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 button 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 passed 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 passage 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 passage. 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 passage 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 pass 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 ass!" 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 passage 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 jackass; 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 Cockney broke down and
sobbed like a child.
"Why didn't yer sing out, sir?" he wailed.
"I did sing out, my boy, but you sang in! However, never mind. How is it
going?" said Dennis, squeezing the disconsolate one's shoulder.
"We've got the trench, sir," said Tiddler, whose face was as white as
Hawke's under the dirt that grimed it. "Our chaps are consolidating the
position now."
"Then one of you go and bring my brother here," said Dennis. "You go,
Tiddler; and Hawke, come with me."
A great rent had been torn in the mouth of the sniper's gallery, and the
sniper himself was not good to look upon, every rag of clothing having
been stripped from his back and lower limbs by the bomb, while a couple
of yards farther on lay the man whom Dennis had shot.
Picking his way past them, Dennis flashed his torch on again, and,
followed by Hawke, made his way back into that underground storehouse,
which had so nearly been his grave.
As he entered it he gave a prodigious yawn, and felt an indescribable
lassitude creep over him.
"I'm frightfully tired, Hawke. I've been through a lot since we crawled
over to their wire last night, and I'm hanged if I can keep up much
longer. You see those steps? A spy fellow pitched me down them neck and
crop. I fell just here, with a bomb in my hand too!"
"Lumme!" ejaculated his listener, as Dennis sat down heavily on the pile
of blankets, just as the shell-proof door above them was opened from the
other side.
Lights flashed into the lower vaults, and several officers chorused
their surprise, among them Captain Bob. Tiddler had not yet reached him,
and Bob was searching anxiously for some trace of his brother.
"My hat!" he cried. "We've touched lucky to-day, but Dennis can't
possibly be down there. I'll go back and question No. 2 Platoon; he may
have gone to the right."
"Arf a mo', sir!" sang out Harry Hawke. "'E is 'ere right enough, and
bust me if he ain't snorin' already!"
Hawke, looking up the steps, saw the group part and General Dashwood
himself come quickly down the ladder, and the store of shot and shell
and the piles of rifles were as nothing to the brigadier as he saw the
boy he thought he had lost for ever lying on the blanket pile, sleeping
the sleep of physical exhaustion.
"That blood's nothing, sir," explained the delighted private, coming to
attention. "It ain't 'is own. I can show you the man wot that come art
of. 'E was that sniper we never could spot, and I reckon it was 'arf me
and 'arf Mr. Dashwood wot killed him." And he gave his listeners a brief
outline of what had happened, as Dennis had told him on their way there
from the tunnel.
"And I sent him out of harm's way, as I thought!" was the brigadier's
inaudible whisper under his moustache, and then aloud he said: "Get
four men and carry him back to his own dug-out. It will do him good to
sleep the clock round, and he will do it better there."
So, oblivious of the jolting, Dennis Dashwood was borne across what had
lately been No Man's Land, and was now ours, and tucked up tenderly in
his bunk, where, if he did not exactly sleep the clock round, he
certainly did not open an eyelid until sunrise next morning.