With Haig on the Somme Part 12

CHAPTER IX

In the Sniper's Lair

"You hound!" shouted the lad, as with great presence of mind he held his right arm aloft with the last bomb tightly clutched in his fingers.

There was a moment of agonised suspense which seemed extraordinarily protracted, and then he alighted, unhurt, on a pile of blankets, the unexploded bomb still in his hand!

"Thank Heaven!" were his first words as he lay, his heart beating furiously and his overwrought frame quivering from the shock.

The atmosphere of the vault--for it was nothing less--was close and stuffy, and there was a greasy smell in the still air, emanating from some lubricant used to protect the stocks of spare rifles which he was presently to discover.

"By Jupiter! if this bomb had gone off down here there wouldn't be much of me left," he muttered, gathering himself up and remembering that he had placed a spare torch in one of his breast pockets.

He was thankful then that he had not had time to change his tattered tunic, and, drawing it out, he pressed the b.u.t.ton and played the bright beam up and down the vault.

It was one of those marvellous underground constructions for which the Germans seem to have a positive genius. The chalk had been excavated for trench building, the walls were boarded, and square balks of timber supported the roof in a double row of pillars.

He could not count the cases of ammunition--there were so many--nor the stacks of rifles that were stored in the place, but he saw enough to convince him that he had made a very important haul, if only things were going well above ground.

The distance he had fallen surprised him when he mounted the steps, but the steel door resisted all his efforts to open it, and though he thundered with his fists, there was no response from the other side.

"I've got to get out of this somehow," he thought, and, descending to the floor again, he made a minute inspection of the vast dug-out without finding any means of egress, until he came to an open case of rifle ammunition, from which several packets of cartridges had been removed.

As he read the description printed on the others he felt cold air blowing on him from somewhere not far away. At first he thought there must be some hidden ventilation shaft, but the draught was low down and fluttered the tatters of his abbreviated tunic.

"It's a jolly odd thing," he murmured, turning his light in the direction of the current. "Surely there is not another dug-out below this one?"

He pa.s.sed round the angle of some piled-up boxes stamped with strange hieroglyphics, and then he stood still, for there was another door, the entrance to a gallery, as he saw in a moment.

But this time it led upward in a rather steep slope, and the floor was marked with the print of heavy boots, showing that the pa.s.sage had been well used.

"I suppose it would take a month of Sundays to come across some revolver ammunition, and then the chances are it wouldn't fit these French chambers," he thought, examining the commandant's second revolver, which had only one charge left. "Anyway, I must find where this leads to."

And, veiling the light with his fingers, he entered the gallery.

The sides had been roughly smoothed and faced by the pioneers' shovels, and he shivered involuntarily, for it was cold.

Making no noise, he crept for some distance in a straight line, until he came to a right-angle bend in the gallery, which he followed for sixty or seventy yards, and then switched off his torch as a loud explosion, not far ahead, seemed to drive the air against his cheeks, followed by the acrid odour of a German cartridge.

For an instant he believed himself to have penetrated an enemy sap, but now he knew that somewhere close in front lurked a German sniper!

Dennis Dashwood dropped on to one knee and peered along the pa.s.sage. A faint light filtered through the darkness and a voice boomed dully.

"That is my first miss to-day," came the words in German. "This wind has given me a bloodshot eye, and I am shivering. Will you go back and bring me a couple of bottles of wine, Joachim?"

"With pleasure, Kamerad," said another voice, and the light was blotted out as a figure rose from the ground where he had been sitting on his heels. Dennis made out the outline of the sniper stretched at full length on a blanket, his rifle in front of him on a wooden stand, but it was too far to get back unseen, for the man was slouching heavily towards him, and in another moment discovery would be inevitable.

Dennis raised his right arm and fired his last cartridge, and the messenger fell forward, dead as a herring.

With a startled shout of surprise the sniper faced about, but Dennis was upon him, and, locked in a terrible embrace, the pair fell with a crash on to the chalky floor.

All fatigue seemed to vanish from the boy's limbs as he and his opponent rolled over and over, and he strained every nerve in a struggle which he knew could have only one end.

For a whole minute the narrow pa.s.sage was filled with the sound as of a terrific dog fight, for Dennis had managed to get his head well fixed under the sniper's jaw, effectually preventing any words leaving his lips. Instead there came a stream of weird snarls and hisses and spluttering coughs, accompanied by the savage kicking of heavy boots against the walls of the gallery.

Their arms were round each other, and they struck out with their knees, but the thin muscular frame proved more than a match for the stouter man, and at last, pinning him down in a corner, where he panted quite out of breath, Dennis withdrew his head, and they looked into each other's faces by the light that filtered in again through a crevice at the end of the tunnel.

"You'd better surrender without any more fuss," said Dennis. "Perhaps you don't know that we've taken your first line trench. Otherwise I shouldn't be here."

"You are a liar," was the polite reply. "All Englishmen are liars."

"Have it your own way," said Dennis with a superior smile, as he began to get his own breathing under control. "Judging from your official statements, and your Bethmann-Hollweg, Germany hasn't much reputation for truth-telling! So you are the beast we've been trying to locate, are you?"

The man had a red moustache, the ends of which lifted as he smiled.

"Yes, I am the beast; the 'great blonde beast' your papers are so fond of talking about," he said ironically. "I've been here for a month, and I have shot on an average twenty of your fools every day."

"Well, you'll shoot no more," said Dennis grimly.

"That we shall see," retorted the man, suddenly stiffening his spine and almost succeeding in reaching a sitting position.

Up went the lad's arm and down came his clenched fist full on the bridge of the German's nose, dropping him back again. He had slid the French officer's empty revolver into its case, and as the man blinked at him with the water in his eyes from the force of the blow, Dennis drew it and clapped the cold muzzle to his ear.

"Now will you surrender?" he said, and he saw a wave of terror pa.s.s over the German's face.

"Yes, yes--don't shoot. I will surrender!" he cried, but as he spoke the beam of daylight was eclipsed, and Dennis looked up.

It was an artfully contrived place, for the tunnel ended against a little scarp of chalk, through which a crescent-shaped hole had been cut, commanding a wide view of the English trench and looking from the outside like an innocent, natural crevice. Immediately behind it was a steel grating, firmly embedded in the sides of the tunnel, and on one of the bars the muzzle of the sniper's rifle was laid, its stock resting on an ingenious wooden fork, which could be raised or lowered by a rack and pinion.

Through the crescent-shaped opening a human face looked in, and a voice, which Dennis instantly recognised, gave warning of more trouble.

"What-oh, Fritz!" said Harry Hawke. "You shouldn't speak so loud. As you can't come art and I can't come in, 'ere's a little present for yer."

And he stepped back with a loud chuckle.

"Hold on, Hawke, you a.s.s!" shouted Dennis at the top of his voice, but he was too late. Harry Hawke had already drawn the pin and lobbed a hand grenade neatly through the crevice.

Dennis knew that there were less than five seconds between him and eternity, but bracing his foot against the side of the tunnel, he suddenly wrenched the German sniper on top of him and lay there.

"Ach, I have you now!" laughed the man triumphantly, but his words were drowned by the explosion, and as the end of the pa.s.sage was blown into the open air, the steel grating with it, Dennis felt the man he clutched grow strangely limp in his hands, and his own face bathed as with a hot rain.

"That's the way to do 'em in, Tiddler. What-oh, it's put the tin hat on one of 'em, and not 'arf, it 'asn't!"

"Yes, you confounded jacka.s.s; and it's nearly put the tin hat on me!"

exclaimed Dennis, rolling the thing which had once been a man to one side with a shudder.

Harry Hawke's face was a picture. Consternation at what might have happened, and a huge joy that it had not happened, struggled for mastery, and between the two the game little c.o.c.kney broke down and sobbed like a child.