After a dead silence:
"Buck up," remarked Carfax; "think how our men must feel in Belfort, never letting off their guns. Ross rifles, too—not a shot at a Boche since the damn war began!"
"God!" said Flint, smiting the ball with the palm of his hand, "to think of those Ross rifles rusting down there and to think of the pink-skinned pigs they could paunch so cleanly. Did you ever paunch a deer? What a mess of intestines all over the shop!"
Gary, still standing, began to kick the snow from his shoes. Gray said to him: "For a dollar of your Yankee money I'd give you a shot at me with your automatic—you're that slack at practice."
"If it goes on much longer like this I'll not have to pay for a shot at anybody," returned Gary, with a short laugh.
Gray laughed too, disagreeably, stretching his facial muscles, but no sound issued.
"We're all going crazy together up here; that's my idea," he said. "I don't know which I can stand most comfortably, your voices or your silence. Both make me sick."
"Some day a salamander will nip you; then you'll go loco," observed Gary, balancing another tennis ball in his right hand. "Give me a shot at you?" he added. "I feel as though I could throw it clean through you. You look soft as a pudding to me."
Far, clear, from infinite depths, the elf-like hail of the cuckoo came floating up to the window.
To Flint, English born, the call meant more than it did to Canadian or Yankee.
"In Devon," he said in an altered voice, "they'll be calling just now. There's a world of primroses in Devon.... And the thorn is as white as the damned snow is up here."
Gary growled his impatience and his profile of a Greek fighter showed in clean silhouette against the window.
"Aw, hell," he said, "did I come out here for this?—nine months of it?" He hurled the tennis ball at the wall. "Can the home talk, if you don't mind."
The cuckoo was still calling.
"Did you ever play cuckoo," asked Carfax, "at ten shillings a throw? It's not a bad game—if you're put to it for amusement."
Nobody replied; Gray's sunken, boyish face betrayed no interest; he continued to toss a tennis ball against the wall and catch it on the rebound.
Toward sundown the usual Alpine chill set in; a mist hung over the snow-edged cliffs; the rocks breathed steam under a foggy and battered moon.
CHAPTER III
CUCKOO!
Carfax, on duty, sat hunched up over the telephone, reporting to the fortress.
Gray came in, closed the wooden shutters, hung blankets over them, lighted an oil stove and then a candle. Flint took up the cards, looked at Gary, then flung them aside, muttering.
Nobody attempted to read; nobody touched the cards again. An orderly came in with soup. The meal was brief and perfectly silent.
Flint said casually, after the table had been cleared: "I haven't slept for a month. If I don't get some sleep I'll go queer. I warn you; that's all. I'm sorry to say it, but it's so."
"They're dirty beasts to keep us here like this," muttered Gary—"nine months of it, and not a shot."
"There'll be a few shots if things don't change," remarked Flint in a colourless voice. "I'm getting wrong in my head. I can feel it."
Carfax turned from the switchboard with a forced laugh: "Thinking of shooting up the camp?"
"That or myself," replied Flint in a quiet voice; "ever since that cuckoo called I've felt queer."
Gary, brooding in his soiled tunic collar, began to mutter presently: "I once knew a man in a lighthouse down in Florida who couldn't stand it after a bit and jumped off."
"Oh, we've heard that twenty times," interrupted Carfax wearily.
Gray said: "What a jump!—I mean down into Alsace below–"
"You're all going dotty!" snapped Carfax. "Shut up or you'll be doing it—some of you."
"I can't sleep. That's where I'm getting queer," insisted Flint. "If I could get a few hours' sleep now–"
"I wish to God the Boches could reach you with a big gun. That would put you to sleep, all right!" said Gray.
"This war is likely to end before any of us see a Fritz," said Carfax. "I could stand it, too, except being up here with such"—his voice dwindled to a mutter, but it sounded to Gary as though he had used the word "rotters."
Flint's face had a white, strained expression; he began to walk about, saying aloud to himself: "If I could only sleep. That's the idea—sleep it off, and wake up somewhere else. It's the silence, or the voices—I don't know which. You dollar-crazy Yankees and ignorant Provincials don't realize what a cuckoo is. You've no traditions, anyway—no past, nothing to care for–"
"Listen to 'Arry!" retorted Gary—"'Arry and his cuckoo!"
Carfax stirred heavily. "Shut up!" he said, with an effort. "The thing is to keep doing something—something—anything—except quarrelling."
He picked up a tennis ball. "Come on, you funking brutes! I'll teach you how to play cuckoo. Every man takes three tennis balls and stands in a corner of the room. I stand in the middle. Then you blow out the candle. Then I call 'cuckoo!' in the dark and you try to hit me, aiming by the sound of my voice. Every time I'm hit I pay ten shillings to the pool, take my place in a corner, and have a shot at the next man, chosen by lot. And if you throw three balls apiece and nobody hits me, then you each pay ten shillings to me and I'm cuckoo for another round."
"We aim at random?" inquired Gray, mildly interested.
"Certainly. It must be played in pitch darkness. When I call out cuckoo, you take a shot at where you think I am. If you all miss, you all pay. If I'm hit, I pay."
Gary chose three tennis balls and retired to a corner of the room; Gray and Flint, urged into action, took three each, unwillingly.
"Blow out the candle," said Carfax, who had walked into the middle of the room. Gary blew it out and the place was in darkness.
They thought they heard Carfax moving cautiously, and presently he called, "Cuckoo!" A storm of tennis balls rebounded from the walls; "Cuckoo!" shouted Carfax, and the tennis balls rained all around him.
Once more he called; not a ball hit him; and he struck a match where he was seated upon the floor.
There was some perfunctory laughter of a feverish sort; the candle was relighted, tennis balls redistributed, and Carfax wrote down his winnings.
The next time, however, Gray, throwing low, caught him. Again the candle was lighted, scores jotted down, a coin tossed, and Flint went in as cuckoo.
It seemed almost impossible to miss a man so near, even in total darkness, but Flint lasted three rounds and was hit, finally, a stinging smack on the ear. And then Gary went in.
It was hot work, but they kept at it feverishly, grimly, as though their very sanity depended upon the violence of their diversion. They threw the balls hard, viciously hard. A sort of silent ferocity seemed to seize them. A chance hit cut the skin over Flint's cheekbone, and when the candle was lighted, one side of his face was bright with blood.
Early in the proceedings somebody had disinterred brandy and Schnapps from under a bunk. The room had become close; they all were sweating.
Carfax emptied his iced glass, still breathing hard, tossed a shilling and sent in Gary as cuckoo.
Flint, who never could stand spirits, started unsteadily for the candle, but could not seem to blow it out. He stood swaying and balancing on his heels, puffing out his smooth, boyish cheeks and blowing at hazard.
"You're drunk," said Gray, thickly; but he was as flushed as the boy he addressed, only steadier of leg.
"What's that?" retorted Flint, jerking his shoulders around and gazing at Gray out of glassy eyes.
"Blow out that candle," said Gary heavily, "or I'll shoot it out! Do you get that?"
"Shoot!" repeated Flint, staring vaguely into Gary's bloodshot eyes; "you shoot, you old slacker–"
"Shut up and play the game!" cut in Carfax, a menacing roar rising in his voice. "You're all slackers—and rotters, too. Play the game! Keep playing—hard!—or you'll go clean off your fool nuts!"