Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Sergeant of Cavalry 27 A machine-gun roared into action at their very elbows. There was no time to give directions, nor could they have been heard if they had been. Nell scrambled up the embankment-and crawled along its side, the barking of the gun drowning the noise of his feet and the stones rattling down. He began to fear that he would pass the culvert in the darkness, when a light was fired and he flattened himself against the stones, praying that they would not roll both him and themselves to the bottom of the bank. As it happened, he lay with his face down hill, so that from one eye he could see the other men at the foot of the bank, in single file, flat on their faces, motionless as the dead. He was alone on the embankment and would have to do his work singlehanded. Darkness again, but Nell had no sooner gathered his legs under him than another cluster of lights blazed and he was forced to lie down again. His position, however, was changed slightly so that he could see out over the field, out to the wheat, where shells were bursting. Midway between, scattered on the field, were the bodies of the men who had been killed in the afternoon. Then Nell saw the far end of the ditch, its course marked by a black line of shadow. His eye rapidly fol- lowed this to where it went out from under the embankment. Man! There was a gun there! He could see it plainly, with a man beside it, and another just at the edge of the bank, kneeling and looking toward the Americans. As Nell watched, this man bent hurriedly down and seized the shoulder of the man by the gun. He shook it and pointed to the Americans. The other man jumped up and bending over the gun, picked it up clumsily and swung it up on the edge of the ditch. The lights went out as though a switch had been turned. Nell decided two things, that the men with the gun would fire another light and then begin shooting, and that when the light went up he would make two jumps and either silence the gun or be killed with the rest of them. Bang! went the pistol. Pop! the lights gleamed brightly. Neil made a leap for the culvert edge, landed on his feet, crouch- ing and swaying forward, took a second leap just as the gun gave its first bark. He landed squarely on the shoulders of the kneeling German, knocked him over across the gun, and Nell, gun and Germans went backward into the ditch, with Nell still holding the other’s collar in a death grip. The man squirmed and writhed. His body heaved under the Yank’s knees, his hands tore at the Yank’s clothes, his nails scratched at the Yank’s face, but Nell hung on. A flying body struck him in the back and knocked him forward on to his antag- onist, a foot crunched against one of his hands, something struck him over the head and nearly knocked him senseless. Mean- while he hung to his German. He had the other’s coat collar twisted in his hands and he had his thumbs into the German’s neck as far as he could shove them. He intended to hang on until he was killed, and something told him that he had a good leverage on the other, for the man’s struggles grew perceptibly weaker. There was grunting, splashing, and thrashing bodies all about, but Nell did not hear them. A light went up, and its glare shone full into the ditch, but Nell paid no heed. He saw a man’s head under his hands, and the back of a blouse, and a shoulder strap with r2r on it. When the light went out the German had ceased to struggle. Nell got very stiffly to his feet. Another light lightened the field, and across it two Germans, their coat tails right out straight, were taking their hurried way. Some one grunted and hurled a bomb after them. It burst and the two running men gave a little jump, as moving picture comedians do when a pistol is fired at them, but kept on running. Then they must have been seen from the farther bank, for one of them dropped, got up again, ran a few feet and then went down for good, and his companion did what looked like an attempt at a handspring and lay still. Nell was forced to laugh. The crawling over the stones, and the holding of breath when the lights went up, and his bitter fight with the German had all ended happily, and there were the two jerries running away with a hop, skip and jump as fast as they could. He laughed heartily and his chuckles were echoed from the ditch. | ‘“There’s one o’ them Huns under my foot as dead as a herrin’,’’ whispered some one. ‘See has he got on a Gott mit Uns belt!’’ cried another. : There was a scramble in the dark. Alas, COMIGDIOOKSEEO