Very few of them worried about anything, as a matter of fact; even the ration parties provoked no enthusiasm. All they wanted was to sleep, and on many of the war-grimed faces was a smile of satisfied content. They had helped to lift the curtain of the Great Push, and it had been completely successful.

When Dennis opened his eyes, or rather, when he was conscious of opening them, he found Bob standing beside him with a colonel of the R.A.M.C.

"They're not hurrying themselves over that dinner," said Dennis. "I'm just as hungry as a hollow dog."

"He'll do," said the army doctor. "But for all that, a run home won't hurt him."

"A run where, sir?" exclaimed Dennis, sitting bolt upright. "The thing's only just beginning."

"For all that, my dear lad, you came very near making an end of it. Do you know you've had a slight concussion and lay unconscious for two days? But you're all right now, and you're going back to town for a week with your brother. The Push will be going on when you return, and you will be able to take up the thread where you left it."

The Colonel nodded with a friendly smile and went away, adding over his shoulder, "I'll make out the papers at once, and you can both of you get away by the next train that leaves railhead."

The next few hours were a dream to Dennis Dashwood, and when he had put on a fresh uniform, which his man had mysteriously procured, and had satisfied his terrific craving for food, Bob told him that our advance was steadily pushing forward, and the weight of our superior artillery was making itself irresistibly felt.

"Fact is, old man," said the Captain, "if you hadn't had an uncommonly thick head you'd have gone under, and the P.M.O.'s quite right. A week at home is absolutely necessary to set you up. My leg will be better at the end of that time, and we shall both come back with the draft as fit as fiddles."

Dennis groaned, but he felt the truth of what his brother said, and, whisked down to the port of embarkation, they crossed the Channel with an escort of T.B.D.'s, and both experienced that glorious thrill which strikes every Englishman worthy of the name when the white cliffs of the Old Country grow nearer and nearer.

Some day someone will write the epic of the Straits of Dover, and it will be worth the reading.

The moment they had set foot on shore they were consumed by a terrific impatience to reach their journey's end. But at last the hospital train slowed up at Charing Cross, and their taxi passed between the double crowd which every day waited to see the arrival of the wounded.

"Can you believe it, old chap?" said Bob, as they whirled through the heavy summer foliage of Regent's Park and came to a halt.

"I've passed beyond that stage when anything surprises me, Den," laughed his brother. "I believe if I woke up some morning and found myself on the top of St. Paul's I should simply look upon it as an observation post, and proceed accordingly."

He broke off as the glass doors opened and a well-known figure came out on to the steps, and the next moment Mrs. Dashwood was in the arms of her two soldier sons.

Their arrival had been witnessed from the window of the schoolroom, and the new governess was powerless to repress the joyful yell or to check the stampede as her young charges tore down the stairs.

"I've got something for you in my haversack, Billy," laughed Dennis, producing a German helmet minus the spike; and what with buttons and bits of shells, when the small fry retired to resume their study of French irregular verbs it is to be feared the verbs were even more irregular than usual.

The talk of the elders naturally turned on the Von Dussels, and Mrs. Dashwood listened with bated breath to the account of their various meetings with the German spy.

"I suppose you've seen nothing more of Madame Ottilie of the big eyes?" laughed Bob.

"I am certain that I passed her at the Piccadilly Tube station two days ago," said Mrs. Dashwood. "But she has dyed her hair red. I am convinced it was the woman, and she knew that I recognised her. Oh, it is a shame that these people are allowed to remain in our midst with their wonderful system of transmitting intelligence."

"Well, I don't think their intelligence is likely to help them now," said Dennis. "We've got the beggars set. We've proved that, man to man, our fellows are miles better than the enemy, and it's only a matter of time. Whatever we take now, we retain—no falling back as in the old days. And, by Jove, mater, you should just hear our artillery!"

"I hear it every day, sleeping and waking," said his mother, putting her hands to her ears. "And oh, how I wish your dear father had been with you! He hasn't had a day's leave since the war started."

"And I'm afraid he isn't likely to put in for one," said Bob. "The Governor's great idea is to stick to his job. He's made our brigade one of the finest in the Army, and they just worship him out there."

How the time flew!—faster even than the week's kit leave that had brought Dennis home before—and though Bob still walked with a slight halt, his leg was getting better every day; while Dennis openly declared that it was simply absurd to have given him leave at all.

"Look here, old chap," said the Captain on Monday, "I'm going up to the War Office to-day to report myself fit and receive my orders about taking that draft over. Of course, it's delightful to be at home again, but there's no earthly reason why we should put in our full leave and feel that we're slacking."

"Right-o!" responded Dennis promptly, "I want to buy one or two things to take over, and I'll come into town with you."

Mrs. Dashwood's heart beat quicker, but she made no attempt to stand in their way, feeling secretly proud of their eagerness, and the two brothers parted outside the Strand Tube, having arranged to meet at a certain well-known restaurant at a given time. It was easier to get into the War Office than to get out of it, and Dennis, his own mission accomplished, was cooling his heels outside the appointed rendezvous when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"I thought I couldn't be mistaken, Dashwood," cried a cheery voice.

"What, Wetherby, old chap!" And Dennis looked at the badge on the brand-new uniform of the lad who had accosted him. "Great Scott! Have they sent you to ours?" And his old schoolfellow grinned delightedly.

"Yes, I've just been getting my things. Left the O.T.C. last week—join the reserve battalion to-morrow."

"And if I've anything to say about it, you'll come out with the draft on Wednesday. Bob will work that for you. Remember Bob, of course? Look here, I'm waiting for him now. Let's go in here and have some grub. He's bound to turn up in a few minutes"; and linking his arm in that of his old schoolfellow, they passed into the restaurant together.

"The Red Tulips" was filling up rapidly, but they secured a little table, and turned down a chair for Bob. It was a gay place, all gilt and glitter, with a string band on one side of the long hall, and at hundreds of other little tables well-dressed people were lunching, a goodly sprinkling of officers in uniform among them.

At the next table to their own was a stout Major, whom Dennis instantly identified as a "dug-out."

His face was flushed and he was talking loudly, names of battalions flowing glibly from his well-oiled tongue. His companions were an over-dressed lady and a young "nut" who ought to have been in uniform.

"There's no doubt about it," said the Major. "My battalion—the Sloggers, you know—absolutely take the biscuit. The —th are a very decent crush, and so are the —th and the —th. They make up our brigade, you know. I shall just get back in time, and as soon as I arrive we have orders to leave Barbillier to support Dashwood's Brigade, which has been awfully cut up in this last business."

"Confound that old gasbag!" muttered Dennis, leaning across the table to Wetherby. "That's the way information gets about—he's no right to be talking like that."

"Certainly not," replied Wetherby, "but I think they're going now. That waitress girl is making out the bill—a pretty long one, too—she's been writing hard for the last five minutes."

"You see, what really happened was this," continued the red-faced Major, "Dashwood's Brigade was at ——"

"You'll excuse me, sir," said a voice, "but I happen to be in Dashwood's Brigade, and we're not at all anxious that our movements should be given broadcast in a place like this."

"Eh, what!" stuttered the field officer, looking at the single star that adorned Dennis's cuff, and waxing furious. "What the dickens is the service coming to? Do you know who I am, sir?" And he fixed his eyeglass into the frown that was intended to slay this young whippersnapper who presumed to dictate to a man with a crown on his shoulder.

But Dennis made no reply, for his eyes were resting on the white-aproned waitress, who was busy with her pay-book, and he saw two things.

One was that it was no bill she was making out; the other, that the red hair under her coquettish little cap matched oddly with the great black eyes that were bent on her writing.

"Pardon me," he said, striding behind the Major's chair; and as his hand stretched forward for the pay-book the waitress looked up, and he knew that it was Ottilie Von Dussel!

"You here!" he exclaimed, and the perforated leaf on which she had been writing came away in his fingers as she closed the book.

She gave a little cry, and one of the musicians stepped down from the platform and came up to them.

"You must not make a disturbance here, sir," he said rudely, and the next moment he was flung back across an adjoining table with a cut lip.

Dennis swung round as people sprang to their feet, but Ottilie Von Dussel was making her way swiftly towards a neighbouring door.

"Stop that woman!" he shouted. "She is a German spy!" But everybody was talking at once, and the white cap vanished out of sight.

"I shall report you, sir," thundered Dennis to the loquacious Major, flourishing the leaf he had secured. "Every word of your conversation has been written down. There was a carbon in that book, and that she-fiend has escaped with the duplicate. Within forty-eight hours the German headquarters will receive information that may cost us a thousand lives!"



CHAPTER XXIII

"Gas!"

The hubbub in the restaurant was tremendous. Well-dressed people can jostle and clamour and crush just as selfishly as anybody else, and those of the lunchers who were not near enough stood up on their chairs to get a better view.

The musician picked himself up with a fried sole embossed on the back of his dress coat and two portions of hot soup running down his neck, to say nothing of blobs of mashed potato and the contents of overturned cruets all over him.

"I've got one of you, anyhow," said Dennis in German, as he seized him by the collar. "You'd better have sat tight among your fiddles, and allowed Madame von Dussel to play her own dirty game."

If the musician's look could have killed, there would have been another vacancy in the Reedshires.

The cause of all the tumult confronted Dennis, purple with indignation, and began to bluster. But another officer had wormed himself resolutely forward through the crush.

"I want to know what the deuce you mean, sir!" demanded the indignant major, but the new-comer interrupted him.

"I am the Assistant Provost-Marshal," he said. "What is the meaning of this fracas?"

"The explanation is very simple, sir," replied Dennis, handing him the slip of paper. "My friend and I were astonished to hear this officer talking so unguardedly. It is charitable to suppose that he has taken too much wine, and when I expostulated with him I recognised one of the waitresses as a remarkably clever German spy."

The A.P.M. nodded.

"I gathered that," he said. "I will ask you, gentlemen, to accompany me to the manager's room." And the excited crowd fell back to let them pass.

As Dennis brought up the rear with his prisoner he met Bob coming in, and young Wetherby told him what had happened.

"By Jove! it's a thousand pities we missed that woman," said the captain. "We haven't seen the end of that vixen and her husband."

What happened in the manager's room it is not for us to reveal, but the placards of the evening papers had the startling announcement:

"DRAMATIC CAPTURE OF A GERMAN SPY AT A WELL-KNOWN WEST-END RESTAURANT!

ESCAPE OF HIS FEMALE ACCOMPLICE! BRITISH OFFICER'S WINE DRUGGED!"

In the Gazette a few days later was an announcement among the promotions: "2/12th Royal Reedshire Regiment, Captain Robert Oswald Dashwood to command the battalion with the rank of major. Second Lieutenant Dennis Dashwood to lieutenant."

Probably none of the lunchers knew what that meant; it was not their affair.

* * * * *

Up the muddy road swung a brown detachment to the music of mouth organs, and Harry Hawke, who was lounging at the door of a big barn, chewing a woodbine and looking fed up with life generally, lifted his snub nose in the air as the head of the detachment came round a bend in the road.

In an instant the sulky, discontented look vanished from his face, and he let off a yell.

"Turn out, you beggars!" he yelped. "Tiddler, look at this! 'Ere's our bloomin' draft at larst. Give 'em a cheer, boys! Now we shan't be long!"

From the barn and the adjacent cottages the Reedshires poured and lined up at the roadside.

"Never mind the weather, Now then, all together: Hallo! Hallo! Here we are again!"

sang the draft, to the accompaniment of the mouth organs, the battalion joining in with a lusty roar of welcome.

"Lumme, Tiddler! They're a bloomin' fine lot!" was Harry Hawke's approving comment. "And if there ain't our little 'ero with two blinkin' stars on 'is blinkin' sleeve! Are we down'earted?"

And eleven hundred and fifty throats gave a thunderous "NO!" as the draft halted.

Within twenty-four hours of the arrival of the draft the battalion fell in with packs and rifles. The little pillar-box at the end of the barn, with the time of the next collection scored in chalk on the wall, had been filled to overflowing with field post cards for home, and the Reedshires left their billets to join the brigade again.

It was all new to young Wetherby, and Dennis seemed quite a seasoned veteran as he pointed out things to his old school chum while they drew nearer and nearer to the thunder of the guns.

Contalmaison had already been taken with great slaughter before they reached the firing-line, and the shadows were lengthening as they came to a captured trench and prepared to make themselves snug for the night.

Dennis and Wetherby were taking possession of a half-demolished dug-out when Bob made his appearance.

"If you fellows have got any coffee to spare, I'll have some with you," said the major. "And I recommend you to turn in all standing, for we're expecting a big counter-attack from the direction of that wood on our front. How have you stood the march up, Wetherby? Feel a bit knocked?"

"Nothing to speak of," laughed the new subaltern of A Company. "I'm not too tired to enjoy the fun when it starts."

"Well, if our informations are correct, you'll see plenty of 'fun,' as you call it, before sunrise. I've just had a chow with the Governor, and he's as pleased as Punch that we're up in time, for I think it's going to be pretty serious. Our airmen have brought news of exceedingly heavy enemy reinforcements, and the German guns are holding their fire on this sector, which all points to something."

"How's the wind?" said Dennis, over the rim of his enamelled mug.

"Dead right for Brother Boche," replied Bob, with a smile.

"I don't quite understand," ventured young Wetherby, who, in spite of the tan of arduous training that browned his clean-shaven, boyish face, was not ashamed to ask questions.

Like Dennis himself, he was not one of those pert modern boys who think they know everything.

"What has the wind got to do with it?" said young Wetherby.

"Gas, old chap, gas!" replied the two brothers. "The moment you hear the alarm, ram on your gas helmet and see the tube is working."

"And by the living Jingo!" cried the major, "there it goes!" And he shot out of the dug-out into the trench as a man on the look out beat furiously upon an empty shell-case dangling there for the purpose.

"Pull it right down!" shouted Dennis, giving young Wetherby a helping hand with his helmet. "Now you're fixed. Wish there was a mirror handy; you've no idea how well you look in it, old man."

Despite the seriousness of the moment Wetherby roared with laughter inside the stifling, smelly cowl that made them both seem like familiars of the Spanish Inquisition.

And then, revolvers in hand, they took their places in the trench and waited.

"Are you certain it's gas?" said Dennis to Tiddler, who had sounded the alarm in their front, for beyond the parapet there was a strange stillness, and the night was as black as your hat.

"Yes, sir; I see it right enough, just as their last flare died down. I saw it at Hill 60, and I've 'ad some. It'll be 'ere in a tick."

But the enemy was impatient that night, and on a sudden a group of star-shells burst overhead, lighting everything up brilliantly, and revealing a long line of grey figures advancing stealthily.

"How do we go now?" inquired Wetherby, as another bunch of star-shells went up. "Do we wait until they're on top of us?"

"That depends on Bob's judgment," replied Dennis, making himself heard with some difficulty through the flannel folds of his mask; and while he was speaking there came the shrill signal for "ten rounds rapid."

As the Lee-Enfields crashed out our machine-guns began to hammer, and the boy fresh out from England felt a fierce thrill of exultation seize him, for this was the real thing at last—the thing he had been longing for so eagerly!

The long grey line seemed to shiver in front of the machine-guns, and great swathes of the enemy went down. But our trench was on a ridge, and the rear ranks filling up the gaps with a precision that astonished young Wetherby, the German line began to mount the slope, breaking into the double.

Dennis suddenly gripped his arm.

"Yes, what is it?" cried the boy, as the "Cease fire" blew and was immediately followed by another signal.

"Reedshires, get over!" shouted Dennis. "That's what it is. Good old Bob! He's a beggar for the cold steel. Come on, Wetherby! There's a fine bit of free wheel for us—all down hill and a walk over at the bottom. Charge, boys, charge!"

Looking like demons suddenly gone mad, the battalion let go a muffled yell, and tore down the slope to meet those other demons, still more hideous in the steel-faced masks they wore as a protection against their own gas; and at the end of a dozen strides brown and grey mingled with a terrific shock.

"Jove, what a ripping scrum!" laughed Wetherby, as he and Dennis plunged into the struggling mass of men; and when his revolver was empty he wrenched a Mauser and bayonet from one of the enemy and used them.

The Reedshires were fresh, and made up for that lost time in billets, yielding not an inch, but forcing the Germans farther and farther down the slope, until they broke and ran.

They were artful enough to avoid the shell holes, where the gas lay thick; but they had little time to pick and choose their way, for the relentless Reedshires clung to their heels so closely that our machine-guns had to cease fire.

Here and there, where the fugitive mob was tightly wedged in some narrow gap between a couple of yawning craters, the rearmost of them would turn at bay, and at just such a place, scarcely wide enough for two men to pass abreast, young Wetherby overtook a hefty little private tackling a huge German, who towered head and shoulders above him.

It was impossible to get by until that single combat should be ended; but as Wetherby paused the big German made a circling swipe with his rifle, and his bayonet tore a great gash in the Reedshire's gas helmet. The little man in jumping back lost his balance, and rolled head over heels into one of the craters, his adversary resuming his flight at the sight of young Wetherby, who dropped him with a bullet in the back.

The splendid pluck with which the little man had tackled the giant had appealed to Wetherby's sporting instincts, and realising the hideous death that lurked in the bottom of the shell hole, he sprang down to his assistance, and found Tiddler—for it was he—grasping the torn mask with both hands, while he vainly struggled to scramble out.

But the earth crumbled under his feet, and, already exhausted, the doomed man sank on his knees, and looked wildly round for help.

He should by rights have had a spare helmet in his haversack, but the careless fellow had lost it when they were in billets.

"Go back!" he gasped with a wave of his arm; but the officer boy was no fool, and, opening his wallet, he forced his own spare mask over Tiddler's head and dragged him to his feet again.

A German lay writhing in fearful convulsions beside them, and young Wetherby pointed to that terrible object lesson.

"Come on!" he shouted. "Never mind your gun." And, seizing him by the arm, the pair struggled panting together up the precipitous side of the hole.

"It's all right up here—the gas has passed over!" shouted Tiddler's rescuer. And away he bolted, leaving the grateful man to recover his breath and pick up a spare rifle.



CHAPTER XXIV

The Chateau at the Trench End

The wake of the battalion was marked at every stride by enemy dead and wounded, and when Wetherby overtook them he found them bayoneting and bombing their way along a zigzag trench, and Harry Hawke in the act of scoring "2/12th R.R." on the shield of a captured machine-gun with the point of his dripping weapon.

"Where is Mr. Dashwood?" cried young Wetherby.

"Straight ahead, sir. 'Follow the tram-lines,' and you can't miss him!" And Harry Hawke pointed with a grin to the zigzag trench.

They ran together along the broken parapet as the explosion of the hand bombs suddenly ceased, and from the way the battalion was crowded in the trench below them with a goodly assortment of unwounded prisoners, progress seemed to have been checked for a moment.

Stumbling over bodies, and every now and then getting entangled among strands of broken wire; blundering down into some trench-mortar hole and up again at the other side, Wetherby and Hawke at length came upon Bob Dashwood and Dennis, where the trench ended abruptly without any apparent rhyme or reason.

"Hallo, what's up?" Wetherby called, removing his mask and putting on his helmet, seeing that his brother officers had done the same, the battalion being now beyond the gas zone.

"Wait a minute," replied Dennis. "They'll send up another flare, and then you'll see."

Overhead soared a rocket from the German lines, and as the light made everything grotesquely visible, the outline of a building showed blackly fifty yards from the trench end.

It was a small chateau, which, from its position in a fold of the ground behind a little ridge, had somehow escaped the havoc of our bombardment.

The ridge round which the trench end curved had been ploughed and mangled and heaped up into a ragged contour, but beyond some gaping holes in the high-pitched slate roof and a yawning gap in the northern wing, the chateau stood behind a tall wall, with an iron gate obligingly open, as if inviting them to enter.

"You see what's happened," explained the O.C. "The place would be so obviously dominated by the capture of this ridge that the beggars haven't thought it worth while turning it into a redoubt. It's very tempting, but it might prove a death-trap if they've got their heavy guns trained on it."

"There's another thing," said Dennis in further explanation to Wetherby. "We've taken about a couple of hundred prisoners, and killed somewhere about the same number, but the rest of the enemy battalion has mysteriously disappeared. We've bombed all the dug-outs we can find, but there's one we must have missed, and the bulk of them have got clear away somehow. What are you going to do, Bob?"

Bob Dashwood lit a cigarette before he replied. Then he reloaded his revolver.

"Those two runners should have reached our supports," he said; "and the field wire will be coming up now. We'll chance our arm, Den, and take possession of the place. Come on, Reedshires!" And he climbed out.

Another rush of brown figures ran forward to the big gate, and Hawke, who was the first to reach it, held up a warning hand as he thrust his head round one of the brick piers, expecting nothing less than machine-guns.

But the place seemed deserted, although the trampled garden bore every sign of recent occupation. A bullock had been slaughtered by the fountain, and its horns and hide lay there. The flower beds had been ruthlessly trodden under foot, but a wealth of beautiful blossom still remained, and Harry Hawke plucked a Gloire de Dijon rose and chewed the stem between his teeth as he scampered up the grass slope on to the terrace.

The front door was wide open, as were several of the white casement windows, and from a magnificent candelabra suspended from the ceiling of the hall guttering candles threw a blaze of yellow light on to the tiled floor.

Even Hawke gaped with astonishment at the gorgeous gilded decorations of the walls and the white marble staircase that led to the upper floor.

"Why, it's like Madame Tussord's arter yer paid yer bob to go in," he said.

"And they've made a chamber of horrors of it," muttered Dennis, who overheard him, as he looked at the shattered mirrors, the full-length portraits fluttering in rags in their frames, and the gilt furniture, whose upholstery of silk brocade showed the traces of muddy boots and spurred heels.

One end of the hall was taken up by a huge open fireplace carved with life-size figures of laughing nymphs and fawns, and, with that coarse imbecility which passes current in Germany for humour, some wag had daubed the noses of the figures with vermilion.

Empty wine bottles lay beside a priceless marquetry table, whose top had been burned with cigar ends; and as the men scattered rapidly through the adjoining rooms, they found everywhere traces of German "kultur" which the vandals had left behind them.

Upstairs it was the same thing; hangings torn and slashed for the mere lust of destruction, smashed china, objectionable caricatures scrawled upon the walls, and upon the open grand piano in the salon a copy of the Hymn of Hate, with a half-smoked cigarette beside it.

"The beasts!" exclaimed young Wetherby, hot with indignation. "Wouldn't you like to turn our chaps loose in the Kaiser's palace at Potsdam, Dashwood?"

"My dear chap," said Dennis, "they wouldn't touch a thing if you did. It's only the Prussians who behave like this. Our fellows are gentlemen. At the same time, I know what you mean, and it makes one sick."

They went rapidly from room to room, A Company having been entrusted with the examination of the chateau, while Bob halted the rest of the battalion in the grounds until they had satisfied themselves that the house was empty.

Bob was making a tour of inspection round the high brick wall to discover what possibilities there might exist of defending it in case of attack, and he and one of the platoon commanders who accompanied him had just reached the stabling, which was some distance from the house, when a sudden hubbub came from the chateau itself.

"Hallo, they've found something," he said to his companion. And they ran back; but before they could reach the terrace firing mingled with the roar of voices, and above the rattle of Mausers rose the bark of a machine-gun.

There were perhaps sixty or seventy men of A Company in the upper part of the house when that hubbub arose; and, rushing out on to the gallery that surrounded the entrance hall, Dennis and Wetherby found the floor beneath them swarming with German infantry in the act of running a couple of machine-guns forward from the huge fireplace.

They belonged to the same battalion which had so mysteriously disappeared, and it was obvious that in their subterranean excavations the Germans must have come upon a secret passage, old as the chateau itself, and connected it up with their new works.

The back of the fireplace opened and revealed a black cavity, which vomited a never-ending horde in the wake of the machine-guns, one of which was slued round to command the garden, while the other was placed at an open window, and was the first to fire.

"This is going to be very hot stuff!" shouted Dennis above the deafening din, as the men of A Company came running on to the gallery. "Be steady, lads, and let 'em have it."

They lined up at the gilded balustrade, and fired down into the mob below them. A sea of upturned faces was turned to the gallery, and a stout Prussian officer, who took very good care to jump back under the shelter of the fireplace, pointed frantically to the marble stair and bellowed out a command.

"Quick! Lend a hand, Wetherby!" shouted Dennis, seizing the end of a large settee. "Hawke, Davis, Johnson, bring all the heavy stuff you can find in that room behind us!" And as they dragged the settee across the head of the staircase, volunteers rushed into the adjoining rooms, staggering out again with chairs and tables to add to the barricade.

They were in the nick of time, for the enemy came boldly up the staircase five abreast.

"Carry on, lads!" cried Dennis. "And you stay here with them, Wetherby. I'll be back in a brace of shakes." And he ran round the gallery until he came opposite to the machine-guns, which were pouring their hail of death into the darkness of the garden.

"This has got to be stopped," he muttered grimly between his teeth. And, groping in his bomb wallet, he took one out, withdrew the pin, and pitched the missile to the other side of the hall.

It dropped where he had intended it should drop—immediately beneath the machine-gun at the open door, one of the gun crew trying to pick it up with a shout of warning to his comrades; but he was too late, and as his fingers grasped it there was a terrific explosion.

The man who was firing fell backwards on to the marble floor, both his legs blown off, and a circle of grey-green heaps surrounded him.

Before another man could spring into his place there was a heartening yell from the darkness, and the Reedshires poured in, their bayonets flashing in the candlelight.

Dennis had hoped to put the second gun out of action, but the thing was too risky for his own men, who were smashing their way into the crowd of Germans that filled the hall.

Besides, something closer at hand claimed his attention, for, in spite of A Company's fire, the head of the storming party had reached that slender barrier, and were already laying hands on the piled-up furniture at the top of the staircase.

He had two bombs left, and, with a shout of warning, he flung them one after another on to the crowded stair. The effect was appalling, for they burst almost simultaneously, rending the gilded balustrade into a hundred pieces, and pouring an avalanche of mangled bodies on to the heads of the rest below.

Harry Hawke signalised his delight by hurling a heavy chair down the staircase, and in a trice the barricade was torn aside, and A Company went down with the bayonet to do their bit.

Taken in the rear, the crew of the second machine-gun fought gamely enough; but the thing was a matter of moments, and, seized with excusable panic, the Prussian battalion fled back again into the passage behind the fireplace.

There was no need for Bob Dashwood to give any command, for strong arms had already seized the gun, and, sluing it round, pointed it at the opening.

A sergeant sprang into the operator's seat, but before he could fire, a crowd of white-faced men, with hands raised above their heads, came running out of the secret passage, crying: "Mercy, mercy!"

"Shall I let her go, sir?" said the sergeant, with a red gleam in his eye.

"Not unless they play any tricks," said Major Dashwood.

He stood there, revolver in hand, and as they filed past him, all the fight gone out of them now, he counted 580 prisoners, including 20 unwounded officers.

"I am the colonel commanding this battalion," said a black-moustached Prussian haughtily. "I shall, of course, be permitted to keep my sword."

"No; hand it over and fall in with the rest of your men," said the major coldly. "And be thankful you are permitted to keep the clothes you stand in."

Within half an hour, thanks to the magnificent energy of our Royal Engineers, a message had been 'phoned to the brigadier, and the answer came back: "Bravo, my boy! Send an officer to me who can explain the exact position verbally, and one who speaks German, who will be useful in interrogating your capture. Let me have Dennis if you can spare him."

That was why, very much against his own inclination, Dennis accompanied the long column of disarmed men that found its way under escort to brigade headquarters just as the dawn was breaking, passing a joyous battalion sent up by the brigadier to consolidate the splendid gains of his beloved Reedshires.

Dennis woke at noon in his father's dug-out.

"I want you to stay here until I get an answer from the general, Dennis," said the brigadier. "If you've never seen the workings of a kite balloon, they're just sending one up over yonder. You'll probably be able to join Bob inside an hour."

Behind a little hollow, close to brigade headquarters, Dennis saw the section busy about the huge sausage-shaped observation balloon, which had been hurried up to direct some batteries already concealing themselves in the vicinity.

"This is the sort of job that would try the nerves of some of you foot sloggers," said a perky little officer, as the lieutenant approached. "By Jove, we're a bit too close to be pleasant! Would you like to go up with me?"

There was something in the observer's tone that rather nettled his hearer, and Dennis replied promptly: "I should like it very much, if you mean it?" without giving a thought on the spur of the moment as to how long the balloon would remain in the air.

"Of course I mean it. Come on!" And as Dennis flung his leg over the edge of the basket the perky youngster gave the order to let her go.

The steel cable began to unwind as the men of the section loosed their hold, and Dennis soon enjoyed the novel experience of seeing the panorama unfold beneath him, and identifying the white-walled chateau they had captured the night before.

At an altitude of two thousand feet the observer 'phoned down to the men at the windlass to stop. A stiff wind was blowing, but the "sausage" behaved itself well until, as the observation officer turned to Dennis with a cheery laugh, something passed screaming beneath them and burst!

Some fragments of shrapnel struck the bottom of the basket; but that was not all. The shell had hit the cable fair and square, the observation officer's laugh changed to a shout of consternation as it snapped, and with an upward jerk the freed balloon floated away towards the German lines!



CHAPTER XXV

From Kite Balloon to Saddle

The two occupants clung to the side of the padded basket, from which it was a marvel they had not been flung by the sudden upward rush of the huge sausage-shaped envelope above their heads.

The observer's face was very white, but he pulled himself together pluckily enough, and took the now useless receivers from his ears.

"I'm awfully sorry to have got you into this mess, old man," he said apologetically.

"It isn't a bit of use being sorry," snapped Dennis. "Get a move on you! What's the best thing to be done?"

The sharp anger in his companion's voice acted like a tonic, and the observation officer pulled a cord.

"I don't think it's an atom of good, for all that," he volunteered doubtfully. "It's a thousand chances to one, with this breeze, that we shall drop on our side of the fence, and those blessed guns of theirs have got us set. Look at that!"

A shrapnel burst above them, and as its fleecy white cloud unrolled there were two more bursts, one immediately below, which carried away the parachute, the other about eighty yards to the left.

"Beggars who fire on the wounded are not likely to miss such a target as we make, although it must be perfectly clear to them that we're coming down," said the youngster between his teeth.

"And suppose they hit us?" questioned Dennis.

"Why, we'll burst, that's all, and descend in flames, with death at the end of the drop and no glory attached to it."

"I wish you'd been in Jerusalem before you asked me to come on this fool's errand!" exclaimed Dennis.

"I shouldn't mind being in Jerusalem just now," said his companion; and somehow they both laughed.

The valve at the nose of the sausage was releasing hydrogen, and the kite balloon dropped slowly as the envelope became deflated. But the wind increased, and already Dennis saw through his glasses the chateau and the wood pass under them.

"I'd half a hope," he said gloomily, "that we might have come to ground near that house. My battalion's there; we took the blooming place last night."

Luckily the wind buffeted them in an irregular course, and the shrapnel flew wide. Seven shells in all were fired at them, and then, ammunition being precious to the enemy, word was evidently given to cease.

It was no use wasting any more on an object whose capture was certain in a few minutes; and lower and lower they dropped, until the observer slackened his pull on the valve cord.

"We may as well save our necks," he interjected over his shoulder. "I wonder if we shall clear that wood?"

Below them stretched a great irregular patch of trees, through which alleys had been torn by our own guns, although much of the wood was still standing, and already a hoarse roar of voices came up to their ears as the enemy lining a trench cheered their misfortune.

"We're dropping right into the trees," said Dennis. "Can't we do anything? Are there no means of guiding this brute?"

"None at all," was the reply. "We're entirely at the mercy of the wind; and look out if our cable catches, that's all—unless you want to be jerked into eternity."

They were both peering down over the edge of the basket as he spoke, and the shouting Germans underneath loosed a volley at the derelict.

Dennis heard the envelope tear in fifty places, and their pace lessened perceptibly; and then it seemed to him that his companion threw himself on to the floor of the basket, and he looked at him.

A little red rivulet was flowing from a round hole in the centre of his forehead, and he realised that the lieutenant had been killed instantaneously!

It was a moment or two before he ventured to look down again, and, peeping cautiously over the edge of the car as the cheering became very distinct, he saw the enemy trench pass out of sight beneath him, and felt the basket tearing its way among the topmost branches of the wood.

Something had got to be done, he knew; and as the top of a tall tree rose above the level of his eyes, and the doomed balloon paused with a sickening jerk, he grasped at a branch, flung himself out, and dangled there.

Relieved of his weight, the balloon, almost on the point of collapsing, dragged itself free of the twigs that held it with a last effort, and floated away to drop on the other side of the wood.

He could hear the excited clamour as men left the trench and ran towards it; and even in the midst of his extraordinary peril he was fired with a wild desire to escape.

His manoeuvre had not been seen, and, lowering himself rapidly hand under hand, he gained the foot of the tree which had proved his salvation, torn and bleeding, but with every nerve of mind and body on the alert.

"They've not got me yet!" he muttered, as he looked about him; and, crawling on hands and knees, crept under the trunk of a fallen tree half a dozen yards away, where he lay down flat on his face.

The very ground beneath him seemed to shake with every discharge, and the roar of the firing was continuous. Not only were both sides flinging a terrific barrage to check the arrival of reinforcements, but half a dozen isolated actions were taking place at various points of the extended battle line. From Trones Wood to Contalmaison Villa heavy fighting was in progress, and Dennis raged inwardly that by his own fault he should have neither act nor part in any of it.

Presently, as he lay with his ear to the ground, he caught another sound much nearer than that of the firing—the thud of men running in heavy boots in his vicinity; and, worming himself still deeper among the undergrowth that surrounded the fallen tree, he drew his Webley revolver and waited.

About a dozen of the enemy came past the tree on either side of it, peering this way and that, and stirring such brushwood as remained with their fixed bayonets.

"Pooh!" said one of them, "this is a fool's quest. What is the good of looking for a man who has got a broken neck by this time?"

"What is the good of the war, I should like to know?" replied one of his companions. "For my part, I am so sick of this terrible life that I would willingly surrender."

"You had better not let our captain hear you talk like that, or you will be shot, my friend," said another of them; "though I dare say, if we were honest, two-thirds of the battalion would agree with you. But it is very certain the Englishman is not here, and the sooner we get back the better."

They passed on; and as the crackle of their going among the bushes died away quickly, Dennis drew a deep breath of relief. He had no idea where he was, for the whole of that rolling country was dotted with irregular patches of woodland, his map case was gone, and the balloon had drifted considerably to the east before it fell.

He knew it would be wiser for him to wait until nightfall and take advantage of the moonlight; but the desire to rejoin his men was too strong to be resisted; and after cautiously peering over the undergrowth he crept from his concealment, and dodged from bush to bush until he reached the edge of the wood.

There the hum of voices warned him that he was only a few yards from the parados of an enemy trench—and not a very deep one at that—for as he parted the brambles behind which he cowered, he could see the round forage caps and shaven heads in front of him.

For an hour he lay there, watching and listening, hoping against hope that our fellows would deliver a frontal attack on the trench, which was thinly held.

Once, indeed, the alarm was given; the enemy manned the fire-step, and the machine-gunners were on the qui vive; but after a while the threatened danger had evidently passed, for they stood down again, greatly relieved.

Every now and then a British shell burst in the wood behind him, tearing off branches and great strips of bark, and bringing the slender trees down with a crash.

"This won't do, Dennis Dashwood, my friend," he murmured. "The way is barred here. Let us see how far their trench extends. I'll swear that was a British cheer on the left." And he crawled back again deeper into the trees, whose shadows were now falling in long lines as the afternoon waned.

Taking his bearings, he worked his way from shell hole to shell hole, now passing through a belt of timber comparatively unscathed, now encountering a stretch that had been heavily shelled, where the trees seemed to stand on their heads with their roots in the air.

Always keeping his eyes on the sky, across which the clouds were drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German shells burst furiously among the neglected fields.

The wood, straggling out still eastward, seemed to indicate the route he must follow; and, without knowing it, he crossed the identical road our troops had taken earlier in the day when they went up to the capture of Bazentin village.

If he could only pass the limit of the German barrage he had an idea that he would find himself among friends before long; and he was right, although the manner of his meeting them was very unexpected.

He paused as the trees suddenly came to an end, and was astonished to see a riderless horse trotting towards him. His astonishment increased as he recognised the saddlery to be British. There was no other living creature in sight. A waving wheatfield, among which some scarlet poppies were growing, marked the skyline, beyond which the ground fell away, and far off in the distance across the wheat was the top of another wood.

"That's a trooper's mount if ever I saw one," said Dennis. And as the mare, with nostrils distended and ears set forward, neighed loudly, he jumped out of his concealment and caught her rein.

"Whoa, little lady—steady!" he said soothingly. "Ah, if you could only speak, and tell me where you have come from!"

He had some difficulty in bringing her to a stand, for she was quivering from the effects of recent alarm; and he saw a red smear on the leather wallets, and the saddle flap on the near side had been cut by a bullet.

As he placed his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, rifle fire suddenly opened from somewhere beyond the ridge of the wheat. He was down again in an instant, and leading the mare cautiously forward through the corn.

Craning his neck above the waving grain, he saw the white line of a trench farther down the slope, and beyond it, retiring at a hand gallop, a row of brown dots in extended order, which he knew to be British cavalry!

A glance had shown him that there was a machine-gun in the trench, and his course was clear now. He must warn the horsemen if they did not know it already; and, turning the mare, he led her back out of sight of the enemy and, mounting, rode off in a wide detour before he put her to top speed across the open.

The sergeant who had ridden her was lying on his back at the edge of the cornfield, and the greyness of his face told that he was dead.

"Now, my beauty!" he cried, with a squeeze of his knees. And away he dashed, taking a barbed wire entanglement like a bird, and coming up with a little bunch of horsemen re-forming in a hollow.

They were Dragoon Guards, and with them was a detachment of the Deccan Horse, whose lance-points and steel helmets twinkled in the sunshine, with here and there a turban among them.

Horses and men betrayed their eagerness, for it was the first time since the dark days of 1914 that the cavalry had had their chance.

"Hallo, sir! Who are you?" was their commander's greeting, as Dennis reined up beside him.

"Lieutenant Dashwood, of the Reedshires, sir—just escaped from the German lines, thanks to the mare which I found running wild up yonder. I want to report a machine-gun in the corn up there."



"The dickens you do!" was the response; and the officer glanced at his men.

Every eye was turned upon him, and the horses were pawing impatiently, shaking the foam from their bits.

"It would be cruelty to animals to disappoint my chaps," he said, with an odd laugh. "This is our day out, you know, and we've waited a tidy while for it." And, raising his voice, he cried: "Come on, men! Slap through 'em—and hang the consequences!"

A rapturous shout greeted his words, and the lance-points came down.

The next moment Dennis found himself galloping beside the leader through the green corn-stalks. Grey figures sprang up in front; someone made a prod at him with a bayonet and missed. Mausers cracked out and a machine-gun began to bark, while here and there little knots of the enemy pressed in close together and prepared to receive cavalry, others flinging up their arms, crying: "Pity, Kamerad!"

But nothing could check the victorious rush.

When his revolver was empty, Dennis drew the sword attached to the saddle, and though he could not distinctly remember what happened, he saw that the blade was red from point to forte, when a parapet stopped the charge, and voices shouted "Retire!"

They streamed back in any sort of order, laughing like schoolboys; and though a few saddles had been emptied, they carried thirty-two prisoners with them—men whose courage had failed at the sight of their glittering lance-points, with the driving force of the galloping steeds behind them.

It had been short and sharp, perhaps a little foolish, but it had been a charge in the old style, and no one minded a cut or a slash when the squadron sergeant-majors formed them up again in the hollow from which they had started.

"Great, eh?" said their leader, binding a silk handkerchief round his wrist.

"Yes, I think it was worth it," laughed Dennis, tying the knots for him.

"I should rather think it was. Didn't some poet Johnny say something about 'one crowded hour of glorious life'? And by gad, boy, if you only knew how we've been eating our hearts out to get a show! Now you can do as you like, but we're going to work up along that wood over yonder. That's Delville Wood, you know. You're miles from your crush."

"Then I'll come with you if I may," responded Dennis, as the line opened out and pushed slowly forward on reconnaissance.

They had not gone very far when machine-guns on their front suddenly opened, and this time the leader deemed discretion the better part of valour. Besides, an aeroplane flying very low came over their heads, and for some minutes they were uncertain whether it was an enemy craft or no, until it swooped above the hidden enemy among the corn and opened fire upon them.

"By Jupiter, that's a good plucked 'un!" said the squadron commander, as the airman swooped for the fourth time before he flew away unscathed.

But out of the ragged volley which the panic-stricken enemy fired at the plane one ball found its billet in the neck of Dennis's mare, and with a squeal and a bound that almost unseated him she tore madly northwards, in spite of all his efforts to stay her.

In vain he hauled on the bit reins; the maddened creature was beyond all human control. The shout of warning from the men behind him died away. The trampled wood and the shell-torn grassland merged into a confused carpet of greeny white beneath him. She took an empty trench in her stride without checking perceptibly, until a crater yawned before them, into which she plunged, tried gamely to keep her feet, and finally rolled over and over to the bottom, flinging her rider clear as she fell dead.



CHAPTER XXVI

Under the German Eagle

Dennis picked himself up with a sob of bitter disappointment, as he realised that the dead mare, which had carried him for a brief moment among his own people, had now landed him once more a good mile within the enemy's lines.

His first act was to bury the sergeant's sword in the earth; his next to reload his Webley revolver; and then, spying a gap in the rim of the crater above him, he clambered up, to find himself on the floor of a German trench!

Not twenty yards away men were busy with pick and shovel, making good the effect of the shell explosion on their parapet; and on the impulse of the moment he dived unseen into the mouth of a dug-out immediately in front of him.

It was empty, but a brazier was burning under a cooking-pot, and on one side of the wall of the unspeakably filthy place hung a row of uniforms.

"I shall never get out of it in these togs," he thought, looking ruefully at his own tattered rags; and with no very fixed idea of what to do or how to do it, he put on the first tunic he found, drew a pair of baggy slops over his own gaiters and breeches, and crammed a forage cap, with a red band and cockade, on to his head.

Something bulky in the pocket of the tunic attracted his attention. It was a book, half filled with German shorthand notes, and on the fly-leaf was inscribed the name—"Carl Heft, 307th Reserve Battalion."

Carl Heft was evidently a stenographer, and to the lad's horror he heard a harsh voice calling out the name.

"Great Scott! What have I done now?" he thought. And as a black-whiskered sergeant loomed in the doorway of the dug-out, he clicked his heels together in the approved German fashion, and stood stolidly to attention.

"What are you skulking here for, Heft?" demanded the sergeant angrily. "Come along, pig's head—the general wants you!"

Dennis stepped briskly forward without a word, fastening the last button on the soiled tunic as he reached the open air.

"They're either in a high state of nerves, or I must be something like the real Carl Heft," he thought. "Not very flattering to one's vanity, but it might be useful, who knows? What on earth is going to happen now? I'm perfectly certain to give the show away this time."

No one paid any attention to him as he passed the busy groups of men in the firing bays, for everyone was working feverishly to repair the damage of the British shells; and after some twists and turns, the sergeant vanished into a covered communication at the entrance to which was planted a pennant, whose horizontal stripes of black, red and white denoted the headquarters of a division.

Dennis could not restrain a smile of huge delight, for the flag told him that we must have penetrated a considerable distance into the enemy lines.

The passage ended abruptly in a luxurious bomb-proof shelter, where electric light was burning. There was a carpet on the floor marked with the white chalk prints of many boot soles, and several comfortable arm-chairs told a story of loot. There were pictures on the walls, and various doorways indicated the existence of quite a suite of apartments.

The place was full of the blue haze of cigar-smoke, and there were three officers standing there, all talking at once.

As Dennis clicked his heels again and saluted with his back to the entrance, his heart beating sixteen to the dozen, one of the officers turned towards him and scowled sourly.

"Zo! You have condescended to come at last, miserable hound!" he snarled—a bald-headed man with a general's shoulder-straps.

"Take this message on to the machine in duplicate." And he pointed to a corner of the dug-out, where there was a telephone board and a stool; and on a Louis XV. table, with beautiful brass mountings, stood a typewriter.

Dennis seated himself with alacrity, thanking his stars that he had learned typewriting in an odd moment, without any distinct idea of it ever being any good to him.

And somehow at that moment there flashed through his mind the recollection of Ottilie von Dussel and the carbon in the pay-book, which had enabled her to escape with her notes.

"Why not a third copy?" he thought. "If I ever get back to H.Q., who knows what use it might not be to us?"

Opening the box beside the machine, he quickly inserted two carbons and three sheets of typing paper; and without a second glance at him the general began to dictate:

"'To Colonel Schlutz, commanding the 307th Bavarian Battalion.—Immediately upon receipt of this order you are to entrain your men with the 89th Ersatz Battalion for transportation to Peronne. Five Prussian regiments will relieve you here to-night, to fill up the gap in our third line of defence. You are to be as sparing as possible of ammunition, both for the rifles and the machine-guns, as we are warned that the supply may be interrupted. You will use the bayonet on every opportunity.' Have you done?"

"Yes, your excellency," replied "Carl Heft."

"Then I will sign the first copy." And he unscrewed a fountain-pen as he spoke.

Handing him the uppermost sheet, Dennis seized the opportunity to fold up the end one and slip it into his pocket; and he had just succeeded when the general added the last scrawl to his indecipherable signature.

"Place this in an envelope," he said, "and deliver it yourself into the hands of the Oberst" (colonel).

"And the second copy, your excellency?" volunteered the supposed Heft.

"Place it upon the file as usual, and be off!"

The three men resumed their excited conversation, to which he would dearly have loved to listen.

But he filed the sheet, made an elaborate salute, and joined the sergeant, who was waiting in the communication.

"Where are we going?" whispered the man, when they were out of earshot.

"To Peronne," replied Dennis.

"Good! I am not sorry!" grunted the sergeant. "I have had enough of these cursed Englanders! Let the Prussians come and see how they like it. It was their war."

All doubt as to how he would find the battalion to which he was supposed to belong was resolved by the sergeant turning sharply to the right, and already Dennis began to feel a little easier in his mind.

Obviously a man employed on the headquarters staff would to some extent lose touch with his comrades; and as the sergeant had not discovered him, he might very possibly pass unrecognised—unless, of course, the real Carl Heft turned up!

Not that he was happy by any manner of means, for he did not see his way an inch beyond the broad back of the man he was following; and before he could formulate any plan, the sergeant saluted a stout officer with the words: "An order from his excellency, Herr Colonel!"

The stout man snatched the paper, read it, and looked up at the sky, which was cloudy and lowering.

"Very well," he said gravely. "Let the men fall in by companies at once." And he retired into his own dug-out, which was a few paces away, to secure some of his personal belongings.

With incredible quickness the word was passed along the trench, and Dennis found himself shouldering up in a jostling line, staring at the sandbags in front of him, while sergeants shouted as a low murmur rolled along the trench. If only he could make one dash over those sandbags he might be free, but the thing was impossible; and, picking up a rifle, he resumed his place, wondering what Bob and Wetherby and the other fellows would say if he lived to tell them of this extraordinary adventure.

A tall captain with a foxy face and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses forced his way along the front of the line, and the soldier on Dennis's left had the misfortune to leave his rifle-butt sticking out in advance of his feet.

The captain tripped over it, ripped out an oath, and confronted the man.

"Clumsy hound!" he hissed, dealing him a sounding box on the ears. "Let that teach you to be careful in the future." And he deliberately spat three times in the offender's face.

Dennis's blood boiled at the coarse indignity, but the man stood rigid without the slightest sign of resentment; and when the beast had passed, he quietly wiped his face with his chalk-stained sleeve.

A sharp command came down the line, everyone turned to his right, and away they shuffled—that grey-green battalion, with Dennis in the middle of them!

For a long distance they stumbled mechanically through trenches and a labyrinth of mystifying communications, until the head of the column reached a light railway, where a train of open trucks was waiting.

The sound of escaping steam mingled with the perpetual thunder of guns, and the train seemed to stretch away in never-ending perspective along a chalk cutting.

Hoping against hope to the last minute that something would happen, almost praying in his heart that one of those whistling shells might fall in their midst and, tearing up the lines, so stop their going, he realised how lonely one can be even in the midst of a crowd.

Already the leading companies were entraining, and a hum of voices rose as the non-commissioned officers drove the men like sheep, with their rifles held crosswise, now and then pounding some bungler in the ribs with the butt end.

Even if he had been able to slip aside, he knew that to stay in that place was to court certain discovery; and now no alternative was left him, as half a dozen shouting sergeants cut off his retreat, and with a wildly beating heart Dennis Dashwood climbed up into the nearest truck with a herd of unwashed, unshaven enemies, packed tightly almost to suffocation.

Then he grasped the side of the wagon as a great jolt ran along the train from end to end, and the couplings tightened.

The 307th Reserve Battalion was on its way to fight the French, and Dennis was going with them!



CHAPTER XXVII

On the Part Dennis Played in the Recapture of Biaches

It was growing dark now, and the rolling country through which they passed became rapidly blurred. The white excavations that here and there marked the presence of a trench were like a child's scribbling on a slate, if the occasional glow of a brazier had not told Dennis that those trenches were full of men, all waiting to repulse the great Allied push.

He was happier now that the night was at hand, for it lessened his chances of being recognised; but most of all was he pleased that no one seemed to bother his head about him—no one entered into conversation.

For all that his condition was one of cramped discomfort, apart from its peril. The tightly packed mass of human beings smelt offensively, for the German, even in peace time, is a dirty animal, not fond of washing himself.

The train moved so slowly—it was one of half a dozen similar trains all using a single line—that he seriously contemplated trying to escape when it should become quite dark, only the obvious presence of large bodies of troops in every direction made him abandon the idea.

He was conscious that a feeling of sullen discontent was present in the battalion.

"'Tis a blessing we're not going to Verdun, or to Hindenburg's command," said one of his neighbours in a low voice. "I myself have been spirited three times to Poland and back, until the very sight of a troop train gives me a feeling of sickness."

"And I can go one better than that," grunted another voice. "I have been wounded five times, and they've patched me up and sent me back again, and my wife has died since I have been at the front. I am waiting for my sixth wound, and I hope it will find the heart."

Dennis gathered from such and other scraps of conversation all around him that the little British cavalry dash had been witnessed from the trench they had just left, and that the spirits of the battalion had not been improved by the sight. They obeyed their orders like sheep, but they were sheep that had gone astray, and their confidence in their leaders' powers to lead them back into the path of victory was growing less every day.

Stopping every now and then, and waiting sometimes a quarter of an hour at a stretch, the train took a terrible time to reach the vicinity of Peronne, although the distance was little more than ten miles, and Dennis found it difficult to keep his patience under control; but at last glimmering lights showed in the distance, lights that were reflected in wavy lines on the marshes that surrounded the town, and speculation became rife in the truck.

"I wonder if they will put us in the barracks, or shall we go into billets?" said somebody in the darkness. "Billets, I hope. It would be heaven to sleep in a bed again with soft pillows, and to make the housewife clean one's things, and kick her if she did not do them properly."

Everyone watched the lights with keen interest, but to their disappointment they passed away behind. The train went swaying and clinking on; and when it reached its destination at last, there was nothing to be seen but a wood of tall trees topping a ridge against the fitful moonlight.

Somewhere beyond the ridge was the sound of gunfire again, striking strangely familiar on the ears that had almost lost it at times during the journey.

"Get out!" shouted the sergeants. "Have you pigs gone to sleep? Fall in here beside the line!" And, extricating their legs with some difficulty, they scrambled over the edge of the trucks, dropped down, and sorted themselves somehow into sections and companies after much bullying and some blows struck.

Dennis found himself between the repeatedly wounded man and the private who had been three times to Poland, and presently the battalion was formed up four deep and marched.

As they swung off it began to rain.

For an hour they continued their route, getting uncomfortably damp during the process; and then they were halted and told that they might lie down. Some of the men lit their pipes, and Dennis would have dearly loved a cigarette; but he was afraid that the odour might betray him, so he contented himself with curling up between his two new acquaintances and went to sleep.

He had no plans; everything must depend upon chance and what the daylight showed him; and when the man on his right shook him and he rose to his feet, he saw that they were on the bank of a navigation canal.

Behind them the mist was curling from the water meadows of Picardy, and along the river tall poplars lifted their heads above the fog.

"Do you know what we are going to do, Kamerad?" he said to the much-wounded man.

"Die, I hope," was the response.

Circumstances had not unnaturally made him a pessimist.

The roll was being called, but the fog was so thick that one could hardly see the sergeant and his notebook; and keeping his lips tight, Dennis was overlooked, and nobody noticed it.

It so happened that the real Carl Heft belonged to another company, and was marked absent on duty at Divisional Headquarters.

There was a bread distribution, and Dennis got his share. It was black, but distinctly palatable, and was better than the coffee that was served out later on.

He knew the masquerade could not last for ever, and at kit inspection the moment he had been dreading came.

Luckily for him the sergeant was a good-humoured fellow, although he opened his eyes with a start when he saw that the boyish-looking private in front of him had no belts.

"Where is your equipment?" he said.

"I left it behind me, sergeant," replied Dennis. "We were mustered so quickly that I had no time to go to our dug-out, which was at the other end of the trench close to the big crater."

"Ha! We have cause to remember that crater, is it not so?" said the sergeant gravely. "Eighteen men and two officers it cost us, and that was why I was appointed to this company three days ago. What is your name?"

"Carl Heft, sergeant."

"Carl Heft? Were you not attached to headquarters? What are you doing here?"

Dennis lowered his voice.

"It is like this, sergeant," he said. "I want to be a soldier, not a clerk. I have not fired a shot at the enemy for two months, and when the order came to fall in I could not resist it."

The sergeant raised his eyebrows, and then a smile crept into his face.

"My boy, you are in the way to get into trouble, but never mind; I like your spirit, and I will see what I can do for you. Can you throw bombs?"

"Ja."

"Very well, you shall join the bombers; and presently I will bring you a bag of sweetmeats of the sort the French do not find to their liking."

His nod implied that there was already a secret understanding between them, and as he passed on Dennis saw possibilities looming in the future. A bomber acted more or less independently, and an avenue of escape was opened up to him.

All that July day, however, the battalion remained on the bank of the canal resting; and during the afternoon the mist, which had never entirely cleared away, returned, and a thick grey fog muffled the marshlands.

True to his promise, the sergeant had provided him with a sheaf of grenades with copper rods to be fired from the rifle and a collar of racket bombs, and Dennis sprang smartly to his feet when the word was given to fall in.

"We are going to attack in ten minutes," said the sergeant. "There are two places—the village of Biaches over yonder, and the hill of La Maisonette more to the left. The French carried them on the 9th; they will be ours again to-night. The fog is the very thing for us; nothing could be better. Our battalion will take Biaches, and it will be hot work."

"What are the troops we shall have to face, sergeant?" said Dennis.

"Senegalese, I am told—Black Devils, who stick at nothing—and some Territorials, mostly old men and fathers of families; but we shall see."

"Yes, we shall see!" murmured Dennis, as the command "Links schliessen!" was given, and the battalion touched in to its left.

Hoarse voices bellowed out of the thick mist, and the 307th Reserve Battalion, after marching for a short distance along the river, filed across a lock bridge and plunged into the woods.

Smoking was forbidden, and strict silence enjoined. Other battalions had come from Peronne by way of the Faubourg de Paris, and there were several halts to establish communication.

Overhead the fog was tinged with a rosy hue, but round about the men all was grey, and one could see very little farther than the spectral tree-trunks in one's immediate vicinity.

The foxy-faced captain with the gold-rimmed glasses marched behind his company, and in his hand he carried a brutal whip, a veritable cat-o'-nine-tails. When a man stumbled over some hidden tree root he would hiss out "Pig!" or "Clumsy hound!" And Dennis felt his heart leap as he heard himself addressed.

"You with the bombs there—what are you doing with those brown boots?" said the captain.

"They belong to an English prisoner," said Dennis, with perfect truth.

"That is no excuse," said the officer sternly. "You will report yourself after this affair is over for daring to go into action improperly dressed. What is your name?"

"Carl Heft, Herr Captain," said Dennis, over his shoulder.

"Very well, I shall remember it," snarled the bully. And, changing his tone, he shouted "Vorwaerts!" as a shot rang out ahead of them, and they heard the French sentries give the alarm.

Instantly the hoarse roll of drums rose from the advancing battalions, and everyone quickened his pace. The wood thinned out, and, bursting from the trees, the 307th Reserve Battalion flung themselves with the bayonet upon the ruined village of Biaches.

There was a belfry tower still standing, and the chimney of a factory—all the rest was a heap of shattered dwelling's round which the greeny-grey wave surged with a roar.

In front of them figures in blue-grey ran scurrying, and were joined by others, and the rifles began to speak.

"This is all very well," thought Dennis, finding himself between two fires. "I had better lie doggo for a bit while they get on with it." And, stepping inside the ruins of a small shop, he flung himself down on a heap of bricks in the posture of a wounded man.

It would have been madness to do otherwise, for the machine-guns were raining bullets everywhere; and, trembling with excitement, he lay unnoticed for a good half-hour, until a hoarse cheer in German told him that Biaches had passed into the enemy's hands. At almost the same moment the modern chateau, surrounded by its park of fine trees on the hill of La Maisonette, had been retaken by the Germans from Peronne.

But Dennis smiled quietly to himself.

"My chance will come when the counter-attack begins," he thought. "Those brave Frenchmen don't take this sort of thing lying down."

As the firing died away cheer after cheer rent the air, followed by a babel of voices in German as every man worked hard to consolidate the position; and as the dusk drew down Dennis thrust his rifle grenades inside the broken chimney of the little shop, and ventured out into the open air.



CHAPTER XXVIII

The Exciting Adventures of "Carl Heft"

The strain of lying there hour after hour had become unbearable. The idea had also struck him that now was his opportunity to glean some information, if possible, about the lie of the land. There would be warm work, he knew, and that before long, for the French "75's" were barking in the distance, and shells were falling about Biaches and upon the hill away to the left.

Field wagons from Peronne had clattered past his hiding-place, carrying reels of barbed wire, and if he were fortunate he might be able to slip through the advanced German trench before it was hedged in by that difficult barricade. Bodies were lying thickly strewn among the brick heaps, and one little alley down which he tried to pass was piled up six deep with corpses.

"I wish I could get on a listening post," he thought to himself. "That would give me a fine chance." And just then he collided with somebody, who shook him by the shoulder and swore lustily; and he recognised the voice of the good-natured sergeant.

"You should look where you are going, Kamerad," said the man. "And, by the way, where are you going?"

"To the front trench, sergeant," replied Dennis, speaking at a venture. "I have just secured a fresh supply of racket bombs."

"What, you are Carl Heft, surely! Good lad, I did not see you in the melee, but I have no doubt you acquitted yourself well. I also am going to the front trench, to our company's sector. We will go together."

Dennis clenched his teeth, but he knew that he must put a good face on the matter.

"With pleasure, sergeant," he made answer. And the pair walked along side by side. "Have we lost many?" he inquired.

"Yes, a good few, and I believe it was their own fault. To tell you the truth, Heft, the battalion is not in a good state; they were left too long over there in the front line without being relieved. Our company in particular is very homesick, and can you wonder when you look at the captain they have?"

"True, he is a great brute. You will let me say that to you, sergeant?" replied Dennis, anxious to draw the man out.

"Have no fear; I shall not report you," said his companion, with a friendly squeeze of the arm. "He is not only a great brute, but he is an arrant coward into the bargain. The men do not mind being cuffed and bullied, because they are used to it; but when they see their officer never expose himself, and always shouting from the rear 'Get on, you pigs!' they don't like it. But, Himmel!"—and he chuckled—"our engineers have surpassed themselves to-night. I have never seen wire so strong during the war. Our whole front is covered with it; not so much as a rat could get through."

"That is good," assented his listener, mentally feeling how bad it was for himself, and that, short of a miracle, he must stay where he was until daylight.

"I have just been making a report to Colonel Schlutz," went on the sergeant. "Now you and I will go to a snug little dug-out I have taken possession of. I have a nice piece of sausage which we will share, and what do you think?—four bottles of lager beer! What do you think of that?"

"I say that you are a good comrade, sergeant—the best I have met for many a long day," said Dennis, with a warmth he really felt. This man was evidently a good fellow at heart, an exception to the general run of German non-commissioned officers. And yet it might come about that he would have to kill him, in spite of that nice piece of sausage and those four bottles!

The sergeant had called it a snug little dug-out, that square hole in the chalk, with earth piled on a piece of corrugated iron by way of roof, and great rats peering at them as they sat with their knees touching by the light of a piece of candle.

But to Dennis it was a palace, hiding him, as it did, from inquisitive eyes.

"Surely it is written that I shall win through," he thought to himself. "Everything seems to point to it."

A shell burst close to them and rattled the corrugated iron, bringing a shower of earth down in front of the dug-out door.

"I will go and see if that has done any damage," said the sergeant. "You may stay here until the alarm is given. Your post will be in that bay in front of us. Why don't you go to sleep? I should if I were not an Unteroffizier."

He came back again in a few minutes, to find that Dennis had taken him at his word, and was watching the rats fearlessly searching for crumbs between his very feet.

"A corporal and five men," said the sergeant laconically. "And a splinter has broken the Herr Captain's glasses. Oh, he is in a rare fury!"

Another shell burst farther away behind the dug-out, and Dennis wondered whether the French gunners were lengthening their fuses preparatory to the counter-attack.

Mist still hung about the ground, and the moon gave it a very ghostly effect.

Peeping through the door from the dark dug-out—for a rat had suddenly pounced upon the lighted candle and made off with it—he saw the look-out motionless and alert behind the sandbagged parapet, and, sitting on the fire-step, the men of No. 6 Company huddled up. Some of them were asleep with their heads on their comrades' shoulders. The man who had been five times wounded bent forward, grasping one wrist with the other hand, and staring into vacancy; perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife!

Without warning a terrific fire suddenly opened on the village; and Dennis, used as he was to the British bombardment, sat dazed in his cubby-hole as shell after shell burst in such quick succession that the explosions seemed like the continuous fire of some giant machine-gun. He put his hands to his ears and crouched there, bowed, like one awaiting inevitable doom, wondering how it fared with the company outside in the trench and with the rest of the battalion.

For a quarter of an hour the inferno continued, and then ceased as suddenly as it had begun; and in the lull that followed he rose to his feet, knowing that the dug-out would not be a safe place in which to await the counter-attack which would come on the heels of that terrible devastation.

In the doorway he stumbled over something soft, and recognised the upturned face of the good-natured sergeant! The lower part of him from the waist downwards had been blown away; and, stooping down, Dennis gently disengaged the Iron Cross from the breast of his tunic.

"Poor chap!" he muttered. "This will be something for dear little Billy." And then he looked round.

The trench existed no longer as a trench, and terrified, trembling men crawled from among the tumbled sandbags, and out of nooks and corners where they had lain.

The barbed wire looked like a parrot's cage that had been run over by a motor-car, and everyone saw that the position was untenable.

So No. 6 Company, or all that was left of it, hurried towards a wood between Biaches and the hill of La Maisonette, and no sooner had they cleared the broken trench than the first wave of the French poured over it.

The ferret-faced German captain had made his way back to headquarters just before the bombardment began. He had a cousin on the staff, from whom he hoped to borrow a spare pair of spectacles to replace his own.

He secured the glasses, and found that he could not have arrived at a better moment, for a message had just been received from the Divisional General!

"You are the very man we want," said Colonel Schlutz. "There is a spy in No. 6 Company masquerading under the name of Carl Heft. It is very serious and altogether extraordinary. The real Carl Heft was wounded by a shell splinter, and has turned up again over there. The spy actually took down the general's order for our move, and he must be discovered at once. He is young, and he wears brown boots."

"Himmel! I know the fellow!" exclaimed the captain. "He shall be arrested within the next twenty minutes!"

But the French fire began, and it was impossible to move; and they cowered in their temporary shelter, expecting death.

"Where is the company?" demanded its captain when the 75's ceased, and he encountered a wounded man dragging himself to the rear.

"The survivors have retired into yonder wood, Herr Captain. May I beg a draught of water from your bottle?"

"You will get some farther back; I have no time now," was the brutal response. And, grinning with secret satisfaction, he ran in the direction of the tree-tops, hugely elated as every stride carried him farther away from the ruined village, against which he knew the counter-attack would be delivered.

As soon as he judged himself to be out of danger he skulked among the trees for more than an hour. He was in no hurry to find his men; besides, the sky was lightening, and he preferred to wait until daylight.

During that hour the fury of combat raged among the brick heaps of Biaches and upon the hill of La Maisonette, and when morning came the French had recovered both positions.

He could hear them cheering, and was hoping that all was over, when the crackle of rifle fire commenced from the western edge of the wood, and he knew that he could delay no longer. His smile gave place to the blustering frown that No. 6 Company knew so well, and, striding forward, he became aware from the hoarse roar of voices that something serious was taking place.

The growing daylight had revealed to the French that the enemy was holding the wood in some strength; and Dennis, who had spied a long line of blue-painted helmets in the distance, was stealthily working his way forward from tree to tree, intent on making a bolt towards them, when that same roar fell upon his ear.

Looking round, he saw a double company of the battalion that had entrained with them forming up for an advance with the bayonet. In sixty seconds they would go charging across the open strip of ground which he had decided upon as his own line of escape, and their right flank would pass within a dozen yards of a white-walled cottage that had been unroofed by a French shell.

He looked at the solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command "Vorwaerts!"

Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans.

Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of the explosions.

Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees.

But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think!

Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting for his life for the shelter of a big shell crater, where he meant to strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer act as a passport to the rapidly advancing French.

As he reached the lip of the huge hole his laugh of triumph died away, for before he could check himself he had slid down among the remnants of No. 6 Company, huddled together, leaderless, demoralised.

At the same moment a shell burst on the other side of the crater, flinging an iron rain into the already terrified mob, and half burying a man who had been descending into the pit.

It was the ferret-faced captain who picked himself up, white as a sheet of paper, and then gave a guttural cry of surprise. Drawing his revolver he strode forward and stopped in front of Dennis, covering him with the weapon.

"I am looking for you, Carl Heft," he laughed hoarsely. "Possibly you know why they want you at headquarters!"

No one knew exactly how it came about, but there was a sharp report, the captain staggered back and fell, shot through the heart; and "Carl Heft" stood like some avenging spirit, looking down at him, with the smoking Webley in his hand.

"Kamerads!" he cried to the throng, "there lies the cause of half our troubles! That beast would have driven us on again while he slunk in the rear. Look at this!" And he pointed to the man who had already been wounded five times. A fragment of the shell had just carried away his right hand. "The game is up; we have the right to choose whether we die like sheep, or live to rejoin our families. You can do as you like, but I am going to surrender. I have had enough!"

Very erect, he swung round and began to walk up the side of the crater in the direction of the French, and fifty voices cried: "He is right; we have all had enough!" And they sprang forward in his wake, every man with his hands raised above his head.

Dennis had planted one foot on the firm ground when a skewer-like bayonet passed within an inch of his ear; and with a disappointed roar its owner flung a pair of terrible arms about him, and the two rolled backwards into the hole again.

"Now you had better say your prayers, Boche!" growled his assailant, as a hairy hand closed on his throat; "I am going to kill you!"



CHAPTER XXIX

An Old Friend—and a Bitter Enemy!

The terrified German herd sprang aside as the two figures hurtled down through the middle of them. Arms were raised sky-high, and quavering voices clamoured "Mercy, Kamerad—we surrender!" but never a finger was lifted to help Dennis. He lay on his back looking into the bloodshot eyes of his old acquaintance, Aristide Puzzeau, who, having dropped his rifle as they rolled, was searching grimly for his knife.

"Puzzeau, you fool!" gurgled the lad, as the huge paw of the Herculean poilu tightened its pressure on his throat.

"Eh, what!" exclaimed the Alsatian. "Who are you, then?" And the terrible grip relaxed ever so slightly.

"Look again," was the reply, and Dennis managed to tear Carl Heft's grey tunic open wide enough to reveal the khaki shirt and tie of an English officer.

"Zut alors!" cried the man, greatly puzzled; "still I do not know you!"

It was hardly to be wondered at, for the face of his captive was encrusted with chalky mud and badly wanted a shave.

"How goes it with the brave Commandant you and I carried out of action that night we silenced the machine-gun? Do you remember now, thickhead?"

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Aristide Puzzeau, "Mon Lieutenant, you have saved me from a great crime! But why will you keep such bad company? Let us embrace!" And he kissed him on both cheeks.

"And you have saved me from a most unpleasant death, my brave fellow," said Dennis, rubbing his throat; "and now you must save these wretched beasts who are my prisoners."

The corporal clapped a hand to his head like one in a dream as the men of his company, whom he had outstripped, reached the edge of the crater above them.

"Halt, my boys!" roared the corporal with the full strength of his leathern lungs, but he made a wry face and scowled savagely.

"If I had my way, mon Lieutenant, we would take no prisoners, hands up or hands down," he said; "we are too soft-hearted in this war."

The howl of disappointment from the French Territorials mingled with the piteous whine of the terrified Germans, and before he scrambled after Puzzeau out of the hole, Dennis rid himself of the grey tunic and slacks, and stood revealed in his proper character.

"Ma foi!" said the captain of the company, as he shook hands heartily with him, "you have indeed had a marvellous escape, my friend, but there is firing in the wood over yonder; I shall leave twelve men to escort this scum to our lines, and you will no doubt wish to proceed with them—unless you care to renew your acquaintance with your old comrades, the——"

"A thousand thanks, mon Capitaine," laughed Dennis, remembering the German dispatch in the pocket of his tunic; "my duty calls me elsewhere. Good-bye and good luck!"

As he turned to go, and the foremost wave of the Territorials was already racing towards the trees, whence came the sharp crackle of musketry, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and he saw Puzzeau looking at him with an expression of profound remorse on his black-bearded face.

"One never knows," said Puzzeau in a deep bass whisper. "I want to hear you say again that you have forgiven me. Also, our old Commandant, who, thank the stars, is recovering, charged me that if ever you and I met I was to tell you——"

A dozen voices shouting "Corporal!" interrupted his speech, and with a despairing shrug of his huge shoulders the honest fellow ran after his men, leaving the Commandant's message undelivered.

At the edge of the wood he turned and waved his powerful arm, and as he vanished, Dennis, still rubbing his throat, stepped out briskly beside the German prisoners, who numbered eighty all told.

The big powerful brutes could have eaten their little guards, and Dennis with them, but they shambled along almost at a run, perfectly demoralised.

A short tramp across some ploughland, where brigades of active little men in blue-painted helmets were waiting, brought the prisoners to the French trenches, where Dennis had to run the gauntlet of half a dozen very wide awake but very polite officers, who passed him still farther to the rear.

He was long leagues from the British Army away to the north of the Somme, and was puzzling how on earth he was to join it, when an automobile dashed from a side road, hooting imperiously for him to get out of the way.

"Confound you!" said Dennis to himself as he jumped rather ignominiously on to the bank, but the car stopped, and the driver rose in his seat, looking back at him.

"No, monsieur—it is not possible! It cannot be the Lieutenant Dashwood, surely!" called out the young Frenchman, and instantly forgetting his annoyance, Dennis ran towards the car.

"What, Martique, my dear fellow! Will wonders never cease? It is indeed the Lieutenant Dashwood, as you call him, and in no end of a hat, too! How can I get back to our lines?"

The good-looking young Frenchman, perhaps a little thinner and more fine-drawn since the time when he and Dennis first met, laughed aloud with delight.

"Cher ami, nothing is simpler. Jump in. I am going straight to Fricourt, if that will help you."

"Great Scott! I left my Governor not a mile from there the day before yesterday!" shouted Dennis, vaulting into the motor-car. "How are things with us?"

"Magnificent!" laughed Martique; "but what are you doing down here?"

"Just escaped from the German lines, old chap," was the reply; and as the brave little car raced away at a really dangerous speed he recounted his latest adventure, to the delight and envy of his old acquaintance.

By good roads and bad roads and no roads at all Martique found his way across country with unerring sagacity, until they found themselves at a level crossing a few miles behind the British advanced line.