In low commands the lieutenant then directed affairs, and in exactly the way that he had been carried out of the hold of the _Everett_ on the verge of suffocation, so they carried poor Tom Rawle back to their own lines.

And when he had been placed upon a cot in the first emergency hospital, Lieutenant Mackinson hurried off to make his report, in the honor of which all shared.

For not only had they found a location from which to wireless advance-line communications to field headquarters, but they had also intercepted a message, knowledge of which resulted in a quick change of plans by which the Americans were able to beat the enemy at his own game on the morrow.

"Rawle was suffering more from loss of blood than from any seriousness of the injury itself," the surgeon told them when they asked there of their friend's condition, on their way to their own quarters. "He will be around all right again in a week's time."

And so, much desperate work accomplished on their first night within the firing lines, the lads threw themselves upon their cots to dream of spies and captured Germans and injured soldiers and calls for help by new methods in wireless.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CAVE OF DEATH

It is one of the fortunes, or misfortunes, of war that a position gained one day, even at great human sacrifice, may be of no real or practical value whatever the next. So it was with the advance post of communication located by Lieutenant Mackinson and his party under such dangerous conditions during the night before.

The information which they had gained through tapping the enemy's wire enabled the American and French troops, operating together, to prevent the German trick from being carried into effect. More than that, it enabled them to turn the knowledge of those plans to such good advantage that the allied brigades swept forward in terrible force against the weakest points in the enemy line. They pushed the whole Boche front back for more than a mile--at the very point where it had been considered strongest!

As a consequence, the point of communication which the lieutenant and his aides had established with so much difficulty was now well within the territory held by the American and French fighters. The requirements for a further advance now made it necessary to have another outpost point of communication as near to the enemy trenches as the first one was before the day's battle put the Allies a mile further forward.

And so, except for Tom Rawle, who was resting easy from his hip wound, the same party started out at the same tune for the same purpose on this second night, but with a very much sharpened realization of the obstacles they had to overcome and the chances they faced of being wounded or captured.

"We take an entirely different direction," Lieutenant Mackinson told them, as he looked up from the map he had been studying. "We go to the north and east and as close to the observation trenches as possible."

Now the danger of this can readily be seen from considering what an observation trench is. The front-line trenches of the opposing armies, of course, run in two practically parallel lines. But an observation trench runs almost at right angles with the front-line trenches, and directly toward the enemy trench, so far as it is possible to extend it. The extreme ends of these observation trenches are known as "listening posts," and often they are so close to the enemy lines that the men in the opposing army can be heard talking.

Lieutenant Mackinson and his aides, Joe, Jerry, Slim and Frank Hoskins, were to get their signaling location as near to an enemy listening post as possible! In other words, they were to court discovery in an effort to get just a few feet nearer the enemy than they otherwise would.

They went along much as they had on the preceding night, except, had there been light enough, it might have been noticed that Slim, in his walking, pushed his feet forward cautiously, and then in stepping lifted them high from the ground.

But as luck would have it they had not gone more than two hundred yards when a bullet whizzed within two feet of Jerry's head, followed by a shower of missiles that were directed entirely too close to them for comfort.

Instantly they dropped flat on the ground. In the distance ahead of them they could see three shadows stealthily crawling along toward them.

"Pick your men!" Lieutenant Mackinson ordered, in a whisper. "Fire!"

Their automatics let out a fusillade of bullets. Two of the shadows jumped slightly into the air, and then rolled over. The third man rose and started to run toward the enemy line. Frank Hoskins took deliberate aim and fired. The man dropped and lay still.

"Looks as though we got them," said Lieutenant Mackinson, "but they may be only pretending. Do not move for a few minutes."

While they were thus waiting, the enemy trenches sent up a glaring rocket. It fell shorthand failed to reveal them, but it plainly showed three German soldiers lying p.r.o.ne upon the ground, all of them apparently instantly killed.

"That's the part of it I don't like," muttered Slim with a shudder. "It isn't so bad when you are firing into a whole company or regiment and see men fall. At least, it doesn't seem so bad, for you don't know just which ones you hit and which ones some one else bowled over. But in this individual close-range stuff it leaves a nasty feeling."

"You are right," whispered Frank Hoskins, "but you'd better not talk any more about it now or some Boche may try the same close-range stuff on us."

Warned to silence by the lieutenant, they continued to creep along, only a foot or so at a time, stopping every few minutes to listen intently to see if their presence had been discovered.

On the night before they had been upon fairly level ground, but this night they were in a section that was all hills and hummocks and hollows. They would creep cautiously up the side of one mound, not knowing but that on the other side lay a group of Germans, perhaps out upon a similar mission.

For no one can tell what may happen in No Man's Land--that section belonging to neither side, before and between the front-line trenches of the opposing armies.

"With that star as my guide, I am certain that we have not turned from the proper direction," Lieutenant Mackinson whispered, as they came to a halt in a secluded spot that seemed as safe from attack as from observation. "We have pa.s.sed the fifth hill. Fifteen more minutes should bring us to the place which Major Jones indicated on the map. It is a sort of natural trench. If we reach it all right we are to string a wire from there to our first observation trench to the northwest of it.

I believe that the same place has been used for the same purpose before, during the long time that all this has been contested ground. An outpost there can observe and report every activity of the enemy in daylight, without himself being seen."

They began again to creep forward, now flat upon their stomachs, and only raising themselves from the ground a little way, but at infrequent intervals, in order to make sure of their position and that they were not being watched.

"Listen!" hissed Frank Hoskins, who was a little to the left of where the others were snaking their way along.

They all stopped moving, almost stopped breathing.

"What was it?" Lieutenant Mackinson barely breathed, after several minutes of silence.

Hoskins crawled nearer before he spoke.

"How near are we, Lieutenant?" he asked:

"I should say about a hundred yards."

"Look straight ahead of us when the next rocket goes up," Hoskins suggested.

They had not long to wait for one of the great sky torches to come sailing over the side of the German trench, but from a considerable distance ahead of them.

"Did you notice anything?" Hoskins asked.

"I didn't," whispered the lieutenant. "Did you?"

"I thought I saw half a dozen men," said Joe.

"We'll wait, then, and see," said Lieutenant Mackinson.

In a moment another rocket went up, this time from the American-French side, and it clearly showed what Joe and Frank both had seen.

Six, perhaps seven or eight, men were crawling along, headed toward them.

"They are making for the same place," said Jerry.

"Exactly," replied the lieutenant. "It means that we have got to fight for it. We will have some advantage if we can beat them to the protection of the base of that hummock."

As rapidly as possible they started forward. Lying out flat, they would draw their feet upward and toward them, rising slightly and going forward upon their arms. This action, which put them ahead a few inches every time, they repeated times without number. But it was slow progress at best, and made slower by the interruptions of the rockets.

"We are almost there," Lieutenant Mackinson whispered, "but I think we have been discovered. Lie flat and don't make a move. By keeping my head in the position I have it I can watch that other group. If we have been seen it means a running fight to the mouth of that trench or cave."

Another rocket cut a glaring path across the sky. Again it was from the American-French side and illumined the black shadows strewn along the ground like little clumps of low-growing bushes.