A BATTLE UNDERGROUND
Five minutes passed; ten. The _Wanderer_ was out of sight now beyond
the trees. Ensign Stowell beckoned and his little command drew closer.
“We want those chaps,” he said in low tones. “They’ve got a hiding
place of some sort over there; probably a hut. There are six of us.
Have you all got watches?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good. I’ll go around to the further side, Jones will take the next
post on the west, then Endicott. You stay here, Masters. Staples you
will cut around to the east and Troy will go half-way. Five minutes by
your watches from the time I start off you will all close in. Don’t
fire a shot until I give the word unless you are fired on. Then shoot
to stop your man but not kill him. Make as little noise as you can,
watch for your friends and don’t mistake them for the men we’re after.
Get it, all of you? All right. Look at your watches.”
The ensign rose and started eastward around the edge of the straggling
grove. Jones followed, and Staples. After a minute or so Endicott and
Nelson quietly went their separate ways, leaving a somewhat anxious
looking youth behind in the shape of Billy Masters. Nelson kept to
the sand so that his feet would tread on no crackling twigs, and,
when he had traversed what he believed to be the proper distance,
knelt and looked at the watch on the leather strap about his wrist.
He had still two and a half minutes to wait. From his place he could
see the _Wanderer_ again. She was swinging westward now, perhaps two
miles away, but one who didn’t know would never have suspected her of
interest in this forlorn stretch of reef and sand. Nelson thought he
could make out a moving figure on her forecastle deck and wondered
if it was Cochran impatiently awaiting a chance to ram a cartridge
into that bow gun. Save for the roar of the waves and the plaintive
cries of the gulls everything was still. The seconds ticked themselves
slowly away. A minute more now to wait. A half minute――fifteen
seconds――ten――five――――
He arose, revolver in hand, and stepped forward into the gloom of the
pines. In spite of his care a twig snapped occasionally under his feet
as, dodging queer, misshapen branches, he went on toward the center of
the wood. The sand was soft and mixed with pine needles and clothed
here and there with sad-looking vines already showing new leaves.
The trees were more scattered than he had thought, and were twisted
strangely by the force of the gales. After a minute he caught sight of
something moving ahead of him and, with a leap of his heart, swung his
automatic up. But it was Endicott. A second rustling brought Masters
to view. Converging, they kept on. One by one the other members of the
landing party drew near, Staples last of all. The ensign was clearly
nonplused. He looked enquiringly from face to face. Each man shook his
head. They stood in silence for a minute. The sound of the surf was
strangely hushed here in the center of the little wood. Nelson could
hear his watch tick. The ensign was looking toward the tops of the
small trees, pivoting slowly on his heel. Jones was doing the same.
Nelson, suspecting an airplane, looked, too, but saw nothing except the
gray sky through the loose branches. The ensign raised a hand warningly
and stepped a dozen paces to the eastward and repeated his queer
survey, and then to the north. The others watched and waited in silence.
Suddenly they saw the ensign’s roving gaze fix itself steadily on some
point almost above his head. They craned their necks, but saw nothing.
The ensign’s head moved again and finally he walked away from them,
step by step, still gazing upward. Nelson, for one, was fairly consumed
by curiosity and would have remained so several moments longer had
not his wandering gaze surprised Lanky Staples in the act of forming
the word “wireless” with his lips. Then Nelson understood and peered
eagerly into the topmost branches and, after an instant, saw what the
officer had seen. Once detected the apparatus was startlingly evident.
Twenty paces away from where Nelson stood, a twenty-foot sapling had
been lashed to one of the taller trees. Some forty feet away another
sapling, not quite so long, had been secured. Between them, invisible
to a careless gaze, stretched two fine copper wires, perhaps two feet
apart. From above they might have been detected, but from any point
seaward they were invisible.
The ensign was stepping softly back toward the little group, a quiet
smile on his lean face. “We’ve got them,” he whispered. He bent a
thumb over a shoulder. “They’ve dug a hole back there. See that darkest
pine, the one with the branches low to the ground? There’s a trap-door
there. You stay here until I beckon. I want to make sure that it’s
unlocked. When I beckon, come quietly, but keep out of range, for they
may start popping.”
The ensign crept slowly off toward the indicated spot and presently
they saw him stoop. A second later he straightened again and beckoned.
“Come on,” said Jones softly.
They joined the ensign. Half hidden by the drooping branches of the
tree, and raised a bare inch above the sandy floor of the forest,
was a square of wood, some eighteen inches across, of matched boards
painted gray and sprinkled with sand while still wet. The ensign
pointed to a barely defined path that led toward the northern beach
and looked accusingly at Jones, and Jones, observing, shook his head
sadly and stuck out a dubious lower lip. But there was no opportunity
for excuses, had he had any to offer, for the ensign noiselessly raised
the trap, revealing a ladder which, at first startled glance, seemed to
lead far into the bowels of the earth. At the foot of it was a glow of
light. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the narrow shaft,
revetted carefully with planking, they saw that the bottom was after
all but a dozen or fourteen feet below them. And, as they looked they
heard plainly the crackling of a wireless and the low sound of voices.
Ensign Stowell studied the situation a moment and then he leaned toward
Jones and they spoke together softly. Jones passed on the orders.
“Lanky, you come next. Then Chatty, then you, Endy. You stay up here,
Billy, and watch. If any of them come up the ladder, drop ’em. All
right, sir!”
The ensign slipped back the safety catch of his automatic and
noiselessly lowered himself into the aperture. Jones, revolver ready,
watched anxiously. Rung by rung the ensign descended. When his head
had disappeared Jones followed. Those above, listening with painful
intentness, heard scarcely a sound from the shaft. Staples scowled
impatiently. Then he, too, set foot on the ladder, and at that instant
they heard the ensign drop the last six feet and heard his voice cry:
“_Hands up!_”
Jones was gone now, Staples was descending rapidly and Nelson was
following. The gray daylight disappeared as the latter feverishly
searched for the rungs with impatient feet. From below came a dim
yellow radiance. He heard the sharp report of a revolver, voices, the
thud of Staples’ body as he spurned the last rungs of the ladder. He
looked down. Jones was flattened against the wall, but he cried a
warning and dropped.
He landed on his feet, collided with Jones and sprawled sideways.
Another shot rang out and he was conscious of a blow on his arm under
the shoulder and of Jones leaping across him. Then he struggled to
his feet. Smoke wreathed and eddied in the dim light of a single lamp
that hung from a nail in one corner, and made a haze through which he
saw dimly. One of the enemy lay prone on the earth floor with blood
trickling from his head. A second, a smoking pistol still in his grasp,
stood with his hands above him. A third, surprised at the instrument,
the receiver still in place was slewed half-way around on the box that
served for chair and with drooping jaw and frightened eyes raised his
hands, too, in token of surrender while his furtive glances swept the
room for an avenue of escape. But the fourth and last member of the
quartet was still unsubdued. It was he who had fired the last shot,
and, although his revolver now lay on the ground under trampling feet,
he fought fiercely, desperately in the clutch of Jones, uttering all
the while the guttural, savage growls of an animal. Back and forth
they swayed, lurched against the man on the box, who cringed away from
them, stumbled back to the center of the floor again. The ensign and
Staples, their revolvers covering the others, watched the struggle for
an instant. Then, just as Endicott joined them, Jones thrust a leg
behind his adversary and sent him sprawling heavily. He was on him in
the instant, astride his chest, pinioning his arms to the floor and
the encounter was over. “Take that man’s revolver, Troy,” directed the
ensign.
Nelson stepped across the prostrate enemy on the floor and approached
the man who was standing. As he did so he tried to return his own
weapon to its holster but found to his surprise and dismay that he
could not raise it from where it hung at his side. So he used his left
hand instead and took the revolver from the upstretched hand of the
captive.
“Search him,” said the ensign, and Nelson, giving the revolver to
Endicott, went over him without finding any other weapon.
“Stand over there against the wall,” commanded the officer, “and keep
your hands well up. Now, you on the box, stand up.”
The wireless operator had difficulty in obeying because his legs were
not inclined to hold him, but Endicott helped him, more forcibly than
politely, and he too was searched, without result, and sent to join his
companion. By that time Jones’ adversary was quiet and he was allowed
to get up.
“Back to the wall there, please,” said the ensign. “Jones, you and
Staples watch those men. If they lower their hands an inch, shoot.”
He stooped over the man who lay unconscious from a blow with the butt
of a revolver and examined the wound. “He will come around in a few
minutes,” he said. “See any water here, Troy?”
“No, sir.”
“He will have to wait then. Now let’s see what’s here.”
He went to the bench on which were the wireless instruments and papers
and gave his attention to the latter. Nelson, conscious of a dull pain
in his right arm, returned his revolver to the holster with his left
hand and then looked curiously around him.
The subterranean apartment was much larger than he had expected to see,
being fully five paces long by four wide. The walls and floor were
of hard-packed sand, the roof of heavy timbers supported by posts of
unpeeled cedar set at intervals along the walls. Although the floor
must have been a full two feet below the ocean level it was scarcely
more than moist. Three narrow two-inch boards ran from wall to wall
at the end of the chamber opposite the ladder and served to hold the
instruments of the wireless outfit: battery, jars, coils, detector,
spark gap, condenser, switches and key. The discarded receiver swung
over the edge from its cords. As was discovered later, the wires to the
aerial were led along the roof and up a corner of the shaft. At the
right of the bench a green tin lamp was supported by a nail driven in a
post. There was no furniture except the empty box that had done duty as
a chair. Some nails in the supporting posts held the coats and hats of
the four conspirators. A box of safety matches had been spilled and its
contents lay scattered on the ground.
Nelson had no difficulty in picking out the leader of the four, the one
whose bearing at a distance had stamped him as military. It was he who
had fought so desperately with Jones and who now, somewhat the worse
for the encounter, stood straight against the wall, hands upheld and a
sneering and haughty smile on his good-looking face. As Nelson observed
him he spoke to the ensign.
“What you find there will be of no use to you,” he said. “If you
seek to prove us guilty of anything unlawful, sir, you are doomed to
disappointment.” He spoke in very precise English which might well
have deceived his hearer until the latter had viewed the typically
German countenance with its rather small gray eyes under heavy brows,
its somewhat aquiline nose, high cheeks, carefully waxed mustaches and
general expression of arrogance.
“We will let others decide that,” replied the ensign coldly. He bundled
the few papers and a small black leatherette-covered book together and
placed them with care in the inner pocket of his jacket. Then: “Place
these instruments, as many as you can, back in this box, Troy,” he
directed. “Hello, what’s the matter with your arm?”
“I think a bullet got me, sir.”
“Let me see. I should say so! Get his sleeve out of the way, Endicott.
Better cut it. That’s it.” He made a tourniquet above the wound from
which the blood was running freely. “You go on up, lad. Call Masters
down to help you.” He turned then to the prisoners. “You will march
to the ladder, one at a time, and wait outside. There is no use trying
to escape, for a patrol boat is lying off the beach. Besides, you will
be shot instantly the moment you make a break. Lieutenant Haegel, you
first, please.”
The man started at the sound of his name and two white disks appeared
at his cheek-bones. But he bowed, smiled ironically and asked: “I may
lower my hands, I presume?”
“Yes. Go first, Staples. Now, then――――”
Outside, Nelson, suddenly feeling faint, sat on the sand and tried to
keep the trees from swaying. He saw Staples emerge, and then the German
addressed as Lieutenant Haegel, but no others, for just then he toppled
quietly over on the ground.