A LUCKY SHOT TOOK AWAY A PORTION OF THE BRIDGE
A LUCKY SHOT TOOK AWAY A PORTION OF THE BRIDGE
"Just mark that wheel aft!" came in stentorian tones from Jack. "The last shot smashed the steering-gear on the bridge, and if we don't let 'em man the other gear they'll be helpless. Here you, Tom, and you, Charles, you make it your business to see that no one goes near it! Boys, make ready to board the trawler!"
They waved their hands at him, those gallant sailors, they cheered him with vigour, and then, peering over the bulwarks, watching every movement, they waited eagerly for the moment when the two ships would grind together. They drew nearer. Figures aboard the hostile trawler were now clearly visible; men still raced to and fro. Now and again a rifle was fired, and a bullet could be heard as it pinged against the steel sides of the vessel. Two men rushed aft towards the steering-gear which Jack had pointed out to his comrades, and, reaching it, measured their length at once, shot down by those told off to fire in that direction.
Less than five minutes later the two vessels came together with a clang and a grinding crash, and instantly, before the men picked out by Jack to lash them together could get a hawser over the side, a number of the British sailors had scrambled from their own ship and gained the deck of the hostile trawler. They swept along it like an avalanche, beating down the resistance of the deck hands. They threw them down the companion-way, just as they had done with thecrew of their own captured vessel. They shouted down the engine-room hatch, and in but a few brief minutes they had assembled the whole of the engine-room staff on the deck, and Jack could be seen haranguing them for all the world as if these Germans could understand all that he said. And, as he talked, Larry stood beside him, as nonchalant a figure as ever, chewing his cigar, vastly entertained by all the proceedings.
"You get in and talk to 'em, Jack," he said. "Just tell 'em all that's wanted. Ef they keep on working hard, and play the game and what not, well, all will be well with them; ef not—— Well, let 'em know what then."
Jack nodded, Jack actually grinned, then mopped the perspiration from his hot forehead. "I knows! See here, you—you—sons o' guns," he said, bellowing the words at the Germans, "you'll get straight down below. Savvy? You'll stoke and grease and carry on as you did before; and if you don't, well no one will be there to help you. This 'ere Tom will go along to watch things. Tom, you've got a gun, ain't you?"
Tom had. Tom was a tall and sinewy individual—as honest a British sailor as you could meet in a day's march, but one who, if he wished, could adopt a sinister appearance. And sinister he looked now as he patted his rifle and glared at the prisoners. Then he held up one big battered forefinger and beckoned to them.
"You come right along here," he said. "Youget right down below, double quick. Savvy! I'm comin' along behind you, don't you fear. You get in and carry on yer business. No," he added a moment later, shaking the same forefinger at one of the prisoners—a man with an evil cast of countenance, who glowered at him, "you ain't got no call to look at me like that. I'm harmless, I am! Only, just you take care of yourself, young feller! Just hop it, or things will begin to happen as won't be too comfortable for you!"
And "hop it" the German did. He and his comrades disappeared down the engine hatchway, with their tails between their legs, as you might say, and Tom, following, presently discovered them as hard at work and as diligent as those he had left on the other trawler. No doubt more than one of the engine staff would have willingly upset the running of the machinery had such a thing been easily effected and not so easily discovered, but the sturdy Tom, with his sinister glance, drove all thoughts of mutiny or double dealing out of his prisoners' heads. The rifle, on which he leaned so unconcernedly, and Tom's stern looks, sent these men about their business in a desperate hurry.
Meanwhile the lashings which had bound the two trawlers together had been cut adrift. Jim, extracted from the engine-room of the vessel he and his friends had captured, was now perched on what was left of the bridge of the other ship, and presently the two vessels were under way, headingthis time out to sea towards the spot where the German destroyer had been steaming.
And what of her? What of the other boat which had been observed dashing towards the escaping trawler? The fight and the boarding of the trawler had occupied every bit of the attention of Bill and his friends. While it lasted it had been a breathless affair, and, though it was soon ended, the resistance of the German crew had not been altogether negligible. Indeed, the sturdy fellows whom Bill commanded had fought furiously for those few minutes, so furiously, in fact, that they failed to note the bang of guns in the offing, or to follow the movements of the two destroyers.
Now, as they steamed towards the spot, it was to discover the German boat down by the stern, afire for'ard, her funnels shot to ribbons, and her decks smashed, while steaming close to her was the other destroyer with a white ensign blowing out from her mast-head. Boats were being lowered, and as the two trawlers came upon the spot they discovered British sailors rescuing the German survivors of the enemy destroyer.
Imagine the shouts and the cheers to which Jack and his gallant friends gave vent. Imagine, if you can, the thrill of pride which went through Bill's frame as he rang the engine telegraph and stopped his machinery. It was the first big occasion in his life, and, like Jim and Larry and all the rest of them, he gloried in it.
"We couldn't ha' come into English waters inbetter shape," observed Larry that night as he sat on the deck and surveyed his surroundings, the boat having meanwhile made the port of Dover. "Here's England right beyond us and all round us. Yonder there's France. Listen a bit! Hear the guns, Bill? That's the British and French holding the line against the Germans. Well, we'll be there soon—eh?"
"We will," Bill and Jim echoed.
Many and long were the discussions held by Jim and Bill and Larry now that they had reached the neighbourhood of the vast European conflict which had drawn America into its whirlpool. As they sat on their captured trawler at Dover they could literally hear the sound of that conflict in the distance; for across the Channel, but fifty miles inland, beyond Ypres—the celebrated Ypres, which had long since been shattered into fragments—British troops were fighting their way along the ridge of Paschendaele. Messines, the German stronghold, had fallen. British guns, made in British factories manned by British women, had smashed the Hun defences.
Consider this achievement for a while. In 1914 Britain possessed guns sufficient only for a small expeditionary force, and the supply none too liberal. In 1915 her manufacturing resources were sufficient to supply guns for an increasing host of volunteers—guns and every other munition necessary for the conduct of warfare. But the business of manufacturing weapons and all that appertains to fightingwas not yet by any means fully expanded. Indeed, the need for it was not apparent. The call for shells, more shells, and still more shells, and for guns by the hundred to project them, had not yet gone through the land, nor had munition factories sprung up in every direction with the rapidity of mushrooms.
Then came the Ministry of Munitions—a huge Government concern inaugurated to control supplies for every kind of warfare. It commenced its work perhaps hesitatingly, it forged ahead with determination, it got fully into its stride; so that when 1916 arrived, and Britain and France faced the German in Picardy across the Somme valley, British guns, aye, and British men, were the masters of the situation.
And here was 1917 with still more men and with a still mightier array of munitions, deluging the German, bruising him all along the line through Flanders into France, smashing him and his defences, driving him from the ridges which he had held since 1914, and from which he had looked down upon the British troops floundering in the mud in Flanders.
To the Kaiser and his ruthless agents, to the German High Command as it is termed, those days must have seemed portentous. Disaster hung in the air, the fortune which had favoured them from the first instant seemed to have departed from them altogether. The Central Powers were in fact girt in by enemies. The world had declared war againstthese land and sea marauders. America had joined the Allies, having suffered indignities at the hands of the Kaiser; Portugal had joined the ranks of Prussia's enemies; and states in South America were already considering their position, or were now throwing in their lot with those sworn to beat down the oppressors of mankind and to fight for the freedom of nations.
The Dardanelles was an old tale. Britain had there left her mark, and the graves of her sons, and had departed. In Egypt the tribes haunting the Delta of the Nile, stirred up by German agents and supplied with money and with weapons, had revolted and had been subjugated by British columns. The Senussi, to take an example, were now conquered. Across the Canal, and far to the east of it, Turkish hosts gathered in Beersheba, Jerusalem, and other places were watching the steady relentless advance of a British railway across the desert, and, as Bill and his friends reached European waters, troops of the King-Emperor were already on the fringe of Palestine, where very soon they were to advance by Beersheba, Hebron, Bethlehem, and other places of Biblical interest, and were to hoist their flag over the ancient and sacred walls of Jerusalem, once the home of historical crusaders.
Farther east lay Mesopotamia, where the forced surrender of General Townshend's gallant troops at Kut had long since been avenged by the capture of that place and the taking of Bagdad. The noble-hearted Sir Stanley Maude was alreadyleading his forces up the Tigris and Euphrates towards Mosul, and, though in later months that dread scourge cholera seized him, there were others to step into his place and still lead British and Indian troops onwards.
Glance to the eastern area of Europe. If matters wore a rosy aspect on the French front, in Egypt, Salonica, and Mesopotamia, if along those lengths of British trench-lines British guns and British troops were causing the Prussian to reel, the Turks to surrender, and the Bulgarians to wish perhaps that they had never joined hands with the Kaiser and his soldiers, to the east of Europe Russian troops were reeling from another reason altogether.
Revolution was in the air; the rights of man were being preached and practised in preference to patriotism and unselfish devotion to country; upstarts were springing into position; subtle agents of the Kaiser, their pockets heavy with German gold, had seized upon the ear of the ignorant people; soldiers turned against their officers; the working and the peasant class were induced first to oppose and then to throw off allegiance to those who had been their lords and masters. Anarchy supervened, though for a time the revolutionists, holding those who would carry matters to great lengths, attempted to form a Government and control the country, even attempted to keep the soldiers in the trenches and to stem the German invasion; until anarchy reared its head still higher, the voices of Trotsky and Lenin overpowered the voices of themoderates. The Tsar and his house had been removed, and were, in fact, prisoners; the government of the people, on behalf of the people, was destroyed. Trotsky and Lenin became, in fact, the rulers of the country, and they, be it understood, were already more than half given over to Germany. Trenches were abandoned, soldiers gave themselves leave and went off to their distant homes, a few faithful and patriotic divisions were left stranded; guns by the hundred and munitions of every description—for the most part supplied by Britain—lay at the mercy of any German battalion that cared to come for them.
The inevitable followed. German troops advanced and seized wide tracts of country. They took, with only the trouble of taking it, vast masses of military booty; they imposed peace terms on the Russians which practically made slaves of them; and, with their accustomed cunning, so handled matters that this huge country, once tenanted by a patriotic people, became dissolved into separate provinces, each claiming its own sovereignty, the one already engaged in warfare against the other, careless of the fact that the conqueror was already knocking at their doors.
That was the position which faced the line when Jim and Bill and Larry came upon the scene. Our eastern ally, who had held masses of Germans and Austrians, and bid fair with proper organization and generalship to march into Austria, and perhaps into the Kaiser's territory, suddenly went out of theconflict, leaving Germany and Austria free to withdraw their troops and throw them upon the French and British in the west and upon the Italians. The situation was more than serious. Already, in fact, Italy had suffered a serious reverse, and had been driven from the line along the River Izonso, which she had captured, right back to the Piave.
There again German cunning and Austrian duplicity had had much to do with this loss of territory and of soldiers. Lies had been spread, gullible subjects of King Victor had listened to and had disseminated tales which robbed some of their comrades of their patriotic valour. Thus, when the ground was fully prepared, a secret massing of the Austrians and Germans allowed strong forces to be flung upon our Italian ally. The line reeled; where the poisonous lies of the Germans had penetrated, it broke, it fell back, in places it surrendered. The whole line then was forced to retire, but, thanks to the valour of the majority of the Italians, to the patriotism of King Victor's army, a rear-guard action was fought which saved the situation, though for a time the position was precarious, so precarious, in fact, that British and French troops were rushed to Italy to stem this invasion.
And now the end of 1917 was at hand. What had 1918 in prospect for Britain and her allies? The line in France, stretching from Dunkerque to Verdun and so to Belfort, bristled with men and weapons. Opposite it lay the German line packed with an increasing throng of soldiers, while gunsand every implement of warfare, now no longer needed on the Russian front, were being massed, preparatory to the biggest conflict the world has ever witnessed.
But not yet had the blow fallen. A comparative calm existed along the front—the calm before the storm which was undoubtedly brewing. It was this period of the war which found Bill and his friends stepping from the steamer at Boulogne, about to take their places in the ranks of the Allies.
"Hello, boys!" someone greeted them as they halted on the quay and looked about them. "Come over—eh?"
"Yep," Larry answered laconically, shaking hands with this undoubted specimen of American citizenship, and then casting his eyes round once more, for he could never tire of the hum and bustle which existed all round him.
What with railway trucks being slowly shunted towards the water-side, what with the vessel then busily unloading, the big station and its restaurant, alive with officers and men, with blue-frocked porters, hospital nurses, and every variety of human being; with the quay farther along stacked high with boxes and bales and parcels of every sort and description, more ships, motor-cars, motor-ambulances, a shrieking locomotive, soldiers, sailors, and civilians, women and children and babies, the place was a seething mass of movement, backed by the hills beyond, and the picturesque town of Boulogne climbing towards the summit. It wasquite a little time, in fact, before either Larry or Bill or Jim could give much attention to the person who had accosted them. They found him a tall, raw-boned, thin, American non-commissioned officer.
"Names!" he snapped, and they gave them.
"Ah! I've heard of you. They sent me a chit through from London. You've come right here to get trained. How's that? Why not do your training in the camps in America?"
They told him—Larry in his jerky, short, abrupt and smiling manner; Jim, serious, rather monosyllabic, having to have the details dragged out of him; Bill impulsively, as one might expect of such a youth, yet modestly enough. Then the Sergeant stopped them and clapped a big, brawny hand on Bill's shoulder.
"I've heard of you. Gee!" he cried, and pushed the young fellow away from him so as to study him the better. "So you three are Larry and Jim and Bill, and, say, what did you do with the trawler?"
"Trawler!" Larry gaped, Jim gaped, Bill looked astonished.
"Aye, trawler! D'you think we're such dunces over here that we don't know what's going on? Just you wait! Look at this—acommuniquéwhich was issued last night—see it?
"'Gallant affair in the North Sea. British prisoners on board a German trawler overpower crew and conduct a fight with another trawler. German torpedo-boat destroyer intervenes, but assistance arrives at the critical moment in theshape of a British destroyer. The escaped prisoners capture the other trawler and steam her in with the help of their prisoners. The two trawlers reach the roads at Dover quite safely. This feat is mainly the work of three men from America—Larry——'"
"Here, hold hard!" cried Larry, pushing his head forward, "you're romancing—eh? Gee! It's truth! Well I——!"
The big Sergeant shouted his laughter and pointed a finger at the diminutive Larry.
"True? I should say it was! So you are the three! Come right along. I've quarters for you, and you can get some food and then sit down and give me the whole yarn. To-morrow you'll go up country and then start in at the business of training."
Three days later the three had reached a spot some fifteen miles from the front line, where they were at once posted to a Franco-American transport unit.
"You'll have to learn the work with horses first of all," they were told, "after that there is the motor traction part of it. Yes, you'll see some of the front. In a day or two you'd be sent with one of the convoys taking ammunition up. It's exciting work sometimes, boys," the Sergeant continued. "When shelling's severe, the chaps that take up food and such like, see things, or rather feel 'em. But you've been under gun-fire—eh! Don't tell me! Ain't I seen the news about the trawler?"
So he had seen it too, others also, for the advent of the three to this Franco-American unit was the signal for quite an outpouring of questions. The very first night indeed, as Larry puffed tranquilly at his cigar, a big American finger was pointed at him, while there sat round the circle with their American brothers a number of blue-coatedpoilus, likewise attached to the unit.
"Oui! Bien!" one of them said, shrugging his shoulders expressively; "Larry, Jim, Beill! A-ha! Ve knows sem! Ve 'ave 'eard seir names many time. You come out wis see story now—hey! Dat is bien!"
Larry blew a cloud of smoke at him, Jim fidgeted, Bill felt really like bolting; to stand upon the bridge of the trawler under gun-fire had been one thing, to sit there under this battery of eyes with questions being flung at them, bursting all round them as it were, was quite a different experience and a greater ordeal to our heroes.
"See here," drawled Larry at length, turning an expressive and somewhat dirty thumb in Jim's direction, "he's the scholar of our crew, he'll spout. Jim, you get in at it. 'Sides, you speak French a little, you told us so on our way over; give it 'em in French and English together."
It was true enough that Jim, in a moment of enthusiasm, and when feeling confidential, had informed his chums that he was quite a considerable French speaker; but now he seemed to have forgotten the occurrence. He shook his head quiteangrily, shook a fist at the grinning Larry, and mopped a streaming forehead. So it devolved on Bill to tell of their experiences, which he did quite modestly, interjecting a word or two of French now and again; for, if Jim were dumb, he at least had heard something in his schooldays and was, as a matter of fact, quite a fair linguist.
"Then you ain't got no call to feel scared about going up to the line," said their Sergeant when the tale was finished. "You three did mighty well. There's Americans as reached France in advance of our fighting units in queer ways. Some of 'em come over as stowaways, some sneaked across in perhaps more open fashion. I know a chap what got took on as a German nootral in Noo York. What, don't know what a German nootral is? Well that is some! A German nootral, chaps, is a man what's absolutely nootral; he don't care nothing for one side nor t'other. But he happens to have been born of German parents. They've likely as not settled in America this many years back, and have made pots of money under the old stars and stripes. They're grateful, they are! they've brought up their son to feel grateful too! He speaks German, of course, and equally of course he's nootral, that is when he's speakin' open and above-board; but behind the scenes he's as German as the Kaiser. He'd down America and the very boys that he went to school with. He's out for planting 'Kultur' round the whole world. He looks for a Germany that'll spread across England and awayover the Atlantic to Noo York, Washington, and Philadelphia. Shucks! He's about as nootral as I am! He's just a born traitor! This here pal of mine was all that I've said, only he wasn't a traitor, he was just artful and burning keen to get over. So he takes on as I said as a German nootral on a nootral boat that wasn't any more nootral than a German. He hoodwinked the crowd, got across, and slipped ashore in England; in twenty-four hours he was over here. He's laid back o' the churchyard over yonder, he is. Harvey Pringle was his name—you'll see it chalked up on the cross on his grave. He was a man, was Harvey Pringle."
The big Sergeant blew his nose violently, stared at Larry in quite a pugnacious way, lit a pipe with considerable display of energy, and spat a little aggressively. It was American feeling; it was the only way in which this sturdy fellow would allow his feelings to vent themselves. Larry knew what he meant; Jim and Bill realized that he had lost a friend almost before he mentioned the churchyard; their French comrades, quick in feeling and understanding, glanced at one another, exclaimed, and lit their pipes as if in sympathy with the Sergeant.
"Well, boys," the latter went on when he had smoked for a little while in silence, "you've come over in fine style, and you'll do fine. We can't have too many boys of your sort. Anyways, we're glad to see you."
It was three nights later when the three chums joined a convoy which moved out of the camp with its laden wagons for the trench line, where, for the first time, they were to experience warfare as it was just then in France.
A moon, half risen and not yet full, lit up the surroundings as the supply column drew away from the village where Bill and his friends had their head-quarters. The road wound away from them pale and ghost-like, a ribbon of shimmering greenish-white, once shaded by trees, the stumps of which alone remained. Woods cropped their green heads up here and there, a stream tinkled in the immediate neighbourhood, and all around lay a blue-green waste over which moonbeams played gently.
"Pipes out!" came the order. "Young Bill, you'll come along with this French sergeant; you can call him any name you like, he'll answer to it. Do as he says all the time and you won't get into trouble. Larry, you come along with me; Jim's fixed with another Frenchman. I needn't tell you that no matches must be struck, and when we get a couple of miles nearer not one of you must speak above a whisper. If heavy shelling starts you'll carry on just the same until further orders."
Bill climbed to the seat beside the driver of thewagon to which the Sergeant had pointed, and found himself reared well above the column, able to look right along it. There for an hour he was jolted and jarred as the vehicles were pulled northward, and there he listened to the chatter of the men and to the clatter of the horses' hoofs as they trod the highway. Far away in the distance guns spoke; nearer at hand at times there were louder clashes as French guns answered. More than once the hum of an engine could be heard; far overhead and soaring upwards he caught a fleeting glimpse of an aeroplane hurrying to its destination. Once, too, a still period was of a sudden broken by the sharp tattoo of a machine-gun up in the trenches, followed by silence which was almost painful.
"Just a little 'do'," the Frenchman told him. "Oh yes,mon ami, I speaks the American well, but you—ah!Je me rappelle!you—you—speak French beautifully."
It was just the politeness of the Frenchman; indeed Bill was to find the friendly and gallantpoilua boon companion, and the few hours he spent with this soldier made him feel the warmest friendship for him.
"What's that?" he asked a little later, as the pale rays of the moon were put in the shade by a brilliant conflagration which lit up the sky ahead and made every horse, every vehicle, and every driver stand out boldly silhouetted against the ground.
"Very lights! Listen to the machine-gun again! Someone's restless up there; perhaps it's the Boche suffering from toothache and strolling out in 'No-Man's-Land'. My comrades of France always shoot when a Boche is in sight. They do not forget the invaded districts of France, my friend! They do not forget Belgium!Pardieu!They do not love the Boche! No, not at all,mon ami. Ah, it has died down! Now we shall push on, for we are within one and a half miles of the trenches."
They clattered on their way steadily; behind them came other columns, and presently they found themselves driving abreast with another which had emerged from a side road. Under those mysterious beams they pushed forward along the road, a collection of vehicles containing all that makes war possible to an army; bread and meat, and bacon and coffee, and wine, and such-like articles; trench stores, rifles, ammunition, barbed wire, and poison gas apparatus; shells for the soixante-quinze, the famous French quick-firer; shells for the howitzers; and in bigger and stronger vehicles, which were motor-propelled, shells for other guns, of larger calibre, which had been pushed up towards the trench-line. Then the column halted.
"Here we go straight on while the others branch off to various rendezvous," said the driver. "Do you find it a queer sensation, this driving at night with the trench-line in front, knowing that there are men there stretched on either hand for milesupon miles—yes, for four hundred miles—American, British, Portuguese, Belgian; and opposite them the Boche—the hated Boche? Do you realize,mon ami, that on every road along that four hundred miles at this very moment similar convoys are pushing up stores to be carried to the trenches, and that on the far side of 'no-man's-land' the same is going forward? For the Boche also must replenish the stomachs and the ammunition dumps of his soldiers. Poof, you will say, it is all wasted labour! That all this ammunition will be fired into the air, and that, being fired, it will cause more waste, for it will kill people! But is it waste?Mon Dieu! Non!It is spent for the freedom of all nations. This pouring out of shells and blood, though some of it is thrown to the winds in these days, will bring forth fruit in the future; for it will see the defeat of the Germans and the downfall of Prussian militarism, and will find France mightier than ever, Britain the Queen of Empires, and America—well, America refined by the fire through which she has passed, nobler than at the moment. The price, my friend? Well, it appears high—outrageously high—in our day; posterity will realize that it was not too high for the liberty it purchased.
"But there, I am romancing. I think in these night hours, I think of my country saddened by its losses, of yours, and of Britain and our other allies. I wish that this war had not been, but, being a philosopher, I see that it was inevitable.And the Boche, does he wish that it had never been? Bah! Ask him! It was a bad day for the Kaiser when he let loose his soldiers. An easy conquest was then promised. Does it look easy now? Will he achieve triumph? Never! Even if he were to do so it would be to discover a shattered, broken Germany. Ah, here we are at the rendezvous! Now we halt and feed our horses; presently the fatigue parties from the trenches will come down and then our stuff will be taken."
A little later a ghostly line of men appeared out of nothingness as it were; they were challenged by the officer commanding the convoy, and soon, laden with material for themselves and their comrades, went trudging off again under the moonbeams, making for the entrance to the communicating-trench which led to the front line.
"Heigh ho! a good job done!" said thepoiluas he picked up his reins again. "Get along to the leaders, my friend, and help to turn them, for these roads are narrow for steering a cart of this sort round. Another half-hour and we shall be able to light pipes. My word, this night work costs the country something in tobacco!"
Not a shot, not a shell of any description, had come near the convoy so far, and in fact the front line, illuminated quite brilliantly a little while before, and stirred to some movement, as evidenced by the rattle of machine-guns, had now sunk as it were into blissful slumber. Even the Very lights failed to illuminate the sky. It looked as thoughthe two armies had decided upon a truce until the morning. But not so! Some ten minutes later there came the boom of distant guns, and then a screech ending in a loud detonation.
"Hum!" thought Bill. "Heard that sort of thing before! Shrapnel—and not very far away either."
"Just ahead. You can hear the bullets dropping on the roadway," thepoiluanswered, pointing. "It's just a strafe; they know, as we know, that convoys occupy the roads at night, and every now and again they send over a feeler. If they have luck—poof! it is uncomfortable for some of us. But then, so also for the Boche; for if he shells, so do we also. Besides, there are the aeroplanes; they swoop down on the roads. A week ago the Boche had the impudence to attack us, but we hurried under some trees, and in the darkness he lost us. But, plague take the Boche, there are more shells! He is wakeful! It must be the man with the toothache again, for listen to the machine-guns. Bother the man! Why does he not go to the doctor?"
Bill could hear him chuckling. That the Frenchman was undisturbed by the shells now sailing over the country-side was quite evident. He did not even duck his head as one played over the convoy and ricochetted from the road perhaps a hundred yards in advance. If his features had been clearly visible, his eyebrows would have been seen to lift as if he were vastly astonished whenanother one spluttered shrapnel to the left of the convoy. He even laughed when one plunged into the ground not ten yards away.
"It's always so," he said quite quietly. "You've heard, my friend, that the bullet does not strike you which has not your number on it. It is a great joke, I tell you; my number—my regimental number—is so great that I doubt the bullet was never made that can hold it. But a shell. Ah! that is different—eh? We can smoke now—bien! That is a comfort."
Bill might have found it a comfort too if he had taken yet to smoking; instead, he sat perched up beside this cool Frenchman, listening to his words, turning his head round to watch the bursting shells, and listening to others which hurtled through the air at a distance.
"Uncanny, yes!" he told himself. "It makes one rather feel inclined to shiver, as if a jug of cold water were being poured slowly down one's back. But yes, it is something to be a philosopher, only difficult under such conditions. Somehow it's so different from what it was on the trawler; then everything was movement, hurry, rush, with fighting to be expected; here it's all so peaceful—er—except for the shells."
It was peaceful in its own way, though dangerous enough as many have already discovered; yet, to do him justice, Bill never flinched, and indeed rather enjoyed the whole experience.
"A man gets used to it," said the Sergeant, whenthey got back to their quarters, having in the meanwhile surreptitiously obtained a report on Bill and his two chums. "You three fellows were not, of course, expected to mind shelling after that trawler affair; but you can take my word for it, son, that shelling gets on a man's nerves even when he thinks he's used to it. You may go up to the trenches night after night; sometimes there's not a shot fired; then you come in for a burst of it and things are lively. If you don't, every odd gun that sounds in your ear may have a shell for you—you're listening for it, expecting it; it's almost as bad as a strafe same as I've been talkin' of. Now, young shaver, you turn in! Precious soon you may be takin' your own convoy up."
Less than a month had passed when Bill was actually driving one of the convoy carts, Larry and Jim being placed in similar responsible positions. Then each got a step in rank and became lance-corporal, and finally, when a few weeks had passed, were full sergeants. Just about then it happened they were transferred from the Franco-American unit to one of the new units working with the American army, which was now swelling visibly and increasing in numbers.
"We're off to the Somme area," Larry said. "Say now, ain't that the place where British chaps fought the Huns somewheres about 1916, when America wasn't yet in the war, and when the President was still tryin' to keep us out of it? Guess it would want a lot of keepin' us out of it now!What was it they said when we came in?—'in with both feet'—eh? Gee. It's more than our feet we're putting into this business."
They went by road to Amiens, where the famous Cathedral overshadows the ancient city, soon to be the objective of the Germans; then they turned due east and rode to Peronne, where, to their amazement, to Bill's huge delight and none the less to the satisfaction of Larry and Jim, they found themselves billeted next to British troops and their unit actually attached to a British division.
"It's getting a sorter mix-up, boys," a friend of theirs explained. "Way north there's Belgians and French and British sorter mixed up together; then there's Portuguese and British and French again sorter mixed up and jumbled lower down; there's us and more British and French, and then more Americans, all of 'em facin' the Hun and ready for him. Folks say as how he's about to start a big offensive. There's hundreds of thousands of German troops on t'other side of 'No Man's Land'. For that we've got to thank the Revolutionists in Russia—or rather, a chap should say, the Bolshevists—who, I reckon, are sorter super-Socialists, and are agin' the law and agin' everything as the Irish might say. Well, we're watching for Mr. Hun and his offensive."
"And meanwhile we go on learning our own particular job with motor transport," said Bill, for this part of the work entrusted to him and his friends interested him even more than that of thehorsed transport. "You seem to be able to do so much more with motors; you can go so much faster and farther, and the loads you carry are so much heavier. Then, too, our job is to take up shells; and when you hear the guns shying them over at the Huns you somehow feel that you're doing better work than you were beforehand. An offensive—eh, Larry? Wonder where it'll start? I did hear that this front might be attacked."
"Guess the Hun wants to win back the line the British and French took from him in the Somme offensive," Jim said. "You see, he was lying then just east of Albert and pretty nigh within easy shot of Amiens; then he got pushed back right away past Fricourt and Pozières and other historical places, till his line was so broken and his defences so upset that he made a forced retirement after the battle was over, clearing out of Bapaume, Peronne, and Noyon to mention a few of the places. It must have shook him up a little that offensive of our allies, and if he's made up his mind to recapture the ground, well it ain't wonderful."
"Not when you come to remember the fact that the Russians are out of this business altogether," declared Larry with a curl of his lip; for somehow or other the downfall of the great Muscovite nation, the refusal of the soldiers there to fight, and the upheaval and revolution which had undermined the strength of the country, roused something like contempt. "There ain't no longer need for Germans in the east nor for Austrians either; a fewbattalions marching here and there are quite enough to occupy the country and to bully and overawe the people. Meanwhile the Kaiser is moving every man-jack he can find into France. Folks says that the railways are worn-out with transporting guns and men; and yonder, just over there"—and standing up the diminutive Larry stretched out a hand to the country beyond Peronne, where the German lines were—"somewhere yonder there are masses of the enemy, masses of guns too, I dare say, thousands of gas shells, trench mortars, bombs, and every sort of implement, all being stored and made ready for the day when the Germans will fling themselves upon Britons and French and Belgians and Americans, not to mention Portuguese and others who are fighting on the Western Front. It will be a terrific combat."
Yet days went by, settled weather arrived, and the end of March was already approaching. Those were days of beautiful sunlight, when men began to think of throwing off the hairy waistcoats with which the British soldier is provided, when greatcoats were discarded during the daytime, and when men sniffed at the breeze, scented the spring flowers, and thought of summer. But at night cold winds played over the ground, and the earth, in which so many thousands were living, dug deeply into it, struck chill and cold, and, as the early hours of morning came, condensed the moisture. Then the country-side was obscured in damp, wet fog, which hid the combatants from one another, hid, indeed,all but the sound of guns, which thundered here and there along the battle line.
For days past, indeed, gun-fire had been a feature along the front; it broke out here and there with violence; it subsided, perhaps, only to burst into double fury at an adjacent point; while for some hours now the enemy artillery had been thudding over a wide stretch, and the Allied guns had been answering shot for shot, so that there was pandemonium. Then, in the early hours of the 21st March, German masses were suddenly launched through the dense fog which still clad the country-side, and threw themselves with desperate fury upon the British Third and Fifth Armies.
It was cold and raw as Bill put his head up from the dug-out where he and his chums had their head-quarters.
"Something doin'," he said laconically, bobbing down again and clambering to the depths below, where in 1915 the Germans had dug hard to prepare a defensive line which would arrest the British forces.
Yet that contemptible force, as the Kaiser had arrogantly called it, swollen to unwonted proportions, had overrun this line in spite of strenuous German resistance, and here, in March, 1918, in place of the Hun enjoying such comfort as these dug-outs provided—here were Bill and his friends snug under cover.
"Somethin' doin'," Bill repeated, as he joined the throng down below, some thirty-five feet under the surface, and stumbled in to find a seat in the dug-out, about which sat or lounged, perhaps, a dozen men facing the centre, where, perched on a kerosene tin, a single army-pattern candle spluttered and glimmered.
"Oh, aye!" answered one, as he pulled at his pipe. "Sounds like it! Shouldn't wonder!"
They listened. Each man, as if by habit, lifted his head and stared hard at the spluttering candle.
"Yep!" Larry interjected, pulling his hat from his head and rubbing his fingers through his hair. "It do sound something like a ruction. This here gunnin's been goin' on this four hours. Say, Bill, what's it doin' upstairs?"
"Aye, what's it doin'?"
They turned their eyes upon the young soldier, and then sat there still staring at the fluttering flame of the candle, listening, listening to the thud, thud, thud, the almost continuous roar of distant guns—damped down, as it were, by their deeply entrenched position, yet a roar for all that—and listening to the distant reverberation, which shook the earth and sent tremors through the dug-out.
For hours, indeed, German guns had been thundering; for hours shells of every variety, but mainly gas shells, had been crashing into the British defences, and crashing upon roads, levelling all that was left of the puny walls of one-time pleasant hamlets, creating more destruction in an area already almost utterly destroyed by previous bombardments. And to those guns British guns made answer, till the roar made speaking well-nigh impossible even deep down there in that dug-out.
"Best get something to eat, boys," said the practical Jim, when a few minutes had passed in silence—that is, silence save for that interminable thud,the occasional whine of a shell scarcely perceptible deep down in the dug-out, and the deep rumbling of the earth caused by so many concussions. "It looks as if the Germans are coming on, and, that being so, the man who's got his waistcoat well lined will be ready for them. Ah! hear that one? That's an ammunition dump gone up! Hit direct, I shouldn't wonder."
They had been almost deafened by a rumbling roar, and sat for a while again in silence, then from an adjoining opening there emerged a tin-hatted, hairy individual bearing a dixie in one hand and a ladle in the other. It was the cook—a stalwart British Tommy, his muffler wound round his face, a cigarette between his lips, the very embodiment of coolness and nonchalance.
"Food, boys!" he called out, "and maybe it's the last we'll get down in this dug-out. With all that fire comin' over, it ain't possible that we shall advance, and from what I've sorter gathered we'll be lucky if we can hold our ground. There's millions of Germans. The Kaiser's been bringin' 'em over from Russia all the time, and I expects that 'e's been bringin' all the guns and ammunition that the Russians left to 'im. 'Ere you are, Bill, hold yer plate! Good bully and stew with a potato or two a-floatin' around. You won't turn yer nose up at it, I know, nor Larry neither. I don't know America, but I guess there couldn't be anything better put before you out there—eh, Larry?"
"Yep! You bet! Feedin' ain't no better andno worse out there, and it'll never be better than it is here," the American answered, sniffing at the stew and smacking his lips.
Indeed he spoke the truth, for never were soldiers better fed than those belonging to Britain. They ate their stew with relish, those men down in that deep well of the earth, and then fell to smoking and to chatting, while Bill clambered along flights of steep wooden steps till he came to the gas curtain which hung across the exit, and, keeping his gas respirator at the "alert" position, ready to pop the mask over his face at any instant, he pushed the curtain aside, and, helmet on head, emerged into the open. It was light—that is to say, it was lighter than it had been three hours earlier, though a damp, wet fog clung to the ground. Gun-fire still sounded, but for some uncanny reason its fierceness had subsided; though now, in place of the heavy thuds of distant batteries and the bursting of shells, there was to be heard the sharp, crisper report of smaller explosive missiles.
"Trench mortars, shouldn't wonder," he thought, "and that's rifle-fire, machine-gun firing, and it's spreading all along the line! It's—— by James! it's behind us! It's close here to our left! It's—— who are they?"
He peered through the mist, and then, lifting the curtain, dived down the steps of the dug-out, reaching his friends eventually in a confused heap, for he had missed his footing on the damp stairway.
"Why, it's our little Bill," chaffed Larry, and then looked serious, for Bill sat up, his clothes awry, his helmet dangling in one hand, his eyes starting.
"They're Huns—Huns I tell you! They're all round us! They've got behind us! Our men have fallen back. It's been a surprise attack, and the mist and the fog have helped them. It's—it looks as though we're cornered."
"Cornered! Cornered! Looks as though we're cornered," they repeated, the words coming to Bill's ears as if from a far distance, first with a decided flavour of the American accent, then in broad Devonshire, and again from Jim in that drawl which was so unmistakable. "Cornered!"
"Yep!"
"But," said Larry, diving for his morsel of cigar, "you don't mean——?"
"I mean," said Bill, "that the Germans are all round us, that we chaps down here are probably cut off, and that we're in a tight fix. Where's yer rifles? Where's yer bombs? Some of you men have got a store of bombs down here that you were to carry up to the front line, and what about ammunition stocks? This is a business! Look here, boys, make ready whilst I go up and have another look round. The thing to do would be to decide which way to go, how to act if we are surrounded. We shall be made prisoners the moment we turn out, or get shot down. I'm not asking to be made a prisoner—not me!"
"Nor me neither," came from the burly individual who had borne the steaming dixie into the dug-out, "nor me neither, Bill. I had some!" he added, and he actually grinned in spite of the precariousness of their situation. "Don't yer forgit, young feller, that in 1915 I was took at Hulloch, opposite Loos, you know—no yer don't, 'cos you was in America; but Hulloch's just where we gave the Hun proper stuff somewhere about September, 1915. Well, I got pinched, and for about a week I was a guest of the Kaiser's. Oh, no thanks! No more being a guest of the Kaiser nor of any other Hun, I thank you. Skilly ain't in it—I give yer my word, I was worn wellnigh to a shadow—I——"
The incorrigible, loquacious fellow would have gone on discussing the event for half an hour had not Bill abruptly interrupted him, while another of the men brusquely ended his conversation.
"Stow it, Nobby! You as thin as a rake, eh? You'll be thin soon if you don't hold yer wind and help us to get out of what looks like a nasty business. Yes, young Bill, you nip up, me and the other boys'll make ready."
"And I'll go along with him," said Jim, making towards the stairway.
They clambered up rapidly, Jim adjusting his gas respirator. Then, arrived at the gas curtain, they pulled it slowly aside and peered out. It was lighter still, for every minute now made a difference. Mounting higher overhead was the springsun, though still invisible, yet sucking continuously at the moisture, driving deep lanes through it, trying all the while to send its rays to the soaked earth underneath. There were figures moving about, a batch of men disarmed and dressed in khaki were being marched across the narrow foreground; officers dressed in field grey—the German uniform—were galloping to and fro, and a host of men were staggering past bearing machine-guns and trench mortars. It was a German invasion in fact. For the German hosts, seizing the opportunity provided by mist, had taken the British Fifth Army at a disadvantage, and, coming on by the thousand, had swept through their front line and were already hotly engaged with other troops farther to the rear. In that sudden, successful advance they had overwhelmed small parties of the British, they had run over trenches and advanced posts and dug-outs, and, in fact, they had erected a curtain between those men in the front line who had been unable to fall back, and their comrades now resisting the enemy advance.
In that area which they had so suddenly captured lay the dug-out in which Bill and his friends were quartered, and they too, like many another party, were derelict, surrounded, encompassed by enemies, with no way out, though as yet they were not actually prisoners.
"Huh!" grunted Bill, peering from beneath the flap of the blanket, "it don't look healthy—do it? A fellow don't know which way to turn nor whatto do. If we wait, we are taken. There'll be a party of Germans come along and summon us to surrender. Then it would be a case of 'hands up' and 'come out'—or——"
"Be burst in by a bomb," said Jim. "I know it! I went up with a party of our chaps in one of those raids of ours when we blew up some of the German dug-outs. My, it was a game!"
They lowered the gas curtain over the entrance again and stumbled down the stairway.
"Yes, it was a game," said Jim, as they entered the dug-out and joined their comrades. "A game for the Huns, you bet! Gee! and we wouldn't find it so."
The big man in the hairy waistcoat, with the broad smile on his strong face, grinned, and, taking the cigarette from his mouth, tapped Larry familiarly on the shoulder.
"A game I've played too, up here in these very parts in the days when we was fighting the Germans back over the Somme. Kamerad! D'you know the call? They'd come tumbling up from the dug-outs, with their hands above their heads, and, if you believe me, they'd offer money, watches, anything, for their lives, boys. We gave 'em somethin' that time. Of course, if they didn't come up we gave 'em a smoke-bomb; and if that didn't fix 'em we put a sentry at the door and waited till a chap came along with something stronger."
"Hold hard! Sentry! Oh!" Bill shouted.
"Oh!" repeated the big man; "and what's now? You ain't frightened?"
"Frightened!" glared Larry. For the very thought sent him into a hot flush of indignation. "Him!—Bill!—the chap——"
"Shut up!" said Bill. "I was thinking of that sentry. We're cornered—that's what all agreed—eh?"
Even the big man in the hairy waistcoat could not fail to be in sympathy with the suggestion. If he had, a glance out through the door of the dug-out would have soon satisfied him. The light was now stronger. The mist was clearing. On every side Germans could be seen, while behind them, where there had been British support-lines before, was now the fierce rattle of machine-guns and of trench mortars. Across what had been "No-Man's-Land" streamed columns of Germans, some marching in good order, others trapesing over the ground dragging every sort of war material. There were detached bands, too, marching hither and thither, and halting unexpectedly. They were searching for the hidden caches of British soldiers, cut off by this sudden advance, and for dug-outs.
"Hold hard!" said Bill. "You chaps wait down here. Larry and Jim come along up with me. I'm going to post a sentry over our show," he said, when they had gained the curtain and were able to peep out. "Perhaps we'll get a chance."
"A chance!" said Larry, scratching his head—"a chance to place a sentry! You mean a chanceto get hold of some togs in which to rig one of us up. That's a fine idea, Bill, but it would mean shooting if we were discovered."
"Not if the sentry's a real German," grinned Bill. "You know what I mean—a real stout, floppy German!"
"A real stout—— Here, what are you getting at!" cried Jim, and he too was grinning.
As for Larry, as one might expect, he merely cocked his hat a little farther forward, fumbled automatically for the stump of his cigar, and scrutinized the smiling Bill from the top of his tin hat to his thick boots.
"Look here, me lad, this 'ere fat, floppy German," he said. "What are you after? Gee, lad, but—but I do believe——"
"Hist! Sit down! Let the blanket drop! There are men there, fat and floppy," whispered Bill, pulling them both back well into the entrance, and seeing that the curtain was carefully lowered. Then, pushing it aside with a single finger, he bid them in turn peer out.
A shattered hedge ran not far from the opening to the dug-out, masking the entrance to some extent. A bank, too, obstructed the approach to it, and bordered a sunken road, which no doubt at one time had been a feature of the village situated just there. But the village had gone long since. High-explosive shells had churned the ground in all directions, had torn the pleasant dwellings of the villagers to shreds, had lacerated the trees and brokenthem on every side, had even turned water-courses, by bursting in their channels, and, having dug deep holes and pits in all directions and flattened every prominence known by the residents, had transformed the country thereabouts, and indeed for miles and miles on either hand, into a vast disordered desert.
Yet this one feature remained—a narrow, sunken cart track, passing along beside a bank which gave it shelter, perhaps, from the desolating action of the shells—a bank which was seamed and furrowed by the spades of men who had dug deep into it for shelter. It harboured amongst those many cavities the entrance to this dug-out. As for the lane itself, it harboured at this particular moment a German—a big, lumbering man, whose steel helmet seemed so huge that it covered his head as an extinguisher covers a candle. He was plodding along towards the dug-out, perhaps some two hundred yards distant from it, his eyes upon the ground, his weary feet moving heavily, his rifle over one shoulder.
"That's him," said Bill, pointing a finger through a niche made by withdrawing the curtain with his finger. "That's our sentry—a fine big, fat German!"
He could feel rather than hear Larry giggling. As for Jim, he squatted down beside the wooden sides of the entrance to the dug-out and did his utmost to stifle the roars of laughter he felt bound to give way to. For somehow the sight of that plodding German coming steadily towards them,Bill's incriminating finger, and their own peculiar position, struck a ludicrous note. It tickled his fancy immensely.
"Ho! ho! ho!" he roared, till Larry, turning, struck him sharply on the shoulder.
"Gee, man!" he said; "d'yer think we're going to stay here and be captured 'cos a big lout such as you gets a-laughin'? But Bill's right, ain't he? A fine German, just fine! And won't he do for us! Just how'll we tackle him?"
"Tackle him!" exclaimed Bill. "Easy! Get your gun, push it through the curtain. Here, wait till he gets close to us, then watch and see!"
Neither of the three had any fears as to the result of the encounter, and less so as the German drew nearer. From being just a big, fat, ambling German, he was seen from a closer view to be in addition a very shaken and frightened individual.
"Here, you just sit up sharp," said Larry, pushing his revolver through an opening which Jim made, while Bill pushed his head up through the other side of the curtain. "Hands up—quick! Now, young feller, you come over here straight! D'you get me?"
The German "got him" at once. He stood of a sudden stock still, lifted his eyes, and gazed at the entrance to the dug-out. Then he dropped his rifle, opened his mouth wide as if about to shout, and half turned. But at that instant Larry's weapon was pushed still farther forward, and, obedient to Bill's beckoning finger, the German picked up hisrifle, holding it well above his head, and the other hand also, and advanced towards them.
"Now, you look here, you Hun," said Larry, pushing his way farther forward, "I'll be just behind you here—savvy?—with a bit of the curtain between us. You'll march to and fro—get me? Just to and fro same as any ordinary sentry. But if you try tricks, cunning tricks, me boy, look out for it!"
"Aye, look out for it!" Jim chimed in; "because, if Larry misses, I ain't so bad a shot by no means."
"Here, he doesn't understand. Let's try him with a bit of French," said Bill, stepping out to the bewildered German. "Speak English?" he asked, and then, as the man answered "Nein"; "then understand this," he told him in French, "you're to act as sentry. If you are challenged by any other Germans, simply say that you've been put here by orders. Don't try to play any games with us. My friends here are Americans, and perhaps you know what that means: they can shoot. You understand that, eh?"
The man nodded; his mouth gaped for a moment, and then, flinging his rifle over his shoulder, he began to move to and fro, to and fro, like an automaton, glancing sheepishly at the entrance to the dug-out, and seeing there every now and again a little niche or opening, and from that niche the faces of either Jim or Larry or Bill, and sometimes also the muzzle of a revolver. It was marching to and fro that comrades of his saw him, and, takingit for granted that he had been stationed there to watch the dug-out, they passed on without thinking to challenge him. For the moment, in fact, Bill's ruse had saved his comrades from capture, but how long would it act in that manner? The sentry could not possibly march to and fro for ever, and presently there would be more Germans in the neighbourhood. What then?
"Aye, what then?" asked Larry thoughtfully, as he cocked and uncocked his revolver.
"Ah!" replied Jim, unable to fathom the difficulty.
"A teaser," agreed Bill. "Let's hope for the best! What about a meal anyway?"
"Fine!" was Larry's terse rejoinder.
"Let's count heads," said Bill, some hours after the German sentry was posted and when one of the watchers had reported that he still continued diligently at his post. "It's getting dark—things will be moving presently."
"And if we ain't by then, something unpleasant will be happening," remarked the big man with the hairy waistcoat as he ladled the contents of a steaming dixie out into the mess-tins of the men. "That there sentry, as I've squinted at this dozen times now, will be off the moment it gets dark and dusk's fallen. Give 'im ten minutes from that to shout hisself hoarse and call up some of 'is mates; after that——"
"After that," grinned one of the men, as though he rather enjoyed the statement and thought it a joke, "there'll be a swarming band of the blighters all round—there'll be bombs coming down most like. Say, boys, we'd better eat all the grub we've got and make the best of it. Pity to waste good things—eh?"
He laughed as he dug his teeth into a huge slice of bread-and-jam.
"But what about the heads? There's Jim and Bill and me—I counts us three first, boys, 'cos, you see, I knows me mates best," explained Larry. "Then there's Nobby here, our cook—and prime good stuff he turns out—that's four, and Simkins over there eating bread-and-jam—five; and, yes, there's five more, which makes us ten down below and one upstairs watching the Hun—eleven good boys—eh?"
"And ten hundred Huns outside," said Bill. "Yes, fair odds, Larry. Fighting won't do much for us; we've got to use a little artifice. Seems to me the first thing to do is to get out of the dug-out, for once the sentry does get off, or once we're discovered, it will become a trap. As to the sentry getting off, we could soon put a stop to that by dragging him down here. But is it worth it?"
"And what then?" demanded Nobby. "Young Bill, you are the boy to show us the ropes—eh?"
"Yep. You bet!" Larry interjected. "This here Bill's shown me and Jim and a whole lot of pals the ropes before now. This ain't the time to spout, but you can take it from me that he's a bit of a leader. Waal, Bill, what about it?"
"Aye, what about it?" they asked, gathering round the young Englishman, much to Bill's discomfort.
"Don't you get rattled," said Nobby, seeing him flush. For though the light was not very good down there the fluttering candle still showed sufficient light to make the men's faces easily visible,and Bill had flushed at Larry's words. "You sit yerself down and take another bite; there's just a tinful left at the bottom of my dixie. Then have a smoke—one o' these yeller perils. Yer don't know them! Yer don't smoke! Why, these 'ere things is the soldier's delight, and the orficers smoke 'em too; so they're good, you can guess. No, you won't eat any more, and yer won't smoke, but yer thinkin'. What is it?"
"Can't say," said Bill. "But I'm too young to lead you fellows."
"Too young!" exclaimed Nobby. "You don't 'come it' in that way, young Bill. I ain't been down 'ere these many days cookin' for our mess without learning things. My word, Larry ain't the one to talk much unless you've got 'im in a good mood—and seems to me he ain't always in a good mood—but he did talk at times, and—well—there's some of us as has heard o' that trawler. Boys, there ain't no officer 'ere; there's some of us what 'as got non-commissioned rank—but this is a fix what's likely to cost us our liberty. Who's to lead us?"
"Bill," came from many of them. "Bill," they cried.
"Sure—Bill. Didn't I tell you, boys," said Larry. "Then get in at it, youngster. What are we to do?"
"Do?—it's almost impossible to say," Bill answered them; for during the last few hours he had been hard at work considering the situation—onlyto meet with disappointment. How could he devise any plan when there was nothing to base his plans upon? If they stayed down in the dug-out they risked destruction and certainly imprisonment; if they went abroad, well, plans then depended entirely upon circumstances.
"Boys," he said, "I'll do what I can. Some of you fellows may be senior to me, but no matter; we're all in the show together, and if I can help, why, you can count on me. Now, as to what we're to do: I'm going aloft at once, and immediately it's dark enough I'm going to our German and I'll send him off down the lane double quick, with orders not to come back unless he wants a bullet in him. By then you chaps will have collected all the grub you've got, each one of you will have picked up his rifle, and you will see that every round of ammunition we're possessed of is carried on with you. Then we take a line that leads us west and south, and we'll make for the Somme River, for that's the direction, I think, in which our troops have retreated."
"Good for you!" said Larry.
"It sounds a likely sort of business, it do," said the big man with the hairy waistcoat—"leastways it's better'n nothing. Being cooped up here is worse than bein' blown to bits or taken prisoner out in the open. Well," he went on, swinging his arms wide, or as wide, we will say, as the dug-out permitted, and throwing his chest forward, "the open's the place for a man—eh, boys?Living down here like a rat or like a rabbit ain't what I asks for."
A glance at this gallant fellow was quite enough to show that he was an open-air man; he was indeed a typical example of your English countryman who lives the day long in the open, thrives on fresh air, and looks robust and sturdy. As to fear, he seemed to have no idea as to what it meant, and rather looked upon these new difficulties and dangers as something of a diversion. He at any rate would make a most excellent companion on the sort of adventure on which the party were now to step out. Bill glanced at him approvingly; Larry cocked an eye at this burly Englishman and smiled.
"Say, boy," he lisped, "ef you ain't just it—just the sort o' pard as Uncle Sam likes. I'm glad I've a chance of soldiering up alongside o' you. It does a man good what's come from the States, where we've been looking on at the fighting these last two or three years, to come in contact with British soldiers who've been fighting like tigers all this while. But we'll do the same, never you fear. America means business!"
Probably the huge Nobby had never had such a long speech addressed to him before, and in front of such an audience. He positively blushed—stuttered—grinned—and then brought an enormous paw down on Larry's attenuated shoulder.
"Don't you worry, chum," he said; "I'll look after you. If any blighted German tries to get at yer, just call to me."
It was hardly the kind of statement that Larry looked for—distinctly not the sort of thing he required, for, diminutive though he was, the American positively oozed courage and determination—that cool determination which seemed to suit him and his languid person so admirably. As for wanting anyone to take care of him, he was well able to do that for himself, and was about to tell Nobby so in unmistakable manner, when, on second thoughts, he realized that it was merely good comradeship which had prompted him to give vent to the statement.
"You're a chum," was all he said; "you'll look after me. And say, Nobby, ef ever you get into a tight corner, just sing out. I'm small but I'm handy—eh?"
He grinned as he turned in Jim's direction, and then winked at Bill, whereat Nobby glanced at the two of them to find Jim nodding violently.
"He's put the case fine," said the latter. "Larry's small—you'd think you could take him by the neck and shake the life out of him—but he's a vixenish little rat, I can tell you, and he'd dig his teeth into you before you could get a real good grip. And, Nobby boy, don't you ask him to start in with a gun; he'd flick the eyelid off of a weasel within ten yards, would Larry—it's part of his vixenish spirit. Oh yes, he's weak, he is! A tarnation little rat to deal with."
It was complimentary in half a sense, the reverse if viewed from another direction. But it pleasedLarry immensely, and it appealed to the understanding of the British soldier. He glanced 'cutely at Larry, took far more notice of the various points of his person, and then patted him violently on the shoulder.
"I see! You're sort o' small and daring," he said, "and—and—pug—er—what's the word?"
"Pugnacious," Bill interjected.
"Aye, pugnacious—always wantin' a row, looking round for things to fight, like so many little people. And he can shoot—he can flick the eyelid off a weasel! Well, that'ud want doing at ten yards. But, to speak as you chaps do, I guess he can shoot. That's good. He'll want to know how in the next few hours, if we're to get through the Germans. Now, boys, up we go!"