Chapter VIII: A Midnight Sally

"To die like this!" thought Leon. "What a terrible end."

He had always planned that if he should be stricken in this war it would be with his gun in his hand and his face set toward the enemy. To perish, buried under a heap of earth, was not a soldier's death.

He worked the dirt out of his mouth with the tip of his tongue and set himself for a supreme effort. A quick breath and more dirt filled his mouth. He could not move a muscle in his body. He tried to shout and more earth entered his mouth. It gritted its way down his throat.

So this was the end. The young soldier grew calm and waited for it to come. After all it was not so bad. He had done his best and now it was all over. That was the chance a soldier was compelled to take. The pain left him and the whole world turned black.

"Ouch," cried somebody suddenly. "He bit my finger."

"Never mind that," said another voice. "Get the dirt out of his mouth."

Leon felt a finger enter his throat and he coughed. Some one was working his arms up and down and his wounded shoulder pained him. He struggled up but sank back to his knees and began coughing up dirt.

"Spit that dirt out on your parapet," said a voice which Leon recognized as belonging to Dubois, one of his mates. "You'll need it all there."

Dubois was the joker of the regiment and everybody laughed. Even Leon smiled. He was feeling much better now and all the men except Earl returned to their holes. Jacques had been taken to the rear by the Red Cross to have his wound dressed.

"What hit me, Earl?" asked Leon.

"Dirt hit you," said Earl. "A shell exploded just the other side of you."

"It must have been a big one."

"It was; 250-millimeter."

"That's a ten-inch, isn't it? Did it do much damage?"

"Well we've got two men less in our company than we had a few minutes ago."

"I guess I was lucky," exclaimed Leon soberly.

"You certainly were," agreed Earl. "That shell tore a hole in the ground about six feet deep and spilled about ten cubic yards of dirt on top of you."

At this moment two stretcher-bearers arrived on the spot to take Leon back to the rear, but he refused to go.

"I'm all right," he exclaimed. "I only had a lot of dirt piled on me and that didn't do me any harm. Besides there is too much going on and I don't want to miss any of it."

The bearers withdrew and Leon went back to his ditch. He was rapidly recovering his strength and began to dig his two German overcoats out from under the pile of dirt. He bedded them down in the crater made by the shell and made himself quite comfortable.

"Come over here, Earl," he shouted a moment later. "This crater is much larger and safer than your ditch and lightning never strikes twice in the same place you know."

Earl soon joined his brother and with him came Dubois the man who had helped to dig out Leon. There was plenty of room for all three and for a time they felt quite secure. Soon however the shells began to fall thicker and faster all about them.

"What did you say about lightning?" demanded Dubois at length.

"The shells are getting pretty close, aren't they?" said Leon anxiously.

"Yes," said Dubois, "and to my mind it's only a question of time before one lands on us. This isn't old-fashioned lightning you know."

"They certainly seem to be getting the range all right," exclaimed Earl. "I don't see what we can do though. We can't leave our post."

"No," agreed Leon. "We certainly can't go back."

"We can go ahead though," said Dubois.

"What do you mean?" demanded Leon puzzled by his comrade's remark.

"Do you remember that little German trench about forty yards ahead of us out here?"

"Yes."

"Well why can't we go out and take possession of that?"

"Just the three of us?" demanded Earl.

"Why, yes," replied Dubois. "You will remember that there has been no firing from that spot all day. It is probably empty."

"Do you think we can reach it?" exclaimed Leon eagerly.

"Why not? It is very close and yet we'll not be fired upon by the Boches. If we remain here it is but a question of time before we are entirely wiped out. What do you say?"

"I say to go," replied Leon at once.

"And I too," echoed Earl.

"Come then," urged Dubois and without waiting another moment he crawled up out of the crater and started across the space intervening between them and the German trench. One on each side, Leon and Earl accompanied him.

These two boys were typical twins in every respect. Strangers could hardly ever tell them apart and even their intimate friends became confused at times. They looked alike, their voices were alike, and they even seemed to think alike. The only distinguishing mark was a small mole under Earl's right eye.

"Don't let any German clip that mole off, Earl," warned Dubois. "If that should happen I don't know how we could ever tell which was which."

"It's impossible to see anything to-night anyway," said Leon. "I have never seen such blackness."

Crawling three abreast they proceeded across the shell-swept battlefield. The cannonade made an infernal noise now and it seemed as if bedlam had been let loose. Closer and closer they came to their goal. Indistinctly outlined against the night they could see the pile of earth thrown up in front of the German trench.

A few moments later they came to it. Dubois did not try to enter here however but, still followed by Earl and Leon, he crawled around the end of it. Then he continued until he came to the center of the trench so that it was between them and the French lines.

Suddenly a wild yell split the darkness.

"_Die Franzosen_! _Die Franzosen_!" (The French! The French!)

It was impossible to distinguish one object from another. There might have been a regiment of Germans in the trench for all that Dubois and his two comrades could tell. For that matter the Germans might easily have imagined they were beset by a regiment of French. The night was inky black.

It was a great surprise to the three adventurers to hear this yell of fear coming out of a trench they had supposed to be vacant, but they were undaunted. Dubois immediately jumped down into the trench, closely followed by Leon and Earl.

"_Hände hoch_!" (Hands up) shrieked Dubois, calling upon the small amount of German with which he was familiar.

"_Hände hoch_!" he shouted again and Leon and Earl added their voices.

It was a tense moment. Probably they were far outnumbered by the Germans and should this fact be discovered it would go hard with them. It was a strange sensation for two American boys to experience. There they were standing in a deep trench somewhere in France, in the middle of the night, with they did not know how many Germans who would have liked nothing better than to kill them then and there.

"_Hände hoch_!" repeated Dubois threateningly and the three comrades held their breath in suspense.

"_Kameraden_! _Kameraden_!" came the familiar reply and Dubois chuckled audibly. He and two companions had forced the occupants of a German trench to surrender, solely through bluff.

In his broken German the intrepid Frenchman ordered their prisoners to leave the trench and with their hands held high above their heads to march towards the French lines. One by one they stepped out and as the three friends saw them outlined indistinctly against the sky they counted six Germans. Three of them had taken double their number of the enemy prisoners.

"You and Earl take them back," said Dubois to Leon. "I'll stay here in this trench and you'd better tell the rest of the fellows in our section to move up here. It's much safer."

"All right," said Leon readily, and with his revolver in his hand to guard against any attempts to escape he and Earl set out to conduct their captives back to the French lines.