Read Ebook: The Oversight by Breuer Miles J Miles John Forte John R John Robert Illustrator

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Ebook has 181 lines and 10235 words, and 4 pages

So John found himself dashing to the landing field on a motorcycle, and then in an Army plane, a telephone on his ears connected with the lieutenant in front of him. It was all a mad, dizzy, confused dream. He had never been up in a plane before, and the novelty and anxiety of it fought with his tense observation of the sliding landscape below. But there was the galley on the river, and three more following it in the distance. There was an army marching along the top of the bluffs down the river, a countless string of densely packed companies with horsemen and chariots swarming around. There were the huge flat buildings in the walled enclosure where Rosalie had stood. Out of the buildings and out of the enclosures, marched more and more massed troops, all heading toward Omaha.

Then they were back in the City Hall, he and the lieutenant, and facing them were the chief of police and an Army colonel. There was talk of the Governor and General Paul of the State Militia due to arrive from Lincoln any moment in an airplane; and the National Guard mobilizing all over the state, and trucks and caissons and field guns already en route from Ashland with skeletonized personnel. Secretaries dashed out with scribbled messages and in with yellow telegrams. A terrific war was brewing, and what was it all about?

The lieutenant stepped up to the colonel and saluted.

"If you please, sir, the galleys on the river--"

"Yes?" asked the worried colonel.

"They've got to be sunk."

"We have no bombs," the colonel answered. "We're just a toy army here, in the middle of the continent."

"No bombs!" The lieutenant was nonplussed for a moment, and hung his head in study. "Will you leave it to me, sir? Somehow--"

"Good fellow. Thank you," said the colonel, very much relieved. "Your orders are, then, to sink the galleys."

"Come!" The lieutenant said to John.

"Me?" gasped John.

"Don't you want to?" the lieutenant asked. "Men are scarce. I need help. You're the closest. And you've got a level head."

"Just give me a chance," John said eagerly.

The lieutenant spent fifteen minutes in a telephone booth. Then they dashed in a motorcycle to the city landing field where the plane lay. They made the short hop to the Army flying field. This all took time; but when they taxied towards the Army hangars, there stood men ready to load things into the plane. A stack of kegs labeled "Dynamite" and white lengths of fuse did not look very military, and their source was indicated by the departing delivery truck of a hardware firm. The men knocked the stoppers out of the kegs and wadded the fuses into the bungholes with paper.

"Bombs!" The lieutenant spread his hands in a proud gesture. "The Q.M.G. in Washington ought to see this. Maybe he'd trust us with real ones some day."

He turned to John.

"We'll use a cigarette-lighter down in the cockpit, and heave them over the side."

Out over the city they flew, and up the river. The trireme was steadily approaching, and the lieutenant flew his plane a hundred feet above the ship. They could see gaping mouths and goggling whites of eyes turned up at them. The decks were a mass of coarse looking faces.

"Hate to do it," remarked the lieutenant, looking down on the decks packed with living men. "But, Lord, it seems to be the game, so light up!" he ordered sharply.

As John applied the cigarette-lighter and the fuse began to fizzle, the lieutenant circled about and again flew over the creeping galley.

"Now!" He shouted, and John rolled the keg over the side. It turned over and over endwise as it fell, and left a sputtering trail of smoke in the air.

It fell on the deck and knocked over several men. The lieutenant was putting height and distance between themselves and the galley as rapidly as possible, and rightly. In another moment there was a burst of flame and black smoke. Blotches of things flew out sidewards from it, and a dull roar came up to them. For a few minutes a mangled mass of wreckage continued the galley's course down the river. Then it slowed and drifted sidewise, and flames licked over it. Struggling figures stirred the water momentarily and sank. Not a swimmer was left; bronze armor does not float on muddy Missouri River water.

Above the second galley they were met by a flight of arrows, and the lieutenant hurriedly performed some dizzy gyrations with the plane to get out of bowshot, but not before several barbed shafts struck through the wings and thumped against the bottom. So they lit their fuse and passed low over the galley at full speed. There was less regret and more thrill as they rolled the keg with its sputtering tail over the side; the humming arrows made the game less one-sided. The high speed of the plane spoiled the aim, and the keg of dynamite plumped harmlessly into the water just ahead of the galley. The second time they figured a little more closely, and before very long, all four of the galleys were a mass of scattered, blackened wreckage.

John leaned back in the seat.

"Terrible way to squander human beings," he said.

The lieutenant's teeth were set.

"You haven't seen anything yet," he said to John. "We've got two more kegs of dynamite and no orders to the contrary. Let's go back to the front lines."

"Front lines!" exclaimed John.

The lieutenant smiled.

"You've studied medicine; I've studied war. It is two and a half hours since we left the meeting. The Roman--or whatever the blank they are--infantry has made ten miles south and west. Our troops from the Fort have easily made thirty or forty in their trucks, and started digging trenches and emplacing guns. That would mean that there must be fighting north and west of here. Isn't that so?"

"I hadn't thought of it," John admitted.

"Also by this time there must be two or three regiments of State militia on trucks and bound in this direction; and the artillery and machine-guns from Ashland ought to be ready any minute. We've got two more kegs. Are you game?"

As if in answer, a dull boom sounded from the northwest, followed by another; and in five minutes the banging was almost continuous.

John nodded his head. The lieutenant swung the plane around, and it was less than ten minutes before they saw the trenches of the Fort Crook troops spread below them; and from far into the north there poured column upon column of densely formed Roman troops, with the gleam of the afternoon sun upon the metal of their armor and swords. On the eastern end of the line the Roman infantry had reached the trenches and a sickening carnage was taking place. As they advanced steadily toward the trenches, the Roman troops were mowed down by the machine-guns of the Federal soldiers and the Omaha police, in swaths like meadow-grass laid flat by the blade of the scythe. During the period of a few minutes as they looked down they saw thousands of men fall; great heaps of twitching and bloody dead in armor and plumes were piled before the thin line of khaki.

"They don't need us much, but here goes!"

Far back over the enemy's lines, where the troops were massed the densest, they sailed, and dropped their black and smoking blasts and scattered several companies of bewildered soldiers. But others took their places and pressed steadily on.

"If we only had a few fighting planes and some ammunition for them--wouldn't we clean up the place!" gloated the lieutenant. "But there isn't a plane with a machine-gun on it in this division, and not an aerial bomb except some dummies for practice. The War Department isn't ever so very fast, and this certainly came suddenly. However, I'm sure that they must be getting busy sending things over by now. Let's look westward."

The line was flung a dozen miles west of the Missouri River, and gradually was crawling still further west. The artillery from Ashland had stopped ten miles southwest of the place where fighting first began, and by now had set up their pieces and gotten the range with the aid of a commandeered, tri-motored, passenger plane; they were banging shells at the rate of one every three seconds into the thickest of the troops. Even at the height of three thousand feet, the sight was horrible; there were red areas against the green of the landscape, and red areas on the piled up heaps that twitched and gleamed with spots of metal; the heaps piled up and grew into hills, between the gaping holes that the shells dug into the wheatfields.

"Ha! Look!"

The lieutenant pointed near the line at the middle.

"An artillery captain is looking for prisoners."

The barrage of one of the batteries was laying flat a wide area, but preserving a little circle intact in the middle of it. On this island, among a sea of smoky holes, stood a huddled group of Roman soldiers. One by one they fell, for flying fragments of high-explosive shell traveled far, and they did not know enough to fall flat on their faces. Then the barrage stopped and a platoon of men in khaki with rifles crept toward them.

The lieutenant looked like a man on the side-lines of a football game. He flew his plane low and gazed breathlessly at the combat below. For it was an exciting one.

The khaki-clad soldiers wanted prisoners alive. But the Roman soldiers understood nothing of the threat of the gun. Rifles and pistols were leveled, but served in no wise to stop them from making a fierce attack on the Americans with swords and spears. To save their own lives, the latter had to stop and shoot the Romans down.

All but a half a dozen armored men now lay flat on the ground. These gathered together for a moment's council, adjusted their shields, and balanced their swords and spears. They were preparing a charge.

The lieutenant on the ground obviously had orders to get live prisoners. He also knew his battle psychology well.

He formed his men in line; bayonets flashed out of scabbards and in a moment a serried line of them bristled forward on the ends of the rifles. The khaki-clad line started first. The men on the flanks ran as fast as they could go and dodged through shell-holes. The Romans started slowly toward the thin looking center of the American line.

The men in khaki pushed them apart with their bayonets, and two to a prisoner, marched them back to the line; others stopping to pick up weapons. For the first time John noted that these men were all giants; even from the altered perspective of the aeroplane it was clear that they were six and a half to seven feet tall, and burly.

"We'll go back and report, then get a rest," the aviation lieutenant said, heading the plane toward the Army field. There he shook hands with John, and arranged to meet in the morning for further work.

After a telephone conversation with Celestine, and a meal, John settled down in his room and turned on the radio. Program material had been crowded off all stations by the news of the war.

"The front lines are now fully equipped with portable searchlights and flares. But the Roman soldiers have quit coming. Apparently there will be no fighting during the night."

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