But Hal blundered against him and carried him back.

"All right," Hal whispered. "Are you?"

"All right," said Chester. "Great landing. I've fixed things back there. Time to be moving. Got your grenades?"

"You bet."

"All right. Good luck."

Their orders were to part now. Chester crawled one way, Hal the other. The biplane was burning with a great deal of smoke, which smothered the glow on the side they had leaped. And no German was near; they could be very sure of that. The gasoline now was ignited, and the wreck was blazing beautifully. The machine was known, of course, to be a bombing machine, shot down during operations. No one would know how many bombs had come down with it; no one would come close until after the flames had burned down. Then the Germans would find the "pilot" and the "bomber," the two still forms the lads had strapped to the machine before leaving their own lines. Everyone would be accounted for; no search for more would be made.

Both boys now were ready for their desperate work.

CHAPTER XXIX

DESPERATE WORK

Chester, having crept a hundred yards, hugged down into another hole and waited. The Germans who had been about now approached the glowing heap of the biplane. What they found seemed to satisfy them. At least they raised no alarm. The sh.e.l.ls from the far-off trench guns, which had been breaking in the fields both to right and to left, began searching about here now and scattered them. Chester moved forward toward the lines. And, as he moved, the sh.e.l.ls which had been bursting in that direction, ceased.

The feel of the far-off hand of Captain O'Neill and of his superiors--the men who had planned this desperate venture--thrilled through him. Until five minutes to 10 o'clock he would be cared for, Captain O'Neill had promised. The French artillery, opening a path through its fire, would throw its shield around him. Simultaneously, it would be opening another path to Hal, advancing off to the right. Where all the Germans, who held that ground, burrowed below in dugouts or crept and ran through the deep defiles of communication trenches, Hal and he could go at will over the ground and so far as the sh.e.l.ls from the French batteries were concerned, be perfectly safe.

Chester stole on through the blackness. Sh.e.l.ls were breaking a hundred yards before him, behind him, off to both sides, but no sh.e.l.l came closer. Now, if he remembered rightly, the sh.e.l.ls would cease in the square ahead and to the left; he moved that way--and they stopped.

Over the ground which he had crossed, sh.e.l.ls were bursting again now.

When he halted once more, the frightful hurricane of high explosives swept before him, on both sides and behind--but not close to him. So for many minutes he advanced.

It was strange, when used to dodging sh.e.l.ls behind his own lines and when accustomed to twist and turn and dive and tumble in the air to avoid the burst of anti-aircraft shrapnel, to feel sh.e.l.ls falling like a bulwark about him. That was what they were. For the present, at least, the sh.e.l.ls gained for him and gave to him the sole use of the surface of the earth there behind the German lines.

Troops were all about, of course; but all were hiding. They could not imagine anyone purposely advancing through the open there; they could not imagine anyone surviving if he tried it. They noticed, undoubtedly, that the fall of the French sh.e.l.ls intermitted for a moment in this direction and that; but when any of them went out the sh.e.l.ls burst upon them again and annihilated detachments. The cease and the start again of the French fire seemed merely capricious, to tempt them out to destruction. Not having the pattern of the pa.s.s by which the two boys advanced, they could not suspect any pattern about it.

And now Chester no longer could trust his own memory of that pattern.

He went to the bottom of a deep sh.e.l.l crater, and, lying upon his stomach, he took a sc.r.a.p of map from under his shirt and spread it below him. He took a tiny electric torch from his pocket and illumined the sheet dimly. A series of squares, into which that sector was divided, marked his path for the front--each square of the series numbered in ink and designated by a time, such as 32, 24, 19, 16, 10 and so, forth. They told the moment before 10 o'clock, at which, upon the square marked, the French fire would cease, not to start again until the fire ceased, at the next lowest minute, upon the next square. Down to five minutes to 10 o'clock they showed the safe path, after that friend and foe alike on this side of the German lines must shift for themselves.

Chester's mind caught the pattern of the next numbered square; he repeated to himself the time intervals. He climbed up out of the sh.e.l.l hole and swiftly pa.s.sed the next square as the sh.e.l.ls began falling behind him. Had Hal, off there to the right four squares away, now, as good luck as he? Or, was the French fire opening a path for no one there now?

By the ceasing of the sh.e.l.ls on this square it was 24 minutes to 10 o'clock--the hour when the French forces would stream over the top.

And for ten minutes, upon the square, the French fire would cease.

That was because it was upon this square that Hal and Chester--if both survived to reach it--would meet. It was under the ground in this numbered ten minutes to 10 o'clock--that the French were hidden, of whom Jean Brosseau had told. And as Brosseau had expected and hoped, Chester and Hal--or whichever of them survived to this square--were ordered to employ those people.

Chester crept forward, searching for the ruins of the house to mark the spot. There was a communication-trench some yards away to the left of it, he remembered. He could hear them working upon it now, calling to each other as the sh.e.l.ls had given them a few minutes respite. He crept by them and came upon stones--the square stones of the walls of a house demolished and scattered. Only one house had been at that point, and, crawling carefully, he dropped into the pit of the cellar.

There, in that cellar, Hal and he were to meet, if Hal yet lived.

Hal was not there; he had not been there. The heap of old charred beams and rubbish, which covered the opening of the tunnel to the French hiding in the old cellar deeper and beyond, was undisturbed; he heard no sound except that of the sh.e.l.ls and the sc.r.a.ping and voices of the Germans at work thirty yards away.

Chester flattened down upon the rubbish of the cellar; he raised a black beam a little and thrust himself under. Feeling ahead, he found more rubbish, which he cleared; and then, beyond, his hand found emptiness and the smell of earth--and the odor of people and the closeness of foul air. But there was no sound ahead.

He crawled his length and then spoke quietly in French:

"I come for the redeeming of France," words which he had been ordered to use upon his arrival.

He got no reply from the silence ahead; so he said again:

"I am not Jean Brosseau; he sent me. I come to ask your aid."

"Aid?" a voice repeated; "aid?"

Chester lighted his little torch again, and men's faces showed before him.

"Quick!" one of the men said. "Get away. It's a trap!"

"The Germans have taken us," said a second voice. "We--"

His voice stopped and choked. It was stilled forever, Chester knew.

He could not see--he had extinguished his light.

A revolver was fired in his face, but the bullet went over him. He pressed to one side of the tunnel as he pushed back, and the next bullet went into the sand where he had been. He was back under the beams; and the Germans, choking, fired no more.

Someone pulled at his leg. Someone jerked him out and pulled him up--it was Hal.

"The people in there were taken," said Chester quietly. "They--"

"You've still got your grenades," said Hal. "I've got mine. We can do it alone, with luck!"

The Germans, working on the tunnel off to the left, yelled at each other to jump for cover, for the French sh.e.l.ls were coming again. They burst all about--except now, just ahead, where Hal and Chester were running. Two minutes they had to run and crawl and run again across the square, three minutes for the next one. Then, again, they parted.

Two squares to the left, two minutes for one, three for the next--Hal was to go; two squares to the right--for three minutes and two the French fire was to be remitted--Chester must travel. There were two other small squares to be spared for five minutes to provide for help which might have been gained from the refugees' dugout.

Those squares were being spared now, anyway.

But the minutes of respite for all were finishing fast.

It was five minutes to 10 o'clock and Chester, running bent over, stumbled and fell; the frightful concussion of great high explosive sh.e.l.ls, bursting close to him, shook and battered him. He hugged down into a hole, and from about his neck, he drew a flat bag, which held a gas mask; he adjusted it quickly. Sh.e.l.ls were striking about him, which did not break; but from the b.u.t.ts of these fumes were floating.

The Germans, showing in the light of the star-sh.e.l.ls, had become snouted creatures in their gas helmets.

They appeared only for an instant, as, jumping up from one trench, where the sh.e.l.ls were falling, they rushed to another deep defile.

Half a score, who had shown themselves in one group, vanished; and Chester was buffeted again by the shock of high explosives.

Gas and still more gas followed high explosives again.

Chester, creeping now, got, even through his mask, smarting, searing twinges of the gas. He was among bodies and wounded men. Their masks, when, they fell, had become torn or broken. The gas had got them.

Five minutes to 10 o'clock had pa.s.sed.