Under Fire For Servia

"Oh, I hope I'm in time!" cried Dick.

And then he wasted no more of the precious seconds. He knew that Obrenovitch, as an officer, in uniform, and in time of war, would have somewhere about him a Red Cross packet containing the absolute essentials of first aid treatment. In a moment he had found this packet and torn it open. He was close to the river, and in a twinkling he found two small, flat stones. These he pressed into the open wounds where the bullet had passed in and out, and then he drew a tight bandage about them.

All this time, be it remembered, he was under heavy fire. Bullets pattered about him constantly. Once a stick he was using in an effort to improvise a still better tourniquet was shot right out of his hand. But he never faltered. Fortunately the shooting was wild. The searchlight had not picked him up, and so he was not a real target for the enemy, as he might have been had they seen him in the glare of the great light.

The blood soon ceased to flow, and then Dick leaned over to listen for the beating of the captain's heart. He caught it in a moment. It was faint, but regular enough.

"I think he'll do all right now," said Dick to himself, with intense satisfaction.

And then he had time to think of himself, and to realize that he was tired and shaky about the knees. He collapsed for a moment, and lay beside the wounded and unconscious officer. But he realized something that was like a tonic; he had not been afraid, not once, while his work remained unfinished! Perhaps it was just because he had been too busy in his fight with the death that was reaching out to seize the Servian. Whatever the reason, it was something to make him proud and happy, and to fill him with a tingling sensation that was worth a night's sleep, almost, in making him forget his own exhaustion.

"Now to get him away!" said Dick to himself. "There's no use in staying here. Something is sure to hit one or both of us if I do."

But Obrenovitch was rather a heavy man. Dick could have dragged him along, but he was afraid that that would start the bleeding of the wound afresh, and he knew that if the Servian lost even a little more of the blood that he had already shed so freely nothing could save him.

For a moment Dick was near to despair. There seemed nothing to do but stay there and hope that the Austrian fire would slacken. Even so, however, things were bad enough, for it was highly important, as Dick understood very well, to get the Servian officer into a doctor's hands as soon as possible. His improvised bandage and tourniquet would do very well for an hour or so, but better treatment was necessary, since it was dangerous to arrest the circulation of the blood, what there was left of it, too long. And then Dick heard footsteps, the most welcome sound he had ever heard, he thought – except for the hail that followed a moment later.

"Dick! Where are you?"

It was Stepan Dushan. He had come after Dick, determined not to let a stranger outdo him in courage!

"Here!" cried Dick. "I found him! I believe he'll pull through, if we can get him away. I've been puzzling my brains trying to think how to do it. But now we can make a stretcher."

"How? We haven't any material, Dick!"

"Haven't they taught you that?" said Dick. "All our scouts know how to turn that trick! Stay here! I'll be back in a minute."

Dick always carried his big knife, which had been a present from his scoutmaster as a reward for a particularly good piece of work that Dick had once done at home. Now, with its biggest blade, he managed to cut away two stout branches of a tree, and to strip them of leaves and twigs. Though they were thin, he knew that the live, green wood was stout, and that while it might bend and give, it would not readily break. He returned with the two poles, and called to Steve.

"Take off your coat and give it to me, Steve," he directed.

Steve obeyed, and Dick laid the coat, and his own, which he now took off, on the ground. Then he passed the poles through the sleeves of the two coats, having laid them end to end, and then he proceeded to button both coats.

"Now do you see?" he said. "Isn't that a fine stretcher for a home-made one? Take his feet now, and lift him very carefully. He's too tall, but if we pass our hands and arms under him, we can support his head and his feet when we start to carry him. It'll be a hard job, but it's the only chance. It's better to let him take the risk of being carried that way than to leave him here. He hasn't any chance at all here, and he will have some this way. How soon can we get him to a doctor?"

"Very soon, once we're up the hill," said Steve. "The men can help there. They didn't know I had come back, but they will soon miss us and come back to see what has happened. Mischa has been my father's servant for years, and he would go through fire and water for me, I know."

"Good! Steve, have you noticed? They've stopped firing!"

"About time, too! What a lot of ammunition they have wasted! Well, they have plenty! We haven't, and when we shoot it will be when we're pretty sure that there are Austrians in the way!"

"Yes. Steady, now – careful! Don't jolt him even a little – it won't take much to start that bleeding up again."

Tenderly, carefully, they lifted the wounded man and got him on the stretcher. Then with the utmost care, lest they disturb the rough bandaging, they raised it. And when they had it up and were about to start, in broken step, to make the movement smoother, there came a fearful test of their nerve. A dull roar sounded behind them, and above their heads a whistling, shrieking sound, that they had learned to know well that night! It was the hiss of a shell, and in a moment it burst. But it had overshot the mark, and when it burst, though their hands shook, they held their firm grip on the stretcher, and that last, wanton shot had no more effect than its predecessors. It was the last. They finished the ascent safely. And there they found Mischa and the rest, who relieved them and carried the stretcher to the road a few hundred yards beyond, where, by great good luck, they met a marching regiment, with a real surgeon.

Their work for Obrenovitch was done.

CHAPTER VIII

A NEW EXPLOIT

Dick dropped into the background when they encountered the soldiers, and let Stepan do the talking. Now that the strain was over, he was feeling very tired and he wanted only to get to a place where he could sleep. But Stepan would not allow him to escape so easily. He told everyone within hearing of Dick's feat in going back to look for the wounded captain. The surgeon, bending over the bandages and making little adjustments, looked up quickly.

"Whoever applied this tourniquet saved this man's life," he said, briskly. "He would have bled to death in a very little time. As it is, he will do very well, if the wound has not been infected, and there was so much blood that I doubt if there was any great danger of that."

Then the colonel of the regiment appeared, and drew aside Stepan, whom he evidently knew. When they returned the colonel spoke to Dick very quietly.

"This is not the time to try to thank you for what you have done to-night," he said. "I can only tell you that, if I live long enough, I shall see that your heroism is properly known and fittingly rewarded. You have helped to bring Stepan Dushan to this side in safety, too, for he tells me that your cool behavior in the boat under the Austrian fire had a good deal to do with getting you all ashore. Now I shall send you to Belgrade, since Stepan Dushan tells me that you have reasons for wishing to stay with us for a time. You have earned the right to do as you please."

Captain Obrenovitch was being sent back to Belgrade, and Steve and Dick volunteered to care for him on the way, since that would make it unnecessary to detail a hospital corps man to act as orderly. They had already proved that they could be trusted in any emergency that might arise. And so in a few minutes the column began the march again, moving westward. Dick noticed that no bugles or drums were sounded, and that the order to march was passed along from company to company, the officers giving the brief commands in low voices.

"It's a secret troop movement, of course," said Steve, when Dick commented on this. "I can explain a little. The Austrians think, or we hope they do, that we will concentrate in defense of our capital. We would like to, but, after all, Belgrade is not the historic capital of Servia. Our chief city in the olden times was Uskub, which we regained from the Turks in the first war. We have made a capital of Belgrade because it is the most convenient city and because it is the centre of most of our trade."

"And you're going to let them take it?"

"Oh, I didn't say that!" said Steve, with a grin. "Perhaps they will take it but they won't hold it very long! No, what I mean is that our armies will defend Belgrade not by standing a siege, but by attacking the Austrians in other places. Belgrade will have a small garrison, and its situation makes it very strong, of course. But if the Austrians were to enter the city to-morrow it could make no real difference to the plan of our campaign."

They were not very far from the city, which they entered, of course, from the land side. They drove to the military hospital first, and there Captain Obrenovitch was turned over to those who could complete the work Dick had begun. Then when it was certain that he was in good hands, and they had had a confirmation of the regimental surgeon's optimistic verdict, they were ready to rest.

"Haven't you got to make a report?" asked Dick, when Steve announced that they were going to his home to sleep.

"I've made the important report already," said Steve. "The chief information I had was military, and Colonel Tchernaieff will give the facts I had gathered to the staff when he reports at Schabatz. The rest can wait until morning. I don't know what has happened here yet. I suppose the information department still has quarters here, but most of the men will be with the army in the field. I may have to go to Schabatz in the morning – later in the morning, I mean."

That was a good correction to make, because it was morning now, and streaks of light were beginning to appear beyond the Danube. And Dick, who had lived through the fullest day of his life, was eager to get to bed. The Austrian bombardment, which it seemed had not been very bad, had stopped altogether, and the strong probability that it would be resumed when the sun rose didn't deter Dick from his desire to sleep.

"We'll be at my house soon," said Steve, who knew how tired Dick was. "If old Maritza is still there, she will look after us. I don't believe anyone else will be in the house. My mother and my two young brothers have probably gone away. My father said they must when the war began."

Dick found that his friend's house was in that new quarter of Belgrade that he had admired so much when he had made his trip across from Semlin. And the inside of the house was as pleasant as its outer aspect. It was not luxurious. Few houses in Servia are, since Servia is a country where great wealth is practically unknown. But so, for that matter, is extreme poverty. Most of the Servian people make enough for a living, and not a great deal more, and so they have remained a simple people, and have maintained their ability to rise as a nation in arms.

But Dick wasn't thinking of such things. All he needed to know about that house or any other was that it contained a bed. Yet first before they went to bed, both he and Steve took a bath.

"Heaven only knows when we'll get another chance," said Steve, cheerfully. "There are going to be exciting doings, my friend Dick, for a time. We may have to leave here in a great hurry. You know, the Austrians may find out how easy it would be for them to come over into Belgrade! It would be a great stroke for them to say they had captured our capital in the first week of the war, even if they couldn't keep it."

"Well, I hope they don't come until we've had a good sleep," said Dick. And with that he rolled himself into bed and was snoring as soon as his head touched the pillow.

When he awoke it was broad daylight. But one thing surprised him. The window was in the west wall of the room in which he had slept, and yet the sun was pouring into it! It didn't seem possible, yet it was true. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and he had slept practically all day! In his surprise he called out sharply to Steve, who had slept in the same room, but in a separate bed. But Steve was not there. His bed was crumpled, but he himself had vanished!

Dick went to the window and looked out. Everything seemed to be peaceful. There were not many people about, but he knew that in this part of Belgrade few people were to be seen at this time of day in any case. At first he scarcely noticed a sound that came to his ears regularly, almost as regularly and monotonously as the ticking of a watch. Then he realized what it was; the sound of cannon. The bombardment, then, was still going on. He wondered about its success.

He looked out toward the business quarter of Belgrade. In a good many places black smoke was rising, shot through with yellow fumes. There was no wind, fortunately; he guessed that these pillars of smoke were from fires started by the Austrian shells. Had there been a gale to fan them they might have done serious damage. He was still looking out when the door burst open and Stepan Dushan came in.

"Hello! You're awake at last, are you?" he cried. "Well, you had sleep enough when you once started! You looked so comfortable that I didn't have the heart to wake you when the time came for me to get up."

"I'm glad you didn't," said Dick, honestly. "I'm feeling fine now, and if you'll give me some breakfast I'll tackle my weight in wildcats! But if I'd had five minutes less sleep it wouldn't have been enough! I don't believe I was ever tired enough to sleep through a bombardment before."

"This isn't much of a bombardment," said Stepan, contemptuously. "I don't believe there'll be much damage done. Come on out – though I'll see that you get some breakfast first. I think I'll have something interesting to tell you before long."

"All right. But why don't you tell me now?" asked Dick.

"Bad luck to talk about things until they're done," said Steve, with a grin. "Don't you know that in America?"

"All right," said Dick. "But just when are you going to know?"

"Pretty soon – but that's no sign that you'll know it as soon as I do, you know. How would you like to go back to Semlin?"

"I'm game, if you'll tell me why."

"That's just what I'm afraid I won't be able to do. That is, it would be a whole lot better if you didn't know."

"Oh, all right! I don't care, anyhow! I've enlisted for the war. By the way, what's happened to your scout troop? I thought perhaps there'd be some good work here in Belgrade for it to do."

"There will be, only there isn't any troop any more. About everyone in it is with the army, except the very little chaps. I think they'd have let me fight this time if there wasn't other work for me to do. You see we lost so many men against Turkey and Bulgaria that we haven't really enough men to fill the ranks. We have regiments that aren't half filled – or we did have until this started. By this time, though, I think there aren't many short battalions left. The old men and the boys will fight, and they say that some of the country regiments have a lot of women in them."

"Women? Fighting with the men? That's not allowed, is it?"

"How can you stop it?" asked Steve, with a shrug. "You don't know much about us yet, Dick, my friend. You don't know what it is to have lived with the Turks for centuries. I have read about your American women on the plains, in the times when the Indians went on the war-path. Most of them could handle a rifle, couldn't they? And they were pretty good shots, too!"

"Yes, but that's different – "

"Not so very different. I don't believe your Indians were ever worse than the Bashi-Bazouks. They hated us Servians, you see, because we were infidels and Christians. And so for hundreds of years they harried us, burned our homes, carried off our women, killed our men. That sort of thing gets into the blood after a time. For centuries we Serbs have stood between all Europe and the Turks. They never wiped us out, though they beat us by sheer weight of numbers. But here, and in Bosnia, that the Austrians stole, and in the Black Mountains – Montenegro – a few Serbs have always held out.

"That's why we aren't so civilized as some of the other countries of Europe. We haven't had the time to be civilized. We have had to fight just to keep alive. We have had to fight the Turks for life itself, and when they did not kill, they burned our fields with the standing grain, summer after summer, so that the harvest was lost. Yet once there was a great Serb empire that stretched from the Black Sea to the Aegean – " Stepan's eyes flashed, and there was a look in them that might have been worn by his great ancestor and namesake, the last of the great medieval Servian Tsars.

"There is a day that we still mark every year," he went on. "The day of the battle of Kossovo, when the Turks annihilated us – though that was more than five hundred years ago. But in the last war we had our revenge, on the great day of Kumanovo, when, though the Turks outnumbered us, we drove them before us and crushed them.

"But I spoke of the women, and I am wandering from the point! We do not want the women to fight, but they come from the villages, where whole companies are recruited from relatives, since we still have almost a patriarchal system. The woman wears men's clothes, and she marches with her husband or her brothers. The officers do not know, and – they fight well. They have known what it is, some of those women, to see their homes burned and their mothers slain by Turks. They know that a free Servia means more than a name!"

"I hadn't thought about it just that way," said Dick. "But I see that you are right. It is just the same thing as with our pioneers. The women of those days did fight the Indians, and for just such reasons. I'm going to get you to tell me more about Servian history some time. You know, until the Balkan War Servia and Bulgaria weren't much more than names to us in America or to most of us. We were surprised and mighty pleased, of course, when you smashed the Turks the way you did."

"Everyone was surprised," said Stepan. His face grew dark. "And there is another thing we hold against Austria. We were good friends, we little states of the Balkans. We had fought a great war, and we would have continued to be good friends had it not been for Austria. But she stepped in when peace was to be made, and said what we could have and what we must not touch. She would not give us the window on the sea that we had paid for with our blood. And she tricked Bulgaria into attacking us and so starting the second war."

"How was that?"

"She thought Bulgaria was strong enough to beat us, and she promised to help if Bulgaria were too weak. Everyone thought, you see, that the Bulgarian troops were the best in the Balkans. They forgot that we helped them to win Adrianople, and that we and the Greeks won our great victories unaided. And then, when we crushed Bulgaria within two weeks, Austria broke her word, and Bulgaria was left helpless. We acted in self defence, but we were sorry."

"I supposed that Servia hated Bulgaria now, Steve. And Greece, too."

"As to Greece, I cannot say. Her people are not Slavs. But we and the Bulgarians are blood brothers. We would not have fought except for Austrian trickery and Austrian lying – that they call diplomacy."

"Will Bulgaria fight again in this war?"

"I do not know. There is a great effort being made to revive the Balkan League and add Roumania to it. Roumania is stronger than any of us now, because, though she helped us at the end of the war with Bulgaria, she did no real fighting at all, and it did not exhaust her to gain what she did from the wars. If we can win what Austria denied us before, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, perhaps, as well, we will not grudge Bulgaria what we had to keep from her in Macedonia after the war with Turkey, and we will help her, too, to recover Adrianople. You remember that the Turks took that back from her when we had beaten her down."

"So Bulgaria may be on your side?"

"Yes. And I think it very likely, because she is near us and far from Austria, which might offer to help her. If she attacked us, too, Greece would come to our aid. But that depends on many things. If Russia helps us, that will make a difference. And it is a question of what Italy will do, also. But this is not getting us anywhere. You are game to come with me?"

"Yes."

"Then let us start. We are going to get a motor boat on the Danube – not on the Save – and try to run the gauntlet of the Austrian monitors. I think it is safe enough, because they believe that they have the river entirely under their control. I think it will be easier to get into Semlin than it was to get out last night."

"Well, I'm ready whenever you give the word."

CHAPTER IX

BACK TO SEMLIN

It was beginning to grow dark when they set out from Steve's house.

Maritza, the old servant who seemed to idolize Steve, had given them a wonderful meal. Dick liked the old peasant woman. She reminded him of the stories he had read of old southern mammies. It was plain that she was wholly devoted to the Dushan family, and that she would do anything for them. But in spite of that, she ordered Steve around as if he had been a child of her own, and Steve, who seemed to Dick to possess a goodly share of independence, accepted her orders with the utmost meekness.

"She was with the family before I was born," he explained. "I can remember how she used to order me about when I was a little chap. And she's pretty nearly as bad with my father, too. I can tell you he does what he's told. It's a wonder she hasn't insisted on going with him in the campaign, just to make sure that he changes his shoes when his feet get wet and wears heavy clothes when it's cold!"

Dick laughed, but he could understand Maritza's attitude well enough. She had mothered him, too, and, despite his excitement, which made him inclined to slight his meal, had insisted on his eating generously.

"I don't know what mischief you two boys will be up to to-night," she had said, "but if you've got a good hot meal in your stomachs you'll be in a better condition for it, whatever it is."

As they left the house, Steve explained that they had a long walk before them.

"Horses are at a premium," he said. "Otherwise we might have ridden, because I could have got them. But they are so badly needed in the field that everyone has given up all the animals that are at all fit for service."

"You don't use cavalry very much, though, do you?"

"No, not as a rule. Our men fight better on foot, and a great deal of our fighting is done in mountainous country that is all split up with ravines and clumps of woods. It was so, at least, against the Turks and the Bulgarians. But in this war there will be some chance for cavalry, at first, anyhow. And, besides, the horses are needed for the guns."

"Oh, yes! I didn't think of that. You don't use motor cars much, I suppose?"

"We can't. We haven't the roads. If the French get in, they and the Germans will use cars a great deal, I suppose, for all sorts of things. But our roads are too bad for that. It's just as well, because the Austrians have had so much more money to spend than we that they are far ahead of us. They've got better heavy guns than we, too, but I don't think they'll get much more chance to use them. We are not going to shut ourselves up in fortresses. And when it comes to field pieces we can hold our own with them a good deal better."

"Field guns will be the ones most used, won't they?"

"We think so. We've got light guns that are easy to move about, and we've got the men who know how to handle them, too. Our men are all veterans, and that is going to make a lot of difference. They know what it is to have hard fighting, and if things go against them at first it won't bother them. My father says that the experience we have had in actual war will be worth five army corps."

"Who is the commander-in-chief?"