of a polite though fierce people, and he brought the officer into the sitting-room. Srebnitz's mother got up from her chair timidly, but the old man refused to move. This man was not his guest, and he came of a free people.

"I am billeted here," said the Prussian officer.

The old man nodded his head; he was powerless to keep the German out.

"We have come to safeguard our own frontiers from aggression," said the officer, "and for the good of your own Land."

The old man turned slightly in his chair, away from the German.

"It is so everywhere," said the German to Srebnitz. "The old have not yet learned, but all the young are for Hitler."

Srebnitz was silent for a few moments, and then he said: "Heil Hitler."

"Heil Hitler," repeated the German.

One eyebrow of Srebnitz's father rose slightly; his mother sat silent.

"Show the officer to your bedroom," said his father. "You must sleep here on the floor."

Srebnitz did as his father told him. The German seemed pleased with the room, or with Srebnitz's politeness to him, and almost smiled. He was silent a few moments,[Pg 22] evidently thinking what he could do for Srebnitz. Then he said:

"Tell your father and mother to change their minds while there is still time. Now I will go and send round my kit."

And he went amiably down the stairs.

An officer, thought Srebnitz, an officer. He would not have a rifle. And he decided to bide his time.

When Srebnitz went downstairs again his father said to him: "Why did you say that?"

He spoke in a strange grim voice that was new to Srebnitz. Like a judge speaking. As though on behalf of many alive and dead he questioned his son.

And the son replied with the words that Gregor had said to him: "This is not a war, Father. It is guerrilla."

And his father seemed to have understood at once, and said no more, but sat looking into the fire and often smiling quietly. Then Srebnitz remembered that he kept his knife in his room, and went up to get it before the German returned. It was a thin knife, about eight inches long, in a sheath of red leather. It is the usual custom of the people of that land to keep their knives about as sharp as we keep our razors, and Srebnitz's knife was like the rest, but he drew it out and honed it with a little stone, to make sure, and stropped it on leather, until the German came back and knocked with his angry knocks again on the door. Then Srebnitz sheathed his knife and hid it under his clothes; and always after that wore it hung on a strip of leather next to his skin. He ran downstairs and looked in at the sitting-room, on his way to open the door. Perhaps his mother[Pg 23] guessed why he went upstairs, or perhaps she merely wondered.

"Did you go upstairs to make the room comfortable for the officer?" she asked.

"Yes," said Srebnitz, "or for one of them. I went to get this."

And he opened his shirt and showed the top of the handle of the knife, a carved piece of wild-sheep's horn inlaid with little pieces of silver wire. His mother nodded, but never said a word. His father saw too, and said nothing. The knocks on the door came again, more angry and longer, and Srebnitz hurried to open the door.

"Heil Hitler," said Srebnitz.

"Heil Hitler," replied the officer.

Yes, they had only been parted for little over five minutes, and it was evidently quite correct to say this all over again.

The German had an orderly with him, with both hands full of kit. No rifle amongst it, Srebnitz noticed. This meant that he must get his rifle elsewhere, and he was glad for his parents' sake.

Then he remembered that he had not passed on this man's warning to his parents. He showed the way to the staircase and, leaving the officer to go up with the orderly and the kit, went into the sitting-room. Somehow he could not think of words in which to tell what he had to say, so he repeated the German officer's own words, warning his parents to change their minds while there was still time. But the old[Pg 24] man only smiled and slightly shook his head. He would have done the same if invited to play football. He was too old for such changes. His wife smiled a little too, and sighed once, and then they heard the feet of the major returning down the stairs.

One often hears of a typical Englishman, a typical soldier, a typical bus-conductor, but very rarely sees any of these types, and when seen they seem slightly absurd; a typical man is in fact a caricature. But this officer was a typical Prussian officer: his face was large and red, and there were hundreds of red veins in it; his body was very plump, although not fat, except for his neck; and the line of his neck went straight to the top of his head, with no bulge anywhere, except for the fat of the neck. His neck was red like his face, and his moustache was much cared for: one could not say it was well cared for; it was rather as though a man had employed several gardeners to plant nettles and weeds, or wild jungle-growths, in orderly rows in a garden. His moustache was a dark shade of yellow, and his eyes were blue, and there were bright red veins in his eyes, as well as in his face. At first sight of him you thought of a savage from cannibal lands, who had been drinking blood all his life; but that was a first impression that could linger only a moment, for a second glance showed that, far from being a savage, he had been drilled night and day ever since he was eight, and was as far removed from the natural savage as a performing ape that has been all its life in a circus is removed from his happy brothers still at large in[Pg 25] the woods. Though he gave orders all day now, he made every movement as though the trainer were still behind him, and the trainer's whip over his head.

Supper was now preparing and, as the German saw his hostess's preparations, a brighter scarlet seemed to shine in the veins of his eyes. No shortage of food had come as yet to The Land. Srebnitz was out of the room when the others sat down to supper. He had gone to get an armful of clothes from his bedroom, to throw them down in the corner in which he was going to sleep. He had scarcely been gone three minutes when he returned with his bundle; and the quarrel had already occurred. The old lady had said grace before sitting down to supper, and the German had tolerated that, but had added the name of Hitler. It was not this that had been the cause of the quarrel; this had only caused exasperation: the actual quarrel arose over the precedence that was due to God's name or to Hitler's. They were sitting very silent when Srebnitz returned; and he saw at once that there had been a quarrel, and feared for his parents' lives. It was only a fear awakened by Gregor's words, for he did not yet know the Germans.

The supper was eaten in silence. Beer was brought in silence to the German officer by Srebnitz's father. And then the German relaxed. He relaxed like a traction-engine that has come over the crest of a hill; his movements were smoother, less awkward. At last he smiled, as heavy engines might smile, if their ghosts spoke together at night, when man had gone. "After all," he said ingratiatingly to[Pg 26] Srebnitz's mother, "what do we know of these great figures? It is but for us to obey."

Still he got no response.

"A curious people," he said aloud, but in German, so as not to give them offence.

Srebnitz watched every minute go by, and hoped the end of the evening might come, before either his father or mother had said something that the German would never forgive, if they had not done so already. As soon as the first dimness strayed into the room he went and lay down on his heap of clothes in the corner, though the German was still at the table. Somehow the mere movement had more than the effect that he hoped, and the little party broke up, the German going upstairs and Srebnitz's father and mother going soon to their own bedroom.

All the sounds in the streets outside were changed: there were more feet, fewer voices. Sometimes Srebnitz heard a shout far off. The whole volume of sound was different; the very voice of the city was altered. As none of the voices to which he listened told anything in words, and as none of the dim echoes of sounds that reached him told anything to his reason, Srebnitz listened all the more acutely, bringing his imagination to the aid of his ears, and he lay long awake in the sorrowful city. Suddenly in the night the city's voice changed again, and changed so sharply that Srebnitz awoke. What did it say this time? Still he could not tell. But its voice was alert and horrified.

[Pg 27]The Prussian went out next morning without his breakfast.

"Mother," said Srebnitz as they sat over their own breakfast, "you nearly quarrelled with him last night. Please don't. He forgave you. But, if he had not, Gregor says . . ."

"He insulted God," said his mother.

"What did he say?" asked Srebnitz, thinking that perhaps he might explain it away.

"He said He was not a European," she answered.

"But is He?" asked Srebnitz.

"It was not that," his mother replied. "But he implied very clearly that he himself was a European and, better than that, a Prussian."

"But he is," said Srebnitz.

"And therefore superior to God," his mother continued.

"He was joking," said the boy.

"We don't joke like that," said his mother.

"No," said Srebnitz. "But don't be hard on him if he can't see things as we do. Because Gregor says . . ."

"What does Gregor say?" said his mother, though not in a voice that sounded as though she sought instruction from Gregor.

"Gregor says . . ." But somehow what Gregor had said seemed rather absurd, and he could not bring himself to repeat it. "Well, he'll be hungry when he comes back," he said. "Let's give him a good breakfast. We must make him comfortable while he is here. Perhaps they will go soon."

[Pg 28]"Perhaps," said his mother.

The German soon returned. Srebnitz had been thinking that his impression that his face was red could not be really true. It was a bright, bright red. He strode into the room and made a speech. He said, speaking so as to have been heard by a large audience, had one been there, that the people of The Land were a savage people. "We come to the country for its own good," he said, "and in order to protect it from England. And how have they shown their gratitude? What have they done?" He paused, then shouted louder, "What have they done?"

Then Srebnitz saw that an answer was needed, and said, "We don't know."

"You don't know," repeated the German. "No, because it is incredible. You accursed people have murdered a German sentry."

"It is incredible," said Srebnitz.

It was the mot juste. But his mother said nothing. The Prussian looked at her, to hear what she would say. Still she said nothing.

"Very well," he said suddenly, and strode out of the house.

"That's right," said Srebnitz when he had gone. "I was afraid you might say something to make him angry. We must be rather quiet while he is in this mood. In a day or two it will blow over."

And then his father came in to have his breakfast: he had been upstairs making the German's bed. He had heard the[Pg 29] shouting and knew what had happened. He said nothing as he came in, but his face seemed to wear resignation, like an ancient national dress.

"Gregor has killed a sentry," said Srebnitz.

And the old man nodded his head. He sat down to his breakfast and seemed to be waiting for something. Presently the major returned with three armed soldiers. He marched in, and they behind him. The Prussian had a paper in his hand and at once began to shout. The gist of his shouting was that Aryan life was sacred; that the German people, the most cultured in the world, knew this, but there were inferior races that did not know it. To these races the Germans must act like parents and teach the simple lesson; stern parents, until the lesson was learned. When these good lessons were learned, all the world would be happy; meanwhile there must be reprisals. Fifty persons must be shot to atone for the murder of the sentry. The behaviour of his host had been correct: it was therefore a pleasure to spare him. Young Srebnitz, like the youth of the whole world, would learn to love Hitler if he did not already. The behaviour of his mother was incorrect.

He turned round on his heel and marched out of the house, and the soldiers led away the old woman. Her husband followed them. Srebnitz too followed as far as the door. For one moment all three soldiers had their backs to him. He looked as earnestly at their large shoulder-blades as he had ever looked at anything. Then one of them made a half-turn, and Srebnitz seemed to have changed his mind.[Pg 30] He did not realise then that he would never see either of his parents again. He did not yet wholly believe Gregor.

His mother was shot dead that afternoon. His father had insisted on accompanying her to the wall before which she had to stand; so the Germans had laughed, and shot him too.

That evening when Srebnitz heard what had happened, the despair of the day before had wholly left him; there was scarcely even grief in his heart, and no fear and no other emotion except one, which wholly filled it, a deep and ardent yearning to get a rifle.

III

There is a story of Kipling's about a man whose pet ape tore his master's wife to pieces from jealousy, and, knowing he had been naughty, kept away from the man for some days, till the man lured him back with little kindnesses, and finally killed him.

The position between Srebnitz and the Prussian major on the day after the reprisals was, in their attitude towards each other, somewhat that of the man and the ape, after the ape had killed the woman. Did Srebnitz feel resentment? the major wondered. He did not seem to; and yet the officer, from his knowledge of psychology, which he had once studied at a German university, suspected that[Pg 31] Srebnitz might have such a feeling, even although it was reasonably groundless. Men do not act always from reason alone, he had once been taught. And yet he reasoned with Srebnitz.

In war, he explained to him, certain things were necessary, and logically followed on other things. And he explained to Srebnitz the usage of reprisals, with the exactitude of a chess player explaining an opening. Srebnitz agreed at once. The position was clear enough to the major, but he was a little surprised to find that it was so clear to a man who had not the advantage of German culture. And so he explained it all over again, which logically was what he ought to have done if Srebnitz had not understood him, but not when he did understand. Well, there was no harm in making sure; and the clear logic of his argument had a soothing effect on the major's own mind, which was slightly teased now and again with doubts as to whether Srebnitz was as well disposed to him as he appeared, and as he certainly ought to be. If one loses one's queen at chess to an important piece on the other side, one does not bear resentment to that piece.

Srebnitz did not appear to act in any such foolish way, and logically ought not to do so; so why suppose that he did? And yet the fact remained that nobody could tell what anyone outside Germany would think about anything. And this fact, however absurd, should be borne in mind, for a reasonable man must never neglect a fact. In Germany the moment the Fuehrer spoke on the[Pg 32] wireless on any subject, one knew what everyone thought on that subject: in an ordered country it must be so; then all men acted the same way, because they thought the same way, and their action came with the weight of a single blow, eighty million people striking together; and such a blow must be victorious. It was very simple; it was the difference between organization and running wild, the difference between culture and savagery, and incidentally the difference between victory and occupation. The occupied countries must be taught this now, like children in school; those as yet unoccupied must learn by defeat. "So," said the Prussian out loud. Srebnitz smiled. Was it a natural smile? All that the major and his forbears had learned for three generations said that it was, for how else should other peoples act towards Prussians? But some older, simpler lore, that had not studied psychology, seemed to be doubting that smile. One more word to Srebnitz.

But Srebnitz said, "I must cook your dinner now. It will not be cooked quite as well as it used to be."

"Naturally," said the Prussian.

Then Srebnitz went to the kitchen to do his best.

A foolish remark about the cooking. How could a man cook as well as a woman? Only an uncultured people, thought the major, would trouble to point out such a thing. Did the boy think he would punish him for the inferior cooking? Germans were not unreasonable.

Srebnitz brought in the dinner, and the meat was tough, as the officer had expected. He made no complaint. He[Pg 33] knew well enough that a woman's place was the kitchen. Even a German man would not try to compete there, still less an uncultured man. The woman had cooked well. But such things could not be considered in war. Reprisals came first. Indeed it was by reprisals that Germany must keep her hold on the occupation of the world. Decent cooking would follow.

The major and Srebnitz ate together. Often Srebnitz's hand would move to his waist and linger there for a moment.

"Your stomach aches?" asked the Prussian.

"No, no, no," said Srebnitz. "Yes, it does." And suddenly Srebnitz realised that he must have been fondling the handle of the knife that was under his shirt.

It might have been an awkward twenty minutes while the Prussian major and Srebnitz ate their dinner, were it not for the young man's frequent smiles. One thing prevented the military shrewdness of the major from detecting any falsity in those smiles, and that was that they were entirely sincere: whenever Srebnitz smiled he was thinking of his rifle that he was going to get and take away to the Mountain. The Mountain and its bright freedom, and the free men whom he would meet there, filled his mind as flowers are filled with sunlight. After dinner the major marched out. And Srebnitz was left in the lonely house, to sit by the kitchen fire and make his plans. And the more he planned, the harder it seemed to be, till the daring act that should win the rifle seemed the easiest step of all. First of all, the Germans had imposed a curfew within half an hour of sunset,[Pg 34] as one of the punishments for the death of their sentry. This would mean his arrest if found at night in the streets at all, even without carrying a German rifle, and there would be a bayonet with it too. There would be a long way to go through the streets from the place where the sentry would be. And then there was a moon about four days old: that would not help things either. Srebnitz's plans had not progressed very far when there came a knock at the door. It was not the terrible Gestapo; in fact it was evidently not a German at all. Srebnitz could not guess who it could be; and, had he guessed for long, the man he saw in the doorway would have been the last of his guesses. It was Gregor.

"Gregor!" Srebnitz exclaimed.

Gregor smiled.

"They have killed my father and mother," said Srebnitz.

"Yes, and mine," said Gregor. "Our fathers and mothers were lost when the Germans first came. We are probably all lost. But The Land will be free."

"I will get the rifle," said Srebnitz.

"That is right," said Gregor. "It will be beautiful up on the Mountain with a rifle. Their sentries wear bandoliers. Remember to bring the bandolier."

"There's a curfew."

"I came to tell you about that," said Gregor. "You must go by moonlight, so that the sentry can see you. You couldn't get close in the dark. Have a piece of white paper in your hand. Say 'Erlaubnis'—that means 'permit'—and give it to him."

[Pg 35]"But when he reads it?" said Srebnitz.

"He must never read it," said Gregor.

"No," said Srebnitz. "And then?"

"Then take his rifle and bandolier, and take off your boots, and hide till the moon goes down. There will be nobody near at the time, because you will choose a time when the sentry is alone, before you take your permit to him. Tie your boots round your neck; you will want them on the Mountain."

"Where will I hide?" asked Srebnitz.

"The two best places are the wood and the public gardens," said Gregor, for a pinewood came right into the town. "So avoid those two. The Germans will search them as soon as they miss their sentry; there are plenty of little gardens among the houses; you know them all; and you can move on from one to another whenever the street is quiet."

Srebnitz did not speak, but gazed thoughtfully into the fire, for they had come to the kitchen.

"Well?" said Gregor.

"I was thinking of the rifle and bayonet," said Srebnitz.

"Don't bring the bayonet," said Gregor. "Hlaka doesn't want them. The Germans will be twenty, and even fifty, to one, when we fight, so we can't sail in with the bayonet."

"Fifty to one?" said Srebnitz.

"Perhaps a hundred to one," said Gregor. "But that doesn't trouble Hlaka. He makes up the difference by brains. But you must use your brains, or Hlaka will flog you."

[Pg 36]Perhaps a troubled look came into Srebnitz's face, for he knew he was not as clever as Gregor, and he feared that he might fail the redoubtable Hlaka.

"You've shot coneys, haven't you?" said Gregor.

"A few," said Srebnitz. "But only with an air-gun."

"That's all the brains you need," said Gregor, "and more than enough. A stupid man might kill a coney with a rifle, if he took a long shot, but not with an air-gun. And we don't take long shots."

"From how far do you fire?" asked Srebnitz.

"What is the furthest that you have ever shot a coney?" asked Gregor.

"I shot one once at seventy-five metres," said Srebnitz. "I paced it."

"Then never fire at over seventy metres," said Gregor, "at a German. The first five cartridges, think of your mother; the next five think of your father; and don't waste one. We don't fight battles. If an officer gave an order to open fire at four hundred yards, Hlaka would execute him. No battles; only killing."

"And the rifle," said Srebnitz to remind Gregor of a point from which they had wandered away.

"You must do as you think best," said Gregor. "Indeed you must do that at all times. What I did myself was to carry it through the streets while they were quiet; but I had a small saw with me so that I could saw off the stock in any place where I hid, and carry the barrel under my waistcoat and down my trouser-leg. As it turned out I did not use the saw.[Pg 37] If you do carry it that way it's best to have a stick, and walk a bit lame. Here is the saw."

And he gave Srebnitz a small sharp saw, only a few inches long. "Don't bring the stock," he said, "if you cut it off. You can carve another stock out of a cork-tree. And now get your air-gun, and let's see how you can shoot."

While Srebnitz went to get his air-gun Gregor picked up a large empty match-box and, opening it to make it a little larger, and walking out of the house and across the street, set it up on the pavement against the opposite house. Rifle practice, even of so humble a sort, in the streets of a conquered city, and among two of the conquered, surprised Srebnitz as soon as he saw what Gregor had planned. But Gregor said: "This is how we must live from now on; doing whatever we like, but choosing our time for it. I will watch from this window. The moment you hear me shut it, put your air-gun away."

So Gregor leaned his head out of the window, looking up and down the street, while Srebnitz fired four shots at the match-box from six yards inside the house, and every shot hit it. Then Gregor went and picked the match-box up, and nothing had disturbed them. As Gregor walked across the street with the incriminating match-box in his hand, the idea came to Srebnitz that more might be done than he had hoped, for the trifle caught his eye, whereas he had not seen Gregor's journey all the way to the town from the Mountain.

[Pg 38]"What part of the Mountain shall I come to?" asked Srebnitz.

"Any part," said Gregor. "We shall find you. You will be watched all the way. If you carry the rifle in your hand, carry it with the stock foremost."

Then he picked up the air-gun and looked at it.

"That's a nice air-gun," he said. "You could learn to hit a coin at seventy metres with that. Would you like it up on the Mountain?"

"Oh yes," said Srebnitz. "Shall I bring it?"

"No. You will have your rifle to bring," said Gregor. "I'll take it for you. It will go nicely."

And there and then he began to slip it down his waistcoat with the stock uppermost. And Srebnitz gave him several hundred lead slugs in a round tin. These Gregor poured loose into his pockets, and handed back the tin. Then he walked out into the street.

"See you soon," he shouted, and was gone.

Srebnitz went back to his seat by the fire, and back to his thoughts. He had no need of the fire's warmth, for spring was far on its way over all those lands, though the swallows had not yet got as far as England, and the fire was only there for cooking: he sat by the fire so as to see the past in it, which his fancy could sometimes discern in its luminous scenery. He would have liked to have left some flowers upon his parents' graves; but, thinking it all out, he decided that he must choose between that and vengeance.

Then, having made his choice, he went out for a walk[Pg 39] through the streets of the little capital to see where the sentries were: and he went in the direction of the Mountain. Having found what he wanted, he returned to the house, stopping on the way at a street corner at which they always sold flowers, and where men were selling them even yet, and buying a bunch at the cost of a whole pound of tea, because he realised that money would not be of much more use to him for a long time to come. These he brought back to the house and he began to prepare supper. The major had not yet returned.

He had not been at work in the kitchen long when a furious knocking was heard at the door and the major was there, having come back for his supper.

"Heil Hitler," said Srebnitz.

"Heil Hitler," replied the major with the same solemn face. Would he never get tired of saying this? thought Srebnitz.

Srebnitz had all his wits about him now, realising that now, if ever, he must keep them about him. For he meant to go that night a bit before the moon went behind the Mountain. He could not bring himself to say much to the major, but he smiled more frequently than he had at dinner. He is beginning to get over the loss of his parents, thought the Prussian.

After supper, when he went into the kitchen to put the plates away, he packed into his pockets and about his clothes all the tea and sugar there was in the house, and a good deal of butter and some slices of bacon, and put nearly sixteen[Pg 40] pounds of bread into a sack. Would the major go to bed before the moon set? He could not sit and watch him without letting some trace of his anxiety show through, so he stayed most of the time in the kitchen, where the major heard him moving saucepans and washing plates. Already through a window he saw the moon hanging low. Would beer help? He opened two bottles and placed them beside the major, who was pleased. Then he returned to the kitchen. There he found a sheet of paper and made out his permit; he wrote on it "It is a free Land." For a moment he wondered how to sign it, then signed with his own name.

After what seemed a long time, but may have been only ten minutes, he heard a yawn, then silence, and more silence. His father's old clock sounded loud in it. Suddenly a hope came to him, and he looked quietly into the sitting-room: it was as he hoped and the major had fallen asleep. He scattered some flowers then in rooms and nooks and corners that were especially frequented by memories of his parents, and slipped out into the street, and locked the door on the far side and threw the key away.

The moon was still in the sky, but getting near to the Mountain. The street was quite deserted, and he went quietly in the direction of a little public garden with two gates on the street, over both of which the Germans had put a sentry; and the further of the two sentries was the one that Srebnitz had chosen, because he was the nearer to the Mountain. This meant that he would have to make a detour, up a street to the right and back down another, in order to come[Pg 41] to the further sentry without being seen by the nearer. The bit of garden was only a hundred yards long, and the distance between the two sentry-posts was no more than that; but they walked up and down and met in the middle, and would be two hundred yards apart at the end of their beats.

He walked softly, though with his boots on, and felt strangely free. He felt, although the feeling was not crystallised into thought, that Man was opposed to the night, that all his doors and locks and laws were against it. Out-of-doors now, in the silent street, no locks or laws held him. The night was no longer against him; it was his friend: and he was on the side of the night. In the houses freedom was lost now: all who abided by laws in that land abided by German laws: only in the night and on the Mountain were his people still free.

He heard the sound of three men marching, and they seemed more in the night. Then he saw the glint of an electric torch flashing out now and then. To go back would be to lose time, and the moon was getting low. There was a side-street only fifty yards ahead, which he thought he could reach if he hurried, before the men came within hearing of his light feet.

He ran softly and reached it, and ran up the steps of a house on the far side of the side-street and flattened himself against the door; not the first house, but the second, so as to have sufficient start if the patrol turned up that street. They were coming down the far side of the street he had left. If the steps left the pavement to cross the street, he would have[Pg 42] ample time to get away from them. But they drew level and kept straight on.

He left the door and continued his journey, and the night seemed more than ever his friend. Then the silence was broken again, this time by a voice, a high voice calling incoherently, somebody singing. The singer was coming towards him out of the distance and dark: it was a drunken man. For a moment Srebnitz was astonished at any sound of festivity in that fallen city; then he realised that it was some poor devil trying to drown the sorrow of Europe in a glass of wine. He came down the street the way the patrol had gone, and Srebnitz heard, as he came nearer, the ruins of songs of his country. He stood still as the man passed him on the other side of the street, so that the man should not hear him and shout to him. And away the wild singing went, sending up fragments of the songs of The Land into the lonely night. For a long while he heard him; then a volley from two or three rifles, and all was quiet.

He heard the sound of more men coming behind him, but that did not trouble him, because he was near the first sentry now and the time was come for him to leave the wide street and turn up to his right, and then soon to his left and to his left again, which would bring him back to the street that he was in, and close to the further sentry. He turned to his right and passed by little gardens, where trees leaned their dark heads out over the railings, trees that seemed friendly to Srebnitz, and free, trees that had never said Heil Hitler: freedom was gone from men in The Land, but it seemed still to linger among these leaves.

[Pg 43]When he came to his next turning he paused, to hear how far the marching feet had got. If they should turn from the main road where he had turned he would have to make fresh plans, but they went on straight past the turning. Then he turned to his left and was about level with them. As he turned to his left again, he heard them marching on up the wide road, past the far end of the street he had just entered. He was very near the sentry now. He followed the sound of the marching feet for a little way, softly; then he turned back and, as soon as the patrol was out of hearing, walked loudly towards the sentry, whose feet he could now hear, his approach from that direction giving the impression that he must have passed the patrol. He had also timed his walk so as to meet the sentry when he was farthest away from his comrade.

Now he saw the sentry, in such light as there was from the moon, and held out his white paper. Before the sentry challenged Srebnitz called out, "Erlaubnis," and added the word Doctor in his own language, hoping that the Germans would have picked up the word for doctor in any country they entered. If he looked too young for a doctor, the word might be taken to mean that he was in search of one. He waved the paper in the direction in which the patrol had gone, with the implication that they had seen it, and then stretched it out to the sentry, repeating the word Erlaubnis; for it was death to be out in the streets after dark without a permit.

Srebnitz came of a race that had held a small country from before the Christian era. They had done this by [Pg 44]outstanding courage, and of course by agriculture, but also by cunning. Cunning was honoured among them, probably because they knew, or only dimly felt, that it was one of the pillars upon which their nation rested, and without which their race might have fallen into the dust.

Srebnitz handed the paper to the sentry in the same hand that held the knife: the blade of the knife was under his hand and lying along his wrist. The sentry tried to read it, but there was not enough moonlight. Then Srebnitz spoke of his mother in his own language. Whether the words surged up unbidden out of his thoughts, or whether he spoke to distract the sentry's attention, he did not know himself.

"My mother was always kind," he said.

And then he stabbed the sentry to the heart. The thin knife slipped in easily. The sentry coughed and Srebnitz seized his throat with his left hand for fear that he should cry out: with his right hand he caught the rifle before it could fall, for he knew that the sound of a falling rifle would waken the whole street.

He had forgotten to loosen his boot-strings, so he cut them now with the knife, as the other sentry marched towards the point at which the two of them were accustomed to meet. Srebnitz's sentry seemed quite dead, as he took his hand from his throat. Then he slipped the bandolier over the dead man's head and threw it over his own shoulder, and took off his boots and ran, picking up his small sack of bread as he went, which he had left on the pavement before going up to the sentry. A flash of moonlight on the bayonet[Pg 45] as he ran reminded him that Gregor had told him that Hlaka did not need bayonets, and that he was better without it now; so he unfixed it from the rifle and, with a neat knack they have in those parts, threw it into a door, where it stuck; a warning, Srebnitz thought, if the people in the house should be traitors; otherwise a message of hope.

Soon he heard the steps of the patrol again, for he was now overtaking them. So he stopped to think, and to rest; not because he was tired, but in order to have his speed fresh when it might be needed. The other sentry seemed not to have left his beat, and there was no pursuit as yet. It struck Srebnitz then that the safest place for him was as near as possible to the patrol. If they turned he must run: till then they would warn him whenever they passed a sentry, and there would be no more patrols, just behind them.

For a long while he followed the patrol, till it turned down a street that led away from the Mountain. Srebnitz kept straight on, and went now more cautiously.

IV

The moon was very near to the left side of the Mountain, but it still gave too much light; and Srebnitz looked, as he went, for a place to hide. If the dead sentry was discovered before the moon set, which seemed more than likely,[Pg 46] he decided to go on at once, as the certain danger behind would then be greater than the unknown danger in front; but as yet he heard no noise.

He passed a garden, but there seemed no cover there, and the moonlight was all over it. Trees were plentiful along the street, but they were only pepper-trees, with thin trunks. The kind of cover he looked for did not seem to be there, and there were no clouds near the moon. The houses he passed had gardens in front of them, but too minute to grow any trees except almond or orange or peach: none of them gave any cover.

And then he saw a garden so neat and calm and well tended, with the moonlight shining on patches of lemon-blossom, bright in the dark of the leaves, and with something else about it that he could not define, but that charmed him somehow as the echo of chimes that had just stopped ringing on a summer's evening . . . so neat and calm and charming that the idea came to him suddenly that in this house he might find shelter. Without any hesitation or any further thought he went straight up to the door and knocked with his knuckles; nor was there time for any hesitation, for he had been too long in the moonlit street already to hope to go much longer without being seen; and indeed as he knocked he heard marching feet again, between him and the Mountain. He knocked again, a little louder. The door was opened by someone with a knitted shawl over her face, through which she could see.

[Pg 47]Srebnitz walked in with his rifle, and his right hand all over blood, and much of the sleeve, and said: "It is for The Land."

The figure behind the shawl nodded, and made a gesture with one hand to an inner door. Then she shut the door on the street, while Srebnitz, still with his rifle in his hand, walked in to the room to which she had pointed. There two old ladies sat knitting, two unmarried sisters. They glanced at Srebnitz's rifle and the blood on his hand, and went on with their knitting.

"It is a fine evening," said one of them.

"Yes," said Srebnitz, and then added what he had said in the doorway: "It is for The Land."

"Yes, yes," said the other old lady. "Are you going to the Mountain?"

"Yes," said Srebnitz. "To Hlaka."

"You must have some tea before you go," she said.

The marching footsteps drew nearer, and another patrol passed the door, as they all listened.

"The moon will set soon," said the old lady who had offered the tea. Her name was Isabella.

"Properly speaking," said her sister, "it will go behind the Mountain. But that will suit quite well."

"I must wash my hands," said Srebnitz very hastily, looking down with a shocked expression at his own right hand in that neat, tidy room.

"That is as you wish," said Isabella. "But, if you are[Pg 48] going to Hlaka, they say—do they not, Angelica?—that he will receive you better with your right hand unwashed."

"That is what I have heard," said Angelica.

"Sophia," called Isabella, "bring us some tea for this young gentleman. And your name?" she said to Srebnitz.

"I think not," said Angelica.

"Very well then, perhaps not," said Isabella.

So Srebnitz remained anonymous.

"My dear young man," said Isabella, "you have no blanket. Nobody goes up to the Mountain without a blanket. It is very cold up there as soon as the sun sets."

"Yes," said Angelica, "he must have a blanket." And she went to get one.

And now Srebnitz heard the sounds of a stir down the road by which he had come, the very sounds that he had been expecting, and he and his hostess knew they had found the sentry.

"You must not go by that road," Isabella said, pointing to the front door. "But Sophia will show you a lane that goes straight to the Mountain."

They were still listening to the noises in the town, when Angelica returned with the blanket, which she made up into a long roll and handed to Srebnitz, and a strip of leather with which to fasten the ends. Srebnitz thanked her and threw it over his right shoulder.

"Not that shoulder," said Angelica. "They never wear it that way."

[Pg 49]And Srebnitz realised, rather shamefacedly, that the way he was trying to wear it would get in the way of his rifle. Very soon Sophia came in with the tea, this time with no shawl over her face.

"This is our niece Sophia," said Isabella.

Srebnitz gazed at her and said nothing.

"And your name?" said Sophia when the silence had gone on long enough.

"His name is Monsieur de la Montagne," said Angelica.

"Good evening, Monsieur de la Montagne," said Sophia.

"Good evening," said Srebnitz.

Then they all had tea.

"There are lovely flowers up in the Mountain," said Isabella.

"Beautiful, I believe," said Angelica.

Men in thick boots hurried past the house, going up the street that already slanted towards the Mountain, away from the town.

"And are your parents well?" asked Angelica.

"Yes," said Srebnitz.

And the two old ladies sighed.

Even an aeroplane came over after a while, and still there were hurrying Germans in the street.

"Are they going to bomb, do you think?" asked Isabella of her sister.

"Most unlikely," replied Angelica. "They have their own men all over the town."

[Pg 50]"So I thought," said Isabella. "I only asked."

"Of course, you never know with Germans," said Angelica.

"No," said Isabella.

And the aeroplane throbbed away towards the Mountain, but the sounds of men in the street did not diminish.

Suddenly there came a roar of knocks on the street-door.

"Quick, Sophia," said Isabella. And she threw two of the four tea-cups into the grate, and their saucers after them, where they lay broken among the ashes. Then she walked to the door of their sitting-room. "To the Mountain," she said to Sophia, "and remember to lock the back-door after you."

Srebnitz wanted to thank her, but there was not time.

"We shall see you again one day," she said. "You can thank us then. Or perhaps there may be reprisals along our street. If so we shall meet again where there are no Germans."

"My dear!" exclaimed Angelica. "Beethoven!"

"Yes, yes. Of course," said Isabella. "I should have excepted him."

The knocking came again, and shook the whole door, and plaster began to fall from where the hinges were straining. Isabella walked slowly down the few yards of passage, and called out, "Who is there?"

"Police," came the shouted answer. "Open at once."

"Certainly," said Isabella.

[Pg 51]Sophia and Srebnitz were in the kitchen now, and the door was shut behind them. As Isabella opened the front door, Sophia opened the back. As the Germans entered the house she picked up part of a ham, then followed Srebnitz out of the back door and locked it from the outside. They were in a little garden now, glistening with fruit-trees. Sophia handed the ham to Srebnitz to put into his sack, which now also held his boots, as they walked through the garden. She walked fast, but without anxiety, for it was a long way round to the back of the house by any way except by the back door. They came to a small wicket, which Sophia opened, and they were in a narrow lane leaned over by lemon trees, and orange and peach and wisteria.

For a little while the moon shone faintly on white blossoms; then Srebnitz and Sophia came to the darkness where the moon was hid by the Mountain.

"I have brought another blanket for you," said Sophia.

And Srebnitz saw that she had it draped over her. He was glad of that, for he had decided that, with all the blood on his sleeve, it would be no use hiding the rifle as Gregor had done. If found by daylight, he was sure to be shot: if found by night without a permit, it would be the same thing. So it was better to have his rifle handy, and the blanket might do to hide it from aeroplanes. He was troubled about Sophia; indeed he was vaguely troubled from the first moment he saw her; but here she was out in a dark night, in a town full of Germans; nor would it have been any better, but worse, if the dark night had been lit.[Pg 52] He wanted her to go back, but the Germans were there. He was troubled too about the old ladies, whose kindness seemed too fragile to endure in such an age as this: the Germans would be upon them even now.

"Your aunts," he said. "Should I not wait to see if they need help?"

"They never need help," said Sophia.

"But . . ." muttered Srebnitz.

"Not for themselves," she said. "For The Land only."

"But what will they do to them?" asked Srebnitz, as they still walked away.

"Oh, they are very good at talking to Germans," said Sophia. "They have been to our house before."

"What do your aunts say?" he asked.

"They listen to all that the Germans say, first," she said.

"And then?" asked Srebnitz.

"Then they talk about blood," said Sophia. "Pigs' blood, I mean; and all the things you can do with it, and about a sausage called blut-wurst. They know all about cooking, and they can talk German."

"And the Germans listen?" he asked.

"On their knees," said Sophia.

And he glanced at her face for fear she was laughing at him. But it was too dark to see.

"One of them asked Aunt Isabella yesterday," Sophia went on, "if she was not highly born. And she said Yes, she was one of the pigs of Swines' Sty. But she said it in our language, which is in any case finer than theirs; and I[Pg 53] think they were awed by the sound of it. Anyway, they didn't shoot her, and I don't think they will tonight."

Srebnitz sighed. "But what about you?" he asked.

"I shall go back, when they are gone," she said.

"How will your aunts account for your not being there now?" he asked.

"They may not find out I live there," she said. "There were only two cups on the table. If they do find out, I think Aunt Angelica will explain to them. She is very good at talking the shepherds' dialect, and she can talk it very fast."

All the while they were walking quickly towards the Mountain.

At first there were gardens at the backs of the houses, all the way on their left, and on the right what looked like orchards or orange-groves, but it was now too dark to be sure.

"Have you a box of matches?" asked Srebnitz. "I cannot see your face."

"You saw it in the house," said Sophia.

"That was a long time ago," said Srebnitz.

"Have you no matches?" asked Sophia.

"No," said Srebnitz.

"Hlaka will say something to you, if you come to him without matches," said Sophia.

"What will he say?" asked Srebnitz.

"He will say a great deal," said Sophia.

"Will he be angry?"

"I hope not," Sophia replied.

[Pg 54]"Why will he say a great deal?" asked Srebnitz.

"Because he likes his men to have more sense," answered Sophia.

Srebnitz thought a while about that, and realised that Hlaka would be right.

"What is Hlaka like when he is angry?" he asked.

"They say things are bad on the Mountain when Hlaka is angry," she said.

"How long has he been in the Mountain?" asked Srebnitz.

"Over a week," said Sophia. "He went up there when the Germans broke through the line. He was too old to be a regular soldier, and had not fought in this war till he went to the Mountain."

"Has he fought any battles yet?" asked Srebnitz.

"He doesn't fight," said Sophia. "He kills."

That was what Gregor had said.

"In the end he will die fighting," said Sophia. "But he wishes to kill first."

"Has he killed many yet?" asked Srebnitz.

"I don't know," said Sophia. "They say he means to kill two hundred with his own hand before he shows himself much, and that he will be very little seen on the Mountain until he has done that. And that is what he makes all his men do; hardly to kill as many as he does, but not to be seen. Hlaka gets very angry if he hears much firing, because he knows his men have been showing themselves, and he flogs them. Sometimes he goes down into the town. But that is different. He does not go as Hlaka."

[Pg 55]"Will you give me a box of matches?" asked Srebnitz, rightly guessing she had some.

"Yes," said Sophia, "if you do not waste them." And he held out his hand. "Not now," said Sophia, "you do not need them yet."

The dark lane led away from the houses now, to the right among fields and orchards. They walked in silence and darkness. Other young men had told of walking with girls along lanes on spring nights such as this, and Srebnitz had thrilled to hear; but instead of stars and fruit-blossoms over their heads, though they were actually there, there seemed something else over both of them: it was the huge wings of Death. He thought of the beauty of Sophia's face, and wanted to see it again, but she would not give him a match. And then, just as he was going to ask again, they saw flashes of light ahead of them, for they were coming back to streets. All the houses were dark, and the flashes were from electric torches carried by Germans. "You cannot come any further," said Srebnitz.

But Sophia said, "You cannot find your way alone. I will turn back when I come to the houses."

They slanted towards their left, and there were the houses, and beyond them the Mountain, visible under the stars. Rubbish-heaps, and tins thrown out from small houses, were about them; and they came to a street, slabs of bare rock at first, and then pavement. A wider street crossed it a little way off, and it was from this that the flashes came, and shone down the side-streets as the Germans came to crossings. Here Sophia, speaking in whispers[Pg 56] now, gave Srebnitz the blanket she carried and the matches that he had asked for, and showed him the way: he must cross two more streets after the wide one, and that would bring him to open country, or to country as open as it ever is near a town, wire and market-gardens and very soon a small wood, and then the Mountain.

"Do you think you will be able to see the Mountain?" she asked.

And in the darkness Srebnitz could not be sure whether or not she was laughing at him. So he said that he could see the Mountain now. Then it was time to say good-bye, and Srebnitz stepped on the pavement, pausing for a moment to find all the words of thanks that were due, and to warn Sophia to go quietly and watchfully. But Sophia was gone.

V

For a while Srebnitz stood listening, but all was quiet down the lane by which Sophia went. Then he moved without a sound along the little street, and soon came to the edge of the wider street, from which the lights had flashed. He was still in his bare feet. The lights were flashing in the street, both to left and to right of him, and it seemed full of Germans. So he walked across it; and the street to[Pg 57] which he came seemed empty, and it slanted steeply, as though its pavement were the hem of a cloak that covered the feet of the Mountain.

There were no sounds ahead of him, yet he walked warily, for the Germans in the town were uneasy, as the sounds behind him showed, and he expected them to have sentries at all the exits, especially towards the Mountain. He crossed another street safely, but now he heard sounds of marching behind him, as a patrol turned from the wider street and up the street he was in. Srebnitz quickened his pace then to a very slow run, but went no faster than that, in case he should run into a sentry ahead of him. A sentry was less likely to be out in the road than on the pavement, but Srebnitz ran on the pavement for the sake of the ease with which his bare feet could move on its smooth surface, and the mastery that he felt that his speed could give him there against any opponent he might meet in the night; and he felt almost as safe from the marching feet behind him as a hawk might feel from the feet of a gamekeeper on a night as dark as this. He crossed another street, the last of them, and still he had met no opposition. Then he dropped to a walk again; the German patrol was still behind him, but his only fear now was of a barricade, or a group of sentries, at the end of the street.

He went very cautiously past the last houses, and then the pavement ended and there was no sentry there. More than likely the men marching behind him were the very men who were to close the end of the street, and he was a few[Pg 58] yards ahead of the news of what he had done. Certainly the patrol came no further than the end of the street.

Very soon the road by which he was travelling was no more than an ordinary country road. He stopped then and listened attentively for as long as he thought it would take Sophia to return to her home, and, hearing no shots, was sure she had got home in safety. Then he looked carefully at both sides of the road to see what sort of obstacles bounded it, and found a hedge on both sides, not too thick for him to get through if he had to.

Then he walked on slowly down the road, and presently the hedges ceased altogether. Then he came to the wood of which Sophia had told him, a pine-wood dark and mysterious in the night, but he felt that with his bare feet and his rifle he was as dangerous as any mystery in the wood. Tall asphodels shone faintly in the light from the stars: nothing else in all the wood gathered any radiance. Srebnitz felt more confidence now than he had felt before in that night, for he felt that if he met anyone now he could use his rifle and still get to the Mountain before he was overtaken; and if the worst should come to the worst, he meant to use it, which would have been impossible in the town, if he was to escape afterwards; and he meant to escape, for he had much to do for The Land. The road ran through the wood and brought him to heathy country without fields. The Mountain rose before him, but the road ran rather to the right than straight upwards. Yet he kept to the road, which seemed to know its business, rather than[Pg 59] go straight up, which seemed so easy; for he had heard of men who had been lost on the Mountain.

When he was far from the town he sat down and put on his boots, tying them with many knots, for he had cut the laces earlier in the night. He put them on, not so much for protection for his feet on the road, but in case he should have to take to the rough country. The road had no boundaries any longer, and he felt almost perfectly safe now, for any patrol he might meet on the road would never overtake him in the rough country by night. He had only to run a few yards to his left, and the night and the Mountain would take care of him.

So he went on slowly through the night, thinking of Hlaka, and of the victory of The Land, which many doubted and which the Germans had not even considered as a possibility, or as an eventuality worthy of the trouble of any of their speakers to deny, but Srebnitz saw it vividly, and Hlaka up in the Mountain never saw anything else; for Srebnitz victory for The Land was a faith, but Hlaka up in the Mountain with his band of free men saw it all round him as the saints see Paradise. The eastern stars paled and a light came low in the sky and the night seemed to grow colder.

Srebnitz was glad of the second blanket that Sophia had given him, and that he wore like a cloak. He was too young to know that sleeplessness and hunger are two other causes of cold, besides the obvious one of the wind before dawn on a mountain; but a very elementary instinct prompted him[Pg 60] to eat food, and he sat down by the road and cut a slice from the ham that Sophia had given him and a slice of bread from a loaf, both with the knife that had killed the sentry. The knife reminded him of his fulfilled dream, the rifle now in his hands, and he raised the rifle to his lips and kissed it.

Dawn as he ate came up coldly and slowly, first in a dead hush, then with the familiar sounds that accompany dawn in Europe, rising up from the far town, the dull and occasional rap of volleys of musketry. Reprisals already, thought Srebnitz. A feeling of horror went through him for a moment. And then he remembered Gregor's words, that all these people were lost already. Today, tomorrow or next day they would die: only The Land would be saved. At a certain altitude above the town Liberty seemed to dwell. Down below in the streets he was a fugitive, a man without a permit, and in his father's house he was one of a conquered race; but just about where he was now something in the feel of the air seemed to tell him there ran the frontier of Liberty. Near here, or further up where Hlaka served her, Liberty was enthroned. Her banners were beginning to show over the Mountain now, as the sun, although not yet risen, caught floating clouds; and larks rose up to sing to her. Her palace roof was over his head, the open sky; its great bastion rose beside him, the wild Mountain. He was going to join her guards. Then the boy's mind, playing with fancies, tried to picture what uniform the guards of Liberty should wear, and fancied them for a moment gorgeous in[Pg 61] gold lace, marching into the capital when victory came. And suddenly a glance, straying from dreams, fell on his own clothes, and he realised that the Guards of Liberty were cloaked with a brown blanket, and wore plain clothes, much like his own, with a red sleeve.

VI

The fancies had turned to dreams, and Srebnitz, starting up and seeing broad daylight, realised that it was time for him to go on at once, before any patrol should come out from the town. He flung an end of his blanket over one shoulder and stooped to pick up his rifle on his right side, then sprang to his left, spun around and looked all about him, and found his rifle was gone. If an earthquake had sunk the Mountain into the earth, leaving him on the brink, he could not have felt more aghast. Indeed the Mountain seemed lost to him now. For he could not go to Hlaka without a rifle. But then he could not go back to the town, with blood on his sleeve. What could he do? And after a while another question came to him. Why had the German rifle been taken from him, and he been left alive? A man picknicking in an Indian jungle, and falling asleep, scarcely expects his cup of tea to be drunk by a tiger, and himself to be spared. If the cup of[Pg 62] tea was drunk, it was not by a tiger. Who then took his rifle? The sun had not risen when he had fallen asleep. It was death to be out without a permit between sunset and sunrise. And it was death to be in possession of arms. And death to rob the German army of anything. And as for his right sleeve . . . ! Was another man going to join Hlaka with his rifle? It was the thought of that that made him turn up the Mountain, still following the road, instead of going the other way. He would go to Hlaka and complain that he had been robbed.

He hurried up the road for nearly an hour. Then, where the last scraps of wild vegetation grew, before scrub and flowers ended in bare mountain, he saw a few thin sheep grazing, and an old shepherd standing near them, not far from the road, in one of the vast coats that the shepherds of those lands wear, made out of many sheep-skins. The shepherd was tall and still powerful, and was looking at Srebnitz with a fixed look, more like a frown.

Srebnitz shouted "Good morning" to him, but the shepherd neither answered nor changed his expression. So Srebnitz went on, but felt uneasily that from those craggy eyebrows he was being frowned upon still.

After that he saw nobody any more, and in another hour he came, in the bare mountain, to the end of the road amongst rocks as large as cottages, lying below a cliff. Tracks wound up from there, but only tracks, and Srebnitz wondered what Gregor had meant, when he had said that he could go to any part of the Mountain and that he would[Pg 63] come on Hlaka. He called with the long clear cry, that they use in that land, calling the name of Gregor. And the only answer was echoes.

His despair stimulated in him a feverish energy, and he hurried by one of the steep foot-tracks still higher upward. A few bits of a heath-like plant, or stunted bush, grew about him: the rest of the slope was a shiny crumbled stone. To his right the Mountain rose into peaks, but above him the sky-line was not far away. This he soon reached, and saw before him a flat circular space, scarcely a hundred yards across, with little steep hills all round it. He went down to it by a small pass between two miniature hills, and walked across it, and found that he had come to the top of that part of the Mountain. He called again, but even the echoes seemed less responsive here.

He looked away over the plains that lay to the north of the Mountain, and, the sun having gone behind a cloud, he saw them all shadowed. All Europe is under a shadow, thought Srebnitz; and, finding Nature matched by his mood, drew dark omens from the sombre guise of the view.

He turned round then and walked back to look at the city below him, on the other side, to the south. As he recrossed the level arena he noticed, this time, in the midst of it a looser patch of sandy soil, a little circle less than a yard across. He went up to look at it and disturbed the loose soil with his foot; as he did so and revealed black cinders beneath, a voice said to him in ordinary conversational tones, "Leave that alone."

[Pg 64]He looked up and at first saw no one. Then a young man walked towards him down a rocky slope of the hills that stood round the arena no higher than the houses of a good street. He carried a rifle, and wore a bandolier.

Srebnitz gazed at him in silence, and as he gazed he saw other men come over the rocks all round him. There were about ten of them, men in rough dress like his own; and Srebnitz said to the man that he saw first: "I have come to join Hlaka."

The man walked further towards him before he spoke, and when he spoke he said: "Hlaka does not take everyone."

In desperation then Srebnitz staked his wealth: "I have six loaves of bread," he said, "and a ham and twenty-five cartridges."

In the man's face Srebnitz thought he saw some acknowledgment of the weight of his argument when he mentioned the bread, and almost a slight smile at the fewness of his cartridges. But the man said nothing till he came to the level ground and walked still nearer to Srebnitz and looked at him. Then he said: "Hlaka is angry with you."

"Hlaka?" said Srebnitz. "Why?"

The other men were coming near him too and among them he saw Gregor. His face lit up, but a very slight smile showed on Gregor's, and there was no welcome in any of the faces, as though no smile or welcome could thrive on the Mountain under the anger of Hlaka. Srebnitz opened his sack and drew out the ham and the loaves and said: "I have brought these," and took out the bacon that was hidden under his clothes, and the packets of tea and sugar out of[Pg 65] his pockets, and laid them all down beside the loaves and ham on the sack. The eyes of all showed interest. Then Gregor came up to Srebnitz and drew him a little away from the rest and said to him gravely in a low voice: "Why did you not carry your rifle with the stock foremost as I told you?"

Srebnitz said: "It was almost dark. Nobody could see me. I should have remembered as soon as it got light."

Gregor said: "Hlaka can see in the dark."

"I am sorry," said Srebnitz.

"And then," Gregor went on, "you went to sleep. Hlaka never lets any men sleep until they are hidden. And you went to sleep on the road."

"By the side of the road," said Srebnitz.

But Gregor paid no attention. His face was grave, and they walked for a while in silence.

"Who got my rifle?" asked Srebnitz.

"You must ask Hlaka that," said Gregor. "He is Master of the Mountain."

"But how will he know?" asked Srebnitz.

"Nothing goes on in the Mountain that he does not know," answered Gregor.

"What will he do?" asked Srebnitz.

"He is very angry," said Gregor. Then he glanced at Srebnitz's right hand and sleeve. "I'll tell you what," he said; "as soon as you see Hlaka, shake hands with him. He may shake hands with you when he sees your hand like that. And then perhaps . . ."

"But where is Hlaka?" asked Srebnitz.

[Pg 66]"I told you," said Gregor. "He is in the Mountain. You only had to come to the Mountain to find him."

"But what part of the Mountain?" asked Srebnitz.

"Here," said Gregor.

And walking down a slope of the little rocky hill, Srebnitz saw the old shepherd, but taller and straighter than he had seemed before, and even fiercer. Like all the others he carried a rifle, and Srebnitz thought he recognized his; at least it had a patch of blood of the same size on the same part of the stock. As Hlaka came to the flat arena Srebnitz walked towards him and stretched out his right hand, as Gregor had advised, towards the frowning figure. Hlaka flashed a fierce glance at him.

"Is that man's blood?" he asked, moving his rifle to his left hand and pointing at Srebnitz's right.

"Yes," said Srebnitz.

"Then I will shake hands with you," said Hlaka, and a grim smile came to his lips.

"May I have my rifle?" asked Srebnitz, emboldened by that smile.

"No," said Hlaka. "You have a man's hand, but a sheep's brains." Then he turned to Gregor and said: "Teach him sense. And he shall have his rifle."

Gregor began at once. "You must not shout on the Mountain," he said. "If you want any of us at any time, light a fire by day and walk away from it as fast as you can down-wind for ten minutes. There is always a wind on the Mountain. And one of us will come to you there, ten[Pg 67] minutes walk down-wind of the fire. If you should want one of us at night light two fires some yards apart, and the second one, which should be the smaller of the two, will show the direction in which you went. Walk for a quarter of an hour at night, and then wait until someone comes to you. And you must obey orders. I told you to carry your rifle with the stock forward. Any man unknown to Hlaka, with a rifle on the Mountain, carrying it any other way is likely to be shot."

"Did Hlaka take my rifle?" asked Srebnitz.

"Hlaka educates us all," was all that Gregor said.

"Educates?" said Srebnitz, with something in his voice that seemed to boast that the education he had just absorbed from the final course of the top class of his school was something superior to any education that could be possessed by a rough fierce man like Hlaka.

"Listen," said Gregor. "There is only one study for Europe now. You had a pen and ink when you went to school, and masters taught you how to use them, and told you everything. Now you have your knife and you are under one of the greatest masters at our end of Europe, and you know nothing. But you will learn a great deal. You will learn never to go to sleep where anybody can find you. You will learn not to shout when the enemy is within hearing. You will learn not to uncover the ashes of fires that have been hidden. We will teach you hundreds of things. And when you have learned them you will save The Land with all of us, and march back to the town when the flag[Pg 68] flies again, or perhaps stand in bronze in the Central Square for ever. You brought a satchel of good books with you," and Gregor pointed to the loaves and ham and packets of tea and sugar on the sack. "You will learn."

"I brought these cartridges too," said Srebnitz, touching his bandolier, for his repute seemed to be sunk low and he wanted to raise it a little.

"Yes," said Gregor. "Tell me how you got them."

And Srebnitz told the story, walking up and down the flat arena among the miniature peaks. Gregor listened with the attention of a schoolmaster hearing a boy's lesson. When Srebnitz had finished he nodded.

"That was all right, wasn't it?" said Srebnitz

"No," said Gregor. "You shouldn't have thrown the bayonet into that door."

"But why not?" asked Srebnitz.

"You must learn things like that," said Gregor. "It showed the direction in which you were going. It showed you were going up that street. And that street leads to the Mountain."

"But I might have been stopping anywhere on the way," said Srebnitz.

"Yes," said Gregor. "You might have been going to have a cup of tea in any of the houses. But after killing the sentry the Gestapo would expect you to be leaving the town, and you showed them the direction in which you would leave it."

"I see," said Srebnitz.

[Pg 69]"You must study these things," said Gregor. "There is only one branch of study now for all Europe, and there's no master better than Hlaka. But he is severe."

"I'll try," said Srebnitz.

"What way is the wind blowing?" said Gregor.

"I don't know," replied Srebnitz.

"You must always know from what point the wind is blowing," said Gregor.

A low whistle sounded, and all the men in the little arena began moving outwards towards the rocks.

"There is an aeroplane coming," said Gregor.

"Where is it?" asked Srebnitz.

"We can't see it yet," said Gregor. "We have a listening apparatus. We go to those caves," and he pointed to hollows under ledges of rock where the wild sheep sometimes rested. They were no more than hollows worn by the wind in a softer stratum about three feet deep, under a harder one, and they did not go many feet into the mountain. Gregor began to walk towards one of them, and Srebnitz turned to come with him.

"You mustn't leave your sack and bread lying there," said Gregor.

Srebnitz ran to collect them, while Gregor walked towards the sheltering rock. Srebnitz rejoined him just as he reached it.

"There it comes," said Gregor, pointing to a speck in the sky, and both of them went into the shallow cave. The[Pg 70] aeroplane roared over, and went away to the north. When it was out of hearing Srebnitz crawled out, but Gregor told him to wait.

"If he is searching the Mountain," he said, "he will circle back about now."

But no aeroplane returned. It was away on some journey.

"Where is the army?" asked Srebnitz, wondering that the plane had seen nothing.

"Some of them are up among those peaks," said Gregor.

Something in his hesitation as he spoke brought into Srebnitz's mind a surprising suspicion.

"Where is the main body?" he asked.

"It is enough for the purpose," said Gregor, "and grows every day."

"Are we the main body?" asked Srebnitz.

Gregor smiled, but said nothing; and later that day Srebnitz learned that the total force in the Mountain was fifteen men. His hopes of being allowed to join the band now increased. Presently Gregor spoke again. "Don't think we are too few," he said. "Every man has two hundred cartridges, and we all use our brains. The Land will be freed, and we shall free it."

And now Hlaka and all his men, for five more had come down the Mountain, were gathered in the midst of the little arena, where the sandy soil had been thrown over the cinders.

"A cloudy day," said Gregor, "we shall have a hot dinner."

[Pg 71]Srebnitz, who did not at once see the connection, remained silent. But as soon as a fire was lit he saw, as his imagination had been unable to see, that the surrounding slopes would hide the column of smoke, and that the lighter clouds of it that might stray over the rocks could only be seen against a clear sky.

An armful of dry scrub had made the fire and one of the men stood watching it with bunches of dry grass in his hands, which he put under any twigs that were smoking too much, turning the smoke to flame. A cauldron and a tripod had been brought out of a cave, and in it the cook boiled mutton. A heap was lying on the ground near the fire, which Gregor explained to Srebnitz was a wet blanket ready to throw over the fire if an aeroplane came. There seemed as much to learn in the Mountain as on the day when a boy is first introduced to algebra, or even Euclid, and Gregor explained that the sides of the blanket had all been cut into curves, because nothing in nature is straight and angular, and anything that is stands out at once and catches the eye. And Gregor explained that when the blanket was used men would tread on it to lower its height, and throw a few handfuls of earth on it to break up its colour.

The cook had been, a few days before, the chef in one of the best hotels in the town, which he had left before the Germans came; and, as he found that the manager was preparing to receive German officers, he brought away with him, for better uses, all the pots and pans and knives that he needed for cooking. He was a hearty man, with a plump red[Pg 72] face, on which was a merry expression, shadowed, as a bright precipice might be shadowed by the passing wing of an eagle, by one grim purpose. He, like all the rest, had a stubbly chin, on which a beard was growing, all but grey-headed Hlaka, who, perhaps proud of his dark moustache, would allow no white hairs to grow near it, and so shaved; or perhaps he felt that his face was so well known in The Land that to alter the look of it would be like defacing a coin.

All the men cut their meat with the same thin sharp knives that Srebnitz had used to get the rifle that he had now lost. They sat down in a circle round the fire, with Hlaka at the head of the group; that is to say, facing towards the city. Some touch of geniality came into the grim man's features seated there with his men, and, though all of them were given the appearance of brigands by their arms and their clothes, and outlaws by their situation, there was a look in all their faces that went with neither of these things. Nor was that look at all the look of a people of a defeated country; far more they looked like creatures escaped from prison, not criminals, but rather happy sparrows on windowsills outside some place of torment. Never had liberty seemed so precious in that land as it seemed now when it was so rare, and there was none among them who did not feel to the full the luxury of being free. Defeat below them in the town, that lay under the shadow of Hitler, did not prevent them making jokes as they passed round their sweet and resinous wine in bottles of antique pattern. Whatever the[Pg 73] past had been, the present was merry, and the future, for them, was radiant.

Srebnitz, although not yet permitted a rifle, was allowed the friendship of these men, and soon they heard from him how his parents had been slaughtered. Hlaka looked up, at that, and asked suddenly for the name of the Prussian major of whom Srebnitz had told, the man who had found the attitude of his mother incorrect. Srebnitz had found out the major's name before he had left his home, while the Prussian slept in a chair: it was Major von Wald, and this he told. And Hlaka said to a man beside him: "Bring me the book."

And this man went away to one of the many hollows between ledge and ledge of rock, and brought a book in a binding of rough leather, while another man brought him a pen and ink. And Hlaka took the pen, made of an eagle's feather, and dipped it into the ink and said to Srebnitz: "It is death for any man to have his name in this book."

Then he threw a pinch of sand over the name that he had written, and gave one of his men the book to return to its safe place.

The clouds that had been gathering in the morning grew blacker during the meal, and before it was ended there fell one of those showers that fill for a few hours the watercourses of the Mountain, that are often dry for weeks, except for a few pools that lie in the deeper hollows, and keep alive butterflies and wandering men, and wild sheep and more other lives than one knows of. It came down suddenly from[Pg 74] the clouds to the north, and helped that small band of free men to quench their fire, and washed Srebnitz's right hand clean. Two men removed the cauldron and its tripod, the cook went away with his pots and pans, while others threw wet sand over the cinders and all of them went for shelter into their shallow caves. And soon there was no sign of men in the Mountain, or that any free men were living in all The Land.

VII

In the small cave, sheltering from the rain, Srebnitz's lessons continued. Gregor explained to him that there were five thousand Germans in the town, and that one by one these must be killed. The first thing, he said, was not to show yourself, and he showed him how to hide in front of things as well as behind things, and taught him to know where the horizon would be to any watcher below, so that he should never come between a German's eyes and the sky. He told him about the oak-scrub, the heath and the myrtle, and the various kinds of cover. And he must never fire a shot at a hundred yards. Hlaka might sometimes fire at two hundred, he said; but no one else was allowed to fire at a hundred. Infantry sometimes fired at a thousand yards, said Gregor; but that was in war, and in war it took a ton of lead to kill a[Pg 75] man. This was guerrilla; and they had not a ton to spare. If they never wasted a cartridge and never showed themselves, they would kill the Germans in time. "But won't the Germans do the same thing and kill us?" said Srebnitz. "And they are two or three hundred to one."

"No," said Gregor. "They have not the brains for it. Very fine plans are worked out for them, by men well capable of working out plans. There are no better plans in the world. And they have worked them out for years, while we were all sleeping. And there are no better men to obey those plans than Germans."

"Then why won't they work?" asked Srebnitz.

"They do work," said Gregor. "They broke the Maginot Line and conquered Europe, and have taken all The Land except this Mountain. They were brilliant plans, well carried out. But they made no plan for fighting in oak-scrub on a mountain. And it's too late now."

"Why is it too late?" asked Srebnitz.

"I don't quite know," said Gregor. "But all the plans were made years ago, when Hitler was speaking of peace, and they have to follow those plans now. Everything they have done was foreseen. And we of course, who foresaw nothing, we lost where they won. But where they did not foresee, there are no plans; and without plans Germans can do nothing. They foresaw everything for two years, but the two years are running to an end, and the plans go no further. Soon they will be like children lost in the dark. Hlaka will make his plans from hour to hour; but they will[Pg 76] ask their great generals for plans, and the generals will look among their papers and not find any more."

"And can we fight five thousand men?" asked Srebnitz.

"Why not?" said Gregor. "Five thousand men can't kill a coney. Some men are born hunters; the Germans are born plotters. Good plotters too. But we are hunters."

"We shall win, then," said Srebnitz, but a little doubtfully.

"Certainly we shall win," said Gregor. "But you must obey Hlaka."

Then Gregor picked up the little air-gun that was in the cave and gave Srebnitz a small spade and told him to come and practise some shooting.

"But I can shoot from here," said Srebnitz.

"No," said Gregor. "We never shoot till we are hidden."

"But I am hidden here," said Srebnitz.

"No," said Gregor. "That is too easy. You cannot always go to a cave when you want to shoot. You must learn how to hide yourself on the Mountain, wherever you are."

"What is the spade for?" asked Srebnitz, as they walked out of the cave.

"We all carry spades or trowels," said Gregor. "It is often necessary in order to hide ourselves. And we are not allowed to shoot until we have done that."

Gregor led the way out by the back of the arena through the rocks to the north, stooping and crawling when he came to the top of the crags. Then they came round to their left[P