<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII<br/> <span class="cheaderfont">THE BOYS PERFORM AN ACT OF MERCY</span></h2>
<p>The Austrian commandant’s story of the
frightful privations which his garrison had
undergone, stirred all four of the boys deeply.
Buck took Ned to one side and said:</p>
<p>“Did you note all of the awful things that
the governor there says these poor chaps have
had to eat?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Well, what do you say to inviting him on
the sly to have one little square meal with us
aboard the <em>Flyer</em> before we leave? Just leave
it to me to make it a Jim dandy! I’d like to
feed the whole lot of them if only we had the
victuals.”</p>
<p>“Let’s ask the commandant if he will accept,”
said Ned, brightening.</p>
<p>The Austrian listened gravely to their well-meant
offer, but the boys could feel him
stiffening.</p>
<p>“You forget, gentlemen, that whatever hardships
the soldier of the dual monarchy may<span class="pagenum">[174]</span>
have to suffer, his officers are proud to endure
with him. I thank you for your courtesy, but
cannot honorably accept it.”</p>
<p>Many pitiful sights were seen by the Airship
Boys on their tour of the fortress, but none
impressed them more deeply than that of a
young man in one of the hospital wards. He
was wasted to mere skin and bones with fever
which flamed insanely in his eyes. His feet
they had swathed in great layers of bandages, at
the ends of which wooden splints protruded.
All the time in his delirium he would keep
whispering in the most heart-rending accents:</p>
<p>“Ah, Liebchen, dich kann ich nicht mehr
gruessen!”</p>
<p>“What is that he keeps saying?” asked Alan
of their guide.</p>
<p>“He is speaking of his young bride in
Vienna—bemoaning the fact that he may never
see her again. Lieutenant Racoszky here came
of a comparatively poor middle-class family
but fell in love with the heiress of Count
Polnychek, one of the most influential noblemen
of Budapest, and the head of one of the oldest
families in Hungary. The girl was a reigning
beauty of the fashionable set, but that did not
keep her from falling in love with Racoszky here.<span class="pagenum">[175]</span>
He was handsome, gay, dashing, in those days
before the war. So they were married secretly.</p>
<p>“By and by the old Count found out about
it and would not permit Racoszky to see his girl-wife
any more. Then she eloped one night and
they fled together. They settled in a little town
not far from Budapest and were happy. And
one day she told Racoszky that she was about to
bear him a child.</p>
<p>“That was one week after war had been
declared. Already the Serbs were across our
borders and Montenegro was daily threatening to
join them. The war office was in a panic. All
available troops were rushed to the southern
frontier, where we were defeated badly. A
second army was sent and it too met with
reverses. Then the Russians began to cross our
northeastern frontier by the millions. Every
able-bodied man in the land was drafted.</p>
<p>“Racoszky here hoped to escape until after
his child was born, but that he was not permitted
to do. It was the hard-hearted old count, her
father, who himself told the recruiting officers
that Racoszky was a coward and was trying
to avoid his duty. So one day they came and
seized him in the market place as he was coming
out of the doctor’s office.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum">[176]</span></p>
<p>“‘Come with us. You are called to the
colors!’ they told him sternly.</p>
<p>“Racoszky was desperate. He tried to plead
off.</p>
<p>“‘Good sirs,’ he pleaded, ‘I am but now come
to hasten a doctor to the bedside of my wife.
See, he is running there now. Let me at least
wait until the crisis is past.’</p>
<p>“‘No!’ growled the recruiting sergeant
roughly. ‘We have heard all about you and
your trickiness. Come along now before we
make you.’</p>
<p>“Then Racoszky became like a madman. He
tried to break away from them and run back to
his suffering wife. All in vain. They clubbed
him insensible with their pistol butts, handcuffed
him and took him away to Koloszvar,
where the regiments were forming. For whole
weeks thereafter he remained like one distraught.
It was then that I first met him and learned the
story. Finally a sort of dreadful calm came over
him. He no longer raved nor wept nor tried to
escape. His face lost all expression and he went
methodically about his work like a person in a
trance.</p>
<p>“Word had come that his old enemy, the
count, had gone for his daughter and taken her<span class="pagenum">[177]</span>
away with him down the Danube to Vienna. All
of the idle rich fled there when they saw there
was really danger that the invading foe might
overrun all Hungary.</p>
<p>“Poor Racoszky never has heard from his
girl-wife since then. He never spoke of her to
any of us until the delirium of this fever began
to rack him. He became a terrible fighter. His
ferocity in hand-to-hand combats with the Russians
was appalling even to us who fought
shoulder to shoulder with him. He was that way
at Slovno, on the blood-soaked field of Lemberg,
at Doukle in Galicia, where our great retreat
first began.</p>
<p>“Then we came here to Przemysl, and
Racoszky was among the first to volunteer to be
one of the garrison which everybody agreed was
doomed to certain death. I said to him at that
time:</p>
<p>“‘Racoszky, my friend, why do you not go
on with the main army? They are falling back
upon Vienna, and there maybe you might see
your cherished wife again.’</p>
<p>“He gave me so terrible a look that I never
have dared mention the subject to him again.</p>
<p>“After that the army marched away and left
us to our fate. Then came the Russian hordes,<span class="pagenum">[178]</span>
until the whole plain was black with them.
They assaulted, they bombarded, they dug
mines, and blood ran as freely as water. We
beat them back. So then they camped all around
us here like so many of their own Siberian
wolves, waiting until the poor dog dropped from
hunger and they could rend him limb from limb.</p>
<p>“We of the garrison all suffered cheerfully
together. There was very little grumbling. The
commandant’s hair turned white when we served
up the roast flesh of his favorite charger as a
delicacy on his birthday.</p>
<p>“Two weeks ago it seemed as if we all were
about to starve at last. Only our spirits
remained strong. Racoszky came forward and
volunteered to lead a sortie out into the enemy’s
camp if twenty men would follow him. He
promised to bring back food, and did, but he
came back with his legs riddled with bullets. All
but two of them who accompanied him fell
somewhere outside there.</p>
<p>“Long before this we had run out of all adequate
medical supplies. Our surgeons could not
probe Racoszky’s legs properly to remove but
one of the three bullets which had lodged there.
They wanted to amputate, but he swore that he
would kill himself if they did. So there he has<span class="pagenum">[179]</span>
lain ever since, poor fellow, with his wounds
festering, and blood poison getting more assured
every day. Always he keeps moaning in that
way for his girl-bride and the baby he has
never seen.”</p>
<p>This touching story moved all of the boys
profoundly and weighed on their spirits to such
an extent that Alan finally said:</p>
<p>“What do you fellows say to playing the Good
Samaritan and taking Lieutenant Racoszky out of
here in the <em>Flyer</em> to some place where he can
get the medical attention that his bravery
deserves?”</p>
<p>“That’s just what I was thinking,” answered
Bob.</p>
<p>“And I,” echoed Buck. “But where shall
we take him?”</p>
<p>Ned spoke up.</p>
<p>“Why not to Vienna, the capital? The very
best hospitals and surgeons in the country are
there and—so are his wife and baby. The sight
of them would undoubtedly do him as much good
as all of the expert medical attention he would
receive.”</p>
<p>“The very thing! A great idea!” exclaimed
the other boys. “But what about that crabbed
old count, her father! Do you think that he<span class="pagenum">[180]</span>
will relent enough to permit Racoszky to see
his daughter?”</p>
<p>“That,” said Ned briefly, “is up to us and
can, I think, be managed. Anyway, it certainly
is worth the trial. Now let’s go to the commandant
and see if he will permit us to remove
the lieutenant.”</p>
<p>The governor, they found, was only too pleased
to afford his faithful officer this unexpected
chance of recovery, and helped remove the invalid
to a soft bed they had made ready in the airship’s
spare stateroom.</p>
<p>“By nightfall we shall have him in competent
hands there in Vienna,” said Ned, already at the
wheel.</p>
<p>“Good luck and tell them there in the capital
that Przemysl still holds out,” called the
commandant.</p>
<p>“No fear that we won’t do that!” the boys
cried, and, amid the increasing whir and roar
of the powerful propellers, the <em>Ocean Flyer</em>
once more swept up into the sky and out over
the great plain where the Russian encampment
lay.</p>
<p>Buck threw a large, black, pear-shaped object
overboard and down at the crowd below waving
good-byes.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum">[181]</span></p>
<p>“Great heavens, what was that? A bomb?”
exclaimed Bob, startled.</p>
<p>“No,” Buck replied solemnly, “that was a
smoked ham—our last one, too.”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum">[182]</span></p>
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