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--Hello, 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 assaults 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 shell 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 shells;
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 substitute."
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 shells,
gas shells and shrapnel, when the battle was on.
To escape those shells, the Germans again were burrowing, Brosseau
pointed out. Some places they had burrowed far too deep to be
endangered by shells; 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?"
"No, no! All goes well--very well, except for us here," Captain
O'Neill replied. "The time is moved forward; that is all."
He bent again over the map.
"There will not be time now if you are taken far back of the German
lines where an aeroplane may come down unobserved. There will not be
time," he repeated to Hal, "for you to work forward to the position
where you must be."
"What's the matter with coming down near the position where we're
wanted?" asked Hal.
"Near their lines?" Captain O'Neill questioned. "There will be men all
about, of course; you will be observed."
"What's the matter with coming down observed sir?" said Chester.
"Observed," repeated the captain. "How do you mean?"
"It is something we have talked of before," said Hal. "We have often
considered this method of getting a man down inside the German lines,
even in a section where discovery is certain. A machine goes up
carrying bombs, perhaps; it drops them and attracts anti-aircraft
fire. It appears to fall, sir, and comes down in that way."
Captain O'Neill's brows drew together, puzzled, but he was patient.
"But I do not see the advantage," he said.
"It falls in flames, sir," said Hal. "The pilot ignites it when it
begins to drop."
"Proceed," Captain O'Neill bade.
"The men found in it are killed," continued Hal "'killed by the
shrapnel fire--also, of course, they burn with the aeroplane. It is,
to all observers, a bombing biplane shot down in flames."
"And you think such a plan will succeed?" asked the captain.
"I feel sure of it, sir."
"Well," said Captain O'Neill, "you are the two who must take the
chances. You have my permission to adopt your own plans."