第95章

There was nothing miraculous about it.That is to say, it was no more of a miracle than hundreds of similar cases in the World War.

The papers of those years were constantly printing stories of men over whose supposed graves funeral sermons had been preached, to whose heirs insurance payments had been made, in whose memory grateful communities had made speeches and delivered eulogiums--the papers were telling of instance after instance of those men being discovered alive and in the flesh, as casuals in some French hospital or as inmates of German prison camps.

Rachel Ellis had asked what was to hinder Albert's having been taken prisoner by the Germans and carried off by them.As a matter of fact nothing had hindered and that was exactly what had happened.Sergeant Speranza, wounded by machine gun fire and again by the explosion of the grenade, was found in the ruins of the cottage when the detachment of the enemy captured it.He was conscious and able to speak, so instead of being bayonetted was carried to the rear where he might be questioned concerning the American forces.The questioning was most unsatisfactory to the Prussian officers who conducted it.Albert fainted, recovered consciousness and fainted again.So at last the Yankee swine was left to die or get well and his Prussian interrogators went about other business, the business of escaping capture themselves.But when they retreated the few prisoners, mostly wounded men, were taken with them.

Albert's recollections of the next few days were hazy and very doubtful.Pain, pain and more pain.Hours and hours--they seemed like years--of jolting over rough roads.Pawing-over by a fat, bearded surgeon, who may not have been intentionally brutal, but quite as likely may.A great desire to die, punctuated by occasional feeble spurts of wishing to live.Then more surgical man-handling, more jolting--in freight cars this time--a slow, miserable recovery, nurses who hated their patients and treated them as if they did, then, a prison camp, a German prison camp.

Then horrors and starvation and brutality lasting many months.

Then fever.

He was wandering in that misty land between this world and the next when, the armistice having been signed, an American Red Cross representative found him.In the interval between fits of delirium he told this man his name and regiment and, later, the name of his grandparents.When it seemed sure that he was to recover the Red Cross representative cabled the facts to this country.And, still later, those facts, or the all-important fact that Sergeant Albert M.C.Speranza was not dead but alive, came by telegraph to Captain Zelotes Snow of South Harniss.And, two months after that, Captain Zelotes himself, standing on the wharf in Boston and peering up at a crowded deck above him, saw the face of his grandson, that face which he had never expected to see again, looking eagerly down upon him.

A few more weeks and it was over.The brief interval of camp life and the mustering out were things of the past.Captain Lote and Albert, seated in the train, were on their way down the Cape, bound home.Home! The word had a significance now which it never had before.Home!

Albert drew a long breath."By George!" he exclaimed."By George, Grandfather, this looks good to me!"It might not have looked as good to another person.It was raining, the long stretches of salt marsh were windswept and brown and bleak.In the distance Cape Cod Bay showed gray and white against a leaden sky.The drops ran down the dingy car windows.

Captain Zelotes understood, however.He nodded.

"It used to look good to me when I was bound home after a v'yage,"he observed."Well, son, I cal'late your grandma and Rachel are up to the depot by this time waitin' for you.We ain't due for pretty nigh an hour yet, but I'd be willin' to bet they're there."Albert smiled."My, I do want to see them!" he said.

"Shouldn't wonder a mite if they wanted to see you, boy.Well, I'm kind of glad I shooed that reception committee out of the way.Ipresumed likely you'd rather have your first day home to yourself--and us."

"I should say so! Newspaper reporters are a lot of mighty good fellows, but I hope I never see another one....That's rather ungrateful, I know," he added, with a smile, "but I mean it--just now."He had some excuse for meaning it.The death of Albert Speranza, poet and warrior, had made a newspaper sensation.His resurrection and return furnished material for another.Captain Zelotes was not the only person to meet the transport at the pier; a delegation of reporters was there also.Photographs of Sergeant Speranza appeared once more in print.This time, however, they were snapshots showing him in uniform, likenesses of a still handsome, but less boyish young man, thinner, a scar upon his right cheek, and the look in his eyes more serious, and infinitely older, the look of one who had borne much and seen more.The reporters found it difficult to get a story from the returned hero.He seemed to shun the limelight and to be almost unduly modest and retiring, which was of itself, had they but known it, a transformation sufficiently marvelous to have warranted a special "Sunday special.""Will not talk about himself," so one writer headed his article.