Carefulexamination revealed that Roque's injury was not of broken bones, but a severe sprain, due to the twisting suspension from the bush which had checked his fall. Schneider had gone down feet foremost, breaking through the growth until he struck the ledge.
"I didn't expect Mr. Roque so soon," he said, with a face-wide grin, "but I knew him by his legs, and gave him an open-arm reception."
"Until Schneider reached for me," related the secret agent, "I thought there was nothing underneath but the bottom of nowhere. It was certainly a curious accident, all in all, the two of us tumbling as we did, stopping in the very same place, and both of us alive to tell it."
"There was mighty near a good third on your peculiar track," interposed Henri, "for Billy had set his heels for that very slide which you two took."
"If it had not been for Henri," asserted Billy, "there is no telling how deep I would have gone."
"And if it had not been for both of you, there was hardly more to look for than a miserable endfor Schneider and me. We could have proceeded neither up nor down, for there was nothing to put hand or toe into for many rods either way."
Roque did not propose that the boys should lose any of their dues for gallant achievement by other belief than that two lives had actually depended upon their prowess.
When Schneider intimated that he thought it was time for another attempt to find material for a fire, there were two young rebels emphatically against the proposition.
"We'll move where there is wood in sight," was the joint declaration.
Roque agreed that a change of base was desirable, and a flight from the mountain top was in immediate order.
As the machines descended and followed a lower course, ghastly reminders of the struggle that had recently taken place in and along the pass were easily discernible from the lookout seat of the biplanes—the melting snow on the slopes revealing many bodies of Austrians and Russians.
In a clearing at the edge of a considerable forest the aëroplanes again settled, the observers being first convinced that there was no military occupation, especially hostile, of the wooded tract.
"This beats the mountain roost a mile and a half," declared Billy, the leader in hopping out of the aircraft.
In a big hole in the ground, dug by the impact of a cannon ball, Schneider started a brush fire, and in a few minutes was passing hot coffee around.
"I must say," observed Roque, between bites at a sandwich of corned beef and hardtack, "that I don't seem to be getting anywhere on this trip except into pitfalls. All this is sheer waste of time. I had hoped to see a relief march to Przemysl begun within a day, but here we are tied in a knot, and not a step forward."
"Well," consoled Schneider, "you gave them the route that could be won with the least difficulty."
"But what's the good of that when the opening wedge couldn't be driven?" impatiently queried Roque.
Schneider scratched his head. He had no answer.
"There is one thing sure," exclaimed the secret agent, "and that is, I must be on the move, for this isn't the only fish scorching in the pan."
Billy just then edged into the conversation. He had made an alarming discovery. The petrol supply in the biplane tanks was at low mark. The aviators had expected to replenish long before this, and the disaster at Lupkow had spoiled their last chance.
"Oil nearly out, sir," were the words that brought Roque to his feet like a jumping-jack.
"The devil you say!"
Here was a quandary that completely upset the chief.
"We ought to have filled day before yesterday," explained Billy, "but you know why we didn't."
"The only thing to do that I see," advanced Henri, "is to add the supply of one machine to that of the other, and two of us hunt for the new camp of the Austrians."
"They could fix us all right," assured Schneider, "for there is quite a number of aëroplanes with the force which was driven back."
"It was my intent to get in touch once more with this corps, but it was not my intent to divide this party in the going. It cannot be helped, though, and it may take but a few hours at most. You are sure" (turning to Billy) "that you cannot raise enough power for both motors to go the distance?"
"I fear, sir, that both machines would be stranded in less than an hour; and, with all this uncertainty as to how far we would have to go, there is no telling into what kind of place and under what circumstances we would be compelled to drop. There would be much less odds against the one-machine plan."
"It's up to you to prove it," challenged Roque, "for you and I are going to make the trial."
The transfer of the petrol accomplished, Schneider and Henri were left in sole possession of thecamp in the woods, after a last strained look at the departing biplane, a little blot on the sky, finally dissolving in the mist of the mountain top.
"Let's knock about a bit," said Schneider, suiting action to the words by starting up the nearest slope, where the gloomy pines were farther apart than in the dense growth below.
"Ah! Here's where the Russians must have gotten a severe jolt. See here, my young friend"—Schneider pointing at a scattered ground array of discarded rifles, knapsacks, sheepskin coats, and many caisson shells in baskets. "Not so very long ago, either, for you will notice that all this is on the top of the snow and not under it. You can safely wager that here, and at this season, it is not very long between snows."
Here and there were other objects, stiff and stark, that sent a shudder up Henri's spine.
Picking their way still higher to the apex of the ridge, the man and boy had view of a land depression, bowl shaped, almost cleared of snow by exposure to the sun, being free of shade or shadow.
Something on the far side of the bowl, catching a golden ray from above, glittered like a big diamond. Henri called Schneider's attention to the flashing point.
"Worth a walk across," conceded the soldier-aviator, moving that way. Henri, interest aroused, made it a point to outpace his companion.
Drawing nearer, the investigators saw, in half-sitting posture, back against a blanket roll, a soldier—in dark-blue uniform, Austrian infantry—marked by emblems of rank, including a sparkling decoration on the breast.
A silver flask lay close by, alongside of sword and belt.
Schneider dropped to his knees, seized one of the nerveless hands of the officer, and fingered the pulse of the lifted wrist. The old campaigner had noted that the blood curdle in a tunic fold was yet unfrozen.
"Hand me that flask."
Henri quickly complied with his comrade's request, first unscrewing the metal top. Schneider tenderly moved the head of the officer to his own shoulder and poured the contents of the flask through the livid lips.
"He lives!" cried Schneider.
The evidence was a faint flutter of the eyelids, a twitching of fingers and labored breathing.
Henri unrolled the blanket that served as a backrest, made a pillow of the wounded soldier's knapsack, and Schneider shifted his burden to this new resting place.
It was not long until the vigorous first aid rendered by the aviators found a more marked response—the heretofore unconscious officer looked up at the anxious faces of the workers, and perceptiblysmiled through the beard that concealed his mouth.
He had comprehended that he did not owe a Russian for the help that had come to him in this extremity.
Schneider addressed him in the familiar tongue of the Fatherland, and Henri also added a word of sympathy and encouragement in the same tongue, at the time bending his head in the hope of a word in reply.
That word was spoken, and others in faltering train.
"He says his name is Schwimmer, Johann Schwimmer—captain."
"A captain without a regiment," was Schneider's sad comment, his eyes bending further afield, where corpses in blue, in heaps and singly, marked the path of deadly artillery practice.
"It does look as if we are caring for the only survivor," said Henri, realizing that Schneider's mournful observation was founded upon fact.
That Captain Schwimmer understood what was passing between his rescuers was manifest, for stoic though he was, he covered his eyes with a trembling hand and his breast heaved convulsively.
At the moment there was a startling diversion—the whip-like crack of rifles from the opposite edge of the bowl, at the very point where the aviatorshad stood when first attracted by the shining point on the captain's tunic.
Spat, spat—bullets boring the earth close to the right, left, and at the very feet of the trio on the ridge.
Schneider, again a firebrand without sentiment, coolly unslung the carbine from his shoulder, and put a shot across that evidently counted, for it raised a death-yell.
Without further ado, the soldier-airman plumped down on the ground, with his back to the sufferer on the blanket, and hoisted upon his broad shoulders the sorely wounded soldier, who faintly protested, and urged Schneider not to so hamper himself.
But you might as well argue with the wind; the sorrel-top warrior was up and away, making little of his load, Henri sprinting at his heels.
The firing company of Russians, either stragglers from the rear of a corps or scouts in advance of one, had evidently no intention of permitting the escape of several prospective prisoners, and they took up the chase as eagerly as the sporting pursuers of a deer, whooping and shooting as they bounded in a body across the separating hollow.
But for the good start made, Schneider could not have possibly, extra-weighted as he was, maintained speed enough to have gained even the base of the mountain for which he was heading. As it resulted, the carrier and the carried had hardlyreached the first level, some fifty feet up, when the Muscovite marksmen were in close target range, and a leaden pellet among the many flattening against the rocks clipped the visor of Henri's cap as he cast a last look at the oncoming crowd before climbing like a squirrel into the rocky shelter above.
Schneider had placed Captain Schwimmer out of any possible line of fire from below, and was doing some return shooting on his own account. Unluckily for this style of defense, all of the surplus ammunition was in the locker of the biplane back in the woods, and the few rounds in the aviator's pockets were soon exhausted.
Henri knew that such was the situation by the fervid remarks of his companion.
But such was the angle of the aviators' perch that there could be no attack except from the front, and even that was a climbing approach.
It occurred to Henri, considering the lay of the land, that lead was not the only effective substance with which to repel boarders.
The ground was loaded with natural ammunition—loose rocks and rocks, thousands of them, from fist size up to a ton.
"Hey, old scout," hailed the boy, "give them a dose of dornicks."
Schneider took the hint with a burst of approbation.
"Two heads are better than one," he facetiously declared, hauling off his greatcoat for greater freedom as a heaver.
A dozen or more of the pursuing party were working up the acute elevation when the first huge stone thundered down the incline. The boulder made as clean a sweep as a well-placed ball in a bunch of ninepins.
"A ten-strike!" whooped Schneider. "Set 'em up again in the other alley!"
The Russians back-tracked for a time, finding a better range to fire at the defenders on the mountainside, and such was the fusillade that Schneider and Henri were compelled to stay in cover to save their skins.
"They can't work that game, though, to support a scaling force," said Schneider, "for the same fire would catch the scalers. If they come any nearer we can fix them, all right. But what a mercy it is that they haven't a field gun with them."
"As it is, we can't stave them off very long," added Henri. "When it gets dark the stone-rolling game won't work."
"Let me tell you, young man, when that hour comes, all they'll find here will be an empty nest."
The veteran had a moving plan up his sleeve, and the chief reason he had for making this stand was to give the injured captain a little more time to mend.
A scalp wound was what had laid the officer low, and since recovering consciousness he had rallied remarkably. In the soldier's knapsack, which Henri had thoughtfully carried, notwithstanding the hasty leave-taking, was three days' rations, and the invalid had also been strengthened by the food his new friends prevailed upon him to swallow.
During the day Schneider several times checked an effort of their foes to reach the height by starting a little avalanche of rocks at the critical moment.
In the periods of enforced peace, he cast an eye about for a likely way for quick retreat.
The way presented itself in the shape of a fallen pine that bridged a narrow pass, deeply dividing this isolated level from the mountain chain that widely extended back of the occupied position, and rose in serried crags to the very skyline.
It was a nerve-testing prospect, alluring alone to a professional rope walker.
"We'll tackle it in short order," resolutely declared Schneider, after final survey.
Whenthe biplane bearing Chief Roque and Billy Barry cleared the mountain top, the pilot and observer had a fixed understanding that every Russian camp was to be given a wide berth, for with fuel tanks going dry it would have been the top of folly to invite a long chase from the Muscovite airmen. And then, too, it was no part of a safe and sane program to risk an enforced descent in hostile domain.
"Keep her nose southward," commanded Roque, "and we may find the Austrian lines before we have lost our power. It's a desperate chance, of course, but there is nothing else to be done."
A precious hour was consumed in fruitless flight, with never a cheering sign of the friendly forces sought by the anxious aviators.
"It has just dawned upon me that our army has again entrenched in the mountains, for we could not possibly have come so far in the open without a single sight that would encourage further search in this direction."
Roque trained his glasses to the east, where thesnow-capped peaks of the Carpathians were showing in the dim distance.
"It's a good forty miles in that turn," figured Billy, "and whether we can make it or not with an inch or two of petrol is a close guess."
"Make a try for it, and count on the wind to help."
The mind of the chief was set on this last throw.
One satisfaction to Billy in this change of course was the definite objective—hit or miss, they were no longer wandering.
Within a mile of the first slope the pilot knew that the jig was up with the motors. Over his shoulder, he called to the observer:
"This is no Zeppelin with a gas range, and it's the turf for us now."
The motors clanked and ceased to hum. The aëroplane took the downshoot and skated to a standstill on the slippery soil.
"Stranded but not wrecked."
Roque accepted the inevitable with fairly good grace for him.
"What's the next move?"
Billy was curious to know what the chief had in stock for the emergency.
The boy was not immediately enlightened, for Roque evidently proposed to reach speech through meditation. The secret agent with his long coat-tail dusted the powdery snow from a flat stone andcalmly took his ease behind the glowing tip of a long cigar.
"He must have wireless communication with a tobacco shop," thought Billy, "for he never fails to find one of those black rolls when he reaches for it."
The young pilot, muffled in a blanket, stuck to his seat in the biplane. It was his fortune, however, to see the first rift in their clouded luck.
The color scheme of the mountain side, brown, white and gray, added in the passing minute some new and stirring effects. On a higher slope were arrayed a number of men wearing crest helmets, blue jackets and red trousers.
"Say, boss," drawled Billy, when he caught sight of these gorgeous figures, "there's a circus band coming down the mountains."
Roque looked up. "Austrian dragoons!" he exclaimed. "We've rung the bell this time!"
Whether or not the dragoons heard Roque's exultant remarks, they were, nevertheless, gazing at and pointing to the spot where the stranded aviators were joyfully anticipating discovery. Willing to aid it, indeed, upstanding and waving welcome.
The soldiers came in haste to size up the strangely arrived visitors, and the leader recognized Roque as an oft-seen mixer in official circles. In calling him by name, however, the name was not "Roque."
The secret agent promptly explained the situation, and received hearty assurance that he could haveenough petrol to carry him back to Berlin, if he wanted that much.
"We have fifteen air cruisers with us," stated the dragoon spokesman. "By the way, who is your pilot? You must have plucked him young."
Billy, notwithstanding Henri's patient instruction, was a little short yet in the Teuton tongue, but he had picked out of the conversation at this stage enough to put him wise to the fact that he was in the limelight.
"A bud as to years, I'll admit, my dear lieutenant, but in genius, skill and daring a full flower; one of the master craftsmen of the flying profession, and I left a companion piece on the other side of the mountain."
Threading Roque's eloquent tribute no doubt was the memory of that most recent rescue performance of the Boy Aviators in the black pass of Uzsok.
The boy from Bangor felt like the bashful member of a graduating class when the dragoons committed friendly assault by slapping him between the shoulders.
"Roten will steal you," laughingly predicted one of them. Billy later discovered that Roten was the chief aviator at army headquarters.
It was decided by Roque that Billy and himself should rejoin Henri and Schneider at once, the reunited party returning together to this camp, andremaining until the development of new plans of the secret agent.
Roten suggested that as it was the intent of the aviation corps to inaugurate a reconnoitering expedition the following day, it would be of mutual pleasure and benefit to combine in the trip. Further, he advised Roque of a much more direct route over the mountains than the roundabout way uncertainly taken by the secret agent in coming.
"Consent"—this ready acceptance by Roque.
The army air scouts who were to participate in the expedition numbered eight, and the No. 3 piloted by Billy would measure speed with four of the swiftest biplanes in this branch of the service.
To the east of the Uzsok pass the Russians had constructed an elaborate network of cement and earthwork trenches, and to make any headway against the vigorous Muscovite defense at this point the Austrian troops would encounter a particularly difficult task.
It was up to the Austrian aviation corps to determine the true strength of the position, and to weigh the chances of an assault with the present artillery equipment in support.
So it happened that the little fleet was going in just the right direction to enable Roque to reunite his own party, at the same time affording him the opportunity to see for himself what was going on.
Roten had been fully advised of the exact locationin the pass of the forest tract where Schneider and Henri were supposed to be watching for the return of their companions.
"We will find it without fail," he confidently declared, "and taking the nearest way there."
A blinding snowstorm, beginning in the night, served to hold the aviators in shelter for another day. At the first sign of clearing weather, however, Roten decided to fly, though he explained that many landmarks would be lost sight of under the drifts, markings recorded during a previous journey.
"Follow the compass, old man."
This remark, ventured by one of the lieutenants, the chief airman ignored with a sniff.
"Pass the word to pull out," he snapped.
Five biplanes were off at the signal, and winging their way in perfect alignment. As far as vision extended billows upon billows of snow capped the mountaintops and billows and billows of it smothered the defiles. The observers shaded their eyes as best they could with their hoods from the trying color effect, heightened by the reflection of the sun, and many times the pilots made hasty swipes with coat cuffs to dry wet cheeks.
Roten changed the course more than once during the first hour out, indicating that he was missing here and there some familiar formation that would aid the keeping of undeviating progress.
"We ought to get to the jumping-off place pretty soon at fifty miles an hour."
Billy felt that he had to say something to break the sailing monotony.
If Roque had an opinion he kept it to himself.
There was one thing sure, the flight had carried the aviators beyond the path of the recent blizzard, for brown and gray were again showing above the white in the checkered landscape.
That Roten was planning an intermission was apparent by the circling action of his machine over a plateau of broad expanse, probably an intermediate station with which he was acquainted.
His initiative set the balance of the flock on the down grade, and the pilots rejoiced over the immediate prospect of a thaw-out.
The chief aviator wore a satisfied smile on his bewhiskered countenance. "The Carpathians were never built to down me," he briskly proclaimed; "we'll go to the mark now like a bullet through cheese as soon as the steering boys get the cricks out of their backs."
"Come to think of it," volunteered Billy, "it is a tolerably nifty morning to hold a still curve for a hundred and twenty minutes at a stretch."
Roten, who understood American, grinned appreciatively at this recognition of his welfare action in behalf of the pilots.
"Right over there, Mr. Roque," he continued, indicatinga summit a quarter of a mile distant, "is a rise exactly on a line west from where you started the other day to hunt for petrol—some twenty miles or thereabouts."
"You ought to have a medal for accuracy, my friend," genially complimented Roque, "and I apologize for holding the suspicion at least once to-day that the snow had thrown you out of balance."
"Can't blame you much, sir; I was mizzled a bit by too much white shroud back there. But here comes Ansel with the oil stove and the coffee pot, and we will have a brew that will reach all the cold spots under the vest."
"You must have been born for this kind of business," piped Billy, viewing the food display on a blanket laid like a tablecloth and the steaming coffee pot topping the little camp stove.
"I have had some experience in living in and out of an aëroplane," modestly admitted Roten, "yet I have seen days when I wished that I hadn't been born for this profession; hungry days, never-resting days, ever-perilous days. A sailor may be saved from shipwreck, a soldier has a fighting chance on the ground, but when an aëroplane goes too far wrong, just save the pieces, that's all."
"Right you are, sir," earnestly declared Billy; "but get it in the blood once and there's no quitting."
"By the way, speaking of military aviation, andthe cold we have endured to-day, it is no more a question of climate in that sort of work. Why, Russia is away up in the hundreds in the number of its aircraft."
"I expect that is true, Mr. Roque; I know I have met a few from over there myself," grimly conceded Roten.
"Perhaps some that you will never meet again," suggested the secret agent.
"Perhaps," said the veteran airman, reputed to have been mixed up in as many air duels as there were weeks in the year.
Billy, chumming it with Ansel, Roten's pilot, had challenged the new friend for a footrace, which led the runners to the edge of the plateau on the north.
Looking across the intervening defile, their attention was attracted by a movement on the opposite slope, the first sign of life below observed since they took flight from the Austrian camp early that morning.
"There is something doing over there," panted Billy, not yet recovered from the exertion of beating his companion a foot or two in their speed contest.
"I can't tell what it is, though," replied Ansel in broken English.
"It might be a bear," surmised Billy.
"More than one bear, then," claimed the Austrian,"for I just saw two of the kind between the bushes."
"Your eyes are the better," conceded the boy; "there are two, one with a big hump on its back. I wish we could get over there."
Ansel shook his head. "You can't cross there on foot. Too deep."
"We can chase back and get the glasses anyhow."
Billy was already on the way for the means of satisfying his curiosity.
When the boy had secured the glasses and was hastening by the group around the little stove, Roque hailed him.
"What are you up to now?"
"Just going to take a pike at some mountain freak on the other side of the gully."
"Wait a minute, young man; I'll come and see what you have started." Roque carried a big bump of curiosity under his cap.
In the meantime, Ansel had told Roten about the slope climbers, whatever they were, and the aviation leader concluded that any sort of investigation on this trip required his presence.
The whole company, then, trailed after Billy across the plateau, with a general view of deciding in force the value of the alleged discovery.
From the lookout point a battery of glasses were soon trained upon the slope designated by Billy and Ansel.
Roten hit the moving mark first this time.
"I'll be blest," he ejaculated, behind the steady aim of the binocle, "if it isn't one big man carrying another on his shoulders, and a shorter fellow bringing up the rear!"
Foran hour the Russians in front of the rocky rise, where Schneider and Henri stood sentinel over the prostrate Austrian officer, had maintained an ominous silence.
Not a shot had been fired in the mentioned time, and no opportunity had been afforded the champion stone roller to make another ten-strike in repulsing attack.
"You can put it in your pipe and smoke it that this brooding over there means no good to us."
While Henri was not addicted to the pipe, he accepted the figure of speech, and fully agreed with his companion that the calm had sinister portent.
"The minute is about ripe," he volunteered, "for us to make ourselves scarce."
That Schneider was in accord with the proposition had evidence in the action of removing his boots. To cross a cavity that lowered two hundred feet or more on the unstable and untried support of a fallen pine warranted every precaution. Therecould be no crawling for the venturesome bricktop. He had human freight to carry on his back.
"Sorry to disturb you, captain," he apologized to the invalid soldier, "but it has to be done."
Henri, keeping watch at the front, sounded a note of alarm:
"Quick! I see what they're doing—it's a spread, and a three-cornered charge—they've stolen to the bushes right and left, and the firing gang in the middle is prepared to pot us if we show head or hand!"
Schneider bent to the task of lifting Schwimmer, the latter groaning at the movement.
Henri, balanced by Schneider's boots thonged over one shoulder and the knapsack swinging from the other, made a dash for the slender bridge. He had determined to first essay the perilous passage, and test the solidity required to bear the fourfold weight that would follow.
A single misstep, and for the error maker there yawned a pit of death, a mangling on jagged rocks lashed by the ice-laden rush of a brawling mountain stream.
But, sure-footed as the native chamois, with never a falter nor a backward look, the boy made the crossing, backed against the mound of upturned earth in which the roots of the fallen pine were imbedded, and fixed apprehensive eyes upon the burdened Schneider bravely and steadily advancing over the shaking bridge. Once the boy fanciedthat, with the earth clods tumbling from the mound behind, the whole structure was about to give, and he instinctively reached out for what would have been a vain endeavor to prevent the threatened disaster.
A moment later, with mingled sighs of exertion and relief, the man and boy clasped hands—on solid ground once more. The wounded officer had not realized other than that he suffered by the necessary lifting of his nerve-racked body.
Hardly a second, though, for the silent congratulation. On the level the defenders had just quitted in such thrilling manner swarmed Russian pursuers, seeking with fierce activity those who had conducted baffling resistance for several hours.
"Hear them yell," said Henri in suppressed tone.
"It's a sound better for the distance."
As Schneider made this comment he set shoulder against the root-threaded mound that anchored the fallen pine. With cracking of straining sinew the powerful pusher put every ounce of his wonderful strength into the effort of dislodgment. Thrice he failed, and then, with a tearing, grinding give, the mass loosened; another heave, and, as the perspiring giant threw himself backward, just escaping the void, the great trunk left its moorings and crashed with a tremendous shower of soil and stone into the abyss.
Schneider in a jiffy, and breathing like a porpoise,dragged on his boots, again picked up the feebly remonstrating captain, and led Henri a merry chase around a rocky bend into the bush-grown level tabled between this and the next mountainous range.
Finally halting, and now beyond hearing of the whoops of the discomfited Russians, apprised of the escape of their prey by the crashing fall of the old pine, Schneider indulged in a cheer on his own account.
"Tough sledding, my boy, but a clean pair of heels to the gentlemen with the sheepskin overcoats. I don't know what's coming next, yet we can count on a 'next' coming."
Henri had to put in a sad word, owing to the depletion of the food store—the knapsack contained less than two days' rations for one man.
The eyes of the two aviators met in meaning glance—meaning that the remaining food should all be reserved for the ailing soldier, now sleeping quietly in his blanket roll.
Many a time in the hours of weary tramping did the aviators tighten their belts, but without a single utterance of complaint or bemoaning of sad fate. To the gnawings of hunger happily were not added the torments of thirst. Snow and ice served that desire.
The rations were sparingly fed to the invalid, who, unsuspicious of the sacrifice of his slowly starving companions, appeared to be gaining a measureof strength. He expressed sorrow that he must so burden Schneider in the march, noting that the latter had begun to occasionally stumble and stagger under the load.
"Don't you bother a bit, captain," as often assured the valiant aviator, "we will run into a friendly camp before long, and you will be in fighting trim before the moon changes again."
On the quiet to Henri, however, the big fellow confided that rest hours must lengthen if he had to fare much farther as a carrier.
He had discovered that in one of his revolvers there were still two cartridges that had not been exploded, and this find was due to the intention of throwing away these weapons as useless and cumbersome and a lucky farewell inspection of the long-possessed arms.
Schneider was a famous shot, with these same pistols had won several trophies, and, too, in war service had with them seldom failed to stop an antagonist lusting for his own life.
"Two bullets and three human lives at stake," he mused, weighing the revolver in his right hand, and aiming it at some imaginary living target. Several times during the day both Henri and himself had noted hare tracks in the snow, and Schneider even talked in a hopeful way of rigging up some sort of trap in the night. While the boy was inclined to be doubtful as to their possible successas trappers, under the circumstances, he did not spoil sport, in the mind of his companion, by adverse argument.
Now there was something tangible in the anticipation that Schneider might stalk and shoot a rabbit, and so hearten the weakened wayfarers to renew the battle for existence. They were beginning to lag with every additional mile traversed.
"Here is a good place to rest," announced Henri, whose sharp eyes had marked the mouth of a cave among the bushes covering the sides of the ridge, along which line the footsore travelers had been continuously plodding for an hour or more.
"We can't stop too quick to suit me," said Schneider, easing his living burden to the ground.
The cave was shallow, but ample in dimensions for the three invaders, clean and dry, and containing a quantity of dried moss.
Comfortably placing the invalid, Schneider dropped like a log in his tracks. He was completely exhausted, and knew no more of discomfort or the waking world until roused by Henri vigorously tugging at his coat sleeve. "There's game in sight," excitedly whispered the boy, "bring your revolver; crawl, and don't make any noise!"
The suddenly awakened sleeper rubbed his eyes, and, comprehending what was wanted, instantly produced the trusty shooting iron, and as quickly crawled to the mouth of the cave. Henri pointeda trembling hand to the little clearing a few yards below them.
Several hares, pure white, were hopping about, scratching and burrowing in the brown loam, there free of snow.
Schneider had for a second an attack of nerves, similar to that fever in the amateur Nimrod when first blundering upon the wallow of a buck deer.
Henri gave the shaking marksman a poke in the ribs.
"Shoot, old scout, or give me the gun!"
By the poke and the hissed demand, Schneider was himself again.
He drew bead on the nearest hare, and with the puff of smoke from the revolver muzzle the little animal made a frantic leap, ending in a complete somersault and an inert heap of fur. Another whiplike crack—and over went a second rabbit, stopped on the first jump to cover.
"Another cartridge or two and I would have potted the lot," boasted Schneider, "but even a pair of them is a mighty big draw for us."
Henri missed these remarks, for he was Johnny-on-the-spot to retrieve the game.
The pistol practice had startled Captain Schwimmer from a doze, and he was under impression that his friends were fighting off another attack by the Russians. The captain had begun to take notice of and interest in what was going on about him.
Raising himself on his elbows, he saw the result of the shooting match in the pair of plump bunnies swinging across Henri's shoulder when the boy capered into the cave.
It occurred to the captain to inspect the knapsack upon which his head had been pillowed. "Is this all the food in the camp?" he questioned, handling the few scraps in the sack.
Henri nodded in the affirmative, taken unawares by the quick query.
"And I have been eating my fill regularly on this march, have I not?"
"I hope you have not been hungry, captain," evaded Henri, realizing that the officer was putting two and two together.
"I see it all now," exclaimed the invalid, "you two have starved yourselves that I might live."
"Shucks, captain, don't put it that way: the rations were yours in the first place, and, besides, look at the glorious feast we're all going to have."
Henri's attempt to lightly pass the soldier's revolt against the self-denial practiced by Schneider and himself resulted only in the invalid turning face downward on the nearly empty knapsack, his emotion shown by convulsive movement between the shoulders.
Schneider, wise unto himself, had kept out of the discussion, and had practically contributed tothe settlement of the hunger question by neatly skinning and cleaning the hare meat.
A hasty fire of dried moss and twigs and Schneider's big knife utilized as a spit raised a savory odor in the cave, and the picking of one set of bones that evening helped a lot to revive courage and hope. The captain, "by the doctor's orders," was compelled to accept his share.
The other hare made the breakfast for the third day out. Schneider alleged that he had a hunch that this rabbit business had turned the scale of luck, and to insure the belief he carefully pocketed the left hind foot of one of the animals.
During the morning the pedestrians, rested and fed, moved in fine style for the first few miles, Schneider stoutly holding to the efficacy of a rabbit's foot as a luck producer.
At the foot of the summit finally cutting off the level over which the party had been so long traveling, it was in order to do some climbing.
"It will give us a chance to look around," cheerfully observed Henri, "and which chance isn't coming to us down here."
Halfway up the height the boy was again heard from. He insisted that he had seen a flock of eagles in the western sky.
"Eagles your foot," bantered Schneider; "whoever saw a flock of eagles?"
"Wild geese, then," insisted Henri.
"How many did you see?" quizzed Schneider.
"Five or six, maybe."
"Guess again," laughed the big fellow; "geese would be lonesome if that was all in a flight."
"Have it any way you please; I suppose you will be claiming next that I am suffering with liver spots."
Henri was a bit nettled that Schneider did not take seriously his sky story.
About twenty minutes later, Henri called another halt. "Now, old scout," he cried triumphantly, "just look up for yourself and say what you would call 'em."
Schneider, shading his eyes under a hand, scanned the blue expanse above. "By the great hornspoon," he almost shouted, "I believe they're aëroplanes!"
Henri was more than willing to be convinced that such was the fact.
"What do you think about it, captain?"
Schwimmer had from the first joined in the sky-gazing contest.
"I think our friend Schneider has solved the problem. I never saw a real bird with exactly that motion."
The blots on the sky were increasing in size.
"It's a sure thing," hurrahed Henri, "and they're circling for a landing!"
"Perhaps they're Russians," mildly suggested the captain.
"Not while I'm carrying this rabbit's foot," firmly asserted Schneider.
Theaviators in the party of Roten were all for sailing, post-haste, to the slope where the mysterious climbers had been sighted, and very shortly the little fleet was in the air, headed that way.
Flying low, the observers kept a sharp lookout for the near appearance of the man with the burden and the "shorter fellow."
Roque caught the first glimpse, and called to his pilot to risk a look for himself. Billy had only a side glance, as the machine rounded the summit, but that was enough for him.
"It's Henri and Schneider, or their ghosts!" he shouted.
Roque fixed his glasses for the close view.
"As sure as shooting it is, but how in the world did they get here?"
Billy had no ear for this—he was for landing right there, even with a chance of plowing through the bushes. However, reason ruled, and he steeredfor a clearing, into which the biplane promptly plumped.
Hardly waiting until the machine had run its length, the boy was out and speeding to greet his chum.
It was a regular collision, the manner in which the youngsters came together.
"Glory be!" This was Billy's high-pitched note.
"Here's to you, Buddy, bully old boy!" Henri cried.
The "bully old boy" then made a dash for Schneider and worked the latter's brawny arm up and down like a pump handle.
Roque repeated the last-named performance with both the recovered members of his crew.
In the meantime the Austrians were saluting Captain Schwimmer, well known to them as a gallant officer in a famous command.
"But for them, gentlemen," gravely stated the captain, nodding toward Schneider and Henri, "I had been in my last fight. Through danger, cold and hunger have they brought me, and neither needs a patent of nobility—nature took care of that."
Roque had only to listen to the happy reunion chatter of the boys to get the side of the story he wanted to hear.
"It seems," he commented, "that Billy and I were not in the same class this time with these trouble hunters."
"Do you suppose that there is anything left of our biplane?"
Henri had taken on the air of a sea captain who had lost his ship.
"That is an important question," said Roque, "There is only one fit mate to that craft in this part of the country."
Fortunately for the preservation of good feeling, Roten did not hear this latter statement.
It was necessary to detail two corporal aviators to take the wounded captain back to army headquarters, where he could have the skilled surgical attention that would hasten his recovery.
As the invalid was lifted into the machine that was to do ambulance service, he gave a hand each to Henri and Schneider.
"From my heart I thank you both," were his last words in profoundly earnest farewell.
Henri traveled as a passenger with Billy and Roque in the brief journey to the forest station in the pass where it was hoped to find intact the stranded biplane.
Schneider, who had been given a lift by Roten in the trip, was in high glee when it developed that the No. 3, behind its screen of bushes, had sustained no damage.
"See that?" The big fellow held aloft the rabbit's foot. "There's no jinx that can beat it."
Roque was delighted to learn, as the aërial expeditionproceeded, that one of his cherished desires had matured—a large German contingent had arrived to support the determined effort of the Austrian forces to relieve the Przemysl fortress.
He had made up his mind that it was well worth the risk to carry back the new word of hope to the hemmed in garrison, and Roten was informed of his purpose.
"I regret that you must quit us, Mr. Roque," said the aviation chief, "but it's the big thing you are going to do, and I certainly wish the best for your undertaking. Let me advise, however, that not a screw should be loose when you make that dash. You can't fall in that country now without bumping a Russian."
"I'll back my boys to make the riffle," confidently asserted Roque.
"They'll need the keen eye every inch of the way," persisted Roten.
"We came out safely, and I guess we can repeat," declared the secret agent.
"Well, good-bye, sir, and look out for the big guns at Malkovista; the Russians are there now, and it's only three miles from Przemysl."
"We've come into our own again." Billy and Henri were standing together, viewing with satisfaction the graceful lines of the No. 3's, every part adjusted to a nicety. Both boys were well aware that they were to run a through express.
Schneider had been supplied by a brother aviator with a new outfit of firearms, and, as usual, was spoiling for an uproar.
"Going, going, gone." His imitation of an auctioneer was excellent, and with this send-off the biplanes bolted for Przemysl.
The pilots themselves knew the route this time, and they sent the biplanes over the course at sixty miles an hour.
Three times they were over the fire of long-range guns, but too high for harm.
Settling in the fortress enclosure, their initial greeting came from Stanislaws.
"Here's a cure for sore eyes."
This delighted individual capered around the welcome incomers like a dancing master.
The garrison received with acclaim the news that Roque conveyed.
They had been advised in a general way by wireless from the nearest Austrian point of the upcoming of the German reinforcements, and this confirmation in person and in detail added to the enthusiasm created by the first report.
"Now, boys," said Roque to his pilots, the next evening, "I am seeking a sight of the gray lines again, and there's another hard flight in store for you. So get a good night's rest. We start at daybreak."
Facing a bitter, biting wind, the aviators leftPrzemysl at dawn, and when they, numbed but undaunted, finally reached the far-away German lines it was a battle front that they crossed. There the atmosphere was being warmed by gunpowder flashes, and below was burning petrol, thawing out the ground that the troops might dig themselves in.
Before the entrenchments, in wide range, combined forces of Austrians and Germans were locked in a life and death struggle with Russian contenders for the possession of Warsaw—a bloody repetition in one spot of the never ending conflict.
Though completing a continuous flight of seven hours, the aviators were there offered no temptation to alight. Hovering over the banks of the Bzura they saw a German cavalry detachment all but totally destroyed by the exploding of a Russian mine, and in turn the big guns of the Germans cut wide swathes in the Muscovite ranks.
Schneider cheered or groaned as the tide of battle swept forward and back, when victory favored or defeat menaced his comrades in the fray. The firebrand, in every quivering fiber, madly craved the chance to brave the shot and shell on the blackened battlefield.
He saw a German color bearer go down in the press of a hand-to-hand conflict, and as the mass was dissolved by artillery fire, that one still figure, among the many scattered in the open, presented irresistible appeal to the soldier-aviator.
"Land me, boy—have you the red blood to do it? Have you the courage, lad? You have, I know. Do it, lad—do it now!"
With his incoherent address, the big observer spasmodically clutched the shoulders of the young pilot.
Carried away by the vehement pleading of the man behind him, Henri set the planes for a straight fall.
Schneider bounded from the skimming machine, made it the work of a few seconds to reach the flag, which the dead man had wrapped around his body, and as quickly returned.
The powerful motors drove the biplane up and across the field, with the colors trailing over the shoulders of the observer, who, in his excitement, sang a mighty war song.
This deed of daring, directly in view of the trenches, and under the very eye of the German commander and staff, raised a tremendous cheer.
Of all this Schneider seemed oblivious. His was a blind patriotism.
Roque wore a look of mild reproach when he encountered Henri behind the lines that night, but he could not resist the prompting of forgiving admiration when Schneider stood before him in attitude of apology.
"Had no orders, of course, boss, but something stuck to my crazybone, and everything went."
"You will have something stuck on the breast of your coat, or I am very much mistaken," said Roque, extending his hand, which Schneider grasped with fervor.
That "something" was to be the Iron Cross, the famous decoration for valorous service, and the most coveted distinction in the German empire, a badge of courage woven into its military history.
"Were this boy a soldier of and for the Fatherland," solemnly continued Roque, "the royal gift might well be bestowed upon him."
Schneider threw an arm around the shoulders of the young aviator. "Of nothing else is he lacking to claim the honor," feelingly maintained the big fellow, and his eyes were moist as he spoke.
Henri shook his head. Then with a roguish glance at his chum, he said:
"The only medal I am hankering after is the one Billy and I are expecting for making the first aëroplane flight across the Atlantic."
"Have the 'made in Germany' mark on your machine and I believe you can establish the record," laughed Roque.
"Not on your life," exclaimed Billy. "We are going to build the crossing craft ourselves."
The No. 3's were lying idle behind the lines. Roque had ceased overground work for the time being, and like a mole was engaged in some underminingscheme, of which the boys had no inkling.
Resorting to his remarkable aptitude as a lightning change artist, and also applying the magic touch to Schneider, the pair of them were scarcely recognizable to even the lads with whom they had been so long and so closely associated.
The secret agent and his trusty lieutenant were masquerading as natives of Russian Poland, and it may be told that their desperate mission was to enter Warsaw, where the slightest indiscretion or betrayal would put them in graves alongside of that daring spy of Roque's who failed to conceal his identity.
It was the midnight hour when Billy was awakened by a man enveloped from neck to foot in a grayish-brown overcoat, from under the head cape of which came the voice of Roque:
"Take this" (slipping a fold of coarse paper into the hand of the drowsy lad), "and if you do not hear from me after three days, read what is written, and follow the instructions to the letter. Not a look at the message, remember, for three days; to be exact, the morning of the fourth day. You hear me?" Billy sleepily nodded his head.
Out on the turbid tide of the yellow river beyond the German trenches two shrouded figures silently launched a flatboat and drifted away in the darkness.
"What's doing?" This was Henri's morning question, preceding a swallow of coffee.
"If I knew what was in here I could probably tell you a whole lot that I don't know at present."
Billy displayed the closely folded packet containing Roque's instructions.
When Henri was advised of the conditions imposed he accepted the trust as a matter of course.
It had never been a habit of the boys to break faith.
Thedin of battle had long since ceased to be an inspiration of terror with the Boy Aviators. They were case-hardened by continual contact with the war game, and too careless, perhaps, of flying lead.
Reclining in the trenches, they indulged in all sorts of surmises as to the whereabouts of Roque and Schneider, wagered back and forth, one way and the other, on the proposition of whether the chief would appear in person within the allotted time or put it up to them to interpret the message in Billy's pocket.
With the passing of two days, the hours in the next one seemed to move on leaden wings.
"I don't even know in what direction to lookfor his coming," complained Henri. "If he is coming," he corrected himself.
"No use getting in a stew about it," advised Billy, concealing the fact that he himself was nearing the boiling point as the last few hours of waiting wore away.
The morning of the fourth day, and no sign or sight of the absentees.
Billy and Henri sat in council, and the former opened the paper that had haunted his dreams during the previous restless night.