Max and Dale strode quickly away, straight into the woods, and in single file the band followed them. The men were in high glee at the success of their enterprise, and seemed neither to know nor care about their critical situation. Max, however, felt very anxious, and presently managed to get Corporal Shaw so far to agree with him as to order complete silence and every care, as they threaded their way through the thickest-wooded country to be found in the quarter not yet reached by the soldiers from the train.

For over three miles the band moved in silence, at top speed, away from the scene of their daring exploit. Max judged that by that time they were outside the sweep of the encircling bodies of Germans, and could take a breather for a few minutes. The work on the railway had been hard and exhausting, and the men had for some time been too ill-nourished to be able to sustain long-continued exertion. At the order to halt and rest the men flung themselves on the ground, and for five minutes lay p.r.o.ne upon the gra.s.s. Then they went on again.

"D'ye see that smoke yonder, lad?" remarked Corporal Shaw, soon after they had restarted, pointing to a thick column of smoke rising above the trees a couple of miles in their rear. "Is it a signal, or what?"

"No--it's not that," replied Max, after a long look at the smoke, which was rising more thickly at every moment. "There is a little village just there, and I can guess what has happened. The Germans have fired the nearest village in revenge for the attack upon the line. I have often heard of it being done. It is one of their methods of terrorizing the people, so that they dare do nothing themselves and try to prevent others doing any thing in the vicinity of their villages. I had forgotten it until this moment."

"What a black shame!" cried Corporal Shaw with fierce indignation. "What had those poor folk to do with it? The Germans knew that well enough--the cowards!"

The other men in the band soon knew what had happened, and their rage and indignation were extreme. Some wanted to vent their rage by returning to the scene of the burning village and attacking those responsible for the outrage. It was as much as Max and Shaw could do to keep them from turning back and flinging away their lives in a desperate endeavour to exact reparation for the foul deed.

The retreat of the band was continued, but the rage and indignation of all concerned was not lessened when, later in the day, after a long halt, they were overtaken by two families fleeing from the burning village. It needed no question to tell them what they were. There were old men and women, heavy-eyed and outwardly uncomplaining, trudging beside creaking bullock-carts loaded with all the little bits of property they had been able to save from their burning homes. There were white-faced, frightened children, too, tucked in the corners of the carts or perched upon the piled-up goods, and their faces seemed to express mute wonder that such things could be.

It was indeed a sight to make any beholder furious with indignation, but on the unwitting causes of the trouble it acted with fourfold force. An instant reprisal was demanded by all the band, and Corporal Shaw, as angry as any of them, promised that they should have it, and that without any more loss of time than he could avoid.

CHAPTER XVIII

Reprisals

Dale was at one with the soldiers in desire for reprisals, but Max was dead against the whole idea. It was not that he was less indignant at the cruel wrong just inflicted upon innocent peasants, but he feared that any more such acts would react upon the country people in precisely the same manner. A reprisal which brought fresh trouble upon yet another set of innocent folk would, he felt, be worse than useless, and he spoke his mind freely to Corporal Shaw on the subject.

"You've done no good," he ended, "by attacking the line and tearing up a few rails. Your methods were too wild to bring about any real damage.

All you have done is to make it additionally hard for me to get you safely out of the country."

"Humph!" grunted the Corporal rather sourly. "I know you've done some neat little things in Liege, but could you manage a better affair out here? I give you leave to try. As for getting us out, I don't see much prospect of that coming off, my lad."

"I'll get you out if you'll drop all these wild-cat exploits," replied Max firmly. "Is it a bargain?"

The Corporal consulted with his men for a few minutes. "No," he said, shaking his head emphatically, "the men refuse to sneak out of the country before they have what they call redressed the wrong done those poor villagers. They want one more good cut at the Germans to make that good, and then they are ready to make tracks for home, if you think you can get us there."

"Will you let me plan the reprisal attack as well as arrange to get you out?" asked Max quickly.

The Corporal opened his eyes a little.

"So _you_ do think you can do better? Well, I don't mind; you shall plan the reprisal and then get us out of the mess. Done!"

"Done!" replied Max firmly, and it was thus settled that he should, from that time forward, practically take command of the little band, subject only to the stipulation that the escape should not be arranged until the Germans had been made to pay, and pay handsomely, for their recent exhibition of brutality.

As soon as that was decided, Max changed the direction of the retreat to due east, and in that direction they continued all day. When night fell, the men looked about them for a comfortable spot to sleep, but Max would not allow them to stop, and, with frequent halts for rest, they continued on their way all through the night. There was some grumbling, but it was soon silenced; and, when all was said and done, the men recognized that Max managed to feed them fairly well. This part of the business he saw to himself. At nearly every farm-house he pa.s.sed he managed to purchase some food. None of the soldiers were allowed to come within sight of the people, and, with this precaution, and his knowledge of the language, he hoped that no suspicions of the destination of the food would be aroused.

During the following day the band hid themselves in a copse and slept.

It was nearly dark when Max aroused them and told them they must go on.

"We've been travelling a good many miles, lad," remarked Shaw carelessly. "Where are we now?"

"In Germany," replied Max.

"Germany!" cried the Corporal, his carelessness vanishing. "Why--what d'ye mean? D'ye think we want to find a good safe prison?"

"No. Your men insist on one more attack on the Germans, as a reprisal for the burning of the village. Well, we cannot do anything in Belgium, for it would only mean another village burned. If we make the attack in Germany it will be different. They can hardly burn down their own villages."

Corporal Shaw held out his hand. "Well done, lad!" he cried heartily, and the other men within ear-shot echoed his words. "That's a stroke of genius, and we are with you to a man. What are you going to attack--nothing less than Metz, of course?"

Max smiled and shook his head. "Something a little less ambitious will have to do, I think. After another night march we shall be on the spot, and can get to work."

"What are you going to do, lad?"

Max hesitated a moment. Should he keep the men ignorant of the nature of the enterprise until the hour for it had struck? It was hardly worth while--in forty-eight hours or so it would be all over.

"To block the main line between Aix and Liege," he answered simply.

"Phew! I think you mentioned wild-cat exploits the other day. What sort of cat exploit is this?"

"It must be carefully planned beforehand."

"Humph! Trains filled with troops pa.s.sing every five minutes; the lines thick with guards. It'll want careful planning--and a trifle more. In fact, it'll need the devil's own luck. What say you, boys?"

"No matter, Corp," cried Peck testily. "Give the lad his head. We ain't particular, so long as it's a fust-cla.s.s sc.r.a.p."

"It'll be all that," grunted Shaw.

"Did we expect to git out of this show alive?" retorted Peck. "What's the odds? Let the lad 'ave his way--he's grubbed us well anyhow."

The other men murmured an a.s.sent, and it was clear that most of the band were quite ready to follow Max in an attempt, however desperate, on the Germans' main line of communication. The Frenchmen were quite ready to agree to anything that would lead to another encounter with the enemy in company with their British comrades, and so Max was left in possession of the field and charged with full responsibility for the tremendous task before them.

Two days later the whole of the band arrived safely within a mile or so of the great main line which runs between Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege, and then on through Namur to Paris. A stoppage to their communications on this line would disconcert the Germans in a way that hardly anything else could do, and Max, from the knowledge he had gained, while at Liege, of the great trains loaded with troops and munitions that constantly pa.s.sed through at all hours of the day and night, was very well aware of it. Next to his darling scheme for the frustration of the Germans' plans as regards the Durend works, the breaking of the great railway through the town had seemed the most serious blow that could be aimed at the Germans by a few men working independently of the great military forces of the Allies. It was a difficult matter, but not impossible. That was enough.

Max and Dale, accompanied by Shaw, reconnoitred the railway after hiding their men well away out of sight. The first point reached Max did not consider suitable, and it was not until they had approached the line at several different places that he found a spot that satisfied him. This spot was one where the line pa.s.sed along a fairly deep cutting, the sides of which were thickly overgrown with bushes with here and there a young tree. It was a spot at which it would be easy to approach the line unseen. And yet this was not Max's chief reason for selecting it. His design had been to find a spot where the line at night-time would have dark patches of shadow cast upon it here and there.

Dale and Corporal Shaw now returned to the spot where the band had been left in hiding, while Max set out for Aix-la-Chapelle alone. He still wore the workman's clothes in which he had masqueraded for so long, and, with his excellent knowledge of the German tongue, he had little to fear so long as he took care not to blunder into a military patrol. Without misadventure he reached Aix, and purchased a dozen spanners similar to those used by plate-layers, except that the handles were short and lacked the great leverage necessary for their work. This difficulty would, however, be easily got over by cutting stout rods from the woods and lashing them to the short spanners. The tools thus obtained would, he knew, be fully suited to the end in view.

The reconnoitring of the railway had disclosed the fact that the guards were stationed only about eighty yards apart. Also that they were changed every four hours, at four o'clock, eight o'clock, midnight, and noon.

An hour before midnight Max led the band towards the line at the point fixed upon. He had already, at some pains, explained exactly what he desired each man to do, and from their intelligent eagerness felt pretty well a.s.sured that they would not fail from want of zeal or knowledge of the part they had to play. To the Frenchmen he, of course, explained matters in their own tongue, and found them equally as ready as their Island brethren.

The moon, what there was of it, was fairly low in the heavens, and the long shadows Max counted upon so largely in his plans were much in evidence. Silence was another factor of importance, and the feet of all the men were swathed in long strips of cloth--their puttees in the case of the British soldiers, and strips from their clothing in the case of the Frenchmen.

The band was divided into three groups, and the orders were that on arriving at the edge of the cutting all were to remain motionless in hiding until the guards were changed at midnight. Then three men from each band were to creep up close to one of the three sentries marked down for attack, and wait for an opportunity to seize and kill or capture him without raising an alarm.

The latter point Max insisted upon as of the utmost importance. The groups of three might spend two hours, even three hours, he told them, so long as they performed their task without making a noise that would attract the attention of the sentries on either side. The darkness of the line, from the shadows of the trees and bushes and the deepness of the cutting itself, Max felt he could rely upon to prevent the other sentries from seeing if aught were amiss. The important thing, therefore, was that they should perform their task without noise.

Promptly at midnight the sentries were changed. The momentary bustle was, as arranged carefully beforehand by Max, taken advantage of by the groups of three to creep close up to their objectives. Then things settled down again in quietude. All was peaceful and silent between the thunder of the trains, and time was allowed the sentries to grow accustomed to their surroundings and to develop any individual habits of carelessness that might be theirs. At first the men marched to and fro rather frequently. Later, they contented themselves with leaning on their rifles and making themselves as comfortable as such a position would allow. There had been no attacks on any part of the line in Germany so far as had become known, and there was no reason in the world why these line guards should expect one now.