"I thought so at first, Dale, but I'm not so sure now. See that light haze yonder? It may be the fires have caught all right but are burning out for lack of draught. Let's hope they've done a bit of damage anyhow!"

"H'm!" grunted Dale in a tone of discouragement.

"Besides," Max went on, "this is only a small affair. The next real attack will come in a day or two, and I hope there will be no failure there."

"No," replied Dale, brightening up, "if that comes off we shall have done something worth doing. Schenk will be ready to tear his hair, and we shall have to look out for ourselves."

"Well, so we will. We shall deserve a rest, and we will retire into obscurity for a season and recuperate. Another ramble in the Ardennes would suit us well."

"Especially with a little shooting thrown in--Uhlans, I mean," replied Dale facetiously.

"There will be plenty of scouting, if not shooting, if all the tales we hear of those gentlemen be true."

"Aye--but see, Max, how that smoky haze is getting thicker! The pile must be alight all right after all."

The light fleecy smoke which hovered over the great stack certainly seemed denser than it was, and a slight smell of burning was in the air.

The other workmen had also noticed it, and hazarded conjectures as to whence it came, but none of them got very near the mark. All day the smoke increased, until, by the time the men ceased work, it lay like a thick fog all about the neighbourhood.

Max and Dale returned to their lodging in high glee, and their joy was not diminished when they noticed that the wind was beginning to freshen up.

"This ought to finish the business, Dale," remarked Max. "With a high wind all night, if the fire doesn't get into its stride it never will."

Soon after daybreak the shrill notes of a bugle in several quarters of the town and the ringing of fire-bells told our heroes that something unusual was afoot. They guessed, or rather hoped, that it might be on their account, and dressed and sallied out as quickly as they could.

Sure enough, an enormous pall of smoke, that a volcano in full eruption need not have disowned, lay in the air in the direction of the Durend coal-yards. Fire engines were hurrying to the scene from all parts of the town, and the hoped-for hubbub seemed to have arrived.

"This is worth a little trouble," remarked Dale with intense relish as they drew near the burning stack and saw hundreds of soldiers and firemen hovering actively about the spot.

"Yes, but we may as well take a little more trouble and do the thing in style," responded Max coolly. "Let us follow these hoses to the river bank and see whether there is anything doing."

They did so, and, finding that the hoses entered the water at a point where a patch or two of short scrubby bushes gave cover against chance watchers, they pa.s.sed on and struck the bank again a hundred yards farther on. Then they disappeared from view, and, crawling along under cover of the bushes, they reached the hoses, and with a dozen rapid slashes of their clasp-knives effectually put them out of action.

An extraordinary hubbub ensued. Soldiers and firemen rushed about in all directions, chasing away every unfortunate civilian who had had the temerity to approach the scene of the fire. In the confusion Max and Dale had no difficulty in escaping, and retired to the hills, there to gloat over the further efforts made to fight the fire, which seemed only to grow fiercer as hundreds of gallons of water were pumped upon it. It was two days before the fire was completely subdued, and the net result from a material point of view was that at least 10,000 tons of coal had been destroyed and the project of transporting coal to Krupp's effectually quashed. From the point of view of _moral_, the Germans were the laughing-stock of the town; they were deeply enraged and the townsfolk proportionately delighted.

CHAPTER XII

The Attack on the Munition-shops And Its Sequel

To Max Durend the successful raid on the coal-yards was only the prelude to the main performance. His mind was bent wholly towards one great object, and that was to prevent, by every means in his power, the exploitation of his father's great works by the enemies of his country.

The coal-yard incident, as he termed it, was satisfactory so far as it went, but gave his mind no real relief such as had resulted from the recovery of part of the firm's monetary resources and the destruction of the power-house. The next affair, which, as has been hinted, was already well in hand, was more important and was an attempt to damage, if not destroy, some of the great machines installed for the production of rifles and machine-guns.

The largest workshop in the yard was devoted to this and a few other of the more delicate kinds of work, and it seemed to Max that the greatest amount of injury might be inflicted upon the Germans by an attempt on this shop. The works were still at a standstill, though it was fairly evident that they would not be so for much longer. The attempt ought, therefore, to be made within the few following days.

The plan was simplicity itself. It merely provided for Max and Dale to enter the workshop during the night and to work as much mischief among the machines as they could, consistently with the need for silence and the avoidance or silencing of the watchmen. For some days they had kept the place under close observation, and noted the hours and habits of the watchmen and the sentinels at either end of the building until they knew them as well as the men themselves.

Dubec they would not bring with them. He was eager to come, but the work required alertness and lightness of hand and foot rather than strength, and for this he would have been of no use. Besides, the two lads, keen as they were on their self-imposed tasks, were not unmindful of the fact that he had a wife and children to mourn him should the venture come to grief.

All, however, seemed to go well. Max and Dale succeeded in effecting an entrance into the ground floor of the workshop after they had seen the watchman, by the glint of his lamp, make his midnight round. The two soldiers--one at each end of the building--saw nothing and heard nothing, of that they were a.s.sured. Without delay, therefore, for in a little over an hour the watchman would be back from his rounds upon the upper floors, they proceeded to put out of action the more valuable and more complicated machines in the building. It was necessary, of course, that they should be almost silent; so their mode of procedure was to m.u.f.fle up in an old blanket the most delicate and fragile parts of the machines before smashing them with a heavy hammer well swathed in flannel wrappings.

The machines dealt with first were those farthest from the route that would be taken by the watchman on his next round. Consequently, when he came, he pa.s.sed along swinging his lantern in utter ignorance that anything was amiss, or that two men lay in ambush close at hand, ready to spring upon him should he suspect anything wrong and pause to investigate. As soon as he had pa.s.sed out of ear-shot the two recommenced their work with redoubled energy, and some two and a half hours were thus consumed in work that utterly spoiled a large proportion of the valuable machines which filled the great workshop.

Skilful, vigilant, and almost silent as they had been, they were yet after all caught napping. How or by whom they never knew, until, some time after, Dubec told them of a tale that was going the round among the workmen to the effect that one of Schenk's hired ferrets had all the time been hidden on the upper floor. Strange to say, he had been there not so much to deal with disaffected workmen--the sentinels were expected to do that--as to spy upon the watchmen themselves. The story seemed to fit in well with what Max knew of Schenk's character, and he accepted it as in all probability true. At any rate, neither Max nor Dale dreamed that aught was amiss until the latter heard the sound of marching outside, and that upon an unusual scale. He slid quickly to the nearest window and peeped out.

"We're done, Max!" he cried soberly. "Scores of soldiers, and they look to be forming a cordon right round the building."

"Are you sure?" Max cried incredulously, hurrying to a window on the opposite side of the block. One glance was enough to show that a strong cordon of soldiers was being drawn--nay, to all appearances was already drawn--all round the workshop. The soldiers faced inwards, and stood with bayonets fixed, as though prepared for an attempt at escape from some body of men caught within their armed circle.

"We've been seen, Jack, old man!" cried Max, coming back to the side of his friend. "It's all up, I fear. They've made up their minds they've got us, and do not intend to let us slip. I'm so sorry, old man, you should have been mixed up in this. It's really not your quarrel, but mine."

There was a new note in Max's voice, one his friend had never heard before, and it was with something suspiciously like a break in his own that Dale replied as he seized and wrung his hand: "Don't say another word, Max. It's my affair too, and I won't have you blame yourself on my account. We've simply fought for our country, and have now got to die for it--that's all."

For a moment or two the friends stood silent, grasping one another's hands. That moment they were indeed friends, and each would cheerfully have given up his own life to save the other. Then the ruling thought which still swayed Max's mind a.s.serted itself once more.

"It seems so, Dale. Well, then, let us die to some good purpose. Here we have under our hands the most valuable of the workshops filched from us.

It is only partly out of action. Let us complete the good work, and we shall at least have deserved well of our country."

"Aye; but how so?"

"Let us burn it down."

"With us in it?"

"Aye, if need be. But if we will we can always sally out and exchange that fate for the bayonet's point."

Dale gazed at his friend in undisguised admiration. "You are a terror, Max," he said slowly. "These old works are your very life-blood, and I believe you would go through fire and water to keep the Germans out of 'em."

"So I would," replied Max with conviction, as he coolly reached down a great can of lubricating-oil and poured it over the floor and upon a pile of wooden cases close by. "Well, if you are game--and I know you are--let us scatter all the oil and stuff we can find about the place and set fire to it. They'll never get it out."

"Right you are, Stroke. It's the final, and we must make a win of it.

What would Hawkesley's think if they could see us--or Benson's?"

"Dale," cried Max, with sudden and deeper earnestness, "d'ye know, I believe this is what we were really training for during all those gruelling races. It was not for nothing we slogged away there day after day, learning to conquer disappointment and defeat. No; it was to know how to serve our country here."

"I believe you--and we will."

"Hark! I think I can hear soldiers on the floor below. Look out! I am going to set a light to this pile of cases. Get ready to run. I fancy it will spread like wildfire."

A match was applied, and flames leapt up and spread with a rapidity that would have terrified anyone less absorbed or less determined than our two heroes. The flames flew along the floor and benches, and Max and Dale retreated down the room, overturning all the cans of oil and grease they could find, and making it an easy matter for the fire to catch and hold. The smoke, driven along in front of the flames, quickly became so intolerable that they had to fly for relief to the staircase at the farther end of the building.

Outside the workshop the burst of flame was the signal for a loud yell of execration, mingled with cries of warning to the soldiers who had entered the building in search of the hostile workmen reported there.

The soldiers trooped noisily out and joined the cordon still drawn about the burning building. Messengers were dispatched to the fire-stations, and in a few minutes a couple of engines arrived and set to work to fight the flames. But though they were expeditious in arriving, the firemen were not equally expeditious in getting their hoses effectually trained upon the building. For one thing, the river had been largely relied upon to furnish a water-supply, and no hydrants were close at hand. Consequently the hoses had to be carried a great distance, and as the yards were still in darkness, save for the lurid light shed by the burning building, the hoses were badly exposed to the attentions of any hostile workman who happened to be near the scene.

Dubec "happened" to be there, with two or three other men animated by out-and-out hostility to the Germans, and waged fierce war upon the hoses at every point at which they lay in shadow. By the time the officer commanding the troops had awakened to the situation, the hoses had been completely ruined, and the fighting of the flames delayed until fresh ones could be brought to the spot.

In the meantime Max and Dale had ceased their efforts to extend the fire, and had retreated to one of the stone staircases situated at each end of the building. There was, in fact, little more to be done, for the fire had got firm hold, and it seemed certain that the whole building was doomed. The end by the staircase was almost free from smoke, and Max and Dale lingered there while awaiting the moment when they should be compelled to choose between death by burning or by the bayonets of the German soldiers. They fell somewhat quiet during those moments, and when they talked it was of the good old glorious times they had spent together. Presently Max's ear caught the sound of someone ascending the stairs.