Some distance away, and seemingly on slightly higher ground, a light was shining, and a second light moved with a curious jerky motion and then disappeared.
The raiders knew that their safety depended on playing a tremendous game of bluff, and that before the news of their adventure spread.
Already a faint grey veil was creeping over the darkness, and at the end of several minutes they found themselves approaching a beech wood which clothed the base of a high hill, and saw that the stationary light came from a curious castellated building at the edge of the wood, where a rustic bridge spanned a swift stream. There was no one about, and the iron-bound door was open.
"Somebody's hunting-lodge," muttered Laval. "They have gone up the hill to see what the explosion meant. That was a lantern we saw moving among the trees."
"Well, it's nothing venture nothing have," said Dennis; and they went in noisily.
The walls of the hall were covered with boar spears and trophies of the chase, but they had scarcely time to glance round them when an old woman came forward out of the darkness with her hands raised.
"Gentlemen!" she cried; "can you tell us the cause of that terrible noise that shook the castle a little while ago?"
"Yes, good wife; it was an awful explosion at the Zeppelin shed over yonder," replied Dennis. "We had the misfortune to be flying over the spot when it happened, and my observer was struck. I am the Lieutenant Blumberger of whom you may have heard." And he imitated the overbearing manner of a Prussian officer.
He had condescended to satisfy the woman's curiosity, but now he must be obeyed.
"To whom does this house belong?"
"It is the hunting-schloss of Count Rudolf von Rudolfstein," said the old woman. "But my master is away serving with the army, and there are only my husband and myself here. Karl has gone up the hill. He said it was an accident, and one can see the ground from there."
"I know the Count very well," said Dennis, looking round the entrance-hall as though the place were his own. "Get me a basin of hot water and some towels. And is it possible that you have any petrol here?"
"There is plenty in the garage," said the old woman, "but I cannot get it until Karl returns. But,Himmel, the gentleman will bleed to death!" And she pointed to a great red pool gathering on the stone floor as Laval leaned heavily against a table. "Come in here!" And, carrying a lamp with her, she unlocked another door, and led the way into a handsome room, lined with polished pine, with a huge stove at one end.
Laval, who was suffering agonies, sank with a groan into the first chair, and with an exclamation of commiseration the caretaker's wife hurried away in search of bandages.
"It is good so far," whispered Laval through his clenched teeth. "Leave me to the mercies of this ancient dame; she will stop the bleeding if she can do nothing else. But, for Heaven's sake, find that petrol!"
"That's all very well," said Dennis desperately, when a cough made him turn, and he swung round to see a bent old man, with a long white moustache and a lantern in his hand, standing in the doorway.
"Good! You are Karl," he said at once, repeating his explanation of their presence. "Count von Rudolfstein is my friend, and if he were here his house would be at our disposal. I must fill my tank without delay and return yonder."
"It is terrible, Herr Officer. The whole ground seems to be burning!" said the old man, completely disarmed by the cleverness of the lad's impersonation. "How much petrol do you require?"
"Twenty gallons, if you have it. Let us lose no time. Here is your good frau who will look after my observer."
"And to think, Herr Officer," said the old man. "One of the new super-Zeppelins that was going to punish England for her treachery! Oh that I was a young man again, and I had an Englishman within reach of these arms! They are still strong enough to strangle him!"
Dennis let him ramble on, and followed him as hestrode out of the hall to a coach-house that had been converted into a garage.
A very handsome car stood over the inspection pit, and at one end of the building was a great stack of petrol tins. Evidently the Count was a wealthy man, and evidently too there was not that shortage of petrol in Germany that some of the English papers had been exulting over of late.
"Wait a moment," said the old forester, as Dennis seized a couple of tins in each hand. "We can sling more of them than that on this pole, and carry it between us."
Dennis inwardly congratulated himself that the old forester had not only no suspicions, but was also a man of resource; and the pair were soon crossing the bridge on their way to the aeroplane, which was now distinctly visible in the growing light.
"Ah!" chuckled the old man, pointing to the distinguished mark painted in black on the Aviatik's side, "they gave my son the Iron Cross for bravery at a place they call Verdun, but I am sorry he did not win it for killing Englishmen."
"Well, you can tell me what he did do while you hand me the tins," said Dennis, climbing up and unscrewing the cap of the tank, and the gurgle of the liquid into the big receptacle was like music to his ears.
"I tell you what it is, my friend," he said, when he had emptied the last tin; "we could do with a few more, and I also see there is something here that requires my attention."
His quick eye had noticed that one of the stays which supported the upper plane wanted tightening, and he opened a tool bag.
"I will bring them; I will not be long," said the old man, who was delighted to have had a listener to the story of his son's exploits, never thinking how little of it the herr lieutenant had really heard.
"There, that's secure," said Dennis to himself. "I wonder why that old dodderer is so long? I must get back and see how poor Laval is getting on, and then, heigh-ho for La Belle France!"
As he straightened his back the dull thud of galloping hoofs made him turn round, and to his dismay he saw a couple of German officers approaching across the sandy plain.
"By Jupiter! Talk about bluff now!" he thought. "Thank goodness they're coming from the right direction!" And drawing himself stiffly up, he saluted as they reined in below him.
They were both of high rank—one of them a colonel; and it was the colonel who spoke first as he and his companion flung themselves from their horses.
"You heard it?" he cried in a voice that thrilled with excitement.
"Everyone within twenty miles must have heard it, Herr Colonel," said Dennis solemnly.
"Do you know the extent of the damage?" was the next question.
"I do not. I had a little trouble with my engines, and was just on the point of going there to see what had happened."
It was perhaps the worst thing he could have said, for the two officers immediately climbed up and squeezed themselves into the observer's cockpit.
"Quick! You will carry us there. It is a command!" said the colonel. And Dennis's eyes roved in vain round the pilot's seat for any sign of a weapon.
He bent down under pretence of examining the shaft of the steering-wheel to collect his thoughts and compose his features, and then a thought came to him.
Had they been on the ground he would have pleaded that his engines were still wrong, but it was too late now.
"I will take you willingly, Herr Colonel," he said. And, sitting down, he passed the two ends of the securing strap round his waist, and drew the buckle tight.
"You are a long time, young man," said the colonel's companion.
"We are off now," replied Dennis, starting the engines to avoid any awkward questioning, and breathing a silent prayer that they were all right.
He thought of Laval, too, and wondered what he would think when he heard the whir; and it was as well that he did not know what was happening to his French friend, or possibly he would have failed to keep his nerve for the task he had set himself!
The horses shied, and bolted across the plain, but no one thought of them as the Aviatik ran uneasily forward over the soft ground and rose like a bird.
For a few minutes they mounted skyward, climbing slowly, and the stout General tried to make hiscompanion understand by much gesticulation that the blockhead was taking the wrong direction.
But the "blockhead" knew what he was about, and after a half circle to test the working of the engines, he opened the throttle and shot her upwards at a terrific speed.
Well might his two passengers cling desperately to the gun brackets and to each other, but their shriek of terror was drowned as the machine gained an altitude of fifteen hundred feet and deliberatelylooped the loop!
For a moment Dennis braced himself and clutched the wheel like a vice, but the strap held, the circle was completed, and the Aviatik, righting herself, skimmed over the pine-topped hill behind the hunting lodge, and planed majestically down towards the starting-point.
Dennis's face was as white as a sheet of paper as he turned and glanced back over his shoulder. He was alone!
"I hope it was playing the game," he muttered, as he brought the machine to a stand. "At any rate, it was the only game I could play under the circumstances."
He jumped down and ran towards the lodge, feeling shaken and trembly, wondering what he would find. It struck him as odd that the garrulous old forester had not returned. Was Laval dead or dying?
As he crossed the stream and mounted the slope he stopped, for the old man's voice was bellowing furiously, and the old woman screamed in concert.
"What on earth is going on?" thought the lad, and seeing that the shutters of the ground-floor room in which he had left his friend had been opened, and it being very nearly broad daylight, instead of entering the hall he sprang to the window and looked in.
Claude Laval, terribly weak from loss of blood, but with an odd, defiant smile on his face, was sitting upright in the carved chair, the sleeve of his wounded arm slit from shoulder to wrist, revealing the drenched blue-grey of his own French uniform beneath it. In front of him, his white moustache bristling with fury, and murder in every line of his wolf-like face, the old forester lifted a hatchet in both hands, while his wife, no longer the trembling servile old peasant of half an hour before, was tightening the knots of the rope she had thrown round Laval's body, binding him tightly to the chair!
In the little village three leagues from Bar-le-Duc a powerful car drew up in a cloud of dust in front of the restaurant where our friends had dined the night before, and General Joffre stepped from it on to the pavement.
"Ah, what? You do not know where he is? No one has seen him—the young English lieutenant who was to meet me here?" said the General, knitting his white eyebrows. "That is strange; but never mind"—and he drew out his watch—"it still wants four minutes to eight."
Leaning his elbow on the side of the automobilewith one foot planted on the step, the great Frenchman waited, talking meanwhile with a Divisional General who had something to report.
"Yes, yes," said the Generalissimo, and then he looked at his watch again. The minute hand pointed to the hour, but Sir Douglas Haig's messenger had not come!
When Dennis Dashwood saw that terrible tableau through the window of Von Rudolfstein's hunting-lodge, his first thought was that he had arrived too late to save his friend; and, drawing his revolver from beneath Blumberger's flying coat, he raced for the front entrance.
"Scoundrel and pig! I will split your skull even as I ground that cross of yours beneath my heel!" Dennis heard the old man bellow. "I will be bound you know more about the destruction of that fine Zeppelin than you will admit. Come, have you not finished yet, thou clumsy old fool?"
"Clumsy old fool, indeed!" screamed the woman. "Who was it discovered that he was a Frenchman, I'd like to know? You will be taking the whole credit to yourself, worthless one!"
"No, I want some of the credit myself," said a stern young voice from the doorway. "Shame on you both to treat a wounded man thus!" And he fired at one of the huge hands that held the woodcutter's axe.
The formidable weapon fell with a clang on to the floor, and the forester gave a howl like a wounded beast.
"Quick, Gretchen, ring the alarm bell! They will hear it at the village!"
The old woman, who had sent up a piercing shriek, ran towards another door; but Dennis was too quick for her, and, putting out his foot, she pitched headlong on to the stone floor and lay quite still.
"Move your own length," he cried to the husband, laying his revolver by the side of the basin of hot water, "and I will shoot you like a dog! Courage, Laval! All is ready, and I'll have you out of this in a brace of shakes."
"Ma foi!you must forgive me, my dear friend," said the wounded officer. "When I heard the machine rise, I thought for a moment that you had deemed it wiser to save yourself."
"I'll tell you all about that afterwards," said Dennis grimly. "I'm going to save you now." And, cutting the cord, he threw the knife into the basin and proceeded to make a slip-knot. "We must make this old ruffian secure first."
"Look out!" exclaimed Laval. And Dennis raised his eyes just in time, for the cunning German had made a spring for the table, and already his unwounded hand had clutched the knife-handle. It was a huge thing, such as a butcher might use, and sharp as a razor.
"Youwillhave it, will you?" said Dennis grimly, and he shot the man through the heart. "It has saved me the trouble of binding him, and that makes the third Boche I have accounted for this morning. By Jove,old chap! you've got it pretty badly. Whatever happens, I must stop that bleeding."
The knife with which the woman had cut the sleeve of the leather jacket had revealed a terrible jagged wound in the Frenchman's shoulder, from which the blood welled through his fingers as he grasped it; but Dennis, tearing some linen that the woman had brought into strips, improvised a couple of tourniquets, utilising the spindles of a chair which he smashed to pieces for the purpose, and to his intense satisfaction he found the hæmorrhage considerably reduced.
"Now, do you think you can walk?" he said anxiously. And Laval got up, reeling from the enormous quantity of blood he had lost.
"Half a mo!" said Dennis quickly. "This noose I had meant for Karl there will make a first-rate sling for that arm of yours. Another pull at the flask—that's good—and now we absolutelymustmake a move."
"One moment!" exclaimed Laval, pointing across the room. "There is a French flag yonder. Will you do me the goodness to tear it from the wall and bring it with you? I cannot leave that trophy in the hands of these hogs. Besides, it may be useful to us later on."
Dennis ran across the room and lifted the silk tricolour from the hooks on which it hung, reading as he did so an inscription in faded gold letters on the shot-riven folds.
Von Rudolfstein's father had captured that colour in the war of 1870 at the head of his Cuirassiers, and it had hung there ever since.
"Look at all that remains of my beloved decoration!" murmured Laval, pointing to the floor.
"They shall give you another for last night's work," said Dennis.
Leaning on the boy's strong arm, thepilote aviateurset out gamely, crossed the entrance hall, and had almost gained the rustic bridge when the clanging notes of a deep-tongued bell broke out behind them.
"The old vixen has soon come to her senses. Let us hope the village is not too near, for it will take us ten minutes at this rate," said Laval, squeezing the arm that supported him as his companion looked back.
He had heard it at the same moment—a hoarse shout from many voices and the trample of hoofs at the hunting-lodge.
"By Jingo! Cavalry!" said the lad.
"You must leave me and run for it. Good luck, old fellow!" exclaimed Claude Laval. But Dennis gave an odd smile and stooped down.
"Put your arm round my neck!" he cried. "I'm not going without you, so argument is useless and will only waste time. It will give you a bit of a twisting, I know. Now, stick tight!" And he started to run with the wounded man on his shoulders.
Several times he nearly stumbled, for the ground was sandy, but he had accomplished two-thirds of the distance when the alarm bell stopped, and there was a chorus of savage shouts from the house they had left.
"Hold on like grim death!" panted Dennis. "We'lldo it yet!" And bracing himself for the last few yards, he doubled the pace and reached the shadow of the aeroplane as the leading files of a troop of Uhlans thundered across the bridge.
A stifled cry broke from Laval's lips, though he tried hard to repress it, as Dennis dragged him up by main force and tumbled him into the observer's cockpit.
"I know I've given the poor chap beans," he muttered to himself, as he handed him the captured tricolour. And, jumping down into the pilot's seat, he started the engines going for the second time that morning.
The officer at the head of the yelling horsemen was not thirty lengths away when the Aviatik began to move; and, roaring out an order to his men to draw their carbines, he emptied his own revolver at random.
Afterwards, when Dennis came to think calmly of that moment, he grew cold and shivered; but at the time itself his heart had given a mighty throb as the rubber-tyred wheels of the chassis left the ground, and they started on their long flight for home.
He knew perfectly well, as several bullets pierced the lifting planes and one starred on the stay he had tightened, that their troubles had by no means ceased when they left the Uhlans behind them. By that time keen eyes would be watching, not only the earth, but the sky, and he had only his wits to guide him.
There was the sun just rising to show him which was the east, and already far down below he saw the ribbonof the Rhine which they must cross; but sluing round to look back, he saw the thing he feared—an escadrille of German aircraft rising from the plain over which the smoke from the Zeppelin hangar still hung.
Already the enemy airmen were in pursuit!
Claude Laval had turned towards him at the same moment, and their eyes met. He had seen it too, but the blanched face of the wounded man shone with hope and confidence. His mouth opened, though the words were lost, but he made a gesture with his sound arm, and Dennis understood.
They were heavy clouds to which Laval had pointed, and Dennis steered straight for them, devouring the chart with his eyes.
Far down below and ahead of them in the extreme distance was the blue line of the Vosges, and he thought he could distinguish the Ballon d'Alsace, but of that he was not sure. His pursuers would naturally imagine that he would make for the nearest point of the French frontier, but that was not in his mind. If he had to deal with the fast-rising Fokkers, his only chance he knew was to gain the cloud-bank and keep within its protecting folds.
To fight with a wounded observer was out of the question, and already he had decided to steer north-west rather than due west, which would bring him, roughly, somewhere between Epinal and Nancy—always provided that he was not overtaken.
There were a thousand risks to run, not only from the enemy fleet, but from the French guns when he should come in sight of them; but as they soared into the chillblanket of vapour his spirits rose, and for a moment he shut off the engines to listen.
The whir and throb of their pursuers already seemed to come from every point of the compass—from below, from either side and, what was more alarming, from above; but banking sharply to the right he thrashed his course at topmost speed, praying that the cloud-bank might not cease.
The baragraph showed him that he was already eight thousand feet above the earth, and, straightening out the machine, he wiped the mist from his goggles with the back of his glove and kept on.
All at once the Aviatik shot out of the cloud with a clear stretch of sky in front of them, and, looking back and upwards, he saw the wicked nose of a Fokker emerge into view on their right beam a couple of hundred yards away and well above them.
Already their own machine was approaching another cloud-bank, but the Fokker had seen them, and plunged downward in their direction.
The instant the cloud swallowed them up Dennis concentrated all his efforts on the foot-bar which controlled the vertical rudder, and, grasping the wheel at the same time, swung sharply to the left, leaving their pursuer to dive down five hundred feet into space before he discovered that he had missed his mark.
Neither of them knew that the nose of the Fokker had been within twelve inches of the Aviatik's tail-planes; and but for the fact that the German suspended his fire at the moment of diving, it would have been all over with the raiders.
Dennis reverted to his old tactics when he found that they had escaped, and turning to the right again, with an anxious eye on the compass, saw no more of the enemy for nearly a quarter of an hour, until, emerging into a burst of bright sunshine and looking down, he found himself immediately over a fierce engagement on the eastern crest of the Vosges mountains. Shells were bursting below them, and though he did not know it, they were passing above the Col de la Schlucht, from which the French guns were bombarding Munster. He could see the enormous puffs of smoke—white, black, and some of them tinged with yellow—but what was of greater moment to them both was the presence of the enemy machines a few miles to the southward.
They, too, were just leaving the cloud-bank, which ended there, misled by the idea that their prey would make a bee-line for safety; but they saw the Aviatik at the same moment that Dennis saw them, and circled round to cut him off from home.
Dennis realised that he was now above French soil. His engines were working magnificently, and dropping to an altitude of two thousand metres, which gave him a clear view of towns and buildings, he consulted his chart, identified Nancy far away on his right front, and trusted all to Providence.
He had judged wisely, as it proved, and knew that he was out-distancing the enemy aircraft tearing in hot pursuit—all but one persistent Fokker that evidently meant business. He even found time to glance backward at his companion, who, with the folds of the French flag wrapped round his shattered shoulder to dull the forceof the keen air, sat huddled up in his cockpit, apparently insensible.
Once a shell came up from the ground, and burst between pursuer and pursued, and a gleam of fierce hope shot through the lad's heart as he saw the French "75" making good practice against the vicious little gadfly.
Higher and higher mounted the Fokker to get out of range, and still Dennis kept on, remembering his appointment with the French Generalissimo, and glancing alternately from the chart to the little clock beside the aneroid barometer, whose registration was useless at that height.
"Twenty-five minutes! Great Scott! can I do it?" he muttered, clutching the control wheel with his frozen fingers.
"Well, messieurs, it is a pity, and I am afraid something must have happened to that young officer," said General Joffre, consulting his watch for the last time. "I must find another messenger to carry my reply to the Commander-in-Chief of our Allies."
And then he stopped as a murmured exclamation broke from the group of officers, and everyone looked up to the grey sky across which some rainclouds were drifting.
"It is an aerial combat, mon Général," said one of them. "Ma foi!I should not care to travel at that speed, let alone fight with nothing under one's feet!"
Two dots scarcely larger than flies on a window-panehad suddenly detached themselves from the rain clouds, and were manœuvring curiously in the direction of the village. Larger and larger they grew, the smaller dot obviously trying to gain the advantage of height, and mingling with the throb of the engines they could now hear the rattle of a machine-gun.
"What is the meaning of this?" said the Generalissimo, fixing them with his glass. "These machines are German. I can see the Iron Cross painted upon them both. Send word to the battery yonder to make ready. It is a raid, and they are adopting those manœuvres to deceive us."
By the wall of the restaurant the young French chauffeur, Martique, who had driven Dennis to that place, waited with a smile dancing in his eyes, hoping against hope that the thing of which he alone knew was the thing that was taking place up yonder!
He started when he heard the Generalissimo's order, for even yet he could not be sure, but the dots had now grown so large that it was possible to tell the make of the two machines, and somebody said: "The first one is an Aviatik; the other is a Fokker."
If the seeming chase were a piece of German stage management it was certainly being carried out with marvellous realism, for now Martique could distinctly see the puffs of the machine-gun, and that the bullets were ripping through the lifting planes of the Aviatik.
"Mon Général!" he cried suddenly, "for the love of heaven order our battery not to fire! Look! The observer in that machine is waving a French flag. Hehas dropped it now, and he slues his gun into position—but with one arm only! He is wounded!"
"Do you know what you are talking about, young man?" said the Generalissimo sternly.
"Forgive me, mon Général!" faltered Martique. "It was a little secret. Oh, look! The Fokker has got the top place, and is about to ram poor Laval and his English companion!"
Everyone held his breath, for indeed it was as Martique had cried. The Aviatik was volplaning down in a wide spiral now, and above it the relentless pursuer poised like a hawk. He was judging the circumference of those spiral curves, and even the Generalissimo himself tightened his lips under the huge white moustache.
Over the side of the fuselage there was no mistaking the glorious red, white and blue that fluttered wildly in the descent, and then the Aviatik's swivel-gun spoke three times. A German always speaks French badly, but that German gun rang out with a true accent that time, and the Fokker gave a strange quiver, burst into a sheet of flame, and dropped like a stone to death and destruction six thousand feet below!
The engines of the Aviatik ceased; thenacelle, pointing earthwards, curved suddenly up again, and floating for some distance like a tired bird, the machine dropped out of sight on the other side of the tall poplars.
There was an instant stampede to the spot, the Generalissimo himself following, unable to curb his curiosity; but as he reached the bank at the edge of thecornfield a running figure in leather jacket and flying helmet checked his pace and, throwing up his goggles, saluted smartly.
"Mon Général, I hope you will accept my apology," said Dennis Dashwood. "I am five minutes behind my time, but I am here, and I have a good deal to tell you!"
Three surgeons, hastily summoned to the spot, knelt with their instruments beside Claude Laval, not twenty yards from the bodies of the two German airmen whom he had brought down the afternoon before, and in the circle that surrounded them stood the Generalissimo, holding the old French colour which would never ornament the walls of that distant hunting-lodge again.
"He will recover," said one of the doctors, getting up from his knee. "But he will want the most careful attention. The whole thing is marvellous. There is not one man in a thousand that could have lived through such an adventure!"
Thepilote aviateuropened his eyes, for he had heard the surgeon's words.
"Mon Général," he said, but so faintly that the Commander of the French Armies had to stoop over him, "I should not have lived if it had not been for my companion. He is brave, that boy—oh, braver than I can make you understand. But, mon Général," and a wistful look came into the deep-sunk eyes, "they have taken my Cross of the Legion and destroyed it!"
"You were a chevalier of the Order, mon lieutenant, if I remember," said the Generalissimo. "The Republicdoes not forget her sons when they behave as you have behaved. You shall have another Cross, and this time it will be the Cross of an Officer of the Legion of Honour. And listen! The English lieutenant shall have one too, if the word of César Joffre carries any weight in France. Messieurs, let us salute these two brave men who have both deserved so well of the Republic!" And, lifting his kepi, the gallant Frenchman kissed Dennis on both cheeks amid a burst of generous applause that came from the hearts of all of them.
"Cher ami," whispered Claude Laval, "if you see my brother, you will tell him of our little escapade, hein?"
Dennis pressed Laval's left hand in both his own as he left him with a happy smile on his face; and with a last look at the Aviatik, followed General Joffre to his automobile.
"Adieu, lieutenant!" said the great soldier, with a lingering grip after an interview that lasted half an hour, "I have no other message for your General. He will find it all written in that envelope, which you will give him."
"Now, Martique," said Dennis, settling himself beside him in the motor, "I am in your hands." And almost before the car had started, Second Lieutenant Dennis Dashwood, of the 2/12 Battalion, Royal Reedshire Regiment, was sound asleep!
"Oh, hang it, Martique! What did you wake me for? I haven't been asleep five minutes," grumbled Dennis. And then he sat bolt upright as herecognised the handsome face of the man who had shaken him by the shoulder, and saw the amused smile in his eyes.
"It is a good car, I admit," said Sir Douglas Haig. "But I hardly think it has done the mileage between this place and Bar-le-Duc in so short a time as that, and your chauffeur tells me that you have snored all the way."
Dennis gasped, to find himself once more in front of the headquarters of the General Commanding in Chief, and turned scarlet.
"I took the liberty of abstracting General Joffre's reply from your pocket without disturbing you," continued Sir Douglas. "And I have had the story of your extraordinary exploit from Martique here. Take my advice, Dashwood, and be chary in future about embarking on such adventures; they hardly come within the scope of your day's duty."
And then, seeing the shamefaced look that came over the lad, he added quickly: "Do not read any censure into my words; they were only intended to convey a little fatherly advice. And now the question arises, what is to be done with you? You have shown a most remarkable aptitude, and General Joffre has given such an account of your nerve that I am in two minds whether or not to transfer you to my personal staff—or would you prefer a spell of duty with your regiment?"
"Do you mean for the Great Push?" said Dennis, in an eager voice.
"Confound your great push!" said the General, witha faint flash of sternness in his expressive eyes. "There's too much talk knocking around about our future movements."
For the life of him Dennis could not help smiling all over his face.
"Well, I see where your heart lies," said the G.O.C. in Chief; "and Martique, who is going your way, shall give you a lift. I wish you the best of good luck, Mr. Dashwood, and I am very much obliged to you for the way you have carried out your mission."
"By Jove!" whispered Dennis, as the car started for the firing-line. "He did not deny it. Thereisto be a push, and I'm going to be in it!"
The guns still thundered, and the shells had never ceased to rend and pulverise the enemy position day and night. Otherwise, everything was quiet on our front. The raids had ceased, and the wind was unfavourable to any German gas attack.
"Come on, Dennis," said his brother; "there's nothing doing, and I'm fed up. Let's drop in to that sing-song for an hour. They've got an awfully good chap I'm told, who plays the piano like a blooming Paderewski."
"I'm with you," said Dennis. And they made their way into the subterranean dug-out which had so nearly proved his tomb on the night we had carried the front-line trench.
It seemed odd to plunge suddenly into an atmosphere of merriment within a few yards of the men posted at the periscopes along the sandbagged parapet.The electric lights were burning, and a blue haze of tobacco smoke obscured the air from a semicircle of listeners, sitting on packing-cases and forms round the piano on the platform, and the chorus of "Gilbert the Filbert," sung with a will, greeted them as they descended the stairs.
All sorts and conditions of men were gathered there—officers and privates in mutual good fellowship. The Second-in-Command of the Reedshires had just given them a ballad, and sung it jolly well too; and the armourer sergeant and one of their own lieutenants were fooling about as they waited to appear in a comic turn.
The lieutenant was dressed as a French peasant girl, and really looked quite pretty; and the armourer sergeant was supposed to resemble George Robey!
"Oh, there's the chap I was speaking to you about," said Captain Bob, pointing to a wounded Highlander, whose head was enveloped in a bandage. "He's a regular genius on the keyboard; that is why there are such a lot of chaps here to-night. He only blew in a couple of days ago from the brigade on our right when he heard we were lucky enough to have a piano."
They made room for the two new-comers; and as the closing lines of the chorus died away, there were great cries of "Jock, Jock! We want Jock!" from the audience.
The Highland private's face expanded into a sheepish grin, and as he stepped up on to the platform you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Not a sound butthat dull burst and boom that they had all got used to and scarcely heard now, and then the keys of the piano broke in upon the tense hush, touched by a master hand.
"Isn't that fine!" whispered the Second-in-Command, who was sitting next to Dennis. "When this beastly war has finished that man would fill Queen's Hall to the roof. And to think he's just one of Kitchener's privates, and the first pip-squeak that comes his way may still that marvellous gift for ever!"
Dennis nodded, for the improvised melody which had just ceased had touched him, as it had touched every man in the room.
But there is no time for sentiment in the trenches; it is out of place there, and after a roar of "Bravo!" and a great clapping of hands had succeeded a momentary pause, voices cried clamorously: "Give us that thing you sang last night, Jock—that song with the whistling chorus!"
"Now you'll hear the reverse of the medal, and upon my soul, it's equally good!" explained the Second-in-Command. "He's like poor old Barclay Gammon and Corney Grain and half a dozen of those musical-sketch men rolled into one. It's his own composition too."
There was a great chord on the piano, the performer laid his cigarette on the music rest, and made an amazing face by way of introduction.
"Gentlemen, I call this song 'All Boche'—because it is," he remarked. And then he sang a string of purely topical verses, brilliantly clever in their allusions to theeveryday events in which they all bore their part, and he did not spare the failings of various officers and N.C.O.'s, who were supposed to be imaginary, but whom everybody recognised; and when he had done he resumed his seat quietly on the edge of the platform as though it had been nothing, and Dennis went over to him.
"I say, you know, that's the best thing I've heard for years," said the lad enthusiastically. "Would it be possible to have a copy of the words, or is it asking too much?"
"I'll write them down with pleasure, sir," said the wounded Highlander; "but I've got no paper."
Dennis whipped out his pocket-book and tore out some leaves, withdrawing to his packing-case to leave the obliging soldier undisturbed.
But man proposes—you know the old proverb, and before Dennis could seat himself, the voice of the Company Sergeant-Major rang out from the head of the staircase: "Fall in, everybody, and as sharp as you like!"
There was an instant stampede up and out into the thunder of the guns; and as men scurried along the trench the wounded Highlander handed one of the folded leaves to a sergeant of Dennis's platoon.
"Give that to your Second Lieutenant," he said, "and guid necht." And the sergeant, spying Dennis in front of him, delivered his message.
"By Jingo, he's written them quickly! I hope they're all here," said the boy, diving into his new dug-out in search of his trench helmet. And opening the paper inthe candlelight, he read to his utter astonishment and rage:
"If you want the words of my song you must come and fetch them, little beastly Dashwood! What a lot of fools you English are! And so your Great Push will begin at 7.30 in the morning. Very well, we shall be ready for you!"
"If you want the words of my song you must come and fetch them, little beastly Dashwood! What a lot of fools you English are! And so your Great Push will begin at 7.30 in the morning. Very well, we shall be ready for you!"