"My husband and I are much obliged to you for your hospitality," the German girl had written in scornful mood. "We shall not trouble you any further, as we have learned all we came to know. Gott strafe the English, and in particular your detestable little boy."Ottilie Van Drissel."
"My husband and I are much obliged to you for your hospitality," the German girl had written in scornful mood. "We shall not trouble you any further, as we have learned all we came to know. Gott strafe the English, and in particular your detestable little boy.
"Ottilie Van Drissel."
"Good heavens! What vile ingratitude!" exclaimed Mrs. Dashwood. "I have harboured spies!"
A drizzling rain blurred the Channel, and it was high tide.
The lap of the wavelets on the pebbles sounded in the ears of a sentry who swung suddenly round and challenged, rather surprised to see by the scarlet band that the man who had approached to within two paces of him unheard was a staff officer.
"That's all right, my boy, you needn't look so flurried," said the "brass hat." "Do you know if the boat has gone over yet?"
"I ain't seen her, sir, but, then, you can't see much in this drizzle. But I'll tell you what happened last night, sir; them there lights showed again up yonder."
"That is precisely what I have been sent down to investigate," said his interrogator.
"We are all certain there's something going on," said the sentry, "though they ain't been seen for ten days now."
They stood side by side looking inland, and the staff officer, with his hands behind the back of his drab mackintosh, pressed the button of a tiny electric torch rapidly three times.
The sentry was only a boy, and he talked volubly, not heeding the melancholy call of a sea-bird from the water.
"Ah, well, I think we shall have them to-night," said the staff officer. "I see you have still got the old Mark II.?"
"Yes, sir," smiled the unsuspecting lad. "They took the others away from us when we came down on this job."
"Let me look at it," said the staff captain, holding out his hand, and the moment his fingers closed round the rifle the boy dropped senseless on to the stones, felled by a smashing blow from the heavy butt.
"You'll do!" said his assailant, and, laying the rifle down and gathering up the skirts of his mackintosh, he walked deliberately into the sea!
A collapsible boat, rowed by two men in German navaluniforms, was rising and falling on the top of the tide, and in another moment the men were pulling out into the rain blur with their mysterious passenger.
No one spoke, until the nose of the boat met the dark grey hull of the submarine waiting less than a quarter of a mile out, and as the beam of a searchlight suddenly flashed through the mist, the top of the periscope sank noiselessly beneath the waves, and Captain Von Dussel, alias Van Drissel, sank with it.
"Good luck again, Kamerad?" inquired the commander as they stood in the conning-tower.
"The best of good luck this time, Heffer," laughed the spy. "How soon can you put me ashore on the other side?"
"As soon as I have accomplished a little scheme of my own," replied the commander of the U50, with a strange glitter in his eyes. "The boat is coming out of Folkestone now."
"That is not my affair," said Von Dussel.
"No, it is mine," replied the commander haughtily. "In less than an hour I shall send her to the bottom."
"You will do no such thing," said the spy in a low piercing voice, producing a Browning pistol and clapping it to his head. "In an hour I must be in France. The news I carry is worth the loss of forty Channel steamers. Hesitate another moment, and I will shoot you like a dog!"
"Hawke!"
"Sir!" And the marksman of A Company jumped across the floor of the trench to the door of the dug-out with surprising alacrity, as the merry laughing face of Dennis Dashwood showed in the square hole in the wall of the parados.
From the moment Bob Dashwood had made Dennis known to Harry Hawke as "my brother," that worthy had attached himself to the new arrival with the same devotion he showed to the captain, and the more he saw of Dennis the more devoted he became.
"Hawke," said the subaltern, "I'm going over to-night, and I want three old hands to go with me. The Divisional C.O. wishes the enemy wire examined, and I've put in for the job. You can come if you fancy it. What do you say?"
"I says yus!" cried Harry Hawke, with a widening of the grin that puckered his dirty, mahogany-coloured face. "Better let me pick you out two more, sir, what knows the game."
"Right-o!" assented Dennis. "Of course, it all depends on whether their guns start strafing our trench at dusk. If not, and everything is fairly quiet, we'll moveout at ten sharp," and he consulted his wristlet watch—Mrs. Dashwood's last present.
"What's this conspiracy? Can't I be in it too?" said a strange voice that made Harry Hawke jump round, ready to salute, but his hand dropped to his side again, for it was only an Australian corporal, who had come along the trench behind him unnoticed.
"Why, Dan, old fellow! Where on earth have you sprung from?" cried Dennis, emerging from his burrow and seizing the outstretched hand as though he never meant to let it go again.
"It isn't a long story, Dennis," laughed the corporal, who was a broad-shouldered young fellow a year or two the boy's senior. "They've just moved our crowd in behind the brigade on your right, and the first person I set eyes on was Uncle Arthur, who happens to know our old man. So, as we are in the reserve trenches and nothing doing, I asked leave to come over here to see you, and got it too. Uncle told me you had only just arrived. How long have you been here?"
"Forty-eight hours," said Dennis. "Come and see my quarters."
His cousin ducked his head and followed him down the three steps that led into the dug-out.
"'Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,'" murmured Dan Dunn.
"Quite so," laughed Dennis. "But we haven't room for even a spider's web, though the rats are an infernal nuisance."
"There are worse things in this world than rats," said his cousin, looking round at the little square caveexcavated months before by the Germans in the chalky soil, and seating himself on one of the two cots. "Who's your room-mate?"
"My brother Bob. He's our platoon commander, you know. He'll be in presently for tea. But, I say, isn't this just ripping?"
"It's certainly better than Gallipoli," said Dunn with a quiet, retrospective smile. "Gad, Dennis, that was an awful hash up!" And he blew a cloud of tobacco smoke to circle upwards among the shelves and lockers, where all sorts of things were stowed away.
"Beg pardon, sir," said Private Hawke, thrusting his head in at the door. "You didn't answer this gentleman's question. Does he want to come with us to-night?"
"Oh, yes—did you mean that, Dan? It's like this," explained Dennis. "The Boches have been putting up some fresh wire over yonder, and they want to know at D.H.Q. whether it's permanent or temporary. I rather fancy there's a bit of a raid on the cards, and I'm going out to reconnoitre."
"Do I mean it!" laughed his cousin. "As long as I report myself at sun-up it's all right."
"Very well, Hawke, my cousin will go with us."
"Then we'll only want one other man, sir, and I'll warn Tiddler. He can smell Germans in the dark."
"That doesn't take much doing," smiled Dennis. "They're a filthy crowd, anyhow. Ten o'clock sharp! And ask Smithers if that kettle's boiling."
Harry Hawke had scarcely removed his drab figure from the doorway when Captain Dashwood blotted out thelight and dived in upon them with a dexterity born of much practice.
His greeting with the Australian cousin was warm enough, but they both saw something unusual in his face as Dan squeezed up on the cot and made room for him.
"Read this, Dennis," he said. "The mater's just sent it over," and he tossed Ottilie's farewell letter across the dug-out.
"The pigs!" cried Dennis hotly. "I can't say it doesn't surprise me, because it does; but, you know, I never tumbled either to the man or to his sister. What does the governor say?"
"He's very sick," replied Bob. "Especially as he gave the whole show away in his letter. Luckily the mater took it from the postman herself, and she doesn't think they can possibly have seen it. But there it is—one never knows. It is the beastly ingratitude that gets over me. The mater rigged that girl out from top to toe, and paid her jolly well, too, and Van Drissel had the run of the house, and then went away with three boxes of the brigadier's cigars into the bargain. A German isn't a human being when you come to look at it—he's just a mean beast, a bully when he's top dog, and a grovelling worm when he's cornered. Does your crush take many prisoners, Dan?"
Dan Dunn smiled, and his faultless teeth gleamed in the coffee-brown of his face.
"Am I compelled to answer that question, your worship?" he said, with an odd twinkle in his grey eyes, but he had already answered it to their complete satisfaction. "Do you?" he said.
"A few Saxons now and again, when they put up their hands," replied Captain Bob. "They're sick to death of the whole business, but Prussians or Bavarians, no. We've 'had some,' and we're not looking for more trouble."
Smithers made his appearance from the adjoining dug-out, which was their kitchen, and when Bob had fixed up the folding table and Dennis had dragged a Tate sugar box, which acted as cupboard, into the centre of the floor, they drank hot tea, which was good, and ate sardines and bread and butter, and finished up with jam, which Dan Dunn passed with an apologetic grin.
"No, thanks; we had enough of that at Anzac," he said. "Forty flies to the spoonful and enteric to follow. Our boys put in a requisition for apricot so that you could see them better, but it didn't come off."
After tea they smoked and talked over things, especially the new divisions that were marching up in a never-ending stream, and the huge shell stores at the artillery dumps, which had struck Dan Dunn very forcibly as his battalion passed them. And then Bob, having duties to attend to, went away in the gathering dusk, and they hung a ground sheet over the door and lit a candle, and Dan, with his huge arms behind his head, told in his quiet drawl of Quinn's Post and Lone Pine, and had hard things to say about the Higher Command, to all of which Dennis listened, enthralled, with his elbows on his knees.
At five minutes to ten by the wristlet watch there came a cough from the other side of the ground sheet, and Dan picked himself up.
"Right-o, Hawke!" called Dennis, with a glance atthe watch. "Here's a spare revolver for you, Dan, or would you rather have a rifle?"
"Rifle's in the way if it's a long crawl," said his cousin. "I'll take the Smith and Wesson, old man."
Dennis settled his cap firmly on his head and extinguished the candle. On either side of the door of the dug-out, as they pulled aside the ground sheet and came up the steps, a dark figure loomed—Harry Hawke and his chum, Tiddler.
Against the lighter grey of the sky one could make out the ragged edge of the sandbags, and a little way off the rosy glow from a brazier showed through the trench mist which hung low over the ground.
"The listening post knows we're coming through 'em, sir; they're lying out in front of the bay on the left," volunteered Hawke.
"Very well," said Dennis in a low voice, "the idea is this: we want to strike a bee-line—barring shell holes, of course—straight out to their wire. You and Tiddler will keep twenty yards behind to cover us if necessary, but no firing unless you are absolutely obliged. You understand that?"
Both men whispered "Yus, sir!" in a ready chorus, and Dennis led the way to the bay in the trench, and climbed on to the fire step.
Another figure stood motionless there, his rifle on a sandbag before him, and everything was unusually still.
"Anything moving?" said Dennis, in the man's ear.
"Haven't known it so quiet all the week, sir," was the reply. "But don't forget there's a machine-gun yonder, thirty paces to the left of the willow stump, and theygenerally shove one of their posts out in front of that, sir."
"I won't forget," said Dennis. "Come on, Dan! Over we go!" And the next moment four dark forms clambered across the parapet and dropped on to their faces on the other side.
A little way out, glued to the ground with their eyes and ears wide open, our listening post lay, and as they crawled towards it one of the men tapped with the toe of his boot to let them know that their coming had been heard.
A long way off to southward, so far that it came only as a dull booming, the German guns were shelling the French lines intermittently, and there was the sharp bark of rifles to the north.
"How long do you calculate it will take us to reach their wire, Baker?" whispered Dennis to the last man of the listening post as he crawled up beside him.
"Somewhere about ten minutes, sir," was the reply. "There's one biggish crump-hole straight ahead, and two more on the left a bit farther on, and there's a tidy lot of dead lying out there."
Shoulder to shoulder Dennis and Dan crept forward across that No Man's Land, the wind rustling in the tangled grass, bringing with it the acrid odour of unburied corpses. Dan's hand encountered one of them, and he nudged his cousin to work away more to the right.
This brought them to the edge of the first crump-hole, and glancing every few yards at the luminous dial, they kept on for some distance unchecked.
"We ought to be on it now," murmured Dennis. "It's a quarter of an hour since we left the listening post." And he felt cautiously to the full extent of his arms, but without encountering an upright standard.
They did not know it, but they had passed through a gap!
"Hold on!" whispered the Australian; "I thought I heard something quite close on the left there."
Dennis heard it, too, at the same moment. It was like the solemn rattle of earth falling into a newly made grave.
"It's only the chalk settling in those other crump-holes Baker warned us about," he said, after they had listened breathlessly for a few moments. "Our two fellows must have gone wide and struck them."
But he was wrong. The crump-holes were on the left, far behind, if they had only known it; and it was from their right rear that a sudden muffled exclamation came out of the stillness.
"'Evins!" said Tiddler, as he felt the sharp barbs of a low-stretched strand bury themselves in the slack of his pants. "'Arry, I'm 'ung up!"
"Shut yer 'ead! What's the trouble?" growled his companion; and as Harry Hawke groped for his mate he shook the strand; the well-known jangle of an empty bully-beef tin warning them all that they had struck one of the simplest expedients of modern warfare, freely used by both sides.
A tin dangling on the barbed wire does not ring like a cracked bell unless somebody touches it; and from the darkness just in front and above their heads, Dan andDennis heard a guttural whisper, and, realising that they were immediately under the enemy's parapet, lay as flat as playing cards.
"It's those two fellows of mine," breathed Dennis in his cousin's ear. "But how the dickens have we passed the wire without giving the alarm?"
Dan, with recollections of Anzac fresh upon him, remembered that slither of earth from those crump-holes on the left.
"I'll bet you anything there's a party gone out to your trench, and they've shifted a section of the wire to let them through," he replied. "We may meet them on the way back. Don't move! We know, anyhow, that their new wire's not fixed!"
Voices were humming above them now, and the German trench guards were evidently on the alert. Still nothing happened, and Dennis was just congratulating himself that their presence there was unsuspected when there was a sharp sound from the top of the sandbags, and a pistol light soared above their heads, illuminating the darkness.
For a moment everything was distinctly visible, although they themselves were so far hidden by the German sandbags; but as Dennis looked back over his shoulder, he saw the luckless Tiddler lying prone and helpless in the open, and the white face of Hawke telling out strong in the glare.
A hoarse shout from the German trench went up as the pistol flare died down, showing that they had been seen.
"Give us a hand, matey; I ain't 'arf caught!"entreated Tiddler, who, resting principally on his face and one knee, was making violent efforts to disengage himself.
"'Old still!" growled Hawke, producing his nippers and snapping the strand in two places, leaving a short piece about a foot in length embedded in the tough cloth. "Now yer clear; back out of it." And as he seized his rifle a green star-shell soared overhead, and there was an ear-splitting screech above them.
"That's high velocity," whispered Dan Dunn, as they heard the splosh of a heavy shell in rear of the British parapet, followed by a deafening explosion and a red flame. "We've drawn them this time, old man, but I can't make out why these beggars in the trench here don't fire. I'm for making a bolt for it before they start. What do you say?"
Dennis gathered his legs under him, and signalled with his arm to Hawke and Tiddler to go back, and expecting nothing but death for themselves, the two cousins suddenly jumped up under the very noses of the men lining the parapet behind them, and sprinted for the gap in the barbed wire.
One bullet sang by Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a deep crump-hole, into which they rolled.
It was cover from the machine-gun, at any rate, but a cry of surprise broke from the young lieutenant's lips as he landed on something soft at the bottom of the hole,something which gripped him with a similar cry of surprise.
A shell-burst eighty yards away drowned the crack of Dan Dunn's revolver, and two out of the three Germans who had taken refuge in the same place rolled back and lay very still, just as another star-shell, a bright white one this time, broke above them and lit up the hole like day.
Over the edge leapt Hawke and his companion, and Hawke shortened his bayonet as he saw his idol's brother clutching the Saxon in tight embrace.
"Stand clear, sir!" he shouted, but the German's hands went up above his head, and in a quavering voice he cried, "Kamerad! Mercy, officer! I am married with two little ones, and this hateful war is not my fault!"
Harry Hawke's bayonet was only half its length from the man's ribs when Dennis put it aside.
"Strewth, Tiddler! I can't see no difference myself between one Boche and another," grumbled Hawke. "It's one more prisoner to feed, and Lloyd George talks about economy."
"I will tell you," said the Saxon, crouching down as half a dozen shells in quick succession hummed overhead. "We were sent out to reconnoitre your trench. You passed us just now, and we hid ourselves here. There is going to be an attack in a few minutes, only you gave the alarm a little sooner."
"Do you hear that, Dan?" said Dennis. "We must let them know somehow."
"Hum! If we'd nine lives apiece like a cat there might be some sense in risking eight of them," said theAustralian corporal. "But it's no good stirring out of this hole just yet. Look at that!"
A perfect hurricane of shells was going over now, and the air was filled with a succession of explosions.
"They're firing shrapnel!" shouted Tiddler in Dennis's ear. "You can tell by the white burst and the sound of the flying balls, but we're safe enough in here for the present."
He dropped into a sitting position as he spoke, and instantly sprang up again with a yell.
"Are you hit?" said Dennis, feeling himself turn pale.
"No, I ain't hit, sir, but I'm 'urt. You don't do your jobs 'arf properly, 'Arry!" And he exhibited the piece of barbed wire on which, forgetting all about it, Tiddler had sat down heavily.
Hawke's uproarious laughter as he disengaged the offending thing sounded oddly to Dennis in the midst of that fearful din that shook the ground and brought the chalk rattling down into the hollow, but it was the first time he had been under fire, and he was yet to learn the absolute disregard of danger which the best and worst alike learn in the trenches.
"What's the strength of the attack?" said Dan Dunn to their prisoner, while the two privates went through the pockets of the men he had shot.
"Three battalions of us, and we were told the Brandenburgers were to be brought up in reserve," replied the Saxon. "Look! they are beginning now. That is a smoke shell that has just burst to cover our advance, and the other guns have ceased."
A dense white cloud rolled along the ground in front of the crump-hole, and Hawke and Tiddler instantly faced round, gripping their rifles as they looked up the jagged slope behind them.
"Don't say no this time, sir," said the Cockney private, "or there'll be a rare shermozzle darn 'ere if some of the blighters come on top of us in the dark."
"You can do as you like, Hawke," replied Dennis abstractedly. "But, I say, Dan, I can't stick this any longer. I wonder if our chaps would hear us if we shouted together?"
"Don't shout!" said the Saxon, pulling his sleeve. "See, they are going past now."
Looking up, Dennis made out a bunch of men against the smoke cloud passing on either side of their hole, and his impulse was to scramble up out of it and empty his revolver into their midst.
"What's the northernmost limit of the attack just here?" he said to the Saxon, speaking in such excellent German that the man was obviously surprised.
"Ten yards this side of the machine-gun, Herr Officer, and they will keep well within it," he added. "They are Prussians on that gun, and they don't care who they kill as long as they hit somebody."
"Look here, Dan, you can stay where you are if you like," said Dennis. "I'm off!"
"Wait a moment—don't be an ass," expostulated his cousin. "What's your plan? I'm with you if there's an earthly chance of doing anything."
"It's this," replied Dennis, slipping his revolver back into its case. "The top of our parapet is a couple of feethigher than that machine-gun emplacement. I noticed that yesterday. I'm going to crawl out under the line of their fire, and I'll bet you I'm back in our trench in ten minutes."
"It's risky," said his cousin. "But not as bad as Lone Pine. What about the prisoner?"
"If I am alive and we have not carried your trench," said the Saxon very earnestly, "I shall report myself to your people before daybreak."
"All right, that's a promise," said Dennis, and he climbed cautiously up to the lip of the hole and peeped over.
A wave of the enemy had just passed on, swallowed up in the dense vapour of the smoke-bombs, and as the two cousins flung themselves on their faces they heard the Lee-Enfields opening from their own trench.
So long as the smoke lasted they were safe from detection, but the whole air seemed alive with singing bullets, and Dennis felt a jar all along his right side as one of our own shots carried off the heel of his boot.
"Keep your direction, for Heaven's sake!" he called over his shoulder. "We've a hundred yards to go in a straight line," and then no one spoke, as the quartet wormed themselves on their stomachs as fast as they could crawl, parallel with the two trench lines which bordered that strip of No Man's Land.
Tiddler's bayonet was wrenched from the muzzle of his rifle, and a bullet chipped the brim of Hawke's steel helmet.
"Now look out for yourselves," called Dennis. "We're level with the gun," and, trying to squeezethemselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few feet above their heads.
"That's better," said Dan Dunn when they had left it behind them. "Where shall we turn off, old chap?"
"Not yet," replied Dennis through his clenched teeth. "A bit farther, and then we shall have to face the music of our own men. That's why I'd rather have come on this job alone."
"Are you playing up for the V.C.?" he heard his cousin say, but he made no answer, and at the end of another couple of minutes he paused to take breath.
"Talk abart a bloomin' obstacle race—I got fust prize at Aldershot at the regimental sports—but this 'ere takes the cake," said Harry Hawke, as he and Tiddler overtook them.
"Hawke!" said Dennis sharply, "we're going to turn here and make for our own trench. Do you know any signal or any call that would prevent our platoon blazing at us?"
"Let's get a bit nearer fust," replied Harry Hawke. "Then I'll tip 'em a whistle. Wust of it is, the Boches are so bloomin' ikey—they 'aven't 'arf played us up before—but we'll try it on," and he said something to his companion.
Still on their faces, but swinging round at right angles now, the little party groped its perilous way towards their own sandbags, hearing the roar of the fight apparently limited in their direction by the spot on which the German machine-gun was working.
In front of them all was quiet.
The whole air trembled with the roar of firing, but perhaps the most trying thing to the nerves was the sudden transition from brilliant glare to black darkness in the momentary intervals between the extinguishing of one star-shell and the bursting of the next. For an instant they would see the line of their trench standing out as clear as at noonday, with the glint of bayonets above the sandbags, and then it would be blotted out, to be lit up again the next moment.
When they had crawled to within fifty yards of it, Harry Hawke thrust two fingers into his gash of a mouth and let loose a piercing whistle.
"Now, Tiddler, pipe up!" he shouted, and their two voices rose in a discordant rendering of a popular trench song, their rifles waving wildly the while.
At any other time Dennis would have been constrained to laugh at the incongruity of their choice, but Harry Hawke knew what he was doing, and that no German could have imitated the Cockney twang in which they brayed their chant at the top of their strident voices.
"There's a silver linin'—froo the dyark clard shinin',Turn the dyark clard inside art till the boys come 'ome!"
they howled, and as a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand in their direction.
"Cut it out, 'Arry—there's Ginger Bill, and 'e's'eard!" cried Tiddler, jumping to his feet. "Run for all you're worth, sir!"
His companions needed no second bidding, and in another minute they were clambering up the outer face of the parapet and falling in a heap on to the fire step inside.
"Well, I'm blowed!" said Ginger Bill, as they picked themselves up.
"And you ain't the only one," panted Harry Hawke. "Where's the other chaps?"
And then he saw that Ginger Bill was bleeding badly.
"Ordered over there at the double—ain't none of you got any ears?" said Ginger Bill, pointing to the hand-to-hand scrimmage which seemed to end in front of the Dashwoods' dug-out.
Harry Hawke, very excusably overstepping the deference due to commissioned rank, clutched the skirt of Dennis's tunic and nearly pulled him backwards.
"We four ain't no good, sir, in that scrum, but there's a shell-proof bomb store not a minute's run down this 'ere traverse. We could give 'em socks then!"
"Bravo, Hawke!" shouted Dennis. "Come on, Dan; he's right!" And they tore along the traverse like men possessed.
Back they came, Hawke and Tiddler girdled with a belt of racket bombs, Dennis and Dan Dunn each laden with two bags of that deadly variety so handy to the arm of the bowler.
Ginger Bill gave them a cheer as they went past him, but they heard nothing and saw nothing but that solid mass of grey German uniforms, wedged like herrings in abarrel where they had no right to be—in a British trench!
Without a moment's hesitation Dennis sprang on to the parados, and hurled bomb after bomb with perfect aim into the grey mass, which instantly began to yell and squirm as panic seized it. Nothing human could withstand that terrific shower that rained upon the victorious Saxons, who had been recovering their second wind; and as a lucky shell from one of our 18-pounders put the Prussian machine-gun out of action, Dan Dunn mounted the parapet, leaving the trench clear for Hawke and Tiddler.
The four advanced steadily, bombing as they went.
"Hold on!" sang a voice as Dennis reached the mouth of the next traverse. And, looking down, he saw that it was Bob who spoke, and behind him thirty or forty men of the platoon, who had been forced to take refuge there from the overwhelming rush of the enemy.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" cried the captain, darting out, revolver in hand. "Come on, boys! The bombers have got a move on them; it's our turn now!" And as Dennis launched a long ball, the men of the platoon poured out into the trench again and clambered over the hideous carpet of dead and dying.
Without hesitation Dennis leapt across the traverse, and was soon at the head of the bayonet party, Dan Dunn keeping neck and neck with him on the parapet, and only when he groped to the bottom of his second bag and found it empty did he jump down and flatten himself against the side of the trench.
"Here, what's wrong?" he shouted, as his own men came pouring back.
"Order's come to retire, sir; we've got to fall back on the next trench!" cried a panting private.
"Oh, hang it! I thought we'd got the beggars out!" exclaimed the lad, almost overthrown by the jostling crowd with packs and rifles that streamed past him. "I wonder what's become of Bob?"
Tiddler and Harry Hawke were nowhere to be seen, and Bob was equally invisible; but there could be no doubt about the order, for a staff-captain, his uniform stained with the white chalk, came running along the trench, crying: "Retire! Hurry up, there! Here come the Bavarians!"
"But I say, sir," expostulated Dennis, "isn't this all wrong? We've piled the Saxons up six deep behind us yonder, and surely we can hold on here?"
"The order has been given by the Brigade Commander. Who the deuce are you, young man, to dispute it?" thundered the staff-captain furiously.
Dan Dunn saw his cousin's eyes suddenly blaze and his clear-cut face turn crimson as he whipped out his revolver and covered the speaker!
The Australian's first impression was that in the excitement of it all his cousin had gone stark staring mad—he had seen such things happen in Anzac.
"Great Scott, Den! Do you know what you're doing?" he yelled, flinging his powerful arms round him.
But he was too late. The barrel of the revolver gleamed blue in the lurid glare of a big H.E. which burst behind them, and Dennis had already pressed the trigger!
The staff cap, with its scarlet band and gold-edged peak, spun round in the air and dropped half a dozen yards away, as its late wearer sprang on to the parapet and vanished out of sight.
"Great Scott! Are you mad, Dennis?" shouted Dan, still holding him tightly; but there was no madness in the boy's face as he turned it to his cousin.
"You blithering ass! You seventeen different assorted kinds of an utter idiot!" yelled Dennis. "I know that man—he is a German spy, and you've made me miss him!"
Dan Dunn's arms released their grip and fell nerveless to his sides.
"Old chap!" he exclaimed in a voice of bitter regret. "How was I possibly to tell that? Perhaps it's not too late now!" And he bounded on to the sandbags, but there was no sign of Anton van Drissel.
For a moment they leaned side by side over the parapet, trying to penetrate the darkness that once more enveloped No Man's Land, and then as Captain Bob came hurrying up, blowing his whistle for all he was worth to recall the retiring platoon, Dennis drew his own, and the shrill signal brought the men tumbling back again into the fire trench.
"Line up!" cried the captain as Dennis and Dan, both speaking at once, told him what had happened.
"I knew something had gone wrong," said Bob bitterly. "What a thousand pities the skunk got clear! Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk, and the artillery's on them now. Do you hear that?"
The momentary lull was broken by a tremendous booming from our guns in the rear, and a hurricane of shells began to burst on the German front line trench and the ground beyond it, a steady, systematic bombardment, which grew in volume and increased in intensity.
"Do I hear it?" shouted Dennis. "One can't help hearing it. What do you mean?"
"I mean," replied his brother, making himself heard with considerable difficulty, "that it is the beginning of the artillery preparation, which will continue day and night without ceasing for the next week. After that the great push is coming. That is what I mean!"
The 18-pounders, the 9.2's, the big howitzers farther to the rear—guns of every kind and calibre blended in one infernal concert, which extended for more than eighty miles, from the Yser to the Somme.
"If those Brandenburgers are wise they'll stay where they are to-night," said the Australian corporal. "Hallo, Fritz! Why, Dennis, here's your prisoner, after all."
A white-faced man, crying "Kamerad!" at the top of his voice, climbed in over the sandbags, trembling like a leaf, and Dennis saw that it was indeed the Saxon he had captured at the bottom of the crump-hole over there.
"I told you I would come," said the prisoner. "I am sick of it all—it is horrible. The Emperor is a manwithout heart. He takes good care to keep out of harm's way, and sends us to our death by the thousand. Himmel! Look! This was my company!" And he lifted his quivering hands as he saw the litter of corpses that filled the trench from side to side. "We are told that you kill all prisoners and all the wounded, but I do not believe that. They feed us on lies and very little bread, while our officers have wine and even pianos in their dug-outs," and the nerve-shattered man burst into tears.
Captain Bob was in the act of giving instructions to one of his sergeants to pass the deserter to the rear, when another "brass hat" came along the trench—the genuine article this time, and one of the best, for it was Brigadier-General Dashwood himself, followed by his brigade-major.
The brigadier was a thick-set, soldierly looking man, fit as a fiddle in spite of the grey hairs which mingled with his brown moustache, and his eyes lit up as he saw his two sons still safe and well.
He was not one of those officers who paid a hasty visit now and then to the lines, ducking his head when his guide said, "Duck, sir!" where the wall of the traverse was low, and who, after a perfunctory glance about him through a gold-rimmed monocle went back again to headquarters, "having seen nothing and learned nothing." General Dashwood knew that he had a certain section of the front to defend, and did his work thoroughly, and the whisper often ran along the fire trench by night as well as day: "Look out, boys, here's the brigadier!"
He listened to all they had to tell him, and questionedthe deserter closely, turning to his brigade-major several times and exchanging a meaning nod.
"The battalion has done very well, but that is nothing new," he said with a proud smile. "Still, it won't hurt them to hear my opinion. You'd better come with me, Dennis; there'll be nothing more doing here to-night, and I want someone to go to Divisional Headquarters with a message. You'll be back at your post by daylight," and, after picking his way along the trench to the far end and examining the German line carefully through a periscope, he returned, to find the men of Bob's platoon lifting out the dead Saxons and laying them on the reverse side of the parados to await the arrival of the sanitary squad with their picks and shovels.
"Well, so long, old chap," said Dan Dunn, as Dennis passed him. "I've enjoyed my visit. When you look me up I hope we shall be able to give you an equally good time. Fearfully sorry I spoiled your shot."
The cousins shook hands, and as Dennis followed his father and the brigade-major, Bob carried Dan into their dug-out, where he found that Australian panacea for all evils—hot tea.
It was only a short walk to Brigade Headquarters, a couple of cottages by the roadside under the lee of a rising bank which had so far preserved them from the German shells. One red lamp burned there, and a sentinel stood by the doorway, leaning on his rifle.
"I'm sorry you have got that confounded cigarette habit so soon," said Dashwood senior with a dry smile. "But you will find a box on that table, and you can amuse yourself while we get out a report."
Dennis looked round the bare little room, contrasting it with their luxurious home in London. A flagged map was pinned on one wall, some British warms and mackintoshes hung on pegs, a couple of field bedsteads, whose disarranged blankets showed that they had been hastily left when the alarm was given, occupied one end, everything else was bare and comfortless.
Standing in the doorway, Dennis heard the click of a typewriter, and could not help catching some of the report as his father paced backwards and forwards, filling a pipe with his favourite mixture as he dictated.
"Three Saxon battalions delivered a surprise attack at 10.35 to-night, and one of them succeeded in penetrating my first line trench, No. ——, through the failure of a machine-gun, which was put out of action by an H.E.," began the brigadier. "The 2/12th Royal Reedshire Battalion, Platoons 1 and 2, behaved with great gallantry, and scarcely a man of the enemy was left alive. The bodies were lying six deep when I visited the position. Some confusion was caused by a German in British staff uniform making his way along the trench shouting 'Retire!' but I have the honour to report that through the initiative of Second-Lieutenant Dashwood, of the battalion, and Corporal Daniel Dunn, of the Australians, gallantly supported by two privates, whose names I shall forward later on, and who successfully bombed the enemy, the attack completely broke down, and was not supported by the Brandenburg Division, which, I am informed by a prisoner, was waiting in reserve."
When Dennis heard his own name mentioned he stepped out into the darkness with a strange tingling allover him. It seemed like eavesdropping to listen any more, but he knew that proud thrill in his father's voice, and the boy's heart beat high with a great happiness.
Some horses, picketed under the lee of the bank, fidgeted at their shackles, and over everything was the thunder of that incessant bombardment which, as Bob had said, was to go on night and day. He was watching the shrapnel bursting in the distance far over the German lines, where our guns were delivering a barrage fire to isolate the front enemy trenches from food and supports, when the sentry called to him.
"The general is asking for you, sir," said the man, and Dennis stepped back and re-entered the cottage.
"Here you are, my boy," said his father. "You know the way to Divisional Headquarters. There are a couple of motor-cycles standing at the end of the cottage, take your pick and away with you."
"You will find the road has been badly shelled at the next village," said the brigade-major, holding up his map-case and tracing the route Dennis would have to follow. "And here, at this point, the supply column got it rather badly earlier in the night—there may be wagons still lying about. When you've passed that it's all plain sailing."
"Do I report to you, sir, on my return?" inquired the boy.
"Yes," said the brigadier. "Then you can leave the bike and rejoin your company. I could have 'phoned this, but it's all experience, and may stand you in good stead."
Perhaps the brigade-major, as he nodded a cheerygood night, understood the father's wish to place the youngster out of danger, if it were only for a few hours, but as Dennis swung into the saddle and waved his hand, neither he nor the brigadier foresaw the things that were going to happen.
The road was a fairly straight one, and Dennis found the shell holes without difficulty, shutting off his engine only just in time as he plunged down into the first of them like Quintus Curtius of old.
"Hang it, that's a bad start," he laughed when he found the machine had sustained no injury, but it took him a good five minutes to get it up again, and after that he was more careful.
A little farther on he encountered a supply column of the A.S.C., and coasted by them without much difficulty, until at last a red lantern gleaming above a green one told him that he had reached Divisional Headquarters.
There he found the staff busy, and a good deal of quiet bustle as the various brigade commanders' reports arrived, and a telegraphic operator in a shell-proof dug-out was transmitting the night's news to Sir Douglas Haig at ——.
Dennis handed in his dispatch, which was duly read by the lieutenant-general commanding the division, a florid officer with a white moustache, who held the communication in one hand while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the other.
"Where is the officer from General Dashwood?" he inquired suddenly, and word was passed for Dennis.
The divisional general looked him up and down for a moment, and his brow cleared. "If you are not wantedimmediately I should like you to carry a query for me to the officer commanding the brigade on the right of the division," he said. "There is something I do not quite understand in his report, and unfortunately, the field wire has broken down somewhere and we can't get through to him. Is your machine in order?"
"Yes, sir," said Dennis, and the general turned to a shorthand clerk.
"Just take this down, will you? And type it out quickly," he said, and he rapidly dictated to the man.
"Captain Thompson," he said when he had finished, "kindly explain to this officer how he is to reach Donaldson," and the staff captain took the young lieutenant to the large scale map at the end of the room, where everything was marked out in squares, each numbered and lettered.
The captain was lucid, and Dennis quick of intelligence, and in less than five minutes from entering the room he was turning his cycle round and darting off on his new mission.