THE WRATH OF THE HUN
“Oh! Oh!” cried Helen, clinging tightly to Barton’s arm. “Let us turn
back!”
“What good’ll that do!” growled Gear, who heard her.
One of the French nurses crossed herself and murmured a prayer as
Barton could see by her whispering lips. He could not fail to note how
much better the French girls were taking it than Helen. She had quite
lost her self-control and was fairly hysterical.
He could not afford to show any trepidation himself, even if he felt
it. He was in the uniform of an officer of the American forces and
there were French eyes upon him. In any case he must not show the white
feather, and it stabbed his pride that Helen, an American Red Cross
nurse, should do so.
An aerial bomb fell nearer and almost deafened them with its explosion.
Barton sprang out of the motor-car and aided Helen to alight.
“Into the ditch--everybody!” he shouted. “Lie down!”
He saw Renau and Gear spring to the help of the other women, then in a
moment Barton was rushing toward the muddy sluiceway with Helen Fuller.
“Oh, _don’t_ drag me around so, Frank! I’m wet to my _knees_. Isn’t
there some place--”
The roaring of the powerful motor overhead drowned her further
complaint. It was then that another shell fell.
Had Barton not dragged the girl down with him--both falling flat into
the bottom of the ditch--they must have suffered the fate of those
who had not yet got away from the motor-car--the two nurses, Monsieur
Renau, and poor smiling, reckless Johnny Gear, Johnny, who had run away
from home to “see what the blooming war was like.”
Overhead the aero engine moaned into the distance. Barton got to his
knees and pulled the girl up beside him. It was light enough for them
to see each other.
“Oh! Oh! Take me away! I must go somewhere. Oh, Frank! I--I’m all
_muddy_,” Helen, poor shallow, selfish Helen, wailed.
“Oh!” gasped Barton, unheeding. “They’re dead--dead!”
He stood up and tossed back the thick hair from his brow. He had not
his cap. He found his army pistol gripped in his right hand. His left
was holding up the girl whom he clutched by the shoulder as carelessly
as he might have held a half-filled sack of flour.
“You’re not _listening_!” cried Helen. “Don’t you _hear_? Take me
somewhere--take me where it is _safe_.”
He was listening, but not to her cries. That terrible thing in the air
was coming back.
The moan of the powerful engine was increasing again. A few guns
in the distance began to pop. The Field Artillery was getting into
action--_and he was not there_.
What carnage might not have already been accomplished! This terrible
thing in the air, swooping through the fog, might have brought havoc
and disaster to the American forces.
“Take me away! Take me away!” the girl cried over and over again,
fairly clawing at his arm to attract his attention.
“Where shall I take you? One place is as safe as another--until this
raid is over.”
It was growing lighter all the time. The fog was rapidly thinning.
Suddenly Helen shrieked:
“Where is our car?”
There was nothing but a hole in the road where it had stood. Not a
shred of it remained within their straining vision. Wiped out--like
that!
“Here it comes again!” shouted Barton.
Through the dissipating mist the great sausage-like body of the German
air-raider appeared. It was one of the newest and largest airships yet
conceived and built. It drifted low--not two hundred yards from the
earth.
“Down on the ground!” commanded Barton. “If they spy us----”
[Illustration: He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled
clumsily above the spot.
(_See page 201_)]
The huge flying car swooped lower. It seemed to be heading directly for
the two Americans in the muddy road. The lieutenant flung the girl down
again, but stood erect himself, his legs astride, his head back, eyes
glaring through the shreds of fog at the airship. He had involuntarily
assumed an attitude of defiance and his pistol was raised at firing
angle.
He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled clumsily above
the spot. He emptied the weapon at the flying foe.
Suddenly--whether a chance bullet had hit some vital spot or not--a red
flame leaped to life in the envelope of the huge bag. So low sailed the
machine that Barton could see a man run along a narrow platform and
shoot the spray of a chemical fire extinguisher up at the spreading
flame.
Only for a moment was this attempt continued. Then a second man
appeared, and the usual high, staccato voice of a Prussian officer
uttering a command sounded sharply through the rumble of the dying
motor.
The efforts of the man with the fire extinguisher ceased. Some
catastrophe had overtaken the huge war machine. Her engine had lost its
stroke. She was coming to earth--and that in enemy territory. The crew
would destroy the ship as they always do in such instances.
A wild cheer burst from Barton’s lips. Swiftly he reloaded his
automatic pistol. The nose of the wabbly, creaking machine, so clumsy
looking that Barton half wondered how it was ever lifted from the
ground, plunged toward the earth.
It passed directly over the road. The balloon envelope was afire in a
dozen places. Barton could see the flash of an axe in the officer’s
hands as he wrecked the mechanism of the still flying airship.
There was a deafening crash when the car hit the ground. The American
saw one man, turning over and over in the air, dashed forty feet at
least by the force of the impact. Other figures climbed down from the
crushed car on to which the balloon collapsed slowly, all afire.
“Come on!” shouted the excited lieutenant, waving his weapon. “Now
we’ve got ’em!”
“Frank! Stop! Don’t you _dare_ leave me!” wailed Helen Fuller.
“Wait for me here, Helen----”
“I tell you I _won’t_!” cried the girl. She stamped her foot in rage.
“You take me right away from here!”
“But I must round those fellows up. We’ve got ’em--don’t you see? Wait
here for me if you are afraid.”
“I’ll _never_ forgive you, Frank Barton, if you leave me! And I _won’t_
go over there! Those--those men will kill us. Oh, Frank! Come back!”
He hesitated but a moment to answer her. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want
me to be a quitter, Helen,” he declared, and leaped the ditch to get
into the field upon which the wrecked German airship had fallen.
With a scream she followed him. She ran faster than he, and caught
his right arm again just as he was rounding the rear of the wreckage.
Before them stood fourteen men in the gray olive of the German uniform.
The man thrown when the ship came down never moved.
Barton saw instantly that the crew of the airship--even the commander
himself--were unarmed. Good reason for that. Deep in the enemy’s
country, without a possible chance of escape through the lines, a
peaceful demeanor and appearance spelled safety for them.
Barton raised his pistol, Helen still clinging to his arm. The Germans,
or, at least, those in the front of the group, raised their hands in
token of surrender. Even the commander called out: “_Kamerad!_”
“Frank Barton! Take me away! Save me!” shrieked the hysterical girl.
She hung, a dead weight, upon his arm and pulled down the weapon. One
of the men in the back of the group had been stooping down, his hands
on the ground. Now he stood up, stepped clear of his companions, and
swung his right hand back.
With the accuracy of a baseball player he flung the sharp stone he had
picked up. Barton tried to fire and dodge, but Helen’s interference
made both attempts impossible. The stone struck him just above the
right temple and glanced off, cutting such a gash that the blood poured
down his face, blinding him.
With a shout the Germans started for Barton and the girl. The
lieutenant, feeling himself helpless, thrust his weapon into Helen’s
hand.
“Defend yourself!” he gasped, and then slipped slowly to the ground,
crumpling in a senseless heap at her feet.