Slade made his report of this business while lying in the Epemay
Hospital. This I have not seen, but Captain Whitloss has told me of it.
By reason of the character of Slade’s mission, neither he nor anyone
else talked of it and even the surgeons and nurses knew nothing of his
late exploit, more than that he had sustained a serious injury while
flying.
“As soon as I saw that piece of wood,” he told the captain, “I knew it
was swamp larch. That always grows near water and usually high up. I
thought it must have been right close to the gun, in front of it,
because it caught some of the fire. I could even smell the powder. I
thought maybe it was a part of the camouflaging in front. Anyway it was
torn off a limb, anyone could see that, and was near enough to get
burned. In scouting they always tell things by signs. She picked it up
when it fell off the thatch roof and they had to chuck a couple of
buckets of water up there because the thatch was starting. She couldn’t
pick it up at first, it was so hot.
“I knew there wasn’t any larch at all where I’d been ’cause if there had
been I’d have seen it—wouldn’t I?”
The captain said he supposed so.
“There was only one thing to do and that was to start with the brook and
follow it up. I had to start back that night under signed orders so
there wasn’t much time. I knew if there were any swamp larches I’d find
them that way—see? And then I’d find out how a chunk like that could get
torn off and all charred, and be blown two or three miles maybe. I knew
what to do then ’cause I had something to go by. That’s a scout sign,
kind of.”
He certainly made good use of his scout sign. In less than two minutes,
they tell me, he had picked up his trail at the little trickle of a
spring whence they got their drinking water. It came down between rocks,
a mere dribble of water, as if from a leaky faucet. I saw this, what
there was to it, and how he managed to trace it through all its
intricate windings, I am sure I do not know.
I tried to follow it up myself and got just fifteen feet by a tape
measure when it ran under a flat rock.
This trickle led him, as he thought it would, to the brook from which it
branched off. He had crossed this during the day, but, of course, had
not followed it, for there had been no reason to do so. It led him for
about three miles through a densely wooded section where he kept a
continual watch for larches and cedars. But there were none to be seen
and no point of elevation commanding a prospect to the south.
He at last reached a place where the brook ran far below him between
rocks and he followed its course through this ravine with great
difficulty until he came to a point where it appeared to emerge out of a
sort of cave or tunnel and he climbed down to examine it.
He found that the ravine which he had been following branched out of
this larger ravine and that this latter had been roofed with boards and
logs and brush, forming a sort of covered tunnel, which was completely
concealed save at this point of juncture where the brook emerged into
the narrower way. He was now hot upon the trail though he probably gave
no sign of excitement.
He judged by the stars, he said, that this covered ravine ran north and
south and if it did and ran fairly straight, its northern end would be
somewhere in the neighborhood of the railroad village of Le Chesne, or
at least near the line of trail thereabout, while its southern end would
be at the steep slope of the hills southward.
He entered the passage and found that the brook trickled along here not
much wider than in the narrower ravine, and that the bed of the passage
was hard and fairly flat. He reached above him and pressed against the
artificial covering. Cross-pieces had been wedged between the converging
rock at intervals, two or three feet below the upper surface and between
these he could feel the considerable thickness of brush which lay
overhead. Wagons could easily pass here, as safe from aerial observation
as a rabbit in his burrow. And so this sunken road and what it led to
might be used almost to the last minute as the irresistible line of
Marshall Foch advanced.
[Illustration: TOM DISCOVERS A BIG GUN.]
The rest was easy, yet it is characteristic of Slade that he called
himself a fool for not having smelled out this covered ravine in his
wanderings. It was dark and musty inside, the little brook meandering
aimlessly from one side to the other, with pools here and there, and the
foliage overhead emitting a pungent, rotten odor from its soaking in the
recent heavy rains. Some of our own boys, you may be interested to know,
recently passed through this very ravine in their advance toward
Tourteron. But one look inside it was enough for me.
Slade hurried through it, parting the matted roofing now and then for a
glimpse of the guiding stars, and was assured that the passage led
almost due north. And somewhere along this dark, sickening way, he was
siezed with hauting doubts, lest he be pursuing a phantom. What he
sought was so great and the clue to if so trifling! “But I remembered
how Indian scouts would follow a trail a hundred miles just because they
found a hair sticking to a bramble,” he told his superiors. And so he
hurried on, on, with hope sometimes mounting, sometimes falling.
After he had gone what he thought was nearly two miles there came a
welcome freshness in the air which much relieved him, and he soon saw
the clear sky overhead. Before him, to the south, the open country
spread away and in the distance he could distinguish two or three tiny
lights which he thought were within the allied lines.
The ravine opened into a spacious basin filled partly by a small lake
and enclosed by dense woods. He followed the guiding stream out of the
dank passage and found that it had its source in this lofty little sheet
of water nestling almost at the very brink of a steep decline. In its
black, placid bosom his guiding stars were reflected and a sombre tree
of swamp larch cast its inverted shadow in the water.
Farther back there were others—larches and cedars. “Good old scouts, I
told ’em,” Slade said afterwards; “they love the water, same as I do.”
So there, Master Roy Blakeley, scout and would-be author—there is the
sequel of your Temple Camp and your Black Lake and your silent,
companionable trees.
Tom Slade saw the lay of the land clearly enough now. This covered
ravine was in fact the lofty crevice between two hills, and from the
distant allied lines its end must have taken the form of a great rough V
high up where those twin hills parted. There was no suggestion of this
upon close inspection, but it is a faculty of the scout to see in his
mind’s eye a bird’s-eye view of the locality he is studying. Thus the
scout has always two pairs of eyes.
What Tom Slade saw about him was just a lake amid woods rising on either
side, east and west, and below him, southward, an expanse of open
country. In the little jungle of crowded brush, which from a distance
must have seemed to half fill that big V, stood a great, ugly thing
swathed in canvas. It poked its big nose up slanting-ways at the stars
as if to threaten those friendly monitors of the night for helping this
weary young fellow who stood leaning against it, trying to realize his
good fortune. All about it and over it the brush and foliage clustered,
as if ashamed to own its presence in their still, obscure retreat; and
in front of it, between it and the steep decline, a graceful larch tree
stood in all its silent, supple dignity. From one of its lower spreading
limbs a broken branch hung loose, the splintered remnant blowing to and
fro in the night.
“It seemed as if it must hurt,” said Slade to Captain Whitloss, “and I
felt kind of as if I ought to go and bandage it up—especially as it did
me such a good turn, as you might say....”