The Divisional Headquarters had been fixed at a spot where several roads branched off like the sticks of a fan, and the one Dennis followed was a typical French chaussée, paved down the centre and bordered on either side by tall trees.
It had been a good deal cut up by the passage of distribution columns, but its surface was fairly free from shell holes, and he covered the distance without much difficulty, a slight drizzle blowing in his face as he hung low over the handle-bars with his eyes fixed on the acetylene beam in front of him.
A man riding in the opposite direction whizzed past with a shout of, "Cheer-oh!" and he was not challenged until he drew near the brigade.
"Thought there was something wrong with the wire," said the C.O. "I've been trying to get through for the last half-hour."
"A wiring party went out just before I left, sir, to look for the damage," said Dennis.
"Very well, take this back to the general—that will tell him all he wants to know," and Dennis retraced his way, rather enjoying the ride, although it had not proved particularly exciting so far.
But the excitement was to come. Overhead the scream and whistle of our shells never ceased, but he was growing used to the thunder of the bombardment, until there was an explosion not far ahead in the centre of the road, and he slowed down with a glance over his shoulder.
"That's the enemy replying," he murmured, as another shell fell in the dark fields on the left, and another and another, so quickly that he lost count of them.
"Bit of a danger zone, this," he thought. "The sooner I'm through it the better," but as his thumb sought a lever there was a blinding flash very close to him, and following on the heels of the explosion he felt his machine quiver and the front tyre burst with a report like a rifle shot.
"By Jingo! I'm done," he cried, jumping off as his head-lamp went out. "That's shrapnel. Now what's to be done? The tyre's in ribbons!"
As he looked ahead his heart gave a bound as he saw a motor-car pull up some forty yards away and the driver spring out on to the road. Dennis left the damaged cycle where it was and ran forward.
"I say, I'm in no end of a hat, chauffeur. Can you give me a hand?" he cried.
The man stared at him with a white face, apparently dazed, and replied in a shaky voice: "Can you givemea hand, sir? Look at this!" and unshipping one of his lamps he turned the light on to the car.
Sitting rigidly erect was the body of a staff officer, decapitated.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Dennis, bending over with eyes of horror as he recognised the officer who lessthan half an hour before had shown him his own route at Divisional Headquarters. "It's Captain Thompson!"
"It was Captain Thompson, and one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever driven," said the man. "I don't know what to do. He told me he was taking a message to the French general on the other side of Hardecourt, and that it was of the very greatest importance. We were doing sixty miles an hour, even on this road, when that shell copped us."
There were sobs in the man's voice as he pointed to the leather dispatch-case still clutched tightly in the dead hand.
"Look here," said Dennis. "My machine's smashed up. How long would it take you to reach the French lines?"
"A quarter of an hour—twenty minutes at the outside. But what's the good of that, sir? I can't speak a word of their blooming language."
"I can," said Dennis, gently disengaging the wallet. "I'll carry the dispatch, and I'll drive if you like, if your nerve's gone."
"My nerve's all right, sir. Haven't any left after eighteen months of this job," and as Dennis climbed into the front seat, the chauffeur turned the handle over and the engine began to whir.
It was good to turn one's back on that hideous thing, and when they heard the headless trunk topple over on to the floor of the car behind them, both shivered, and the chauffeur's knuckles stood out white as he gripped the steering-wheel.
"I've seen two officers, one a brigadier-general, treatedthe same way, and their shover huddled forward against the screen dead as a door nail," said the man. "That was up near St. Julien, when Princess Pat's got wiped out; but it sort of hits you when you know the man, and this was his own car too. You'd better have your papers ready now, sir; they'll stop us at yonder white house."
The examining post at the little cabaret detained them, but did not hold them up more than a moment or so.
"A dispatch for Monsieur le Général," said Dennis to the sergeant in charge, who recoiled as he saw the tragedy that had taken place.
"Décapité, mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "Pass, mon lieutenant," and they proceeded, leaving a red pool on the road where the car had halted.
While Dennis was inside the farmhouse a crowd of commiserating officers surrounded the car, and they would have rid it of its grim burden and interred poor Thompson among the little harvest of rude crosses that marked where their own dead were laid, but when one of them, who spoke English, suggested so doing, the chauffeur said "No."
"Beg your pardon, sir, but he'll be better buried in our own lines, where they'll give him the Last Post and all that." He was protesting when Dennis came out again quickly.
"It's a very good thing we took the bull by the horns," he said. "That message was tremendously important, and the general has been good enough to say all kinds of nice things about our bringing it along. We've got to go back top speed to Divisional Headquarters," and he stepped in.
All the officers saluted the dead man as the motor started on its return journey, and already the darkness was giving place before a ghostly grey feeling in the east, which was not light as yet, but heralded the near approach of dawn.
The chauffeur turned up his coat collar, for it had grown very cold, and he could not get rid of the oppression of that dread something which they were carrying—that something which a short hour before had been so full of life and vigour and kindly thought for all with whom it had come in contact.
"I shall put in for a rest after this," said the man as they repassed the post at the cabaret, and he opened out the engines. "They tell me there's going to be a week of this firing, and upon my sam, I don't think I can stand it now!"
"I suppose one gets used to the guns," said Dennis. "But what an infernal row they make!"
"Been out here long, sir?" said the chauffeur, whose quick eye had detected the newness of his companion's uniform, notwithstanding the chalk stains which were the result of his adventure earlier in the evening.
"As a matter of fact, I haven't been up at the front three days yet, but, of course, I've done a lot of training at Romford with the Artists'," replied Dennis.
"Lord! you don't know you're born yet, in a manner of speaking, sir," said the driver with a little toss of his head. "You've got a lot to go through before you've seen as much as I have. Blow 'em! Those Boches are still at it," and he craned his head forward over his wheel. "They've got the range of this blooming road to a T. Idon't funk risks, but it's madness to shove ahead through that!" And he slowed the car down as a rain of shells crashed among the trees in front of them, bringing half a dozen tall poplars down on to the road itself, while the wholeterrainto their left hand was alive with bursts of high explosives.
"Well, what's to be done? I must reach the general at once. Isn't there another way round?"
"There's only this turning on the right, sir," replied the man. "It seems to be pretty clear, and it will run us close behind our own line. I've been there before, and we can double back past General Dashwood's headquarters."
"Right-o!" assented Dennis eagerly, and the car swung into a narrow track between two swelling rises that had not long before been peaceful farm land under cultivation.
It was little more than a cart track, and they plunged and swayed like a boat on a choppy sea, the wheels now mounting the bank at a dangerous angle in the uncertain light of the dawn.
"It's better going a bit farther ahead," said the chauffeur. "You sit tight, and I'll bring you through somehow."
The words had scarcely left his lips when everything seemed to be suddenly swallowed up in a soul-terrifying roar. A vivid orange flame rose skyward, and as Dennis soared upward through the air and fell with a plump into a field of beetroot, the world turned black and he lost consciousness.
How long he lay he did not know, but when he openedhis eyes it was almost light, and the face of his wristlet watch had been smashed to atoms.
For a few seconds he remained quite still, not daring to move from fear of what movement might tell him, but at last, sitting up, he felt himself all over and breathed a sigh of deep thankfulness to find that he had no bones broken.
He remembered that they had been running into an avenue where the trees met overhead and formed a species of tunnel, and the avenue was still there before him, one of the poplars headless like poor Captain Thompson, and showing a great white scar where the shell had caught it.
And then he rose to his feet, to find himself half a dozen yards from the narrow road, his heart standing still as he saw the mangled chassis of the motor, entirely stripped of its body works, reared up on one end at the edge of the crater.
The whole road seemed to have been scooped out to the depth of several feet, and how he had escaped destruction was little short of miraculous. The skirt of his own tunic was rent to rags and ribbons, his Sam Browne belt, map-case, and glasses were gone, and the French general's message with them, and a great sob shook the lad as he walked slowly to the ruined car.
The first thing he saw was a human leg swathed to the knee in a stained puttee, and a stride farther on was the rest of his companion, so shockingly mutilated that it was only with an effort he could bring himself to examine it.
"Poor chap, poor chap!" he muttered. "An end like this after eighteen months at the wheel!"
There was no trace of the captain's body; it wasprobably buried deep in the shell hole, or else plastered far and wide over the hillside with the debris of the motor.
He stooped and opened the chauffeur's coat, which bulged suggestively, and drew out a little case containing his identification papers and driver's licence, perhaps also letters from home.
Pulling himself together, he placed the case in one of his own breast pockets which had escaped injury, with a soldier's "small book" he had picked up from one of the dead Saxons in their own trench as a memento to send home to his mother, and then he looked about him, without seeing sign or trace of living thing or human habitation.
There was a green wheatfield on his right hand, from which the mist was curling away, and in the glory of the dawn overhead the larks were trilling. A patch of scarlet poppies was almost startling in its vividness, and beyond the poppies a long ribbon of yellow mustard was backed by a thick wood.
"Where on earth am I?" was the thought that passed through his brain. "This poor chap said the road would bring us near to our firing line, and I may be able to borrow another motor-bike there. I must return to the French headquarters and get that message duplicated, or I'm not worth my salt."
He straightened one of his leggings which had been twisted round, and, skirting the shell hole, started out on his voyage of discovery, feeling rather dizzy at first, but surprised to find that his cap was still upon his head, for he had not yet been served out with a trench helmet.
The narrow way wound along the edge of the woodthrough a hollow, the banks of which were clothed with purple scabious, and he had gone some distance before he thought of taking his bearings by the sun, which showed him that he was heading due south.
"I'm on the right road, anyhow," he muttered, and then he suddenly stopped and crouched low.
In the mist wreath that still filled the hollow he had caught sight of a figure in uniform, which recalled the field grey of the Saxon. The man was standing motionless beside a clump of trees that tufted the skyline, and, uncertain whether he could gain the shelter of the wood behind him unseen, Dennis was looking backwards over his shoulder when the decision was taken very unexpectedly out of his hands by the appearance of another man, who suddenly covered him with a rifle from the bank top not a yard away, and challenged him in German.
"Wer da!" said the man, and although he recognised that his interrogator was wearing a French uniform, Dennis unthinkingly replied to the question in German also.
"I am an English officer," he said. "Perhaps you will be good enough to direct me to our nearest brigade."
The man rose slowly from the wet wheat which had concealed his coming, and, still covering Dennis with his rifle, slid down the bank until he was within arm's length, a thick-set Alsatian corporal, powerful as a bull.
"So," he said with a short laugh, as he seized Dennis by the collar. "You are an English officer, are you? We shall see. We had one of your sort through our linesyesterday—a staff captain, who gave us orders from the British general which turned out to be false. Come along, my pig. We will see what our captain has to say to you. English officers do not speak German with a Prussian accent. You are a Boche, I tell you; and you will breakfast off ball cartridge unless I am very wrong!"
Dennis Dashwood laughed aloud, but though there was genuine amusement in his voice at the beginning, it quickly tailed off into a broken quiver, for the lad was still suffering from the effect of the shell burst.
"You will laugh on the other side of your mouth directly, if I know anything," said his captor gravely.
"I am quite content to leave that to the judgment of your officer, my friend," replied Dennis in French. "But have the goodness not to shake me like a rat. I've got a splitting headache as it is."
"Ha, you spies speak all languages.Ma foi!What a lot of clever scoundrels you are!" grunted the Alsatian corporal. "What a pity, for you have not got a really bad face when one comes to look at it."
"Is it far to your headquarters?" inquired his prisoner wearily.
"Not far, so you had better make the most of it. It will be your last walk on earth. How beautiful is the song of the lark! The little animals do not seem to mind the gunfire at all. Do you have larks in Prussia?"
"I hope we shall, my corporal, when you and I get there with our battalions," but the corporal wasimpervious to the harmless jest, and squared his shoulders as they came in sight of his commander's post.
The other man whom Dennis had seen on the slope had come down and joined them, and the pair marched their prisoner in with a brisk, businesslike stride.
The French trench ended, or began, whichever way you like to take it, in a wood of oaks, and the smoke of many fires drifted among the tree-trunks. At the door of a dug-out a group of officers sat round a trestle table taking their coffee, and they all looked up as the corporal cried, "Halt, prisoner!" and saluted with his rifle.
"Mon Commandant, I found this man hiding by the roadside behind yonder. He speaks German and French and all the languages under the sun, and I am convinced he is a spy."
The commandant was a spare, black-bearded man, whose uniform of horizon blue gave one rather the impression that it had been made by a dressmaker, but on the left breast was a little strip of crimson and green ribbon, showing that he had won the Military Cross during the war. He had black leggings and narrow black belts, and the wristbands of his shirt were spotlessly clean.
"What have you to say for yourself, prisoner?" said the commandant, eyeing him keenly from top to toe, through the chalk and dirt that encrusted him, and Dennis in excellent French told him who he was.
"Where is the dispatch of which you speak?" was the next question, and Dennis pointed to his torn tunic. "It was destroyed when the car was blown up, Monsieur le Commandant," he replied.
"But you must still have some proofs of your identity.What is that in his pocket?" And the commandant, who had lit a cigarette, pointed with the match.
The corporal thrust his hand into the drab tunic and produced two things which he laid on the table by the long loaf from which the officers had cut slices to dip in their coffee.
"Ha!" said the commandant, opening the wallet. "You told me your name was Dashwood, but here it is given as Alfred Robinson."
"I brought that away from the body of the man who drove me," explained Dennis. "That is the English chauffeur's licence from Scotland Yard."
"And this?" continued the officer, his face becoming graver as he examined the German soldier's "small book." "Here you are described as Hans Schrettelmeyer, Private in the 24th Reserve Battalion of the 108th Saxons; how do you account for it?"
"That I picked up in the fire trench of my own battalion when we repulsed the attack last night," said Dennis, drawing himself up a little and colouring indignantly as he found his position becoming serious.
"Oh, come, you are evidently fond of picking things up, my friend," said the commandant with a dry smile. "Is there anything else that you have found that will help you?"
"I have my own identification disc," said the lad hotly, and then he bit his lips as he groped between his shirt and undervest.
"Unfortunately, monsieur, it has also gone!" he exclaimed, turning pale.
"Ah, well, I do not think we want it," said thecommandant, tilting his chair backwards. "We have had several of your kind prowling about our lines lately—one only last night, and an example is necessary. You are a spy, my friend, and that is the end of the matter."
"Look here, sir, this is all bosh!" exclaimed Dennis hotly in his own language, realising for the first time that appearances were dead against him.
"Quite right, my boy," laughed one of the other officers in English. "You are all Boche. I think there is very little doubt about that."
The commandant leaned across the table and said something in a low voice to the others, and they all nodded.
"May I be permitted to make an observation, sir?" said the lad.
"With pleasure," replied the commandant, bowing politely.
"A very short question over your wire to Monsieur le Général commanding this army corps will convince you that I am what I tell you I am," said Dennis.
"Even if I thought there were any necessity it would, unfortunately, be impossible," said the commandant in a cold voice. "Your wires are not the only ones that suffer, and ours has undergone some damage during the night. It may be two hours before it is repaired, and you must not be surprised if we make short shrift of you."
"But, monsieur!" expostulated Dennis. "This is an outrage! My country and yours are firm friends, and I repeat, upon my word of honour, that I am an Englishman."
The officer who had laughed at him and who spoke English, said in an undertone: "Do you know, monsieurle commandant, I should feel inclined—with all due respect I say it—to postpone the execution. I must confess this boy is a marvellous linguist, and there is not a trace of fear in his bearing."
"My dear Laval, for myself I am convinced, and I shall take all responsibility," replied the commandant. "Prisoner, if you would like to write a letter to your friends you are at liberty to do so. We will endeavour to forward it afterwards. Also, if you care to avail yourself of the good offices of our chaplain they are at your disposal. But do not waste time, for you will be shot in half an hour," and he made a grave inclination with his head to intimate that the interview was at an end.
A contemptuous smile passed across the young lieutenant's face, and he bowed in return.
"Very well, sir, I can only say that you will be sorry for this decision," he said. "I have a fountain pen—will somebody kindly lend me a sheet of paper?"
One of the officers at the table handed him a blank form, at the same time offering his cigarette-case.
"No, thanks, I won't smoke," said the boy, and, sitting down on a billet of wood, he laid the paper on his knee.
"Dear Pater," he wrote with a steady hand. "It seems a rotten thing to have to tell you, but the French are going to shoot me for a spy. The fool man in command here, who was probably a successful pork butcher before the war started, declines to communicate with headquarters, and I rather hope you'll rub it into him when you learn all. It seems I speak German too well,and I should not be surprised if the sham English 'brass hat' who upset them last night were that scoundrel, Van Drissel, whom I nearly shot."
"Dear Pater," he wrote with a steady hand. "It seems a rotten thing to have to tell you, but the French are going to shoot me for a spy. The fool man in command here, who was probably a successful pork butcher before the war started, declines to communicate with headquarters, and I rather hope you'll rub it into him when you learn all. It seems I speak German too well,and I should not be surprised if the sham English 'brass hat' who upset them last night were that scoundrel, Van Drissel, whom I nearly shot."
He got thus far, the Alsatian corporal standing rigidly at his elbow, when he became aware of a bustle at the table, and looked up.
A Frenchliaisonofficer had just arrived, and was explaining his mission to the group, while the commandant read a dispatch he had brought.
Dennis sprang to his feet, and the laugh which brought the corporal's grip on to his collar again turned every eye towards him.
"Good morning, mon Capitaine!" he cried. "Will you be good enough to tell the commandant the circumstances under which we met last night, and why I came to your headquarters with a message?"
"My dear lieutenant," said theliaisonofficer. "Enchanted to meet you again! But what in the name of heaven has happened to you?"
"Nothing to what was going to happen in a few minutes if you had not arrived," replied Dennis, unable to repress the triumph he felt at the consternation in the faces of his judges.
"Ciel, mon Commandant!" exclaimed theliaisonofficer. "It is a very fortunate thing for you that I came in time. If you had shot this young Englishman, Father Joffre would have had something to say about it."
In a few words he established the prisoner's identity beyond any shadow of doubt, and the good-hearted fellows were round him in a moment, clamouring out theirapologies, while the commandant, with tears rolling into his beard, kissed him on both cheeks.
Dennis was ashamed that he had called him a pork butcher, for the poor man was pathetically apologetic, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of what might have been.
"You certainly gave me a very tight squeeze for the moment," laughed the lad. "But it was a string of extraordinary coincidences that might have deceived anyone."
"Then our general's reply has not reached your headquarters?" queried theliaisonofficer.
"Unhappily not," said Dennis. "It is somewhere among the wreckage of the car and the remains of those two poor fellows."
"Never mind," said his preserver. "We will let you into a little secret. The dispatch you brought to us was a request that this division should join with your nearest brigades in a raid on the enemy's lines. The Allied artillery is even now lengthening its fuses, and we are on the point of giving the Germans a surprise. Will you find your way back, or——" And he made an expressive wave of his hand in the direction of the German trenches.
"If Monsieur le Commandant has no objection, and somebody will lend me a revolver, I should love to take part with the battalion that was going to shoot me," laughed the boy.
"Cher ami!" cried the black-bearded officer. "You heap the coals of fire upon my head. You and I will march together!"
While Dennis swallowed a cup of coffee the commandant dived into his dug-out and reappeared with arevolver case, which he buckled on the boy with his own hands; and meanwhile the little group at the wood fires had snatched up their rifles and donned their blue-painted steel helmets, and were falling in by companies, eager to exchange the monotony of trench warfare for a brisk dash at the hated foe.
The Alsatian corporal, a typical poilu, still kept very close to his late prisoner, but there was an altogether different look in his eyes now.
"I should never have forgiven myself, mon lieutenant," he blurted out, as he slung his rifle behind his back and festooned himself with racket bombs. "I hope monsieur will bear me no ill will for my stupidity."
"It is nothing, my friend," said Dennis laughing. "A brave man should do what he thinks to be his duty, and you did yours. What is the distance to the enemy trench?"
"About a hundred metres, mon lieutenant," replied the corporal, "and uphill all the way.Voilà!There goes the signal!"
A low blast on a whistle, and the long grey-blue line went quickly forward among the trees, and jumped down into the deep excavation which wound like a dirty white ribbon along the outskirts of the wood.
The 75's were barking loudly in their rear, the shells now falling behind the enemy trench, the sandbags of which showed in an irregular line on the slope against the sunrise.
Theliaisonofficer had come with them thus far, and was looking at his watch.
"Bon chance, lieutenant," he said. "Unhappily, Imay only see the attack launched, but I hope this will not be our last meeting."
"My boys, it is time!" cried the commandant. "En avant!" And, climbing swiftly over their parapet, the active little poilus scampered up the hill through the yellow charlock.
Half-way up every man flung himself flat upon his face, and looking back, Dennis saw the second line coming over to their support. Again the whistle sounded, the little blue figures jumped up, scurrying like rabbits, and the machine-guns on the German trench opened fire.
Down on their faces sank the first line again, so suddenly that an onlooker might have thought that everyone of them had been shot, and as Dennis found himself in a bed of stinging nettles close to the ruins of a cottage, with the corporal and the commandant on either side of him, he caught the distant sound of an English yell away to the left, and knew that the British raid had been well timed, and was acting in concert with his new friends.
For an instant the commandant, whistle in mouth, lifted his head and saw that his supports had come up to within twenty yards of their comrades.
"Now, my dear friend," he mumbled, giving Dennis's arm a warm squeeze. "One bound, and we shall be there!"
The whistle shrilled loudly, and, jumping to his feet, the commandant shouted, "Forward with the bayonet!Vive la patrie!"
Instantly the sandbags in front of them bristled with heads wearing flat caps, and the volley from the mausers mingled with the murderous tac-tac of machine-guns.
It floated dimly through the boy's mind that he had no right to be hazarding life and limb in that place, but the joy of that mad rush with a fight at the end of it banished the thought on the spot, and, scarcely conscious of those few remaining yards which they traversed at top speed, he found himself scaling the sandbags.
Above him was the commandant, sword in one hand and revolver in the other, but as the active little man poised for an instant on the top of the parapet and fired into the trench at his feet, he threw up his arms and pitched backward, Dennis dropping his weapon to dangle at his wrist, and catching him as he fell at the foot of the obstacle.
"It is nothing," gasped the French officer, clutching at his throat, but the blood was pouring between the fingers of his hand.
"He is wrong," said Dennis, as the Alsatian corporal knelt beside him. "We must get him back under cover at once. It is only a surgeon who can stop this hæmorrhage."
"And I haven't thrown a bomb yet!" growled the corporal, tossing the racket he held in his hand over the top of the sandbags.
Its explosion seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and passing his powerful arms under the commandant's shoulders, while Dennis lifted his legs, they walked carefully backwards down the slope again beneath a whistling hail of bullets.
By great good fortune, when they reached the crumpled ruins of the cottage, they found two stretcher-bearers kneeling among the nettles, on the look-out for casualties. They had seen them coming, and the stretcher was already unrolled, and as they laid him upon it the wounded man motioned with his hand.
"Stand round me," he said in a husky whisper, speaking with difficulty. "Do not let them see who it is that is hit."
One of the brancardiers placed a pad under the commandant's ear, and passed a bandage round his neck.
"Tighter, tighter!" motioned the sufferer. "How is it going? For me, I do not mind if you pull my head off, provided we take the trench."
Dennis peeped through a crack in the wall and bent over him.
"The attack has been completely successful," he said. "The supports are swarming in now."
"Vive la patrie!" cried the wounded man, whose grey-blue tunic was stained crimson with his own blood. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart, lieutenant. Again you heap the coals of fire upon me."
Then he fainted.
"Come along, Alphonse," said one of the stretcher-bearers to his companion. "We must get him to the surgeon at once."
"And we," said the Alsatian corporal, touching Dennis on the arm. "Shall we return up yonder?"
The commandant's revolver lay among the nettles, Dennis picked it up, and the pair raced side by side again up the trampled slope.
Lithe and active as Dennis was, his new friend, loaded with his pack and hung about with bulging wallets and strings of racket bombs, was over the parapet before him, and the boy's after-recollection of the ten minutes that followed was a chaotic jumble of mad slaughter.
The French infantry were in terrible earnest, and out to kill. They had old scores to wipe off, and at the outset nothing could stay them.
Figures in blue grey and figures in greeny grey wrestled and fought in the drifting smoke, and what with the hideous gas helmets and their huge goggles, and the mediæval-looking trench helmets, Dennis seemed to have suddenly found himself in the company of weird demons from some other world.
Men stabbed and hewed and hacked at each other. Others, gripped in tight embrace, were seen revolving in a species of grim waltz, until a chance bullet or a piece of shell ended the dance of death.
The wounded squeezed themselves against the boarded sides, the dead lay where they fell, and the living took no notice of either. If there was any shouting the guns drowned it, and the lust of slaughter was in every face.
"I do not think there will be any poison gas," shouted the Alsatian corporal, whose name was Aristide Puzzeau. "The wind is in the wrong quarter, but you never know what these Boches are up to."
He handed him a gas helmet, which he took from a dead comrade, and without waiting for any thanks, Corporal Puzzeau pursued his way.
Dug-out after dug-out he bombed, and when his supply was exhausted he unslung his rifle with its long, thin bayonet, Dennis following upon his heels.
The barrage fire, playing a couple of hundred yards in rear of the German parados, effectually kept the enemy's supports in check, and Dennis wisely possessed himself of a steel helmet, for the shrapnel had a habit of raining down on friend and foe alike, but after they had gone some distance in a northerly direction, they found that the enemy had recovered from the first surprise, and a strong counter-attack was forcing a company of poilus back.
At first it was difficult to find where the enemy sprang from, until Puzzeau located the mouth of a subterranean dug-out from which they poured in rushes, and, crouching down, he waited at one side of the opening like a terrier at a rat-hole, Dennis standing beside him with a revolver in his hand.
"Wait, do you hear that?" said Puzzeau. "There are plenty more of them inside," and they waited.
"Good morning, my pig!" said Puzzeau, lunging forward, and the sergeant reeled against the trench boards.
Almost before he could recover his weapon the openingwas filled with a surge of men, and Dennis emptied a revolver into the middle of them.
"That is the style!" grunted the corporal approvingly, as a dull shout boomed from the dug-out and those behind paused. "If there were only half a dozen of us here now, or, better still, a bomb-thrower," and, lifting up his powerful voice, he bellowed to a man he knew: "Rabot, surely there are some bombs left?"
"That is all very well," replied Rabot. "I have been sent myself for reinforcements. Do you know every officer of our company is down, and the men are falling back?"
"There is something yonder that will serve our purpose," cried Dennis, pointing to an ugly grey muzzle behind an iron loophole on the parados.
It was almost opposite to the door of the dug-out, and before the Alsatian knew what he was doing, Dennis had scrambled up to the machine-gun emplacement and vanished. The next moment his head appeared round one side of it.
"Stand clear!" he yelled, waving with his arm, and vanished again.
"Who is that?" inquired Rabot. "He looks English and speaks French like Monsieur le Président."
"You will hear him speak German out of that gun in a moment," laughed the corporal. "Voilà!there she goes. And to think we were going to shoot that boy less than an hour ago!"
Dennis, who had qualified as a machine-gun officer, had indeed lighted upon a piece of great good fortune, for under the gun he found three Germans recently bayonetedand the cartridge-jacket in position. He had only to depress the muzzle to send a stream of bullets straight into the mouth of the dug-out.
The stream ceased in a moment, and they saw him beckoning to them.
"Look yonder!" he cried, as the corporal and Rabot joined him. "The rabbits will not bolt again if we can leave someone here, but the company is in difficulties, and we are wanted. Can you take charge,mon garçon? See, the mechanism is quite simple; it works like this," and he loosed half a dozen rounds by way of illustration.
"Stay here and do as the lieutenant has shown you if they show their noses again," said the corporal, and Rabot took his post at the machine-gun.
The French soldier is intelligent because he has imagination, and Rabot understood. Corporal Puzzeau understood also, and his eyes danced as Dennis bounded along the top of the parados towards the retreating company.
They were bunched up in the trench, and some of them were even scrambling out over the other side, when that slim brown figure in the uniform of their British Allies with one of their own helmets on his head, and the corporal behind him, appeared above them.
"Comrades of the 400th of the Line!" cried Dennis. "You are surely not going back to Paris? Berlin lies in this direction. Follow me, and I will show you the way."
"Vive la patrie!" bellowed Corporal Puzzeau, and the men who had recoiled, took up the shout and scaled the wall of the parados again.
A furious rat-tat-tat sounded a little way off, and Dennis heard Puzzeau laugh.
"It is only Rabot," he said. "He has learnt the trick already."
In a few minutes the ground behind the German trench was strewn with bodies in field grey, and it was with some difficulty that Dennis and the corporal could check the victorious company from penetrating into the zone of their own artillery barrage fire. As it was, a good many of the helmets were dented, and not a few of the poilus paid the toll of their own eagerness.
"Mon lieutenant, if I return to our own lines," said the Alsatian corporal, "the general shall hear of this thing you have done. In the name of my country I thank you," and he held out his hand.
Dennis shook it, and laughed. "There is nothing to make a fuss about, corporal," he said. "We've taken the trench, anyhow; and as I see our right brigade yonder, who seem to have been lucky also, I think I'll get along now and join them."
He was gone before Aristide Puzzeau could say any more, and after a quick sprint he came up with an English Fusilier battalion consolidating the position they had just secured.
"Hallo, Dashwood!" hailed a voice, as a very young officer with a very large eyeglass turned round and stared at him. "You look as though you've had a rough night of it. Where on earth have you sprung from?"
"I've been with the French for a spell," said Dennis, looking down ruefully at his tattered uniform. "Where shall I find my crush?"
"Good heavens! they're miles away," said his interrogator, who had been with Dennis in the same training corps. "Pretty good raid, what? What price Romford after this? Bet you a lemon squash your C.O. will reprimand you for appearing on parade improperly dressed."
"I'll chance that, Jimmy. So long, old man," and he threaded his way past the rear of the brigade, not without some good-humoured banter at his dishevelled appearance.
It was twelve o'clock in the day when, rather leg weary, he struck the nearest battalion of his own brigade, and arrived in time to find himself once more in the very thick of it.
During the fighting on their right General Dashwood's command had lain doggo, but word had just come that they, too, were now to make a surprise attack on the enemy's first line trench, and smoke bombs were already preparing the way for them.
"By Jove! Den. The governor's been tearing his hair about you!" was Bob's greeting as they met on the fire-step. "You look pretty well knocked. Better turn in, old man, for a spell."
"Turn in be hanged!" cried Dennis. "Here, Hawke, you've no business with three bags of bombs. Give one of them to me. I'm going to be in this."
He had scarcely fitted the leather strap to his shoulder when his brother, who had been looking at his watch for the last minute said: "Ready, boys! Get over!" And the Reedshires cleared the parapet with a low glad murmur.
Dennis had lost all count of time, and only knew thathe had crossed the strip of "No Man's Land" with his platoon, somehow, and was bursting bombs mechanically along the German trench.
Turning round as he came to a narrow door on his left, he was surprised for the moment to find the French corporal no longer at his elbow, and his laugh of amusement as he entered alone sounded odd and hollow.
With abrupt suddenness he ran down a flight of thirty wooden steps leading from the end of a short passage into a large hall, lit by electric light.
The huge underground dug-out was empty, save for some wounded Germans in bunks, and with a glance at the pictures on the walls, and the piano on a platform, he ran towards another door at the far end.
"Great Scott! they've got a regular town here!" he exclaimed aloud, gazing at the floor of the inner dug-out, which was quite thirty feet below the level on which he stood. "More electric light, and cases of ammunition enough for an army corps!"
"Perhaps you would like to count them, Dashwood?" said a mocking voice behind him.
But before he could turn round a coward's blow flung him forward into space. The electric lights went out, and while he was still falling he heard the heavy slam of the shell-proof door boom out of the darkness above him.