A sunny smile came over the countenance of the dying man, and he said in a faint whisper:
“Good old boy! I knew you wouldn’t disgrace our Company——”
Lloyd interposed, “For God’s sake, if you want to save that Company you are so proud of, tell me how to load that gun!”
As if reciting a lesson in school, the soldier replied in a weak, singsong voice: “Insert tag end of belt in feed block, with left hand pull belt left front. Pull crank handle back on roller, let go, and repeat motion. Gun is now loaded. To fire, raise automatic safety latch, and press thumb piece. Gun is now firing. If gun stops, ascertain position of crank handle——”
But Lloyd waited for no more. With wild joy at his heart, he took a belt from one of the ammunition boxes lying beside the gun, and followed the dying man’s instructions. Then he pressed the thumb piece, and a burst of fire rewarded his efforts. The gun was working.
Training it on the Germans, he shouted for joy as their front rank went down.
Traversing the gun back and forth along the mass of Germans, he saw them break and run back to the cover of their trench, leaving their dead and wounded behind. He had saved his Company, he, Lloyd, the coward, had “done his bit.” Releasing the thumb piece, he looked at the watch on his wrist. He was still alive, and the hands pointed to “3:38,” the time set for his death by the court.
“Ping!”—a bullet sang through the air, and Lloyd fell forward across the gun.
The sentence of the court had been “duly carried out.”
The Captain slowly raised the limp form drooping over the gun, and, wiping the blood from the white face, recognized it as Lloyd, the coward of “D” Company. Reverently covering the face with his handkerchief, he turned to his “non-coms,” and in a voice husky with emotion, addressed them:
“Boys, it’s Lloyd the deserter. He has redeemed himself, died the death of a hero. Died that his mates might live.”
When the United States of America finally declared war against His Satanic Majesty, Wilhelm of Prussia, Carter nodded his approval. The nation’s decision was reached at a time when he was in a particularly generous mood, for things had been coming his way for some time and he had finally settled down comfortably to enjoy them. In the preceding fall he had reached the goal of his ambition, the managership of the New York office of the Atlas Company, where he had been employed for twenty-five years. This carried a salary of seventy-five hundred—some jump from the petty twelve hundred on which he had started; even some jump from the forty-five hundred he had been drawing for the past year.