THE LONG NIGHT.
Then followed the blackest hours of Jack's life. Outside the sentries
kept up their eternal pacing. In the distance a dog barked, and there
was still scattered firing. For a long time the unfortunate young
wireless man sat huddled on the floor of his prison in a sort of torpor.
All at once he recollected that one of his guards spoke English. Perhaps
he could get the loan of pen or pencil and paper to write some last
words. But when hammering at the door for some moments brought a
response, his request was gruffly refused. The sentry resumed his
measured pacing.
One--two! One--two! Hour after hour the sound beat into Jack's brain
till he thought his head would burst.
Then came another sound.
The sound of digging! The blows of a mattock!
A cold perspiration broke out on Jack's forehead as he realized the
import of this. They were digging his grave, and by a refinement of
cruelty, within earshot of his prison place. Whether by accident or
design, poor Jack was being forced to hearken to the most grisly of the
preparations for the next morning's reveille.
So the hours crept by leaden-footed. Sleep was out of the question as
much as was possibility of escape. The sound of the digging, which Jack
had stopped his ears to keep out, had ceased.
Then came a sudden stir outside. The sound of hurrying feet and commands
barked in sharp, quick voices. Jack's heart gave a bound.
Could it be a detachment of Belgians summoned by Tom and Bill coming to
wipe out the small force occupying the farm?
He flung himself against the door of the smoke house, listening
intently. There was a tiny crack at one of the posts and through this he
could command a limited view of the moonlit farmyard. Then came an odd
sound. Like the dry whirring of insects in the fall. It grew in volume.
The hurrying and the shouts increased, too. Shots were heard, scattering
one after the other and a yell that sounded like a shout of warning.
Then the world rocked and spurted flame. Screams and groans filled the
air.
Again there came an explosion that shattered the night and sickened the
senses. Jack, half stunned, fell to the floor of the smoke house as part
of its roof was torn off.
Then came silence, broken an instant afterward by groans and moans and
swift, alarmed orders. There was a rat-a-plan of hoofs. The queer
whirring sound died out. Only the moans still continued. Dizzy and sick,
Jack got to his feet.
As yet he could not quite realize what had happened. Suddenly followed
realization.
A night raiding aircraft had spied the shifting lights of the encampment
and, by the moonlight, caught the gleam of stacked arms, and had struck.
The sound of the sentries' ceaseless pacing had stopped. Jack shouted
and pounded on the door of the partially wrecked smoke house, but there
was no answer but the moans and cries that were now getting fainter and
less frequent. The sides of the smoke house were of rough logs and
without much difficulty Jack clambered to the shattered roof.
He raised himself and clambering over, gave a hasty glance about him. It
was a terrible scene of wreckage that he surveyed. In the earth two
immense holes, big enough to bury two horses, had been torn, and close
by lay two men. Over toward the house was a third figure stretched out.
Three horses, one of which died as Jack was looking over the carnage,
lay not far off.
There was nobody else in sight.
Jack clambered over the edge of the gap the shell had torn in the roof
and dropped lightly to the ground.
"Wasser!" moaned one of the wounded men, whom Jack recognized as one of
his guards. The boy sped to the well and hastened back with the big
earthen pitcher from which they had refreshed themselves earlier that
day.
But he was too late. Even as the boy held the cooling draught to the
sentry's lips, the man died. The other was already dead when the boy
dropped to the ground, his body frightfully shattered by the aerial
bomb.
There was still the third man lying by the house and Jack, thinking he
might be able to minister to him, hurried over. But here, too, the bomb
had struck fatally.
A shaft of moonlight fell through the poplars and illumined the man's
face. It was Radwig, struck down in death even as he had planned a cruel
revenge for another. Jack covered the dead professor's face with the
man's huge blue cloak and then stood silent for a moment. The rapidity
with which it had all happened almost stunned him.
Fifteen minutes before he had been a prisoner with the hideous sounds of
spade and mattock in his ears. Now he was, by nothing short of a
miracle, free again. He raised his face to the sky and his lips moved
silently. Then, with a last look about the place, he prepared to leave,
fervently hoping that before another day had passed he would be with his
friends once more in Louvain.
All at once he heard a loud whinny. One of the dead troopers' horses had
been left behind in the mad flight from the farmhouse. It was saddled
and bridled, although the girth had been loosened. Jack untied it,
tightened the girths, and mounted. He did not know much about riding,
but somehow he managed to stick to the animal's back as he directed it
down the road.
Every now and then he drew rein and listened. He had no desire to
encounter prowling bands of Uhlans or to run into the small force that
had evacuated the farmhouse, no doubt believing him to be dead. But dawn
broke while he was still traveling, not at all certain that he was going
in the right direction.
Jack decided to abandon his mount. Taking off its bridle so that it
could find forage along the roadside, he patted its neck and said:
"Thanks for the ride, old fellow."
Then bareheaded, and tired almost to exhaustion by all he had gone
through, yet driven on by dire necessity of reaching the Belgian lines,
the lad struck off across a wheat field into a path of woodland. On the
edge of the field he shrank suddenly back into the tall wheat. There lay
a man's coat, a stone jug and a basket. No doubt the man was close at
hand. But although he crouched there for a long time, nobody came, nor
was there any sound of human life. Birds twittered and once a rabbit
cocked an inquisitive eye at the lad as he lay crouched in the wheat.
Cautiously Jack raised himself and parting the stalks, peered out. He
saw something he had not noticed before. The man, who doubtless owned
the belongings which had alarmed Jack, lay stretched out at the foot of
a tree. He was on his face sleeping.
But was he sleeping?
An ugly, dark stain discolored the ground around him. His shirt was dyed
crimson. Jack saw, with a shudder, that he had nothing to fear here. The
poor peasant was dead. Shot down by wandering Uhlans no doubt, as he was
about to gather his harvest.
"Poor fellow, he'll never need these now," said Jack, as driven by
thirst and hunger he investigated the stone jug and the basket. One held
cider, the other the man's dinner of black bread, onions and coarse
bacon.
Too famished to mind the idea of eating the dead man's dinner, Jack
stuffed his pockets, took a long pull of the cider jug and then plunged
into the wood. Here he flung himself down to rest and eat. Then, tired
as he was, he forced himself to rise and travel on again.
Faint and far off the distant rumble of cannonading came to his ears,
but here in the woods it was as calm and peaceful as if war, death and
slaughter were forgotten things. At length he came to a place where the
woods thinned out and there was a small clearing. He was about to
advance across this when he saw something that caused his heart to give
a quick leap and stopped him short in his tracks.
At one side of the clearing was an aeroplane!
It was a big monoplane with gauzy, yellow wings and a body painted the
color of the sky on a gray day, no doubt to make it invisible at any
considerable height.
Any doubt that it was a war machine was removed by the sight of a small
but wicked-looking rapid-fire gun that was mounted on its forward part.
Jack was still looking at it, rooted to the spot as if he had been a
figure of stone, when there was a sudden crackle on the floor of the
wood behind him.
Then came an order sharp and crisp.
"Arrette!"
Jack was not a French scholar but there was something in the way the
command was given that made him stand without moving a muscle. Footsteps
came behind him and then he felt rather than saw a man passing from the
rear to face him.
He worked round to the front of the boy and then Jack saw that he was a
small man with carefully waxed mustache in whose hand was a particularly
serviceable-looking revolver, which he held unpleasantly level at Jack's
head.