The strain of lying there hour after hour had become unbearable. The idea had also struck him that now was his opportunity to glean some information, if possible, about the lie of the land. There would be warm work, he knew, and that before long, for the French "75's" were barking in the distance, and shells were falling about Biaches and upon the hill away to the left.
Field wagons from Péronne had clattered past his hiding-place, carrying reels of barbed wire, and if he were fortunate he might be able to slip through the advanced German trench before it was hedged in by that difficult barricade. Bodies were lying thickly strewn among the brick heaps, and one little alley down which he tried to pass was piled up six deep with corpses.
"I wish I could get on a listening post," he thought to himself. "That would give me a fine chance." And just then he collided with somebody, who shook him by the shoulder and swore lustily; and he recognised the voice of the good-natured sergeant.
"You should look where you are going, Kamerad," said the man. "And, by the way, whereareyou going?"
"To the front trench, sergeant," replied Dennis,speaking at a venture. "I have just secured a fresh supply of racket bombs."
"What, you are Carl Heft, surely! Good lad, I did not see you in the mêlée, but I have no doubt you acquitted yourself well. I also am going to the front trench, to our company's sector. We will go together."
Dennis clenched his teeth, but he knew that he must put a good face on the matter.
"With pleasure, sergeant," he made answer. And the pair walked along side by side. "Have we lost many?" he inquired.
"Yes, a good few, and I believe it was their own fault. To tell you the truth, Heft, the battalion is not in a good state; they were left too long over there in the front line without being relieved. Our company in particular is very homesick, and can you wonder when you look at the captain they have?"
"True, he is a great brute. You will let me say that to you, sergeant?" replied Dennis, anxious to draw the man out.
"Have no fear; I shall not report you," said his companion, with a friendly squeeze of the arm. "He is not only a great brute, but he is an arrant coward into the bargain. The men do not mind being cuffed and bullied, because they are used to it; but when they see their officer never expose himself, and always shouting from the rear 'Get on, you pigs!' they don't like it. But, Himmel!"—and he chuckled—"our engineers have surpassed themselves to-night. I have never seen wire so strong during the war. Our whole front is covered with it; not so much as a rat could get through."
"That is good," assented his listener, mentally feeling how bad it was for himself, and that, short of a miracle, he must stay where he was until daylight.
"I have just been making a report to Colonel Schlutz," went on the sergeant. "Now you and I will go to a snug little dug-out I have taken possession of. I have a nice piece of sausage which we will share, and what do you think?—four bottles of lager beer! What do you think of that?"
"I say that you are a good comrade, sergeant—the best I have met for many a long day," said Dennis, with a warmth he really felt. This man was evidently a good fellow at heart, an exception to the general run of German non-commissioned officers. And yet it might come about that he would have to kill him, in spite of that nice piece of sausage and those four bottles!
The sergeant had called it a snug little dug-out, that square hole in the chalk, with earth piled on a piece of corrugated iron by way of roof, and great rats peering at them as they sat with their knees touching by the light of a piece of candle.
But to Dennis it was a palace, hiding him, as it did, from inquisitive eyes.
"Surely it is written that I shall win through," he thought to himself. "Everything seems to point to it."
A shell burst close to them and rattled the corrugated iron, bringing a shower of earth down in front of the dug-out door.
"I will go and see if that has done any damage," said the sergeant. "You may stay here until the alarm is given. Your post will be in that bay in front of us. Whydon't you go to sleep? I should if I were not anUnteroffizier."
He came back again in a few minutes, to find that Dennis had taken him at his word, and was watching the rats fearlessly searching for crumbs between his very feet.
"A corporal and five men," said the sergeant laconically. "And a splinter has broken the Herr Captain's glasses. Oh, he is in a rare fury!"
Another shell burst farther away behind the dug-out, and Dennis wondered whether the French gunners were lengthening their fuses preparatory to the counter-attack.
Mist still hung about the ground, and the moon gave it a very ghostly effect.
Peeping through the door from the dark dug-out—for a rat had suddenly pounced upon the lighted candle and made off with it—he saw the look-out motionless and alert behind the sandbagged parapet, and, sitting on the fire-step, the men of No. 6 Company huddled up. Some of them were asleep with their heads on their comrades' shoulders. The man who had been five times wounded bent forward, grasping one wrist with the other hand, and staring into vacancy; perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife!
Without warning a terrific fire suddenly opened on the village; and Dennis, used as he was to the British bombardment, sat dazed in his cubby-hole as shell after shell burst in such quick succession that the explosions seemed like the continuous fire of some giant machine-gun. He put his hands to his ears and crouched there,bowed, like one awaiting inevitable doom, wondering how it fared with the company outside in the trench and with the rest of the battalion.
For a quarter of an hour the inferno continued, and then ceased as suddenly as it had begun; and in the lull that followed he rose to his feet, knowing that the dug-out would not be a safe place in which to await the counter-attack which would come on the heels of that terrible devastation.
In the doorway he stumbled over something soft, and recognised the upturned face of the good-natured sergeant! The lower part of him from the waist downwards had been blown away; and, stooping down, Dennis gently disengaged the Iron Cross from the breast of his tunic.
"Poor chap!" he muttered. "This will be something for dear little Billy." And then he looked round.
The trench existed no longer as a trench, and terrified, trembling men crawled from among the tumbled sandbags, and out of nooks and corners where they had lain.
The barbed wire looked like a parrot's cage that had been run over by a motor-car, and everyone saw that the position was untenable.
So No. 6 Company, or all that was left of it, hurried towards a wood between Biaches and the hill of La Maisonette, and no sooner had they cleared the broken trench than the first wave of the French poured over it.
The ferret-faced German captain had made his wayback to headquarters just before the bombardment began. He had a cousin on the staff, from whom he hoped to borrow a spare pair of spectacles to replace his own.
He secured the glasses, and found that he could not have arrived at a better moment, for a message had just been received from the Divisional General!
"You are the very man we want," said Colonel Schlutz. "There is a spy in No. 6 Company masquerading under the name of Carl Heft. It is very serious and altogether extraordinary. The real Carl Heft was wounded by a shell splinter, and has turned up again over there. The spy actually took down the general's order for our move, and he must be discovered at once. He is young, and he wears brown boots."
"Himmel! I know the fellow!" exclaimed the captain. "He shall be arrested within the next twenty minutes!"
But the French fire began, and it was impossible to move; and they cowered in their temporary shelter, expecting death.
"Where is the company?" demanded its captain when the 75's ceased, and he encountered a wounded man dragging himself to the rear.
"The survivors have retired into yonder wood, Herr Captain. May I beg a draught of water from your bottle?"
"You will get some farther back; I have no time now," was the brutal response. And, grinning with secret satisfaction, he ran in the direction of the tree-tops, hugely elated as every stride carried him farther awayfrom the ruined village, against which he knew the counter-attack would be delivered.
As soon as he judged himself to be out of danger he skulked among the trees for more than an hour. He was in no hurry to find his men; besides, the sky was lightening, and he preferred to wait until daylight.
During that hour the fury of combat raged among the brick heaps of Biaches and upon the hill of La Maisonette, and when morning came the French had recovered both positions.
He could hear them cheering, and was hoping that all was over, when the crackle of rifle fire commenced from the western edge of the wood, and he knew that he could delay no longer. His smile gave place to the blustering frown that No. 6 Company knew so well, and, striding forward, he became aware from the hoarse roar of voices that something serious was taking place.
The growing daylight had revealed to the French that the enemy was holding the wood in some strength; and Dennis, who had spied a long line of blue-painted helmets in the distance, was stealthily working his way forward from tree to tree, intent on making a bolt towards them, when that same roar fell upon his ear.
Looking round, he saw a double company of the battalion that had entrained with them forming up for an advance with the bayonet. In sixty seconds they would go charging across the open strip of ground which he had decided upon as his own line of escape, and their right flank would pass within a dozen yards of a white-walled cottage that had been unroofed by a French shell.
He looked at the solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command "Vorwärts!"
Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans.
Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of the explosions.
Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees.
But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think!
Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting for his life for the shelter of a big shell crater, where he meant to strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer act as a passport to the rapidly advancing French.
As he reached the lip of the huge hole his laugh of triumph died away, for before he could check himself he had slid down among the remnants of No. 6 Company, huddled together, leaderless, demoralised.
At the same moment a shell burst on the other side of the crater, flinging an iron rain into the already terrifiedmob, and half burying a man who had been descending into the pit.
It was the ferret-faced captain who picked himself up, white as a sheet of paper, and then gave a guttural cry of surprise. Drawing his revolver he strode forward and stopped in front of Dennis, covering him with the weapon.
"I am looking for you, Carl Heft," he laughed hoarsely. "Possibly you know why they want you at headquarters!"
No one knew exactly how it came about, but there was a sharp report, the captain staggered back and fell, shot through the heart; and "Carl Heft" stood like some avenging spirit, looking down at him, with the smoking Webley in his hand.
"Kamerads!" he cried to the throng, "there lies the cause of half our troubles! That beast would have driven us on again while he slunk in the rear. Look at this!" And he pointed to the man who had already been wounded five times. A fragment of the shell had just carried away his right hand. "The game is up; we have the right to choose whether we die like sheep, or live to rejoin our families. You can do as you like, but I am going to surrender. I have had enough!"
Very erect, he swung round and began to walk up the side of the crater in the direction of the French, and fifty voices cried: "He is right; we have all had enough!" And they sprang forward in his wake, every man with his hands raised above his head.
Dennis had planted one foot on the firm ground when a skewer-like bayonet passed within an inch of his ear; andwith a disappointed roar its owner flung a pair of terrible arms about him, and the two rolled backwards into the hole again.
"Now you had better say your prayers, Boche!" growled his assailant, as a hairy hand closed on his throat; "I am going to kill you!"
The terrified German herd sprang aside as the two figures hurtled down through the middle of them. Arms were raised sky-high, and quavering voices clamoured "Mercy, Kamerad—we surrender!" but never a finger was lifted to help Dennis. He lay on his back looking into the bloodshot eyes of his old acquaintance, Aristide Puzzeau, who, having dropped his rifle as they rolled, was searching grimly for his knife.
"Puzzeau, you fool!" gurgled the lad, as the huge paw of the Herculeanpoilutightened its pressure on his throat.
"Eh, what!" exclaimed the Alsatian. "Who are you, then?" And the terrible grip relaxed ever so slightly.
"Look again," was the reply, and Dennis managed to tear Carl Heft's grey tunic open wide enough to reveal the khaki shirt and tie of an English officer.
"Zut alors!" cried the man, greatly puzzled; "still I do not know you!"
It was hardly to be wondered at, for the face of his captive was encrusted with chalky mud and badly wanted a shave.
"How goes it with the brave Commandant you and I carried out of action that night we silenced the machine-gun? Do you remember now, thickhead?"
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Aristide Puzzeau, "Mon Lieutenant, you have saved me from a great crime! But why will you keep such bad company? Let us embrace!" And he kissed him on both cheeks.
"And you have saved me from a most unpleasant death, my brave fellow," said Dennis, rubbing his throat; "and now you must save these wretched beasts who are my prisoners."
The corporal clapped a hand to his head like one in a dream as the men of his company, whom he had outstripped, reached the edge of the crater above them.
"Halt, my boys!" roared the corporal with the full strength of his leathern lungs, but he made a wry face and scowled savagely.
"If I had my way, mon Lieutenant, we would take no prisoners, hands up or hands down," he said; "we are too soft-hearted in this war."
The howl of disappointment from the French Territorials mingled with the piteous whine of the terrified Germans, and before he scrambled after Puzzeau out of the hole, Dennis rid himself of the grey tunic and slacks, and stood revealed in his proper character.
"Ma foi!" said the captain of the company, as he shook hands heartily with him, "you have indeed had a marvellous escape, my friend, but there is firing in the wood over yonder; I shall leave twelve men to escort this scum to our lines, and you will no doubt wish to proceedwith them—unless you care to renew your acquaintance with your old comrades, the——"
"A thousand thanks, mon Capitaine," laughed Dennis, remembering the German dispatch in the pocket of his tunic; "my duty calls me elsewhere. Good-bye and good luck!"
As he turned to go, and the foremost wave of the Territorials was already racing towards the trees, whence came the sharp crackle of musketry, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and he saw Puzzeau looking at him with an expression of profound remorse on his black-bearded face.
"One never knows," said Puzzeau in a deep bass whisper. "I want to hear you say again that you have forgiven me. Also, our old Commandant, who, thank the stars, is recovering, charged me that if ever you and I met I was to tell you——"
A dozen voices shouting "Corporal!" interrupted his speech, and with a despairing shrug of his huge shoulders the honest fellow ran after his men, leaving the Commandant's message undelivered.
At the edge of the wood he turned and waved his powerful arm, and as he vanished, Dennis, still rubbing his throat, stepped out briskly beside the German prisoners, who numbered eighty all told.
The big powerful brutes could have eaten their little guards, and Dennis with them, but they shambled along almost at a run, perfectly demoralised.
A short tramp across some ploughland, where brigades of active little men in blue-painted helmets were waiting, brought the prisoners to the French trenches,where Dennis had to run the gauntlet of half a dozen very wide awake but very polite officers, who passed him still farther to the rear.
He was long leagues from the British Army away to the north of the Somme, and was puzzling how on earth he was to join it, when an automobile dashed from a side road, hooting imperiously for him to get out of the way.
"Confound you!" said Dennis to himself as he jumped rather ignominiously on to the bank, but the car stopped, and the driver rose in his seat, looking back at him.
"No, monsieur—it is not possible! It cannot be the Lieutenant Dashwood, surely!" called out the young Frenchman, and instantly forgetting his annoyance, Dennis ran towards the car.
"What, Martique, my dear fellow! Will wonders never cease? It is indeed the Lieutenant Dashwood, as you call him, and in no end of a hat, too! How can I get back to our lines?"
The good-looking young Frenchman, perhaps a little thinner and more fine-drawn since the time when he and Dennis first met, laughed aloud with delight.
"Cher ami, nothing is simpler. Jump in. I am going straight to Fricourt, if that will help you."
"Great Scott! I left my Governor not a mile from there the day before yesterday!" shouted Dennis, vaulting into the motor-car. "How are things with us?"
"Magnificent!" laughed Martique; "but what are you doing down here?"
"Just escaped from the German lines, old chap," was the reply; and as the brave little car raced away at a really dangerous speed he recounted his latest adventure, to the delight and envy of his old acquaintance.
By good roads and bad roads and no roads at all Martique found his way across country with unerring sagacity, until they found themselves at a level crossing a few miles behind the British advanced line.
A long hospital train was waiting in a siding for the next convoy of motor ambulances which should arrive from the various dressing-stations.
The little village, not much knocked about by shell-fire, was occupied by a reserve brigade, and as the cap crossed the rails Martique shut off his engines.
"I thought so," he said, getting out and looking at one of his back tyres, "we punctured half a mile back on the road, and I must put on a spare wheel. She wants some water too, and an oil up, so I am afraid you will have to cool your heels for the next quarter of an hour. No," he added, as Dennis prepared to help him, "I do all my own repairs—much rather. Thanks, yes, I will have a cigarette," and Martique slipped off his coat.
It was good to be back among his own people once more, and with a smile of immense satisfaction on his face Dennis strolled along the little street, taking everything in.
There were Army Service Corps motor wagons on supply, and an infantry platoon came swinging round the corner, looking very bronzed and fit. From their black buttons he saw that they belonged to a rifle battalion in the reserve.
An orderly was holding horses outside a dirty little estaminet, and, riding his machine on the cobbled sidewalk, a motor dispatch-rider threaded his way with marvellous skill among the little groups of villagers and fatigue parties.
Where a lane crossed the street at right angles he saw the white line of a trench close to the backs of the houses, and walked towards it.
At the corner of the trench a Red Cross nurse was in the act of posting a letter in the field collection box. There were nurses from the waiting ambulance train among the crowd in the street.
After a long gaze over the country beyond the trench he returned to retrace his steps, when something in the attitude of the nurse at the pillar-box attracted his attention. Her back was towards him, and she was peering round the angle in a furtive kind of way.
He stood still, and then he noticed that the door of the collecting box was open, and that while she peered along the deserted trench she was gathering the letters and dropping them into a receptacle beneath her white apron.
"I didn't know they had women letter carriers out here," thought Dennis; "possibly they take them down on the hospital train for quickness' sake—and yet——"
An indefinable suspicion followed on the heels of his surmise as the girl turned her head, and in an instant he recognised the red hair and dark eyes of the waitress in the London restaurant.
The rumble of the motor lorries at the cross-roads deadened the noise of his approach as he came softly upbehind her, and then his suspicions were confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt.
"Got you at last, Frau von Dussel!" he exclaimed, seizing her arm; and with a low cry she dropped a bunch of letters on to the ground, thrust her hand into the breast of her apron, and drew out a Browning pistol.
But he was too quick for her, and his fingers closed like a vice on her wrist.
"Brute, you are hurting me!" she wailed.
"Not half so much as you have hurt some people I could mention!" he retorted hotly. "You are my prisoner, you vixen!"
For a moment the big dark eyes blazed unutterable hatred, and then she laughed aloud.
The unrestrained laugh of a German woman is the index to the German character. It is one of the most horribly unmusical sounds on earth.
"You shall never take me alive!" she hissed.
"And there I beg to differ; Ihavetaken you, though how long you will remain alive will rest with the higher powers."
He kicked the Browning which she had dropped aside with his foot, and for an instant she struggled with a violence that surprised him, giving vent to a piercing shriek which brought several soldiers running to the spot. Among them was one of the Military Police.
"Your handcuffs, my man!" said Dennis, "this is one of the most dangerous German spies at large. I accept all responsibility for my action, but I am going to take her to our Brigade Headquarters for further identification."
A Red Cross nurse is a very sacred personality to theBritish soldier, but Dennis's voice carried conviction with it, although the artful jade made a bold bid for liberty.
She ceased her struggles and said in a plaintive tone without a trace of foreign accent, "It is a wicked mistake. I am a Welsh woman, and my name is Margaret Jones. The Sister on the train will bear witness for me."
"I have yet to learn," said Dennis, fully aware of the renewed look of doubt in the faces of the men, "that a Red Cross nurse has any right to pilfer a field letter-box, or that she usually carries a Browning pistol for that purpose. Besides——" And at a venture he suddenly transferred his grip from her left wrist to the nurse's headgear she wore.
"There you are!" he said, sternly triumphant, as the splendidly made red wig came away and revealed the black hair beneath it. "Those handcuffs!" And they closed with a snap on the wrists of the German spy.
Martique was sounding his horn as a signal that he was ready, but he was not prepared for the sight that greeted his eyes as Dennis and the M.P. came up to the car with their prisoner.
"You might give me a bit of a chit, sir, to show it's all right," said the policeman, when they had lifted her into the front seat, pale and rigid now. "And if you take my advice," he whispered, "you'll keep an eye on her; she can wriggle like an eel, and if she grabs the steering-wheel when you're moving, she'll break all your bloomin' necks for you."
"I'll watch it," said Dennis with a smile.
In the telephone dug-out at Brigade Headquarters a man was speaking into the receiver, and the man at the other end of the wire out in a certain sector of the firing line smiled as he recognised the voice.
"That's you, Pater, isn't it?" said Bob.
"Yes," replied Brigadier-General Dashwood. "Any news yet?"
"None at all, sir," said Bob, his face changing; "the balloon's been found pretty well riddled, with the observer dead in the basket. The Highlanders took the wood this morning, you know, but there's no sign of Dennis. We can only hope for the best, Pater, and that is, that he is a prisoner. Eh? What did you say?—I can't hear you—are you there?"
"Hold the wire a moment," came the response, delivered in a startled voice; and Bob Dashwood sighed as he rested his elbow on his knee and looked about him at the appalling destruction of the place.
The Great Push was still continuing without a check, and the Reedshires had again made good with the other regiments of the Brigade.
Somebody came up to him for orders, and he gave them, and somebody else arrived with a request for his presence in another part of the new position.
"You must wait a moment; I am talking to the Brigadier," he said, and then feeling the pause had been a long one, he turned to the receiver again.
"Hallo! Hallo! Are you there, Pater?" he queried, and the reply that reached his ear was a startling one.
"Yes, I'm here, and who do you think is here too?The cat with nine lives has turned up again, and, by Jupiter! Bob, he's brought another cat with him. Dennis is with me without a scratch, and he's captured Ottilie von Dussel, red-haired and red-handed!"
"Oh, good egg!" shouted Major Dashwood, commanding the 2/12th Battalion of the Royal Reedshire Regiment. "Where did he find her? How did he do it?"
"Gently, my dear Robert," said the Brigadier; "he will be with you in a couple of hours, and then he'll tell you the whole thing."
With the coming of dusk came Dennis Dashwood back to the old battalion, just at roll-call. The last quarter of a mile he performed at the double, and burst into the fire-trench like a bolt from the blue.
When his brother officers shook hands with him—for all were delighted at his return—an irresistible murmur of welcome rippled along A Company, and as Hawke's name was called at the moment, that worthy replied with a ringing yell.
"Report yourself at office to-morrow," said the lieutenant in charge of No. 2 Platoon, and Harry Hawke so far forgot himself as to answer, "Right-o, Governor!" at the same time lifting his trench helmet on to the point of his bayonet and waving it frantically.
An enemy sniper promptly sent it spinning on to the top of the parados.
"You shall do four days' field punishment, Hawke!" said the outraged officer.
"Forty days if you like, sir—I don't care what becomes of me. 'Ere's Mr. Dashwood back agin—that's good enough!"
No. 2 Platoon, carried away by the infectious enthusiasm, joined in the shout.
"Another word," cried the lieutenant, "and No. 2 Platoon shall go back into the reserve!" And amid the dead silence that followed that awful threat, Dennis reached them, lifting a warning finger.
"Steady, men," he said. "Thank you for the welcome, but it's not done in the best platoons, you know. How are you, Littlewood?"
"Top-hole, old chap! Where have you been, you beggar? You've managed to completely demoralise the company."
"You shall have a narrative of my expedition all highly coloured, by and by," laughed Dennis. "I've had no end of a time, and I've brought back the news that we've got the Prussians in front of us by way of a change."
"The dickens we have!" said Littlewood. "Any chance of their counter-attacking?"
"That's the idea, old man. I'm going on listening-post to-night, and I shouldn't wonder if we get it pretty hot. Bob tells me you've had it in the neck whilst I've been away."
"By Jove, yes!" said Littlewood gravely, "seventy-five casualties last night. Spencer's gone, young Fitzhugh, Blennerhasset, and Bowles, all killed. There wasn't enough of Bowles left to bury even—nothing but one boot with a foot in it—high explosive, you know, and he was only married two days before he came out!"
"Rotten hard lines!" said Dennis, passing along the front of the platoon, and stopping before Harry Hawke.
"You and Tiddler are 'for it' to-night, remember," he said, and the two men grinned delightedly. "Ah, Wetherby! Going strong?"
"A1," replied the boy, as the parade was dismissed, "but I say, we've got beastly quarters this time. Look here," and he pointed to a mere dint in the side of the trench with a piece of sacking by way of protection from the vulgar gaze.
"Hum! we'll alter that to-morrow—it's certainly not palatial," said Dennis. "I suppose there's none of my clobber come up?"
"Oh yes, it's all here; I saw to that," said young Wetherby, blushing like a girl, as he pointed to a haversack and a brown valise which contained his friend's campaigning kit.
"What a good little chap you are!" exclaimed Dennis.
"Not at all. I fagged for you at Harrow, and somehow I had the idea you'd turn up," and young Wetherby blushed again.
He was a pretty pink-faced boy, who wrote extremely sweet poetry in his odd moments.
"Well, I'm going to have a shave," said Dennis; "and I say, Wetherby, you might grope in the kit-bag and put a refill in that spare torch of mine. I've got an idea it may be useful to-night. Oh, hang this rain!"
The steady drizzle which had set in as the light faded had turned to a heavy, pitiless downpour.
"What a night!" murmured Harry Hawke, as he lay on his stomach in two inches of water some twenty yards in front of the trench with his pal, Tiddler, beside him. "An' me on the peg to-morrer!"
"Bet you there won't be no show," said Tiddler.
"Don't you make too sure of that, Cocky. I'll put ashilling on Mr. Dashwood both ways, and he's got a notion that something's up."
They both looked round, as a slim figure in a thin mackintosh crawled up alongside.
"Hear anything, Hawke?" said Dennis.
"Not so far, sir, but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night—the rain makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the shell 'oles a fair knock-art."
"Well now, look here," said Dennis impressively, "I'm going to shove along, and I want you both to listen with your eyes. You know the Morse code, and if you see anything straight in front of you, pass the word back to Mr. Wetherby on the parapet behind."
"But you ain't goin' alone, sir! You'll let one of us come wiv yer!"
"I am going alone, Hawke. I marked the lie of the ground before the light went, and it's as easy as walking down Piccadilly. If I can't find out what I want I shall come back; anyhow, look and listen!" And he glided off into the rain and was lost to view long before the slither of his footsteps had died away.
Two hundred yards separated friend and foe; two hundred yards of pulverised No Man's Land, now soaked like a sponge. About midway stretched an unfinished German trench, from which our guns had driven the enemy before they had had time to complete it. It was little more than a wet shallow ditch now, with a line of sandbags on the British side, and when Dennis had crossed it he continued his perilous course on hands and knees.
It was a zigzag course to avoid the thirty or forty shellholes that our guns had made, and as he wormed himself forward the darkness of the night and the strange silence of the enemy batteries on that sector confirmed him more than ever in his conviction that something was in preparation.
The trench he was approaching was of quite unusual strength, with a formidable redoubt making a salient in one place, and as he reached the foot of it he knew that a wall of sandbags nearly fifteen feet high towered above his head.
He had seen that before the light went. Now, in the pitchy darkness of the drenching rain, as he crouched at the foot of the wall he could hear the hoarse murmur of many voices behind it, as it seemed to him.
He looked back across that dreary No Man's Land, and then again at the barrier in front of him, and, carrying his life in his hand as he well knew, began to worm his way up the face of the sandbags.
The actual climb presented little difficulty to an athlete; the danger was if a rocket should soar into the sky and some sharp eye discover him.
But the desire to learn something of the enemy's movements from their conversation deadened all sense of risk, until he had reached the last row of sandbags but one, when, without any warning, a group of heads popped up over the parapet, and five officers with night glasses examined the British line.
He could have reached out and taken the first one by the collar, so close was he, and clinging there, ready to drop and bolt for it, he listened with all his ears.
Secure from all eavesdropping—for who would ventureacross that No Man's Land on such a night?—the five men talked freely, with all the blatant self-assumption of Prussian sabre rattlers, and the wet wind that brought their words to him brought also the smell of their cigars.
But if the listener's pulse quickened at their conversation, his heart beat faster still at the conclusion of it.
"By the way, Von Dussel," said one of them, "how comes it that you are going in with us to-night? Surely you are not abandoning the role that you have filled with such success?" And Dennis recognised the short laugh that preluded the reply.
"Not at all, Herr Colonel," said the nearest of the five, "but I have had no word to-day from my wife, so I know it is of no use penetrating their lines. Besides, I have an old grudge against the regiment in front of us—a quarrel I hope to settle to-night."
"You may rest quite easy that you will do so," laughed the colonel; "our five battalions of Prussians are going to do what their Bavarian and Saxon comrades failed to accomplish. Let me see, it is General Dashwood's Brigade that is before us here,nicht wahr?"
"Yes," chortled Von Dussel; "and it is with the Dashwood family that I hope to renew an interrupted acquaintance, the pig hounds!"
Dennis had never found it necessary to place such a powerful restraint upon himself as he did at that moment, and it was perhaps a lucky thing that the five men withdrew as the spy spoke.
His own clutch on the sandbags had been graduallyrelaxing, and his feet were so cramped that he regained the ground with difficulty.
For several seconds he paused irresolute, figuring out how long it would take him to crawl back to the British trench, and then, suddenly coming to a very hazardous decision, he sat down on his heels with his back against the German sandbags.
Spreading the skirt of his saturated mackintosh over his knees, and holding the Orilux torch which young Wetherby had recharged for him between his ankles, he breathed a silent prayer to Heaven, and pressed the button.
Before he had started he had pasted a strip of paper over the electric bulb to reduce the light, leaving only a tiny aperture in the centre of it.
But the two men on listening-post in the distance caught the gleam distinctly, and read off the Morse code message in whispered chorus without a mistake.
"Wetherby," twinkled the tiny speck from the foot of the enemy trench, "find Bob at once, and tell him that five Prussian battalions will attack in half an hour. They are to form up on this side of the line of sandbags midway between us, and the signal for their advance will be the turning on of their searchlights. If he'll move our chaps forward to your side of the sandbags and lie doggo, the brutes will get the surprise of their lives, for they're cocksure of a walk-over. Tell Bob they're attacking with emptied magazines, and it will be bayonet work—that'll fetch him."
The listening-post waited eagerly for more, but the Orilux did not show again, and when Hawke crawled backto find Mr. Wetherby, his heart sank into his muddy boots, for the officer boy was not there.
Meanwhile Dennis had gathered himself together for the return journey.
It seemed an hour since the voices above him had ceased, and a thousand wild doubts chased one another through his brain, but he had not left the shelter of the wall three yards when he glided back to it again, and wormed himself into a crevice at its base.
Earth had come dribbling from the top of the parapet, and following the earth panting men scrambling down the sandbags until they reached the ground. One trod upon his shoulder as he lay there, but the lad never moved, and whispered words all about him told that the enemy was mustering for the assault.
At the end of a few minutes the soft squelch of heavy boots died away in the direction of the British line, and Dennis Dashwood swallowed rapidly and felt sick. He could not see his hand in front of him, and the rain continued to hiss without cessation, falling into a neighbouring shell hole with an ever-increasing plop.
Had they seen his signal and understood it? was his agonised thought, as eight powerful searchlights were suddenly turned on to the ground in front.
Everything was now as light as day, and he saw the Prussian battalions lying on their faces, packed like sardines in a tin, behind those sandbags that concealed them from his own people.
The iron plates on their boot soles gleamed like silver, and not a man of them moved. Then, without warning, a hurricane of German shells plumped into the trenchwhere he had left his beloved battalion, raking it from end to end.
No need for those waiting bayonets now, was his soul-rending thought, as he saw the trench disappear in a holocaust of flame and smoke. He had acted for the best, but he ought to have gone back with his news, for, if the battalion was where he had left it, then the 2/12th Royal Reedshires must have been wiped off the face of the earth!