Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
The Battle of Demon Faces Flinging Bombs in a Mist of Green Death
One minute, two minutes passed, and no fumes arose. Cautiously the boy lifted a corner of the mask and gave the merest little sniff. He smelt nothing.
It was a false alarm!
Profoundly grateful over his escape, Horace decided that by some happy accident, the shell which had fallen had been a gas shell, but, by some accident of manufacture, it had escaped being filled. Evidently, he was born lucky, he thought. Had it been a high-explosive shell, it would have blown him to atoms; had the shell been filled with gas, he would have been poisoned before he had time to put on his mask.
Five minutes passed.
Then the boy noticed, on the under side of his legs, just where his weight touched the edge of the chair, a curious prickling sensation, as though he had been stung with nettles. Unconsciously, he rubbed the place with his hand.
That instant, wherever the weight of his hand had been, the prickling began. His hand, too, began to smart.
Something was happening. A vague discomfort spread over the skin of his entire body.
He blinked his eyes. The sight was dim and blurred. He could not see clearly the holes in which to put his telephone plugs and, when he picked one up, his fingers were burning so that he let them fall.
Something was happening.
His flesh felt raw about his neck where the collar touched it, and where his skin had touched the chair, fire seemed to be eating him.
A black and purple light was blinding him, heavy fingers pressed on his eyeballs.
Gropingly he managed to find the wire to headquarters.
"I'm going blind," he mumbled, in a thick voice he could not recognize as his own, "send relief."
Relief came half an hour later and the men found Horace on the floor, his clothing half-torn from his body and his shrill screams sunk into hard, husky moanings.
The stretcher-bearers took him to the nearest dressing station.
One look was enough for the examining doctor.
"Put on rubber gloves," he said to his assistant, "take off every stitch he has and burn the clothes. Don't let them touch anything. Burn the canvas of that stretcher. Get the 'phone instruments out of that shelter and burn the shelter. Tell the operator who is there now to change his clothes and burn them, too, and tell him to come here for treatment, quickly!"
"Why, Doctor, what is it?" the assistant asked.
"Blister gas," the doctor answered, "the newest horror of those German fiends.[25] You can't see it, can't smell it, don't know it's there, but ten minutes after you've been near it, the vile stuff raises a thousand blisters on the skin. The poison will sometimes stay in the clothes for weeks. Even the wood of a chair will hold the venom."
"But is it fatal?"
"Victims die from the pain, sometimes," the doctor answered. "Take this boy here. He's had an awful dose, because, as I understand, the shell burst right in the shelter and he soaked it in. He'll be unconscious for quite a while and in about three days all those blisters will break. His body will be nothing but a sheet of raw flesh. We'll have to keep him under morphine and we'll be lucky if he pulls through."
For two long awful weeks Horace lay in a drugged state which left him dulled and yet conscious of pain. The agony rose above the anæsthetic.
At last, exhausted, weak and still in acute torment, he came to himself, to find the hunchback standing beside his bed.
The lad looked up feebly.
"Oh, Croquier," he said, speaking with a still raw throat, "I've been having such a queer dream."
The hunchback leaned forward to listen to the weary, croaking voice.
"I dreamed that Father was over here, in American uniform, and that he said:
"'We're here, my son, at last. We've lagged in late, after France and Britain's heroism, that they may show us what we still can do to save the world from the Hun.'
"And, Croquier, he had in his hand the cage with the 'captive Kaiser'!"
The hunchback leaned low over the bed.
"Remember Madame Maubin!" he said. "That, my boy, was not a dream, but a prophecy!"
THE END
[20] Official British report, April 27, 1915. No poisonous gases or bombs had been used by the Allies prior to this time.
[21] This anticipates a little the development of poisonous gases. Some of these forms were not in use until 1917.
[22] This is the main principle. It is to be remembered that new devices are constantly being experimented with and put into use on the front.
[23] The Allies refrained from using asphyxiating gases for several months, but by 1918, they had attained superiority in their use.
[24] First used in the spring of 1917.
[25] This gas was a development of 1918; it is known as gas vesical.
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