IN THE NICK OF TIME
HOW long they had been asleep Tom had not the faintest idea when with a
sudden, startled jump, he came to a bewildered wakefulness. He felt
deeply depressed, and he was distinctly aware of a feeling of alarm and
a sense of impending danger. He could not account for any of the
sensations. Whether someone had touched him, or he had been awakened by
a sound, he did not know. Perhaps he had been dreaming. He could not
tell that, either. Indeed, it was a full minute after he came back to
consciousness before he recognized his surroundings and realized where
he was.
Then he remembered that George and Ollie had been with him. He reached
over, touched them both. Ollie groaned slightly in his troubled sleep,
and Harper turned restlessly. They were safe, anyway. Tom tried to
fathom the strange feeling that possessed him, but he could no more come
to an explanation of what caused it than he could shake it off.
He peered into the darkness. Nothing there to cause alarm, so far as he
could see, but still that disconcerting feeling of some unknown,
unplaced menace. Tom decided to waken his pals. He was not afraid, in
the sense of being a physical coward. It was the baffling mystery of the
thing and what it might portend that was so disquieting. Perhaps it was
just overwrought nerves; or maybe the strange surroundings in which he
found himself when he awakened. He tapped Ollie two or three times upon
the shoulder, and nudged George Harper with his foot. He disliked to
deprive them of their sleep, but he felt that he must. It was not only
the necessity of talking to them about this strange feeling that he
could not get rid of; it was even more imperative that they return and
join their company, which at any hour now might suddenly be ordered to
renew the action.
But even as Ollie and George almost simultaneously grunted sleepy and
impatient objections to this treatment, although at the same time
opening their eyes and starting upright, Tom would have given a great
deal had he left them to their sleep—and silence.
For, hardly the fraction of an instant before they had given half
conscious utterance to their plaintive growls, Tom had seen, as clearly
as though it had been daylight, the head, then the shoulders and half
the body of a man rise suddenly from a shell hole ahead, as though
directly at the sound.
Instinctively Tom knew by the way the man moved that he was not wounded.
Equally obvious was it that whoever he was he was not an American, for
all this territory now was held by those forces, and one had no need to
hide if he was a friend.
This man was in the very act of swiftly climbing out of his hiding place
when Tom spied him. At the first sound of the sleepy voices he had as
suddenly dropped back and out of sight.
Never for a second taking his eyes from the spot, Tom warned his two
friends to silence in a way that quickly brought them to their senses,
and they crept close to hear his briefly whispered statement of what he
had seen.
Unquestionably it was the same man they had been seeking before they
dropped off to sleep. Each had a feeling of shame that they should have
weakened that way when there was an urgent necessity before them. How
long had they slept? It was a useless question. Two facts were apparent,
however. It was still night, so they could not have been out of the hunt
for long; and they knew the whereabouts of the enemy they sought.
One method of capture presented itself to them, and that was to creep
forward in a surrounding movement and then lay there, as close to the
hole as they might, without themselves being discovered, and wait for
the man to make his reappearance. They were without bombs and could not
attack that way. They had no rifles, either, and were entirely dependent
upon their automatics. Even with these, they realized, there was danger
to themselves in the positions they would be in, in any cross firing.
However, there was no other way open.
Caution, already a sort of second nature to them, was sharpened by the
knowledge that their presence also was known, and by the realization,
too, that this German—for there no longer was any doubt in their minds
as to that—should not elude them a second time, possessing as he did
information which must not fall into the hands of the Boche commanders.
As it turned out later, however, the man in hiding had good reason for
electing to take his chances on escape, rather than lay there until
daylight, when capture would be inevitable if he was then still alive.
While the three lads were yet some distance from the spot, proceeding in
a spread-eagle movement, Harper in the centre, the fellow made a wild
jump from the hole. Three shots rang out almost simultaneously. With a
groan the man crumpled up on the edge of what had been his hiding place.
The lads waited for a moment, to make sure it was not a ruse, then
swiftly ran upon him, all three covering him with their pistols.
Considering the darkness and the quickness of the shots their
marksmanship had been highly creditable. One bullet had hit the German
in the right hip, another in the calf of the left leg, while the third
had grazed his neck. He was painfully, although not critically wounded;
but he was entirely out of the fighting for the time being.
Tom stripped him of his automatic and made sure he had no other weapons,
but even wounded as the fellow was he tried to put up a resistance when
Ollie opened his blouse and abruptly drew forth a packet of papers.
“That means your finish, Fritz,” Harper ejaculated, but the wounded man
only grunted viciously.
“Search him carefully and see what else he has collected in the way of
valuable souvenirs for his superiors,” Tom instructed; and Ollie
continued to investigate every possible hiding place in or under the
German lieutenant’s clothing.
Evidently he had canvassed a large stretch of ground, for he was a
veritable walking library of secret orders, maps and photographs taken
from American officers. While Ollie was doing this, and Harper was
discouraging any resistance by a threatening play of his automatic, Tom
walked around to take a look into the shell hole. It had just occurred
to him that the captured German might not have been working alone.
In the darkness Tom took a false step. Before he could regain his
balance he went feet first into the hole and disappeared completely from
sight. When he landed it was with a grunt that told that the breath had
been pretty well jarred out of his body, and the Hun, even in the pain
of his wounds, laughed outright.
Ollie leaned over the hole and looked in. He expected to see Tom’s face
almost on a level with his. Instead, he could but dimly discern him,
several feet below.
“Holy smoke!” he ejaculated, involuntarily. And then, “Oh, Tom, are you
hurt?”
“No,” came the response, “only jarred. But this is _some_ shell hole.
I’m just beginning to get my breath. Felt as if I was dropped from an
aeroplane. My searchlight seems to be burned out. Drop yours down to me;
I want to look around. Easy now—reach down as far as you can and then
let it go. I’ll try to catch it.”
By mere good fortune he did. In an instant he had switched it on, and
its glare was followed by a quick gasp from Tom and an involuntary
expression of surprise.
“What is it?” asked Ollie, still leaning over the edge of the pit.
“What is it?” Tom repeated. “I don’t know yet, but it’s not a shell
hole, that’s one thing certain. There’s a long tunnel that leads away
under the ground here, and it’s big enough for a man to walk through. It
runs almost due north from here, so far as I can see, but the light’s
not strong enough to show how far it goes.”
“A tunnel!” Harper repeated, at the same time fixing the German with a
severe stare. But if the prisoner understood, he gave no sign. His only
expression was one of pain.
“Ollie,” said Tom, who now as a sergeant could command the other two,
although he had no disposition for any unkind or unjustified use of his
authority, “you’d better stay there and watch Fritz, while Harper drops
down here with me. We’ll trail along the secret passageway that the
Germans didn’t build for nothing, and see just where it leads.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him, you can bet,” Ollie answered, as Harper, by
the aid of the light Tom threw upward, dropped warily into the deep
entrance to the secret tunnel.
In another moment Ollie was left alone with his prisoner, and Sergeant
Tom and George Harper had disappeared from sight and sound, Tom in the
lead, flashing the searchlight’s rays before them as they went, Harper
following close behind.
They found the artificial passageway to be at no point less then five
feet in height, and on the dirt surface of the flooring were imprints
leading them to believe that many persons had passed back and forth
through there at a comparatively recent date. Its course was almost
directly northward, and the lads could at all times see some distance
ahead. Nevertheless they proceeded warily, not knowing what sort of a
trap might be set for them. The air was heavy and damp, but gave them no
great discomfort until they had proceeded for several hundred yards, and
then they concluded that the tunnel, whatever its purpose, had but one
outlet, and that was the one through which they had entered.
“Do you realize where this is leading?” Tom asked presently, as he half
turned toward Harper.
“Unless my sense of direction is all off,” George responded, “directly
under Thiaucourt.”
“Straight as an arrow,” Tom added, “and we ought to be almost under the
town by this time.”
No longer could they hear the dull rumble of the guns, and their own
voices echoed and re-echoed down the cavernous passageway, the only
interruptions in an otherwise dead silence.
“Hello!” exclaimed Tom suddenly, in a note of new surprise, and an
instant later the far wall flung back the word at them as though someone
there were repeating it in mockery. There was something unpleasant about
the situation. It was like wandering around aimlessly in the dead of
night in an abandoned house reputed to be haunted, not knowing what
startling surprises awaited one at any moment.
Tom’s exclamation escaped him when he noticed that the tunnel apparently
came to a dead end about twenty-five feet ahead. A moment later,
however, it was apparent they were approaching a right-angled turn.
Tom extinguished his own light to see if any ray came from down this new
passageway, but there was nothing but pitch blackness, in which neither
lad could discern the outline of the other.
Snapping it on again they proceeded slowly until Tom stood within a foot
of the abrupt turn in the wall. The new tunnel ran directly to the right
of the direction in which they had been approaching. With a sudden
forward thrust of his head, Tom took a quick survey of what lay beyond.
He drew back with a gasp, and his free hand fell upon Harper’s arm.
“Look!” was all he could say for the moment, and Harper, following Tom’s
bidding, drew in his breath sharply, then gave a low whistle.
They had made a discovery of tremendous moment! But had they made it in
time?
“Out! Out!” Tom ordered. “We may be blown to atoms any second if we stay
here.”
And indeed it was true. The sharp turn in the tunnel brought them into a
great cavernous chamber in which there must have been at least fifty
tremendous bombs, all connected by copper wires with a heavy cable which
hung suspended from the ceiling. It was obvious that during their long
occupancy of the St. Mihiel salient the Germans had dug this tunnel and
planted these mines, for just such a contingency as now existed—enemy
occupation of Thiaucourt. And while neither lad was an engineer, both
knew sufficient about bombs to realize that there were enough there to
blow the whole town site off the map and annihilate every person within
a radius of more than half a mile.
“Ten thousand men are quartered on the space that those bombs would blow
up, and the Germans may touch them off at any time! Run! Run!” Tom
ordered, and, setting the example, he bounded by Harper, the searchlight
held out before him, tearing toward the mouth of the tunnel as fast as
his legs would carry him.
“They’re probably waiting for that German lieutenant to return,” Tom
managed to speculate jerkily, without in the slightest reducing speed.
“It’s pretty clear now that he was down here—to see that everything was
all right—and put on—finishing touches.”
“Yeh,” agreed George, “and it just occurs to me now that he wore the
insignia of the Signal Corps.”
“Wanted those papers,” Tom supplemented, “so as to know when the largest
number of our men would be over the spot.”
“Uh-huh,” from Harper, but by this time neither had further breath to
spare on conversation. They were forcing themselves forward with every
ounce of energy they possessed.
As a gray light, barely discernible, loomed in the distance, they knew
that at last they were approaching the mouth of the tunnel, and that the
first streaks of dawn had appeared.
Winded as they were, neither had the strength to climb the smooth-sided
hole as the German evidently had done, by the main strength of the
pressure of his legs against the walls as he made his way upward.
George squared himself with widespread feet, and Tom mounted to his
shoulder. Ollie, who was still guarding the prize prisoner and awaiting
their return, began popping questions, even as he helped Tom out of the
hole, but the latter had no time for more than the essential facts then.
“Use your jacket as a rope and give Harper a lift out of that hole,” he
instructed, and while this was being done he partially regained his
breath.
“Now Ollie,” he continued, “go like the wind to the first officer of
Engineers you can find, tell him we’ve discovered that everything under
Thiaucourt is mined, and get back here with the necessary men as soon as
you can.”
He turned to Harper. “You stay here and watch this German. I’ve still
got breath enough left to make brigade headquarters in a very few
minutes. Don’t let Fritz get away under any circumstances.”
And at the same instant Tom and Ollie sped away in opposite
directions—Tom for the highest commanding officer he could find; Ollie
back over the ground they had traversed, past the grave they had dug,
and into the wood in search of an officer of Engineers.
Both knew that thousands of lives were at stake. Both put forth their
bravest effort. For both realized that if they succeeded at all it would
only be in the nick of time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------