A NIGHT TO BE REMEMBERED
"Come!" the French officer whispered. "Now is our chance."
"Oh!" Ruth murmured, scarcely understanding.
"Haste! He will be back in a minute," the officer said.
He helped her over the dyke, and, stooping, they ran away from the
abandoned house from which the puzzled American sentinel thought he had
seen a spy flashing a light signal to the enemy lines.
"Fortunately, I had a little mirror," murmured Major Marchand, as he
and the girl hurried on through the dusk. "With it, you see, I flashed
a reflection of the firelight upon the broken panes of that upper
window. Our brave young American will discover his mistake before his
relief comes. We could not wait for that. Nor could we easily explain
to his top-sergeant why we wished to go forward."
"Oh!" murmured Ruth again. "In your work, Monsieur, I see you have to
take chances with both sides."
"It is true. Our own friends must not suspect too much about us. The
best spy, Mademoiselle, plays a lone hand. Come! This way. We must
dodge these other sentinels."
It was evident that he knew the vicinity well. Beyond the mesa they
descended through a grove of big trees, whose tops had been shot off by
the German guns.
They traveled through the lowland swiftly but cautiously. Ruth could
not see the way, and clung to Major Marchand's hand. But she tried to
make no sound.
Once he drew her aside into a jungle of brush and they crouched there,
completely hidden, while a file of soldiers marched by, their file
leader flashing an electric torch to show the way.
"The relief," whispered Major Marchand, when they had gone. "They may
be swarming down this hill after us in a few minutes."
The two hurried on. The keen feeling of peril and adventure gripped
Ruth Fielding's soul. It was not with fear that she trembled now.
At length they halted in a pitch-black place, which might have been
almost anything but the sheepfold Major Marchand told Ruth it was. He
produced an officer's trench whistle and blew a long and peculiar blast
on it.
"Now, hush!" he whispered. "It is against usage to use these whistles
for anything but the command to go over the top at 'zero.' Necessity,
however, Mademoiselle, knows no law."
They waited. Not a sound answered. There was no stir on any side of
them. Ruth's fears seemed quenched entirely. Now a feeling of
exultation gripped her. She was fairly into this adventure. It was
too late to go back.
The major blew the whistle a second time and in the same way. Suddenly
a dark figure loomed before them. There was a word In French spoken
out of the darkness. It was not the password the Major had given the
American sentinel.
"Come, Mademoiselle," said the major. "Give me your hand again."
Ruth's warm hand slipped confidently into his enclosing palm. The
Frenchman's courtesy and unfailing gentleness had assured her that she
was perfectly safe in his care.
They left the sheepfold, the second man, whoever he was, moving ahead
to guide them. Even in the open it was now very dark. There was no
moon, and the stars were faint and seemed very far away.
Finally Ruth saw that a ridge of land confronted them; but they did not
climb its face. Instead, they followed a winding path along its foot,
which soon, to the girl's amazement, became a tunnel. It was dimly lit
with an electric bulb here and there along its winding length.
"Where are we?" she whispered to the major.
"This is the first approach-trench," he returned. "But silence,
Mademoiselle. Your voice is not--well, it is not masculine."
She understood that she was not to attract attention. A woman in the
trenches would, indeed, create both curiosity and remark.
The guide stopped within a few yards and sought out trench helmets that
they all put on. When the strap was fastened under her chin Ruth
almost laughed aloud. What would Helen and Jennie say if they could
see her in this brand of millinery?
She controlled her laughter, however. Here, at the first cross-trench,
stood a sentry who let them by when the ghostly leader of the trio,
whose face she could not see at all, had whispered the password. Ruth
walked between her two companions, and her dress was not noticed in the
dark.
Soon they were out of the tunnels through the ridge. Later she learned
that the ridge was honeycombed with them. The trench they entered was
broader and open to the sky. And muddy!
She stepped once off the "duckboards" laid down in the middle of the
passway and dipped half-way to her knee in the mire. She felt that if
the major had not pulled her up quickly she might have sunk completely
out of sight.
But she did not utter a sound. He whispered in her ear:
"I admire your courage, Mademoiselle. Just a short distance farther.
Do not lose heart."
"I am just beginning to feel brave," she whispered in return.
Presently the leader stopped. They waited a moment while he fumbled
along the boarded side of the trench. Then a plank slid back. It was
the door of a dugout.
"This way, Major," the man said in French.
The major pushed Ruth through the narrow opening. The plank door was
closed. It was a vile-smelling place.
A match was scratched, a tiny flame sprang up, and then there flared a
candle--one of those trench candles made of rolled newspapers and
paraffin. It illumined the dugout faintly.
There were bunks along the walls, and in the middle of the planked cave
was a rustic table and two benches. Evidently the men who sometimes
occupied this trench had spent their idle hours here. But to Ruth
Fielding it seemed a fearful place in which to sleep, and eat, and loaf
away the long hours of trench duty.
"All ready for us, Tremp?" asked Major Marchand of the man who had led
them to this spot.
The American girl now saw that the man was a squat Frenchman in the
horizon blue uniform of the infantry and with the bars of a sergeant.
He was evidently one of the French officers assigned to teach the
Americans in the trenches.
In his own tongue the man replied to his superior. He drew from one of
the empty bunks two bulky bundles. The major shook them out and they
proved to be two suits of rubber over-alls and boots together--a
garment to be drawn on from the feet and fastened with buckled straps
over the shoulders. They enclosed the whole body to the armpits in a
waterproof garment.
"A complete disguise for you, Mademoiselle--with the helmet," Major
Marchand suggested. "And a protection from the water."
"The water?" gasped Ruth.
"We have half a mile of morass to cross after we get out of the
trenches," was the reply. "I am unable to carry you over that,
pickaback. You will have to wade, Mademoiselle."