The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders Part 37

He also shook hands with Hal. Major Derevaux and Stubbs expressed pleasure at seeing each other again. Then Hal demanded:

"Where did you get hold of Stubbs, Anderson?"

"I found him back in the British lines," said the colonel. "I was detailed to come here to see a woman who lives in this house and to bring a companion for the journey. I asked Stubbs to accompany me, and he was glad of the chance."

"What!" exclaimed Hal. "You mean you brought Stubbs where there was danger and he didn't protest."

"No, I didn't protest," declared the little war correspondent. "But I protest now. I didn't sign up for any adventures in your party, and neither will I; you can bet on that."

"If you didn't know him, you'd think he was afraid," laughed Colonel Anderson.

"I am afraid," declared Stubbs. "I'm afraid to go fooling around with these two," and he indicated Hal and Chester with a sweeping gesture.

"I'd rather fool around with dynamite."

"Well, we can't stay here any longer," said Major Derevaux, and in a few words explained to Colonel Anderson what had happened. "What was the nature of your business here?" he asked.

"About the same as yours," returned the colonel with a laugh. "But, as you say, there is no need to linger now. You have learned what I Came to find out. We may as well be moving."

"How'd you come, an airship?" asked the major. "Yes; and you?"

"Same way."

"Then we may as well get both machines back. I'll take half of your party. My plane is only about a hundred yards from here."

"My plane is not much farther--in a little woods there."

"By Jove! So is mine. Wouldn't be surprised if they were near the same spot. Well, let's be moving."

Colonel Anderson led the way from the house, and the others followed him through the darkness.

CHAPTER XXVII

A NEW VENTURE

It was three days later and Hal and Chester sat in their own quarters in the shelter of the American lines. The flight from the German lines had been made safely. The aeroplanes had been found where Colonel Anderson and Major Derevaux had left them.

These had ascended without knowledge of the Germans, and had started on their homeward flight before being discovered. Then there had been pursuit, but they had landed without being so much as scratched.

"Well," said Hal, rising and picking up a pile of papers, "I've studied these maps until I know them by heart. Now if someone can tell me what it's all about, I'll be obliged."

"Same here," Chester agreed. "Funny, when you stop to think about it.

Here they give us these maps and tell us to stuff our heads full of them. Well, my head is full, all right."

"And mine--h.e.l.lo, here comes someone."

"It's Captain O'Neill. Maybe he'll, be ready to explain now," said Chester.

A moment later the American captain entered the tent. The boys saluted. The captain came to the point at once.

"You are both familiar with airplanes?" he asked.

The lads nodded.

"So I understand," said the captain. "Also I hear that several times you have landed upon unfamiliar ground, and in the dark. I am informed, too, that you are always willing to take desperate risks. Am I right?"

"We are glad to do what we can," returned Chester quietly.

"Understand," said the captain, "you will be asked to land not only in the dark but behind the enemy lines, not knowing who or what is below."

"We understand," said Hal quietly.

"I have come to offer you this opportunity," said Captain O'Neill quietly. "Tonight--the exact time is 10 o'clock--we attack in force. In comparison, the a.s.saults before this have been as nothing.

I say we, but I mean chiefly, of course, the French. There will be some American troops in the advance, however. The mission I am now offering you was turned over to us by the French general staff."

"We shall be glad of the opportunity to aid, sir," said Hal.

"Good!" said Captain O'Neill, and continued: "One element alone is uncertain; one only is to be ascertained. The force and disposition of the defending troops in sh.e.l.l holes, in their concrete 'pill-boxes,'

in their flanking trenches all have been ascertained. They will be blasted out by our artillery. But they have additional forces below the ground, in great caverns too far down to be reached by our sh.e.l.ls; they are tremendous underground works concealing whole battalions, many thousands of men, whose presence is known; but the entrances and the means of egress from those great caverns have so far eluded us.

"We have discovered some of these entrances," he continued, "but immediately they have changed. At present we do not know them. But at 10 o'clock tonight the points from which the German reserves will emerge must be instantly and accurately marked. When our infantry goes over the top and the Germans order their shock troops out from the safe underground refuges to meet our men, we must know the points where the enemy battalions are coming up. Some of these points will be cared for by French already in position to inform us. I offer to you the opportunity of marking others of those points."

"We shall be glad," said Hal simply.

"Very well. You understand, of course, that you will be killed if discovered. Both of you come with me."

He arose, and Hal and Chester followed the captain to his motor-car, which they entered and drove to the main road, over which German prisoners captured early in the day were still streaming to the rear.

Overhead a few aeroplanes still buzzed--combat and fire control and staff "observation" machines seeking out their aerodromes in the dark. It grew dark so quickly now that Hal, looking up, saw the colored flash of the signal lights from a pilot's pistol; they burned an instant red and blue and red again as they dropped through the air; and, in response to the signal, greenish white flares gleamed from the ground to the right, outlining the aviation field; then the flying machine, which had signaled, began to come down.

From far beyond the drum fire of artillery rumbled and rattled.

The car ran up a side road and halted before a little hut. Captain O'Neill alighted.

"We bad the misfortune, in the attack this morning," he said, "to lose one of our most useful people. The enemy had employed him, recently, in excavating certain of their great underground stations, which I have mentioned; but last night they had him in a front-line trench, which we took this morning. He has volunteered to return to his post, if we can place him behind the lines, but, I regret, he is in no condition for further service. Therefore, we must send a subst.i.tute."

Captain O'Neill led the way into a candle lighted room, where a man was lying in bed. Civilian clothes--the rags of a French refugee from the other side of the lines--hung on the wall beside him. The man was very weak, with hands which drooped from the wrist as he half sat up as the captain entered. The man's name, the captain informed the lads, was Jean Brosseau.

Captain O'Neill produced a map, a duplicate of the ones which the lads had been given several days before. The man in bed now detailed to them the exact nature and purpose of the markings and spots. It was all lined off into little squares and oblongs, each described with a letter and number. These were for the guiding of the guns--because, for each tiny square on the German side of the lines, there was a battery or a couple of batteries behind the French front, whose business was solely to sweep that square with high explosive sh.e.l.ls, gas sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel, when the battle was on.

To escape those sh.e.l.ls, the Germans again were burrowing, Brosseau pointed out. Some places they had burrowed far too deep to be endangered by sh.e.l.ls; but their ways of egress were not known. These were covered with camouflage.

Hal took down the shirt from the wall; vermin crawled in it. Captain O'Neill had not made the mistake of having it steamed or washed or disinfected; vermin and filth of underground communications soiled the rags of Jean Brosseau's jacket, his trousers, his cap. Hal, without ceremony, stripped off his uniform and underclothes. His body was clean and without calluses; the cleanliness was soon remedied. Then he dressed, to give him all the time possible to become accustomed to the garments of a French citizen in the hands of the enemy.

The reverberations of the guns outside had increased mightily; they seemed to double again to topmost intensity. Captain O'Neill frowned a little as he heard them and glanced at his watch. A motorcycle clattered up and stopped outside; a man knocked at the door, delivered a message to Captain O'Neill, and departed. Captain O'Neill read the message and tore it to bits. Hal and Chester waited without question; but the sick man had to ask:

"We have lost ground, sir?"