A DARING EXPLOIT
Frank leaped out.
"Turn the car around first," he said. Henri obeyed. "Now try your
starter. Cut out the motor and then see if she starts quickly."
Henri, mystified, obeyed.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because when we want to start, we may have to do it in an awful hurry,"
said Frank. He searched the road for a moment. "Run her back a few feet
to where that big tree is. It's darker there than anywhere else around
here. All right, that's far enough. We'll have to take the chance of
something coming along while we're gone and bumping into her but I don't
believe there's much risk of that. Now, come on! And quiet! We've got to
get up to that place without being seen."
Cautiously they approached the house. No lights showed in any of its
windows; the place looked deserted. Indeed, all around it were traces
of hasty flight. It was a wayside inn, of a type common always in
France, commoner than ever since the spread of the craze for automobiles
and motor touring. Suddenly Frank stopped.
"Wait a minute for me," he said. "I've got to go back to the car. I
ought to have thought of it before."
"What do you want?"
"Batteries. I saw a coil of wire in the car and I want that, too. And
there must be batteries. A car like this would carry everything needed
for small repairs, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. I think you'll find them under my seat."
Frank was back in less than five minutes.
"All right," he said. "I don't know whether we'll have time to do what I
want or not, and whether I'll be able to do it, anyhow. But it's worth
trying. Now come on past the house. Easy! This is the hardest part of
it."
They slipped by. However, Frank uttered a suppressed exclamation as soon
as they had done so. Before them, on the right of the road was a field
easily two or three times as large as the ordinary French field. As a
rule the land in France is split up into very small sections, closely
cultivated. But here was a cleared field as large as those commonly seen
in England or America, with no fences for perhaps a quarter of a mile in
any direction. Henri turned to look back at the inn.
"They're still signalling from there--and look! There are two lights
now, instead of one, above!"
These lights were still some distance away. Frank studied them. Then he
led the way into the field.
"I thought so!" he said, with suppressed triumph in his voice. "Do you
see those barrels over there toward the inn? There's petrol in those--or
I'll eat my shirt!"
"And if there is?" said Henri. "What then?"
"Can't you guess? What do you suppose those lights mean?"
"Aeroplanes?"
"Never! They wouldn't flash that way. They'd have to be in a different
position entirely. No. Dirigibles!"
"Zeppelins?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps Parsevals or Schutte-Lanz airships. I think Parsevals,
for they need gasoline. And Zeppelins could fly from Brussels or Liege,
almost from Cologne--oh, I have it! That's why they need petrol!"
"Why?"
"They haven't flown over Belgium at all! They are from the sea!"
"Oh--so that they could come secretly, and not be seen as they passed
over Belgium?"
"Yes. If they flew over Belgium they would have to cross some territory
that the Germans do not hold, and word would go to Antwerp and from
there to the army here. Now quickly! They will be here soon. They are
coming nearer every minute."
They went to the barrels as fast as they dared. There was nearly a score
of them, all close together. Each had a tap, and it was proof enough
that they contained petrol to open the tap of one. The smell identified
them beyond any doubt whatever.
"Come on, and help me dig a hole," said Frank. He dropped to his knees,
and began scooping out the soft earth with his hands. Henri fell to with
a will, though he was sadly puzzled. But when the hole had been dug to a
depth of perhaps two feet, and Frank began to hollow out a trench toward
the barrels he began to understand. And as soon as he did, he worked as
hard as Frank himself, careless of torn finger nails and bleeding hands.
They carried the trench to the foot of one of the barrels, and Frank
turned the tap. The gasoline ran out into the trench, and flowed to the
hole. Frank ran back to the hole.
"Stop it when I give the word," he said. "Now!"
Then he was busy with the copper wire he had brought from the automobile
for several minutes. The wire had been carried either to repair cut
telegraph or telephone wires, or to serve as the conductor for a field
system of lighting. But whatever its original purpose had been, Frank
was thankful now that he had found it. He worked fast, and was satisfied
at last.
"Now a little straw and a few twigs over the hole and the trench--and
the sooner they come, the better!"
"Yes, the sooner, the better!" echoed Henri, tremendously excited, now
that he understood, even if rather vaguely, what Frank planned. "Vive la
France! A bas les Allemands!"
As they went back toward the road Frank trailed the wire behind him in
two lengths. And when they reached the road, he dropped into the ditch,
and was busy for some minutes.
"Now if it only works!" he said. "Perhaps it will; perhaps it won't. But
it can't do any harm. That's certain."
"They're coming closer. I think I can see their shapes now--and there
are two of them," said Henri. "Do you see?"
For a moment Frank could not. Henri's eyes were sharper than his. But
then he did make out vaguely two immense shapes that were coming through
the air. Soon, too, the faint hum of their powerful motors made itself
heard.
"Zeppelins and big fellows, too," said Frank. "All the better!"
He wondered if his plan would work, and if he would be able to carry it
out. If, in the final test, would he dare to do what he had tried to
arrange? Time enough to think of that when the moment for decision came.
And meanwhile there were a hundred things that might happen to ruin his
plan. There was nothing to do now but wait. But every moment of waiting
brought the climax nearer. The hum of the motors of the airships rose
louder on the quiet air, broken only by the faint and distant mutter of
the battle that was still being fought miles away. It sounded now like
the buzzing of a swarm of bees, magnified a thousand times. And then the
field was full of men, rushing from the inn. He wondered how they could
have been concealed there. But such wonder was idle, and he did not
think of it. Instead he watched keenly. First one monstrous aerial
battleship came to rest on the earth. At once the men in the field
surrounded her, seizing the ropes that were flung out, and made her
fast.
There was a good deal of noise. Men were calling in German of course.
But soon order was restored, and the only voices were those giving
commands. Suddenly Frank's face lighted up.
"Did you understand, Henri?" he said. "The men in the field are to be
the crews for the fighting. They have sailed here with only enough men
to steer them. And now all are ordered out, to stretch their legs!"
"Yes, I heard that order," said Henri.
"Now keep your eyes glued to them. What are they doing?"
They listened and watched intently.
"Just as I thought," said Frank. "See, they are going to fill the tanks.
There, they are attaching hose. And they have a pump--they surely must
have a pump, to send the petrol uphill!"
Meanwhile the other airship had come down, on the other side of the
barrels, and there as nearly as they could judge, the same procedure was
carried out.
"Watch, Henri! Are they pumping?" cried Frank.
"Yes!" said Henri. "Now--now--now is your time, Francois!"
Frank hesitated the fraction of a second.
"If it meant killing them, I could not do it," he said, solemnly. "But
they are all out of the airships. Now!"
On the word he closed the circuit he had made by connecting the loose
ends of the wire he had carried from his petrol filled hole to the two
batteries he had brought from the car. He had broken the circuit at the
other end, leaving the two wires separated by the fraction of an inch,
and cunningly held in place. The result was a spark--or would be, if he
had not erred.
And he had made no mistake! For as he closed the circuit, he saw a
flash of flame at the spot where he and Henri had dug the hole into
which the petrol had flowed from the barrel they had opened. The spark
had fired the explosive gas that results when petrol is mixed with air.
The flame ran along the shallow trench, and, amid a chorus of shrieks
from the Germans who scattered in all directions, the fire reached the
barrel. In a moment there was a loud explosion. The flame flew to the
other barrels--the whole neighborhood of the barrels, owing to the
mixture of the petrol and the air, was then filled with an explosive and
inflammable gas.
There was a great flash of flame, broken by a dozen sharp reports as one
barrel after another blew up.
And still, though the Germans were flying in all directions, plainly
visible in the light of the blazing gasoline, the real success of
Frank's plan hung in the balance. But then what he had calculated
happened. The flame ran through the lines of hose. And a moment later
two great shafts of flame marked the spread of the fire to the helpless
monsters of the air. There was no chance to save them. Indeed, even the
Germans had no other thought than to save their own lives. Their raid,
whatever its ultimate object, was ruined and two vessels of the great
air fleet of the Kaiser were destroyed.
For a moment after the final catastrophe the two scouts stayed, caught
by the wonder and the magnificence of the ruin they had wrought. But
then Frank cried out,
"Come on! We haven't a moment to lose! They'll know that that was no
accident! Some came running this way. They'll find the wires! And then
they'll know. The wires will bring them here. Hurry!"
They began running desperately toward the automobile.