CHAPTER XI

THROUGH THE LINES

It was stiff, tiresome work lying quiet in the ditch that day, but with brambles pulled over them the boys were in comparatively little danger of discovery. At dusk they crawled cautiously out of their hiding-place and slowly headed northward. Every sound meant Germans to them, and their first mile was a succession of sallies forward, interspersed with sudden dives underneath the hedge by the roadside. The moon came up. The clank of harness and the gear of guns and wagons told of approaching artillery or transport, or both. From the shelter of the hedge the boys watched long lines of dusty shapes move slowly past. They seemed to be taking an interminable time about it. Now and then a rough guttural voice rasped out an order.

The boys waited for what seemed hours to them, and the very moment they would move, along would come another contingent of some sort. They had evidently struck a corps shifting southward. At last a good sized gap in the long, ghostly line gave them courage to cross. They got through safely enough, and kept on steadily for a time across country. They skirted two villages, and reached a haystack near a river-bank before daybreak. Out toward the east they saw the faint outlines of a fairly large town. Before them lay the river, spanned by a bridge guarded at each end by a German sentry. Hope fell several degrees.

The boys had climbed upon the stack and pulled the straw well over them. As they lay looking toward their goal, to the north, the home of the owner of the stack was at their backs. He made his appearance at an early hour, and came not far distant. After a whispered conference, Bob hailed him in a low tone. First the little man bolted back into his house without investigating the whereabouts of the mysterious voice. After a time he reappeared, and when Bob again sung out to him, he gingerly approached the stack, staring at it like mad, in spite of Bob's continuous warnings that he should not do so. Finally Bob induced him to mount the slight ladder by which the boys had climbed to their point of vantage.

He was a little man, with a thin red beard, great rings in his ears, and piercing, shifty eyes. A reddish, diminutive sort of man, altogether, with a thin little voice that went with his general appearance. He was literally scared stiff at the idea of the Boches finding the boys on his premises. That would mean his house burned, and death for himself, he said. Germans were all about, he said fearfully, and no one could escape them. He was so frankly nervous and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that the boys were well hidden, and before he climbed down the ladder he piled bundle after bundle upon them, as if preferring that they should be smothered rather than discovered by the dreaded Boches.

That was a tiring day, a hungry, thirsty day, but the boys lay as still as mice. From where they lay they could see a sufficient number of Germans passing and repassing along the road and across the bridge to hourly remind them of the necessity of keeping close cover.

At night, before nine o'clock, they climbed down from their hiding-place, went to the edge of the river, undressed, and waded out neck-deep. Dicky stepped on a stone that rolled over and in righting himself splashed about once or twice. In a moment a deep voice could be heard from the opposite bank, growling out, "Was ist das?" The boys kept perfectly still, and heard the German call out for someone to come. Quietly each of the boys ducked his head and gently waded back under water to the shelter of their own bank. There they sat, very cold and miserable, for some time. Then the moon came out and lit up the country-side bright as day.

"It's off for to-night," whispered Bob. "We must go back and have another try to-morrow night. That was bad luck. The Boche could hardly have been a sentry. I think he was just there by chance. What rotten luck!" So back they went, wet and cold, to their nest at the top of the stack, in anything but a hopeful frame of mind.

They fell into a sound sleep before long, and were awakened quite
early next morning by the weight of someone ascending the ladder.
"A Boche this time!" whispered Dicky as he regained consciousness.
"That light little man never could make such a commotion."

The perspiration broke out on Bob's forehead.

An age seemed to pass before the head of the intruder came into view. What was their surprise and relief to see the round smiling face of a Belgian woman of considerable size and weight! Redbeard had told her of his unwelcome guests and she had come to offer such succor and assistance as might lie in her power.

She was the widow of a Belgian officer, killed in the first fighting of the war. She asked if the boys were hungry, and when Bob admitted that they had been on very short rations indeed for some time she reached down and drew up a little basket containing a bottle of red wine and a plate of beans.

The Germans had taken most of the food in the district, and beans were her only diet save on those occasions when she managed to get some of the American relief food which a friend of hers had hidden away, drawing sparingly on the rapidly diminishing store.

It was a sad day for many folk in Belgium and Northern France, she said, when the American food stopped coming, but American soldiers should find that she remembered. As to getting across the river, she could guide the boys to a point where they might find it more easy to cross. She would return again at night and try to help them another stage their journey.

The day seemed brighter after the woman's visit. Night came at last, after an uneventful day of waiting, and with it the ample form of madame. She led the boys two miles eastward to where the ruins of a bridge still spanned part of the stream. Girders just below the water's surface made it possible to clamber across, she said, and there had not been a guard at that point for some months. The boys bade the good woman a very grateful good-by, and found the crossing much easier than they had expected to find it.

Soon they were plodding on by starlight, and by midnight had reached, unmolested, a road that seemed to lead due north. They went around all villages, and learned to consider dogs a nuisance in so doing. At first they were unduly nervous. Faint moonlight played strange games with their fancies. Once a tree-trunk held them at bay for some minutes before they discovered it was not a German with a rifle. It certainly looked like a German. A restless cow, changing her pasture, sent them flying to cover. A startled rabbit dashed across the road, and the boys flung themselves face downward in a gully in a twinkling. The night made odd, sounds, each one of sinister import to the fugitives. The wind sprang up and made noises that caused their hearts to jump into their throats half a dozen times.

The boys were sadly in need of food and drink. They decided to try the hospitality of some of the villages as they passed a hamlet. Approaching a house on the far side of a little cluster of dark dwellings, they lay by the door and under one of the windows for a few minutes, listening for the heavy breathing that might betoken German occupants. All seemed quiet and propitious, so Bob gave a gentle knock and explained in a low tone that two Americans, in hiding from the Germans, wished to enter. Sounds of commotion came from the cottage. A light flashed from a window, and a woman's shrill voice spoke the word "Americains" in anything but a low tone. A moment later, as they still waited for the door to open, a light appeared in the next cottage, and another feminine voice repeated the surprised ejaculation, "Les Americains!"

"Come on," said Dicky. "The sooner we get out of this the better.
That woman has raised the whole town."

The boys ran down the road quietly, but losing no time. Well it was that they did so, for they had not gone far before several shots were fired behind them, and one or two sinister bullets sang over their heads. They started running in good earnest then. Fortunately there was no pursuit. After a time they slowed down and again became a prey to all their former fears of night noises. A large bird flew close to Bob's head and gave him quite a scare. As they pressed on along the roadway, the clatter of hoof-beats coming toward them sent them to the roadside, where, a ditch offered welcome refuge.

Bob and Dicky jumped in, close together. At the bottom they hit something soft, which turned beneath them and gave a whistling grunt as their combined weight came down upon it. In an instant they realized that they had jumped full on top of a man. Who he was or what he was doing there was of no moment to the boys. A sound from him might mean their capture. Bob grabbed the man, grappled with him in the pitch dark, and choked him into unconsciousness, Dicky lending a hand. A troop of German cavalry clattered up. Just as the troop drew abreast, the order was given for them to slow from a trot into a walk. The boys held their breath. Gradually the horsemen drew past, then away. Bob waited until they were well in the distance, and then examined the poor fellow underneath. If the boys had been scared to have jumped on the man, the man had been more than scared to have had them do so.

There was all-round relief when the boys found the victim to be an elderly Belgian farmer; and the relief of the farmer himself as he gathered his scattered wits, to find that the boys had no designs further upon his welfare, was truly comic. The Germans, he said, had imposed severe penalties on inhabitants who roamed about the country-side between eight o'clock in the evening and daylight. His quest remained unexplained, except in so far as a sack of something the boys did not examine might have explained it. Bob advised the old man to remain where he was till morning light, and the boys pressed on.

Before dawn they took refuge in a shed behind a house whose stately lines were marred by the marks of bombardment.

The owner of the half-ruined house and the shed where they had taken refuge proved to be a fine old Belgian, courageous and full of resource. As soon as he found that the boys were escaping American airmen he brought food and drink to them in plenty. They were a long way from the Holland line, he said, but they might, with care, get across. Others had done so. He would look into the probabilities and possibilities, and let them know.

The shed was a bare, small building of rude boards, with nothing in it. A few boards were placed across the eaves, forming a sort of loft extending for some seven feet from the end of the building. It was on these boards that the boys spent their days while waiting for an opportune moment to go further. Their host would not hear of their suggestions that they should leave the shed until he had arranged plans for their reception at a further station on their journey.

"I wonder why he does not ask us to come into his house?" queried Dicky after the boys had been two days in the shed. "It seems to be big enough—-even what's left of it—-to have plenty of hiding places in it, judging from what I can see of it out of this hole in the roof."

"He probably has his reasons," was Bob's reply.

That he had was proven the next day, when a squad of German soldiers came and spent an hour searching the house. One of them glanced in the doorway of the shed, but did not come inside. Seeing the bare surroundings, it evidently did not occur to him to glance upward. That night, when the Belgian brought their food, he told them that his house was searched periodically, though as yet no one had been discovered in hiding there.

Impatiently, they spent a week on the hard boards of the loft in the shed. At last their host was ready for them to move on. He gave them a map of the country, on which he marked the route and their stopping places. After six hours' steady march through a driving downpour they found another shed, in just the place that had been described to them before starting. It, too, had a hospitable loft, and food was there in plenty.

Two more stopping places, always in sheds or outbuildings, and they were very near that part of the Dutch frontier which their friends, most of them unknown, were planning that they should cross. Money, they were told, was to be a factor in their obtaining entrance to Holland. They knew little of the detail of what happened. They were guided one night by a dwarfed cripple to a little wood, and there spent four hours in weary waiting in absolute silence. Then the cripple returned and motioned them to follow him. This they did, and when they reached the edge of the wood, commenced crawling on all fours, as their guide was doing.

They crawled for some hundreds of yards, winding about the scrub brush and tall grass, and then suddenly came upon a wire fence. A dark shape loomed up on the far side of this barrier. The cripple, aided by the man on the other side, held apart two strands of the wire, and cautioned the boys to step quickly through the opening.

The cripple disappeared in the black night, the dark form beside them motioned in a ghost-like way to the blackness ahead of them, and without a sound they pressed on, as though in a dream, hardly daring to hope all would come out well.

By daylight they were able to distinguish something of the general outlines of the country, which was flat, damp and fog covered. A tall line of poplars led them toward a road. As they reached it, in the gray of the morning, Bob turned to Dicky and said the first words either of them had spoken for more than an hour.

"Do you think we are really in Holland, and free?" he queried.

"The whole thing was done in such a mysterious fashion, and silence so rigidly enjoined by everybody, that I would not be surprised if we have been smuggled out of Belgium, Bob," was Dicky's reply.

Nevertheless, they were most cautious as day came. They hid for a time, then decided to go to some homely cottage and see what manner of folk they would find. Stealthily approaching a simple home, they waited until they caught sight of the housewife who was outside it, feeding her chickens.

"She looks Dutch," said Dicky. "Let's try her."

They came upon her suddenly, but she showed no great surprise. Perhaps she had seen escaping soldiers of the Allied Armies in that part of the world before. She could not understand either English or French, but offered the boys a drink of milk and some bread, taking the money they proffered for it and looking at the coins curiously before she placed them in her pocket.

"She is Dutch as Dutch," was Bob's conclusion.

Sure enough, they were in Holland at last.

Careful maneuvering enabled them to get a passage to England, though they had to use camouflage in their answers to certain pointed questions in order not to disclose the fact that they were American belligerents.

It was not until their arrival in London—-which they reached without further incident—-that something of their real adventures became known.

Bob voted that they proceed at once to Farnborough, which he had heard was the headquarters of the British Flying Corps. An English intelligence officer who had helped them to get through from Holland had suggested Farnborough, too. Accordingly they wasted no time in London, except to inquire for the whereabouts of the Farnborough train. They were soon at Waterloo Station, and by afternoon had come to the Royal Aircraft Factory Grounds, which were then at Farnborough. There the commander was very cordial to them, and found a place for them to get a bath in a jiffy. More than once the boys had effected changes of raiment during their series of adventures, but while they did not look quite as bad as they did when they assumed their first disguise in France, they were still dressed in odd fashion. Two smart British uniforms were given them, and they were told that they would be very welcome and honored guests at the general's mess for dinner.

At dinner they told their story in relays, to an intensely interested audience. It was voted a truly great adventure, and the two young Americans were overwhelmed with genuine admiration from their British comrades.

"I suppose your squad have no idea you escaped, have they?" asked the general, who was a very youthful man for his rank.

"I dare say they imagine we are done for," answered Bob. "I think we should send word to them as soon as we can."

"We have a squadron of pushers going over in the morning, sir," remarked the commander to the general, "and if these boys would like to get over to their own crowd in a hurry they could take a couple of that new squadron over for us. We are really very short-handed. It would help us and it might suit the boys. It would be quite dramatic for them to show up over there in person after being counted as lost. How would it suit you, gentlemen?"

Both of the boys though it a splendid idea, and as the general good-naturedly acquiesced, they went to bed early to get up at dawn and have a trial flight on the two machines which they were to pilot across the channel.

The new machines were in fine trim, and the whole group were in France, at the appointed time and place in due course. The airdrome where the squadron landed was but four hours' drive by motorcar from the point from which Bob and Dicky had started the flight that had ended so strangely for them. The flight commander of the Britishers gladly sent the American lads to their own airdrome in a car, and they arrived at dinner-time. When they walked into the headquarters' hut they had a welcome indeed, and half an hour later when they were allowed to join their comrades in the mess building, there was a scene that none of the Brighton boys could ever forget. Feeling ran too deep to make any of the fellows try to hide wet eyes, and lumps in the throat made handclasps all the more firm.

Bob and Dicky were anxious to know how the rest had fared during their absence, but not a word would anyone of the others say until the two returned heroes of the mess had gone over their story in detail.

As the boys finished the recital of their adventures Joe Little expressed the universal feeling in the hearts of every one of the Brighton boys when he turned to Bob and Dicky, and putting a hand on a shoulder of each, said soberly: "Fellows, if two of us can get out of a hole like that and get back safe and sound, we can rest mighty secure in the sort of Providence that is looking after us. It is little we need to worry about what may happen to us, after all."

"You never know how lucky you can be in this world," said Bob.

"And you never want to be afraid to give your luck a fighting chance," added Dicky.